Mistral点评

• China attempts to counter Japan and South Korea’s closer ties with U.S.
• Pakistan arrests 11 militants involved in Chinese engineers’ killing, officials say
• China has ‘huge responsibility’ to reshape world order, reform global bodies like UN, WTO: foreign envoys to Beijing
• Trade, Taiwan in focus as Chinese Premier Li Qiang meets leaders of Japan, South Korea ahead of 3-way summit in Seoul
• Hong Kong tycoon Victor Fung briefed Chinese President Xi Jinping on supply chain centre vision for city ahead of third plenum
• China’s tech ambitions and AI rivalry with US: could a kids’ walnut farm game hold the key to the future?
• New research suggests that prehistoric humans in China survived Gobi Desert by adapting technological development
• Chinese state media takes aim at US overcapacity claims as wary G7 insists on playing field level
• China’s Yangtze River, biggest freshwater lakes Poyang and Dongting at risk as fishing, sand mining bans flouted: report
• Chinese funding keeps Cameroon’s deep seaport expansion project afloat
• Meet Liu Yang, China’s first woman in space, mother of 2, as she discusses intricacies of balancing career and family
• ‘Emotional power’: China’s Covid wounds reopened in tense, divisive ‘An Unfinished Film’
• Chinese and Japanese leaders travel to South Korea for their first trilateral meeting since 2019
• A closer Asean-China community with a shared future will lead the trend of times of building a community with a shared future for mankind
• Self-styled China education expert with violent approach to teaching exposed as ex-primary school teacher
• China breeds leaner, meatier pig to bring home the bacon in food security drive
• Dubai is the new Portugal for Chinese property investors, lured by golden visas, improving infrastructure, agents say
• Harvard scientist behind Justin Bieber’s NAD therapy resigns, leaving China’s booming anti-ageing industry in hot water

China attempts to counter Japan and South Korea’s closer ties with U.S.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/26/china-japan-south-korea-summit-meeting/2024-05-22T06:07:37.596Z

Leaders from China, Japan and South Korea will on Monday will hold their first trilateral meeting in more than four years, as Beijing seeks to counteract U.S. efforts to work closely with Tokyo and Seoul — two major American allies in the Asia-Pacific region.

The meeting underscores the balancing act that Tokyo and Seoul are trying to strike as they try to navigate the economic and military competition between Washington and Beijing: Although Japan and South Korea are security allies of the United States and have stepped up joint military drills in the region, they also rely on China as their largest trading partner.

“The opportunity for engagement with Beijing, particularly on economic issues, is attractive to both — but won’t change the larger context of deep concern about China’s actions and intentions, and the shared interest in closer alignment with the United States and with each other,” said Chris Johnstone, former East Asia director at the National Security Council and Japan Chair at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

American analysts say there is no reason Washington should be concerned about the resumption of a routine meeting between the three Asian nations. But the summit also serves as a reminder that U.S. allies have their own interests to manage, they said.

“I don’t think it is a cause for alarm for Washington but it should tell those who are pushing an anti-China axis that our allies have their own interests, and they are not always the same as ours,” said Daniel Sneider, an East Asia policy expert at Stanford University.

The three countries began meeting regularly in 2008 but have not done so since 2019 because of the coronavirus pandemic and souring relations between Japan and South Korea. In March last year, Seoul took a major step to restore relations with Tokyo out of shared concerns over China and North Korea, paving the way for closer relations with Washington. These moves have motivated Beijing to try to pull them back, analysts say.

Chinese premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Seoul on Sunday for bilateral meetings. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol also hosted a banquet for the leaders. On Monday, they are scheduled to hold a trilateral summit and plan to issue a joint statement, the South Korean presidential office said.

Traditionally, the presidents of Japan and South Korea and the premier of China, who leads the cabinet, have participated in the meetings, which were focused on economic issues rather than security matters. With Li’s power significantly diminished under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, some analysts say the symbolism of the trilateral gathering has become less important.

A lot has changed since their last meeting: Russia has invaded Ukraine, China has increased its military aggression toward Taiwan, and North Korea has advanced its nuclear weapons program, leading Japan and South Korea to work more closely with the United States and even set aside their historical animosity for now to cooperate with Washington.

At the same time, Tokyo and Seoul both share an interest in stabilizing ties with China, just as the United States has worked to do.

Japan’s national security strategy calls for a “constructive and stable” relationship with Beijing, especially on maintaining economic engagement. South Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy calls for a resumption of the trilateral meetings, and its president Yoon is dealing with sharp divisions among voters and the business community over his steps to draw closer to Washington.

Meanwhile, China wants to revive talks with the two Asian countries given the pressures it faces from Washington’s efforts to slow down China’s technological advance and to counter its military ambitions by forming a coalition of allies and nations throughout the Asia-Pacific region, analysts say.

“The Chinese feel encircled, pressured by the U.S. and its allies. So as for China, it has to push back,” said Yasuhiro Matsuda, international politics professor at the University of Tokyo.

After President Biden declared a “new era” of partnership with the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David last summer, Chinese officials suggested restarting the trilateral meetings, according to South Korean officials.

“The summit will serve as a turning point for fully restoring and normalizing the trilateral cooperation system among South Korea, Japan and China,” South Korean Principal Deputy national security adviser Kim Tae-hyo said during a media briefing last week.

Still, major differences between the three remain. Tensions have risen between China and South Korea under Yoon, who took office in 2022, and is more skeptical toward Beijing than his predecessor. The rapprochement between South Korea and Japan is being tested by a dispute involving two prominent tech companies from both countries. Japan and China are arguing over the release of treated radioactive water off the east coast of Japan.

Yet Chinese scholars say better coordination is important for regional stability, and the three must get along as “inseparable neighbors.”

“Now [we have] the Taiwan issue, the Korean Peninsula issue, the Ukrainian war issue, and the U.S. technology war against China, so we need to discuss them with these two important Asian neighbors,” said Zhu Feng, director of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University.

China will seek to gain support from Japan and South Korea as it faces U.S. efforts to raise tariffs on Chinese imports, including electric vehicles, Zhu said. “The U.S. has suppressed Chinese high-tech companies, including the recent tax increase on EVs, and U.S. policies have become increasingly protectionist.”

Japan is interested in keeping lines of communication open with China, especially given Tokyo’s concerns over potential Chinese military actions in the Taiwan Strait, Matsuda said.

“Japan’s diplomacy is to first establish deterrent frameworks against China, because China’s ambition to take over Taiwan is quite clear,” he said. “Deterrence should be supplemented by … communication.”

Tokyo and Seoul are likely to press Beijing to help rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and help curtail the growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.

But Li is unlikely to be receptive: Beijing has shown little interest in blocking North Korea’s military ambitions in recent years. China and Russia have consistently vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions to strengthen sanctions on North Korea for its repeated ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. prohibitions.

Still, South Korea hopes China will play a greater role on decreasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, said Lim Jeonghee, senior research associate at the Center for Foreign Policy and National Security at Asan Institute in Seoul: “The fundamental thing for Korea will be dealing with North Korea’s cooperation with Russia. South Korea wants China to act more at the Security Council.”

Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.

Pakistan arrests 11 militants involved in Chinese engineers’ killing, officials say

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3264184/pakistan-arrests-11-militants-involved-chinese-engineers-killing-officials-say?utm_source=rss_feed

Pakistani authorities have arrested 11 Islamist militants who were involved in the suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers in March in the north of the country which borders Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.

The announcement was made at a news conference held by Pakistan’s counterterrorism chief Rai Tahir along with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi.

The arrested men belong to local Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is an umbrella group of dozens of Sunni Islamists and sectarian militant groups.

The TTP aims to overthrow the government and replace it with a harsh brand of Islamic law.

Tahir said a mobile phone the suicide bomber had been using to communicate with his local handlers led to the arrest of the suspects.

The investigation and evidence show the militants had been taking instructions from TTP leaders in Afghanistan, he said.

Pakistani military had already said the attack was planned in Afghanistan and that the suicide bomber was also an Afghan national, a charge Kabul denies.

The TTP previously denied involvement and a spokesman said on Sunday that it had already explained its position on the attack.

“We have forensic evidence to prove that the TTP militants who were operating from Afghanistan are involved in it,” said Naqvi, the minister.

The suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a dam in northwest Pakistan in March, killing five of the engineers and a local diver.

Kabul previously said rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have soured in recent months. Islamabad says Kabul is not doing enough to tackle militant groups targeting Pakistan.

The minister said legal help will be sought from Kabul to arrest another three main members of the TTP who were directing the attacker and his facilitator from Afghanistan.

“We want Afghanistan to act against these terrorists. Either try them there or hand them over to us,” said the minister.

China has ‘huge responsibility’ to reshape world order, reform global bodies like UN, WTO: foreign envoys to Beijing

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3264166/china-has-huge-responsibility-reshape-world-order-reform-global-bodies-un-wto-foreign-envoys-beijing?utm_source=rss_feed

China has a “huge responsibility” to shape the future world order, as cracks in existing international systems reveal a dire need for reforms, envoys to Beijing told a multilateral forum on Sunday.

