Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 60/No. 19 i Beijing Review

Tourism Boom China saw a tourism boom during this year’s three-day May Day holiday (April 29-May 1), official data showed on May 1. The tourism industry raked in 79.1 billion yuan ($11.5 billion) in revenue during the holiday, up 16.2 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the National Tourism Administration. During the holiday, tourist destinations across China received 134 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 14.4 percent. The boom came as China tries to wean its economy off over-reliance on exports and heavy industries, and shift to a growth model that draws strength from consumption, innova-tion and the service sector. The tourism industry is considered a growth driver as it boosts profitability in sectors ranging from hotel and transportation to catering. Industrial Park The Guangzhou Automobile Group…

CIPG: So far, how have the two countries aligned their development strategies? What are the highlights of bilateral cooperation? Hong Xiaoyong: Since being put forward in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative has had a wide response from the international com-munity, so has naturally attracted Viet Nam’s attention. In November 2015, President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Viet Nam, and early this year, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam Nguyen Phu Trong visited China. During these top-level meetings the two countries confirmed they would align the Belt and Road Initiative with Viet Nam’s “Two Corridors and One Economic Circle” plan. The relevant depart-ments are now negotiating the documents specific to the alignment. The two countries have also signed a memorandum on production capacity co-operation. This…

The maritime Silk Road, an ancient route for trade and cultural exchanges linking China with the rest of the world, is being retraced with COSCO Netherlands, one of China’s most advanced merchant vessels, setting sail on the route from Shanghai to the Piraeus Port in Greece on April 16. The nearly 40-day journey from China to Europe will retrace the oldest maritime trade route in the world. “I am very much looking forward to this new journey, from history to reality, from China to Europe,” Yao Wei, a 30-year-old engine room operator on board, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency. Maritime connectivity between China and other countries is improving, with facilitated voyages, runs by container vessels and now, with the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed…

The business performance of China’s five major state-owned banks has drawn wide attention. While their total net profit is still growing, remaining above 2.5 billion yuan ($362.84 million) daily, the growth is slow, and the net profit of some of them is even declining. In 2016, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s net profit was 278.2 billion yuan ($40.38 billion), up 0.4 percent year on year. Agricultural Bank of China real-ized net profit of 183.9 billion yuan ($26.69 billion), a 1.86-percent increase. Bank of China earned net profit of 164.6 billion yuan ($23.89 billion), a decline of 3.67 percent. China Construction Bank earned net profit of 231.5 billion yuan ($33.6 billion), a year-on-year growth of 1.45 percent. Bank of Communications (BOCOM) realized net profit of 67.2 billion yuan ($9.75 billion),…

‘Jesus! This thing looks like a time ma- chine!”—That was the first thought that shot through my mind when I first saw the newest generation of China’s bullet train. On my recent trip to Xi’an, I finally got to travel in one of these futuristic marvels. I searched for my seat in the spacious interior: Car 6, row 12, seat A—a window seat. Excellent! How long would it have taken an official of the emperor’s court to get from Beijing to Xi’an? That was just one of the many thoughts that raced through my mind at bullet train speed as beautiful Chinese landscapes flew by my win- dow, going at 300 km per hour. As the train glided silently through Hebei Province, I fell asleep. Only six hours later, I…

People dance in Ulanhot City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the region’s founding on May 1. Inner Mongolia was the first region in China to be designated as a provincial-level autonomous region. The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Government was founded on May 1, 1947 in Ulanhot. The capital city of the region is now Hohhot. Located in north China, Inner Mongolia covers an area of 1.18 million square km, about 12 percent of the nation’s land area. It shares borders totaling 4,200 km with Mongolia and Russia to the north. Inner Mongolia’s ethnic Mongolians number 4.6 million, nearly one fifth of the region’s total population.…

THE PHILIPPINES Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hold hands for a photo during the opening ceremony of the 30th ASEAN Summit at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on April 29 SOUTH AFRICA Artists burn a big wooden wheel on April 29 during the 2017 Afrikaburn Festival in Tankwa Town in Karoo Desert, Northern Cape. As a Burning Man regional event, it is held here annually, lasting for seven days and nights from April 24 to 30 this year UNITED STATES U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech during a rally marking his first 100 days in office in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on April 29 BELGIUM German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni attend the Special European Council summit on Brexit…

