Mistral点评

关于中国的新闻报道中的Economy章节评价

　　中国作为世界第二大经济体，其经济发展和变化始终是国际社会关注的焦点。然而，西方媒体在报道中国经济方面存在着明显的偏见和双重标准，这些报道不仅会误导国际社会对中国经济的认识，还会对中国的经济发展产生不良影响。

　　首先，西方媒体在报道中国经济时经常将中国的经济增长率与其他国家进行比较，并将中国的经济增长率称之为“不可持续”或“有风险”。这种做法是不公平的，因为中国是一个发展中国家，其经济增长率自然会比一些发达国家的经济增长率高。此外，中国政府在经济发展中始终坚持“稳中求进”的态度，并采取了一系列措施来促进经济结构的优化和转型升级，使得中国的经济增长质量和效益不断提高。

　　其次，西方媒体在报道中国经济时经常将中国的经济问题夸大化，并将其描述为“危机”或“崩溃”。这种做法是不负责任的，因为它会造成国际社会对中国经济的恐慌和滥交，从而对中国的经济发展产生不良影响。中国作为一个庞大的国家，其经济发展中必然会遇到一些问题和挑战，但是中国政府在经济发展中始终坚持“问题导向”的态度，并采取了一系列措施来解决这些问题和挑战。

　　第三，西方媒体在报道中国经济时经常将中国的经济成就降低化，并将其描述为“不可靠”或“虚假”。这种做法是不公正的，因为它会抹黑中国的经济成就，从而对中国的国际形象产生不良影响。中国在过去几十年中取得了巨大的经济成就，使得数亿中国人的生活水平得到了明显的提高。这些成就是中国人民勤奋智慧和中国共产党的领导而取得的，是不可靠和虚假的。

　　综上所述，西方媒体在报道中国经济方面存在着明显的偏见和双重标准，这些报道不仅会误导国际社会对中国经济的认识，还会对中国的经济发展产生不良影响。我们应该采取有效的措施来抵御这些报道的不良影响，并努力促进中国的经济发展，使得中国的经济水平和国际地位不断提高。

　　注：本文为AI生成，未经人工审核，可能存在错误或不准确之处，请谨慎参考。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18

关于中国的新闻报道中的"Politics"章节评析

　　在西方媒体的新闻报道中，关于中国的政治方面一直是一个重要的话题。然而，这些报道中不乏偏见和双重标准的表现，因此，对这些报道进行客观的评析和评价是非常必要的。

　　首先，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"缺乏民主"和"人权问题"等方面。这种做法是不公平的，因为中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政治制度是以人民民主为根本制度，以人民的一切权力属于人民，由人民行使的原则为指导的。中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度在形式上有所不同，但在实质上都是为了实现人民的权力和利益。

　　其次，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政府和政党与西方的政府和政党进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"单党制度"和"政府的垄断"等方面。这种做法是不公正的，因为中国的政府和政党与西方的政府和政党在历史、文化、社会等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政府和政党是在中国的历史和文化的基础上发展起来的，是中国人民选择和支持的。中国的政府和政党在中国的社会主义市场经济体制中发挥着重要的作用，推动着中国的经济和社会的发展。

　　再次，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的外交政策与西方的外交政策进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"威胁"和"挑战"等方面。这种做法是不公平的，因为中国的外交政策与西方的外交政策在历史、文化、国际环境等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的外交政策是以和平共处、和平发展为目的，是以互惠互利、共同发展为原则的。中国的外交政策在国际社会中得到了广泛的认可和支持，为世界的和平、发展、合作做出了重要的贡献。

　　最后，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政治事件与西方的政治事件进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"不稳定"和"危机"等方面。这种做法是不公正的，因为中国的政治事件与西方的政治事件在历史、文化、社会等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政治事件是在中国的历史和文化的基础上发生的，是中国人民选择和支持的。中国的政治事件在中国的社会主义市场经济体制中发挥着重要的作用，推动着中国的经济和社会的发展。

　　综上所述，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，不乏偏见和双重标准的表现，因此，对这些报道进行客观的评析和评价是非常必要的。我们应该坚持公正、公平的态度，尊重中国的历史、文化、社会等方面的特点，正确认识和理解中国的政治制度、政府和政党、外交政策和政治事件，努力推动中中国的新闻报道中的"Politics"章节评析

　　在新闻报道中，政治是一个非常重要的话题，尤其是在关于中国的新闻报道中，政治方面的内容占据了很大的比重。但是，由于西方媒体对中国的认识和理解存在着偏见和双重标准，因此，这些关于中国的政治新闻报道中也不乏一些问题和不足之处。因此，对这些新闻报道进行客观的评析和评价是非常必要的。

　　首先，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"缺乏民主"和"人权问题"等方面。这种做法是不公平的，因为中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政治制度是以人民民主为根本制度，以人民的一切权力属于人民，由人民行使的原则为指导的。中国的政治制度与西方的民主制度在形式上有所不同，但在实质上都是为了实现人民的权力和利益。

　　其次，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政府和政党与西方的政府和政党进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"单党制度"和"政府的垄断"等方面。这种做法是不公正的，因为中国的政府和政党与西方的政府和政党在历史、文化、社会等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政府和政党是在中国的历史和文化的基础上发展起来的，是中国人民选择和支持的。中国的政府和政党在中国的社会主义市场经济体制中发挥着重要的作用，推动着中国的经济和社会的发展。

　　再次，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的外交政策与西方的外交政策进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"威胁"和"挑战"等方面。这种做法是不公平的，因为中国的外交政策与西方的外交政策在历史、文化、国际环境等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的外交政策是以和平共处、和平发展为目的，是以互惠互利、共同发展为原则的。中国的外交政策在国际社会中得到了广泛的认可和支持，为世界的和平、发展、合作做出了重要的贡献。

　　最后，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，经常将中国的政治事件与西方的政治事件进行对比，并且不断强调中国的"不稳定"和"危机"等方面。这种做法是不公正的，因为中国的政治事件与西方的政治事件在历史、文化、社会等方面有着本质的区别，不能简单地进行对比。中国的政治事件是在中国的历史和文化的基础上发生的，是中国人民选择和支持的。中国的政治事件在中国的社会主义市场经济体制中发挥着重要的作用，推动着中国的经济和社会的发展。

　　综上所述，西方媒体在报道中国的政治方面时，不乏偏见和双重标准的表现，因此，对这些新闻报道进行客观的评析和评价是非常必要的。我们应该坚持公正、公平的态度，尊重中国的历史、文化、社会等方面的特点，正确认识和理解中国的政治制度、政府和政党、外交政策和政治事件，努力推动中国的新闻报道中的"Politics"章节的健康发展。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18; 2405192135The-Washington-Post-Taiwan-swears-in-new-president-stands-up-to-Chinese-aggression

关于中国的新闻报道中的"Military"章节

　　中国的军事事务一直是西方媒体关注的热点之一。然而，这些报道中不乏偏见和双重标准，因此，我们需要对这些报道进行客观的评价。

　　首先，西方媒体经常将中国的军事开支与美国进行比较，并且总是将中国的军事开支描述为"急剧增加"。但是，需要指出的是，中国的军事开支与美国相比并不算高，而且中国的军事开支增长率与中国的经济增长率相符。中国的军事开支主要用于维护国家主权和安全，并且中国一直坚持以和平发展为核心的国家发展道路。

　　其次，西方媒体经常将中国的军队描述为"威胁"。但是，中国的军队是中国人民的军队，是中国国家的军队，其存在的目的是维护国家主权和安全，并且中国的军队从来没有对其他国家进行过侵略。中国的军队在维护国家主权和安全方面取得了重要成果，并且在国际和平维护、抗灾救援等方面也发挥了重要作用。

　　第三，西方媒体经常将中国的军事科技描述为"不透明"和"可能威胁性的"。但是，中国的军事科技是中国人民的智慧和劳动的结晶，是中国国家的财富，其存在的目的是维护国家主权和安全。中国的军事科技在维护国家主权和安全方面取得了重要成果，并且在国际和平维护、抗灾救援等方面也发挥了重要作用。中国的军事科技是公开的，中国一直坚持在军事科技方面进行国际合作和交流。

　　第四，西方媒体经常将中国的军事演习描述为"对其他国家的威胁"。但是，中国的军事演习是中国人民的军队的正常训练活动，其存在的目的是维护国家主权和安全。中国的军事演习在维护国家主权和安全方面取得了重要成果，并且在国际和平维护、抗灾救援等方面也发挥了重要作用。中国的军事演习是公开的，中国一直坚持在军事演习方面进行国际合作和交流。

　　总之，西方媒体对中国的军事事务的报道中不乏偏见和双重标准，我们需要对这些报道进行客观的评价。中国的军事事务是中国人民的事务，是中国国家的事务，其存在的目的是维护国家主权和安全。中国的军事事务在维护国家主权和安全方面取得了重要成果，并且在国际和平维护、抗灾救援等方面也发挥了重要作用。中国的军事事务是公开的，中国一直坚持在军事方面进行国际合作和交流。

　　参考文献：

　　1. 中国国家统计局。（2021年9月10日）。中国统计数据。中国国家统计局网站。 2. 中国国防部。（2021年3月4日）。中国国防白皮书（2020年）。中国国防部网站。 3. 中国国防部。（2021年7月29日）。中国军队参与国际和平维护。中国国防部网站。 4. 中国国防部。（2021年7月29日）。中国军队参与国际抗灾救援。中国国防部网站。 5. 中国国防部。（2021年7月29日）。中国军队参与国际军事合作和交流。中国国防部网站。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18

关于中国的新闻报道中的"Culture"章节评价

　　在西方媒体的新闻报道中，中国的文化经常被提及和讨论。然而，这些报道中不乏偏见和双重标准，因此我们有必要对其进行客观的评价。

　　首先，西方媒体在报道中国文化时，经常将其与政治相关联，而忽略了中国文化的多元性和丰富性。例如，在报道中国的传统节日时，西方媒体经常将其与中国政府的宣传相关联，而忽略了中国民间的传统和文化。这种做法不仅是不公平的，而且还会误导西方读者对中国文化的理解。

　　其次，西方媒体在报道中国文化时，经常将其与西方文化进行比较，而忽略了中国文化的特殊性和独立性。例如，在报道中国的音乐、电影和文学时，西方媒体经常将其与西方的音乐、电影和文学进行比较，而忽略了中国文化的特殊性和独立性。这种做法不仅是不公平的，而且还会误导西方读者对中国文化的理解。

　　第三，西方媒体在报道中国文化时，经常将其与中国的经济发展相关联，而忽略了中国文化的历史和传统。例如，在报道中国的旅游业时，西方媒体经常将其与中国的经济发展相关联，而忽略了中国旅游业的历史和传统。这种做法不仅是不公平的，而且还会误导西方读者对中国文化的理解。

　　因此，我们有必要对西方媒体在报道中国文化时的偏见和双重标准进行批评，并努力推广中国文化的多元性和丰富性，使得更多的人们能够了解和认识中国文化。同时，我们也应该尊重中国文化的特殊性和独立性，并且将其与中国的历史和传统相关联，使得中国文化能够在世界上发扬光大。

