Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 60/No. 18 i Beijing Review

Vehicle Gala The Seventh Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition on April 22. More than 1,000 exhibitors from 18 countries and regions attended the event from April 21 to 28, where 113 models of car made their global debut. Auto-Making Plan China is aiming to become an automaking powerhouse in a decade, boosting the development of newenergy vehicles (NEVs) and relaxing restrictions on foreign ownership. The strategy is to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies and increase the share of Chinese brands in the international auto market by 2025, according to an auto industry development plan released on April 25 by three government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. By 2020, China will see NEV output and sales hit 2 million units annually, according to the plan. That number…

Wang Zhao works in Beijing but her work helps people in faraway places. She develops intraocular lenses, to be implanted in the eyes of patients undergoing surgery for cataract or myopia, at Eyebright Medical Technology (Beijing) Co. Eyebright spe-cializes in making ophthalmic products. One of her favorite stories goes back to November 2016, when a team of seven Chinese medical workers went to Sri Lanka to restore cataract patients’ vision. During the one-month trip, they did more than 500 cataract surgeries and three vitrectomies, a procedure to remove vitreous gel from the eye, caused by retinal detachment. After the surgeries, most of the patients, who could barely see before, had clear vision. “When I heard the news, I was over-whelmed,” Wang told Beijing Review. “I couldn’t believe that what I…

The ancient Silk Road was explored by traders and merchants seeking to con-nect China to the world. Thanks to the Internet and mobile phone technology, today’s Silk Road can be found in your pocket. The Internet is bringing new oppor-tunities to the China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, collectively known as the Belt and Road Initiative, that can break barriers in time and space, languages, cultures and tradi-tions. A number of e-commerce firms have jumped at the opportunity to expand their business. Cross-border e-commerce plat-forms such as the Alibaba Group’s AliExpress online shopping service benefit from the Belt and Road Initiative and serve to expand the scope of the modern Silk Road. Growing popularity “AliExpress is almost on everybody’s lips in Israel,” said Shen Difan, the…

Xiamen, the famous coastal city in south- east China’s Fujian Province, is committed to supporting the Belt and Road Initiative to the full. It seeks to turn itself into a hub that connects the Silk Road Economic Belt with the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road and has already achieved remarkable progress in increasing in- terconnectivity, promoting economic, trade and marine cooperation, and boosting people-to- people and cultural exchanges with countries along the routes. A review of progress in 2016 Interconnectivity The number of freight trains between Xiamen and Europe was increased to two per week, one in each direction. In April 2016, goods from Taiwan arrived in Europe via the China-Europe freight train. Aside from the route to Lodz in Poland, routes to Nürnberg in Germany and Tilburg in the Netherlands…

Science fiction is becoming a reality with China’s first robotic cargo ship firmly anchored in space, paving the way for a manned space station around 2022. Tianzhou-1, China’s first cargo spacecraft as well as its largest and heaviest spacecraft, will stay in space for nearly two months after docking with the Tiangong-2 space laboratory on April 22. When the manned space station is in place in the future, the cargo spaceship will serve the important function of supplying its residents with food, medi-cines, fuel and other necessities. Tianzhou-1 can carry up to 6.5 tons of supplies, according to China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). Tianzhou-1 was lifted into space by a Long March 7 Y2 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province on April 20, two days…

China’s second aircraft carrier, also the first developed and built indigenously, is launched at a Dalian shipyard in northeast China’s Liaoning Province on April 26. The carrier began to be built in November 2013. In the next stage of its development, it will undergo outfitting, when engineers and workers will complete installation of its power plant, interior equipment and systems as well as weapons. Up to now, the Chinese navy has operated a sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a Soviet-era vessel which received an extensive refit before going into service in September 2012.…

Before the Djiploho Hydropower Station (DHS) was built, Djiploho was a secluded forest village in Equatorial Guinea. The change has shone a spotlight on the Wele River, now quite literally the center of power. Liu Bao, chief supervisor of the DHS project, said the power plant satisfies more than 90 percent of the country’s electricity demand and has promoted industrial and agricultural growth. Liu is general manager of Sinohydro Bureau Six Co. Ltd., a hydropower engineering company based in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning Province. “Who could have imagined that in the desolate primary forest a group of Chinese friends with a love for Equatorial Guinea are constructing such a grand project?” asked Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President of Equatorial Guinea, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony of the power plant in December…

