Innholdsfortegnelse for May 14, 2015 i Beijing Review

Entrepreneurship Counts The 28-year-old Chen Anjie makes business phone calls while his girlfriend sorts out accessories for sale in a hostel on April 27 in Jinan, Shandong Province. Three years after graduation, Chen founded the hostel with 170,000 yuan ($27,732) as startup fund in his home-town in January and turned it from loss to profits in the second month. During the just concluded May Day holiday (May 1-3), Chen had a revenue of nearly 10,000 yuan ($1,611). PMI Data Chinese manufacturing activity continued to improve in April, with the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remaining in expansion territory, official data showed on May 1. The manufacturing PMI, a key measure of factory activity in China, posted at 50.1 in April, unchanged from the March reading but up from 49.9 in…

On May 4, Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, making Chu another sitting KMT chairman to set foot on the mainland since 1949, when the KMT fled in exile to China’s eastern isle of Taiwan after their defeat at the hands of the CPC-led forces. Both sides of the Taiwan Straits should build a community of shared destiny and settle political differences through consultation as equals, commented Xi in a speech he made during his meeting with Chu. Observers believe the high-level meeting between the leaders will help strengthen cross-Straits ties ahead of the island’s leadership elections next year, as well as consolidate the importance of the…

In China’s classical novel Romance of Three Kingdoms, the development of an empire is described as “long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.” The same is true in the business world. In the early 2000s, a great number of large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China were divided into smaller companies that rivaled each other, in order to increase their competitiveness in the market. After more than a decade of fast development, some of them, however, have or will join hands again in response to changed market conditions. The process started in late 2014, when China Agri-Industries Holdings Ltd., which engages in the production, processing and distribution of agricultural products, acquired China Huafu Trade and Development Group Corp. China’s top train makers—China CSR Corp. Ltd. and China CNR Corp. Ltd.—announced…

Dong Youchen was studying Russian at the Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1959 when he came across a novel by a foreign author that captivated him. Boat Capsize, the complex story of a man who survives a ferry disaster to discover the young woman he has rescued is not his new bride but rather someone else’s, moved Dong immeasurably. “I have to read the original,” the 22-year-old from northeast China’s Jilin Province thought to himself at the time. The author of the book that was to shape Dong’s trajectory in life was Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian writer, philosopher and humanist who was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Thus in 1960, when Dong went to the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University to study…

Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping is welcomed by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev (left) in Astana on May 7. During their talks, the two heads of state agreed to align their countries’ development strategies—the China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative and Kazakhstan’s new Bright Road economic policy—in pursuit of common prosperity. Kazakhstan was the first leg of Xi’s second overseas tour this year, which also took him to Russia and Belarus.…

THE UNITED STATES FBI investigators work a crime scene outside of the Curtis Culwell Center after a shooting occurred on May 3 in Garland, Texas. The Islamic State extremist group claimed that the shooting was their doing INDIA Young Buddhist monks circle a stupa as they offer prayers on Buddha Purnima in Bangalore on May 4, the 2559th birthday celebration of Buddha ISRAEL A woman from the Ethiopian community challenges Israeli security forces in Tel Aviv on May 3 during a protest against alleged police brutality and institutionalized discrimination against the Ethiopian community GERMANY Chancellor Angela Merkel lays a wreath during a ceremony at the memorial in the Dachau Concentration Camp in Dachau on May 3, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Camp THAILAND A well-wisher holds…

The five biggest Chinese banks posted weak profit growth in the first quarter of the year—the result of economic slowdown, surging bad loans, market-oriented reform on interest rates and increasing challenges from online investment products. The five listed state-owned commercial banks—namely the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Bank of Communications—colloquially known as the Big Five, all reported a net profit growth of less than 2 percent in the first quarter of the year, down from an average of about 10 per-cent from the same period last year, according to figures from their quarterly financial reports to bourses. Bye bye, fat profits A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers said that the net profits of some of Chinese banks will slide into…

Dear Readers, Forum is a column that provides a space for varying perspectives on contemporary Chinese society. We invite you to submit personal viewpoints on past and current topics (in either English or Chinese). yanwei@bjreview.com Please provide your name and address along with your comments Wang Yajun, a security guard at the Central Academy of Drama, one of China’s top art institutions, from which many of the country’s renowned actors and actresses have sprung, unveiled a book on people’s outer appearances in April. The book, which sets out criteria for judging looks, points out that good-looking people tend to acquire more social resources and thus looks can help secure job promotions, wealth and increased social status. In order to keep the specifics confidential, Wang opted not to publish the book,…

Quake-Stricken Tibet Rescuers carry relief materials into Chenzhuo Bude Village of Tingri County, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, on May 1. The road leading to Chenzhuo Bude Village, located at the foot of the Himalayas, was cleared of obstructions on the day. The village was severely affected by the April 25 Nepal earthquake. The 8.1-magnitude earthquake in Nepal affected parts of Tibet, including Xigaze and Ngari, in the north of the Himalayas, leaving 26 people dead, three missing and 856 injured. As of May 7, a total of 63,989 people who were evacuated had been well accommodated with safe food and drinking water and medical treatment. Power supply and telecommunication service were being resumed. Accountability System China will set up a government official accountability system as it steps up efforts…

Yantian Village in Dongguan, south China’s Guangdong Province, defies stereo-typical images of the southern Chinese countryside. It has no expansive paddy fields, nor blooming rapeseed flowers, nor livestock wandering on streets. Rather, it features row after row of modern buildings nestled amongst green, undulating hills. The village, with more than 3,000 natives but approximately 100,000 migrants, boasts hundreds of factories, a four-star hotel, a library, a cultural center with a gym and theater, shops, hospitals, schools, parks and even a golf course. Lying a mere 21 km from Luohu border crossing to Hong Kong, it covers a total area of 24 square km and wedges into Shenzhen— the pacesetter of China’s reform and opening up—in the east, south and west. This unique geographical location has contributed to its prosperity. Yantian…

A Wall Street Journal report on May 3, said the IMF is likely to declare, for the first time in more than a decade, that the yuan is fairly valued. “China’s contributions to the world economy in recent years are obvious to all. It’s natural for the IMF, a multilateral international organization, to change its attitude toward the Chinese currency,” Tan Yaling, President of China Forex Investment Research Institute, said during an interview with China Radio International. However, since the yuan may weaken the dollar hegemony, the United States insists (and will most likely continue to insist) that the yuan is undervalued to make the yuan less competitive. Despite the debate, current economic conditions show that the yuan is in fact not undervalued but overvalued. In IMF’s Article IV Consultation with…

Approved by the State Council, seven ministries on May 5 jointly promulgated the opinions on pushing forward medicine price reform Previous market-oriented medicine price reform was once deemed a failure, primarily due to flawed administrative control. Without basic conditions for market-oriented pricing mechanisms in place, blindly pursuing marketization will turn out to be reckless and counterproductive, which may end up in the hands of related interest groups. Presently, drug pricing is halfway liberalized. Due to the absence of overall planning, many policies are indecisive and liable to be blamed. To crack down on the unreasonable surges in medicine prices, authorities have introduced maximum retail prices since 2000, and tried to bring down prices by way of centralized purchasing, which may have squeezed pharmaceutical companies out of profit Restrictions such as…