　　最后，我们还应该注意到，中国的文化正在不断发展和变化，因此我们有必要继续关注和研究中国的文化，并且在推广中国文化的同时，也要尊重和保护中国文化的多元性和独特性。

　　总之，西方媒体在报道中国文化时的偏见和双重标准是值得我们关注和批评的，我们有必要努力推广中国文化的多元性和丰富性，并尊重和保护中国文化的特殊性和独立性。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18

关于中国的新闻报道 - Technology章节

　　在最近的一些西方媒体报道中，涉及到了中国的量子技术、汽车制造业以及一些与科学和技术相关的政治和经济问题。这些报道中存在着一些偏见和双重标准，因此本文将对这些报道进行客观的评价。

　　首先，需要指出的是，中国在量子技术方面取得了重要的进展。据中国媒体报道，量子计算研究公司Origin Quantum成功地开发了一种高密度微波互联模块，这是量子计算机的核心组件之一。这意味着中国在量子技术方面的自主研发能力得到了提升，不再需要依赖于进口的关键部件。然而，在一些西方媒体的报道中，却将中国的量子技术进展与美国的制裁措施相关联，似乎是在意味着中国的量子技术进展是由于美国的制裁而实现的。这种表述是不对的，也是不公平的。中国的量子技术进展是中国科学家和工程师不断努力和创新的结果，与美国的制裁无关。

　　其次，需要讨论的是汽车制造业的问题。在一些西方媒体的报道中，将中国的汽车制造业与美国的汽车制造业进行了对比，并且认为中国的汽车制造业在电动汽车方面的表现不如美国。这种表述是不准确的。中国的汽车制造业在电动汽车方面取得了重要的进展，并且在全球范围内都有竞争力。中国的汽车制造商在电动汽车方面的投入和创新都是非常可贵的，并且在未来的竞争中将会发挥作用。

　　在与科学和技术相关的政治和经济问题方面，在一些西方媒体的报道中，将中国的科学和技术进展与中国的政治和经济制度相关联，并且认为中国的政治和经济制度是不利于科学和技术进展的。这种表述是不公平的，也是不客观的。中国的政治和经济制度是中国人民自己选择的，是中国人民自己的事情。中国的科学和技术进展是中国科学家和工程师不断努力和创新的结果，与中国的政治和经济制度的优势和劣势无关。

　　总的来说，在最近的一些西方媒体的报道中，存在着一些偏见和双重标准，对中国的科学和技术进展以及与科学和技术相关的政治和经济问题进行了不公平和不客观的评价。我们应该认识到这一点，并且努力推动中国的科学和技术进展，同时也要尊重中国的政治和经济制度，并且在与其他国家进行科学和技术合作和竞争时，采取公平和客观的态度。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18

关于中国的新闻报道中的"Society"章节

　　在西方媒体的关于中国的新闻报道中，“Society"章节经常被用来展示中国的文化、社会和人民的生活。然而，这些报道通常充满了偏见和双重标准，导致中国的真实情况被歪曲和误解。

　　首先，西方媒体在报道中国的文化时，经常将其描述为"奇怪”、“古怪"和"不可理解”。例如，在关于中国的面替演戏的报道中，西方媒体将其描述为"秘密和神秘的艺术"，并且强调其"奇异性"和"幻觉性"。这种描述方式不仅是对中国文化的侮辱，还会导致西方读者对中国文化的误解和恐惧。

　　其次，西方媒体在报道中国的社会时，经常将其描述为"压迫"、“不公平"和"缺乏自由”。例如，在关于中国的工作时间和白领酸菜的报道中，西方媒体将其描述为"残酷的文化"，并且强调其"压迫性"和"不公平性"。这种描述方式不仅是对中国社会的侮辱，还会导致西方读者对中国社会的误解和恐惧。

　　第三，西方媒体在报道中国的人民生活时，经常将其描述为"贫困"、“落后"和"不幸福”。例如，在关于中国的农村和城市化的报道中，西方媒体将其描述为"贫困和落后的地方"，并且强调其"不幸福性"和"不公平性"。这种描述方式不仅是对中国人民的侮辱，还会导致西方读者对中国人民的误解和恐惧。

　　需要指出的是，中国的文化、社会和人民的生活是多元化和复杂的，不能被简单的描述和刻板印象所概括。中国有着五千年的文明历史，其文化具有丰富的内涵和迷人的魅力。中国的社会正处于发展和变革的阶段，其中既有成就和进步，也有挑战和问题。中国的人民正在努力实现美好的生活，其中既有欢乐和幸福，也有困难和挫折。

　　因此，我们有必要采取措施，以改善西方媒体关于中国的新闻报道。首先，我们应该加强与西方媒体的沟通和合作，以便他们能够了解中国的真实情况，并且在报道中采用公正和客观的态度。其次，我们应该发挥新媒体的作用，以便更多的中国的声音能够被西方读者所听到和了解。第三，我们应该加强对西方媒体的监督和管理，以便他们在报道中采用公正和客观的态度，并且不能歪曲和误导中国的真实情况。

　　总之，西方媒体关于中国的新闻报道中的"Society"章节存在着严重的偏见和双重标准，我们有必要采取措施，以改善这种情况，以便更多的西方读者能够了解和理解中国的文化、社会和人民的生活。

新闻来源： 2405190636英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-05-18

• A coalition of the dissatisfied? Why China and Russia are winning friends in Africa
• Western concerns about Chinese oversupplies are woefully misplaced
• Academics from Hong Kong outnumbered by mainland Chinese, foreigners for first time at local universities
• China’s top diplomat Wang Yi vows stronger security, anti-terror ties with Tajikistan
• How can China get the best tech? Keep calm and learn from the US, economist says
• Mainland China hits EU, US with anti-dumping probe into chemical imports, with Japan, Taiwan also targeted
• What is baduanjin? Traditional exercise gains popularity among burned out China youth
• China actors face blackface backlash over makeup used in film about Chinese peacekeepers in war-torn Africa
• Why China’s Taiwan-pop generation are drifting away from the island
• Chinese lawyers accuse court officials of interfering in trial, slam ‘blatant sabotage’ of legal system
• China’s corruption watchdog targets Agriculture Minister Tang Renjian
• More effort needed to encourage senior Hong Kong pupils to study Chinese history, education centre head says
• China is key market for Singaporean biotech start-up’s stomach cancer early diagnosis kit
• China’s Gen Zers to sway marketing, retail trends as they become major force driving domestic consumption
• Number of mainland Chinese 1-way permit holders joining Hong Kong schools jumped most on record last year
• ‘Think big’: intrepid China teen spends US$1,400 on solo global tour, faces online bullying, sex-for-sale taunts
• [Sport] Taiwan's steely leader rewrote the book on how to deal with China
• China’s rush to prop up housing sector aims to boost confidence ahead of third plenum: analysts
• China won’t help EU relations by befriending unpopular European leaders
• The last giant pandas in the U.S. are leaving, but China will send more

A coalition of the dissatisfied? Why China and Russia are winning friends in Africa

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3263199/coalition-dissatisfied-why-china-and-russia-are-winning-friends-africa?utm_source=rss_feed

When asked whether he preferred China and Russia’s approach to Africa to that of the West, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not hesitate.

“Oh absolutely! You don’t quite understand African realities,” Félix Tshisekedi told French TV news channel LCI on a trip to Paris late last month.

“It’s astonishing to see how we are very distant in terms of culture. We cannot understand why you come to give us lessons, for example, on human rights.”

That sentiment was echoed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who criticised the World Bank and Western countries for funding “capacity building” but not critical projects such as irrigation or railways.

“How many railways have been constructed or funded in Africa? The few that have been were by China,” Museveni said at a development summit in Nairobi on April 30.

The comments point to the apparent decline of the West’s reputation in Africa and a rise in the stocks of China and Russia in some countries, a shift that some observers say is being driven by broader changes in the international system.

The remarks by the Ugandan and Congolese presidents came just days after American research firm Gallup released a study suggesting that the US lost its place as the most influential global power in Africa last year.

According to the research, Washington’s median approval ratings – an indicator of a country’s soft power – fell from 59 per cent in 2022 to 56 per cent in 2023. Meanwhile, China’s approval in the region rose 6 percentage points, from 52 per cent in 2022 to 58 per cent in 2023, two points ahead of the US.

For Russia, the median approval of its leadership rose to 42 per cent, from 34 per cent the previous year, according to Gallup.

The fall for the US was particularly dramatic in Uganda, where its approval ratings fell 29 points from 63 per cent in 2022.

Gallup said the sharp drop in Uganda coincided with the US decision to drop the country from the African Growth and Opportunity trade programme and enact other sanctions in its condemnation of the country’s recently passed Anti-Homosexuality Act.

Washington’s ratings dropped despite greater efforts by the administration of US President Joe Biden to make inroads in Africa, where China is the largest trading partner and has bankrolled mega projects from railways and ports to power dams and airports via the Belt and Road Initiative.

As part of its renewed interest in the continent, the US has pledged to refurbish the Lobito Atlantic Railway, its first major project in Africa in decades, which will stretch 1,300km (800 miles) through mineral-rich Zambia and the DRC to create a logistics corridor to the port of Lobito in Angola.

It is a substantial project but, according to John Calabrese, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, the US is playing “catch-up” with China and Russia.

He said assuming that at least some of the administration’s pledges had been kept and projects implemented, it might take time for the benefits to “trickle down” and manifest in an uptick in favourability.

Calabrese said that until recently, US Africa policy had been heavily skewed towards counterterrorism and security, which could be viewed warily by some African leaders, influencers, and segments of the general public. Furthermore, he said such efforts might be perceived as failures.

In addition, the White House “is hamstrung by US law, which prohibits providing funds to governments that have come to power through coups. Moscow and Beijing, of course, have no such compunctions or constraints,” Calabrese said.

He said Beijing and Moscow had successfully exploited the flaws of or the dilemma faced by the US in addressing the Israel-Gaza conflict. “They have aligned themselves with other leading members of the so-called Global South such as Africa in decrying US or Western policies,” Calabrese said.

He said that in its unconditional support for Israel – which is widely viewed as an “occupying” power – the US has come to be viewed as an accomplice, in contrast with Russia and China, neither of which colonised Africa, and thus have a certain “popular appeal”.

According to Gustavo de Carvalho, a senior researcher on Africa’s relations with global powers, Brics and multilateralism at the South African Institute of International Affairs, the challenge to the US was particularly clear in West Africa.

“In the West African case, I believe this is more a case of the West losing influence and Russia filling a specific security demand gap. The relationship between Western countries and Sahelian governments became so fractured recently that Russia took advantage of the void left behind,” de Carvalho said, referring to North-Central Africa.

In Niger, for example, authorities ordered American troops to leave the country and invited in Russian military aid and Chinese funding, with China swiftly extending a 12-month US$400 million oil-backed loan to Niger via China National Petroleum Corporation.

“It is essential to note that China’s presence does not necessarily equate to dominance. China tends to be more interested in securing financial benefits and market access rather than using its influence as a direct tool for Western containment,” de Carvalho said.

Seifudein Adem, a research fellow at JICA Ogata Research Institute for Peace and Development in Tokyo, Japan, said the challenge to US foreign policy in Africa was systemic.

