Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.63/No.47 i Beijing Review

Since its inception in 2018, the China International Import Expo (CIIE) has become a major platform for international trade, investment promotion, cultural exchange and cooperation. Despite the mounting uncertainty in the world economy caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the CIIE drew a large number of businesses from around the globe. The exhibition area expanded by nearly 30,000 square meters and intended deals worth $72.62 billion were signed, an increase of 2.1 percent year on year. All this showcased the international community’s trust and confidence in China. China is the only major economy that has registered positive growth this year. As a bellwether of the world economy, any economic activity by China impacts the world economic development. So with the economy in recession, the world is looking to China for…

China will pursue creative ways to grow foreign trade through the CIIE and other platforms of opening up. It will encourage crossborder e-commerce and other new business forms and models to foster new drivers of foreign trade and shorten its catalog of technologies prohibited or restricted from import to create a favorable environment for the free flow of technologies across borders. China will keep improving its business environment. In the wake of COVID-19, a range of pro-business relief policies have been adopted that apply equally to all companies registered in China. China will continue to make its foreign-related legal framework more open and transparent, strengthen intellectual property protection, better protect the lawful rights and interests of foreign investors and provide them with more high-quality services to further improve the business…

What makes the China International Import Expo (CIIE) special this year is its organization at a time when the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) remains a pandemic outside China with many countries going into a second phase of lockdown following a resurgence of cases. Amid the rising uncertainty and frustration, the development in Asia can generate some optimism about the future, China’s example in particular. BMW China’s President and CEO Jochen Goller recently said China was the first major global economy to successfully contain COVID-19 and this paved the way for smooth recovery of businesses. The protection of public health is a prerequisite for the national economy to restart. Though the virus caught China by surprise, after the initial shock, the Chinese Government embarked on an unprecedented attempt to control the…

First, we need to step up anti-epidemic cooperation and build a community of health for us all. Right now, COVID-19 is still presenting an ongoing threat. To fight the virus that respects no borders, we must take up the most powerful weapon of solidarity and cooperation, and rise up to the most imperative task of saving people’s lives. Second, we need to safeguard security and stability and build a community of security for us all. Security and stability are the number one precondition for a country’s development, and thus concern the core interests of all countries. We need to act on the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, address all forms of threats and challenges effectively, and foster a sound security environment in our region. Third, we need…

When guests from around the world arrived at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport recently to participate in the Third China International Import Expo (CIIE), few could have imagined that this bustling aviation hub on the bank of the Yangtze River used to be a tidal flat till the late 1990s. Shanghai’s Pudong and Puxi areas, though separated only by the Huangpu River, used to be dissimilar like chalk and cheese. Puxi was prosperous while Pudong was all villages and farmland before the 1990s. There was an old saying in Shanghai: It’s better to have a bed in Puxi than a house in Pudong. In the past three decades, Pudong has developed into one of the country’s most prosperous areas. On November 12, a grand gathering was held in Shanghai to…

PROFESSOR MAKES BREAKTHROUGH IN MATHS Chen Xiuxiong, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, has solved two problems that confounded mathematicians for over two decades. He has resolved the Hamilton-Tian Conjecture and partial C0-estimate for Kahler-Einstein metrics with his colleague and student Wang Bing. It took five years for the two professors to write their essay, which is over 120 pages, and another six years to review their work. It was recently published in the Journal of Differential Geometry, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics published by the International Press on behalf of Lehigh University in the U.S. Chen, a leading figure in complex geometry who has made fundamental contributions to the field, won the New York-based Simons Foundation Award in 2019. The foundation was established…

As I hurtled toward Shanghai on China’s famous high-speed rail to cover the Third China International Import Expo (CIIE), I made it my mission to answer one simple question: Is the CIIE still relevant in 2020? Having attended the expo last year for the first time, I had already witnessed firsthand the worth of hosting and participating in such an event. For one, at its core, the CIIE is a genuine business platform. Whether it be large enterprises already established in the Chinese market, smaller unknown businesses making their first waves into it, or buyers from China looking for the next “big” international product or service, participating in the CIIE is a serious way of increasing company profits and boosting trade. At last year’s event alone, deals worth $71.13 billion…

The Party leadership’s proposals for formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) as well as the long-term objectives through 2035 adopted at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in October underline the need to give priority to innovation in China’s modernization drive. The document also called for achieving self-independence and making China more competitive in science and technology. This marks the first time the CPC put innovation at the top of the agenda during the formulation of five-year plans. Self-reliance and independent innovation have long been the focus for sci-tech development. The emphasis given to innovation at the plenum is consistent with previous pledges to pursue technological progress. The plenum also clarified how innovation is relevant today and what it means for China…

The China Express Delivery Index, based on data from large logistics firms operating delivery services, stood at 108.6 percent in October, up 0.5 percentage point from September. The sub-indexes for business express delivery in the manufacturing and service sectors came to 111.9 and 109.9 percent, respectively. Major food processing companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan ($3.02 million) from their main operations saw their combined profit reach 440.32 billion yuan in the first nine months of the year, up 10.1 percent from the same period in 2019. The building materials sector saw positive growth in the first three quarters of the year. Its value-added output gained 0.7 percent year on year, reversing the previous downward trend.…

China’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) issued $6 billion worth of sovereign bonds into Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on October 14, with subscriptions by international investors reaching 4.7 times the volume issued by the time the dollar-denominated bonds were released at a premium. According to data from China Central Depository & Clearing Co., Ltd. (CCDC), holdings of Chinese sovereign bonds by overseas institutions have grown continuously for the last 23 months, now totaling $370 billion. This figure is up by 38.5 percent compared with the end of 2019. FTSE Russell, the world’s second largest index service provider, has revealed that China’s sovereign bonds will be included in FTSE GBWI from October 2021. In February and April 2020, China’s treasury bonds were included by J.P. Morgan Government Bond Index-Emerging Markets (GBI-EM)…

The Third China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai opened against a backdrop of the worst worldwide economic recession seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and a growing backlash against globalization. So it became a significant platform for countries and regions to strengthen economic and trade cooperation at a time when the existing global trade order is increasingly under strain due to the United States’ unilateral and protectionist economic policy. “This year’s CIIE is convened at a special time,” President Xi Jinping said in his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the CIIE on November 4. “COVID-19, which caught us all by surprise, has hit countries hard and dealt a heavy blow to the world economy. As scheduled and…

The apparent and poll-predicted election of Joe Biden to the U.S. presidency has produced other predictable results. Donald Trump steadfastly refuses to concede and begin processes designed to produce a smooth transition of power by January 20, 2021, when his term ends and the new president will be inaugurated. In fact, there is no law that he cooperate with the transition, and he is well within legal rights to contest results in states where he or his surrogates have alleged fraud. These efforts are unlikely to overturn Biden’s win not simply because of actual vote totals, but also because a Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates nearly 80 percent of Americans believe Biden won. Nevertheless, Trump will delay certification of the vote in some places, undermine public confidence in the system and outcome,…

This year, Kiki (online name) gained more happiness from purchasing experiences during the annual online shopping festival than earlier. The 20-something bought 26 items including clothes and cosmetics on November 1 and 20 of them were delivered the very next day, Kiki posted on the social media platform Weibo. According to tech company Alibaba Group that initiated the sales promotion campaign in 2009, the one-day event on November 11 was extended with presales beginning on November 1 and the second round of promotions started at midnight on November 10. Millions of consumers like Kiki participated in the shopping bonanza with no less enthusiasm compared with previous years as the impact of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has largely eased domestically. By November 12, the total gross merchandise volume of Alibaba’s…