Matilda Gaby knows she was born near Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi, a province in central China, but she has no other recollection of her life there or her Chinese biological family. She was adopt-ed by a New Zealand couple when she was 9 months old and spent her early years in London. Since then, New Zealand has been her home. Today, she is back in China as a 21-yearold, studying Chinese as a second language at Peking University in Beijing. She is also a liaison officer at the New Zealand Center, founded by Peking University and the University of Auckland in 2007 to enhance New Zealand’s profile, especially through academic exchanges, and deepen China- New Zealand understanding. Maori links Gaby is hoping that when a New Zealand culture and…

In Zhuo Minliu’s home, there’s now one bond that has skillfully narrowed the generation gap between her in-laws, husband and 10-year-old son, becoming a topic of animated conversation for the entire family. It’s a TV soap, and a political drama at that. “It’s one of the few TV soaps which keep all of us riveted to the screen,” the 32-year-old math teacher in south China’s Hainan Province told Beijing Review. The plot centers on anti-graft investigators apprehending corrupt officials amid compli- cated bureaucratic infighting in Handong, a fictitious province in east China. Since its premiere on the Hunan satellite channel on March 28, In the Name of the People has hooked millions of followers of all ages. It has wrested the highest TV rating in a decade in China, according…

Deep-Sea Mission Scientists obtain sediments from the bottom of the sea onboard the Xiangyanghong 09 research ship on April 25. They embarked on a deep-sea mission in the South China Sea that day, the beginning of the second stage of China’s 38th oceanic expedition. Illegal Fundraising The crackdown on illegal fundraising will be tightened to protect people and fend off systemic risks, the Office of the Inter-Agency Anti-Illegal Fundraising Taskforce said on April 25. There were over 5,100 illegal fundraising cases in 2016, involving 251.1 billion yuan ($36.5 billion). The number of cases went down 14.48 percent and the amount involved decreased 0.11 percent year on year. It is the first time both figures have declined, showing illegal fundraising, which had been rising in the past years, has been contained,…

On April 6 a Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptop, fresh off the assembly line, was loaded onto a freight train in Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China. It was put into a container holding 4,000 other laptops which was placed on the train with another 11 con-tainers filled with more portable computers. The 41-carriage train also carried auto parts, mechanical products, clothes and more. Along a 14-day journey, it traveled through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland before reaching its destination— Duisburg, a German city. From laptops to cars The rail line, named Yuxinou (a fusion of Chongqing Municipality, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Europe in Chinese), was launched in 2011. It spans 11,179 km and first served as a special train for information technology (IT) products. Chongqing, a mountainous city on the…

Pu Lianggong, 63, is the inheritor of the local incense-making tradition in Yongchun County, Quanzhou City of southeast China’s Fujian Province. With a long history, Yongchun incense is made of hundreds of Chinese herbs using ancient techniques. The production needs to go through over 10 procedures and requires finesse. Pu has always adhered to traditional tech-niques to preserve this intangible cultural heritage. “The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative has brought unprecedented opportunities to the local incense- making industry, which has been passed down over generations. We will grasp this opportunity to introduce our incense culture and products abroad,” said Pu. Quanzhou became an important port during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties, when China’s seaborne trade thrived. Pu’s Arabian ancestors brought spices with them…

OPINION Why the Spending Spree? In the first quarter, China’s retail sales of con- sumer goods totaled 8.58 trillion yuan ($1.25 trillion), up by 10 percent over a year ago, ac- cording to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on April 17. During this period, consumption contributed 77.2 percent to China’s economic growth. Days before the NBS figures were released, the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) said in 2016, China’s international tourism spending grew by 12 percent to $261 billion, consolidating China’s position as the number one source market in the world since 2012 and continuing the trend of double-digit growth in tourism expenditure every year since 2004. Last year, China’s international tourism spending was more than double that of the United States, which stood at $122 billion. It is…