Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.64/No.22 i Beijing Review

China has achieved a complete victory in its fight against poverty. In December 2020, President Xi Jinping announced that all remaining rural poor population had moved out of poverty under the current standard. That means 98.99 million impoverished rural residents shed absolute poverty in just eight years. Up until the late 1970s, more than 770 million people were living below the poverty line, according to World Bank data. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hailed China’s transformation as “the greatest anti-poverty achievement in history.” “Every time I visit China, I am stunned by the speed of change and progress,” he said. Today, the question on everybody’s mind is how exactly did China do it? What is China’s secret? To understand China’s “secret,” we must first look back to 1978, when the…

From a small apartment to a full house. Hong Kong entrepreneur Kenny Tam highlighted the change in his life with this one sentence when speaking about the benefits reaped from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) initiative. “Given the skyrocketing prices in Hong Kong, I could afford to rent an apartment of merely 200 square feet (18 square meters) years ago. Today, I live in a house in Guangzhou for almost the same amount of rent,” Tam said. While more comfortable housing is a factor that beckons young people from Hong Kong and Macao to GBA cities on the mainland, a more important consideration is professional pursuit. Greater regional integration and favorable government policies create more and better opportunities there, and they work hard to seize them. Fulfilling aspirations…

When the hearse left Xiangya Hospital in Changsha, Hunan Province, on May 22, it was the setting of an unusual scene. A large crowd stood outside the hospital to say farewell to the man in it and they began to cry out, “Grandpa Yuan, rest in peace!” Yuan Longping, known as the father of hybrid rice in China, died of organ failure on May 22 at the age of 91. But the legacy he left behind will continue to improve food security and research around the world and inspire generations of agro-scientists. His research helped feed 1.4 billion Chinese, nearly one fifth of the world’s population, by growing high-yield hybrid rice though China has less than 9 percent of the arable land in the world. When a memorial service was…

Child Welfare China’s child welfare services will be restructured; the reform will see its completion by 2025, with the focus of the service system shifted to minor protection, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on May 25 at a press conference. Child welfare services in China have been dedicated to sheltering and supporting underage children whose guardianship has been assumed by the civil affairs authorities, the ministry said, noting that many of the facilities now lie idle as the number of orphans dropped 66 percent from the 2012 figure to the current 190,000. Close to 70 percent of county-level child welfare facilities have fewer than 10 residents, Zhao Yong, an official with the ministry, said, adding that there are 1,217 child welfare facilities across the country. In contrast to the…

Among the celebrated scenic spots in southwest Yunnan Province, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture is not on the frequently mentioned list. In the past, a lack of transportation infrastructure used to prevent many tourists from catching a glimpse of the region’s breathtaking vistas, so they were known only to niche travelers. With over 98 percent of the land being covered with undulating mountains, valleys and rivers, transportation infrastructure has long been on the region’s development agenda but such projects have been hard to implement on the ground. Cliffs, frequent falling rocks and landslides have made road construction there a life-and-death endeavor. Several simple roads built over the past decades have been of poor quality and in constant need of repair. Under these conditions, a road stretching 300 km linking Lushui, the…

Western scholars often refer to China’s political system as “dictatorship,” “autocracy” or “authoritarianism” while the Chinese call it a centralized power system or a system of prefectures and counties. Some Western scholars argue that liberal democracy would lead to prosperity and strength, and dictatorship would result in the failure of the country, with the economy collapsing and the people struggling to make a living. However, for a long time in history, China was the most powerful country in the world. For such a civilization country, the terms used by Western theorists to judge China, such as dictatorship, autocracy or authoritarianism, cannot summarize the main characteristics of the country. Similarly, the labels used by Chinese theorists such as a “centralized power system” or a “system of prefectures and counties” may also…

At the 12th Central China Investment and Trade Expo in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, in May, the new products of Huayang New Material Technology Group showcased how companies in central China are switching to green and sustainable development. Shanxi is one of China’s major coal-producing areas and Huayang is the reincarnation of coal producer Yang Quan Coal Industry (Group) Co. Ltd., which shifted its focus to the new material sector last year. At the expo, Huayang’s products included smogfiltering windows that can block 99.5 percent of fine particulate matters (PM2.5) and nanofiber masks that can be used repeatedly without becoming malodorous. The expo is held for enterprises in central China, which comprises the six provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. It is a region with growing market potential…

With her short hair dyed bright purple, 15-year-old Du Fangmei is easy to spot in her class. She practiced giving a haircut to a mannequin head as she talked to Beijing Review in her classroom. “My hair was dyed by the hairdressing teacher last month,” she said in standard Chinese. “I like it a lot.” With her in the classroom are some of her classmates, all teenagers, and hairdressing teacher Duan Zhiwen, whom the students prefer to call shifu (master) rather than teacher to show their respect. The students all have stylish hairstyles, either created by their shifu or by each other. A boy with a buzz cut said he cut his hair by himself with the help of a mirror. The clothing and jewelry worn by some of the…

Sixty-one-year-old Zhang Juhua finally received his first jab of a COVID-19 vaccine on May 25. A resident of Qingdao, Shandong Province, Zhang could have been vaccinated earlier. However, during the first round of mass vaccination in his community in March, Zhang hesitated to take the dose as he was concerned about its safety and believed there was no need to do so as the control and prevention work in his city was well executed. When asked why he changed his mind, Zhang said many of his friends already had been inoculated and they only saw very minor side effects. Furthermore, the recent emergence in COVID-19 infections in the provinces of Liaoning, Anhui and Guangdong also prompted him to get the vaccination after all. Like Zhang, quite a large number of…

In the 2006 Hollywood blockbuster Night at the Museum, main protagonist Larry Daley experiences a thrilling, action-packed night at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, when an ancient curse causes the animals and exhibits on display to come to life and unleash chaos onto the city. On May 18, another “Night” came to the Capital Museum in Beijing, but this time visitors could just enjoy a cloud tour. The event, One Night at the Museum, showcased to the audiences not only new exhibitions of cultural relics, but also stage performances including drama, Peking Opera, and traditional Chinese dancing at the museum, the main venue for the national-level celebration of the 45th International Museum Day. Alberto Garlandini, President of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), said at the…