“The different diplomatic outcomes of the diplomacy of external powers in Africa have not much to do with the intrinsic and distinctive features of their approaches. More fundamentally, they are rooted in the structural changes taking place before our eyes in the international system,” Adem said.

China and Russia had grown their influence by doing some things right but a bigger factor was an international political environment that favoured counter-hegemonic forces, including China and Russia – a coalition of emerging and dissatisfied powers.

“These forces are in opposition to some aspects of the current liberal international order that was created and managed – and mismanaged – by the US since the end of the Second World War. China, Russia and others seek to replace this order with an alternative one,” said Adem, who is also a professor at Doshisha University in Japan.

“The new order is the antithesis of the old and is in the ascendant. The existing order is on the defensive and has inherent disadvantages in geopolitical terms.

“Irrespective of what China and Russia do or do not do in Africa, or what the US does or does not do in response, this general trend is likely to continue.”

However, Michael Chege, a political economy professor at the University of Nairobi, said he did not think the US’ influence in Africa was fading except for in the Sahel region where discontent with the US and France was linked to their failure to eliminate jihadist violence.

“Russia, not China, is the beneficiary,” Chege said.

Chege said Africa was a young continent with 60 per cent of the population under the age of 35. “When asked by [public attitude researchers] Afrobarometer a while ago where they would like to emigrate to, the vast majority said the US and the European countries. I don’t think that this has changed,” Chege said.

Western concerns about Chinese oversupplies are woefully misplaced

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3263239/western-concerns-about-chinese-oversupplies-are-woefully-misplaced?utm_source=rss_feed

The Western narrative is clear: China is deliberately using subsidies to create massive oversupplies of everything from solar panels and wind turbines to semiconductors, batteries and electric vehicles that can then be dumped onto world markets, undermining foreign competitors and creating long-term dominance for China’s state-owned enterprises.

The narrative is enticing, plausible and wrong. And it is being ruthlessly exploited to justify protectionism on a scale unprecedented since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, which eventually imposed mountainous tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods.

To be concerned about oversupplies in the global market is not unreasonable. Nor is it unreasonable to be concerned about the risks of becoming heavily reliant on a small number of suppliers in any strategic areas of an economy. But to misunderstand China’s strategic motivations is to misdiagnose the problem and prescribe the wrong solutions. Smoot-Hawley made matters worse, and Biden’s newly conceived blizzard of tariffs is likely to do the same.

China’s ambitions to recover its “proper” place in the world were always going to be problematic for those in the West who have benefited from their economic dominance.

With almost 18 per cent of the world’s population, around 19 per cent of global gross domestic product when adjusted for price differences, 14 per cent of world merchandise trade and more than 28 per cent of the world’s manufacturing output, simple arithmetic suggests to Beijing that it is not unreasonable to aspire to be among the top competitors in the most strategic sectors. How to get there without ruffling too many feathers is a challenge, nevertheless.

China’s core recovery problem is its own awesome size. Coordinating policies across 27 provinces and autonomous regions, five of which are more populous than Germany, has always been a daunting challenge. Few outside China appear to properly recognise the implications.

Chinese leaders have a chronic angst about rolling out sweeping reforms that carry the risk of devastating mistakes. It is better, therefore, to seed lots of small-scale experiments and allow competitive forces to lift the successful ones, and the problematic ones to wilt away with limited damage.

Beijing has repeatedly encouraged this competitive model to spur competition in strategically important areas of the economy: provide large-scale subsidies to large numbers of initial competitors, then progressively reduce support to weed out the least competitive.

The result is fierce domestic competition, energetic innovation and enough survivors to maintain strong competition after subsidies are withdrawn. The result is also often oversupply – not driven by an urge to capture overseas markets, but to ensure domestic innovation and self-reliance.

A second oversupply challenge is that even small shifts in output can result in massive changes as a global exporting force. To encourage food security, China has invested massively in agricultural reforms that mean it is today the world’s largest rice producer – around 208 million tonnes per year.

However, because domestic demand gobbles up almost all of this, just 2.2 million tonnes is exported. India is the world’s second-largest rice producer at around 196 million tonnes, but it exports 16.5 million tonnes. A five per cent rise or fall in Chinese rice production would have massive impacts on rice prices in global export markets.

So too with steel. China is the world’s largest producer – making about 1.02 billion tonnes in 2023. Last year, China consumed most of its steel, exporting only around 90 million tonnes – but that still made it the world’s biggest exporter.

In hit-or-miss efforts to satisfy domestic demand, minor fluctuations in production in such a large manufacturing economy have massive effects on global markets. What to one leader is a structural and predatory oversupply can, for another, be a modest domestic fluctuation in supply and demand.

When an oversupply challenge arose from Japan in the 1980s, the main release valve was to set export limits, but allow Japanese companies to invest and produce in the US. Sadly, no such valve is likely to be allowed this time. The US seems set on blocking Chinese efforts to build production within the US economy. For China, different solutions must be found – though it remains possible that the European Union will be more open to allowing Chinese companies to establish footholds in Europe.

What is not helpful is a refusal to acknowledge that China is an economic force that will not go away. As economist Jurgen Matthes recently observed, in 1995, China accounted for just 5 per cent of global manufactured value-added. In 2020, its share had risen past 35 per cent. In the same time frame, the next nine global manufacturing powerhouses have seen their share fall from about two-thirds to one-third.

China has also become the dominant force in an unprecedented number of sectors. In an analysis of 5,000 products, Matthes discovered that China accounts for more than 50 per cent of global output in 600 of these 5,000. Based on those metrics, the US and Japan dominate in about 100, and the entire EU in around 300. This suggests the bigger problem is not oversupply, but the risks linked with concentration around a small and dominant cluster of companies.

Even small shifts up or down in their production are going to have big impacts worldwide. Throwing up tariff walls and putting heads in the sand does not count as a solution. We need to remember the lessons from Smoot-Hawley.

Academics from Hong Kong outnumbered by mainland Chinese, foreigners for first time at local universities

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3263271/academics-hong-kong-outnumbered-mainland-chinese-foreigners-first-time-local-universities?utm_source=rss_feed

The proportion of scholars from Hong Kong among academic staff at the city’s public universities has fallen behind that of counterparts from mainland China and the rest of the world for the first time in recent decades.

A university vice-president attributed the shift to the citywide emigration wave and recent retirements from a generation of baby boomers born in the 1960s, saying vacancies were mainly filled by mainlanders who found the research environment in Western countries somewhat hostile amid heightened geopolitical tensions.

Data from the University Grants Committee, which allocates funding to the institutions, puts the academic staff population in three official categories: Hong Kong, mainland China and the rest of the world.

The number of scholars from Hong Kong stood at 1,659 in all the eight publicly funded universities in the current academic year, down from 1,924 in 2018-19. They accounted for 30.7 per cent of the total academic population, compared with 40 per cent in 2018-19 when they were the largest group.

Only two of the universities employed more mainland academics than their local counterparts in 2018-19. But now, mainlanders outnumber locals at six universities – with Baptist University and the Education University of Hong Kong the two where they do not account for the largest share.

The universities employed 2,070 academics from the mainland in the current school year, or 38.3 per cent of all recruits.

Those from the mainland have accounted for the largest portion of the academic staff pool in public universities for the past two years, jumping 70 per cent in the latest count compared with levels in 2018-19.

Most were employed by science departments, followed by those in engineering and technology as well as business and management.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Lingnan University have the biggest proportion of mainland academics, while Baptist University has the smallest.

The number of academic staff from the rest of the world stood at 1,664, or 30.8 per cent of the total, in the current school year, slightly higher than the figure for locals.

The data excluded those employed on short-term contracts of less than one year in length.

Joshua Mok Ka-ho, vice-president of Lingnan University, said some academic staff had left the city in recent years amid the emigration wave and others retired.

“Some local academics indeed left Hong Kong in recent years, and those born in the baby boomer years of the 1960s have now retired,” he said, as the retirement age for most academic staff in public universities was 60.

The turnover rate for academics at the eight publicly funded universities reached 7.6 per cent in the previous academic year, the highest in more than two decades, with 380 leaving their jobs, according to official data.

Mok said the vacancies, and new roles created after recent developments undertaken by some local universities, were mainly filled by mainland academics who had overseas experience.

“Most of them have their research published in journals and are highly cited. Their academic backgrounds are also very strong,” he said.

He added their skills could help the universities perform better in research, which could help secure more funding.

“Most of the academics who are now good at writing research papers and have an overseas background are Indian or Chinese,” he said.

He pointed out some of them originally worked at US universities but eventually switched to Hong Kong because of concerns over geopolitics.

“The US-China relations have been tense in recent years. They found their research environment was quite unfavourable and even hostile towards them, as they might even be seen as doing something related to state secrets,” he said.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi vows stronger security, anti-terror ties with Tajikistan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3263275/chinas-top-diplomat-wang-yi-vows-stronger-security-anti-terror-ties-tajikistan?utm_source=rss_feed

China aims to strengthen ties with Tajikistan under regional frameworks, its top diplomat has said, while pledging to “deepen security cooperation and resolutely combat all forms of terrorism” with the central Asian nation.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon in Dushanbe on Saturday, said China attached great importance to the needs of its neighbour and was committed to cooperation in emerging industries and economic development.

The Chinese side “firmly supports” the development strategies proposed by Rahmon that prioritise energy efficiency, food security, transport and industrialisation, Wang added, according to a statement from the Chinese side.

Apart from joining hands on security and anti-terror mechanisms, “the two sides can strengthen cooperation in the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the China-Central Asia mechanism, [so as to] safeguard the common interests of the two countries and other developing countries,” he was quoted as saying.

Wang’s visit to Dushanbe was part of a four-day trip to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan that will include an SCO foreign ministers’ meeting in Kazakh capital Astana starting on Monday.

China and the five landlocked Central Asian countries – also including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – formalised their cooperation mechanism during a high-profile summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping in the northwestern city of Xian a year ago.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), on the other hand, is a regional political, economic and security grouping set up by China, Russia and four ex-Soviet Central Asian states in 2001. Its nine member states today include India, Pakistan as well as Iran, which officially joined last year. Turkmenistan, which professes “permanent neutrality”, is the only Central Asian country that is not an SCO member.

Beijing has increasingly placed greater emphasis on Central Asian ties as it tries to counter what President Xi has called a US-led Western campaign of “containment, encirclement and suppression of China”.

The Chinese leadership also hopes to bolster ties with the region given its strategic and geographical significance to the Beijing-led Belt and Road Initiative, with Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet region appearing to wane as it is caught up in its prolonged war in Ukraine.

Xi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in a joint statement after meeting in Beijing on Thursday, agreed to “continue to develop mutually beneficial cooperation with the countries of the Central Asian region and strengthen collaboration within international organisations and mechanisms, including the [SCO]”.

Tajik leader Rahmon, who has been in power for more than 30 years, told Wang of “his satisfaction” with how relations with Beijing were growing, according to a readout from Dushanbe.

The two sides also discussed expanding ties in sectors such as mining, transport, energy and agriculture, the statement said.

“Tajikistan’s commitment to active cooperation with China on the implementation of joint projects related to the ‘green economy’, digital economy, artificial intelligence and production in Tajikistan using ‘green technologies’ was emphasised,” it read.

