Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 60/No. 34 i Beijing Review

Trade Probe Reaction The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on August 15 expressed “grave concerns” about an execu-tive memorandum signed by U.S. President Donald Trump a day ear-lier, directing Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to examine China’s intellectual property practices. Lighthizer will determine “whether to investigate any of China’s laws, policies, practices, or actions” that “may be harming American intellectual property rights (IPRs), innovation or technology development” under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, according to the memorandum released by the White House. “We hope that the U.S. trade representative respects facts and acts with prudence,” the MOFCOM said in a statement. “If the U.S. side fails to respect basic facts and multilateral trade rules, and takes measures that harm bilateral economic and trade rela-tions, China will definitely not sit…

Li Jingjing started to buy foreign prod-ucts—milk powder, baby clothes and toys—in 2014, when she had her first baby. The 29-year-old employee of a multinational in Beijing was following the trend of Chinese new mothers—that is, those who can afford it always buy baby prod-ucts from countries such as the United States, Japan and Australia since these are regarded as being of better quality than the options available at home. In the past, this was a complicated pro-cedure and the buyers could not make direct purchases unless they went abroad. They had to go through agents, which made the business costly and time-consuming, and at times raised the specter of a counterfeit industry. Around 2007, haitao, the practice of buying products via overseas online shop-ping platforms, began to boom, thanks…

Hassan Rouhani was sworn in as Iranian president for his second four-year term in Tehran on August 5. Rouhani won reelection in May by a wide margin, taking 57 percent of the vote. However, Iran now faces hard challenges and potent threats. He must lead the country to break through the current outside encirclement that is being built by the United States and its Gulf allies, as well as achieve progress in domestic affairs. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave his official seal of approval to Rouhani at a formal endorsement ceremony in Tehran on August 3. In his speech, Khamenei also expressed his expectations for Rouhani to maintain fairness and justice in governance, safeguard the interests of underprivileged groups, strengthen national unity, and protect national dignity and sovereignty.…

If they look carefully, air passengers arriving in or departing Beijing might now glimpse the overall outline of the terminal at the capital’s new airport, which is taking shape in the south of Beijing. By the end of June, over 80 percent of the project’s construction work had been completed. The terminal’s steel frame was completed on June 30, and the runways are under construction as planned, according to Zhu Wenxin, assistant commander and spokesman of the Beijing New Airport Construction Headquarters. When Beijing Review visited the site of the pas-senger terminal, set to be the world’s largest, in July, workers were installing glass curtain walls. Although the construction involves over 10,000 workers, the core site is not crowded, as it covers over 1 million square meters. The work is…

OPINION Resilience and Risks of China’s Economy A year ago, economic forecasters at home and abroad bet on sharp depreciation of the renminbi, or the yuan, in 2017 due to a flagging economy and U.S. rate hikes. But the Chinese currency roaring back in the past months has proven them wrong. The yuan’s midpoint saw a substantial increase to 6.6770 against the greenback on August 11, the strongest in more than 10 months, following a steady strengthening streak since the beginning of 2017. Onshore and offshore rates were also much firmer. While curbed capital flight and the weaker U.S. dollar were considered the immediate cause, the country’s economic resilience played a fundamental role in propping up the currency. China posted a forecast-beating GDP increase of 6.9 percent in the second…

Alipay and WeChat Pay, two major mobile payment service providers in China, launched campaigns in August, encouraging the public to embrace cash-less payment. Alipay implemented large- scale marketing activities under the name Cashless Week in several cities from August 1 to 8, while WeChat Pay staged its Cashless Day on August 8. During the promotions, those who used either smart phone app to pay could get some money returned as a reward. According to statistics from the People’s Bank of China, in 2016, mobile payment amounted to 157.55 trillion yuan ($23.6 trillion). In early 2016, Alipay proposed to develop China into a “cashless society” within five years. As a result, more and more businesses have begun to accept cashless payment. However, some consumers complained that they encountered inconvenience when shopping…

Members of an anti-war NGO based in Kobe, Japan, attend a peace assembly in Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, on August 15 to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender at the end of World War II. Representatives from a number of countries mourned the 300,000 people who died in the Nanjing Massacre committed by Japanese troops during the war. Peace-loving NGOs from around the world gather in Nanjing every year to remember the victims.…

UNITED STATES A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifting a Dragon spacecraft is launched at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 14 for the last mission of the first-generation of the reusable spacecraft SOUTH KOREA Protesters rally in Seoul on August 15 against the THAAD missile defense system and South Korean-U.S. joint military drills EGYPT A train crash in Alexandria Province on August 11 kills 49 people and injures over 130 others PAKISTAN An aerobatics team performs at an airshow celebrating the 70th anniversary of the nation’s independence in the southern port city of Karachi BRITAIN Usain Bolt of Jamaica pulls up with a leg injury midway through the men’s 4x100m relay at the World Athletics Championships in London on August 12, ending his stellar career in excruciating pain…

China’s enthusiasm for fine dining is as strong as the Great Wall itself and older. About 7,000 years ago, the Chinese de-veloped sophisticated culinary skills and several styles of exquisite dishes, which continue to fascinate foodies around the globe. Since then, more spice has been added to Chinese food habits. The Chinese dining table is becoming in-creasingly diversified with imported food tickling Chinese taste buds—a tribute to the growing spending power of Chinese consumers and their role in making global trade and the world economy grow. A new chapter was added to Chinese food history on June 20, when the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine announced that American beef would be re-allowed after being shut out of the Chinese market due to mad cow disease in 2003.…

