Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Beijing Review

INDIA Police officers guard streets in Faridabad on February 21 to quell the riot by the Jat community in the city of the northern state Haryana. At least 10 people have been killed and 150 injured in the recent unrest SYRIA Military officers investigate a blast site after a series of explosions hit the northern part of Damascus, killing at least 83 people and injured 178 IRAN An elderly lady looks at electoral posters in downtown Tehran on February 22; two important elections— Majlis (parliament) and Assembly of Experts—were held on February 26 NORTH KOREA Top leader Kim Jong Un, accompanied by military officers, at a drill of the Korean People’s Army on February 21 RUSSIA President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during a wreath-laying ceremony to mark…

Comments to yuanyuan@bjreview.com ‘Have you watched 3D movies in town?” became a common greet-ing among residents in Youdunjie Town in Boyang County, east China’s Jiangxi Province, during the most recent Chinese Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) holiday. That is in part because the Purple Golden Cinema, which opened on January 18, has become a popular recreational venue in the town. During the weeklong holiday that started on February 7, it was packed with eager moviegoers. “I never thought I could watch updated 3D movies in my hometown,” a young resident surnamed Wang told Bychina.com, a local news website in Boyang. “The visual effect is no differ-ent with that in big cinemas in Shenzhen and the price is much lower.” Wang has worked in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, for two…

Comments to yushujun@bjreview.com General Electric (GE)—the American behemoth of refrigerators, washing machines and other home goods manufacturing—has agreed to sell its appli-ance unit to its Chinese counterpart Haier for $5.4 billion, according to an announce-ment by the two companies. The deal is the third largest acquisition of a U.S. company by Chinese investors. Although unusual, the agreement “establishes a model for cross-border investment and cooperation between China and the United States,” according to Haier officials. The Qingdao-based company will have the right to use the GE brand for its appliances for the next 40 years. In addition, the two will partner worldwide to expand their reach in healthcare, advanced manufacturing and the industrial sectors. “Haier is committed to investing in the United States. Furthermore, Haier and GE will explore opportunities…

In November last year, a song about Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region went viral online. “Let’s go to Ningxia and depart before sun-rise; Listening to songs sung by local girls and appreciating the rock paintings of the Helan Mountains,” the lyrics go. Ningxia is located in the northwestern part of inland China, in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River and the intersection between the desert and the Loess Plateau. It is adjoined to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. As the catchy tune indicates, Ningxia is sandwiched between the Helan Mountains to the north and the Liupan Mountains to the south. The region also boasts a long history and illustrious culture and is one of the cradles of the Chinese civilization. It used to…

Butter and Buddhas People visit butter sculptures at the Taer Monastery in Huangzhong County of northwest China’s Qinghai Province on February 22. The monastery is the birth place of Tsongkhapa, founder of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism. New Staple Food China will further boost its potato production to make the tuber one of the nation’s staple foods, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) said on February 23. By 2020, China will have more than 6.67 million hectares of potatoplanting areas, 30 percent of which can be processed into staple food, according to a document released by the MOA. To achieve the goal, China will better plan the planting of potatoes by taking local resources into account, while diversifying staple foods based on market demand, improving support for staple food production,…

Comments to lifangfang@bjreview.com Aygul Ismayil is a typical housewife liv-ing in the remote village of Qigirtmak, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. She had been depend-ing on her husband’s work on a small farm, which only generates 10,000 yuan ($1,534) a year, to feed a family of six. Qigirtmak is located in the town of Wupu, in east Xinjiang. Due to the scarce amount of arable land in the village, many villagers stayed home without other employment options, worsening the poverty situation in the region even further. In Xinjiang, there are currently 2.61 million people living under the national poverty line— defined as an annual income of 2,300 yuan ($375) for rural residents—accounting for more than 20 percent of the rural population in the whole region. “Now I can…

Comments to tangyuankai@bjreview.com For quite some time, the identities of the informants behind celebrity drug stories have mystified Beijing’s residents. News stories in local papers about such cases often begin with the phrase: “According to reports by Chaoyang people.” Oftentimes, readers cannot help wondering who those informants are. Chaoyang, the largest district in Beijing, is home to the city’s Central Business District and the main venues of the 1990 Asian Games and the 2008 Olympic Games. It is also famed for the glamorous high-end residential areas and golf courses, and the Sanlitun Sub-District’s numerous bars and nightclubs. Many movie stars have chosen to reside in this district, which also houses most of the foreign embassies in China. Celebrities caught taking drugs in the district include the famous film director Zhang…

