• Trump and Xi speak on the phone ahead of the inauguration, China’s foreign ministry says
• Mainland China gives green light to first post-Covid group tours to Taiwan
• China logs 5% GDP growth in 2024 as exports, stimulus provide year-end boost
• With deal-maker Trump, business cooperation could reset US-China ties
• China rejects US allegations targeting its world-leading shipbuilding industry
• China’s Xi Jinping and Donald Trump speak over the phone
• China meets annual GDP target, US tally of top scientists surpassed: SCMP daily highlights
• IMF raises China’s 2025 GDP forecast by a hair, cites stimulus effects
• Aching since China halted foreign adoptions, US families pin hopes on Donald Trump
• Xi Jinping sends China vice-president to Donald Trump’s inauguration
• Guangzhou noodle shops, Mandarin in Tibet in focus as China pushes ethnic integration
• ‘This is me’: China RedNote users share actor Eddie Peng photos to welcome TikTok refugees
• China’s population drops for third year in a row despite uptick in births
• Unplug Great Firewall to boost China’s competitiveness, Shanghai lawmaker says
• China’s population falls for a third straight year, posing challenges for its government and economy
• China’s Africa imports rise, but will 2025 headwinds halt the continent’s trade gains?
• Chinese stake in Philippine power grid operator raises concerns about security, skill transfers
• US ‘TikTok refugees’ spark global rush of sign-ups to China’s RedNote platform
• China worker wins US$820,000 in lottery, forced to share winnings with company colleagues
• Chinese military tests electronic war gadget that turns drone into a giant UFO
• Philippines turns to US firms for South China Sea oil drills as Beijing tensions persist
• [Sport] Three reasons Trump tariffs aren't China's only problem
• China developer Vanke’s shares drop amid reports of CEO detention by police
• ‘Escapism’: China firm offers office, lunch for US$4 a day for people hiding jobless status
• China announces 5% GDP growth, population drop at press conference
• Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng to attend Trump’s inauguration
• [Sport] 'Looking for my spy': The jokes Americans and Chinese are sharing on 'alternative TikTok'
• Chinese hackers accessed Janet Yellen’s computer in US Treasury breach
• Why does China enjoy preferential trade status with US, and could it lose it?
• Nominee for US treasury secretary suggests possible restart of trade talks with China
• How China aims to be guiding light in Middle East’s energy transition
• China surpasses US in tally of top scientists for the first time: report
• People in China Swim in Freezing River for Health, Happiness

Trump and Xi speak on the phone ahead of the inauguration, China’s foreign ministry says

https://apnews.com/article/trump-xi-inauguration-china-us-782413bbc4ca5e06c9e39ce9ae151ea2Sarah Baus, left, of Charleston, S.C., and Tiffany Cianci, who says she is a "long-form educational content creator," livestream to TikTok outside the Supreme Court, on Jan. 10, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

2025-01-17T14:27:31Z

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were speaking on the phone late Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The conversation comes ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday. The U.S.-China relationship is expected to be one of the main focuses of Trump’s second term, with tensions between the two superpowers looming in the areas of trade, technology and the self-ruled island of Taiwan, among other things.

The president-elect confirmed on Truth Social that he had spoken with Xi and said “the call was a very good one for both China and the U.S.A.”

Trump said they talked about trade, fentanyl and TikTok, among other things.

“President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe!” he said.

Trump has threatened to slap tariffs of 60% on all Chinese imports into the U.S. But he has also in the past praised his relationship with Xi and has suggested China could help mediate international crises such as the war in Ukraine.

Xi will not attend Trump’s inauguration. China will be represented at the event by Vice President Han Zheng.

Trump said in a December interview on “Meet the Press” that he had been communicating with Xi since he won the election. Trump in the interview said he has “a very good relationship” with China’s leader. He said they did had not discussed Taiwan but discussed other issues.

Mainland China gives green light to first post-Covid group tours to Taiwan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3295250/mainland-china-gives-green-light-first-post-covid-group-tours-taiwan?utm_source=rss_feed

The mainland Chinese authorities have lifted a pandemic-era ban on travel to Taiwan, allowing tour groups from Shanghai and Fujian province to visit the island.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry said preparations were “actively under way”, although there is no timetable for visits to resume, adding that the move would help normalise cross-strait exchanges, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua on Thursday.

All overseas group trips from mainland China, including to Taiwan, were halted at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Beijing started allowing overseas group tours again in 2023 and since then travel has resumed to most destinations, including the United States and much of Europe.

But cross-strait travel has fallen down the list of priorities as a result of ongoing political tensions between Beijing and Taipei.

In February last year, Taipei delayed a plan that could allow local agencies to organise tour groups to mainland China, citing the failure by Beijing to allow group tours to the island.

Fujian in southeast China sits on the opposite site of the Taiwan Strait to the island and its geography has made it the focal point of Beijing’s push for integration. In April last year, Beijing signalled that Fujian residents would be the first allowed to visit Taiwan once group travel resumed.

Meanwhile, Shanghai, the mainland’s biggest economic powerhouse, is a major destination for Taiwanese investment and has hosted the Twin-City Forum with Taipei every year since 2010.

Chen Binhua, a spokesman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, told Xinhua the decision to allow group tours to resume “responds to the fervent desire of compatriots on both sides of the strait to strengthen exchanges”.

He also urged the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to lift its own ban on group tours to the mainland, remove its travel warnings and restore direct passenger flights and routes to “create favourable conditions for cross-strait exchanges”.

Last June Taipei raised its travel warning for mainland China – as well as Hong Kong and Macau – from yellow to orange, saying new judicial guidelines that could carry the death penalty for “diehard separatists” were a “severe threat” to the personal safety of Taiwan residents.

Orange is the second highest alert level in the four-tier system and advises against all “unnecessary travel”.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to reunify it with the mainland. Most countries, including the US, the island’s main international partner, do not recognise Taiwan as independent, but Washington opposes any forcible reunification.

Relations started declining when the independence-leading DPP came to power in 2016, prompting both sides to impose restrictions on travel to the opposite side of the strait.

Beijing has also ramped up military pressure and staged drills in the Taiwan Strait, especially since the DPP’s William Lai Ching-te took office as the island’s leader in May.

Beijing stopped allowing individual tourist visits in 2019, citing the deterioration in relations – a ban that has still not been lifted.

The pandemic led to further severe restrictions on travel on both sides but Taipei ended its controls in October 2022.

Chen told a press conference on Wednesday that there had been just over 4.4 million cross-strait visits in 2024, a 54 per cent increase on the previous year’s total, more than 4 million of which were trips from Taiwan to the mainland.

China logs 5% GDP growth in 2024 as exports, stimulus provide year-end boost

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3295236/china-logs-5-gdp-growth-2024-exports-stimulus-provide-year-end-boost?utm_source=rss_feed

China has reached its 2024 target for economic growth, recording a 5 per cent increase to its gross domestic product despite numerous internal and external challenges – an achievement which may give Beijing’s policymakers the necessary confidence to handle what is likely to be an even more trying 2025 as US president-elect Donald Trump prepares for his second term.

Analysts attributed last year’s growth – particularly the 5.4 per cent reported in the final quarter, the largest increase for 2024 – to a massive export wave and a set of stimulus policies rolled out starting in late September.

However, they warned a similar growth target for 2025 – a strong possibility, based on benchmarks unveiled by backbone economic regions earlier this week – would require a stronger dose of stimulus, given Trump’s threats of higher tariffs and low domestic confidence.

“Setting the 5 per cent target is more about long-term policy needs,” said Raymond Yeung, chief Greater China economist at ANZ Bank. He noted that to meet the government’s pledge of doubling 2020 GDP by 2035, an average annual growth rate of around 4.7 per cent would be required.

With stronger economic headwinds on the horizon, the government will need to adopt more aggressive fiscal measures and continued monetary easing, he said, adding a 5 per cent target would be a sign of stronger policy support.

Those headwinds will intensify if Trump makes good on his threat of additional tariffs after taking office on Monday. His victory in November, among other factors, drove investment banks to set lower growth estimates – largely between 4.5 per cent and 4.7 per cent – for the Chinese economy in 2025.

Goldman Sachs, which set its estimate at 4.5 per cent, said the burden of higher US tariffs could more than offset the effects of policy easing as a prolonged downturn continues in the property market.

The investment bank’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, said last week that the US tariff rates on China could increase by an average of about 20 percentage points – and by up to 60 percentage points in some areas – but not uniformly across all goods.

However, there are several signs Beijing will keep this year’s growth target at “around 5 per cent”, just as it did in 2024.

That level of expansion is essential to help the country reach its stated development goals for 2035 and create enough jobs to maintain social stability. More importantly, an improved economic structure has been an explicit priority for policymakers.

China has become less dependent on its property sector and seen higher contributions from its digital economy to GDP, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) head Kang Yi said at a Friday press conference unveiling several pieces of headline data for 2024.

The added value of China’s property sector dropped to 6.3 per cent of the national total in 2024, down 0.5 percentage points from the year before.

While property investment shrank by 10.6 per cent, year on year, funding continued to pour into the sector to ameliorate the slump. Some signs of stabilisation have already appeared, as December saw the first increase in new home prices for first-tier cities since June 2023.

Technologically advanced sectors – deemed so crucial to future growth they have been named as “new quality productive forces” by President Xi Jinping – have become all the more essential amid the decline of real estate, and more credit has been channelled from the state-dominated banking system to buoy these emerging industries.

To that end, industrial output rose 5.8 per cent in 2024, with expansion observed in bleeding-edge industries like new energy vehicles, integrated circuits and industrial robots, NBS data showed.

The country’s urbanisation ratio also rose 0.84 percentage points to 67 per cent last year, with officials stating there is still growth potential to be found as more of China’s people settle in cities.

Earlier this week, economically important regions like capital city Beijing, financial hub Shanghai and top exporter Guangdong, set their 2025 growth targets at “around 5 per cent”.

“The key question is if we can see consumer confidence bottom out and begin a meaningful recovery,” said Lynn Song, chief Greater China economist at ING Bank in Hong Kong. “Pessimism has grown quite entrenched as of late, and it will take a lot of effort to break out of the doldrums.”

Retail sales, a major barometer of consumption, grew by 3.7 per cent year on year in December, bringing full-year growth in 2024 to 3.5 per cent.

Overall fixed-asset investment, covering major projects like infrastructure, manufacturing and large-scale construction, rose by 3.2 per cent last year.

Domestic consumption and the revival of investor confidence are high on Beijing’s economic agenda.

The Ministry of Commerce announced an expansion of consumer subsidies earlier this week, claiming trade-in subsidies helped leverage spending of more than 1.3 trillion yuan (US$177.4 billion) last year.

Stronger countercyclical adjustments have also been promised by the country’s central bank, with a shift in rhetoric around future monetary policy to “moderately loose” from “prudent” – a stance that had been in place since the 2008 global financial crisis.

People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng said on Monday that the country would deploy supportive monetary tools – including potential cuts to interest rates and the reserve requirement ratio – “to ensure ample liquidity and maintain a supportive environment” for lending.

Liao Min, vice-minister of finance, said last week that the country would take a “very proactive” fiscal policy direction this year, featuring a higher deficit ratio, increased bond issuances and stronger countercyclical measures to drive the economy.