An express train departed slowly from Hohhot, capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, at 10:18 a.m. on August 3, heading for Ulanqab, another city in the Region. The train, running at a speed of up to 250 km per hour, was the first high-speed train in the region and it reduced the rail journey time between the two places from over one hour to 40 minutes. The rail link is part of a longer line which in 2018 will extend eastward to Zhangjiakou, the co-host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Hebei Province. Ethnic autonomy The train was put into operation five days before the ceremony celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Region’s foundation. From April 23 to May 3 in 1947, under the leadership of the Communist…

‘We used to spend one or two days fin-ishing all the necessary customs pro-cedures,” said Chen Fangfang, a staff member at the Xiamen Port Joint Inspection Center of the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), on August 4. “Now we only need to fill in one form online, which can be finished in a few minutes,” Chen told Beijing Review. The process Chen referred to is the single-window foreign trade service imple-mented in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China’s Fujian Province, since 2015. Under that system, foreign trade companies submit all the required documents and electronic information via a single platform—on which processing results are also displayed. The platform is jointly operated by 36 depart-ments in charge of customs, commerce, planning, taxation, port and other affairs, offering 65…

China finished fifth on the medal table at the 2017 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships London from August 4 to 13 with seven med-als—two gold, three silver and two bronze. Over 3,000 athletes from across the world competed in the 10-day championships, including 48 Chinese athletes who took part in 19 events. During this round of the biennial IAAF event, Team China maintained its good performance from the World Championships 2015 and the Rio Olympics 2016. On August 10, veteran athlete Gong Lijiao won her first individual gold medal in the women’s shot put, which was also China’s first gold medal at the championships in London. Gong had waited a very long time to win the gold, this being her sixth appearance at the World Championships in…

Rescue at a Risk A rescue squad heads to quake-hit Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area, southwest China’s Sichuan Province, on August 12. They were sent to continue searching for survivors after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the area on August 8. For Better Water China’s water quality is improv-ing overall, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said on August 14. However, the progress is uneven, with some regions finding it hard to meet the annual quality improvement targets. In the first half of 2017, the proportion of monitored surface water reaching Grade III or above— meaning water which can be used for drinking—rose to 70 percent across the country, up 1.2 percentage points from the same period in 2016, according to MEP. The ratio has surpassed the 68.3-percent target set for 2017. The…

With the joint effort of China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), foreign ministers of the 11 countries endorsed the framework of the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea at their meeting in Manila, the Philippines, on August 5, announcing that they would initiate substantive consultations on the text of the COC at a proper time within the year. The latest progress marks an important step toward peaceful settlement of the mari-time disputes concerning the South China Sea, which will also lay a good foundation for China- ASEAN pragmatic cooperation. Common will Actually, the consensus on the COC framework was first reached at the 14th China-ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on the implementa-tion of the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in…

Promoting exchange of governance experience is an important consensus of BRICS leaders, to which President Xi Jinping attaches great importance. Xi has stressed the need to enhance mutual un-derstanding, exchanges and learning on a number of occasions. The BRICS Seminar on Governance is a concrete step taken to put the leaders’ consensus into practice as well as a major event within the framework of the BRICS Summit in Xiamen in early September. Over the past decade, BRICS coopera-tion has borne abundant fruit. A multi-level and all-dimensional cooperative framework led by the summit and covering a variety of areas has taken shape. The five BRICS countries are becoming a community of common interests and joint action charac-terized by solidarity and collaboration for shared progress. Today, BRICS cooperation has flourished to assume…

Among the traditional houses with their black roof tiles and white walls in Xiajiang, a village in Zhejiang Province in east China, there is a refurbished house that stands out with its cobbled yard and wooded grounds. The interior is Nordic in style, with a fireplace. This is a homestay house belonging to Jiang Lijuan, her husband Chu Chengfei, and her sister Jiang Lihong. Jiang Lijuan quit her stable job as an interior designer in Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang, to try a different life. “I decided to give up life in a big city and manage a bed and breakfast because of my mother,” she said. Last year, the village authorities began encouraging the residents to develop the local tourism industry by starting homestays. It set Wang Yangqiu, Jiang’s…

Approved by the State Council on December 31, 2014, the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) is among the second group of pilot FTZs in China. Covering an area of 118.04 square km, the Fujian FTZ comprises three areas in Pingtan, Xiamen and Fuzhou, of which the 43.78-square-km Xiamen area is the larg-est. The Xiamen area consists of two parts: Cross-Straits Trade Center, which covers 19.37 square km, and Haicang Port Area of the Southeast International Shipping Center, which covers 24.41 square km. The Xiamen area aims to become a demonstration area for cross-Straits emerging industries and modern service industries, an international shipping center, a cross- Straits regional financial service center and a cross-Straits trade hub. From January to June, 12,575 enterprises were established in the Fujian FTZ, with…

A wallet was lost in an unfamiliar city. Shock, stress and fear ensued predictably, but were unexpectedly short-lived. A maiden encoun-ter with the city police, 12 hours of self-berating and an unknown benefactor later, the wallet was returned. The Good Samaritan who made the ef-fort to return it will remain unknown. For now, let us call her Beijing. The wallet in question was left behind on the seat of a shared e-bike on August 8. I was attempting the online registration required to use the service and needed identification cards. My attempt failed since the e-bike is available only to Chinese citizens. I switched immediately to a shared cycle and pedaled away. Minutes later, an awful realization dawned. The wallet—with my credit, ATM and identity cards, gate passes, house keys…