Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.64/No.36 i Beijing Review

‘At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger… We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice.” Those are the words spoken by former U.S. President George W. Bush as he launched the Iraq War in 2003. Eighteen years on, what he said seems cold comfort compared to the suffering of the Iraqi people. The reconstruction of Iraq is still in the most fragile of stages, the lives of the people have yet to be improved and extremist ideas continue to surge. The country lingers in a transitional period of political reconciliation and the road to national…

As environmental protection becomes an increasingly common concern, and new technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things continue to improve, more and more Chinese drivers are embracing electric and intelligent vehicles. In addition to U.S. electric carmaker Tesla, domestic startups such as Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng, as well as multinationals such as Volkswagen, have all expanded their market shares. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), new-energy vehicles (NEVs) accounted for 2.06 percent of total auto ownership in China in the first half of 2021, numbering 6.03 million units. Of the registered NEVs, 4.93 million units, or 81.68 percent, were fully electric vehicles (EVs). Getting electrified Compared with gasoline-powered vehicles, EVs have the potential to be more energy-saving and environmentally friendly. As manufacturing technologies continue…

Urban Renewal China will take measures to prevent large-scale demolition of buildings during the upgrading of cities, the country’s urbanplanning authorities said on August 31. The country will avoid tearing down existing buildings on a large scale unless those buildings are illegal or designated as dangerous by professional agencies, while historical buildings should be preserved, said Huang Yan, Vice Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, at a press conference. Huang said that while many local governments have started to introduce policies for urban renewal in line with the Central Government agenda, some plans seemed to have run counter to the original intention, such as those on demolishing old towns and districts or cutting down old trees on a large scale. All localities should carefully plan their urban-renewal programs, taking into…

‘Kabul, Afghanistan, I love my job!” Nicole L. Gee, a 23-year-old marine from California posted on her Instagram on August 21, holding up a photo of herself cradling an Afghan newborn. The image also made it onto the U.S. Department of Defense’s social media pages. Six days later, this young and promising woman died in a suicide bomb attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The blast was claimed by ISIS-K, a radical terrorist organization in Afghanistan. Altogether, 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghanistan civilians lost their lives either in the explosion or the ensuing gunfire by U.S. soldiers. It is a hugely painful fact that Gee and her colleagues died in a terrorist incident just a few days before the conclusion of the two-decade U.S.-led war in…

Following similar uprisings in neighboring countries, in February 2011, residents in eastern Libya staged large-scale protests that quickly escalated into a civil war between supporters and opponents of the government. Regime change was brought about through a campaign of military interference by Western countries. Libya has struggled to rebuild in the following decade amid fracturing regime power, a flagging economy and many forms of social unrest. The current predicament of Libya is partly the result of external intervention, which is likely to continue hindering the country’s future development. Therefore, only a real reconciliation inside the country can bring about real progress. Rejection of Western democracy Failing to build a stable and united government, Libya was instead divided between a Tripoli-based government and a government based in Tobruk. After their split,…

In late 2020, the Chinese Government announced that its goal to eliminate extreme poverty had been met. At the start of the targeted poverty alleviation program back in 2013, under 100 million people were identified as living below the poverty line; seven years later, that number dropped to zero. To eradicate extreme poverty in a developing country of 1.4 billion people is a truly extraordinary achievement. Only 72 years earlier—at the time of its founding—the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was one of the poorest countries in the world, characterized by extensive malnutrition, illiteracy, foreign domination and technological backwardness. Since Xi Jinping became China’s top leader in 2012, he has made poverty eradication one of the country’s central policy planks, introducing a program of targeted poverty alleviation by identifying those…

The dinner table in He Mingxing’s house is usually a folkloric mosaic of traditional foods such as glutinous rice cakes from the Zhuang ethnic group and dishes from the Mulam. His family is made up of members from different ethnic backgrounds—his mother is Zhuang, his father is Han, and his daughter-in-law is Mulam. Such a family composition is typical in his home village of Jinji in Luocheng Mulam Autonomous County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The village, with some 300 residents in more than 70 households, is inhabited by seven ethnic groups who speak 11 dialects. About 30 percent of the villagers are Han, the largest ethnic group in China with a little more than 91 percent of the country’s population. Ancestors in the village created a festival that falls on…

Logistics Performance The logistics sector maintained its recovery momentum and showed better performance in the first seven months of 2021, compared with the pre-pandemic level in 2019, according to a report from the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. The value of social logistics reached 179.2 trillion yuan ($27.7 trillion) in the period, up 14 percent year on year, it showed. The average growth rate of the January-July period in 2020 and 2021 came in at 7.1 percent. The combined revenue of the logistics sector reached 6.8 trillion yuan ($1.05 trillion), a rise of 20.8 percent from a year ago. Subsidized Housing More than 80 million units of government-subsidized and renovated housing have been built, improving the living conditions of more than 200 million people, Wang Menghui, Minister of Housing…

After nearly 20 years in the shadows, Taliban forces once again took control of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, on August 16. The rapid Taliban takeover and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country denoted the end of the Afghan War first launched by the George W. Bush administration in 2001. Furthermore, it indicated the failure of U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East region, leaving the local geopolitical structure facing a new round of profound adjustments. Focal shifts The September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001 were a major turning point for America’s Middle East policy. From the viewpoint of the Bush administration, the Middle East had to be fundamentally transformed so that the breeding ground of terrorism and extremism could be eradicated once and for all.…

Amid the recurrence of the COVID-19 contagion across the globe, prospects for forging coordinated and coherent multilateral cooperation remain abysmal. While the blame game over the virus origin still rages on, a new dimension of schism along ideological seams is becoming increasingly pronounced. Jingoistic drum beats accompanying abrasive geopolitical rhetoric have been gaining traction at the expense of international cooperation. Is a face-off inevitable? Having inherited the Trumpian legacy to a large extent, notably his anti-China stance, the Joe Biden administration did not mince words in portraying the world’s second largest economy as its worst adversary and the competition as the fight between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. The ensuing global onslaught of diabolical vilification against China by Washington and the Western media has been incessant and well-coordinated, far beyond the…

After equally dividing community property with her husband, a housewife in Fujian Province received an additional 550,000 yuan ($85,000) in “household labor compensation.” The verdict was made by a local court in July. It is one of several cases nationwide that saw housewives receive divorce compensation for additional domestic duties this year, thanks to an article in China’s Civil Code, the civil law promulgated last year that went into force on January 1. The woman in this particular case, who had married to her husband for more than 20 years, obtained higher compensation than other such cases earlier this year, in which the housewives got between 15,000 yuan ($2,320) and 120,000 yuan ($18,550). Pay for the unpaid Article 1088 in the Civil Code stipulates, “Where one spouse is burdened with…