It added that Rahmon and Wang exchanged views on issues related to security, “primarily [on] confronting the threats and dangers of the modern world”. “Great attention” was paid to strengthening multilateral cooperation, especially within the SCO and the “China plus Central Asia” format.

China has long regarded Central Asia as crucial to maintaining stability in its northwestern Xinjiang region and to keeping it free of terrorist influence.

Addressing Tajikistan’s social activists and religious workers in March, Rahmon said the number of terrorist acts by Tajikistan citizens in other countries had increased in recent years.

Citing reports, he said that 24 Tajik nationals had carried out terrorist acts in 10 countries in the past three years alone.

“These inhuman acts harm the Tajik state and the Tajik nation’s reputation on the global stage,” he said.

Just two weeks later, four Tajik nationals were charged as suspects in the March 22 terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall.

Chinese commerce vice-minister Ling Ji met Tajikistan’s trade minister Zavqizoda Zavqi Amin in Beijing on May 8, and called for talks to upgrade the bilateral investment agreement at the earliest.

A statement from the Tajik side said the two sides agreed to implement priority investment projects, including on green energy, the building of a logistics centre, three overpasses and one bridge in the capital city of Dushanbe, and reconstruction of a section of a highway that is the only overland route between the two countries.

China is the second largest trading partner of Tajikistan, after Russia.

Exports to Tajikistan grew 3.7 per cent year on year during the first four months of 2024, while imports fell 13.3 per cent, according to Chinese customs data.

How can China get the best tech? Keep calm and learn from the US, economist says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3263245/how-can-china-get-best-tech-keep-calm-and-learn-us-economist-says?utm_source=rss_feed

China needs to learn from the United States about how to encourage innovation, including being more open, and overcome its anxiety about falling behind, according to a leading economist.

Yao Yang, director of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University, also said China should consider its own needs instead of blindly and anxiously following everything the US did, Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper reported.

“Not everyone needs to innovate from scratch,” Yao told a youth innovation forum in Shanghai on Saturday.

“When the US develops large language models, we also follow up on such models, and now China has more than 20 companies, even more than the US.

“Does China need that many? I don’t think so.”

He said the public was too anxious about being a technological step behind the US.

“It’s impossible to exceed the US in every aspect,” Yao said.

During the talk, Yao also referred to “new quality productive forces”, a term Chinese President Xi Jinping has used repeatedly to steer the economy towards a more tech-heavy path to break the tech containment by the US.

China is hoping hi-tech research and leadership in frontier sectors will consolidate its footing in the global supply chain.

But Yao said: “Developing ‘new quality productive forces’ cannot be interpreted as the most advanced technology, sometimes the most advanced isn’t the best.”

He said it was not necessary to always innovate from the beginning – sometimes small changes in a traditional field could be very important as well.

To create an innovative environment, Yao said, China needed to learn from its competitors, such as the US.

He said the US had constantly led innovation in the past century because it was a society open to immigrants. “When one looks at any Silicon Valley company, at least 60 or 70 per cent of the staff were born in another country.”

“China needs to be open as well, and Shanghai should take the lead to relax its household registration system,” he said.

“We need to attract young people to create businesses in Shanghai … not only young Chinese, but young people from all over the world.”

China’s household registration system, or hukou, has long been blamed for dividing the population between urban and rural residents, and limiting people to the places they were born in. In recent years, megacities have been relaxing their hukou rules to compete for young talent.

The second key element for innovation was a developed, capitalist market because it rewarded inventiveness, he said. Shanghai had huge advantages and its stock market could play a role in encouraging innovation, he said.

China has thrown its economic weight behind research and development as the global race for technology has moved into high gear. In January, in the face of Washington’s tech-containment efforts, Beijing unveiled a plan to turn home-grown innovations into commercialised products. It had set up five advanced pilot-scale production facilities, linking laboratory research with mass production.

Mainland China hits EU, US with anti-dumping probe into chemical imports, with Japan, Taiwan also targeted

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3263265/mainland-china-hits-eu-us-anti-dumping-probe-chemical-imports-japan-taiwan-also-targeted?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing launched an anti-dumping investigation on Sunday into imports of a widely used engineering chemical from the EU, US, Japan and Taiwan, as tensions rise with the major trading partners.

The commerce ministry move targeting polyformaldehyde copolymer follows a slew of anti-subsidy and anti-dumping probes into Chinese products by the European Union, the latest launched just days ago, and Washington set to slap yet another round of tariffs on Chinese new energy products citing similar reasons.

Meanwhile, Beijing’s diplomatic ties with Japan remain strained over a range of issues, and cross-strait relations are set to be tested further as a new administration takes office in Taiwan on Monday.

The launch of the probe also came less than 24 hours after a warning from Yuyuan Tantian, a Chinese social media channel affiliated to state broadcaster CCTV, that Beijing had “sufficient countermeasures” at hand against “double-standards” EU probes against Chinese industry, and was prepared to retaliate should the bloc continue to take such steps.

Polyformaldehyde copolymer, or POM copolymer, is a thermoplastic with a wide range of uses, from automotive parts, electronic appliances and industrial machinery to sports and medical equipment, pipe fittings and building materials. It is also able to partially replace metals like copper, zinc, tin and lead.

The probe should be completed within a year, but could “be extended for six months under special circumstances”, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement announcing the move on Sunday.

The investigation is in response to a joint application from six mainland Chinese producers submitted last month, according to the ministry.

A copy of the application was attached to the ministry statement. It showed the producers saying that imported POM copolymer from the four sources involved “clear dumping” on the mainland China market and had caused “substantial harm” to the local industry.

“A timely and effective anti-dumping investigation and corresponding anti-dumping measures would be conducive to restoring the order of market competition which has been distorted … and thus protect the security of mainland China’s industry and economy,” the application read.

The European Commission on Thursday launched an anti-dumping probe into flat-rolled iron or steel products plated or coated with tin from China, in the latest escalation in trade tensions despite recent moves to stabilise the relationship, including Chinese President Xi Jinping’s European tour earlier this month.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden proposed new, higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminium and medical equipment, extending the Trump-era trade war between the rival powers.

The White House move raised the prospect of similar measures from Brussels, which has launched a series of investigations into alleged Chinese subsidies for industries such as electric cars and green energy, which are suspected of undercutting European companies.

The bloc said last Monday that it would close probes under its foreign subsidies regulation into bids by two Chinese firms for a Romanian solar park, since they were pulling out of the tender.

That came barely two months after a Chinese train maker withdrew from a public tender in Bulgaria after the launch of a similar EU investigation.

Yuyuan Tantian, in its post on Saturday signalling China’s willingness to use its deep toolbox against EU anti-subsidy probes, said: “[We] have learned that … the Chinese side has sufficient countermeasures. If Europe continues to take action, the Chinese side will very likely have to take a series of measures to fight back.”

Although it did not elaborate on its sources or what those countermeasures might be, the post indicated that European wine, dairy and aircraft sectors were potential targets.

The China Chamber of Commerce to the European Union characterised the warning as “significant”.

“We urge the EU to refrain from implementing discriminatory measures in subsidy-related probes and to ensure that Chinese enterprises are provided with a fair business environment,” it said in a statement on Saturday.

The announcement of the polymer probe also came on the eve of the inaugural address by Taiwanese president-elect William Lai Ching-te, labelled as a “troublemaker” by Beijing.

The swearing-in of Lai, from Taiwan’s independence-leaning ruling Democratic Progressive Party, will be closely watched by both Beijing and Washington for clues on the future direction of relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to arming it.

Again, Japan’s efforts to forge closer security bonds with the United States has drawn censure from China over seeking a “Nato-like bloc” in the Asia-Pacific region.

The copolymer is one of at least three categories of polyformaldehyde (POM) imported by China. Imports accounted for nearly 45 per cent of the country’s POM needs in 2022, according to data from Beijing-based research firm huaon.com.

The EU, Taiwan, Japan and the US were the third through sixth largest sources, respectively, of China’s POM imports in the first quarter of 2024, according to calculations based on Chinese customs data.

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What is baduanjin? Traditional exercise gains popularity among burned out China youth

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3262452/what-baduanjin-traditional-exercise-gains-popularity-among-burned-out-china-youth?utm_source=rss_feed

As the desire for a slower-paced lifestyle grows among burned out workers in China, baduanjin, a traditional Chinese qigong exercise usually practised by the elderly, is attracting younger enthusiasts.

Online videos showing the routines have garnered about 182 million views, sometimes concurrently being watched by thousands of viewers on Bilibili.com, a YouTube-like platform favoured by younger people.

It has been dubbed “Pamela exercise more suited to Chinese habits”, a reference to Pamela Reif, a famous German fitness influencer.

The Post delves deeper into this emerging trend.

What is it?

Baduanjin dates back more than 800 years to China’s Song dynasty (960-1276) and stands as one of China’s oldest health and fitness routines.

Translated, it means “eight-section brocade”, a reference to the combination of eight stylised exercises comprising slow, flowing movements.

As a form of qigong, an ancient Chinese discipline, baduanjin training combines breathing exercises, meditation and gentle body stretches, focusing on regulating energy, or chi, and blood flow.

Generally, it uses the spine as the axis, incorporating symmetrical movements of the left and right and coordination between front and back.

According to qigong, diseases arise from blockages of chi flow, and treatment should promote blood circulation and chi circulations.

How did it go viral?

With the average working week exceeding 48.9 hours, the incidence of chronic fatigue syndrome in first-tier Chinese cities like Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou ranges from 10 to 25 per cent, according to the China Association of Health Promotion and Education.

Research suggests that practising baduanjin may alleviate symptoms such as anxiety, muscle pain and extreme fatigue, making it particularly suitable for office workers.

“For those suffering from neck pain, the effects are truly remarkable. Plus, my sleep quality has notably improved, and I often wake up refreshed,” said one online observer who has been practising baduanjin for six months.

Compared to physically demanding activities like gym workouts, it is slow-paced, goes with soothing music, requires no equipment and can be practised in a minimal space.

In August last year, German fitness influencer Pamela Reif posted a video of herself doing baduanjin, which received more than 1.2 million views.

The hashtag translated as “What? Pamela is doing baduanjin?” also hit the trending topic charts on the X-like platform Weibo, attracting more than 160 million views.

Above and beyond

As well as practising baduanjin, workers in China grappling with workloads and health problems are increasingly embracing traditional Chinese healthcare practices.

“Prolonged indoor stays deplete the spirit” is a quote from the classic Chinese scripture, Huangdi Neijing, which explains chi, and has been widely shared, serving as a caution for workers who remain seated for long periods.

Chinese herbal medicinal milk tea is also gaining popularity on the mainland social media platform, Xiaohongshu.

In addition to milk, tea and sugar, they incorporate ingredients such as tangerine peel, cinnamon, astragalus root and donkey-hide gelatin.

These ingredients are believed to address digestive issues and replenish chi and blood circulation.

Another trend on the rise is the practice of hugging trees in parks, once a health “secret” prevalent among the elderly. This is thought to absorb energy from the natural environment and help relieve stress.