Starting with changes to monetary policy in late September, China introduced a slew of measures to give the economy a jolt in the latter months of 2024. These included lowering thresholds for property purchases, swapping local government debt and subsidising consumption.

Such stimulus proved effective in driving up economic activity in the final stretch of 2024.

The fourth-quarter economy expanded 1.6 per cent from the previous one, the highest quarterly change observed since the first quarter of 2023.

And China’s surveyed urban unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent – 0.1 percentage points lower than a year earlier. Meanwhile, the youth-unemployment figure for those aged 16-24, excluding enrolled students, dropped by 0.4 percentage points in December for a fourth consecutive monthly drop.

China reported year-on-year export growth of 5.9 per cent and a record-breaking trade surplus last year, with activity heating up after November’s US presidential election as exporters rushed to secure their orders ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

With last year’s data a matter of public record, attention now turns to this year’s benchmarks – for the deficit ratio, local bond quotas and inflation, as well as GDP – set to be unveiled at the annual parliamentary meetings in March.

Additional reporting by Luna Sun

With deal-maker Trump, business cooperation could reset US-China ties

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3294745/deal-maker-trump-business-cooperation-could-reset-us-china-ties?utm_source=rss_feed

As US president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20, a pivotal moment in US-China relations is unfolding. One day before his inauguration, TikTok faces a shutdown under legislation requiring its Chinese parent ByteDance to divest or cease its US operations.

Trump’s declaration last month that the United States and China “can together solve all the world’s problems” signals a reset in bilateral relations. He showed he was open to practical cooperation in his first term, notably with the phase-one trade agreement, which established frameworks for financial services and intellectual property protection, and expanded economic engagement.

Trump’s new team reflects his commercial priorities: David Perdue, with extensive Asian business experience, as US ambassador to China; Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary; Jamieson Greer as trade representative; and Tesla chief Elon Musk – all signalling a business-focused approach.

Business-driven diplomatic breakthroughs are not without precedent. The resolution of US-Japan trade tensions in the 1980s offers instructive parallels. In the 1980s, Japan defused bilateral frictions through a strategic pivot towards direct investment in American manufacturing. Against strict US automotive import restrictions, Toyota’s 1985 decision to establish a factory in Kentucky proved transformative, creating jobs directly and throughout the local supply chain. Honda’s investment in Ohio reinforced this model, showing how production localisation could address trade imbalances while creating local employment.

Through this “Made in the USA” strategy, Japan balanced its trade surplus while boosting US economic growth. Though China’s economic power today far exceeds Japan’s in the 1980s, the lesson is clear: strategic investment transformed US-Japan relations. The same approach could stabilise US-China ties today.

Chinese companies in the US show how this investment-led approach can work. Fuyao Glass Industry Group’s US$1 billion commitment to Ohio represented more than a manufacturing investment – it has created thousands of jobs while establishing a model for Chinese industrial expertise to enhance American productivity.

BYD’s electric bus facility in Lancaster, California is another strategic milestone. Backed by over US$250 million in investment in North America and employing more than 750 workers, it is the first Chinese vehicle manufacturer in the US, bringing both clean energy technology and employment opportunities.

CRRC Corp’s engagement with Chicago offers another compelling case. After securing a contract to supply railcars to the Chicago Transit Authority in 2016, CRRC invested US$100 million into establishing a manufacturing facility, creating hundreds of jobs.

This momentum looks set to accelerate, particularly in the strategic new-energy sector where Chinese companies are bringing advanced manufacturing capabilities to the US market. Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest battery manufacturer, has a technology licensing partnership with Ford’s Michigan plant and is now working on the same with Tesla’s Nevada facility, notwithstanding the fact it is now on the US government’s list of Chinese companies linked to the military.

CATL’s founder and chairman Robin Zeng recently expressed strong interest in building manufacturing plants in the US, aligning with Trump’s stance that Chinese companies should “build plants here” and “hire our workers”. The timing of these signals suggests Chinese businesses see opportunities to expand operations in the US.

It goes both ways. American companies have found remarkable success in China’s vast market. In 2023, China accounted for 63.8 per cent of Qualcomm’s global sales revenue, 26.8 per cent of Intel Corp’s, and about 33 per cent of General Motors’. Tesla’s performance stands out: last year, it sold more than 657,000 cars in China, an 8.8 per cent increase and a record high.

The inclusion of Tesla’s cars in government procurement lists is a further sign of China’s openness to foreign businesses. Apple’s dominance in China’s premium market is also notable; the country is Apple’s second-largest market for its smartphones. Starbucks added 290 new stores in China in the last three months of its financial year ended September 30, entering 78 new county-level markets.

The scale of US-China business engagement is substantial. There are estimated to be more than 73,000 US companies in China with investments exceeding US$1.2 trillion, spanning electronics, automotive, consumer goods and financial services. From 2009 to 2023, while US global exports grew by 91.1 per cent, its exports to China increased by 112.6 per cent.

Growing business ties are also evident at the recent CES trade show in Las Vegas, where the more than 1,300 Chinese companies taking part accounted for 27 per cent of all exhibitors. These success stories underscore how commercial engagement can strengthen bilateral ties even amid broader economic tensions.

Trump’s request to the US Supreme Court to halt any legal action on TikTok until he enters office is a signal that the ban may be reconsidered and raises the possibility of breakthrough cooperation in digital commerce. China’s recent visa liberalisation, benefiting citizens from 59 countries including the US, also signals a more open stance.

There is potential for even greater opening up, particularly in allowing more international tech companies access to the Chinese market. Major US firms like Google, Microsoft, Meta and others could benefit from expanded market access and create opportunities for bilateral digital cooperation.

The scope for cooperation can extend well beyond the traditional sectors into the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI). As frontier AI competition intensifies, shared security concerns can create common ground. Trump’s deal-making instincts may give rise to unique opportunities for targeted cooperation in AI safety and governance frameworks.

Trump’s commercial mindset, his business-oriented team and Chinese enterprises’ growing investment ambitions point to a clear path: strategic investment and localised production can transform economic tensions into shared prosperity. These business-driven approaches may offer the most practical way to rebuild trust between the world’s two largest economies, solving problems through commercial cooperation, one deal at a time.

China rejects US allegations targeting its world-leading shipbuilding industry

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3295226/china-rejects-us-allegations-targeting-its-world-leading-shipbuilding-industry?utm_source=rss_feed

China has rejected the findings of a US investigation into its shipbuilding industry and described the allegations that it levelled at China as an attempt to hinder the country’s development.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement posted online on Friday that China, which has been the world’s largest shipbuilder for more than a decade, “strongly opposes and is deeply dissatisfied with” the report released by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on Thursday that said China’s dominance in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors was “actionable” under Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974.

Section 301 investigations aim to determine whether a foreign government’s policies or acts are discriminatory, and whether they burden or restrict US commerce.

“The US 301 investigation is driven by domestic political purposes and the goal of curbing China’s development, posing a significant threat to the multilateral trade system and international trade rules,” the ministry said.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Beijing’s targeted dominance in the three sectors was “the greatest barrier to revitalisation of US industries”.

“Today, the US ranks 19th in the world in commercial shipbuilding, and we build less than five ships each year, while the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is building more than 1,700 ships,” she said. “In 1975, the United States ranked No 1, and we were building more than 70 ships a year.”

China won 70 per cent of the world’s newbuilding orders last year, followed by South Korea with 17 per cent and Japan with 5 per cent, according to an annual report from shipping-data provider Clarksons Research.

The decline of the US shipbuilding industry was unrelated to China, the Ministry of Commerce said: “Even before the rise of China’s shipbuilding industry, the US held a minuscule share of the global market in shipbuilding.”

China urged America “to stop blaming China for US domestic industrial-development problems”.

The ministry also countered the US accusation that China’s shipbuilding success was built on the back of the “displacement of foreign firms and deprivation of market-oriented business”, saying that its shipbuilding sector relies on advantages in its industrial system, labour force and business environment, and has been open to the global market.

The 301 investigation results provided a basis for responsive action, which would be considered in the next stage, the USTR said in a report on its findings.

US labour unions that requested the 301 investigation had suggested imposing additional port fees on Chinese-built ships calling at US ports.

China will closely monitor the actions of the US and take necessary measures to defend its legitimate rights and interests, the Ministry of Commerce said.

The China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry released a statement on Friday denouncing the US investigation findings as “incorrect and riddled with falsehoods”.

It attributed the Chinese shipbuilding sector’s prominent position to technological innovation, management reform, quality improvement and the hard work of all industry staff.

“The irresponsible and unprofessional misjudgments will significantly disrupt the global shipping system and international trade order, and severely impede the progress of the global maritime industry’s green transformation,” the association said.

China’s Xi Jinping and Donald Trump speak over the phone

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3295267/chinas-xi-jinping-and-donald-trump-speak-over-phone?utm_source=rss_feed

President Xi Jinping has spoken to US president-elect Donald Trump on the phone, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said.

The phone call comes with just three days to go for Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

Beijing is sending Vice-President Han Zheng to attend the ceremony – the first time a senior Chinese official will be present at a US presidential inauguration.

More to follow …

China meets annual GDP target, US tally of top scientists surpassed: SCMP daily highlights

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3295212/china-meets-annual-gdp-target-us-tally-top-scientists-surpassed-scmp-daily-highlights?utm_source=rss_feed

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China and economy stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider .

China has reached its 2024 target for economic growth, recording a 5 per cent increase to its gross domestic product despite numerous internal and external challenges – an achievement which may give Beijing’s policymakers the necessary confidence to handle what is likely to be an even more trying 2025 as US president-elect Donald Trump prepares for his second term.

China says Vice-President Han Zheng will attend US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington on Monday. It will mark the first time that a senior Chinese leader has been present at such an occasion.

China has overtaken the United States for the first time in the number of its high-level science and technology experts, according to a new report.

A lawmaker in China’s financial hub of Shanghai has called for the lifting of strict internet controls in free-trade zones, financial districts and universities to help support AI development and attract foreign investment and talent.

In yet another consequence of the impending US ban on short-video app TikTok, rival Chinese platform RedNote is seeing a spike in users based in other countries, mirroring the migration of American self-styled “TikTok refugees”.

In its annual report to Congress in November, the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said the legislature should repeal China’s permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status and instead reintroduce annual reviews of its trade practices to gain more leverage in efforts to change them.

While China’s sixth-generation fighter jets pierce the skies in their boundary-pushing stealth coating, a team of scientists has been breaking new ground in electronic warfare technology from the opposite direction.

IMF raises China’s 2025 GDP forecast by a hair, cites stimulus effects

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3295215/imf-raises-chinas-2025-gdp-forecast-hair-cites-stimulus-effects?utm_source=rss_feed

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised China’s 2025 growth forecast to 4.6 per cent from an earlier projection of 4.5 per cent, as stimulus measures start percolating in the world’s second-largest economy.

“This revision reflects carryover from 2024 and the fiscal package announced in November largely offsetting the negative effect on investment from heightened trade policy uncertainty and property market drag,” the IMF said on Friday in its World Economic Outlook.

Global growth is projected at 3.3 per cent this year, unchanged from the IMF’s October forecast as an upwards revision in the United States offset downward revisions in other major economies.

For China, stimulus measures since September have included rate cuts, debt-relief efforts and a 10 trillion yuan (US$1.36 trillion) package to help reduce the financial pressures facing indebted local governments.

