Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 61/No. 39 i Beijing Review

NORTH KOREA Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae–in sign a document after their third face–to–face dialogue in Pyongyang on September 19 MEXICO Mexicans gather at Zócalo Square in Mexico City to celebrate the 208th anniversary of their country’s independence on September 15 UNITED NATIONS María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (center), President of the 73rd session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, opens the session at the UN headquarters in New York on September 18 JAPAN Thousands of protestors stage a rally in Tokyo against the controversial security laws passed by parliament three years ago on September 19 GERMANY Visitors ride a train displayed at the InnoTrans railway industry trade fair in…

‘One would rather have a bed in Puxi than a house in Pudong.” This saying for decades reflected the lack of regard for Pudong in Shanghai. Just on the other side of the Huangpu River, Pudong, a sparsely populated farmland area, was long neglected until April 1990 when the Chinese Government decided to set it up as a pilot area for opening up. After 28 years of development, Pudong is now one of the most vigorous centers of finance and hi-tech innovation in the country. Comments to zanjifang@bjreview.com…

A group of almost 50 media representatives from 29 African countries and 10 of their counterparts from Chinese media came together on September 10 at the China-Africa Media Dialogue hosted by the State Council Information Office to consider the outcomes of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The theme of the dialogue was Authenticity and sincerity, winwin cooperation—the role of the media in building a China-Africa community of shared future. With the establishment of FOCAC in 2000, the relationship between China and Africa has gained renewed vitality in the new era. At the opening ceremony of the 2018 Beijing Summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed building a China-Africa community with a shared future to assume joint responsibility, a community that pursues win-win cooperation, delivers happiness…

China’s economy maintained steady growth amid domestic and external challenges as the country pushes structural reform and fosters new growth drivers. The country registered sound growth in industrial output and retail sales, though fixed asset investment increase continued to slow, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on September 14. Despite the fluctuation of some indicators, NBS spokesperson Mao Shengyong said the economy has been generally stable with improving momentum for growth. Industrial output rose 6.1 percent in August from one year earlier, a notch higher than July’s 6-percent increase. The output of 336 of 596 key industrial products monitored by the government, including steel, coal, crude oil and integrated circuits climbed, while production of autos, ethylene and computers fell. Retail sales posted a better-than-expected growth of 9…

In China, education authorities in most regions stipulate that only children who are at least 6 years old or above on August 31 of the new school year, which normally begins on September 1, will be admitted into primary school. This requirement is based on Article 11 of the Compulsory Education Law, which defines the compulsory schooling age as 6 years old and states that in places where conditions are not available, the age for a child to enter primary school could be postponed to 7 years old. Most parents of the children disqualified by this policy, however, complain that it is unfair, as their children will have to stay in kindergarten for one more year than those who were lucky enough to be born before August 31 of the…

Happy 60th Anniversary A plaque with an inscription by President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, is presented as a gift to northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in honor of its 60th anniversary on September 19 in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia. The plaque reads: Building a beautiful and new Ningxia, jointly realizing the great Chinese dream. It was unveiled by Wang Yang (left), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Science Literacy Conference Science and technology (S&T) is the primary productive force and innovation is a crucial driving force behind development, said President Xi Jinping in a congratulatory message to…

Su Weiguo, CEO of Hutchison MediPharma, an innovative biopharmaceutical company based in the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, has been under the spotlight lately. Fruquintinib, China’s first fully domestically-made targeted anti-cancer drug is going to market soon and his company is the developer. Pharma Valley Hutchison MediPharma is located in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Innopark, which was established in July 1992, two years after the State Council decided to develop Pudong as a new area. Since then, it has identified the biomedical industry as one of the key science and technology industries for development. In August 1996, the National Shanghai Biomedical Science and Technology Industry Base was established, and after more than 20 years of development, it has become the leading biomedical research and development (R&D) center in China, known as China’s…

Covering an area of 140 square km, Miami, the second largest city in Florida in the United States, is home to a population of 450,000. Yet, in Zhili, a small town in east China’s Zhejiang Province, the same amount of people live and work in an area of only 25 square km. Such a high population density has brought challenges for the local government, which only has about 200 full-time staff. But the government is managing its job capably with most people living and working in peace and happiness. In recent years, the Zhili Government has explored innovative measures, such as dividing the area and creating smaller administrative units, promoting management reform to assume more of the responsibilities of higher levels of government and mobilizing the participation of other social…