The German ambassador to China, Patricia Flor, said a “more efficient multilateral system” was needed to tackle the multiple crises facing the world, including climate change, the Ukraine war and the weakening of human and women’s rights.

Addressing these challenges would require greater cooperation and integration between countries, and a “peaceful adaptation” of global institutions, from the World Trade Organization to the UN, Flor said at the annual forum of the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG), a Beijing-based think tank.

“The way should be to look at a reform that makes our global order fit for purpose, for the tasks and the challenges that we confront,” she said.

“We need to address some of the inefficiencies [of current global frameworks],” Flor added, citing how the UN Security Council was “less able to act” in a time of heightened geopolitical tensions and crisis.

The war in Ukraine has revealed cracks in the Security Council, which has repeatedly failed to act swiftly and fulfil its responsibility of maintaining international peace and stability.

To that end, China – as a global power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council – had a “really big responsibility” to shape future changes, Flor said.

“Whatever China does matters for the multilateral order as a whole and for our ability to steer reforms in the multilateral system, because the more we have conflicts with China and among us, the weaker our ability to collectively address some of these issues.”

Flor was among ambassadors to China who had gathered for a round-table talk on multilateralism as part of the annual CCG forum in Beijing.

Her views were echoed by Turkish ambassador Ismail Hakki Musa, who said China had a “huge responsibility” to drive reforms of international institutions, which he described as “not representative at all”.

While the existing liberal international order may have prevented a third world war, it had “fallen short of offering sustainable peace and security for all”, he said, adding: “Current global governance mechanisms are unable to address global challenges timely, fairly and effectively.”

Calling for a robust global system based on solidarity rather than polarity, Musa noted that Turkey had continued to call for a reform of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions to create a “just and fair new order”.

Calls for UN reform, particularly for restructuring the Security Council, have grown louder in recent years. The council’s five permanent members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – represent the victors of World War II, and countries including Brazil, Germany, India and Japan have been pushing to join them.

The political, economic, environmental and technological challenges facing the international system indicated the “pressing necessity and inevitability” of a transformation, Musa told the forum, also attended by envoys from New Zealand, Argentina and Estonia.

“I think we almost agree on some inefficiencies of the current system. Let’s not wait for a major conflict in order to reform it,” he said, pointing out that new systems were previously established after such conflicts.

Jorge Toledo, the European Union envoy, also voiced similar sentiments, saying the world was moving “from globalisation to fragmentation”.

“That’s why we need to reinforce our multipolar system,” he said.

“A very simple way” to do that would be to reinforce, align, and insist on the basic principles of the UN Charter, Toledo said, adding that these should be applied universally, as a compromise would lead to fragmentation and conflict.

“China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has a special responsibility to protect the basic rules, the basic principles of the charter,” he said.

According to Siyabonga Cwele, the South African ambassador to China, the existing world order is facing challenges like growing unilateralism, geopolitical rivalries, and “at some times blatant violation of international law and application of double standards”.

The result, he said, was a steady erosion of trust between countries that had weakened the ability of the international community to address shared challenges.

While the UN had made significant contributions to issues like poverty and human rights, it must be modernised to be more effective and inclusive, Cwele said.

“We believe that multilateralism, which is the notion of collective solutions, must be at the heart of the engagement between member states … guided by the UN Charter,” he said. “New momentum and political will is then required to strengthen and transform multilateral relations.”

Trade, Taiwan in focus as Chinese Premier Li Qiang meets leaders of Japan, South Korea ahead of 3-way summit in Seoul

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3264174/trade-taiwan-focus-chinese-premier-li-qiang-meets-leaders-japan-south-korea-ahead-3-way-summit-seoul?utm_source=rss_feed

Trade and Taiwan were the highlights as Chinese Premier Li Qiang held talks with the leaders of Japan and South Korea in Seoul on Sunday, a day ahead of their first trilateral summit in more than four years.

While observers say Monday’s summit is unlikely to yield significant results amid geopolitical tensions, a return to the table after 2019 is still seen as a signal of the three neighbours’ interest in improving relations.

China and Japan agreed to launch a new round of high-level economic dialogue as Li held his first official meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday afternoon, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

According to Japan’s Kyodo News, Kishida also asked that China lift its ban on imports of Japanese seafood. The ban, imposed last year by an angry Beijing after Japan went ahead with plans to release radioactive water from its damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, has cast a shadow over bilateral relations.

Li demanded that Japan “fulfil its own responsibilities and obligations” on the issue, while also urging that it “properly handle the issues of history and Taiwan”, according to CCTV.

The Kyodo report said Kishida had mentioned the importance of a stable Taiwan Strait during his talks with Li and conveyed Tokyo’s “serious concern” about Beijing’s military expansion.

His remarks came a day after the People’s Liberation Army concluded two days of what observers described as the largest and closest military drills ever held near Taiwan. Beijing described the exercise as a “strong deterrent” against Taiwanese independence, but both Tokyo and Washington have expressed concerns.

Meeting South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol earlier in the day, Li urged Seoul to work with Beijing to “oppose turning economic and trade issues into political or security issues”, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

He also called for joint efforts to “safeguard the stability and smooth flow of the industrial chains and supply chains of the two countries and the world”.

Li and Yoon agreed to speed up the second phase of negotiations on a bilateral Free Trade Agreement.

Li said China was willing to strengthen cooperation with South Korea in areas such as high-end manufacturing, new energy, artificial intelligence and biomedicine, Xinhua reported. He also pledged to protect foreign investment, including that of South Korean companies – something he also emphasised in a separate meeting later with Samsung Group chairman Lee Jae-yong.

According to Xinhua, Yoon said South Korea would adhere to the “one-China principle”, which states that Taiwan is part of China.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Yoon called on China to play a role in the North Korean nuclear issue and Pyongyang’s military cooperation with Moscow. It also said Beijing and Seoul had agreed to set up a mechanism for diplomatic and security dialogue, with the first meeting to be held next month.

China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner and is seen as a key force in containing nuclear-armed North Korea.

However, regional geopolitics has felt the effects as the United States steps up security cooperation with Japan and South Korea, both US treaty allies, amid its worsening rivalry with China.

Hidden risks in Beijing’s relationship with its two East Asian neighbours over Taiwan have also surfaced, as William Lai Ching-te of Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party was sworn in as the island’s new leader on Monday.

Lai, whom Beijing regards as a “separatist” and “troublemaker”, has repeatedly expressed hopes for greater economic and security cooperation with Japan. Beijing has accused Lai of “ingratiating himself” with Japan, and lodged serious representations on Monday after Japanese and South Korean politicians attended his inauguration ceremony.

Beijing’s envoy to Tokyo, Wu Jianghao, accused Japan of “historical responsibility” over the Taiwan issue at a seminar on Saturday, urging that it “be careful in its words and actions” and to uphold its “serious political commitment to the one-China principle”. Wu has previously drawn protests from Tokyo for similar remarks.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, Japan and South Korea, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. But Washington opposes any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Hong Kong tycoon Victor Fung briefed Chinese President Xi Jinping on supply chain centre vision for city ahead of third plenum

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3264168/hong-kong-tycoon-victor-fung-briefed-chinese-president-xi-jinping-supply-chain-centre-vision-city?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong tycoon Victor Fung Kwok-king shared with President Xi Jinping his vision on how the city could become a multinational supply chain centre for mainland Chinese companies amid changing global trends, the Post has learned.

The chairman of Hong Kong supply chain management conglomerate Fung Group was among nine business and expert representatives who offered suggestions to Xi at a meeting in Jinan during a visit to the eastern province of Shandong last Thursday.

A source said Fung explained global changes in the sector and how Hong Kong could develop into a supply chain centre for medium-sized, export-focused businesses from the mainland and overseas multinationals.

The representatives’ suggestions, including proposals over Hong Kong being better integrated into the country’s development and urban-rural plans, could be included on the agenda of a key Communist Party meeting in July, the third plenum, according to a report from state news agency Xinhua.

During the meeting, Xi stressed the importance of “pursing an approach that is both goal- and problem-oriented to solve problems” and “focusing on deep-seated institutional obstacles and structural issues” in efforts to address the country’s economic problems.

The comments were seen as the most pro-business message delivered so far by Xi ahead of the third plenum, when the country’s leaders are expected to map out new reform agendas and set the course for future growth.

The insider said Fung’s suggestions were based on a key research focus of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Li & Fung Supply Chain Research Institute, the latter of which was launched on Friday.

Li & Fung is a member of Fung Group.

The institute aims to bring together the university’s research and Li & Fung’s industry expertise to spur change in the Greater Bay Area, China, Asia and the rest of the world, while also playing a part in the city’s development.