On Friday, China said it hit leadership’s 5 per cent growth target for the nation’s gross domestic product, three days ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. During his election campaign, Trump pledged new tariffs against China of at least 60 per cent.

China’s economic direction this year hinges on the speed, strength and effectiveness of its fiscal-policy roll-out, as well as the pace of monetary easing, said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at Dutch financial services corporation ING.

The development of any tariffs under Trump, including whether he convinces other countries to coordinate action against China or shuts down offshore “re-export channels” for Chinese manufacturers, will further affect growth, Song said.

The IMF, a global financial organisation with 191 member countries, on Friday projected that China’s economic growth would hold “stable” at 4.5 per cent in 2026, as the “effects of trade-policy uncertainty dissipate” and an increase in China’s retirement ages slows a labour-supply decline.

Elsewhere in the world, the IMF raised its 2025 forecast for economic growth in the US to 2.7 per cent, half a percentage point higher than its previous forecast. The IMF also expected that India and the larger Southeast Asian countries would grow at China’s rate or higher.

The IMF’s “stable, albeit lacklustre” global growth forecast of 3.3 per cent for both this year and next year comes in below a 3.7 per cent annual average over the last two decades.

Aching since China halted foreign adoptions, US families pin hopes on Donald Trump

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3295248/aching-china-halted-foreign-adoptions-us-families-pin-hopes-donald-trump?utm_source=rss_feed

Heidi Snyder was overcome with emotion as she recalled the moment she learned that China had abruptly ended its three-decade-long international adoption programme.

“It felt like the death of a living child, honestly,” said the 39-year-old Illinois resident, her voice trembling with the weight of the memory from September last year.

At that point, the Snyder family had been waiting for five years to bring home a little girl with special care needs – whom they had been legally matched with and approved to adopt from China.

“It was a lot of gut-wrenching sobs, just grief from the last five years … all of the grief and all of the hope we had stored up just kind of came out all at once,” Snyder said.

Her face glowed with love and longing as she showed photos of the now six-year-old Willow. The Snyders have never met her in person but have exchanged letters, photos, videos, drawings and presents through their adoption agency over the years.

“She’s our daughter, she’s a niece, she’s a granddaughter, she’s a sister,” said Snyder, who has three sons with her husband, Kenton.

According to Snyder, her family was just weeks away from receiving a travel letter – the final step in the adoption process – to bring Willow to the US when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down international travel in 2020.

Hopes were briefly revived when China reopened in 2023, but the family received no updates until the Chinese government announced it would discontinue foreign adoptions altogether. People familiar with the situation, however, said that some waiting Italian and Spanish families were allowed by China to complete the adoption process in late 2024.

The Snyders’ story echoes the heartache of nearly 270 adoptive families across the US, all desperately trying to unite with the children they consider their own. Now, they are pinning their hopes on president-elect Donald Trump to help make it happen.

On November 1, more than 100 US lawmakers sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to press China “to fulfill and uphold the commitments the country has made”. Last month, 33 state governors wrote a similar letter to Biden about the pending adoptions.

The US Department of State and the departing American ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, have made consistent efforts to address the issue, but Beijing has largely been unresponsive.

It remains unclear whether Biden raised the matter during his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on November 16 in Peru. The White House and State Department did not respond to an inquiry about whether the issue was discussed. Press releases from both the US government and the Chinese side made no mention of it.

The waiting American families are now urging the incoming Trump administration and Beijing to view the stalled adoptions as an opportunity for goodwill and friendship.

Experts say that resolving the matter could be a win-win for both sides. China, seeking to improve US relations, could use a humanitarian resolution to create a positive atmosphere for tackling tougher issues like tariffs and tech competition. Additionally, many of these adoptions involve children with severe health issues, and as they age, their chances of finding homes in China grow increasingly slim.

Beijing began its international adoption programme in 1992, during the era of the one-child policy, which led to the abandonment of children, especially girls and those with disabilities. China’s declining birth rate, which led to the end of the one-child policy in 2015 and the introduction of incentives for larger families, is largely seen as the reason for ending international adoptions.

Data shows that since 1992, nearly 160,000 children have been adopted by foreigners, with more than 82,000 going to the US. This accounts for 11 per cent of all adoptions in China.

According to Yanzhong Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in New York, this “number is too small to significantly impact China’s demographic landscape”.

Huang said the issue of pending adoptions was a “low-hanging fruit” for the incoming administration in terms of “claiming a diplomatic victory”.

“For Trump, he could claim credit for bringing these 250 children into adoptive families, and for China, the implicit understanding would be that this could help sweeten a potential deal with the US, especially at a time when they were discussing US-China people-to-people relations,” he said.

For Denis Simon, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, the resolution hinges on the “idea of goodwill”.

He pointed to the example of pandas, noting that although Beijing removed the beloved bears from some US zoos amid escalating trade and technology tensions, “they brought them back” later.

“That was a gesture of goodwill. Let’s see if something like this can be worked out on the principle of goodwill,” Simon said.

Biden’s transition team has briefed Trump’s team on the adoption issue, which the outgoing administration has termed a “top priority”, according to people familiar with the situation.

The US State Department said it had been engaging with China at “high levels” in both Washington and Beijing. “We are advocating for US families matched with a child from the [People’s Republic of China] to be able to complete their cases,” a State Department representative said.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said that “we are grateful for the desire and love of the governments and adoptive families of relevant countries to adopt Chinese children”.

But it also underscored that Beijing’s policy remained unchanged, citing last year’s announcement, “‘Except for foreigners adopting children and stepchildren of collateral relatives within three generations in China,’ no more children will be sent abroad for adoption,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu stated on January 9.

Aimee and Stephen Welch of Kentucky, who adopted a child they named Grace from China in 2017, were in the process of finalising the adoption of a girl with special care needs in March 2020, but they are still waiting.

“We hope the level of concern and unity in Congress and among governors, as shown in these letters, will elevate this as a priority humanitarian and diplomatic issue for the next administration,” Aimee Welch said.

Welch, who now leads an organisation called Hope Leads Home, which advocates for completing the pending China adoptions, added, “Uniting children in need with loving families is a cause that transcends borders and politics.”

“I believe it would be a tremendous demonstration of goodwill between China and the US for these children to finally be allowed to join the families committed to giving them the lifelong love and care they need to reach their full potential,” she said.

Noting that the Chinese New Year was “a time of celebration and family togetherness”, Welch added: “As American families mark our fifth Chinese New Year apart from our children, we send them all our love and best wishes and prayers that, by next year, they will be celebrating with us.”

Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out that 98 per cent of children in Chinese state orphanages have severe illnesses or disabilities, according to Chinese government data.

While adoption of children with mild disabilities is increasing in China, he said, “it’s unlikely to address the needs of severely disabled children,” leaving many without the chance for family life and “potentially condemning them to institutional care until they age out at 18, with uncertain prospects thereafter”.

Courtney Moore from Texas broke down in tears as she spoke about the prolonged wait to bring home a now nine-year-old boy with special needs whom she and her husband, Daniel, were approved to adopt in 2019.

Moore, who spent time as a student in China in 2008, said she decided to adopt from there owing to her “admiration for the culture and the people” of the country.

She has not received any updates or videos of the boy, whom they have named Milo, since January 2023.

“It’s been really hard watching him grow up through these photos and videos that we have gotten very sparingly, but just like, treasuring every single picture and video that we had,” she said.

Moore, a 40-year-old mother of three, one of whom was adopted from the US, added that “we’re just begging and pleading” that both sides “can use this opportunity to find goodwill between both of our countries to wrap up this”.

“Thousands of children have been given homes through the last 30 years,” she said. “And what a great way to finish that legacy of those 30 years on a high note, instead of dashing the hopes of these 300 kids.”

Xi Jinping sends China vice-president to Donald Trump’s inauguration

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/17/trump-inauguration-china-vice-president-xi

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration, but he is sending his vice-president, Han Zheng, as his special representative.

The decision, announced on Friday in China by the foreign ministry, came more than a month after Trump extended the unusual invitation to Xi, a break from tradition since no heads of state have previously made an official visit to the US for the inauguration.

“We stand ready to work with the new US government to enhance dialogue and communication, properly manage differences, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly pursue a stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relations and find the right way for the two countries to get along with each other,” the ministry’s spokesperson said when announcing the decision.

Other foreign leaders have spoken about being invited to Trump’s inauguration, including the Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. The offices of the Ecuadorean president, Daniel Noboa, and the Paraguayan president, Santiago Peña, have also said they were invited and were planning to attend.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based think-tank Stimson Center, said the move by Xi meant “China is willing to forego protocol and cater to what Trump wants.”

“It indicates that China is willing to talk, negotiate and make efforts to reach deals,” Sun wrote.

Danny Russel, vice-president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Beijing was hedging by sending Han instead of Xi.

“Zero chance that Xi Jinping would allow himself to be potted plant at Donald Trump’s triumphal coronation. At the same time, ensuring that China extends enough courtesy to avoid bruising Trump’s ego,” Russel wrote. Han’s mission, the former American diplomat said, was “symbolic, not substantive”.

The dispatch of Han comes as the US-China rivalry is set to intensify. Several of Trump’s nominees for key cabinet positions are known China hawks, including senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has been nominated as secretary of state.

Rubio called China “the most potent, dangerous and near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted” during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, when members of the Senate foreign relations committee urged Rubio to make countering China a top priority.

Beijing prefers leader-level talks, which it believes could help guide the bilateral relations, while Trump likes to deal with world leaders directly.

As president, Xi has traveled abroad for state visits and summits. But he did not attend the coronation of King Charles III, nor did he go to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II or the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

Guangzhou noodle shops, Mandarin in Tibet in focus as China pushes ethnic integration

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3295239/guangzhou-noodle-shops-mandarin-tibet-focus-chinas-pushes-ethnic-integration?utm_source=rss_feed

Many people in the Chinese city of Guangzhou enjoy eating halal noodles, a popular and affordable option around the country. What they probably do not know is that the local government closely monitors these restaurants as part of its ethnic integration programme.

Guangzhou, a city of 22 million, is using big data to track the activities of its ethnic minority residents in a model likely to be applied across China.

According to the latest official publication on China’s ethnic integration policy, the southern city is the first in the country to set up a big data system relating to its 830,000 ethnic minority residents.

Published in November by the National Ethnic Affairs Commission (NEAC), the book says the monitoring includes oversight of halal noodle shops run mainly by Muslim minorities, such as Huis and Uygurs.

The commission researches and formulates China’s ethnic minority policy.

Though it does not explain how this is carried out, the book says the database brings together more than 4 million records and covers every ethnic minority individual who rents a flat in the city.

This administrative framework is about to become a model for all Chinese cities. This is because the commission includes it among the 100 “typical cases of practising correct ethnic concepts” – to be studied by ethnic affairs officials across China.

Coming more than a decade after Chinese President Xi Jinping coined the idea of building “a sense of community for the Chinese nation”, the book provides a fresh look at how local governments are pushing for ethnic integration.

One of the latest methods hailed by authorities has been the “all-round embedding of all ethnic groups” – whereby ethnic minority groups are encouraged to mingle with the majority Han.

