Innholdsfortegnelse for March 24, 2016 i Beijing Review

RUSSIA One of the country’s fighter jet pilots hugs his family member after arriving at an air force base near Voronezh on March 15 after the country withdrew its forces from Syria SYRIA A man riding a bicycle passes by an old city wall in Damascus on March 15. Five years ago, the first demonstration was held against the country’s leadership, which eventually led to a civil war and misery for its citizens AUSTRALIA Various balloons fly over Lake Burley Griffin during the annual Canberra Hot Air Balloon Festival in Canberra on March 15 MYANMAR The country’s president-elect U Htin Kyaw, a confidant of AungS an Suu Kyi, waves to the media after winning the election in Naypyidaw on March 15 UNITED STATES A researcher holds up a tooth of…

Luo Yunlian, Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee of Gulu Village in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, hoped to get more attention for her village at this year’s NPC session in order to develop the local tourism industry. Gulu, a village under the administration of Hanyuan County, Ya’an City, is located on top of a cliff and is home to more than 300 villagers, over 95 percent of whom belong to the Yi ethnic group. For a long time, inconvenient transportation has been an obstacle hindering local development: The only way for locals to travel outside the village is via a ladder constructed in 2003, which measures 3 km long and nearly 1,000 meters vertically. That means that agricultural products, such as walnuts and livestock, cannot be transported…

Comments to yuanyuan@bjreview.com A video shot at a hospital in Beijing went viral on the social network in late January, in which a woman wept inconsolably in the hall of the Guang’anmen Hospital. She revealed that she had been waiting for two days but still couldn’t get an outpatient appointment, as they had all been booked by scalpers. The scalpers resold one appointment for 4,500 yuan ($688), 15 times higher than the original fee of 300 yuan ($46). Patients often pay a fee to schedule medi-cal appointments and are issued a numbered ticket upon booking. The appointments for popular specialists are normally booked out days or even months in advance. Patients who want to see these doctors have no other remedy but to turn to scalpers, who make an enormous…

Comments to yushujun@bjreview.com Internet search giant Baidu won a second -level prize at the China 2015 National Science and Technology Awards for its technological advancement of machine transla-tion in early January. The company’s translation system has been applied to or embedded in more than 7,000 products, including websites and apps, and has dramatically improved their competitiveness by giving them access to mar-kets all over the world. It enabled, for example, 1.2 million domestic suppliers on DHgate.com, an online marketplace of wholesale products, to sell products to more than 10 million buyers in 224 countries and regions. The award marked the first occasion upon which an Internet company was able to attain the nation’s top scientific accolades— usually awarded to weightier projects, such as manned space flights. Effective machine translation, one…

Commemoration Ceremony Local officials and residents pay tribute to a statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen at the mausoleum of the renowned statesman in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on March 12, which marked the 91st anniversary of Sun’s death. Born on November 12, 1866, Sun led the 1911 Revolution that ended imperial rule in China. China will hold a series of events to mark the 150th anniversary of Sun’s birth this year. Rights Protection China has created a more efficient and fairer justice system to improve human rights protection, according to work reports from the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP). The reports were submitted to the 12th National People’s Congress, the national legislature, on March 13. Courts upheld the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” and worked to…

On March 16, the closing event of the Fourth Session of the 12th National People’s Congress (NPC) was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Following Premier Li Keqiang’s meeting with journalists at his press conference, this year’s full sessions of the 12th NPC and the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing officially ended. Wei Yao, a photographer from Beijing Review, recorded memorable moments through a panoramic lens.…

Comments to baishi@bjreview.com Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to make his second trip to Washington in less than a year in late March to attend the fourth Nuclear Security Summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama. During his state visit in September 2015, President Xi and his counterpart had reached an agreement on a number of important issues, such as climate change and cybersecurity. With this consensus, the two sides were supposed to be able to set aside their differences while focusing on foster-ing sound bilateral relations. For the remainder of 2016, however, China-U.S. relations are likely to be influenced by a number of uncertainties, including the flare-up in the South China Sea, the nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the U.S. presidential election. Will the leaders of the…