Comments to yushujun@bjreview.com China has achieved rapid economic growth because of its economic struc-ture readjustment and successful transformation from a planned economy to a market economy. Though in the 1990s many other developing countries also undertook eco-nomic restructuring like China, many failed. So what are the real reasons for China’s economic success? In the 1950s, China began implementing an industrial development policy involving many capital-intensive industries. From the 1980s, it adjusted its industrial strategy to make use of its own advantages, by developing labor-intensive industries. After shifting to its new development strategy, the Chinese Government continued to protect and cultivate enterprises that lacked competitiveness and comparative advantages. It also cut back on market access restrictions for private businesses and foreign investment into those with comparative advantages. Meanwhile, China has established…

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com A big fan of digital technology, Wang Fan has been living a paper-free life for sev-eral years. Like his urbanized peers, the 27-year-old likes to schedule his life and work with a variety of apps on his smartphone. But when 2015 drew to a close, Wang found himself among a crowd that was snapping up an old-fashioned calendar. More than a calendar The Calendar of the Forbidden City: 2016 is no mere calendar. It is a collector’s item. After hitting the market in November 2015, it soon jumped to the bestsellers’ list of many book-stores and online markets. “It’s definitely not for the calendar part, because my phone is more convenient,” Wang said. “It’s about a nostalgic sentiment, about culture and aesthetics. That’s something your phone can…

City Planning On February 21, China issued a set of guidelines on urban development. The document sets the basic principles, key tasks and targets for future urban development and man-agement, aiming to ensure that cities are “orderly constructed, properly developed, and efficiently operated.” At the end of 2015, 56.1 percent of the Chinese population lived in cities. Urbanization in the past few de-cades has brought about significant social and economic changes in China, spawning problems including traffic jams, pollution and compro-mised public safety. The guidelines said that China will limit cities from growing beyond the means of their natural resources and environment. It also called on planners to differentiate cities through unique landscape modeling based on local characteristics. Aside from the exterior of buildings, factors including resource and energy conservation…

Comments to yinpumin@bjreview.com Since the rural population of China ac-counts for about 50 percent of the country’s total, poverty alleviation mea-sures in rural areas has long been one of the major concerns of the Chinese Government. “Poverty alleviation endeavors must be carried out in a precise manner, with different measures rolled out targeting different types of people and households,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping during his tour in Jiangxi Province on February 1-3. “Not a single family living in poverty is to be left behind in our path,” he stressed. Earlier, at a group study of the Political Bureau members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in January, the president pledged to make an all-out effort to ensure that all impoverished farmers will be lifted out of…

Comments to yulintao@bjreview.com U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new U.S.-ASEAN Connect initiative at the two-day U.S.-ASEAN leaders’ meet-ing held at the Sunnylands Center in Rancho Mirage, California, on February 16. The initiative will create a network of hubs to better coordi-nate U.S. economic engagement in the region and better connect entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses and generated positive respons-es from ASEAN members. The meeting was symbolically significant in two ways. The first was that the location, Sunnylands, was also the same locale where Obama first hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. The second and most obvious is that the timing of the meeting, which by definition excludes China, also comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Yet if the Obama administration had hoped that…

As of 2020, Hunan’s gross regional product and per-capita income of its rural and urban residents will double from the level of 2010; modernization will be basically realized in the Changsha- Zhuzhou-Xiangtan region in central-eastern part of the province; impoverished counties in the province will be lifted out of poverty; and Hunan as a whole will take the lead nationwide in building a resource-efficient and environment-friendly society. All these efforts will make sure that a mod-erately prosperous society in all respects will be built in the province as scheduled and that local citizens will become more affluent. Hunan’s fast progress over the past decades, particularly in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period, has laid a solid foundation to achieve these targets. In 2015, the province’s gross regional product stood at…

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 Giving hongbaos—red envelopes filled with money—to junior family members as a Spring Festival gift has long been a tradition in China. In recent years, sending digital hongbaos via mobile platforms such as WeChat and Alipay has become a popular way of cel-ebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year. WeChat, an instant messaging platform owned by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent, launched its digital hongbao feature during the 2014 Spring Festival. WeChat users can bind their bank accounts to the platform and send out hongbaos to an…