It also plans to develop business intelligence through industry research and policy studies, and nurture talent through education and partnership programmes.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in his budget blueprint in February that the government planned to develop the city into a multinational supply chain management centre in line with the trend of mainland manufacturing companies extending their production supply chains abroad.

He added the city had the capacity to offer full‑fledged and comprehensive professional support services to meet the business needs of such firms.

Commerce minister Algernon Yau Ying-wah also pointed to the role of the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and natural disasters in exposing existing vulnerabilities in supply chains and the need for cooperation during a talk at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last year in the United States.

China’s tech ambitions and AI rivalry with US: could a kids’ walnut farm game hold the key to the future?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3264042/chinas-tech-ambitions-and-ai-rivalry-us-could-kids-walnut-farm-game-hold-key-future?utm_source=rss_feed

Late last December, a group of primary students from a remote mountainous region in southwest China’s Yunnan province found themselves in unfamiliar territory.

Their school team was among 20 finalists competing in the championship round of a game development tournament in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen. Hosted by the China Association For Educational Technology and video gaming and social media giant Tencent, the tournaments had begun two days earlier with more than 100 schools taking part.

When the winner was finally announced, the children from Yunnan’s Jinlong Mingde Primary School in Dayao county were jubilant – they had clinched first place with a game about a walnut farm that they had designed.

The unlikely triumph over 102 other teams – some from big-city schools in Beijing and Guangdong – was all the more remarkable since urban schools, which enjoy comprehensive teaching resources, generally outperform at such competitions.

“While urban centres teem with opportunities to learn AI programming, rural towns often suffer from a lack of qualified teachers,” said Zhao Yushun, an internet content creator who volunteers as an online teacher of rural students.

The victory of the Yunnan team – from a remote rural school – was a sign that China’s efforts to support artificial intelligence (AI) education in some of the country’s most far-flung regions had begun bearing fruit.

China has taken a series of steps to help promote educational uniformity between rural and urban primary schools through online teaching and equipment donations.

The introduction of modern classrooms and improved access to advanced technology and programming guidance have resulted in better-educated rural students who can perform as well or better than their urban peers in tech competitions.

“The significance of these courses is that they allow rural children to see a bigger world, offering them more choices,” Zhao said.

As AI begins to permeate much of daily life, many children can take extra curricular classes to learn tech-related skills like programming, a subject once taught only at the university level. Still, such educational opportunities are mostly only available in well-resourced urban areas.

In 2021, China had more than 80,000 rural primary schools, according to the education ministry. The challenge has been to ensure that the rapid technological change happening across the country is also reflected in rural classrooms.

One such educational equality initiative is “Future Classroom”, a project funded by Tencent Games to build digital teaching facilities in rural schools.

Under the programme, classrooms in 43 rural schools across 15 provinces have been equipped with futuristic technology, including computers, 3D printers, laser cutters, VR headsets and programmable hardware.

This project also provides teaching courses and holds competitions to stimulate student interest in learning about the advanced technology.

One of the annual competitions – the Dual Teacher Science and Innovation Camp – involves partnering a rural teacher with an urban guide teacher, who provides remote technical instruction so that the rural teacher can guide students in learning new skills.

By the time of the December contest, the students from the Jinlong Mingde Primary School, in Yunnan’s Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture, had developed a game based on the new tech skills they had acquired. Their “Mathematics Walnut Farm game” – based on Yunnan’s speciality walnuts – allowed players to learn maths while interacting with the design.

The team’s success at the major tech competition is one example of how comprehensive training – with hardware as well as online teaching support – is helping rural students to display creativity on a par with city peers who have much easier access to superior educational resources.

“First Lesson in AI Programming”, a charity project launched by the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation in collaboration with Tencent, for instance, recruits volunteers for remote teaching to help youngsters experience AI programming from scratch.

The courses aim to help cultivate student interest early in their development, but it also has another objective: to discover hidden AI talent in China’s vast rural areas – a long-term strategic move that could yield results in future AI rivalry with the United States.

The tech courses do not try to teach complex programming skills, but rather focus on cultivating children’s interests and broadening their horizons, allowing them to discover a world previously unavailable to them.

Thoughtful, well-designed course materials help students engage in scripted interactions that last about an hour, allowing them to understand AI functions and learn basic programming logic.

Zhao, the internet content creator, had taught an online AI science popularisation class under the First Lesson project to a primary school in Fengjie, in southwestern Chongqing municipality, in December.

Later, he visited the school in person. Fengjie county is famous for its dramatic, rugged and mountainous landscape along the Yangtze River. But while the terrain offers spectacular scenery, it is also a hindrance to local development.

It took a challenging six-hour journey from Chongqing’s airport through mountain roads for Zhao to reach the remote school.

Two-thirds of the students at the school are “left-behind children”, whose parents have migrated around the country for work.

But even here, far from the flashy tech hubs of the country’s biggest cities, children now have a ticket to China’s AI revolution.

“For many here, becoming migrant labour, like their parents, seems to be the only path in life,” Zhao said.

But the science classes may open up new horizons. “The simplicity of these science classes, void of complex coding, allows children to grasp the basics of AI,” Zhao added.

Aside from providing educational resources, the online courses have helped the children feel valued, and eager to to embrace new things, a local teacher told Zhao.

According to the First Lesson project website, the programme has expanded to 1,600 schools across the country. By the end of March, nearly 10,000 children from about 300 classrooms had taken part in the remote AI courses.

Liu Zhe, a principal at the Xinhe County Experimental Middle School, in northern Hebei province, told of a long-standing challenge before the drive to improve access to educational resources for underserved rural students took root.

Students who performed well at his school would often struggle to complete computer assignments once they entered college – sometimes requiring up to a week to finish tasks that their urban peers could complete within an hour.

“Before college, concepts like digitalisation and programming were abstract things for these students, who didn’t have the chance to use computers until university, leading to slower learning and even mockery [from classmates],” he said.

Then, Liu’s school was selected to participate in the Future Classroom project, giving students access to some of the most advanced AI technologies.

In the Dual Teacher Science and Innovation Camp competition, students from his school, who had been paired with a guide teacher from a Macau middle school, designed a water-dispensing robotic dog. The invention won them the top prize in Hebei.

“The most important aspect was the learning process itself, during which our students saw the same world as city kids,” said Yang Juanlu, a guide teacher for the school.

“Whether or not they achieve high marks, their attempts represent a significant step out of isolation and broaden their life’s possibilities.”

New research suggests that prehistoric humans in China survived Gobi Desert by adapting technological development

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/environment/article/3263284/new-research-suggests-prehistoric-humans-china-survived-gobi-desert-adapting-technological?utm_source=rss_feed

Few places in the world are as environmentally harsh as China’s Gobi Desert, and yet, long before humans developed rudimentary weapons, invented the wheel, or mastered agriculture, they were surviving and thriving in the Gobi Desert.

So, how did these early Chinese hunter-gatherers manage to navigate the severe living conditions? A new study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science in late April gives immense credit to the people’s ability to leverage a technology called microblades and adapt production to meet environmental demands.

Microblades — small rudimentary knives made by chipping stones to form a tool with sharp edges and, if possible, a pointed end — were often used for hunting, fishing, and possibly forest clearance during gathering expeditions.

In other words, they were essential for prehistoric people’s ability to feed themselves.

“The [Gobi Desert] landscape consists of sparsely vegetated erosion basins, former lake beds, gravel plains, dune fields, and less arid desert steppe areas. The harsh, cold winters, combined with low vegetative biomass, present distinctive challenges for prehistoric hunter-gatherers,” wrote the researchers.

During this time, the Younger Dryas climate event (around 11,700-12,900 years ago), the most severe interruption of the Earth’s general warming trend following the Ice Age, was in full force. There is a lack of evidence of human activity in the Gobi Desert from these years, suggesting humans struggled to survive in the region.

But, it wasn’t entirely uninhabitable, and microblade production evolutions showcase how humans adapted their essential tools to navigate a changing environment in a naturally harsh geographical region.

“In response to these challenging conditions, hunter-gatherers seemed to adopt a more intensive approach to raw material exploitation, possibly driven by the need for resource optimisation during a period of environmental stress,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers analysed tools excavated between 2013 and 2017 at Pigeon Mountain Locality 10, located in the Ningxia autonomous region in north-central China. They found that the prehistoric humans who lived between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago exhibited an ability to make a wide variety of microblades according to their surroundings.

Because of the cold, arid landscape, evidence suggests the people were more willing to discard raw materials and possibly used microblades ad hoc, making them when required and ditching them if the weather began to worsen.

“This adaptation allowed them to navigate the harsh conditions and optimise the use of available resources,” the researchers wrote.

This idea was further supported by the fact that the raw materials used to make the blades were localised — typically quartz and quartzite, and sometimes sandstone and hornfels — suggesting that people did not carry the tools for future use when they travelled, a behaviour seen in other excavation sites.

