Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.61 / No.4 i Beijing Review

Stable Gains China’s economy ended 2017 on a strong footing with a better-than-expected growth rate and improved structure, official data showed on January 18. The world’s second largest economy expanded 6.9 percent in 2017, higher than the 6.7 percent growth registered in 2016, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. The reading marked the first acceleration in the annual growth pace in seven years and was well above the official target of around 6.5 percent. “Major macroeconomic indicators all beat market expectations, pointing to economic stabilization,” said Ning Jizhe, head of the NBS. Growth in the fourth quarter came in at 6.8 percent, unchanged from the rate seen in the third quarter. Gross domestic product (GDP) totaled 82.71 trillion yuan ($12.84 trillion) in 2017, with the service sector…

Our River of Peace and Sustainable Development. This was the theme of the Second Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Leaders’ Meeting in Cambodia, on which the curtain was lowered on January 10. The conference resulted in the release of the Phnom Penh Declaration and the adoption of the FiveYear Plan of Action on Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (2018-22). These documents are expected to chart the course for the LMC’s development into the next decade. The sub-regional cooperation mecha-nism is named for the Lancang River, which originates on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in southwest China and flows through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam where it becomes the Mekong before emptying into the sea. The 4,880-km-long waterway, which flows through an area of more than 795,000 square km, nourishes a population of 326 million people…

The tourism industry may be the best indicator of the latest consumption trends in China. The data showing how people spent the New Year’s Day holiday demonstrate that consumption patterns in the country have changed, and in the coming year even more profound changes will take place in the industrial structure of tourism, which will in turn bring integra-tion, innovation and reorganization to the industry. Vibrant growth Figures from the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) show that the three-day 2018 New Year’s Day holiday saw 133 million domestic tourists make trips inside the country, earning revenues of 75.5 billion yuan ($11.63 billion), up by 11.08 percent and 11.22 percent, respectively, year on year. In fact, in the first half of 2017 alone, Chinese tourists made 2.54 billion domestic trips to…

It was in Beijing that I was bitten by the acting bug, with my serious, intellectual look inviting offers to play researchers, scientists and even a doctor in a commercial for a weight loss product. I love acting gigs because they are a wonderful opportunity to engage in creative projects, practice one’s Chinese and make new friends. My most recent gig involved playing a middle-aged woman for a TV series starring the famous Chinese actor and teen idol Li Yifeng. When I auditioned for the role, I had to play a woman who was arguing with her lawyer, who would be played by Li, about her son’s death sentence. After channeling all my anger over my father’s passing and my divorce into the role, the agent asked me, “Do you…

Members of China’s 34th Antarctic expedition land an excavating loader on Inexpressible Island on January 16. Large engineering equipment has been unloaded from the research icebreaker Xue Long onto the island, where the country’s fifth Antarctic research station will be built The construction of the new base is expected to be completed within five years. It will provide year-round support for researchers conducting observations of the land, ocean, atmosphere, the ice shelf and biology.…

ZAMBIA Police patrol the streets in the town of Caniamar, west of Lusaka, on January 12. Riots erupted in the town during the recent cholera crisis leading to the arrest of 55 people SRI LANKA Police officers inspect packages of cocaine due to be destroyed on the outskirts of Colombo in January 15, just prior to the public destruction of 928 kg of the drug TURKEY A Pegasus Airlines plane skids off the runway at Trabzon airport and slides halfway down a slope on the edge of the Black Sea on January 14. No casualties were reported from the incident PERU President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski observes conditions on the ground from a plane on January 15 after the country was shaken by a 6.8magnitude earthquake SWITZERLAND Festivities take place on…

Hu Yanzhong, manager of the Huzai & Chengnan Brothers Club, has devoted over 20 years to winter sports. For the past eight years he has stayed in Beijing for one reason: to teach ice hockey to children. For Hu, the first half of his ice hockey ca-reer was spent in Qiqihar, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. In the past in China, the best cities for winter sports were all scattered across the far northeastern part of the country, Hu told Beijing Review. During the 1980s in particular, frigid conditions and a lack of indoor facilities meant that most schools in the northeast could only offer ice-based sports for their physical education classes in winter. Hu’s passion for ice hockey emerged when he was a student and he later became a professional…