Among the success stories cited in the book is the northern Hui autonomous region of Ningxia, where the Yinchuan municipal government has kept track of real property agents to prevent them from using “the gimmick of ethnic group clusters and religious beliefs”.

The city has also changed the names of 42 schools that were named after only one ethnic group, the NEAC book says.

Enterprises, schools, villages and residential complexes in Yinchuan had all achieved “ethnic group embedding” with government intervention, according to the book.

The book also contains new details on the promotion of “standard spoken and written Chinese”, or Mandarin.

In Ngari prefecture, in the western autonomous region of Tibet, “3,478 children from 40 kindergartens were tested by 180 examiners on their Mandarin skills”, according to another case study cited.

The region is home to just 120,000 people, of whom nearly 92 per cent are Tibetan, and all middle and primary schoolteachers there had passed the Mandarin proficiency test.

According to the book, Tibetan is used as a medium of instruction only for the Tibetan language and culture course. All other subjects are taught in Mandarin.

The book of “typical cases” was distributed to ethnic affairs commissions across the country in June, then revised and published in November. But NEAC announced the publication only on Monday.

According to the preface, the commission selected cases from those submitted by its local branches.

NEAC director Pan Yue chaired a meeting of ethnic affairs chiefs from across the country in Beijing on Wednesday. He said that China had made “breakthrough progress” in its work with ethnic minorities in the past year, including “extensive and in-depth publicity and education to strengthen the sense of community for the Chinese nation”.

Pan added that another key task of the commission last year was to revise laws and regulations that were inconsistent with integration policies.

This has already been done in the northern autonomous region of Inner Mongolia and in Ningxia in the southwest, according to the book.

The commission’s achievements for 2024 listed by Pan also included “defending ideological ground, preventing and defusing potential risks in the ethnic field, and effectively safeguarding national unity and social stability”, according to an official readout.

Pan also highlighted a textbook used in compulsory courses at many Chinese universities.

The textbook criticises China’s past ethnic policies, which were modelled on those of the Soviet Union, and argues that all ethnic groups accepted the concept of Zhonghua, or Chinese culture or civilisation, since ancient times.

It also cites political divisions and “social cleavages” in the West to justify Beijing’s policy of ethnic integration.

Government academics are also working to reinterpret Chinese history, emphasising that China’s 55 ethnic minority groups have for centuries created the Chinese civilisation together with the Han majority.

‘This is me’: China RedNote users share actor Eddie Peng photos to welcome TikTok refugees

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3295165/me-china-rednote-users-share-actor-eddie-peng-photos-welcome-tiktok-refugees?utm_source=rss_feed

Ahead of an expected ban on TikTok, so-called internet refugees from the United States are being warmly greeted by Chinese counterparts on the alternative RedNote platform posing as a famous Taiwan-born actor.

On RedNote, a leading social media app dubbed China’s Instagram, many Chinese users introduce themselves as the actor Eddie Peng Yuyan, by posting a picture of him.

“Hello, this is me. Nice to meet you,” they say as they leave comments on the accounts of new foreign users of RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu in China, which means “little red book”.

Peng, 42, was born in Taiwan and has Canadian nationality. He is regarded as one of the most handsome actors in the Chinese-language film industry.

Besides a slew of blockbuster films like Operation Mekong released in 2016 and the 2020 film The Rescue, Peng is hugely popular in China due to his self-discipline, hard-working spirit, decent education background and the way he deals with fans.

On seeing the picture of Peng in online biographies, some foreign users fall for it, with some asking: “Oh my god, are you really Peng Yuyan?”

However, some are more shrewd and reply: “You do not have face”, a term in Chinese meaning shameless.

Many people on mainland social media have been fascinated by the response from Peng’s studio.

“You are the real Peng Yuyan. Then who am I?” quipped one online observer.

“There are so many Peng Yuyan on the internet. Everyone is Peng Yuyan. Your identity is actually given by yourself, ha,” joked another person.

While a third said: “With the influx of American internet users to Xiaohongshu, we appoint Peng Yuyan to represent us. There is no problem.”

Over the past week, many Chinese internet users lamented that they have never regretted not studying English so much.

During a live-streaming session in mid-January, host Wu Xin was surprised at the flood of English reactions in the comment section.

As a result, she switched to English, but performed clumsily because of a limited vocabulary.

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China’s population drops for third year in a row despite uptick in births

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3295222/chinas-population-drops-third-year-row-despite-uptick-births?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s population fell for a third consecutive year in 2024, with a modest rise in new births outnumbered by deaths as the country’s collective age continues to creep upwards and deepen the demographic crisis.

The total population dropped by 1.39 million in 2024 to 1.4083 billion, down from 1.4097 billion people in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

In all, 9.54 million babies were born last year, up from the 9.02 million newborns – the lowest total since record-keeping started in 1949 – reported for 2023.

Meanwhile, about 10.93 million people died, pushing the death rate to a five-decade high.

Culture had a part to play in last year’s statistics, as 2024 was the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac – an auspicious time for which some parents wait to conceive. Experts had predicted a possible rebound in birth rates due to this phenomenon, all the while cautioning such a reversal would be limited and localised.

China further loosened its family planning restrictions in 2021, allowing couples to have a third child. Analysts said the uptick in the number of newborns last year could indicate the policy change has had some effect.

Even a slight rebound will not be sufficient to offset the long-term decline, as a decrease in newborns is difficult to reverse, said Yuan Xin, vice-president of the China Population Association and a professor of demography at Nankai University in Tianjin.

“The significant decline in the childbearing population – compounded by the rising number of singles, DINKs and infertility cases – has drastically reduced the pool of potential parents,” said Yuan, using the acronym for “double income, no kids” to describe some couples.

“At the same time, the ageing population continues to worsen, and the scale of deaths is increasing. With more deaths than births, negative population growth has become inevitable.”

He added the willingness of young people to have children has not significantly changed, and the average age of first marriages and first births are both still on the rise, further hindering any potential improvements.

China’s fertility rate dropped to 1.09 in 2022, according to an estimate by the China Population and Development Research Centre, while the total fertility rate in Shanghai, one of China’s wealthiest cities, dipped to 0.6 in 2023.

The fertility rate refers to the average number of children born to each woman. A rate of 2.1 children per woman, called the replacement rate, is widely accepted as the minimum for a country’s population to remain constant.

Demographers have said it is possible China’s fertility rate dropped below 1.0 in 2023, but an official fertility rate for last year has not been provided.

Governments at all levels – and some of the country’s largest companies – have introduced a number of policies to incentivise families to have children or to motivate those with children to have more, including cash rewards, extended parental leave, tax breaks and housing subsidies.

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Unplug Great Firewall to boost China’s competitiveness, Shanghai lawmaker says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3295169/unplug-great-firewall-boost-chinas-competitiveness-shanghai-lawmaker-says?utm_source=rss_feed

A lawmaker in China’s financial hub of Shanghai has called for the lifting of strict internet controls in free-trade zones, financial districts and universities to help support AI development and attract foreign investment and talent.

Mao Xiangdong, vice-president of the Shanghai Institute of Technology and a member of the standing committee of the city’s people’s congress, proposed the idea during Shanghai’s ongoing legislative sessions, according to a post by China Development News – a newspaper under the National Development and Reform Commission.

The post was removed on Friday morning.

Shanghai should “continue to learn new technologies from developed countries”, Mao said, according to Toutiao, a popular news and information aggregation site.

He added that the mission of building China into an international economic, financial, trade, shipping, science and tech innovation centre – envisioned by President Xi Jinping – required “global exchanges”.

During an inspection trip to the city in December 2023, Xi discussed a “five-centres goal”, in which Shanghai should be a global hub based on the economy, finance, trade, shipping, and science and technology innovation. The plan became a trending political and economic vision for the city.

Mao suggested that authorities should consider allowing unfiltered internet access in its international business zones including its free-trade zones – the Lujiazui business district, China International Import Expo sites and the Hongqiao International Business District – to “enhance the international competitiveness of Shanghai”.

He also said unfiltered internet access to international social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and X should be accessible in compounds with high numbers of international residents, such as the Zhangjiang International Talent Hub, to better attract foreigners to live in or travel to Shanghai.

He also urged the city to ease internet restrictions at its research and tertiary institutions so teachers and researchers have easier access to leading global artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT.

Mao said that in the era of AI, as long as the cross-border flow of sensitive data is regulated and controlled, the benefits of opening up computing power and the internet would “outweigh the disadvantages”, and benefit education, scientific research, business and innovation, while boosting employment opportunities.

China’s “Great Firewall” – the world’s most sophisticated censorship system – maintains stringent controls over what the world’s largest population of internet users can access. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog, has repeatedly vowed to exert full online control to filter out undesirable information from overseas.

Without a VPN, China’s 1.1 billion internet users – more than three times the population of the United States – cannot access many of the world’s most popular websites and applications.

The number of websites blocked in China has ballooned to more than 10,000, a blacklist that includes Western social networks, messaging platform WhatsApp; news outlets including Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times; and popular collaboration tools such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

Many have argued that the restrictions have stifled innovation and creativity in China as those who need to access blocked sites have to resort to private networks such as VPNs or proxies such as Shadowsocks to bypass the firewall.

China’s population falls for a third straight year, posing challenges for its government and economy

https://apnews.com/article/china-population-economy-growth-6415abe5e6422de26bd838b6bf0b7564People walk past a sculpture of the Chinese Communist Party flag at the Museum of the Communist Party of China, in Beijing on Jan. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

2025-01-17T02:41:42Z

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China’s population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Friday, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working age people.

China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year.

The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and other nations have seen their birth rates plummet. China three years ago joined Japan and most of Eastern Europe among other nations whose population is falling.

The reasons are in many cases similar: Rising costs of living are causing young people to put off or rule out marriage and child birth while pursuing higher education and careers. While people are living longer, that’s not enough to keep up with rate of new births.

Countries such as China that allow very little immigration are especially at risk.

China has long been among the world’s most populous nations, enduring invasions, floods and other natural disasters to sustain a population that thrived on rice in the south and wheat in the north. Following the end of World War II and the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949, large families re-emerged and the population doubled in just three decades, even after tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward that sought to revolutionize agriculture and industry and the Cultural Revolution that followed a few years later.

After the end of the Cultural Revolution and leader Mao Zedong’s death, Communist bureaucrats began to worry the country’s population was outstripping its ability to feed itself and began implementing a draconian “one child policy.” Though it was never law, women had to apply for permission to have a child and violators could face forced late-term abortions and birth control procedures, massive fines and the prospect of their child being deprived an identification number, effectively making them non-citizens.

Rural China, where the preference for male offspring was especially strong and two children were still ostensibly allowed, became the focus of government efforts, with women forced to present evidence they were menstruating and buildings emblazoned with slogans such as “have fewer children, have better children.”

The government sought to stamp out selective abortion of female children, but with abortions legal and readily available, those operating illicit sonogram machines enjoyed a thriving business.

That has been the biggest factor in China’s lopsided sex ratio, with as many as millions more boys born for every 100 girls, raising the possibility of social instability among China’s army of bachelors. Friday’s report gave the sex imbalance as 104.34 men to every 100 women, though independent groups give the imbalance as considerably higher.

More disturbing for the government was the drastically falling birthrate, with China’s total population dropping for the first time in decades in 2023 and China being narrowly overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation in the same year. A rapidly aging population, declining workforce, lack of consumer markets and migration abroad are putting the system under severe pressure.

