Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.63/No.22 i Beijing Review

With China being the first country to report cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and also the first to contain it, an analysis of the country’s fight against the virus shows the situation was effectively controlled due to three major institutional strengths. First, China’s basic medical insurance system that covers the whole population played a fundamental role. People did not shy away from seeking treatment fearing it would burn a hole in their pocket. The government earmarked subsidies to make all treatments for COVID-19 patients free. Medical insurance funds were prepaid to hospitals to ensure that they did not delay services because of financial problems. Second, the national governance system also played a decisive role. The strong mobilization capability and allocation of resources on a war footing—from the temporary…

Huang Ping, President of the Chinese Association of American Studies China has made initial achievements in the battle against the novel coronavirus epidemic thanks to the strong central leadership, unified allocation of resources, flexible adjustments in public health systems and mechanisms such as building temporary hospitals, and release and analysis of information in a timely manner. The general public has also followed the instructions on epidemic prevention and control proactively. The virus is the world’s common enemy. Some Western countries have demonized and smeared China on the epidemic outbreak, while the facts speak louder than words. Some have even blamed China for the epidemic, filed lawsuits and asked for economic compensation. Such actions can yield no results and only pose challenges to the global pandemic response. Only by staying calm…

The Economist’s recent cover and lead editorial Goodbye Globalization reads firstly as a lament and secondly as a deeply inaccurate description of what’s emerging and likely to come. It’s not a surprising position for a magazine long committed to global economic liberalism, but in fact this apocalyptic narrative has been building for some time. Indeed, it was already a well-worn theme before the current global pandemic: having fretting for several years about China’s rise and use of macro-controls, U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine global trade, and of course, the ominous local symptoms of Brexit (given the magazine’s London headquarters). Of course, the pandemic has contributed to heightening tensions substantially between the U.S. and China, and if some of the more dramatic elements of his own account are to…

Like many other countries, China suffered serious environment degradation in the early stages of its industrialization when its rapid economic growth came at a huge cost to its natural resources and the environment. However, in the past two to three decades, there has been a significant reversal of that trend, thanks to a wide range of government policies and people’s growing awareness of the need to protect the environment they work and live in. A historical problem While investigating the causes of environmental pollutions and ecosystem degradations in China, most analysts have focused on industrialization in the modern era. However, the root causes stretch back for centuries. In China’s history, there were periods when the environment was overexploited in unsustainable ways, often bringing about famines and natural disasters. Since the…

As of mid-May, WeChat users are able to use an applet called Fengshi, operated by China’s courier giant SF Express, for food delivery. Major catering brands present on Fengshi now include Dicos, Xibei Restaurant, Ajisen Ramen, and Kungfu Restaurant. In its description, Fengshi, literally meaning SF Eats, claims to be a platform providing food delivery service for corporate users, and one has to first identify as a corporate user before making an order. Fengshi is a platform operated with the original intention of delivering food for SF staff during the epidemic period. At present, it mainly caters to the staff at SF’s offices across the country. “We are also considering the future of this applet,” SF said in a statement sent to China Industrial Economy News. Focus on group meals…

One of the top priorities on the agenda of the annual session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature, was set much before the novel coronavirus pandemic or other recent issues. It was to vote on the draft civil code, a milestone in developing a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. A new civil code will contribute to modernizing the national governance system and governance capacity and building a country governed by the rule of law. The civil code encompasses almost all aspects of civilian life: birth, death, illness and old-age care, food, clothing, shelter, transportation and more. It ensures civil rights for every person, such as personal dignity, personal freedom, right to life, right to body, right to health, right to inherit and right to privacy.…

PROMOTER OF DUNHUANG CULTURE AWARDED Fan Jinshi, Honorary President of Dunhuang Academy, received the Touching China 2019 award for her dedication and study of Dunhuang culture on May 17. The annual award, presented by China Central Television, honors Chinese people for their tenacity, bravery and wisdom. Fan, 81, first trekked to the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in Gansu Province, northwest China, in July 1963, shortly after graduating from college, and remained there for more than 50 years. She was the first to suggest the Digital Dunhuang concept and implemented the largest comprehensive protection program in the grottoes’ history, the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes Protection and Utilization Project. Fan is an active promoter of Dunhuang culture, and has helped organize multiple successful Dunhuang art exhibitions both at home and abroad. Garbage Sorting People’s…

The annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body, collectively known as the Two Sessions, have long been criticized in the self-proclaimed democratic Western world as putting on a show. However, the prophets of the Western world themselves have different views on democracy. Renowned U.S. scholar Noam Chomsky said the novel coronavirus epidemic makes it very difficult for the West to return to the past, and so does their declining democracy. According to Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History, the state’s capacity and people’s trust in the government are more important than the type of the regime. Author Graham Allison, who coined the term Thucydides trap, called on…

If we regard the January 23 lockdown of Wuhan, the city in central China with a population of over 11 million where the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak was first reported, as the start of China’s combat against the epidemic, it took three weeks for the infection to peak. Then in early March, the number of daily new cases dropped to under 100. Today, most industrial production has been back on track across the country. This is a miracle achieved by the 1.4-billion Chinese through efficient measures and concerted efforts. It might seem odd for the freedom-comes-first Western culture, but China did what it took to succeed. Therefore it is regrettable to see the people who defeated the once-in-a-century epidemic get bombarded with misinterpretations, attacks and distortions by some U.S.…

China’s economic activities continued to normalize as the latest data on industrial output, retail sales and investment showed across-the-board improvements. But the recovery still faces uncertainties and challenges from the global spread of the novel coronavirus. The industrial sector was among the quickest to rebound from the impact of the virus, with the value-added industrial output returning to growth in April, the first expansion since the virus outbreak as factory activities recovered amid easing containment measures. The value-added industrial output went up 3.9 percent year on year in April, rebounding from the 1.1-percent drop in March and 13.5-percent slump seen in the first two months of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on May 15. Adding to the recovery signs, the index measuring services…

China will continue international cooperation in the global battle against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), provide foreign assistance and make its domestically developed vaccine a global public good when available. President Xi Jinping made the announcement at the opening of the 73rd Session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) via video link on May 18. “China will provide $2 billion over two years to help with COVID-19 response, and with economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing countries,” Xi said at the meeting of the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO). As the most serious global public health emergency since the end of World War II, COVID-19 had hit over 210 countries and regions, infected more than 5 million people and claimed over 330,000 lives as…

Those who haven’t been to the Mu Us Desert in northwest China may not have an opportunity to do so as the desert is disappearing from the map. According to recent statistics from the Shaanxi provincial forestry bureau, 93.24 percent of the desert land in Yulin, a city in Shaanxi Province in northwest China where half of the desert lies, has been conquered, enabling the province’s green area to advance 400 km northward. The feat has been achieved thanks both to national anti-desertification policies and the toil of generations of eco-warriors living in the region. The Mu Us sprawls over 42,200 square km between Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, lying north of the Great Wall. In Mongolian, mu us means barren land where nothing can grow. Yulin was dubbed…

The first business dispute verdict since the new Foreign Investment Law came into effect on January 1 made Chinese American businessman Cheng An a very happy man this month. The roots of the case went back to 2009 when Cheng wanted to set up a trading firm in Shanghai to provide import and export services for his U.S. business. He teamed up with a Chinese acquaintance, Zhang Yan, to start a joint venture (JV) but ran into a legal hurdle. According to the Chinese-Foreign Equity Joint Ventures Law prevailing at that time, a U.S. citizen could not start a JV with a Chinese. So Cheng brought in his brother, who had kept his Chinese citizenship, and funded Zhang and his brother through a legal process. The JV was registered and…

($1=7 yuan) Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China (% y.o.y.) Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China by Sector January-April (% y.o.y.) Primary industry: Agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery Secondary industry: Mining, manufacturing, construction, and electricity, thermal, fuel gas and water production and supply Tertiary industry: Services Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China by Region January-April (% y.o.y.) (Source: National Bureau of Statistics) China’s postal industry registered higher revenue and business volume in the first four months of this year despite the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. In January-April, business revenue of the sector totaled 309.02 billion yuan, up 5.4 percent year on year. Despite a slowing domestic new-energy vehicle market, the number of charging posts across China rose to around 1.29 million by the end of April. This represents…