The tools were created from a large stone that would act as the “core”. The people would use hammers to chip off segments of the core into knife-like shapes, a process called “pressure flaking.”

Scrapers were then deployed to retouch the microblades and make sure they had sharp edges.

The blades in China are typically about 5cm long and were often attached to antlers to create a knife-like tool.

“[The] consistency in the use of pressure techniques and the prevalence of specific core types suggest a deliberate and standardised approach in microblade production within this cultural context,” the researchers wrote about the tools found at Pigeon Mountain Locality 10.

Microblades were first discovered in China in the 1920s, but their origination is poorly understood, with theories suggesting it started in modern-day Siberia, China, or even Japan.

Archaeologists are also unclear when it first emerged, with potential dates ranging from 18,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Chinese state media takes aim at US overcapacity claims as wary G7 insists on playing field level

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3264151/chinese-state-media-takes-aim-us-overcapacity-claims-wary-g7-insists-playing-field-level?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese state media took another shot at US claims that the world’s second-biggest economy is exporting its excess industrial capacity, saying Washington was exaggerating the issue to blunt China’s edge.

The commentary in Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily on Sunday came a day after G7 finance chiefs expressed concerns about China’s “non-market policies and practices” that undermine “our workers, industries, and economic resilience”.

The finance chiefs said they would continue to monitor the potential negative impacts of overcapacity and would consider taking steps to ensure a level playing field, in line with World Trade Organization principles.

They also raised concerns about trade ties between Beijing and Moscow.

The overcapacity claims and counterclaims are the latest exchanges in the international row over China’s alleged exports of subsidised electric vehicles, solar panels and new energy batteries.

In the People’s Daily article, Jin Ruiting, a researcher from the National Development and Reform Commission, said the overcapacity problem did not exist.

Jin, from the NDRC’s Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said the capacity utilisation rate of China’s new energy industry was higher than that in other countries, and in global terms, production capacity was well short of meeting market demand.

“The US efforts to hype up the ‘overcapacity’ of China’s new energy industries is its usual tactic to suppress other countries’ advantageous industries,” he said, saying it was motivated by US “hegemonic thinking”, a term referring to a desire to remain dominant.

“China has provided high-quality, affordable green products for countries around the world, and has contributed greatly to the global green and low-carbon transformation.”

Jin also argued that China’s new energy industry had reached its position through continued, rapid technological innovation in a fully competitive market.

“China’s new energy industry obtained its advantages through real skills,” he said, adding that Chinese manufacturing covered a range of categories and the length of the industrial chain.

But China is struggling to convince the United States and the European Union about the virtues of its new energy products.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who attended the G7 meeting in Italy, raised the overcapacity issue with Chinese officials during a trip to China early last month.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has also announced it will impose high punitive tariffs on more than a dozen Chinese products, including electric vehicles.

China has said the overcapacity argument raised by American politicians is “clearly politically-motivated”, “misleading”, and meant to “tarnish and suppress the Chinese economy”.

Meanwhile, the EU is investigating subsidies for Chinese EV and wind turbine manufacturers. The inquiry was launched late last year and so far no action has been taken.

Asked on Wednesday about the G7’s overcapacity agenda, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the discussions were “diametrically opposed to facts and the laws of economics and is pure protectionism”.

Wang said “overcapacity” was just a pretext for the US to try to coerce G7 members into “creating fences and restrictions for Chinese new energy products”.

China’s Yangtze River, biggest freshwater lakes Poyang and Dongting at risk as fishing, sand mining bans flouted: report

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3264140/chinas-yangtze-river-biggest-freshwater-lakes-poyang-and-dongting-risk-fishing-sand-mining-bans?utm_source=rss_feed

Environmental degradation is threatening China’s Yangtze River and its two largest freshwater lakes, a regulator’s report has warned.

The Central Supervision Office of Ecological and Environmental Protection, in a report issued earlier this month, said that a combination of pollution and illegal activity was causing serious damage to the Poyang and Dongting lakes, which connect to the Yangtze.

Poyang Lake, in eastern Jiangxi province, is China’s largest such freshwater body and plays a vital role in regulating the Yangtze’s water levels, preserving biodiversity and maintaining the regional ecological balance.

However, according to the report from the centre’s inspection groups, “the illegality of low dykes in the Poyang Lake is a mere formality, fishing bans in key waters and aquatic life protection are not fully implemented, and the problem of agricultural pollution is prominent”.

Low dykes built to retain water had affected water quality in the lake and obstructed connectivity for river and lake systems, an inspection team found during an undercover operation in April. The local government then carried out its own investigation, only to find 44 illegal dykes still standing.

The county of Duchang, for instance, had wide swathes of illegal lowland enclosures in the Nanji Wetland National Nature Reserve that had yet to be “thoroughly cleared and rectified”, the report said.

Lack of effective enforcement of fishing bans is another threat facing Poyang. In 2021, China imposed a 10-year commercial fishing ban on the Yangtze – the first ever for Asia’s longest river – in a bid to protect its aquatic life. The ban has been applied at the main river course and key tributaries.

Poyang Lake is home to the endangered Yangtze finless porpoise, while nearly 98 per cent of all Siberian cranes, a critically endangered species, spend winters there. But the creatures continue to face threats from poaching gangs that use dragnets, electrofishing and other methods to catch fish illegally, the report said.

Further, excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides in the lake’s catchment area has led to high phosphorus concentrations in the water so that it no longer meets quality standards.

“Relevant departments … do not fully understand the importance of ‘placing the restoration of the ecological environment of the Yangtze River in an overwhelming position’,” the ecological report said.

“They do not pay enough attention to the construction of ecological civilisation, and there is a lack of supervision and ineffective work. Insufficient efforts to overcome difficulties have led to long-term problems related to the protection and restoration of Poyang Lake,” it added, referring to the concept of social transformation that prioritises the well-being of both human and non-human life.

Apart from human activities, the lakes and the habitats of numerous species are also threatened by the impact of climate change, including frequent floods and drought. Poyang Lake has in recent years recorded earlier and more severe dry seasons, which could affect irrigation water and drive migratory birds to artificial wetlands, raising the risk of virus transmission.

For Dongting Lake, which is in central Hunan province and second in size to Poyang, the top threat was illegal sand mining that had hollowed out the beaches, and a return of illegal tree-planting that had destroyed the local ecology, the central report said.

An undercover mission by an inspection team earlier this month revealed that illegal sand mining was rampant in the Lishui estuary wetland reserve in Changde city, involving an area of 119,000 acres (over 48,000 hectares), with nearly 20 million tonnes of sand removed. Quarrying and sand excavation are prohibited in nature reserves.

The team also found that more than 2,000 acres, or nearly one-fourth, of Mengjiangan beach in the estuary area had been hollowed out by construction companies, seriously damaging the natural landscape and ecological balance of the wetlands.

In the 1980s, the area was planted with the European and American black poplars to support the paper industry. This was banned after an inspection report in 2017 said the trees could speed up the drying of river beach wetlands.

However, though the trees were subsequently relocated, the ecological restoration work had not been effectively implemented, the report said.

According to Shanghai-based media outlet The Paper, there have even been illegal planting of other trees used in papermaking, such as maple and willow, in some areas along the lake.

The natural shorelines of the Yangtze and several of its major tributaries had also been severely encroached upon, especially by “excess occupation and unauthorised construction”, the central report said. Some docks exceeded the planned area and had been built without proper permits, it added.

For instance, the Jinqiao dock was found to occupy about 560 metres (1,837 feet) of the natural river bank, despite being allocated only 200 metres in the planning document. This over-occupation was not an isolated case but a common issue in Yunyang and Fengjie counties in the sprawling city of Chongqing, the inspectors said.

Industrial and domestic waste were also found to have seriously polluted the river and lake systems. In Yunyang county, the lack of proper pollution prevention measures in some docks meant industrial and domestic waste water was directly discharged into the Xiaojiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze.

Meixi River, another important tributary, was threatened by two other docks storing coal and sand without proper sealing and water spraying systems in place.

The report highlighted how existing regulations and orders to rectify illegal dock construction had failed to effectively address the problem in full.

In response, government departments in multiple cities and counties cited in the report have expressed their commitment to rectifying the issues.

Chinese funding keeps Cameroon’s deep seaport expansion project afloat

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3263943/chinese-funding-keeps-cameroons-deep-seaport-expansion-project-afloat?utm_source=rss_feed

A small fishing town in southwest Cameroon is counting on Chinese funding to transform itself into a major Central African sea hub.

The Kribi Deep Seaport, on Africa’s Atlantic coast, is being built by Chinese state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), and largely funded by China Eximbank which has provided around US$1.48 billion over the past decade.

It is hoped the port will provide relief to Douala, Cameroon’s main port around 150km (93 miles) to the north, and that it will serve as a gateway for landlocked neighbours including Chad and the Central African Republic.

