Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.64/No.18 i Beijing Review

Observed on April 20, is the UN Chinese Language Day. The exact date comes in tribute to Cangjie, the legendary figure credited with having invented Chinese characters. The theme of this year’s UN Chinese Language Day is “Highlighting Pictographs,” as pictographs are the origin of Chinese characters. In 2010, the UN Department of Global Communications instituted language days for each of the organization’s six official languages. The goal was two-fold: to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote the equal use of all six tongues. Language is the carrier of communication, the bridge of interaction between states and the bond of mutual learning among civilizations. At the same time, a language and its individual written forms make up the “soul” of a nation’s cultural heritage. Every language…

ATHLETE WHO DOMINATES 109 KG Chinese record holder Yang Zhe lifted 200 kg in Snatch, resulting in new world and Asian records on the penultimate day featuring the 109 kg category for men at the 2020 Asian Weightlifting Championships held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from April 17 to 25. This event is a Gold Level competition for the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo. Participating athletes are trying to gather valuable points to add to their final ranking for the games. Yang, 30, born in Liaoning Province, was fourth in the 105 kg category at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. He upgraded the best Olympic result of fifth place obtained by Chinese athletes since the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. In 2017, Yang won the men’s 105 kg category at the 13th National Games.…

The largest robotics manufacturing and research facility of ABB, a Switzerland-based technology company, is set to start operating in Shanghai by the end of this year. Its annual production capacity is expected to reach 100,000 robots, about a quarter of the world’s total back in 2019. Those industrial and service robots will not only serve the Chinese market, but also other economies across the globe. They can be used in the fields of new-energy vehicle, 5G, consumer electronics and healthcare sectors in the post-pandemic era, according to the company. The new factory also features a comprehensive research and development (R&D) center and will become a key part of the ABB global robotics supply system. Liu Chao, President of the Swiss Chinese Chamber of Commerce (SwissCham) Shanghai, told Beijing Review that…

For Figo Zhang, an entrepreneur in his 30s, April 16 is a memorable day. On that day 11 years ago, the unmanned surface vessel (USV) he dreamed of building set sail from Zhuhai, a coastal city in Guangdong Province. Zhuhai Yunzhou Intelligence Technology Co. Ltd., a company founded by Zhang, is China’s first domestic producer of USVs. Starting from scratch, it has filled a vacuum in China’s USV market over the past decade. The company’s research and development team has developed a number of core and key USV technologies and obtained more than 390 patents. It also participated in the compilation of all nine existing industrial standards for USVs in China. In 2008, the technology of artificial intelligence was becoming increasingly popular in China. With a strong interest in the…

Big Bone Disease China has seen no new child cases of Kashin-Beck disease, also known as “big bone disease,” for two consecutive years, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Kashin-Beck disease is a bone and joint disorder endemic to China that causes pain and can lead to disabilities. During the conference, Li Bin, deputy head of China’s National Health Commission, said that China still has 179,000 patients with symptoms of Kashin-Beck disease, and that between 2019 and 2020, patients suffering from the disease had received over 130,000 treatments through medication and 802 had under-gone surgeries. “All 379 infected regions across China have met the criteria necessary to qualify as having eliminated the disease,” Li said, adding that the cause of the disease is still unknown and…

The Chinese script emerged about 5000 years ago when the early humans used pictographs, drawing what they saw around them and expressing their thoughts. The pictorial representation started becoming more accurate and characters evolved. The earliest standardized characters in use discovered so far are the inscriptions found on tortoise shells and animal bones around 1200 B.C., known as the oracle bone inscriptions or jiaguwen, followed by more complex inscriptions on bronze ritual objects found from the Zhou Dynasty (about 1100-256 B.C.) known as jinwen, jin referring to metal or, more precisely, bronze. In the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), Emperor Qin Shi Huang, founder of the dynasty, unified the six different—and often warring—kingdoms that existed in the fragmented China of the time. With that, he also unified their various writing styles…

Many people say the 21st century is the Asian Century. During this year’s Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in Boao, Hainan Province, in April, Zhang Yunling, chair professor and Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Shandong University, spoke to Beijing Review reporters Tao Xing and Wen Qing, sharing his opinions on the future development of Asia and China’s role in the process. This is an edited excerpt of his views: The Asian Century The phrase Asian Century actually refers to the regeneration and development of Asia. The process of going through stages of colonization, gaining national independence and rapid development has been difficult for much of Asia. The new century brings new prospects and one of its most salient features is China’s modernization and development as a…

Inside the greenhouses of a modern agricultural base in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, grow hydroponic vegetables, ranging from ordinary ones to varieties rarely seen on the market. Trickles of water circulate within the hydroponic structure. Inside the pools seven species of fish are raised, living in harmony with the hydroponic vegetables. “Fish farming without the need to change the water and growing vegetables without the need to fertilize. This is the fish-vegetable symbiosis system we have developed, essentially a model of circular agriculture,” said Fung Leung, a young man from Hong Kong and co-founder of the project. “All the vegetables are free of pesticide residues, because once pesticides and fertilizers are applied, the fish will die.” Founders of this eco-friendly hi-tech agricultural project are three young people from Hong Kong, all…

Liu Ruiyi is an accountant at an auditing firm in Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning Province in northeast China. She once worked in Shanghai for one and a half years, and then decided to return to her hometown of Dalian because she could save on rent and be with her family. “Although our income is not as high as that of people in more developed cities, I feel happy living here because of the beautiful ocean scenery, pleasant climate and easy pace of life,” Liu told Beijing Review. In April, Dalian was selected as one of China’s top 10 most beautiful cities as well as one of its top 10 happiest cities, based on a survey on people’s livelihoods and their levels of satisfaction with the cities they reside…

After setting up the Chinese calligraphy class at the UN in 2011, Yong Ho, former Chinese Language Supervisor of the UN, instinctively knew the task at hand was a challenging one. Despite acknowledging the lingering charm of this visual art form in traditional China, he knew that using English to illustrate the Chinese aesthetic and cultural ideas underlying this treasured art to foreigners would not be an easy feat. Deeply rooted in Chinese culture and widely feted, calligraphy is about more than just characters. The art, through the fewest of colors and in the simplest of ways touches upon the very philosophy of the Chinese people. Teaching UN staff Ho was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. After graduating from Jiangsu Normal University in 1978, he became a college teacher of…

Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, the world’s major economies have adopted looser monetary policies as well as expansionary fiscal policies. The combined impact of the epi-demic and these stimulus policies have initiated big swings in the global financial market. In a bid to skirt their losses, investors rushed to offload risky assets and buy safe assets. At first, funds kept flowing out of the bond markets in emerging economies, with China as an exception. Since early 2021, with the recovery of major developed economies, bond yields have risen rapidly, and bond markets in emerging economies mostly have attracted a limited inflow of foreign capital. The Chinese bond markets are booming. The first quarter of this year saw a 173.4-percent jump in Chinese bonds purchased by overseas institutions…

Audiophile: someone who loves music and strives to reproduce music in its purest form. As someone who bopped around as a toddler to reggae and had huge unrealistic dreams of becoming a top-notch sound engineer traveling the world working every music festival from Glastonbury to Midi, I am arguably someone who fits into the audiophile category. Without music, I’m pretty sure life, well “my” life at the very least, would be a mistake. It gives our existence meaning and is a constant, through thick and thin. When life is not ideal, music is played to escape. When life is going great, music is played to celebrate. So, back in 2010, when I started studying Chinese and needed to find some way to stay motivated, obsessively seeking out Chinese music was…