While spending on the military and flashy infrastructure projects continues to rise, China’s already frail social security system is teetering, with increasing numbers of Chinese refusing to pay into the underfunded pension system.

Already, more than one-fifth of the population is aged 60 or over, with the official figure given as 310.3 million or 22% of the total population. By 2035, this number is forecast to exceed 30%, sparking discussion of changes to the official retirement age, which one of the lowest in the world. With fewer students, some vacant schools and kindergartens are meanwhile being transformed into care facilities for older people.

Such developments are giving some credence to the aphorism that China, now the world’s second largest economy but facing major headwinds, will “grow old before it grows rich.”

Government inducements including cash payouts for having up to three children and financial help with housing costs have had only temporary effects.

Meanwhile, China continued its transition to an urban society, with 10 million more people moving to cities for an urbanization rate of 67%, up almost a percentage point from the previous year.

China’s Africa imports rise, but will 2025 headwinds halt the continent’s trade gains?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3295069/chinas-africa-imports-rise-will-2025-headwinds-halt-continents-trade-gains?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s imports from Africa rose to US$116.8 billion last year, up 6.9 per cent compared to 2023, driven by gold demand and agricultural products, which slightly narrowed the continent’s trade deficit.

The increase tapered Africa’s trade gap with China to about US$62 billion from US$64 billion in 2023, according to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, as African countries called for more imports of their processed products, rather than raw materials.

At last year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his country had seen an increase in bilateral trade with China but it wanted “to narrow the trade deficit and address the structure of our trade”.

Increased investment in new mineral sites, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Guinea, Zambia and Zimbabwe, helped to boost African exports last year.

The DRC supplies more than 60 per cent of the cobalt China uses in its electric vehicle battery industry, while Zimbabwe has attracted billions of dollars from Chinese companies for the processing of lithium, another essential material for EVs.

Aly-Khan Satchu, an independent analyst based in Nairobi who specialises in sub-Saharan Africa, said two-way trade was resilient because China had nurtured its African relationships over more than two decades.

Satchu said the rise in imports to China was interesting given that oil prices were largely soft through the reporting period. “I suspect an acceleration in gold exports to China from Africa was hidden in the headline number,” Satchu said.

Chinese companies have stepped up imports of African gold as the price of the commodity has surged. They have also invested millions of dollars in gold processing plants in South Africa and Ghana, the continent’s top two exporters of the precious metal.

Gold – considered a safe-haven asset – has extended gains this year to above US$2,600 per ounce – up from about US$2,000 at the end of 2023 – as investors continued to seek safety in the metal amid geopolitical uncertainty that intensified with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

China’s gold-buying spree in 2022 and 2023 was suspected to have driven up prices. In 2023, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, bolstered its gold reserves by about a third.

Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa specialist and associate professor at the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, said uncertainty around the roles of the US dollar and the Swift-based international bank payments system had renewed interest in gold reserves, which rose by about 30 per cent last year.

She said the China-Africa trade figures were related to the rising prices of some commodities last year.

Prices rose for gold, copper, cocoa and coffee, which last year hit its highest price since 1977 due to a combination of higher demand and poor growing weather in Brazil and Vietnam, Johnston said.

Better logistics, as well as the China-Africa Economic and Trade Deep Cooperation Pioneer Zone in China’s Hunan province, could help to further reduce trade distances and costs, allowing African exporters to take advantage of those price hikes, she said, adding that the time taken to ship coffee beans from some African countries had been cut from three months to one in the past five years.

China is also sourcing more food products, such as avocados, soybeans, pineapples, chillies, cashew nuts, sesame seeds and spices, from the continent. China has pledged increased African food imports to support modernisation of the continent’s agriculture industry.

Beijing expects the imports to continue to rise following China’s move in December to suspend tariffs on all products from the 33 least-developed countries in Africa that have diplomatic relations with Beijing.

The move led to an increase in imports last month of 18.1 per cent from those countries, according to Lu Daliang, director of the statistics and analysis department at the General Administration of Customs.

“China’s orderly expansion of voluntary and unilateral opening up, and the potential of its vast market, are providing more opportunities for the world to share in the Chinese market,” Lu said.

Satchu, from Nairobi, expects farm exports from Africa to accelerate this year as Chinese businesses relocate and indigenise themselves “as a defence against [US president-elect Donald] Trump”.

However, Charlie Robertson, head of macro strategy at asset management firm FIM Partners, said 2025 was looking very uncertain for China-Africa trade.

He said African exports to China could surge in the first few months as China tried to produce as many goods as possible before US tariffs took effect “but after tariffs are imposed, African exports might slump”.

The cheaper yuan could also help Chinese exports to Africa do well all year, he said.

“China will be keen to see export growth to any markets if the US is hurting Chinese exports to the US,” Robertson said.

Chinese stake in Philippine power grid operator raises concerns about security, skill transfers

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3295082/chinese-stake-philippine-power-grid-operator-raises-concerns-about-security-skill-transfers?utm_source=rss_feed

Lawmakers in the Philippines have raised renewed concerns about the country’s national grid operator and its alleged violation of foreign ownership laws, reviving fears about China wielding excessive influence over the Philippines’ energy supply – including a “kill switch” that could turn off power across the archipelago.

While analysts dismiss the possibility of such a switch, they say the issue does raise concerns about limiting skills transfers to Filipino engineers and a lack of operational transparency that could leave the country vulnerable to undue foreign influence over critical infrastructure.

At the centre of the controversy is the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), which is 60 per cent owned by the Filipino-led Synergy Grid of the Philippines (SGP) and 40 per cent by the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC).

Lawmakers have alleged that the NGCP may have violated foreign ownership laws, which only allow up to 40 per cent of foreign investments in certain industries, including public utilities.

On January 6, Joey Salceda, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, raised questions about the NGCP’s ownership structure, including the fact that its chairman, Zhu Guangchao, is a Chinese national.

Salceda also cited the SGP’s Philippine Stock Exchange submissions, which said foreign shareholders including those of American, Chinese, Malaysian and Iranian nationalities held stocks accounting for 7.48 per cent of the company’s ownership.

This meant the SGP had already exceeded the Philippines’ constitutional limit of 40 per cent of ownership, Salceda said, alleging that the NGCP was circumventing the cap on foreign ownership.

During Tuesday’s House hearing on legislative franchises, Representative Gerville Luistro raised similar concerns as she questioned the NGCP’s lawyers on whether the company had complied with the provision on foreign ownership.

Luistro revealed that the corporation had officials who were Chinese nationals, despite the constitutional provision that its executive and managerial officers should be Filipino citizens.

The NGCP’s legal team clarified that the chairman presided over board meetings and had no influence, and that the corporation was wholly Filipino-led.

Previously state-run, the country’s transmission system was restructured to allow the privatisation of the power sector in 2001 and underwent a public bidding process for private ownership in 2008.

However, Dindo Manhit, president of Stratbase-ADR Institute think tank, said the NGCP might not have necessarily violated these ownership restrictions.

“One risk of being a publicly listed company is that anyone can purchase stocks, although limitations can be set on what types of shares the public can buy. Some shares might have a very small stake and without voting rights, giving them no influence on company decisions while still allowing investment,” Manhit told This Week in Asia.

Manhit, who advised the rival bidding consortium in 2008, said he believed the companies involved were then properly vetted.

The consortium comprising the SGCC and two Filipino-owned companies, Monte Oro Grid Resources Corporation and Calaca High Power Corporation, emerged as the winning bidder.

This consortium soon established the NGCP in 2009. In 2020, the SGP secured approval to acquire these entities involved in the NGCP, giving it controlling interest over the corporation.

Lawmakers have also rehashed security concerns about the SGCC’s involvement in the NGCP, reviving speculation about an “off switch” that could enable Chinese engineers to rob the entire country of its power with a single flick.

The National Transmission Corporation, the grid’s previous operator, had mentioned this scenario as a possibility at a Senate session in 2019. Opposition senator Risa Hontiveros then raised questions on the extent of China’s control as Beijing and Manila were embroiled in tensions in the South China Sea.

Last week, Salceda stoked similar security fears, alleging that two Chinese officials of the NGCP were found to be reporting to Beijing. “They’re not supposed to be doing that,” Salceda said on January 6.

However, an NGCP official assured lawmakers that no such switch existed.

Analysts said fears about China having the ability to “switch off” the power grid were unfounded.

Enrico Gloria, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines and a doctoral student at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said concerns about foreign investment in the country’s national grid were valid, given the sector’s importance to national security.

“However, fears of tangible security threats, such as China’s ability to ‘switch off’ the power grid due to its significant investment stake, remain largely theoretical,” he said.

Fears that the NGCP could be utilised for Chinese statecraft needed to be contextualised, Gloria said, adding that during heightened tensions with China in 2012 and 2016, Chinese state-owned enterprises “did not alter their operations in ways detrimental to the Philippines or its power sector”.

“Historically, China’s economic restrictions on other countries have targeted symbolic goods and products – such as bananas from the Philippines in 2012, wine and beef exports from Australia in 2020 […] – rather than critical infrastructure,” he said.

According to Manhit, the presence of foreign ownership of the NGCP is not classified as a risk, especially since six directors are Filipinos while four are Chinese.

“Within the NGCP, the technical side and the control room of the grid are staffed by a majority of Filipino personnel. Filipinos who are in crucial departments of the company must also play their role in managing risks,” he said.

For Alvin Camba, a critical materials specialist at Associated Universities Incorporated, the more pressing issue is the limited transfer of advanced technical knowledge to Filipino engineers.

While the NGCP had greatly improved transmission lines across the country, “the degree to which we train engineers is limited only to mid-level [activities]”, said Camba, who has previously researched the SGCC’s investment in the NGCP.

“When it comes to the high-level things and the most important technologies, it’s actually outside the hands of Filipinos.”

Another major concern was the lack of transparency in the NGCP’s operations, including questions about its decision-making processes and financial arrangements with state-owned institutions, Camba added.

“I think a lot of these things are not transparent. We don’t know how operations work. We don’t know who makes decisions,” he said, noting that there could be circumstances where companies in the Philippines could offer political favours to Chinese entities in exchange for financial support.

Observers, meanwhile, said heightened tensions over the South China Sea dispute “should not unfairly subject SGCC to additional scrutiny”.

Concerns regarding security threats from foreign parties would always be present, Manhit said, but stressed that the privatisation of the Philippines’ transmission centre through a public bidding process made the opportunity available “to all interested parties”.

“The bidding took place in 2008, long before these geopolitical tensions escalated. Thus, we need to be vigilant and continuously monitor their movements and actions,” Manhit said.

Gloria urged the Philippines to “learn to navigate a balanced approach” by maintaining fair and transparent business relations with China while pursuing its own territorial claims and national interests.

US ‘TikTok refugees’ spark global rush of sign-ups to China’s RedNote platform

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3295130/us-tiktok-refugees-spark-global-rush-sign-ups-chinas-rednote-platform?utm_source=rss_feed

In yet another consequence of the impending US ban on short-video app TikTok, rival Chinese platform RedNote is seeing a spike in users based in other countries, mirroring the migration of American self-styled “TikTok refugees”.