The first phase of the port was completed in 2014 and has been in operation since 2018. Pascal Balla Ondoua, director of studies, projects and cooperation for Kribi Port Authority, said the second phase of the project will make the port bigger and deeper.

“We hope that operations in the second phase will start in the first quarter of 2025,” Ondoua told the Post in an interview at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.

The second phase, once complete, will double the port’s capacity – with the hope that Kribi will then attract more transshipment cargo and larger vessels.

It is something the Cameroonian government is banking on, according to Ondoua.

The expanded port, improved road network and an industrial zone near the port should all work together to improve the financial fortunes of Kribi, which is currently best known for its palm-lined sandy beaches that attract tourists, and for its fishing industry.

Going by the schedule, Ondoua said: “CHEC will complete works at the new terminals by the end of the year and after that commercial activities will begin next year.”

The second phase of the project will see the quay line extended, with another 700m (2,296 feet) to be devoted to container traffic as well as storage areas spanning more than 30 hectares (74 acres).

As part of the expansion, CHEC is also building an aluminium terminal and a hydrocarbon terminal, additional buildings, extending roads and acquiring more handling equipment such as wharf gantries and park gantries.

There are also two offshore terminals used for the export of oil from Cameroon and Chad, and an offshore gas terminal for liquefaction and export of gas by Golar LNG and Perenco – liquefied natural gas producers in Cameroon.

“Our ambition is to become the logistics hub in the region. We already receive a lot of transshipment cargo destined to other ports,” Ondoua said. “When Gabon had issues last year, a lot of cargo was shipped via Kribi. But we also receive goods for Nigeria.”

Kribi port is one of the Belt and Road Initiative projects that illustrate a financing model gaining usage among Chinese companies and lenders, in which Chinese companies move beyond just engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts to diversify into direct ownership and operations.

According to the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Cameroon government initially intended to award the operation of Kribi port to a consortium of two French companies. But when Eximbank demanded that CHEC also participate, the Chinese contractor joined as a minor shareholder in the port operation joint venture with a 20 per cent stake.

CHEC, together with French group CMA CGM and its subsidiary Bolloré Transport & Logistics, were granted the funding and operational rights of Kribi Container Terminal for 25 years under a public-private partnership.

Over the past decade, Cameroon has borrowed around US$1.48 billion from China Eximbank to build the first and second phases of the port, as well as a major highway leading up to it.

China Eximbank is providing two loans worth US$674.5 million in all – a US$524.5 million preferential export buyer’s credit and a US$150 million concessional loan for the expansion of the port. It had advanced US$423 million for the building of the first phase.

A 2023 study by CARI said Chinese banks required Chinese contractor’s involvement in both construction and operation as a prerequisite for lending to overseas railway projects.

Ondoua said the Chinese company also built the Kribi-Lolabe highway to connect the port to other parts of the country. China Eximbank advanced US$385.8 million for the construction of the highway, which serves as an important traffic artery in the Kribi region.

“They are also helping us develop land at the port. They are good partners in developing our port,” Ondoua said, referring to CHEC. “Our cooperation with China already has good results.”

He said the first phase of the port has already attracted investors in cement, agribusiness and cocoa processing.

“We want to develop more spaces for investors,” he said, flagging a major plan to develop 1,500 hectares of land in the Kribi Industrial Zone.

The Kribi Port Authority has since signed memorandums of understanding with firms including CHEC, pan-African industrial zones developer Arise, and Tanger-Med, a Moroccan industrial port complex, to develop the Kribi Industrial Zone.

Ondoua said a number of other Chinese companies had shown interest in Kribi port.

“We have been receiving delegations of Chinese companies who want to set up factories,” Ondoua said.

“One of the main areas of development in our port is minerals, especially iron ore. One of the companies that will develop and manage iron ore is a Chinese company,” he said, referring to the massive iron ore projects near Kribi that have attracted Chinese businesses.

A subsidiary of the state-owned Chinese miner Sinosteel Corporation Limited is developing the Kribi-Lobe iron ore mine, just 40km from Kribi. In 2022, the Cameroonian government signed a US$680 million iron ore mining deal with Sinosteel to extract 10 million tonnes of iron ore each year for 20 years.

Meet Liu Yang, China’s first woman in space, mother of 2, as she discusses intricacies of balancing career and family

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3262617/meet-liu-yang-chinas-first-woman-space-mother-2-she-discusses-intricacies-balancing-career-and?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s first woman in space, Liu Yang, has shared insights into managing the delicate balance between her career and family commitments in a recent interview.

Liu, 45, was asked how she managed to juggle looking after her nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son alongside her high-flying profession, in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV).

It is a “false proposition”, she said.

“I cannot balance my career and my family by myself. My husband and parents have my back so that I can fly higher and further,” Liu said.

“Such questions should not be put just to mothers and wives.”

Her answers resonated on mainland social media. In particular, with female observers.

“I was surprised that a woman is asked such a question no matter how successful she is. Liu’s answer speaks for so many women,” one person said.

Liu became the first Chinese woman in space in 2012, as a crew member of Shenzhou 9. In 2022, she returned as one of the Shenzhou 14 astronauts.

In the decade between, Liu became a mother of two, achieved a doctoral degree in sociology from China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, and was part-time vice-president of the All-China Women’s Federation.

She had married fellow People’s Liberation Army Air Force pilot, Zhang Hua, in 2004. They put their plans to have a child on hold when Liu decided to become an astronaut in 2010.

Born in 1978, Liu is the only child of a working-class family in central China’s Henan province.

In her final year of secondary school, the PLA Air Force came to her city to recruit pilots. Liu’s teacher, Wu Qiuyue, signed her up.

Being a pilot had not been her dream, but Liu began aspiring to become an astronaut when a university teacher told the class about the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

“Chinese women should go into space, as China is where Chang’e – the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology – is from,” she said.

When preparing for the Shenzhou 14 mission, Liu’s training involved practising each task hundreds of times to ensure every mission was perfectly executed.

During a 48-hour desert survival training session, the two male crew members Chen Dong and Cai Xuzhe, offered to carry more weight, but Liu declined.

“Space will not treat you nicely because you are a woman,” she said.

Liu continues to make empowering speeches about the female contribution to scientific progress, and encourages women to challenge gender stereotypes.

She has also expressed gratitude to her family’s support on many occasions.

Her husband accompanied her to daily physical training and cared for her hospitalised mother while Liu carried on with the space mission.

He also comforted her when she worried she might not return safely to Earth.

Zhang wrote Liu a card for her to read on her birthday during her second space mission, which lasted for 183 days.

“We can’t celebrate your birthday with you, but some people are destined to belong to a world larger than their family, and you are one of them. Wherever the spaceship flies, our love flies with you,” he wrote.

‘Emotional power’: China’s Covid wounds reopened in tense, divisive ‘An Unfinished Film’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3264028/emotional-power-chinas-covid-wounds-reopened-tense-divisive-unfinished-film?utm_source=rss_feed

A new independent Chinese movie – about an unfinished film that focuses on unfinished business during the pandemic – has turned the spotlight back on Covid-19 and China’s response to a pandemic that has left deep divisions in society.

An Unfinished Film, by director Lou Ye – who is known for his straightforward portrayals of problematic events in contemporary China, including the controversial Covid lockdowns that began in Wuhan in early 2020 – was shown at a special screening on May 17 at the annual Cannes Film Festival in France.

The movie has not been approved for public screenings in China and it is doubtful it would be, according to industry insiders, as content related to the film has already been removed from the internet there. However, those efforts had not stopped nationalistic condemnation of the film, with some labelling the director a “traitor” who panders to the West.

Much of the film focuses on the mobile phone screen of a film crew member character. On the phone, the audience sees actual news reports and short videos that were posted during the Covid-19 pandemic in China between 2020 and 2022 – most of which were later removed by censors.

Nationalist online commenters have argued that Lou’s film was intended as a critique of China’s zero-Covid policy – which included mandatory testing, quarantine and strict border controls – and was “in line with Western criticism” of China’s human rights record and political system.

It was not clear if any of the commenters had seen the film.

In a series of Weibo posts last week “Hongkang010”, a nationalist film blogger with nearly 200,000 followers, called Lou a “traitor to China” who “gives the Western media the material to attack our system”.

The blogger threatened to report Lou to the China Film Administration, the country’s top film management and censorship body, and called for a ban on the release of another Lou film in production. The posts were shared thousands of times and attracted many comments.

But others have praised Lou’s work as a vivid depiction of some of the tragedies caused by the harsh zero-Covid rules.

One critic who saw the film at Cannes said on Weibo that Lou’s film had “emotional power” because “my memory and the film’s presentation are integrated”.

“Lou’s choice to draw on public memory is undoubtedly a daring one, as people’s memories are different, especially when it comes to evaluating those three years,” the critic said.

At the peak of the zero-Covid policy, social media platforms Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), WeChat and Weibo were filled with accounts of tragic events said to be caused by the strict limits imposed on people’s daily lives, especially during the two-month lockdown in Shanghai in 2022.

