Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.63/No.35 i Beijing Review

Whether by restricting business or people-to-people exchanges, it would appear as though the Trump administration is deliberately directing China-U.S. relations down a path towards decoupling. However, a decoupling of the United States and China is not only completely improbable, but would also offer no benefit to either party, nor benefit the rest of the international community. Since the formal establishment of diplomatic ties on January 1, 1979, China and the United States have built a close relationship. Such a deep bond is irreversible, regardless of how it is viewed by the Trump administration. Take the China-U. S. exchanges during the epidemic period this year as an example. Although the flow of people between the two countries has been interrupted, the flow of goods is increasing. According to a recent survey…

Trade in services has existed since ancient times. Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 B.C.) started the tradition of giving private lectures in other kingdoms. Zhang Qian, an envoy of the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220), was sent to the Western regions. Zheng He, a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) admiral and explorer, led several voyages around the Indian Ocean. These stories help us understand the development of trade in services in ancient China. The world’s first coffee shop, opened in Constantinople, Turkey, in 1530, drew the attention of Venetian merchants. They brought back a large amount of coffee beans from Turkey, and gradually coffee became popular in Europe. For a long time, people focused on goods trade, while trade in services occupied a small part of the international trade. Though the coffee…

According to a poll conducted from June 16 to July 14 by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan U.S. fact tank, 73 percent of the respondents surveyed had a negative opinion of China, up 26 percent compared to the same period in 2018. China’s policy toward the U.S. has always been guided by the principles like peace, equality and amity for the good of overall China-U.S. relations, so the rising anti-China sentiment comes as a big shock. However, given the political landscape in the U.S., this attitude has nothing to do with China’s interactions with the U.S. or the Chinese people’s attitude toward the people in the U.S. It has more to do with the fact that the Donald Trump administration is taking advantage of the topic of China to…

ACYF’S NEW INTERNET STAR MEMBERS Huang Wei, a famous live-streamer known as Viya on the Internet, has been selected a member of the All-China Youth Federation (ACYF). Huang, 35, has 13 million followers on Douyin, as video social networking app TikTok is branded in China, and promotes every thing from food and makeup to million-dollar space rockets to viewers on Taobao, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform in China. She has also influenced and led increasing numbers of young people to participate in charitable projects, broadcasting more than 50 live-streaming programs related to poverty alleviation and generating more than 460 million yuan (about $65 million) in trading volume since 2019. Founded in 1949, ACYF organizes programs in education, vocational training, rural development, environmental protection, international exchange, civil society and youth culture. It has…

The string of recent actions taken by the United States against China are aimed at stoking ideological confrontation and reviving the Cold War in the 21st century. It feels like the specter of McCarthyism is resurfacing in the United States. In the 1950s when the United States was gripped by anti-communist hysteria, tens of thousands of people from the Chinese community there were suspected as “spies.” Over 20 million people had to go through “screening.” Today, the witch hunt among Chinese scientists as well as arbitrary harassment and willful detainment of Chinese students in the United States are so reminiscent of the dark era of McCarthyism. Scientists, professors and scholars of Chinese descent in the United States and those Americans who support cooperation with China are too scared to speak…

After the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) launched the COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility to support its members and clients to alleviate and mitigate economic, financial and public health fallout. Over the 18 months from April 2020 to October 2021, the facility is offering up to $13 billion worth of financing to both public and private sector entities for any AIIB member facing, or at risk of facing, serious adverse impacts as a result of COVID-19. To date, nearly $6 billion worth of loans has gone out to 12 members including Indonesia, Pakistan, India, the Philippines and Kazakhstan. It brought AIIB’s total investment portfolio since 2016 to nearly $20 billion. “At a time when many countries are amassing all of their scarce…

Tang Yi hadn’t planned to celebrate his birthday this year. The deliveryman was rushing around Beijing ensuring his customers received their online orders during the restricted days of the novel coronavrius disease (COVID-19) epidemic. There was no time to do anything else. However, on his special day in April, he picked up an order from a bakery and saw a note attached saying: “This cake is a special treat for whoever is the delivery person. Don’t forget to take time out to eat it.” Tang did stop to eat the cake, marveling at the coincidence of picking up such a gift on his birthday and moved to tears that a customer would be so kind-hearted. During the COVID-19 epidemic, China’s couriers and food delivery people played a crucial role. They…

U.S. restrictions on Huawei seem to have no end in sight. On August 17, the U.S. Commerce Department expanded its curb on the Chinese tech giant to cut off all its access to U.S. technology-backed components. It also added another 38 Huawei affiliates to its economic blacklist, which indicates they are required to obtain a license from the U.S. Government when they “act as a purchaser, intermediate consignee, ultimate consignee, or end user.” “It basically blocks the way for Huawei to directly purchase chips from other chip manufacturers that use U.S. technology,” Jia Mo, an analyst at market research company Canalys, said. Richard Yu, President of Huawei’s consumer unit, said at a press conference on August 7 that this year may mark the last year of production for Huawei subsidiary…

In 1991, during the first Gulf War, French critical theorist Jean Baudrillard published a series of controversial essays later collected and published in English as The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1995). While many found the essays frustrating, his arguments were three-fold. First, this was not really a war—this was a massacre masquerading as war. Second, the U.S. so effectively controlled the images and narratives of the war in real time that viewers were hostage to Washington’s propaganda, which diverged significantly from reality. Third, the American version of the war nonetheless became “history,” as a counterfactual account of American righteousness, superiority and victory. America’s “victory” in the Gulf War is important because it took place as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was ending, and…

People aged 60 and older now make up more than a sixth of China’s total population and there are no signs of this figure slowing down in growth. China had 249 million people on the plus side of 60 in 2018, according to a report by the Chinese Aging Well Association in May 2019. Of them, 40 million were dependent or semi-dependent on specialist care. However, there are only 300,000 professionals catering to this emerging market and the gap continues to widen. It is therefore not surprising that geriatricians—primary care medical doctors specializing in the assessment and treatment of elderly people—appeared in the list of new occupation categories released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) this July. Services catering to the needs of the elderly are…

($1=7 yuan) Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China (% y.o.y.) Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China by Sector January-July (% y.o.y.) Fixed Assets Investment Growth in China by Region January-July (% y.o.y.) (Source: National Bureau of Statistics) During summer, State Grid Corp.’s maximum cross-region electricity transfer capacity reached 92.08 million kW, an increase of 14.11 million kW from the highest level in 2019. The company said its cross-region and cross-province power transmission hit a record high as the economy recovered. China’s new yuan-denominated loans hit 992.7 billion yuan in July, down 63.1 billion yuan compared with the same month in 2019. Loans in the household sector and the corporate sector in July increased by 757.8 billion yuan and 264.5 billion yuan, respectively, with medium- and long-term loans accounting for the…