On the first floor of Xiamen’s International Conference and Exhibition Center, a staff member from Mali’s Investment Promotion Agency is busy setting up a booth. Publicity posters are hung all over the walls of the small area so that Chinese investors can easily identify the fields available for investment in the country. The scene is taking place during the 20th China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT) held on September 8-11 in Xiamen in China’s southeast Fujian Province. Awa Bagayoko works nimbly with confidence and optimism. “It’s the first time I’ve come to China to promote investment in Mali. Apart from infrastructure, we hope Chinese companies can also increase investment in agriculture, such as cotton. Mali welcomes foreign investors and offers many preferential policies to facilitate investment,” she told…

($1=6.8 yuan) 100 bln yuan China’s expected investment for developing the digital economy in the next five years $18.8 bln China’s total trade volume with Dubai in the first half of 2018, maintaining its position as Dubai’s biggest trading partner 4.4 tln yuan China’s total value of bonds issued in August 20.3% China’s annual average increase in research and development spending between 1992 and 2017 Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China Fixed Assets Investment Growth by Sector Fixed Assets Investment Growth by Region (Source: National Bureau of Statistics) 246% Average solvency ratio of China’s 176 insurance companies at the end of June 10.2 euros Value of German electronics exports to the Chinese market in the first half of the year, surging 12.2 percent year on year 30.26 bln Number of…

As a frequent museum-goer, I was absolutely thrilled by my visit to the National Museum of China. It was not what I expected, but then again things in China hardly ever conform to a mindset cultivated in the West, which is a good thing in my opinion. The museum, situated on the east side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, was built after the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China and houses the most important cultural and historical relics in the country. I daresay the actual building and entrance—as appealing as they were—looked like many other prominent museums I’ve seen. However, just after walking in, I could sense that this was going to be a different museum experience. It was extremely crowded, of course, as things in Beijing tend…

Additional Tariffs China announced on September 18 that it will impose additional tariffs on U.S. products worth $60 billion starting on September 24 in response to the newly announced U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. The Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council unveiled a list of 3,571 U.S. products subject to a 10-percent tariff, and a second list of another 1,636 items subject to a 5-percent tariff. The United States has announced that it will impose a 10-percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese products effective on September 24, and that it may also take other escalating tariff measures. “We deeply regret the decision. China will be forced to take synchronous countermeasures to safeguard our legitimate rights and interests as well as the global free trade order,” said a…

The Huangpu River, winding through Shanghai, separates the city into an east and west section called Pudong and Puxi, respectively. Although both are part of the same city, they grew at totally different speeds in the past. “Before the development of the Pudong area, when we went to Puxi, we all would say we went to Shanghai because we didn’t think Pudong belonged to Shanghai at all,” Wang Pengcheng, a local from Pudong, said. “People in Puxi called Pudong the countryside. The gap between the two sides was huge. At night, Puxi was always brightly lit, while Pudong was covered in darkness except for several dilapidated street lights.” Looking across from The Bund in Puxi, Pudong was a vast land with low-rise houses and tracts of farmland. The only transportation…

More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, the California state government took up the baton to host the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS 2018) in San Francisco on September 12-14. The summit, held at the midway point between 2015 when the Paris Agreement was reached and 2020 when the parties to the agreement need to review progress and enhance targets, brought more than 4,000 participants from around the world to “Take Ambition to the Next Level.” At the summit, representatives from states, regions and cities; businesses; investors and civil society advanced new commitments in five challenging areas: healthy energy systems, inclusive economic growth, sustainable communities, land and ocean stewardship, and transformative climate…

Liu Li, a 44-year-old oil worker has never attended a parent-teacher meeting for her daughter, nor picked her up from school due to her intense workload and tightly packed training schedule. Her busy life and popularity at the oilfield arose from her fondness for innovation and creation. In 2001, when Liu was working as an oil well cleaner, she invented a device so that she need not carry a cumbersome toolkit made up of a crowbar, pipe tongs, wrench and screwdriver, combining their various functions into a single portable tool, impressing her colleagues. Ever since, Liu’s enthusiasm for innovation has been irrepressible. Over the 25 years of her career, Liu has served in almost every field of production at the Daqing Oilfield, from oil extraction, maintenance and well cleaning, to…

Namjagbarwa, in the east end of the Himalayas, at an altitude of 7,782 meters, is the 15th highest mountain peak in the world located in Tibet Autonomous Region. Scenic Splendor of China, a special issue of the Chinese National Geography magazine, ranked it in first place on the list of China’s most beautiful mountain peaks. In the Tibetan language, the peak means “a spear piecing into the sky.” But since it is most often covered by ice and snow and surrounded by clouds and fog, giving the peak a mysterious cloak, it has attained another name: a shy maiden. At the point where the Yarlung Zangbo River meets Namjagbarwa, it changes its course toward the south and sheds its mild temperament around the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, which has proven…