The videos were quickly removed by censors after they had been posted, but not before people had preserved them with screenshots and recordings.

“Richard”, a film critic from China who saw the premiere at Cannes, said he heard many sobs, at mention of Li Wenliang, a doctor who had issued early warnings about the pandemic but was later rebuked by Wuhan police for “spreading rumours”. Li died of Covid-19 in February 2020, prompting widespread tributes.

Richard asked that his real name not be used due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Other incidents said to be featured in the film include the September 2022 bus crash in which 27 people were killed on their way to a mandatory quarantine facility in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

In November of that year, a fire at a residential building killed 10 people in Urumqi, in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where some of the country’s strictest lockdown measures had been in effect.

The fire later triggered anti-Covid lockdown protests in Shanghai, which soon spread to other major Chinese cities.

Richard said Lou’s film showed the fire and subsequent mourning activities for the victims in several cities, but then “it stops there”.

He also said the film did not show the waves of public protests that had erupted amid the ensuing economic hardship and restrictions on personal freedoms, during which slogans had appeared that called for political change.

Beijing dropped most of its Covid-related controls in December, 2022 and reopened its borders in January 2023, lifting the mandatory quarantine on entry. Analysts have attributed this to political pressure from the protests and growing economic difficulties.

Critics of the film, who supported the zero-Covid policy, argued that easing the restrictions led to countless deaths but many noted the deaths were because of Beijing’s lack of preparedness in terms of vaccines and medical facilities.

In a popular post, one blogger with nearly 300,000 followers, praised the Chinese government for “protecting our lives during the three years”.

Official Chinese government data shows 83,150 deaths linked to Covid-19 between mid-December 2022 and early February last year, a figure widely considered to be an underestimate.

At the end of 2022, researchers at the University of Hong Kong estimated that a mass infection within two months of mainland China abandoning its zero-Covid policy could result in 970,000 deaths.

A tally by the Post last year found that a dozen provincial regions had stopped providing public data, such as cremation numbers, for the fourth quarter of 2022, further clouding true death statistics.

Beijing has consistently maintained that both its pursuit of zero-Covid and its abrupt relaxation of controls in 2022 were the right decisions.

Chinese and Japanese leaders travel to South Korea for their first trilateral meeting since 2019

https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-japan-china-trilateral-48b0f5a9019ff030f69edc045bdc2166Chinese Premier Li Qiang waves as he arrives for a trilateral meeting at the Seoul airport in Seongnam, South Korea, Sunday, May 26, 2024. Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet next week in Seoul for their first trilateral talks since 2019. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

2024-05-26T03:44:15Z

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Chinese and Japanese leaders were set to arrive in Seoul and meet with South Korea’s president separately on Sunday, a day before they gather for their first trilateral meeting in more than four years.

No major announcement is expected from Monday’s trilateral South Korea-China-Japan meeting. But just resuming their highest-level, three-way talks is a good sign and suggests the three Asian neighbors are intent on improving their relations.

A trilateral leaders’ meeting was supposed to take place annually following their inaugural gathering in 2008. But the meeting has stalled since the last one in December 2019 in Chengdu, China because of the COVID-19 pandemic and complex ties among the three countries.

After their arrivals in Seoul on Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are to hold bilateral talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to discuss ways to promote cooperation and other issues, according to South Korean officials. Li and Kishida are expected to meet bilaterally as well.

When Yoon, Li and Kishida meet for a trilateral session on Monday, they’ll discuss cooperation in six specific areas — people-to-people exchanges, climate change, trade, health issues, technology and disaster responses, according to South Korea’s presidential office.

Sensitive topics like North Korea’s nuclear program, China’s claim over self-governed Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea are not among the official agenda items. But some experts say North Korea’s nuclear program — which poses a major security threat to South Korea and Japan — will likely be discussed among the three leaders though it’s unclear whether and how much they would publicize the contents of their discussions.

The three neighbors are important trading partners to one another, and their cooperation is key to promoting regional peace and prosperity. But they’ve been repeatedly embroiled in bitter disputes over a range of historical and diplomatic issues originating from Japan’s wartime atrocities. China’s rise and a U.S. push reinforce its Asian alliances have also significantly impacted their three-way ties in recent years.

South Korea and Japan are both vibrant democracies and key U.S. military allies in the region, but their ties in past years suffered a huge setback over the issue of Korean forced laborers during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial period. Bilateral ties have warmed dramatically since last year, when Yoon took a major step toward moving beyond historical grievances to cope with shared challenges like North Korean nuclear threats, the intensifying Chinese-U.S. rivalry and supply chain vulnerabilities.

Since 2022, North Korea has been engaged in an unprecedentedly provocative run of weapons tests to build powerful nuclear missiles capable of hitting key sites in the mainland U.S., South Korea and Japan. In response, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. have expanded their trilateral security partnership, but that has drawn rebukes from China and North Korea.

South Korea, Japan and the U.S. want China — North Korea’s major ally and economic pipeline — to use its leverage to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But China is believed to have clandestinely supported the impoverished North.

Experts say South Korea, China and Japan now share a need to improve ties. South Korea and Japan want better ties with China because it is their biggest trading partner. China, for its part, likely believes a further strengthening of the South Korea-Japan-U.S. cooperation would hurt its national interests.

“With complex changes unfolding in our region and beyond, we hope that the forthcoming summit meeting will inject new impetus into the trilateral cooperation and provide better ways towards mutual benefit for the three countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday.

A closer Asean-China community with a shared future will lead the trend of times of building a community with a shared future for mankind

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3264054/closer-asean-china-community-shared-future-will-lead-trend-times-building-community-shared-future?utm_source=rss_feed

Building a community with a shared future for mankind is the noble goal pursued by China in advancing major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics for the new era.

The world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation with emerging hotspot issues and intensifying geopolitical conflicts, as well as rising instability and uncertainty. We humankind are at a new crossroads. Bearing the future of the world in mind, President Xi Jinping put forth the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, which answers the question of our times – “where is humanity headed” – and gives China’s proposal for how to solve the questions of “what kind of world to build and how to build it”.

Since its inception in 2013, building a community with a shared future for mankind has developed from a Chinese initiative into an international consensus, from a promising vision into substantive actions, and from a conceptual proposition into a scientific system. It has been included in resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly for seven consecutive years and has given a strong boost to global governance in various sectors.

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations enjoy geographical proximity, cultural affinity and a common future, which makes us a natural community with a shared future. In 2013, President Xi proposed the vision of building a closer Asean-China community with a shared future. Up to now, China has reached important consensus separately with seven Asean members on building such a community, which has laid a solid foundation for a closer Asean-China community with a shared future.

We have a rich historical heritage for building a closer Asean-China community with a shared future. The Chinese culture of harmony aligns with the value of unity in the diversity of Asean, which constitutes a cultural gene of a community with a shared future. Since the establishment of dialogue relations in 1991, the Asean-China relationship has achieved leapfrog developments. In 2021, we took the lead in establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership.

China and Asean have been each other’s largest trading partner for four consecutive years. The Laos-China Railway, Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and other projects under the Belt and Road Initiative keep unleashing dividends. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free-trade agreement, has come into full effect. These have delivered tangible benefits to more than two billion people in 11 countries.

We jointly overcame the Asian Financial Crisis and addressed various natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, we firmly stood together and offered each other support, which created resonances of a community with a shared future across the region.

Building a closer Asean-China community is based on our common needs. China is advancing Chinese modernisation through high-quality development, and Asean is committed to its motto “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”. We are facing similar challenges of promoting economic recovery, improving people’s livelihood, and maintaining regional peace and stability. China will continue to contribute to the efforts of Asean community building with Chinese modernisation, and support Asean’s modernisation along its own development path, so that an Asean-China community with a shared future will benefit more people in the region.

There are bright prospects awaiting a closer Asean-China community. As members of the Global South, we provide each other with important development opportunities and have tremendous potential for cooperation. China is vigorously developing new quality productive forces, while Asean is accelerating industrial transformation and upgrading.

It is important for both sides to seize opportunities to enhance strategic synergy and integrated development, and lead cooperation in emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, digital economy, blue economy, and low-carbon transformation to sustain the region as an epicentre of growth.

We must advance true multilateralism and open regionalism, jointly implement the three important global initiatives, and work together to promote an equal and orderly multipolar world. We must also push for universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation to continuously inject stability and certainty into the world.

The Lao PDR, the rotating chair of Asean, has designated this year’s theme as “Asean: Enhancing Connectivity and Resilience”. It is also the Asean-China Year of People-to-People Exchanges. China is strengthening synergy and cooperation with Asean around the above themes, committed to creating fruitful results, promoting exchanges and mutual learning among civilisations and people-to-people bonds, and injecting rich connotations into the East Asia cooperation as well as the Asean-China community.