The app – also known as Xiaohongshu, which means “little red book” – was ranked as the No. 1 free-to-use platform in Britain and Canada, as well as EU countries like Ireland and Italy, by the Apple Store on Thursday.

The exact number of downloads is unknown, but the app – launched in 2013 as China’s answer to Instagram – has also cracked the top three in Apple’s charts in countries like El Salvador, France, Portugal, and Spain.

According to third-party data analytics firm SensorTower, a similar trend is occurring on Google Play, with countries from Australia to Sweden seeing RedNote at the top of their downloads lists this week.

“Hello from Portugal, I came here with friends from another app,” said one new user identified as Mfp Mfp, who was commenting in Chinese on a video of a young boy introducing his life in China.

“I’ve always been fascinated by your culture but did not know about this platform,” the user said, adding that she hopes to learn Chinese so that she will no longer need to use translation software to make similar posts.

In the comments section of the same video, another new user – identified as Mina – shared an image of a motorway and a note that read: “Hello from the UK. It is very depressing.”

Similar exchanges have proliferated this week across the Shanghai-based RedNote.

Since its launch in 2013, the platform has evolved into a de facto search engine for everything from travel recommendations to college application tips, reaching nearly 300 million active users as of December 2023, with 50 per cent aged 15 to 28.

Unlike many Chinese social media apps, which have been split into domestic and international versions because of China’s moderation rules, there is just one version of RedNote.

This has allowed Chinese and foreign online users to connect more openly and directly than they normally do. Popular international social media apps like Facebook and Instagram are inaccessible in mainland China without access to a virtual private network (VPN).

It is unclear whether this period of openness will last, or if it will quickly fade like the audio-based social networking platform Clubhouse, which for a few days in 2021 allowed uncensored, wide-ranging dialogue between Chinese and international users.

When asked this week whether Beijing would strengthen censorship on content by overseas users on RedNote, foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun signalled government support, saying “we encourage and support people-to-people exchanges”.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers, who have repeatedly raised national security concerns about TikTok, are yet to make up their minds on what the phenomenon means for their policy on Chinese-owned social media platforms.

Asked on Thursday if the US Congress should consider a more comprehensive approach towards foreign apps, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said the migration to RedNote “is a very good example of the law of unintended consequences, which the Congress right now doesn’t know anything about”.

Reports of RedNote topping US app charts began circulating on Monday, initially driven by US users protesting against a looming ban on TikTok, which is due to come into effect on January 19 if China-based owner ByteDance does not divest.

Citing a source close to RedNote, Reuters reported that more than 700,000 new users had joined the app in just two days, but it is unclear whether the figure referred only to US-based downloads.

TikTok is waiting for a US Supreme Court ruling on the forced sale, which supporters argue is necessary because of concerns that the Chinese government could collect the data of American citizens or manipulate content on the app.

The surge in RedNote users is occurring in other countries where similar concerns about TikTok’s ownership have been raised.

In Canada for example, the government in November ordered the dissolution of ByteDance’s operations there after a national security review of the company, but did not block Canadians’ access to TikTok.

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China worker wins US$820,000 in lottery, forced to share winnings with company colleagues

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3294028/china-worker-wins-us820000-lottery-forced-share-winnings-company-colleagues?utm_source=rss_feed

An employee in China won more than six million yuan (US$820,000) in a lottery at a year-end company party only to then be asked by the firm to return the prize so that the jackpot could be divided among all the participants.

The story from March 2019 recently resurfaced and caused a stir on mainland social media because the Spring Festival approaches, when many companies host parties.

Some people speculated that the news had resurfaced to boost lagging lottery ticket sales.

On March 2, 2019, an unnamed company in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, in southeastern China, held its annual party, where, to create a festive atmosphere, it bought more than 500 lottery tickets from a local lottery station and gave one ticket to each employee.

One of the tickets won the first prize of six million yuan, causing a buzz among the employees.

Many of them took to social media to share their excitement, attracting significant attention.

“Come join our company, six million lottery wins are just a regular perk! Message me for job openings,” one person joked.

“Our annual party handed out lottery tickets, and someone won the jackpot! This is probably the closest I will ever get to such a huge prize,” said another.

However, the situation turned dramatically when the company discovered the win and demanded that the employee return the ticket, arguing that the jackpot should be shared among all the people at the party.

When the employee refused to comply, the dispute escalated and had to be sorted out at the local police station.

Police from Yinzhou district of Ningbo confirmed they had addressed the matter: “It was a civil dispute, and we advised the parties to resolve it through legal channels.”

Adding to the drama, insiders revealed that the lottery draw actually took place on February 28, two days before the tickets were distributed at the annual party on March 2.

Also, the company had reportedly instructed its finance staff to ensure none of the tickets they bought were winning ones before they distributed them to staff.

However, an oversight is thought to have allowed the winning ticket to slip through.

It is unclear if the dispute ended up in court.

Tang Caizong, a lawyer from Ningbo Justice Bureau, said that the company’s action constituted a gifting contract because once the tickets were distributed to employees, the rights to those tickets transferred to the recipients.

“Even though the winning numbers had already been drawn and the company was unaware of the results, contract law does not allow for such gifts to be rescinded under these circumstances.

“Therefore, the company’s demand to reclaim the ticket and share the prize among all attendees lacks a legal basis,” Tang told Ningbo Daily Group.

The incident provoked outrage online.

One person said: “Once a gift is given, there is no taking it back. That is common sense.”

“The boss pretends to be generous by distributing tickets and then tries to cash in when someone wins. So shameless,” said another.

A third online observer said: “This is unethical behaviour by the company. Treating employees this way? Bankruptcy must be just around the corner.”

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Chinese military tests electronic war gadget that turns drone into a giant UFO

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3294661/chinese-military-tests-electronic-war-gadget-turns-drone-giant-ufo?utm_source=rss_feed

While China’s sixth-generation fighter jets pierce the skies in their boundary-pushing stealth coating, a team of scientists has been breaking new ground in electronic warfare technology from the opposite direction.

Instead of a stealth approach, the Chinese researchers aim to fool radar operators into thinking that a radar reflector – roughly the size of an iPad tablet – is an unidentified flying object (UFO) as big as a sports stadium.

The effect – similar to a giant flying saucer suddenly materialising in mid-air – would be reminiscent of a scene from a science fiction film but it is achievable, according to a peer-reviewed paper published on January 8.

The paper, which appeared in the Chinese-language journal Radar Science and Technology, said the researchers created a radar cross-section (RCS) – the echo produced by a target’s power output – for the tablet measuring 5,240 square metres (56,400 sq ft).

The team, led by Chen Qiang, associate researcher at the National University of Defence Technology’s school of electronic science and technology, said the effect was achieved with “unprecedented efficiency”.

By powering up the radar reflector as it was carried by a drone, the researchers found it could “significantly increase RCS to mask the characteristics of real targets, effectively achieving tactical goals such as anti-reconnaissance and anti-attack”.

A swarm of drones carrying these tablets could overwhelm radar screens, according to the study.

The RCS is measured by the amount of power generated by a target. When scattered equally in all directions, the energy output produces an echo of the same size on the radar screen.

Chen and his colleagues said that they drew inspiration for the device from a patent filed in 1959 by Lester C. Van Atta, a radar expert at what was then the Hughes Aircraft Company.

Conventional radar reflectors, such as Luneburg lenses and corner reflectors, are limited in their efficiency and their simplistic design can be readily identified by advanced radar systems.

While sophisticated electronic warfare weapons can generate false signals, they often come with a high price tag and are too bulky to use on smaller platforms like drones or loitering munitions.

Van Atta came up with a unique array antenna, designed to ensure that the waveform and path of incident coincided perfectly with the reflected waves. To work, the array’s aperture needed to be much bigger, which is why the idea stayed on paper for 60 years.

By applying an electrical current to the Van Atta array, the Chinese scientists were able to significantly enhance the device’s RCS-boosting capabilities, according to the researchers.

However, the innovation introduced new challenges. The researchers found that the amplified signals interfered with each other during interactions between different array elements, particularly in a downsized radar reflector, they said.

The team tackled the problem by developing a novel signal isolation module. The scientists also incorporated a patterned structure into the middle of the sending and receiving antenna array, further improving the gain, they wrote.

According to the team, rigorous testing in a military lab showed that the prototype could effectively enhance and reflect electromagnetic waves originating from various angles.

The researchers noted that the device displayed a particularly impressive performance when operating in the X-band, which is commonly used for weapons control and target tracking.

“This method only requires powering the amplification module, eliminating the need for the generation and analysis of electromagnetic signals, thus offering the advantages of miniaturisation and scalability,” they wrote.

The People’s Liberation Army’s 63853 Unit, based in Changchun, northeastern China, took part in the research project. According to openly available information, it is primarily responsible for testing the performance and reliability of weapons.

Philippines turns to US firms for South China Sea oil drills as Beijing tensions persist

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3295162/philippines-turns-us-firms-south-china-sea-oil-drills-beijing-tensions-persist?utm_source=rss_feed

US companies are interested in oil and gas projects in the Philippines, Manila’s energy chief said, as tensions with Beijing hamper exploration in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

The projects that could involve American firms “are ultra deep within the archipelago,” Philippine Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said on Friday. He declined to name the companies pending firm commitments, but said some of them could be investors returning to the region.

“The American companies have assured us that their interest is driven by the economics and not by changes in political administrations,” Lotilla said.

The Philippines has been exploring ways to boost energy supply as its Malampaya gas field – which supplies a fifth of the country’s power requirements – nears depletion.

Tensions with Beijing have prevented Manila from exploring contested areas of the energy-rich South China Sea. Philippines-listed PXP Energy Corp.’s exploration work in the South China Sea’s Reed Bank has been stalled amid the maritime dispute, which has flared up again in the past weeks due to the presence of a huge Chinese ship near the Southeast Asian nation’s shores.

Malampaya’s service contractor last year said it was preparing to drill new wells to boost production. Drilling in nearby fields is set to start this year, and “by 2026 or 2027 we will have additional gas flowing from there,” Lotilla said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr this month signed a law aimed at developing the natural gas industry, as the country moves to cut reliance on coal. The Southeast Asian nation relies heavily on imported coal, oil, and gas, making it vulnerable to global price swings which affect energy costs for industries.

The country is seeking to increase the share of renewable energy in its power mix to 35 per cent by 2030 and 50 per cent by 2040. The nation’s transition to clean energy will require an investment of around US$500 billion between 2024 and 2050, according to the government’s estimates.

“If the financial resources were there, we can go as the sky is the limit as far as renewable energy is concerned,” Lotilla said. “The challenge is in the cost.”

Marcos, who took office in 2022, has courted foreign companies to invest in his country’s renewable energy sector. The Philippines signed this week a deal with United Arab Emirates-based Masdar for long-term renewable energy investments worth US$15 billion.

Lotilla also said that the Philippines’ civil nuclear agreement with the US coming into force last year allows for exchange of information and technologies.

“That has enabled our private sector to now directly get in touch with American companies and discuss the possibilities,” he said.

[Sport] Three reasons Trump tariffs aren't China's only problem

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceq9lxlg811o

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China developer Vanke’s shares drop amid reports of CEO detention by police

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3295119/china-vanke-shares-drop-amid-reports-ceo-detention-police?utm_source=rss_feed

Shares of beleaguered state-backed developer China Vanke fell by more than 8 per cent between Thursday’s market close and Friday morning amid rumours that its president had been detained by police, intensifying concerns over the company’s struggle to manage its mounting debt load.

