Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 62/No.18 i Beijing Review

Joint Payments UnionPay International announced on April 23 that it had signed agreements with financial institutions from several Belt and Road Initiative participants to develop payment services. According to the agreements, UnionPay will establish a joint venture with financial institutions in Laos to run the country’s national bank card payment system, while leading banks in Indonesia and Thailand will issue UnionPay cards. A bank in Uzbekistan also reached a package of agreements with UnionPay to issue bank cards. AmBank of Malaysia will issue the first UnionPay credit card that supports contactless payment in the country. These agreements show deepened financial cooperation between China and other Belt and Road participants, and will promote the upgrading of the payment industry in relevant countries and regions, said Fan Yifei, Deputy Governor of the…

Baimamiao, a small town situated lessthan20kmnorthof the Yangtze River, does not lie on the coast, yet it is credited as the birthplace of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy). The PLA Navy was established in this township on April 23, 1949, and four decades later, the date was designated as the PLA Navy’s founding, officially commemorated ever since. This year, to mark the 70th anniversary of the PLA Navy, multinational naval events were held in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, on April 22-25. Naval delegations from more than 60 countries and nearly 20 warships from over 10 countries attended the activities, which included a naval parade, seminars, and cultural and sports exchanges. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and…

The Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash in March that claimed 157 lives was a second blow for leading U.S. large aircraft maker Boeing as it was the second mishap featuring its Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in eight months. The Lion Air Flight 610 that went down in Indonesia last October also featured the same model. Since the crashes, which triggered a global grounding of the aircraft, Boeing is now caught in a battle of words between the United States and the European Union (EU). It started with a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 9. “The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has [sic] adversely impacted the United States, which will now put tariffs on $11 billion of EU products!” Trump tweeted.…

Liang Yaxiao is a “slasher.” According to the book One Person/Multiple Careers: The Original Guide to the Slash Career by U.S. author Marci Alboher, a slasher describes a person who has multiple occupations. The 26-year-old Liang is an anchor with Baotou TV in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China, as well as an entrepreneur marketing a cosmetic brand on social media platform WeChat. “I spend most of my income on clothes, entertainment and food, and this year, my baby,” she told Beijing Review. “I don’t think too much if I really want to buy something. With a double income and relatively low living expenses, I can even save some money.” New adults on the block New generation adults like Liang living in third and fourth-tier cities are presenting a…

Pinduoduo, a Chinese online group discounter, announced on January 20, that someone had exploited a loophole on its platform to steal tens of millions of yuan worth of discount vouchers during its New Year’s promotion. Though the company immediately rectified the bug, it still resulted in a loss of 10 million yuan ($1.49 million), according to the company’s risk control team. Pinduoduo isn’t the only high-profile company to have experienced such a breach. In October 2018, Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba Group and the company behind Alipay, one of the leading mobile payment apps, reported that hackers filched money from accounts via stolen Apple IDs, with some losing up to $288. About a week later, Apple officially apologized for the hacking, saying in a statement that it found “a…

As Xue Juan glides in her wheelchair, you can’t help noticing the hand she uses to steer it. Her left hand is callused. This Paralympic champion who won the women’s single in table tennis at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games described how she got them. Wheelchair-bound when she was around 1-year-old due to polio, the girl from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province in east China, was chosen to play for the Beijing wheelchair table tennis team when she was 17. It was relatively late for a table tennis player and she had to train harder than the others. She practiced six to eight hours every day, which led to the calluses. But she has no complaints. Her hard work paid off when she joined the national wheelchair table tennis team in 2013.…

The opening ceremony of the Belt and Road News Network First Council Meeting is held in Beijing on April 23. Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, attended the meeting, pointing out that the founding of the network is a major move to deepen Belt and Road media cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges. A total of 40 mainstream media organizations from 25 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America took part in the meeting. To date, 182 media organizations from 86 countries around the world have joined the network.…

SRI LANKA Security personnel stand guard outside a church in Negombo on April 23. It was one of the locations hit by terrorist bombings on April 21, which killed at least 250 people. The police have arrested more than 70 suspects in the attacks THAILAND Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha (right) and Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen witness the signing of an agreement on reconnecting the railway lines of the two countries after a 45-year hiatus at a ceremony on April 22 IRELAND People visit the Long Room at Trinity College Library in Dublin on April 23, annual World Book and Copyright Day RUSSIA Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) shakes hands with Kim Jong Un, the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, during their meeting in…

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviewed multinational fleets during a naval parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy on the afternoon of April 23. It was part of a multinational naval event, which also consisted of seminars and cultural and sports activities, hosted by China in the port city of Qingdao in Shandong Province on April 22-25. Xi first inspected 32 Chinese naval vessels and 39 warplanes, including China’s first aircraft carrier the Liaoning, nuclear-powered submarines, destroyers and frigates, as well as bombers and carrier-based fighters and helicopters. He also reviewed 18 visiting naval ships from 13 countries. Comments to zanjifang@bjreview.com…

Even as single people of marriage age from say, 22-35 years old, are under great pressure from parents and relatives who spare no efforts in persuading them to get married, the rate of marriage in China has seen a steady decline for the past five years, hitting a new low in 2018. Only 7.2 people out of every 1,000 people got married in 2018, dropping from 9.9 per 1,000 people in 2013, according to the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA). The old saying that men and women should both get married when they come of age seems to be losing its power to compel singles into marriage. Today, modern young people have various reasons for not tying the proverbial knot. “Some experts cite the…

Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, confirmed on April 18 that it will close its marketplace for third-party sellers in China on July 18, according to a statement from the company. That means customers of Amazon.cn, or Amazon China, will no longer see products from local third-party sellers and will only be able to purchase products from Amazon’s cross-border e-commerce platform Global Store. Amazon claimed it will not withdraw from the Chinese market, but will focus on the Global Store, the merchant selling division Global Selling, the Kindle devices and content business, as well as cloud-based Amazon Web Services in China. “After the adjustment, Amazon will almost give up the Chinese market, and in the Amazon system, Chinese sellers will only serve as suppliers to foreign e-commerce markets,” said…

The widespread use of the Chinese currency internationally has become a trend, with China’s economic rebalancing facilitating the process, a senior official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said. “Given China’s importance in the global economy, there is little question that the international use of the renminbi will rise over time,” Zhang Tao, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, said. “In the short term, fluctuations in trade, capital flows and exchange rates may affect the trend.” Zhang hailed the inclusion of the RMB into the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) basket as a milestone for the IMF and the global economy. The Chinese yuan’s share of currency reserves increased to 1.89 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, the highest since the IMF began releasing yuan data in late 2016,…

When I recently referred to China as the world’s largest developing country to some of my European friends, they thought it was a humorous understatement since they have been to many Chinese cities and have the impression that some are on par with cities in developed countries in terms of convenience. Over the past years, China’s economy has grown rapidly, making it the second largest in the world, after the United States, with hi-tech companies such as Tencent, Huawei and Alibaba also emerging. Many recent Western media reports on China-U.S. trade frictions describe China as a rapidly rising developed country which may challenge the status of the United States as a leading power in the world. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of…

Reading Buddies In celebration of World Book and Copyright Day, children read to elderly people at a nursing center in Changxing County, east China’s Zhejiang Province, on April 23. Conservation Alliance Fifty agencies, including government offices, nature reserves and research institutes, have joined a conservation alliance to better protect the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper. The alliance was established on April 20 in the city of Yancheng in east China’s Jiangsu Province, according to the Jiangsu Yancheng Wetland and Rare Birds National Nature Reserve. It was launched by the spoon-billed sandpiper task force of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership, the Shenzhen Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) and other organizations. The alliance aims to encourage exchanges and international cooperation between wetland management authorities, research institutes and wetland nature reserves in countries along the…

China-Russia relations are an example of cooperation between countries based on joint responsibility for peaceful and harmonious global development. On May 8, 2015, the presidents of the two countries signed a joint declaration in Moscow, agreeing “on cooperation in coordinating the development of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) project and the Silk Road Economic Belt,” with the goal of building a “common economic space” in Eurasia, which would include a free trade agreement between the EEU and China. The EEU is a trade bloc of five northern Eurasian countries, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The Silk Road Economic Belt is the overland component of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013, which also includes the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, and is engaged in building…

Beijing Review: In early April, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed optimism that China and the U.S. could reach a “great deal” soon. How “great” do you think it will be for the future development of China-U.S. relations? Do you think it will help resolve the tensions between the two countries? Avery Goldstein: I think it will reduce the tensions. I think it may be a good deal. As long as it’s not a bad deal, it will be better than no deal. But this is not going to fundamentally resolve the reasons why there’s economic conflict between the two countries on a number of issues that have to do with trade, subsidies, technology sharing openness and the number of investments in each other’s countries. You would assume that a deal…

Born into a family of Tibetan medicine doctors, Jiaojia Tsering was destined to follow on the same path. Today a top-level physician at Beijing Tibetan Hospital, he has treated many patients from both China and abroad and has witnessed the development of Tibetan medicine over his 28-year career. To be a doctor, though, was not in Jiaojia Tsering’s plan as a child growing up in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. His childhood dream was to become a writer or a police officer. His grandfather was a notable doctor, but was unable to hand down his experience to Jiaojia Tsering’s father before passing away. Thus, his father had a strong wish that Jiaojia Tsering learn Tibetan medicine and continue the family tradition. Jiaojia Tsering got high scores on his high school…

As China’s population ages and the workforce shrinks, there will be a greater demand for funds to finance more social security benefits. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of people aged 60 and above will reach 300 million. By 2050, the money spent on elderly care-related services and facilities will account for 26.24 percent of the GDP, according to a blue paper on the health of seniors released by the Chinese Aging Well Association and Social Sciences Academic Press (China) in January. In 2015, the figure was 7.33 percent. Faced with the need for more funds, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), the reserve fund established in 2000 to supplement and adjust social security spending such as pension benefits during the peak of population aging, has stepped up…

($1=6.7 yuan) 8.65 mln tons Imports and exports at Horgos Port in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in Q1, up 17.1 percent year on year 519.9 bln yuan GDP of Tianjin Municipality in Q1, growing by 4.5 percent compared to the same period last year 10% Year-on-year growth of overseas equity of oil and gas production of China National Petroleum Corp. in Q1 179.7 bln yuan Revenue of Huawei in Q1, up 39 percent year on year 7.5% Year-on-year growth of China’s electricity consumption in March 372.2 bln yuan China’s fixed assets investment in transport in Q1, up 3.3 percent year on year 6.6 % Year-on-year growth of China’s cargo throughput at ports in Q1, reaching about 3.15 billion tons $100 mln Estimated size of the initial public offering in the…

I got a call from a very close Chinese friend in Beijing who asked me to have dinner with him one day last year. I was happy to say yes but was a bit taken aback when he suggested the KFC in Qianmen. Since we hadn’t met for some time and this was to be a reunion of sorts, I felt a Chinese or Indian restaurant would have been more appropriate. My friend read my mind. “You are wondering why this common fast food joint, right?” he said. “Let me give you a historical tour.” The Qianmen KFC restaurant opened in 1987 and was the first Western fast food outlet in China. “I was a young boy at that time and badgered my father to take me,” my friend said.…