Where the heart goes, the action follows. China is ready to work closely with Asean to promote a higher-level comprehensive strategic partnership, build a closer Asean-China community, and lead the trend of the times towards a community with a shared future for mankind.

Hou Yanqi is a Chinese diplomat serving as the ambassador to Asean.

Self-styled China education expert with violent approach to teaching exposed as ex-primary school teacher

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3262594/self-styled-china-education-expert-violent-approach-teaching-exposed-simply-ex-primary-school?utm_source=rss_feed

A self-styled educational key opinion leader (KOL) in China who uses physical punishment against students has sparked an online debate about parenting and educational styles on the mainland.

Zhao Juying, 55, from Gansu province in north-central China, has about 300,000 followers on Douyin who watch videos of her visits to students around the country.

Her profile says that she is a senior education expert with 33 years of experience in the field. She claims to have given more than 1,000 lectures and boasts that she has a son who mastered four languages by the age of seven.

Zhao also says she is a lecturer in home schooling who has been certified by the American Positive Discipline Association, and is a senior psychotherapy counsellor.

However, there is no record of her on the association’s website.

In fact, she is a retired primary school teacher, according to the mainland news outlet, The Paper.

Zhao claims that during her home visits she is able to rapidly improve a child’s academic performance.

She also believes that education without punishment is incomplete.

In one of the videos, Zhao is seen using a ruler to hit a boy’s palms and asking him to smash his toys with a hammer. She also installs a surveillance camera in his room.

In another video, she tears up a girl’s comic book, and criticises the child for being childish.

Her punitive style of education has sparked a heated discussion on mainland social media, with many people calling it bullying.

“This suffocating education style has long been outdated, and people like Zhao are not worthy of being teachers,” one online observer said on Weibo.

“Love and gentleness are the best medicines for educating children,” said another.

Officials also condemned Zhao’s educating style.

“Using the pretext of home visits to perpetrate violence will only bring physical and psychological harm to students,” said a China state media report on Weibo.

The Education Bureau of Gansu province has begun investigating the authenticity of Zhao’s identity and qualifications.

In China, “Tiger Mum” and “Wolf Dad” are terms used to refer to strict parents who employ harsh methods to push their children to excel academically.

The country’s most famous “Wolf Dad” Xiao Baiyou believes that physical discipline is the greatest form of love a parent can give to a child.

Xiao established rules when his children reached four years old, dishing out severe beatings with a cane and a feather duster if they failed to complete daily homework.

Of his four children, three gained admission to the prestigious Peking University, while another was accepted into one of the nation’s premier music academies.

In recent years, as traditional grades-oriented education gradually gives way to a different style, fewer parents are resorting to tough love to help their children navigate academia.

Young Chinese parents are more likely to have a “Buddha-like” parenting approach, prioritising their children’s physical and mental well-being.

Liao Wenlong, 25, from Wuhan in central China, whose son is three months old, told the Post: “My educational philosophy is to go with the flow, avoid forcing or spoiling. Just do the best I can within my own capabilities for my son.”

China breeds leaner, meatier pig to bring home the bacon in food security drive

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3264000/china-breeds-leaner-meatier-pig-bring-home-bacon-food-security-drive?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese researchers have successfully bred a pig that can provide a large yield of lean protein for its meat-hungry population – a development official media has trumpeted as a boon to the country’s pursuit of greater self-reliance in agriculture and a potential replacement for Western imports.

Dubbed a “home-made chip” for hog breeding – drawing a direct parallel with the country's quest for advancement in semiconductors and other computing components – the new Lansi breed could perform better on the market than popular pig varieties from Europe and the United States, the Science and Technology Daily reported last week.

Lansi pigs have the potential to make up a large share of commercial farming in China, the world’s top producer and consumer of pork, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology said. More than 90 per cent of hogs currently used in commercial breeding come from overseas.

The new breed grows faster, produces more lean meat and shows stronger resistance to disease compared to mainstream imports, geneticists from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences were quoted as saying.

The Lansi pig is the product of 14 years of trials using over 2,000 swine from mainstream breeds originating in the United States and the United Kingdom. It recently received approval from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for commercial use.

Over that long period of testing and analysis, the researchers developed software and databases that will help accelerate the breeding process in the future, said team lead Li Kui.

“[We will] continue breeding, improve features like meat quality, widen application and increase the market share of China-bred hogs,” he said.

Feng Yonghui, chief analyst at industry website Soozhu, said the achievement in the laboratory still needs to pass the open market’s trial by fire.

“It depends on whether the pig will be competitive in terms of comprehensive economic benefits,” he said.

China’s home-grown pigs have generally been fattier than their Western counterparts, with less lean meat and a slower rate of growth. Farmers began introducing breeds from overseas in the 1980s.

Since then, the country’s pig farming industry has “fallen into a vicious circle of introduction, degeneration, introduction”, Feng said, as industry players – mostly smaller in size – neglect new technologies and techniques.

Pork has long been the most common source of protein for the nation’s 1.4 billion people, making the country the world’s largest market for the meat.

Last year, China produced nearly 58 million tonnes of pork – half the world’s total output, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Despite a decline in recent decades, the share of pork in China’s overall meat consumption remains high at over 50 per cent, said Feng, the industry analyst.

“This is a staple food that we must keep in our own hands. Breeding pigs are like chips in pig production, and they are the core of the production system,” he said.

Selective breeding for preferential characteristics – a process which creates unique and marketable varieties of livestock – overlaps with the Chinese government’s initiative to revitalise its seed industry.

In a plan for livestock and poultry covering the period from 2021 to 2035, the country vowed to achieve a self-sufficiency rate of more than 95 per cent in major farm animals by 2035 – measured by the proportion of genetic sequences originating from domestic husbandry.

Last year, the agriculture ministry said this rate was already over 75 per cent.

Dubai is the new Portugal for Chinese property investors, lured by golden visas, improving infrastructure, agents say

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3264111/dubai-new-portugal-chinese-property-investors-lured-golden-visas-improving-infrastructure-agents-say?utm_source=rss_feed

Dubai is shaping up to be a new favourite for property investors from mainland China and Hong Kong, thanks to its booming real estate market and fast-track residency scheme, according to agents.

After setting their sights for years on Portugal, buyers are now shifting their focus to the glitzy United Arab Emirates (UAE) city, home to about a quarter-million Chinese nationals and a Chinatown that opened last year.

“We have seen a huge increase in demand for Dubai,” said Mark Elliott, senior director and head of international residential at Savills in Hong Kong. “Dubai has essentially replaced the interest in mainland Europe, specifically Portugal and Berlin, where demand has fallen.”

Savills is seeing about 250 inquiries a month on Dubai property from Hong Kong this year, as much as what it used to receive in a year, Elliott added.

The sizzling demand for residential property in Dubai is reflected in its surging home prices, which soared 70 per cent last year, according to Andrew Cummings, head of Middle East residential property at Savills. The consultancy forecasts a 7 per cent growth this year.

Dubai’s luxury homes are becoming increasingly attractive to wealthy individuals, said Faisal Durrani, partner and head of research for the Middle East and North Africa at Knight Frank.

In the first three months of the year, 105 luxury homes were sold in Dubai, bringing it closer to matching the record 431 transactions of homes worth more than US$10 million last year, outperforming New York and London.

Several recent notable property sales involved Chinese buyers.

That includes a US$24 million 10,000 sq ft beachfront home at Palm Jumeirah, a tree-shaped artificial island known for its upscale apartment towers and hotels, Cummings said. The buyer owns a business in the city and wanted a base there for himself and the family.

Cummings travelled to Hong Kong last week to meet about 50 potential buyers interested in homes in Dubai. Meanwhile, Knight Frank met 30 Chinese investors from cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Qingdao, Durrani said.

“In our survey, we found that 23 per cent of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, or people who are worth more than $20 million, are prepared to spend more than US$5,000 a square foot on a branded residential property in Dubai,” he said.

“We’ve just sold the most expensive one at US$2,900 per square foot, which tells you how much more room there is potentially to go for pricing of branded residential units and how much more branded residential stock the city can absorb.”

While Chinese buyers currently account for only 10 per cent of residential property transactions in Dubai, according to data cited by Savills, more Chinese businesses are settling in the city.

In the January-to-March quarter, the number of Chinese companies registered with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce rose 65 per cent to 1,560 from a year ago.

Less than 5 per cent of the city’s office property is vacant, and the number is set to fall further, with much of the estimated 2.3 million square feet of new space coming into the market in the next five years already pre-committed, according to Knight Frank.

Some foreigners have taken advantage of the UAE’s residence-by-investment scheme, which gives people a chance to obtain a long-term visa by purchasing a property worth at least 2 million dirhams (US$544,000), either by paying in full or obtaining a loan from local banks approved by authorities, according to the government website.

Last year, Dubai issued 158,000 of these so-called golden visas, dwarfing the 13,000 that Portugal has given out through its own programme since launch in 2012, according to data cited by property technology platform Juwai IQI.

