Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 60/No. 16 i Beijing Review

State Firms Bolster Xiongan More than 30 central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from power, infrastructure and transportation industries plan to seize business opportunities expected from the planned creation of the Xiongan New Area in Hebei Province, according to the website of the country’s top SOE regulator on April 10. Central SOEs including the China Telecommunications, China Eastern Airlines, China National Machinery Industry and China Energy Engineering have all held top management meetings to discuss plans to develop the new area, according to the website of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. To ensure sufficient clean energy supplies, the China National Offshore Oil said it will build a branch pipeline of liquefied natural gas to the Xiongan New Area, stretching from its supply network connecting its production…

Despite mounting tensions in geopolitics and the global economic arena, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump was not just a boon for the leaders of the world’s largest economies, it also signaled a tailwind for stu-dents who are investing time in forming links between the two countries. Over 300,000 Chinese students are currently studying in the United States, while over 20,000 of their American counterparts are studying in China, according to the American Mandarin Society (AMS). Nathaniel Ahrens, Director of China Affairs at the University of Maryland and Executive Director of the AMS, told Beijing Review that ever since the normalization of relations in 1979, education has been the ballast of the U.S.-China relationship. “In addition to robust student exchange, there are numerous academic exchanges…

A lthough winter is fast fading into spring in north China’s Hebei Province, the almost daily curtains of smog that cover the region are a great cause of concern for Jiang Ting, a 30-year-old new mom. Apart from inconveniences to life and work brought by the severe air pollution, Jiang worries about the harm to her health, and especially to that of her vulnerable child. Statistics released by China Meteorological Administration showed severe continuous smog clouded China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region on eight occasions from November 2016 to early February 2017. “Indeed, our generation grew up in an affluent environment, but the sky is no bluer than the time when I was a kid,” Jiang said, adding her expectation was to have more days with blue skies. While seeing an improvement in the…

T hough total demand has not yet recov-ered substantially and the monetary policy maintains neutral, we should not conclude that the Chinese economy is in stagflation. It is very unlikely that the Chinese economy will suffer stagflation this year. Since the consumer price index (CPI) rose above 2 percent, there were views that the Chinese economy will enter stagfla-tion. In January, the CPI and producer price index (PPI) both rose much faster than in December 2016, fuelling stagflation views. However, in February, CPI declined 0.2 per-cent over the previous month but rose by 0.8 percent over a year ago, which was much lower than market expectations. PPI rose by 0.6 percent over the previous month and 7.8 percent over a year ago. Total demand has not yet recovered significantly and the…

A rocket carrying Shijian 13, China’s most advanced communications satellite, lifts off at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province on April 12. The satellite, developed by the China Academy of Space Technology, is equipped with a broadband communications system capable of transmitting high-resolution video, a feature that earlier Chinese satellites did not have. Shijian 13 will help provide better Internet access to passengers on airliners and high-speed trains.…

MIDDLE EAST The United States launches a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield on April 7 after an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians in Syria POLAND Soldiers line up in front of tombstones during a ceremony marking the seventh anniversary of a plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, at the Warsaw Powazki Military Cemetery on April 10. A total of 96 Polish people, including then President Lech Kaczynski, were killed in the crash ISRAEL Ultra-Orthodox Jews stand near a spring as they take part in the ritual of “Mayim Shelanu” for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover in the hills near Modi’in on April 9 EGYPT A bomb attack hits a church in the Nile delta city of Tanta on April 9. At least 21 people…

W hen ABC correspondent Jim Laurie first visited China in 1978, he remembers the term used to describe foreigners living in China: laowai. They needed to have a “foreigners’ registration” card and if they wanted to drive outside Beijing, they also needed a for-eigner’s travel permit. He still has his old permit, numbered 208420. But when Laurie visited more recently in 2015, he found a massive change. He attended a job fair for foreigners and found applicants ranging from an American master’s degree student to an aspiring Russian radio host to a Turkish construction worker. This year, the fairs are going to be even more crowded and diverse with further relaxations in the Chinese Government’s policy for recruiting fresh foreign graduates. Less restrictions On January 6, the ministries of human resources…

Getting a Head Start A Miao woman gets ready to take part in the Sisters’ Festival in Taijiang, a county in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, on April 10. The ethnic festival, regarded as the Miao ethnic group’s Valentine’s Day, is held annually around the 15th day of the third lunar month. Data Export Control Chinese citizens’ personal information and important data collected by Internet service providers may need evaluation and permission before being shared with non-domestic entities. Such information should stay within China and be subject to security assessment before being provided to anyone outside China, according to a draft guideline released on April 11 for public opinion by the Cyberspace Administration of China. To export personal information, the collector must get consent…

Lin Zhiwei likes to quote a saying common in legal circles: decisions by the supreme courts of China and the United States might not be executed, but awards issued by arbitration courts will always be. That’s because, as Lin, Secretary General of Beijing International Arbitration Center (BIAC), explains, today 158 governments, including China, have signed the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, also known as the New York Convention. It means the signatories will enforce the decisions made by one another’s arbitration authorities, and an award by a Chinese arbitrator will be honored in the United States despite the differences in their legal systems. “Arbitration is becoming a national strat-egy and is being adopted by many members of the business community,” Lin said. “Awards are internationally…

C hina’s northeastern region, once the nation’s heavy industry hub, has suffered stagnant economic development since the late 1990s. Regional economic performance, although greatly improved in 2016, remains less than satisfactory, and revival of the region’s three provinces— Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang—still has a long way to go. In late March, the State Council, China’s cabinet, unveiled a fresh move aimed at buffing up this region. One-on-one partnerships are to be established between the three provinces and three economically developed provinces in east and south China, as well as between four northeastern cities and four economically flourishing cities. According to the plan, provincial partner-ships will be set up between Liaoning and Jiangsu, Jilin and Zhejiang, and Heilongjiang and Guangdong; while pair-up coopera-tion will be created between the cities of Shenyang (Liaoning)…

A s a young boy, Wang Chengqiang, like all children, played with a drum. But it was more than play. His grandmother, who had learned the art from her elders when she was a child, taught him the Taiping Drum Dance, a lively folk dance in which the dancers use drums as props. The genre appeared in Beijing during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and grew popular in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Taiping is associated with peace and tranquility and the drum is also called the Yingnian drum because it is played during Chinese New Year celebrations. An offshoot of the traditional art is the Shijingshan Taiping Drum Dance, which developed in the capital’s Shijingshan District. A group of people, often in a circle, move back and forth to the beat created…