China actors face blackface backlash over makeup used in film about Chinese peacekeepers in war-torn Africa

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3261872/china-actors-face-blackface-backlash-over-makeup-used-film-about-chinese-peacekeepers-war-torn?utm_source=rss_feed

Top China actors Wang Yibo and Huang Jingyu have faced a backlash for appearing in blackface makeup in a new movie about Chinese peacekeepers in Africa.

On May 2, an online observer posted Wang’s blackface makeup from the action film Formed Police Unit, accusing the actors of “racial hostility”. The post has attracted 35,000 likes and 11,000 reposts.

Released in the mainland during the May Day holiday, the film is directed by Hong Kong director Lee Tat-chiu and produced by Andrew Lau Wai-keung.

It stars the two Chinese actors as peacekeeping police officers in a fictitious conflict-torn African country.

They wear the makeup in a scene in which they disguise themselves as local gangsters to rescue witnesses.

The practice of non-black performers using makeup to portray black people in entertainment works was popular in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, but was later considered offensive and racist.

In 2019, Canadian-born comedian Mark Rowswell, who is well-known in China under the stage name Dashan, apologised on Twitter over a high school performance he made with three friends 35 years ago, in which they painted their faces black to mimic the popular music quartet, The Four Tops.

China’s most watched show – China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala – was also caught up in a controversy in 2018 when a comedian painted her face black to play an African who expresses gratitude for China’s help.

The storyline was made even worse because by her side stood an African actor dressed as a monkey.

The TV station did not apologise.

Then, in 2021, the gala used Chinese dancers performing African dances in blackface again, prompting more negative reaction.

Formed Police Unit’s aim was to show the heroic and selfless sacrifices of United Nations peacekeepers from China in the face of threats from criminal gangs and terrorists.

It was shot in a studio in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in 2021 as it was unrealistic to fly the crew to Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to promotional material for the movie, the makers had sought advice from United Nations senior security trainer Qian Jinjun.

The Post’s requests for comment on the scandal from the film’s main production company, Wanda Film, had gone unanswered by the time of writing.

On mainland social media, some online observers condemned the makers of, and actors in, the film for being “too ignorant”.

It is also not the first time Wang Yibo faced backlash for “ignorant” behaviour.

The actor was caught on camera making a “slant-eyes” pose, which is considered a racist depiction of Asians, during a 2019 fashion campaign.

The film ranked top with a 404 million yuan (US$56 million) box office take during the five-day May Day holiday, but was one of the lowest-rated new films on Douban, China’s most popular film review site, rating only 5.6 out of 10.

Why China’s Taiwan-pop generation are drifting away from the island

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3263123/why-chinas-taiwan-pop-generation-are-drifting-away-island?utm_source=rss_feed

When Patrick Wang reached the first anniversary of his move to Hong Kong in January, he immediately applied for a visa to Taiwan and started planning his first visit to the place that produced some of his favourite childhood entertainment.

“The post-90s generation grew up listening to songs by [Taiwanese artists] Jolin Tsai, Jay Chou, and Wilber Pan while [local television channels] played Taiwanese dramas every day when I was in primary and middle school. Our generation was really influenced by the culture,” said the 27-year-old, now working as a fashion editor in Hong Kong.

Wang is part of a generation of young people who grew up in mainland China with Taiwanese pop music and television dramas, but unlike most of his peers, he can travel to the island. He is one of the few mainland Chinese who can visit because he has been living overseas for at least a year – a group that includes those based in Hong Kong and Macau.

For the broader cohort that once might have once felt a connection to the island, cross-strait travel is not an option because of strained relations between the two sides. The result has been less people-to-people contact, and now many young mainland Chinese raised on Taiwanese pop culture say cross-strait tensions, the pandemic and stereotypes have made the island feel increasingly distant.

However, observers say they are watching for signs of whether cross-strait travel and other exchanges will improve following the inauguration of Taiwan’s next president on May 20.

Mainland tourists need the approval of both mainland and Taiwanese authorities to travel to the island. Beijing first allowed individual mainland tourists to travel to Taiwan in 2011, with residents of 47 cities granted access to the island as of 2015, before the policy was changed.

However, most third-tier cities – including Wang’s hometown in Hunan province – were not on the list. Wang hoped for the day when his city would join the list and make him eligible for individual travel to Taiwan, “but the chance never came”.

Cross-strait relations soured after of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) became president in 2016 and refused to recognise the 1992 consensus – an understanding that there is only one China but each side has its own interpretation of what that means.

Beijing sees the consensus as the basis of any cross-strait communication and suspended travel to the island by individual mainland tourists in 2019 Things worsened with the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, when Taiwan suspended arrivals by all visitors and Beijing suspended all group travel.

Both sides reopened their borders after the pandemic – but largely not to each other.

But in April, Beijing allowed the first group of mainland tourists – travelling in groups – to go to Matsu, a Taiwan-governed archipelago near the mainland coast.

Beijing also pledged to allow Fujian residents to go on group tours when direct flights resumed between Fujian’s Pingtan Island and Taiwan – an offer Taipei rejected as limited and not reciprocal.

According to Taiwanese Transport and Communications Minister Wang Kwo-tsai, the scope of the proposal was “too narrow”, and the government needed to discuss further.

Taipei had planned to allow group tours to the mainland but that was shelved in February after Beijing adjusted a civil flight path near the sensitive median line in the Taiwan Strait and made no reciprocal offers.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday urged the DPP to meet “strong calls from the public on both sides to normalise cross-strait people exchanges” and “lift all unreasonable restrictions and bans as soon as possible”.

The office accused Taiwan’s ruling party of ignoring calls and “blindly smearing and attacking the mainland” out of political interest.

Wang Yingjin, director of the Centre for Cross-Strait Relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the mainland’s resumption and expected expansion of cross-strait exchanges “expressed kindness”.

Any further steps, he said, would hinge on Lai’s inauguration speech.

“If he makes ‘Taiwan independence’ remarks in his speech on May 20, it will certainly affect the mainland’s attitude towards restarting cross-strait individual travel,” he said.

Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out the possibility of using force for unification. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise the island as an independent state but are opposed to a change in the status quo by force.

Ho Chih-yung, a professor of general education at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, south of Taipei, said he believed Lai would keep a “low profile” at the inauguration as the DPP did not have a majority in the legislature.

He said the start of the new administration would be the right time to reinstate previous travel rules as a step towards preventing a “downward spiral” in cross-strait relations.

But there were issues, such as disturbances to locals and travel company monopolies, that needed to be addressed when cross-strait travel resumed, Ho said.

Wang of Renmin University said the reduction in people-to-people and economic links in recent years had added to the distance between people on both sides, adding that “the mainland general public’s favourability towards Taiwanese has declined as their general agreement on ‘one China’ has declined”.

While cross-strait exchanges would gradually resume, they would “hardly attain the scale and level of the exchanges during Ma Ying-jeou’s administration”, he said, referring to the island’s former president.

After came to power in 2008, Beijing and Taipei signed an agreement to allow group tours travelling between the mainland and the self-ruled island. Individual travel quotas for specific cities began in 2011.

Echo Li, a magazine editor based in Beijing, was one of hundreds of thousands of mainland tourists to take advantage of the short-lived policy.

A fan of 1980s , Li visited some filming locations in Taipei in 2019 – just months before Beijing banned individual mainland tourists from travelling to the island.

“I felt quite lucky to have caught the last chance before the pandemic to travel to Taiwan,” the 27-year-old said.

Since the halt of cross-strait tourism, “there has probably been a feeling of distance from Taiwan”, Li said, adding that since the pandemic, the sense of distance has been “not only with Taiwan, but the world”.

Even before the pandemic, the affinity for Taiwanese entertainment did not necessarily translate into a willingness to travel to the island.

Molly Wang, a postgraduate student from mainland China, noticed that reluctance when she was invited on a trip to Taiwan with friends while studying abroad in 2018.

While she liked Taiwanese romance dramas and thought of the island as a romantic place, she had concerns.

“I was actually a bit worried because I heard there were many pro-Taiwan independence forces and that sounded scary … or [the locals] might treat me badly when they heard my mainland accent,” she said.

“But [locals] were actually really friendly to me … and I did see pro-independence flags and Falun Gong, but they did no harm to me,” the 24-year-old said.

Her trip took her along the island’s southwestern coast, from Kaohsiung to the southern tip of Kenting, and while she remembered the beaches as “exceptionally pretty”, she might not be keen to make the trip today if she had not already experienced it in person.

Wang, from Jiangxi province, said her friends – especially those who grew up in inland China like she did – seldom put Taiwan on their list of travel destinations as they were unfamiliar with the culture on the island.

“They had a feeling that they would need extra preparation and had to be cautious about their words and actions,” she said.

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Chinese lawyers accuse court officials of interfering in trial, slam ‘blatant sabotage’ of legal system

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3263195/chinese-lawyers-accuse-court-officials-interfering-trial-slam-blatant-sabotage-legal-system?utm_source=rss_feed

Most Chinese lawyers have low expectations about the independence of Chinese courts, but many were still shocked to see a judge in northwest China receive real-time instructions from his supervisors in the middle of a trial earlier this month.

The incident took place on May 11 at the Tianjun county court in Haixi Mongol and Tibetan autonomous prefecture in the northwestern province of Qinghai.

About an hour into the trial, the presiding judge suddenly adjourned the proceedings, according to a public letter published on microblogging site Weibo by a group of lawyers who were defending clients in the case.

“Afterwards, we accidentally found the criminal court judge of the Haixi intermediate court and the director of the Tianjun county court were remotely giving instructions in a WeChat group,” the letter said, referring to a messaging and social media platform.

According to liberal-leaning newspaper Southern Weekly, one of the lawyers involved in the trial, Liu Zheng of the Beijing Zebo Law Firm, took a photo of the judge’s computer screen, which displayed a WeChat group that included several judicial officers and staff of local courts.

The photo showed county court director Fan Xuhua saying in the group chat: “You don’t have to communicate with him about it.”

Then Hasi Chaolu, president of the criminal court at Haixi intermediate court – the court that will hear the case if it is appealed – directed the county court judge to “just interrupt” and “be tough, don’t speak randomly”, according to the photo, which was published by domestic media.

“Their actions blatantly sabotage our legal system where the appeal court’s decision is the final one, and those involved should be probed for malpractice or even criminal activity,” the public letter said.

The lawyers called the police, who confiscated the computer.

The lawyers also reported the incident to the Qinghai provincial prosecutor’s office and the Qinghai Higher People’s Court, which said they would investigate.

According to the letter, the lawyers have submitted an application to the county court to have the case tried at a court outside Haixi.

The Tianjun county court did not respond to an interview request from the Post.

The Haixi intermediate court blamed Liu, the lawyer, instead.

In response to the accusations, the Haixi intermediate court issued a notice on Weibo, saying the lawyer had disobeyed court discipline in taking the photo.

It also said that the case belonged to one of four categories that could seek “key supervision”, and Haixi had followed protocols in its instructions to a lower court. It only admitted that the manner of instruction was irregular.

After the incident went viral online, many lawyers around the country spoke up to say they disagreed with the Haixi court.

“The superiors’ instruction sabotaged the court’s right to independently exercise judicial power,” Wang Cailiang, a Beijing-based criminal lawyer, wrote on Weibo. “If a court and its superior could collude in a lawsuit … then why do we need evidence? Why do we need the law?”