Vanke’s shares opened at HK$4.47 on Friday, the lowest since last September, after closing at HK$4.86 Thursday afternoon. The company’s mainland-listed shares also fell by more than 4 per cent during the same period, opening at 6.6 yuan.

The country’s largest property developer by revenue, according to Bloomberg data, Vanke has US$4.9 billion in onshore and offshore bonds coming due or facing redemption options this year. The share-price decline follows a report by local media outlet the Economic Observer on Thursday evening that claimed that the company’s CEO Zhu Jiusheng had been taken away by police.

Zhu was seen promoting the company’s real estate business on Chinese social media platform WeChat on Friday morning, local media outlet Cailian reported.

“The latest development may be due to the fact that Vanke has sizeable of debt … due in 2025, and it looks like Vanke may not be able to repay it on time, illustrated by the sharp drop of its bond prices recently,” said Raymond Cheng, a managing director at CGS International Securities in Hong Kong.

“The news definitely will further hurt market sentiment of property market, as Vanke is a household brand in China. Meanwhile, we think that the government’s direct step may help to prevent further collapse of the issue if Vanke is eventually taken over.”

Five of Vanke’s bonds were temporarily suspended by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Thursday after falling more than 20 per cent amid media reports that the company had no intention of extending the maturity of its bonds.

Vanke’s bonds largely stabilised after yesterday’s rout. Its debt that carries the coupon rate of 3.21 per cent and matures in 2027 rose 1.2 per cent on Friday, recovering from an 18 per cent slump day earlier.

Additional reporting by Zhang Shidong

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‘Escapism’: China firm offers office, lunch for US$4 a day for people hiding jobless status

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3293892/escapism-china-firm-offers-office-lunch-us4-day-people-hiding-jobless-status?utm_source=rss_feed

Companies in China are offering a “pretend to work” service which includes office space and lunch for 30 yuan (US$4) a day to help people hide the fact they are jobless from their families.

In northern China’s Hebei province, one netizen shared a video of an office space, advertising it as a discreet solution people who are embarrassed about being unemployed.

“For 29.9 yuan per day, you can ‘work’ here from 10am to 5pm, with lunch included,” they said.

Another anonymous internet user promoted a similar service, charging 50 yuan (US$7) for clients to pose as a “boss” in a leather chair and snap photos to reassure their families.

“Many big companies are laying off workers,” the person wrote.

“I had a spare office and thought this could give the unemployed a space to stay and connect.”

He said that while inquiries have come in, no one has yet visited his office.

The “pretend to work” trend has sparked much attention on mainland social media, with related topics racking up more than 100 million views.

One online observer said it helps “ease psychological pressure” on the unemployed.

However, another person criticised it for “promoting escapism”, arguing it hinders the process of finding a new job.

Another netizen shared their own story: “After I was laid off six months ago, my parents helped me move back to my hometown. Parents will always support you, never lose confidence in yourself.”

In June 2023, the youth unemployment rate in China hit a record high of 21.3 per cent for the 16-24 age group, leading authorities to suspend the publication of data for several months.

The government then rejigged its method of calculation to exclude students.

Last November, the youth unemployment dropped to 16.1 per cent, marking a third consecutive monthly decline.

Reports of unemployed individuals hiding their jobless status from families have emerged across China.

Jiawei, a former e-commerce employee from Hangzhou in eastern China, said that after his company went bankrupt, he spent his days at a coffee shop applying for jobs and sending resumes.

“Unemployment is stressful, but I did not want to pass that negativity onto my family,” he told the mainland media outlet Yunxi Technology.

Jiawei left the coffee shop at his usual after-work time, occasionally staying out late to mimic working overtime.

Meanwhile, Chen, a 29-year-old former semiconductor worker from Hubei province in central China, told The Post that after being laid off last year, he chose not to tell his girlfriend.

With two months of severance pay, Chen spent his days at a library preparing for the provincial civil service exam in March.

Experts said that “pretending to work” is an “isolated phenomenon” in China.

“Society places a lot of pressure on people to succeed, and young adults sometimes set their job expectations too high. The sudden shock of losing a job can lead to depression,” Zhang Yong, a social work professor at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, in central China told The Post.

Zhang advised the unemployed to seek professional counselling instead of hiding their struggles.

“They need to take an honest look at their situation, understand the job market, be open with their families and build a healthier mindset about career choices,” he added.

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China announces 5% GDP growth, population drop at press conference

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3295113/china-unveils-annual-gdp-population-figures-press-conference?utm_source=rss_feed

This live blog has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by . Get faster notifications on the latest updates by .

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s chief governmental data compiler, is holding a press conference on Friday morning.

At the conference, NBS Commissioner Kang Yi and other officials are expected to reveal the yearly figures for gross domestic product, population, unemployment and other metrics that will inform policy decisions in 2025.

While meeting the annual GDP target – set at “about 5 per cent” at the opening session of the national legislature in March – has been a priority for decades, the year’s register of births and deaths has taken on greater importance as the country’s population has been in a state of steady decline.

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Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng to attend Trump’s inauguration

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3295107/chinese-vice-president-han-zheng-attend-trumps-inauguration?utm_source=rss_feed

China says it will send Vice-President Han Zheng to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday.

The announcement was made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday, three days before president-elect Trump’s inauguration.

Han’s visit would mark the first time a senior Chinese leader has attended a US presidential inauguration.

Trump had invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the ceremony, according to media reports in November.

“We are willing to strengthen dialogue and communication with the new US administration, properly manage differences, expand cooperation and jointly push for sustainable development of stable and healthy China-US relations, and find out a correct way of engagement in the New Era,” reads the Friday statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In recent years, Chinese authorities have sent the vice president or other senior officials to attend the inaugurations of various state leaders.

On October 20, Han attended the inauguration of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta as Xi’s special representative. He also represented Beijing at the coronation of King Charles in London in May 2023.

More to follow...

[Sport] 'Looking for my spy': The jokes Americans and Chinese are sharing on 'alternative TikTok'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c983lr756xwo

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RedNote

RedNote

RedNote

Duolingo

RedNote

Chinese hackers accessed Janet Yellen’s computer in US Treasury breach

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3295105/chinese-hackers-accessed-janet-yellens-computer-us-treasury-breach?utm_source=rss_feed

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s computer was infiltrated and unclassified files were accessed as part of a broader breach of the agency by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The attackers also hacked the computers of two of Yellen’s lieutenants, Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Acting Under Secretary Brad Smith, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information.

Fewer than 50 files on Yellen’s machine were accessed, one of the people said.

Treasury spokesman Chris Hayden declined to comment on Thursday.

The compromise of Yellen’s computer makes the Treasury breach the latest hack attributed to the Chinese government that has reached the top ranks of a US federal department.

The attackers appeared to focus on Treasury’s role in sanctions, intelligence and international affairs, but didn’t penetrate the department’s email or classified systems, according to an Treasury report previously reviewed by Bloomberg News.

Treasury staff were at Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday briefing congressional aides and lawmakers about the hack. The discussions occurred as the Senate Finance Committee held a confirmation hearing on Thursday for Scott Bessent, US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee as Treasury secretary.

The Chinese operatives breached the top Treasury officials’ computers along with more than 400 laptop and desktop machines, accessing employee usernames and passwords as well as more than 3,000 files on unclassified personal devices, the report states.

The intruders also accessed “law enforcement sensitive” data and material on investigations run by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which reviews the national security implications of some foreign financing, according to the Treasury report.

Software contractor BeyondTrust Corp. on December 8 notified Treasury that hackers had exploited the company’s networks to infiltrate the government department. Treasury alerted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to the incident and sought help from the FBI and other intelligence agencies.

Politico earlier reported that the hackers had accessed a small number of unclassified files belonging to Yellen, Adeyemo and Smith.

Investigators attributed the hack to a Chinese state-sponsored actor known among cybersecurity professionals as Silk Typhoon and UNC5221, according to the report. They found that the hackers prioritised the collection of documents and operated outside normal working hours to avoid detection, according to the report.

Chinese officials have long denied US allegations of state-sponsored cyberattacks, and a foreign ministry spokesperson last month called the claims that the government was behind the Treasury hack “unwarranted and groundless”.

China was also accused in 2023 of breaking into the email accounts of key government officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and, according to The Wall Street Journal, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

Why does China enjoy preferential trade status with US, and could it lose it?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3295047/why-does-china-enjoy-preferential-trade-status-us-and-could-it-lose-it?utm_source=rss_feed

In its annual report to Congress in November, the American government’s US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said the legislature should repeal China’s permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status and instead reintroduce annual reviews of its trade practices to gain more leverage in efforts to change them.

Formerly known as most favoured nation status, PNTR is a legal designation in the United States that allows for free trade with a foreign state. Congress approved PNTR status for China in 2000 in exchange for Beijing agreeing to open up its markets and liberalise its trade practices ahead of joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.

According to WTO rules, the US can revoke a country’s trade advantages due to national security concerns with a simple majority vote from both houses of Congress, which is the path the Biden administration followed in taking action against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Pang Zhongying, an international affairs expert at Sichuan University, said Donald Trump’s second term as US president, beginning on Monday, will provide him with a “timely opportunity” to take such action, given the “abnormal” shape of bilateral trade since Trump’s first term and the fact both countries are heading towards “divergent development”.

“But China would still want to keep its PNTR because the US market is still important,” he said, noting that alternative opportunities offered by the Belt and Road Initiative, the China-Russia alliance or the BRICs grouping were not big enough to replace it.

Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China Centre at The Conference Board think tank, said the incoming US administration could “use the threat” of revocation as “a negotiation tool” to force Beijing to buy more US exports and address US multinationals’ concerns about inadequate access to the Chinese market.

With Trump’s nomination of “China hawks” for key Cabinet posts and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress for at least two years, he said action is on the cards to address concerns in Washington that “China has been taking advantage of the global free trade system and international organisations to the detriment of the US”.

Describing talk about such a move as “more like rhetoric to gain negotiating leverage than an ideologically-anchored commitment”, Han Shen Lin, the China country director at consulting firm The Asia Group, said “it’s reasonable to ask if this could be an outcome of negotiation gone south or a maximalist starting point in search of a grand deal”.

Revoking China’s PNTR status would allow the incoming Trump administration to fulfil his pledge to impose 60 per cent tariffs on all imports from China.

It would also “send an incredibly bold signal that the US has concluded that a quarter century of economic engagement with China has been a massive strategic mistake”, said Stephen Olson, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

Such a signal “might hold appeal” for Trump, Olson said, either as “an extreme negotiating tactic” or “an accurate reflection of what he thinks”.

But Zha Daojiong, a professor at Peking University’s School of International Studies, said “it is not easy to predict the impact from such an act”, because it was not known whether the US would also revoke PNTR status for connectors or transit economies that play a role in getting made-in-China products and components into the hands of American consumers.

Nominee for US treasury secretary suggests possible restart of trade talks with China

https://www.scmp.com/news/us/us-elections/article/3295098/nominee-us-treasury-secretary-suggests-possible-restart-trade-talks-china?utm_source=rss_feed

During his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s choice for US treasury secretary signalled a willingness to resume trade negotiations with China and defended the president-elect’s tariff policy as a useful tool to gain leverage.