Dubai expects to grow its population to 7.8 million by 2040, more than double its current population of 3.7 million.

The city’s ascendancy as an investment destination owes partly to the government’s efforts to boost its infrastructure and international standing, according to agents.

Authorities have announced a billion-dollar initiative to make Dubai the fourth largest financial centre in the world, a position held by Hong Kong at the moment, said Durrani.

The Persian Gulf city is also upgrading its transport networks, with plans to invest 128 billion dirham to build a new passenger terminal that would expand the size of the Al Maktoum International Airport by five-fold, making it the largest in the world.

Etihad Rail, the UAE’s national train network, recently completed construction, linking Dubai to the country’s principal trade, manufacturing and population centres, and extending to the borders of Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Following unprecedented rainfall and floods that hit Dubai last month, the government has also pledged 80 billion-dirham improvement to improve its drainage system, said Cummings.

“Dubai invests with a long-term view, and that is why the direction of Dubai is so positive,” he said.

Despite the upside, investing in Dubai property carries its own risks, including a local currency that is pegged to the US dollar, and the potential of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East.

“As with any investment, you run the risk that prices fall in the future, that expenses climb or that rules change and make residency or investment less attractive,” said Kashif Ansari, co-founder and CEO of Juwai IQI.

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Harvard scientist behind Justin Bieber’s NAD therapy resigns, leaving China’s booming anti-ageing industry in hot water

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3263751/harvard-scientist-behind-justin-biebers-nad-therapy-resigns-leaving-chinas-booming-anti-ageing?utm_source=rss_feed

In an episode of The Kardashians, back in 2022, models Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber had a day out to partake in an anti-ageing therapy known as NAD.

While hooked up to the intravenous drip, Bieber told Jenner: “I’m going to NAD for the rest of my life and I’m never going to age.”

In celebrity circles over the last few years, the treatment has become all the rage. After that 2022 episode, Hailey got her husband, singer Justin Bieber, onto it. And it is not just the young who are keen to stop ageing – Li Ka-shing, one of Hong Kong’s best-known tycoons, who is in his nineties, has been using a similar product since 2017.

Back in April that year, Li’s private venture capital firm Horizons Ventures ploughed US$25 million into Nasdaq-listed ChromaDex. According to Frank Jaksch, co-founder and chairman of ChromaDex, Li has been taking Tru Niagen, a “healthy ageing supplement” pill produced by the company.

But NAD therapy is no longer exclusive to the rich and famous. China has become the world’s largest producer of the supplement, and thanks to large-scale production and subsequent price reductions, it is now being embraced by the masses.

However, that could all soon be derailed after a leading scientist behind the drug resigned his position as president of a prestigious scientific academy last month amid a storm of criticism of the treatment, with serious doubts cast over its efficacy.

David Sinclair – a star professor in the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School – is best known for his work in understanding longevity.

His lab was among the first to identify a role for NAD biosynthesis in regulating lifespan.

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a molecule vital to cellular metabolism that helps converting food into energy and repairing damaged DNA. But it declines with age.

Scientists such as David Sinclair say that boosting its levels can help reverse the ageing process. In 2018, he told Time magazine that NAD+ (the plus symbol refers to its oxidised form) is “the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth”.

In a 2013 paper published in the journal Cell, Sinclair’s team reported that a precursor molecule for NAD, called NMN, can be converted into NAD in the body. After feeding 22-month-old mice NMN for a week, it was found that some health indicators, such as the mice’s muscle condition, were restored to six-month-old levels.

NMN, or nicotinamide mononucleotide, is derived from vitamin B3 (niacin) and is found in human cells. It can easily be taken as a sort of NAD booster.

But over the years, Sinclair’s research has drawn a lot of scepticism. Critics have accused him of hyping his research and touting unproven products.

And in the latest development, in April he was forced to resign as president of a prestigious academy after pushing a pill that he said reversed ageing in dogs.

Just nine years ago, in 2015, the world’s first NMN consumer product was launched by a Japanese company, which then began to enter China through overseas purchases. In those early days, a bottle containing a 9,000mg dose of NMN supplements cost more than 28,000 yuan (US$3,865).

The price came down significantly just two years later, when a rival product from GeneHarbor, a Hong Kong-based biotechnology company, went to market at around 1,300 yuan.

The price drop was due to technological breakthroughs as well as an increase in the amount of raw materials able to be supplied. It marked the beginning of the move from the product being solely in the realm of the wealthy elite to its use being more widespread among the general public.

This was largely down to one man: Wang Jun. Just one day after Sinclair’s landmark paper was published in 2013, Wang, the founder of GeneHarbor, sensed the commercial potential of NMN and tasked his colleagues with researching its production.

Wang graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a PhD in molecular biology, and in 1992 he joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a faculty member, where his main areas of research included molecular biology, enzyme engineering and biosynthesis. In 2004, after leaving academia, Wang founded GeneHarbor.

More than a decade ago, the NMN ingredient cost as much as US$2 million/kg. Wang’s company managed to bring that price down to US$3,000/kg by using synthetic biology technology to scale up the production of the raw material.

Then in 2018, GeneHarbor began construction of a plant in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. Operational two years later, it is capable of producing 200 tonnes of NMN ingredients each year, making it the world’s biggest NMN producer.

This has led to a further drop in price – now just a few hundred US dollars per kilogram.

“We were the first company in the world to really industrialise NMN,” Wang told the Post.

Sinclair’s research is used as a scientific endorsement on the homepage of the company’s NMN product.

“The discovery of the efficacy of NAD+ and NMN in anti-ageing is the world’s first rigorously scientifically validated scientific research with significant results,” it says, with two images of Sinclair’s media coverage used as an illustration below the text.

But not everyone in the scientific community is a convert. While research has been published on the function of NMN and its anti-ageing mechanism, no major clinical breakthrough has been achieved.

Jonas Treebak, a scientist at the faculty of health and medical sciences at the University of Copenhagen, said more research into NMN was needed.

“It is very complex and more studies are needed to determine how and when NAD+ precursors in the form of NMN and NR are beneficial for humans,” he said.

Nicotinamide riboside (NR) is similar to NMN but requires conversion to NMN via an enzyme in the body before converting to NAD+.

He said that for NMN or NR to be beneficial, they would have to target a cell type or tissue that showed a consistent and detrimental decline in NAD+ levels with age, something there is very little evidence of in humans.

Last year, a literature review article by Jonas and his colleague published in Science Advances pointed out that oral NR supplementation had shown few clinically relevant effects, and that “there is an unfortunate tendency in literature to exaggerate the significance and robustness of reported effects”.

“There are lots of people in the field who harbour suspicions [about Sinclair’s science],” said one researcher in an interview with Boston Magazine in 2019. “It’s hard to explain how the same lab on multiple occasions over a decade or so can publish multiple pieces of data that other labs can’t reproduce.”

As well as criticism of his science, Sinclair has also been criticised for financial conflicts of interest. According to a 2019 KFF Health News report, Sinclair is either a founder, investor or board member of 28 companies, at least 18 of which are involved in some way with anti-ageing, including researching or commercialising NAD boosters.

In February, another company he co-founded, Animal Biosciences, quoted him as saying that a supplement it had developed, which also worked by enhancing NAD+ production, reversed ageing in dogs, but the claims outraged his peers.

The controversy led to a series of resignations from the prestigious research body he founded – the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research – with one scientist who quit labelling Sinclair a “snake oil salesman”.

In April, Sinclair was forced to resign as president. The Post contacted Sinclair for a response to these allegations, but did not receive a reply.

These products are strictly regulated in China. They have not yet been approved by the Chinese authorities and customers can only buy them through cross-border e-commerce platforms. In May last year, NMN’s application for food additives was rejected by China’s National Health Commission.

Wang has expressed his displeasure at such regulations.

He has argued that NMN is already a molecule in the body, so there should be no problem with its safety, and research over the years has clarified its mechanism, adding that it is becoming more affordable, all of which makes it a good anti-ageing product.

He said he recently met a friend who told him that hundreds of people around him had taken NMN supplements, and many mentioned improvements in sleep quality, as well as cardiovascular and immune systems, thanks to the product.

On major Chinese e-commerce platform JD, many shoppers mentioned similar improvements.

Some, however, remain sceptical.

For example, one buyer who has been using the product for two years commented in March that he takes it with a grain of salt because “there is no harm in taking it for a long time anyway”.

“The psychological comfort is greater than the actual effect,” he said, although he hopes it will slow down ageing and regulate bodily functions.

Wang denied that the Sinclair controversy would affect the prospects of NMN products. Because of its many benefits, he said, NMN’s future uses would only expand, from healthcare products to cosmetics to pharmaceuticals.

In an interview with the mainland magazine China Newsweek in 2020, Wang mentioned the possibility of expanding again to a much larger NMN factory, boosting production and thus lowering the price even further.

“NMN will probably be as cheap as a cup of milk tea,” he said.