Analysts predict that slower growth in China’s money supply will become in-creasingly common amid the country’s deleveraging efforts. The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in both circulation and deposits, rose 8.2 percent to 167.68 trillion yuan ($26 trillion) at the end of 2017, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, on January 12. Growth dropped from 11.3 percent at the end of 2016, bidding farewell to the double digit growth rates seen consistently over the previous 20-plus years. “Amid the deleveraging process and tougher financial regulations, the slower growth in M2 indicates that the capital uses by commercial banks have become better regulated with less funds circulating inside the financial sector and less derivative deposits,” said Ruan Jianhong,…

Dear Readers, Forum is a column that provides a space for varying perspectives on contemporary Chinese society. We invite you to submit personal viewpoints on past and current topics (in either English or Chinese). baishi@bjreview.com Please provide your name and address along with your comments Winter vacation is just around the corner, and lots of Chinese parents are beginning to secure places for their children on extracurricular tutorial courses. While education authorities are encouraging schools to alleviate pressure on students, why are so many parents still so interested in such classes? What can their children gain from such classes, and how much truth is there to claims that these lessons are doing more harm than good? Advocates believe that childhood is the best time for children to learn. They say…

A Trial Run A bullet train runs on the Chongqing-Guiyang Railway on January 11. Tests are ongoing for a new line in southwest China designed for passenger trains running at speeds of up to 200 km per hour. Fugitive Hunt A total of 1,300 fugitives were captured or returned to China in 2017, with around 980 million yuan ($151 million) recovered, the country’s top anti-graft authority has said. Of the returned fugitives, 347 had been Party members or state functionaries, and 14 were on an Interpol red notice of 100 suspects, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China revealed on its website. According to the CCDI, more than 800 suspects in duty-related crimes such as bribery are still at large. About 70 percent are…

Wang Tingwei, a southerner studying in northeast China’s Jilin Province, is amazed by the multifarious and fre-quent winter sports activities organized by his college, Changchun Normal University. Wang, once a rookie in winter sports himself, became a fan of skiing and volunteered to serve the joint opening ceremony of the 2018 China Changchun Ice and Snow Travel Festival and the Jingyuetan Vasaloppet International Skiing Festival in Changchun, capital of Jilin, on January 4. “It seldom snows in south China; thus most southerners are not familiar with winter sports. On the contrary, people in the northeast are already very fond of them,” said Wang. During the festivals, both of which will last 100 days, more than 100 ice and snowrelated public activities are taking place in over 40 locations, including ice…

Zhang Zhenlong, a resident of Zhangjiakou, said he would never forget July 31, 2015, the day when the President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach announced in Kula Lumpur that Beijing is to host the 2022 Winter Olympics alongside his home city in north China’s Hebei Province. “My first feeling when I heard the news was that it is the start of a new era for my home-town,” Zhang told Beijing Review. Just as Zhang predicted, Zhangjiakou has witnessed a great transformation over the past two years, especially Chongli, a district located north of the city where several skiing and snowboarding events, including the Olympic biathlon and Nordic combined, will be held in 2022. Major turnaround This is the first time Harry Gomil, a sales execu-tive for a pharmaceutical…

In Laicheng District of Laiwu, an indus-trial city in the center of east China’s Shandong Province, chemical, iron, steel and cement manufacturers have been brac-ing themselves for a significant change: On January 1, the country’s first tax designed specifically for environmental protection came into effect. “Since the Environmental Protection Tax Law was approved at the end of 2016, we have been contemplating how to intensify emission reduction efforts in order to pay fewer taxes,” said Li Yong, production manager of Laiwu Lianyun Cement Co. Ltd., a local cement manufacturer. In the past year, a total of 20 million yuan ($3.11 million) has been invested in technological improvement, Li explained. For example, the concrete grinders they purchased have helped eliminate half of the company’s pollution sources. At the same time, 18…

‘Let’s meet at the Beijing Book Building on West Chang’an Street.” Chen Sitong, a 27-year-old saleswoman working in Beijing, finds herself frequently repeating this line to friends when they want to set a venue to get together. “The bookstore is near where I work. We always go in and look through the shelves instead of just passing by,” Chen said. “It makes me feel good being immersed in books. Many of my friends feel the same way.” As Beijing’s largest book store, the five-floor Beijing Book Building is an ideal place for people to relax and recharge their brains, no matter how old they are or what they do. It’s not uncommon to see people reading between the aisles and carrying a stack of carefully piled books with smiling faces.…