During the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016- 20) period, China must improve the efficiency of the financial sector in serv-ing the real economy. Following this principle, five major tasks should be undertaken, which include improving the financial environment to achieve higher efficiency in resource allocation, supporting innovation and business startups, facilitating the role of investment in stimulating growth, and developing a system of diversified financial institutions. In order to improve the financial environment to attain higher efficiency in resource allocation, market-oriented reforms in interest rates, exchange rates and treasury bond yield curves need to be completed. Interest rates represent the price of capital, and thereby offer a standard for the allocation of real resources. A non-market- oriented interest rate system may lead to a distortion in resource allocation. The government must…

Foreign Investment China’s non-financial outbound di-rect investment (ODI) in January and February surged 71.8 percent over the same period of 2015, according to latest official data. The country’s ODI in the first two months of 2016 hit 195.97 bil-lion yuan ($29.92 billion), said the Ministry of Commerce in a statement on March 15. The ODI in February alone, reaching $17.9 billion, out-numbered the total for the first two months of last year. The ministry attributed the rise to a more diversified investment portfolio. In January and February, nine of the 20 industries consid-ered in the ministry’s calculation contributed ODI of over $1 billion, compared to only four in the same period of 2015. The Belt and Road Initiative also accelerated business cooperation between Chinese firms and their foreign counterparts. During…

Comments to yulintao@bjreview.com Just when world leaders thought that they could breathe easily after the successful Iran nuclear deal, nuclear security issues have been catapulted to the top of their agen-das following North Korea’s recent testing of its nuclear bombs’ capabilities. When the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) takes place from March 31 to April 1 in Washington, D.C., the Korean Peninsula will be a hot topic if not the main focus, along with efforts to improve security and close loopholes that could allow weapons to get in the hands of terrorists. What must also be explored is the way in which the global governance system related to nuclear security can be improved beyond the NSS for the advancement of nations big and small, nuclear states or not. Urgent problems…

Growth Target It is impossible for me to agree with doubts stating that China cannot achieve the growth target that it has set for this year. The weak world recovery has taken its toll on the Chinese economy. Also, China’s economic transition is under way and its deep-rooted problems are emerging. The downward pressure is indeed in creasing. But one prominent feature is uneven development across regions and industries. Hope and challenges coexist in China’s economy. If we look at what is “fundamental” as well as the “main trend,” hope outweighs the challenges facing China. We are fully confident about China’s long-term growth prospects because we believe that there will not be a hard landing as long as we stick to the path of reform. There is still huge potential…

Comments to lanxinzhen@bjreview.com In his government work report, Premier Li Keqiang vowed to deepen the reform of the financial sector in 2016. It includes efforts to improve the financial regulatory system, further liberalize interest rates and improve the market-based mechanism for setting the yuan exchange rate. It would also affect financial institutions, promote the sound development of the multi-level capital market, as well as harden the crackdown on illegal fundraising. In addition, it would help develop Internet-based, inclusive and green finance. These measures clearly outline China’s ambition regarding its financial re-form policies. The world is still shaking from the aftershocks of the 2008 global economic crisis that broke out in the United States. The eurozone’s growth is still anemic, and has been worsened by the refugee crisis. Japan implemented negative…

Comments to lanxinzhen@bjreview.com The defense budget will grow at a rate of 7.6 percent in 2016, the lowest in six years, according to a budget report given to the Fourth Session of the 12th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, on March 5. This year, the budget is 954 billion yuan ($146 billion), compared with last year’s budget of 886.9 billion yuan ($136 billion). China’s national defense policy and military reform have recently been in the international media’s spotlight as they have maintained a watchful eye on its military expenditures. Foreign media outlets began predicting China’s defense budget for 2016 as early as last October. Some, in light of the situation in the South China Sea, reckoned that expenditures would rise more than 12 percent in 2016. China’s defense policy…

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com Since retiring from the vice presidency of the China International Publishing Group two years ago, Huang Youyi, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body, has had more time to travel around the world and present China to the international community. Huang’s calendar is crammed with seminars and forums where he helps foreign participants learn more about his country. Of these events, what impressed him most were two international forums held in South Africa and Italy in September and October, respectively, last year, reflecting the different in-terests audiences in developed and developing countries have in China. “At a think tank forum in Milan, Italy, the participants focused on China’s economic restructuring and territorial disputes in the South…