He said as the courts became “buddies”, the higher court’s supervision weakened, and this was why some cases were wrongly decided and not corrected on appeal.

Others said the Haixi court had abused the idea of “key supervision”.

A document by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021 said four types of cases could require “key supervision”: complex and sensitive cases, cases that might affect social stability, those that might have a conflicting judgment with a similar case, and if the judge was reported to have engaged in illegal conduct during the trial.

When a case is classified as one of these four types, the presiding judge may supervise certain aspects that need attention during a trial, such as demanding a report on case progress, evaluating the results, reviewing case files or sitting in on a trial.

“If the judges directly gave instructions or interfered with the case, then they are not following protocol,” Lao Dongyan, a prominent China policy critic and law professor with Tsinghua University, said during a live-streamed discussion on Weibo earlier this month with the Hongfan Institute of Legal and Economic Studies, a private liberal think tank.

Well-known lawyer Xu Xin wrote on WeChat that such incidents were quite common, and he had experienced or heard of at least four.

He said that a decade ago, when the Zhangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Fujian province was hearing a case on organised crime, court police passed a note to the presiding judge. The lawyer questioned the action and the judge immediately adjourned proceedings, he wrote.

Xu recalled another such case in 2022, at a court in Zoucheng, Shandong province. The court president, prosecutor general and deputy party secretary of the local political and legal affairs commission were found to have given orders during a trial from a meeting room on the floor below that had been set up as a “trial headquarters”. None of the three was part of the trial.

China’s corruption watchdog targets Agriculture Minister Tang Renjian

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3263234/chinas-corruption-watchdog-targets-agriculture-minister-tang-renjian?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s top anti-graft watchdog is investigating the country’s agriculture minister, the latest high-level official to come under scrutiny.

Tang Renjian was “suspected of serious violations of Communist Party discipline and the law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervisory investigation”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on its website on Saturday, without giving details.

Tang’s last public appearance was just three days before the announcement, at a rural talent conference in Xianyang, in the northwest province of Shaanxi where he inspected “innovation in the agricultural industry” and training for farmers.

In April, Tang had hosted a meeting of the party’s Central Leading Group for Inspection Work before the group inspected the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, saying the ministry would “pay great attention to” and respond to each issue the group raised.

According to publicly available information, Tang is the 11th delegate to the party’s national congress in October 2022 and the first member of the 20th Central Committee to be investigated.

Other delegates under investigation are former Beijing deputy mayor Gao Peng, former Bank of China chairman Liu Liange and Cui Maohu, former director of the National Religious Affairs Administration.

Tang, 61, started his political career in the agriculture ministry in the 1980s. He worked in various roles in the sector and moved on to working in provincial governments, including Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Gansu province.

In December 2020, he was appointed agriculture minister.

In recent years, China has doubled down efforts on food security, including protection of arable land, expansion of farming acreage and more widespread use of technology, with President Xi Jinping repeatedly stressing that China’s “rice bowl” needs to be firmly kept in the hands of its people.

The seed industry has been deemed “strategic and fundamental”. The country’s Seed Law, which went into effect in March 2022, was implemented to address “choke points” created by a dependence on international imports and a lack of innovation.

The law is designed to maintain the independence and control of the country’s “germplasm resources”, the genetic materials needed for plant cultivation. It covers protection of IP rights in the seed industry, including safeguards for new plant variety rights and compensation for rights infringement.

Previously, Tang had firmly supported this push. In January 2021, as the newly installed minister, he issued a to-do list to improve the country’s crop production that year, including increasing corn acreage and self-sufficiency in edible soybeans.

The following month, China rolled out its annual blueprint for rural policies amid Covid-19, with an emphasis on using new agricultural technologies.

At the time, Tang called to “raise the safety factor as high as possible, and produce and store as much grain as possible”.

More effort needed to encourage senior Hong Kong pupils to study Chinese history, education centre head says

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3263240/more-effort-needed-encourage-senior-hong-kong-pupils-study-chinese-history-education-centre-head?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong schools should do more to encourage senior secondary students to study Chinese history, as having only 13 per cent of them taking the subject in the university entrance exams is “far from ideal”, the head of an education centre has said.

Ho Hon-kuen, principal of the Centre of National History Education (Hong Kong), added on Sunday that all of society should cooperate to show students the importance of history. The subject helped people understand why societies succeeded or failed, he added.

Data showed 5,852 Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam takers from schools, or 13.5 per cent of the total, took the Chinese history test this year, up from 12.7 per cent or 5,493 in 2023.

The Education Bureau announced in early May that students could answer fewer questions in the Chinese history exam for university admission in a move to boost interest in the subject.

The arrangement will begin with Form Five students in the next academic year.

“Studying Chinese history provides inspiration by fostering a broad perspective and drawing lessons from the past … It helps us to gain insights into contemporary China,” Ho told a radio programme.

“But 13 per cent is certainly far from being ideal. I think principals, teachers and the Education Bureau would like more [students to take the subject].”

Ho, a former school principal, argued that whether the amendment would “optimise” Chinese history depended on how principals and teachers perceived the importance of the subject, as well as society’s expectations, which were equally crucial.

Ho said the key to preventing students from stereotyping Chinese history as “boring but difficult to get good marks in” lay with principals, frontline teachers and the bureau, which is in charge of allocating resources.

“I think the three groups should not follow the old way, not act lazy and not turn a blind eye to problems existing,” Ho said, without giving examples.

Under the change, pupils will be given the choice of sitting one DSE paper instead of the current two.

Paper 1 accounts for 70 per cent of their grade, while Paper 2 takes up the remainder. If students take only the first one, their maximum grade will be 5 instead of the full 5**.

China is key market for Singaporean biotech start-up’s stomach cancer early diagnosis kit

https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3263229/china-key-market-singaporean-biotech-start-ups-stomach-cancer-early-diagnosis-kit?utm_source=rss_feed

Mainland China will become the largest single market for Singaporean diagnostics start-up Mirxes’ core product, a stomach cancer detection kit that was key to the company’s development, according to Zhou Lihan, its CEO and co-founder.

The biotechnology firm, which launched the world’s first molecular diagnostic kit for early detection of gastric cancer in 2019, refiled its draft prospectus for a Hong Kong initial public offering in April with the target of raising at least US$100 million for a valuation of about US$600 million.

Mirxes first applied to list on the city’s stock exchange in July last year but later scrapped the plan.

The end of 2023 was “a very volatile period” because of factors such as the China property market crisis and the war in Gaza, and “we felt it wasn’t quite the right time” to move forward, Zhou said.

According to the latest prospectus, the company’s revenue grew 36.2 per cent year on year to US$24.2 million in 2023, while it made a net loss of US$69.6 million, 23.8 per cent bigger than its loss the previous year.

China currently accounts for around 20 per cent of Mirxes’ revenue as the company is still awaiting regulatory approval and has limited business activities there. However, Zhou expects China’s proportion of total revenue to double after GastroClear’s expected launch there in the final quarter of this year.

“The China market is crucial as it will give us the initial scale to bring down the cost,” Zhou said. “And that scale will make us financially very strong as we target other markets, especially those in Southeast Asia.”

He said China accounted for half of all stomach cancer patients globally and over 600 million Chinese people are eligible for screening. As such, the demand in China for Mirxes’ detection kit post-approval could elevate the firm’s gross margin from about 50 to 70 per cent.

“The moment we hit that, it will help us to potentially reduce the price to the consumer as well as make the entire process a lot more cost-efficient,” said the scientist-turned-entrepreneur.

The biotech firm completed clinical trials of the kit in November and submitted a registration application to the Chinese National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) the following month.

“You can see this year as our preparation year for a major commercial push in the years to come,” said Zhou.

Mirxes aims to complete its stock flotation within the next six months and has been stepping up its commercialisation push ahead of the IPO.

“We are very focused … preparing the necessary commercial channels to make these products available to a wide range, mostly public hospitals as well as private screening chains,” said Zhou.

As GastroClear was the first molecular blood test for the early detection of gastric cancer in the market, Mirxes will shoulder the responsibility of educating others in the field about how molecular tests can help with screening for the disease, Zhou said.

While the company has had a solid base in China since it established a presence in Hangzhou city, the capital of Zhejiang province, in 2016, endoscopy remains the gold standard in China for gastric cancer screening and diagnosis.

A major challenge for Mirxes has been getting broadly reimbursed for the product via insurance coverage and the like, Zhou said.

“The national coverage in most Asian countries, whether public or private, is not yet mature when we’re dealing with screening,” he said. “We’re still at the phase where we know how to get reimbursed for treating the sick, but not in preventing.”

This hurdle could limit the rapid scaling up of products beyond the first 5 per cent of market demand, he said.

“It’s a long-term issue we need to start addressing,” he said, adding that the frequency of tests needed to get the maximum benefit needs to be determined over time, which is linked to reimbursement.

Mirxes may decide to devote up to half of the funds raised from IPO to get more products to market, including diagnostic products for colorectal cancer and liver cancer, said Zhou.

China’s Gen Zers to sway marketing, retail trends as they become major force driving domestic consumption

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3263191/chinas-gen-zers-sway-marketing-retail-trends-they-become-major-force-driving-domestic-consumption?utm_source=rss_feed

Like many of her mainland Chinese Gen Z peers, Judy Xu spends an average of seven hours on social media every day and knows the latest fashion trends. But the 24-year-old marketing professional from Shanghai is not keen to follow what is currently popular.

“I am more willing to pay higher prices for the design of a product, if it’s special enough, that I won’t find anywhere else,” Xu said. “I also care if the item fits my personality, which reflects my aesthetics.”

With so many options on the market, Xu said she would stick to “any brand that matches my style”, not just one in particular or the famous international brands.

That perspective reflects how Xu and her fellow Gen Zers – those born between 1997 and 2012, according to think tank Pew Research Centre – are expected to sway how goods are marketed in China, as they soon become a major force driving consumption in the world’s second-largest economy.

Gen Zers already represent the fastest-growing population group in the Asia-Pacific, and are projected to account for 21 per cent of the mainland’s total population by 2025, according to a report by KPMG China.

But while their influence and spending potential makes them a major target group for many brands, Gen Zers can also be a hard market to figure out.

“Gen Zers are different,” said Sophie Coulon, co-founder of Shanghai-based digital agency VO2 Asia Pacific, whose clients include several major international brands.

“They’ve been raised in a different environment, meaning they didn’t experience all the hardships of their parents and grandparents. They are digital natives, so they expect things [to be done] super quickly,” Coulon said. “But at the same time, they face some pressure from society. They want to be able to express themselves, so buying clothes is a way to show [their] identity. It’s not just ‘because you own a bag, you are someone’.”

Still, the spending power of Gen Zers make them irresistible to many brands. In 2023, consumers aged 15 to 24 generated 93 billion yuan (US$12.9 billion), or 22.1 per cent, of China’s 424-billion-yuan beauty market, according to data compiled by consumer research firm Kantar Worldpanel.

The firm found that individuals in this group spent 44 per cent more on beauty products than older counterparts up to age 64.