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, bet-ter known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s twin global outreach development paradigms enunciated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 during his state visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, are up and running. Originally designed as a Eurasian transport network and integrated system that is composed of railways, highways, aviation, navigation, oil and gas pipelines, transmission lines and communication networks from which industrial clusters would emerge, it has become a globally inclusive framework. The Belt and Road Initiative is today taking shape as a trans-regional cooperation model connecting Asia, Africa and Europe’s policies, trade, facilities, funds and people in the 21st century. According to the document Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and…

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) is a large, state-owned, hi-tech enterprise under Central Government administration. It has 11 offices and 19 holding companies outside China, covering Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In 2013, CASIC acquired Luxembourg-based sensing specialist IEE, which in turn acquired French elec- tronic manufacturing services provider ALL CIRCUITS in 2015. In 2016, CASIC achieved a year-on-year growth of 29 percent in international business revenue. CASIC is engaged with strategic industries related to national security. The company makes great efforts to develop aerospace defense technology supported by a complete product range as well as technology development and research systems. It is a pioneer in China’s defense equip-ment industry, with some of its technologies leading the world. CASIC has constantly innovated in the history of China’s…

China National Chemical Engineering Group Corporation (CNCEC) has a high reputation in the world for its engineering capabilities, strong competitiveness, complete industrial chain, and technical capabilities. Since entering into the overseas market in 1985, the petrochemical engineering giant has been committed to pursuing global development, with its businesses covering more than 50 countries and regions. Since 1995, CNCEC has been listed as one of the top 250 contractors in the world by the prestigious Engineering News-Record (ENR) maga-zine. It ranked 32nd in 2016, with a number of its subsidiaries being among the ENR’s top 200 inter-national design companies. As the Chinese Government implements the Belt and Road Initiative, CNCEC accelerates its expanding steps in overseas markets. It has made significant progress in countries along the routes such as Indonesia, Pakistan,…

Rush Hours Passengers at the Zhengzhou Railway Station in Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan Province, on May 1. Road and railway transportation in the province saw rising traffic on May 1, the last day of the International Workers’ Day holiday. New Baidu Robot Chinese Internet company Baidu has partnered with smart home appliance maker Zaijia.com to roll out a home assistant robot based on artificial intelligence (AI) on April 28. The robot can chat with users and answer questions with high-level accuracy while offering security monitoring and entertainment ser-vices through a camera, a display screen and a sound box. The new companion can be controlled by a smartphone. It can be used especially for entertaining children with songs and stories. Baidu has been investing heavily in AI technology and applications. It…

Each year, countless trains roar through Aktogay in eastern Kazakhstan, a main railway hub of the New Eurasian Continental Bridge. The town has seen addition-al revitalization due to its subterranean treasure, which lies beneath grasslands 30 km beyond the downtown area, in the form of a world-class copper mine with reserves of 1.85 billion tons. With China’s help, a recently launched dressing plant will unveil its precious deposits. New techniques, new industry Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked state, and its vast lands possess abundant resources with huge potential. Historically, various events conspired to prevent the development of its industrial base, which meant that until now, the deep processing of natural resources was not feasible, leading to a loss in added value. But currently, the government is focusing on industrialization…

Beijing Review: How does the Belt and Road Initiative dovetail with the Sino- African bloc Forum on China-Africa Cooperation’s (FOCAC) development strategy and the African Union’s (AU) de-velopment blueprint Agenda 2063? Abdoulaye Fall: At the FOCAC Summit in Johannesburg on December 4, 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled an ambitious program built around 10 main themes: in-dustrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, finance, green development, trade and investment facilitation, poverty eradication and people’s wellbeing, public health, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and peace and security. There are so many common development factors with the Belt and Road Initiative. And most of these programs are also to be found in the AU’s Agenda 2063. The trajectories of China and Africa run relatively parallel in three main stages. The first is based on liberation. Like…

The author is an associate professor at the University of International Relations and a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization The first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) is to be held in mid-May. After being proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative has already harvested numerous achievements. However, the imple- mentation of this initiative is still facing some difficulties, of which the major one is the secu- rity problem. For a variety of reasons, the national secu-rity situations of some countries along the Belt and Road routes are not stable. Though the so-called Islamic State (IS) will possibly be wiped out within two or three years by the joint anti-terrorist efforts of the international community, many IS extremists…