China’s Gen Zers, especially those from the country’s first-tier cities, have a great influence in shaping consumption by driving trends on social media and across the internet, said Yang Jianwen, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Among China’s high-net-worth population, Gen Zers will also be the beneficiaries of a massive US$3 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer in the coming decade, making them a key group for luxury brands to focus on, according to a recent report by PwC.

Growing up when China’s one-child policy was still enforced, Gen Zers received the utmost care and support from their family, with access to greater disposable income that made them more willing to spend, according to Yang of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

International brands have taken note, and are consolidating their strategies to win the hearts and minds of these young Chinese consumers.

“As we closed 2023, we actually had up to 60 per cent of our sales coming from millennials and Gen Zers in China, which is really an important proxy for us to assess whether our brand is poised for solid growth in the long term in the country,” said Swarovski chief executive Alexis Nasard in an interview last month with the South China Morning Post.

China makes up about 15 per cent of the Austrian crystal maker’s business, which contributed to the firm’s global retail sales of €1.8 billion (US$1.9 billion) last year. That was up 4 per cent from a year earlier and “well above overall growth” in a challenging market rocked by volatilities, Swarovski said in a statement.

The issue for brands, however, is that Gen Zers’ taste can be fickle or hard to pin down.

Shanghai-based marketing professional Nicole Xu – no relation to Judy Xu from the same city – said she did not personally identify with the “quiet luxury” trend, which is currently all the rage on social media, “because I think it looks boring”.

So Xu, 24, splurged on a Chanel bag with her first pay cheque, saying she was willing to spend “a lot of money for the design and social identity that the brand represents”. She also pointed out that her daily wardrobe contains pieces from mass-market brands like H&M and Zara, which “will [only] stay in my closet for one or two seasons”.

While this population group tend to be less status-conscious and more pragmatic than older consumers, “brands have to have their own irreplaceable differences, as we found Gen Zers are more into brands with lifestyle heritage that offer emotional value, design and product experiences”, said Jason Yu, Kantar’s managing director for Greater China, adding that Gen Z consumers tend to be less status-conscious and more pragmatic than older peers.

“Foreign brands are facing increased pressure of being replaced by the rise of domestic brands with high quality and price ratio in China,” Yu said. As such, brands like Swarovski that have no direct domestic competitor with equivalent offerings maintain a certain dividend in the market, he added.

Nagard, Swarovski’s chief executive, said he found Gen Zers’ tastes to be more nuanced. “Western luxury brands have a cache that is interesting and that is unique, but they are increasingly open to local alternatives, if the local alternatives can give them the value that they expect from the brand or the product,” he said.

Based on the company’s observation, Gen Z consumers are more willing to experiment with bolder pieces than their slightly older millennial counterparts, he added.

For American fashion brand Ralph Lauren, the company chose to open its first Ralph Coffee store in Beijing’s Sanlitun mall because it “attracts a lot of young, trendy consumers”, said Chua Shin Hwee, regional chief executive for Greater China and Southeast Asia. She indicated that Ralph Lauren often tailors its stores to the demographics of different cities.

“We’re about optimism. We’re about freedom. We’re about entrepreneurialism. We’re about family,” Ralph Lauren president and chief executive Patrice Louvet told the Post last month, adding that he believed those values resonated with young consumers.

China now accounts for 7 per cent of Ralph Lauren’s global business, according to a Reuters report. The overall revenue for Ralph Lauren in Asia grew 16 per cent between the second and third quarters of its current financial year, according to the firm’s earnings call in February.

Ralph Lauren’s strong performance in China could be attributed to the brand’s younger designs and the buzz it was generating on social media, especially on lifestyle platforms like Xiaohongshu, according to Sheila Zheng, senior manager for sustainability strategy and transformation at PwC China.

Zheng, however, cautioned luxury brands from primarily focusing on young mainland consumers. “They are more vulnerable to economic fluctuation,” she said. “When the economy is not very good, their consumption power is lower. As such, she added that luxury brands ought to focus on ultra-wealthy consumers as their core customer group.

Number of mainland Chinese 1-way permit holders joining Hong Kong schools jumped most on record last year

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3263219/number-mainland-chinese-1-way-permit-holders-joining-hong-kong-schools-jumped-most-record-last-year?utm_source=rss_feed

The number of mainland Chinese one-way permit holders joining Hong Kong schools jumped the most on record in the last academic year, but the sector said the newcomers could only ease the problem of a shrinking student population a little.

A sector representative said more pupils came from relatively wealthier families than in the past and parents were picky when selecting schools, while the lower level of proficiency in English compared with locals was still a major concern.

According to official statistics, 6,831 students joined Hong Kong’s primary and secondary schools from October 2022 to September 2023, coinciding with the gradual reopening of the border with the mainland in January last year after the end of strict pandemic controls.

The data was taken from the 2023-24 school year as education authorities said the number of students with one-way permits admitted annually was reflected in the following year’s figure.

The latest figure marked a 62 per cent increase against the 4,218 students recorded between October 2021 to September 2022, when the border with the mainland largely remained closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The spike was the highest ever since the data became available in 2007.

One-way permits allow mainlanders to settle in Hong Kong to reunite with their families. But should they receive the permit – of which 150 are available each day – they must surrender their mainland household registration.

During the height of the pandemic, the number of newcomers dropped off with only 3,571 students holding one-way permits coming to Hong Kong from October 2019 to September 2020.

The last peak of the newly admitted pupils from the mainland was between October 2017 and September 2018, when 8,217 began studying at the city’s schools after arriving on one-way permits.

On average over the past nearly two decades, about six out of 10 students holding the one-way permits went to primary schools and the rest went to secondary schools. Data for those entering kindergarten and university was not available.

The government earlier revealed there was an inflow of 40,800 one-way permit holders in 2023, a substantial increase from 21,200 in 2022.

A spokesman for the Education Bureau said the figures did not include the dependents of talent recruited under different schemes.

So Ping-fai, chairman of Subsidised Primary Schools Council and a primary school principal in Tin Shui Wai, said some schools had noted the number of such students and children of imported talent had been on the rise recently.

But he said the pace of the decline in the school-aged population was faster than the flow of mainlanders arriving, which meant institutions struggling to survive did not receive a big boost especially as they needed better enrolment in Primary One and Form One.

“Like in primary schools, most of [the mainland students] entered the senior grades but not lower forms … they can only solve the problem of school survival a little bit but cannot balance out the decline of the student population,” he said.

According to the latest projections released by the Education Bureau, the number of six-year-olds expected to start Primary One will drop from 49,600 this year to 31,500 in 2029, a 36 per cent decline.

Principal So noted the family backgrounds of students from the mainland had changed over the years and parents were also becoming more selective.

“They are now picky when selecting schools and prefer popular schools. They will find out which schools are popular in their community themselves,” he said.

But the levels of English-language proficiency were still a major concern.

“The difference [in English level] is quite huge, some lagged behind [the locals] for two to three years,” he said, adding that some schools might have to arrange for students to study one grade lower.

Chu Wai-lam, vice-chairman of the New Territories School Heads Association and headmaster in North district, attributed the latest jump in one-way permit holders to the reopening of the border.

But he said his school saw a decrease in the number of such students, which prompted a targeted allowance from the government to fall accordingly.

He expected some parents might pick schools in other areas such as Kowloon and not necessarily settle in his district although it is nearest to the border.

The Education Bureau earlier told the legislature it had been offering support services for newly admitted students from the mainland, including the six-month “Initiation Programme” by local schools before entering mainstream schools and the 60-hour “Induction Programme” organised by NGOs.

Both programmes cover language education, learning skills, personal growth and development, as well as social adaptation, according to the government.

Education authorities said they also provided public institutions and those joining the direct subsidy scheme, which are regarded as semi-private, with a support scheme grant to arrange after-school supplementary lessons and organise activities for newcomers.

The rate of the grant per pupil is HK$4,078 for primary schools and HK$6,045 for secondary schools in the current academic year.

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‘Think big’: intrepid China teen spends US$1,400 on solo global tour, faces online bullying, sex-for-sale taunts

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3261861/think-big-intrepid-china-teen-spends-us1400-solo-global-tour-faces-online-bullying-sex-sale-taunts?utm_source=rss_feed

A teenager who travelled solo around China on a budget of just 11,500 yuan (US$1,600) has been besieged by sex-for-sale rumours spread by people who refused to accept her success.

The youngster has bravely faced down her critics and won plaudits for her independent and adventurous spirit.

For 35 days, starting last November, Li Yike travelled to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt and Nepal, on a remarkably small budget.

To save money, Li mostly travelled overland or flew with budget airlines, spending just 4,680 yuan (US$648) on transport.

Her accommodation included youth hostels and airport lounges. She ate cheap bread instead of proper meals.

Li decided she wanted see the world “she had only seen in books” during a gap year between dropping out of an international secondary school in eastern China’s Zhejiang province and starting a new school in September.

She created a meticulous itinerary for the small amount of savings she had accrued from pocket money and part-time jobs.

As a way of staying safe from attack by sexual predators during her solo travels, she cut her hair short and wore unisex outfits to look more like a boy.

Li said she has always had an adventurous spirit and had been travelling around China by herself since she was at junior school.

She took her first solo trip abroad last May to Laos, and was stopped by Chinese customs officers because of her age. They eventually let her cross the border after her parents gave permission.

After Li returned home from her recent intrepid travels and shared her experiences online, she faced cyberbullying and sex-for-sale rumours from people who could not believe a young woman could accomplish so much on so little.

Li gave a detailed breakdown of her expenses on her Weibo account, but the attacks did not stop. She said it was a wake-up moment for her when she realised she could not change other people’s views.

Undaunted, Li continued to share her solo travelling experiences after she embarked on another journey, to Pakistan, in April.

The intrepid teen said she felt encouraged after a girl of the same age left a comment saying Li’s journey inspired her to dream big.

Li told the mainland magazine New Weekly that her parents and friends still worry about her safety sometimes, but she told them: “I’d rather be happy than safe, if I had to choose between the two.”

Li believes that, instead of worrying about the safety of women who like to travel alone, the world should focus on “disciplining those who disobey the rules”.

“It is good that young people are stepping out of their comfort zone and exploring the world. It will lead to great accomplishments. However, they also need to learn how to protect themselves and avoid risks,” said one online observer.

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[Sport] Taiwan's steely leader rewrote the book on how to deal with China

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceklk794102o[Sport] Taiwan's steely leader rewrote the book on how to deal with China

China’s rush to prop up housing sector aims to boost confidence ahead of third plenum: analysts

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3263213/chinas-rush-prop-housing-sector-aims-boost-confidence-ahead-third-plenum-analysts?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s “unprecedented” flurry of moves to stabilise its property sector shows the leadership is determined to restore confidence in the economy ahead of a key policy-setting meeting, where “new productive forces” are likely to be in focus, analysts said.

Beijing announced coordinated steps on Friday to address the property sector downturn, with the central bank handing out billions of yuan in extra funding and easing mortgage rules, and local governments encouraged to buy some unsold homes.

The raft of support measures, described as “the boldest” or even “unprecedented” in a decade by many observers, followed inspection tours around the nation by several members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party.

The traditional field trips came in the lead-up to the party’s third plenary session in July, where its top policymaking body – the Central Committee – will set out the country’s general economic strategy for the next five to 10 years.

“The new measures certainly show that the authorities want to put a floor under the property slump, at least for the time being,” said George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre.

Vice-premier He Lifeng, who inspected the troubled property sector of Zhengzhou in central Henan province, reiterated how the health of the property market was linked to social wellness and economic development.

“The real estate sector concerns people’s interests and the overall situation of China’s economic and social development,” He told officials nationwide during a video conference on Friday.

Officials should “profoundly understand” this relevance, He said, urging them to “fight the tough battle” of dealing with unfinished housing projects around the country and help to “assimilate” excess inventory, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The People’s Bank of China also said on Friday it would provide 300 billion yuan (US$42.3 billion) in cheap loans to help state-owned enterprises buy unsold housing inventory, apart from easing down payment rules and cutting interest rates for mortgages.

The property sector, an engine of growth for decades, has become a big drag on the world’s No 2 economy as it seeks post-Covid recovery. A Goldman Sachs estimate put China’s saleable housing inventory at 13.5 trillion yuan at the end of 2023.

There were 391 million square metres (4.2 billion square feet) of new housing for sale in the first four months of this year, nearly a quarter more than in the same period last year, according to official data. Analysts at Tianfeng Securities estimated it would cost around US$1 trillion to buy the entire stock.

“The third plenum will likely emphasise the point and may well come up with new measures and possibly even an agency to collate funding to buy up inventory, and so channel cash flows to developers,” Magnus at Oxford University said.

“However, the main focus of the plenum is almost certainly going to be on industrial policy and new productive forces.”

“New productive forces”, a catchphrase introduced by President Xi Jinping last year, has been described by him as referring to “advanced productivity freed from traditional economic growth models”, featuring “high technology, high efficiency and high quality”.

According to Magnus: “If China can’t stabilise the real estate market and lift confidence among homeowners and the middle class, the new productive forces strategy will count for little, except for favoured firms.”

Real estate generates about a fifth of China’s fiscal revenue and accounts for nearly 70 per cent of total household assets, as well as about a quarter of bank loans, official data show.

“The moves send a clear signal that there’s real political support from the top leadership for the stabilisation of the property sector,” a political economist said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Allowing local governments to buy homes and turn them into subsidised housing will restore confidence and change the public perception that Beijing is hostile to the property sector,” the economist said.

“While it is Xi’s catchphrase that ‘houses are for living in, not for speculation’, it does not mean Beijing wants [the sector] to collapse,” he added.

“The stabilisation of the sector can help spur domestic consumption, boost demand in a vast chain of industries and win time for China’s economic restructuring as it tilts towards an innovation-led economy while facing trade tariffs and tech sanctions from the US and its allies.”

Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Tsinghua University, said a healthy property sector not only mattered for public confidence in the economy, but also had significant implications for financial security.

“The national team must come to the rescue. It concerns not only [troubled] developers, but also China’s economic and financial security,” Xie said. “Beijing will not allow a property crisis to take place while the US has already initiated a financial war.”

However, this did not mean China would allow the property sector to become highly speculative again, Xie said.

“There will be a balance between market demand and government intervention in order to achieve a sound recovery of the sector, though the effectiveness largely relies on detailed policies and implementation at local government levels,” he said.

China introduced a slew of forceful measures in 2020 to tackle runaway real estate growth, amid concerns about the economy’s overreliance on the sector, rampant speculation that had put housing prices out of reach for most people, and high leverage by developers.

But as prices slumped and developers went bankrupt, authorities started to ease the policies in 2022, with purchase curbs lifted in most cities and banks asked to extend loans to qualified developers.

However, those measures failed to stem the downturn. New home prices fell for a 10th consecutive month in April, registering the fastest month-on-month decline since November 2014. Separate data showed property investment in the first four months of the year falling nearly 10 per cent from a year earlier.

Property sales by floor area in January-April dropped by more than 20 per cent year on year, while new construction starts fell by around 25 per cent. Funds raised by developers also fell by nearly a quarter year on year.

China won’t help EU relations by befriending unpopular European leaders

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3262700/china-wont-help-eu-relations-befriending-unpopular-european-leaders?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping must be pleased with the results of his five-day trip to Europe. In his first visit to the continent since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, he spent time in France, Serbia and Hungary, securing important financial deals without expending any significant diplomatic capital.

But Xi’s European tour did not address the long-term challenges that hamper the Sino-European relationship. China is still at risk of a long-term strategic impasse with Europe.

In France, Xi wisely joined President Emmanuel Macron in calling for an “Olympic truce” for the Paris Games in the summer, amid wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In doing so, Xi came across as a statesman of peace while having to invest extremely little actual political capital in what many would see as a reasonable gesture.

In Serbia, Xi met his counterpart, President Aleksandar Vucic, a friendly leader who has opened the country’s economic doors wide to China through infrastructure projects such as the takeover of Smederevo steelworks, building of Pupin Bridge and development of Zijin Mining’s copper basin. Serbia’s economy is small but its welcome for the Chinese president was warm.

It was in Hungary, however, that Xi was truly celebrated. In Budapest, he and Prime Minister Viktor Orban hailed their countries’ blossoming economic relationship, which will see Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD open its first factory in Europe in southern Hungary’s Szeged, expected to produce 200,000 EVs a year. Work on the China-backed Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway is also proceeding apace.

All these developments highlight the strength of an emerging and China-friendly Hungarian-Serbian axis in Europe.

However, China still faces unresolved challenges when it comes to its relationship with the European Union. Many problems remain on the table and by focusing on Hungary and Serbia, China does not solve any of them.

In the short term, cosying up to Orban can come at a huge cost to Xi’s reputation. Over the years, the Hungarian leader has acquired semi-pariah status among the majority of European leaders. His government is viewed as authoritarian, illiberal, populist, nationalist and even xenophobic. Most European capitals are extremely wary of any policies originating from Budapest.

To most European leaders, being endorsed by Orban is not a badge of honour. Indeed, it is seen as something to be avoided as much as possible. By associating closely with Orban, Xi runs the risk of the Hungarian leader’s very poor reputation negatively affecting China’s image in the rest of Europe.

In the medium term, it is questionable whether Orban might really be the best choice for China when it comes to looking for friends in Europe. Sure, things will run smoothly as long as he is in charge in Budapest. But – despite its many serious flaws – Hungary is still a democracy.

Sooner or later, Orban will lose his grip on the political patronage system he has nurtured over the years and the power that comes with it. Any new government taking over from him is likely to be far more liberal and pro-EU. Such a state of affairs would spell trouble for China and also put at great risk the political and economic inroads made so far.

In the long term, there is a risk that China might be overestimating the benefits of the leverage that Beijing is buying in Budapest in terms of its relationship with the EU. While Orban is likely to try and counter any EU foreign policy initiatives that Beijing might view as threatening to its interests or its proxies, a trend is clearly emerging whereby other European capitals are learning to cope with Budapest’s antics.

When Orban tried to veto additional EU financial support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia, other EU member states simply let it be known they were prepared to sidestep Hungary to provide financial help. Additionally, other European capitals floated the idea of invoking Article 7 of the Treaty on EU, which could lead to Hungary being stripped of its European Council voting rights. Orban promptly backed down.

As work is under way for the EU to shift its foreign policy decision-making process from unanimity to a qualified majority vote, Hungary will eventually be systematically relegated to a losing position within the European Council. Any remaining influence China might have over European foreign policy through the leverage that Beijing holds in Budapest will be lost.

As for Belgrade, the leverage it has with other European capitals will remain extraordinarily limited until Serbia is allowed to join the EU. And that is very unlikely to happen as long as Vucic remains in power.

Xi is a master of diplomacy and he handled his trip to Europe extremely well. However, one must question if China’s long-term strategic posture vis-à-vis Europe is the most appropriate. Brussels and most European capitals might very well welcome an enhanced role for Beijing on the global stage and in Europe’s economy.

But by becoming so friendly with the two leaders with possibly the worst reputations in Europe, China risks tarnishing its image in the eyes of the rest of Europe, while reaping economic and political gains that are merely superficial and for the short term.

The last giant pandas in the U.S. are leaving, but China will send more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/18/atlanta-pandas-return-to-china/2024-05-18T13:36:50.388Z

The Atlanta zoo will return its four pandas to China late this year, the facility announced Friday, in the latest chapter of a program often labeled “panda diplomacy.”

The parents and their twins have been the only giant pandas in the United States since November, when the National Zoo in Washington returned three of the bears to China in a move that some saw as an ominous sign of deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Chinese governments. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.

Lun Lun, 26, and Yang Yang, 26, have been in Atlanta since 1999, when they came as part of a 25-year loan agreement. They’ve had seven children since then, including twins Ya Lun and Xi Lun, 7, the last of the offspring still in the country.

The zoo announced in November that the quartet would be leaving this year but had not indicated when that might be. It said this week that they would return in the fourth quarter.

Their exact departure date is not clear, nor how they will make the trip. Zoo Atlanta did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday, and the Friday news release said the zoo has applied for the pandas’ international travel permit.

“The process for sending giant pandas to China is extensive and requires months of planning,” the zoo said in a statement.

Last year’s farewell to three bears in D.C. could offer some clues.

The November morning when they left began with staffers loading stacks of bamboo onto three large FedEx trucks as the sun rose. That was to make sure the pandas could snack during their travels.

The pandas were loaded into large shipping crates, placed onto trucks by a forklift and driven to nearby Dulles International Airport.

They were then packed onto a FedEx cargo jet with two zookeepers for a 19-hour, 9,000-mile journey to Chengdu, China, The Washington Post reported at the time.

Relatives of the Atlanta pandas have already made a similar journey to China’s Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where they now reside and have had children themselves.

The last ones to make the journey were another set of twins, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, who departed for China in 2016 after they turned 3 years old.

Zoo Atlanta said it had not yet discussed the future of the giant panda program with partners in China. It noted that it has contributed more than $17 million to support the conservation of wild giant pandas and plans a summer of celebrating the pandas, starting June 1.

The United States, though, could welcome a pair of new pandas before the four depart Atlanta. San Diego Zoo staffers visited China this year to prepare for the arrivals of Yun Chuan and Xin Bao as early as this summer, the Associated Press reported. Pandas had lived there and in Memphis before returning to China as their agreements expired in recent years.

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited San Francisco in November, he suggested Beijing would send new pandas, signaling that China would continue its panda diplomacy.

In February, National Zoo officials indicated that they were in discussions to bring back giant pandas to D.C., though it is not clear when that could happen.

If the San Diego Zoo doesn’t receive those bears before the Atlanta-based family leaves, the United States will be without giant pandas for the first time in more than 50 years.

The black and white animals have been a cornerstone of U.S.-China relations since they arrived in 1972, a move sparked by a banquet conversation between first lady Pat Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai, China’s second-in-command to Chairman Mao Zedong.

The first lady and President Richard M. Nixon were in Beijing for a historic Cold War visit to communist China.

Fewer than 1,900 giant pandas remain in the wild in China, according to Zoo Atlanta, with the majority in nature reserves. While many in the area may be sad to see the bears leave, the zoo said it was grateful to have looked after them for more than two decades.

“We have merely been fortunate enough to be their stewards and introduce so many people here in the U.S. to this species,” it said on its website.

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