Bessent said that he would push China to buy American goods, indicating openness to a trade agreement like the “phase one” deal that the US and China reached in Trump’s first term.

He also said the US must ensure that the dollar remains “the world’s reserve currency”, while advocating for “rigorous screening” of outbound hi-tech investments and measures to secure supply chains to ensure an edge in America’s competition with China.

“As a skilled negotiator, [Trump] believes that we’ve probably gotten over our skis on sanctions, and that sanctions may be driving countries out of the use of the US dollar. So the tariffs can be used for negotiations,” Bessent told the Senate Finance Committee.

Trump, who is to be sworn in on Monday, has long contended that tariffs can bring manufacturing and jobs back to America and help cut the federal deficit. During his election campaign, he advocated using tariff revenues to replace income taxes.

In 2018, Trump began imposing tariffs on more than US$300 billion worth of imported Chinese goods and pushed Beijing to sign an agreement, known as the phase-one deal, requiring it to buy an additional US$200 billion of American goods and services in a two-year period.

Trump often bragged that the deal was “the best” he had ever made. But after it was signed in January 2020, Beijing fell well short of the target, in part because the Covid-19 pandemic-related supply chain disruptions hampered exports.

Referring to the phase one deal, Bessent said that if confirmed, he would “begin pushing for the purchase guarantees that were in the China Agreement to be enforced, and perhaps to push the Chinese for a catch-up provision over the past four years.”

Additionally, Trump has said that on his first day in office, he would impose 10 per cent tariffs on all Chinese imports. He also said on the campaign trail they could reach 60 per cent or more for items like Beijing-subsidised electric vehicles that Trump said would cause a “bloodbath” in the US auto industry.

He also threatened to punish Brics nations with 100 per cent tariffs if they create a new currency; Russia and China have shown increasing interest in alternative currencies to the US dollar amid Western restrictions.

While some Democratic senators such as Ron Wyden of Oregon and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire contended that Trump’s tariff plans could be inflationary and costly to US consumers and small businesses that rely on Chinese imports, Bessent argued that the tariffs would address China’s “unfair” trade practicises such as its manufacturing “overcapacity” and raise federal revenues.

Wyden, the committe’s senior Democrat, also questioned Trump’s plan to reverse outgoing President Joe Biden’s efforts to boost US competitiveness in the clean energy sector, a race China is leading.

Trump, a climate change sceptic, vowed to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature programme which pumped billions of dollars into domestic clean energy industries, and he is reportedly planning to issue an executive order shortly after his inauguration to boost fossil fuel.

“Our country is in a clean energy arms race with China and other powers. But unfortunately, these policies from Donald Trump and Republicans may prevent us from winning,” Wyden told Bessent.

But Bessent said the US was in a “energy race” with China instead of a “clean energy race”, citing new coal plants and nuclear power plants that China builds every year. He also called the IRA spending “wildly out of control”.

Bessent also called for more secure supply chains and a tightened screening process of outbound investments in China in chips, AI and quantum computing.

China and the US have been locked in a fierce battle in hi-tech. Washington has issued export controls prohibiting the sale of advanced semiconductors chips to China, and Beijing has retaliated by restricting sales to the US of critical minerals that are essential for chipmaking.

Chinese dominance in critical mineral supply chains also appears to be a top priority for the Trump administration to address, as Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, disclosed on Tuesday.

As treasury secretary, Bessent would be in charge of enforcing sanctions and export controls – some of the most frequent trade tools Washington wields against Beijing – in response to threats to American economic security.

Bessent also faced intense questioning by Democratic senators on Thursday over Trump’s tax-cut proposals, with some saying they would benefit only the “ultra-wealthy” at the expense of the middle class.

Bessent pushed back, urging Congress to extend corporate tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term that are due to expire this year.

Trump also promised in his campaign to lower the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent from 21 per cent for companies manufacturing products in the US.

Studies have found that Trump’s tax and tariff policies could increase the burden on the US economy. An October report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based non-profit group, found that his fiscal proposals could increase the US budget deficit by up to US$15.15 trillion.

In September, the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, estimated the 10 per cent universal tariff and 60 per cent Chinese import tariff would reduce US GDP by roughly 0.8 per cent.

If China retaliated, it found, US GDP would fall by more than 0.2 per cent below the baseline by 2026 and inflation would rise by 0.6 percentage points in 2025.

Bessent, a billionaire hedge-fund manager with no experience in government, nonetheless received support from committee Republicans. Michael Crapo of Idaho, the committee chair, said that he would support Bessent’s nomination.

In a letter to the Treasury Department’s ethics office, Bessent, 62, indicated that, if confirmed, he would resign from Key Square Capital Management, the investment firm he co-founded, and divest its assets.

How China aims to be guiding light in Middle East’s energy transition

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3294797/how-china-aims-be-guiding-light-middle-easts-energy-transition?utm_source=rss_feed

Amid geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States, including US sanctions on Chinese clean technology (cleantech), Beijing seeks to strengthen its presence in the Middle East, a region that has traditionally been in Washington’s sphere of influence. What regional actors seem to expect from China is assistance in the development of their green energy sectors.

Estimates suggest the Middle East receives 22-26 per cent of the total solar energy on Earth. As such, it sees China as a desirable partner, knowing that the world’s second-largest economy can produce enough solar cells, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries for the region. Given that clean energy was the top driver of China’s economic growth in 2023, it has the capacity to be an important part in the Middle Eastern energy transition.

According to Australian research group Climate Energy Finance, China’s international investments in clean energy technology have surpassed US$100 billion since the start of 2023. The Griffith Asia Institute in Australia estimated that Chinese companies were involved in green energy projects across the Middle East worth about US$9.5 billion between 2018 and 2023.

From China’s perspective, the region represents a very attractive market for expansion. Therefore, it is no surprise that a high-level Chinese delegation participated in the 15th session of the International Renewable Energy Agency Assembly in Abu Dhabi. The event was part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, a platform that gathered together leaders in politics and the global energy sector, as well as provided Chinese green energy companies with an opportunity to strengthen their positions in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere across the region.

One of them is Jinko Power, a Shanghai-based solar corporation, which played an important role in the construction of the Al Dhafra solar power plant, the largest in the world. “Before entering the Middle Eastern market, many people were laughing at us because we decided to do the solar business in oil-rich countries,” Mothana Qteishat, Jinko Power’s vice-president, told me in an interview.

Those people might not be laughing any more as other Chinese corporations have also entered the Middle Eastern market. Their focus is mostly on the Gulf region, specifically on nations such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. In these countries, the Chinese are cooperating with local green energy giants.

Al Dhafra, built by the China Machinery Energy Corporation, is now jointly held by several Chinese and UAE companies, including the semi-state-owned renewable energy developer Masdar. The corporation planned to expand its business by entering the Chinese market last year. But what went wrong?

“Although big, China is not the core market for us. There is significant domestic and local competition there that doesn’t necessarily make us very competitive,” Abdulaziz Alobaidli, the corporation’s chief operating officer, told me. He also pointed out that Masdar will continue to cooperate with its Chinese partners nevertheless.

The UAE is expected to be a major partner in China’s ambitions to export its green technologies to the Middle East. Its recent accession to the Brics group of nations seems to have had a positive impact on its green energy ties with Beijing.

In October, Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio debuted its EL8 electric SUV in the UAE. The previous year, Nio secured US$2.2 billion in investment from Abu Dhabi investment firm CYVN Holdings to strengthen its balance sheet and support business growth. The joint venture plans to introduce Nio’s vehicle models and establish a research and development centre focused on AI-driven technologies, notably autonomous driving.

China aims to establish itself as an essential partner in other Gulf states’ energy transitions as well. In neighbouring Oman, the Power Construction Corporation of China built the Ibri solar power facility, the largest renewable energy project in the country. Chinese company Hainan Drinda New Energy Technology plans to construct a factory for the production of solar photovoltaic cells in Oman.

In Saudi Arabia, Chinese firms Jinko Solar and TCL Zhonghuan, together with their Saudi partners, plan to invest more than US$3 billion in projects that aim to localise solar manufacturing and help turn Saudi Arabia into a global hub for renewable energy exports.

Finally, the fact that Premier Li Qiang visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE in September last year, with a delegation including executives of China’s top renewable energy companies, clearly suggests that cooperation between Beijing and regional actors will continue to grow in 2025.

Although many Middle Eastern countries are still heavily dependent on oil exports, with China’s help, the green energy transition could transform their economic portfolio. The wild card in this progress is how the incoming Trump administration reacts to Beijing’s green energy ambitions in the region and the growing ties between the Gulf states and China.

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China surpasses US in tally of top scientists for the first time: report

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3295011/china-surpasses-us-tally-top-scientists-first-time-report?utm_source=rss_feed

China has overtaken the United States for the first time in the number of its high-level science and technology experts, according to a new report.

Analysing data for the five years from 2020 to 2024, the report also shows that the number of top scientists in China has risen, while the number in the US has fallen.

According to the report released by Shenzhen-based data technology firm Dongbi Data on January 11, there were 36,599 world-leading scientists in the US in 2020, a total that declined each year to 31,781 in 2024. Over that time, America’s share of the global talent pool dropped from nearly 33 per cent to 27 per cent.

In contrast, the number of leading scientists in China increased from 18,805 in 2020 to 32,511 in 2024, with its global share rising from 17 per cent to 28 per cent.

For the purposes of the study, a “high-level science and technology talent” was defined as any researcher who had published influential papers in the world’s top journals.

The team behind the report sampled more than 40,000 highly cited key papers published between 2020 and 2024 in 129 top international academic journals across a range of disciplines, then extracted information about the authors and collated the data.

Wu Dengsheng, founder of Dongbi Data and professor at Shenzhen University’s college of management, said the analysis showed just how much the sector was changing worldwide.

“Over the past five years, the global landscape of high-level science and technology talent has undergone profound changes,” Wu said.

“China and the US are consistently dominating, but with diametrically opposed trends.”

In terms of distribution, China’s top scientists were concentrated on the country’s east coast and in first-tier cities, while America’s were mainly clustered in universities and research institutes in California and Massachusetts.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is the world’s largest scientific organisation with more than 100 institutes across China, topped the list with 3,615 leading scientists. This was far ahead of Harvard University with 1,683 and Stanford University with 1,208.

Outside the US and China, the number of top scientists in Germany remained relatively stable over the five-year period, revealing only a slight decline, while Britain and France both showed a downward trend. Japan and Australia also saw declines in both the number and global percentage of leading scientists.

The report’s findings, along with results from other similar analysis, point to a shift in scientific strength between the US and China in recent years.

According to a report released in 2023 by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China under the Ministry of Science and Technology, China contributed nearly one-third of the academic papers published in the most influential international journals in 2022. It was the first time that China had overtaken the US to secure the top position globally.

Also, in the latest issue of Nature – one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific journals in the West – published on January 8, almost half of the studies featured work by ethnic Chinese researchers.

Dongbi Data also released its Global Top Journals List Across All Disciplines, which aims to select and rank international academic journals.

Wu noted that most scientific literature database platforms that Chinese researchers had long used were from the West, including the Science Citation Index, one of the main international benchmarks of journals.

He said he hoped the release of the new list created by Chinese scientists would break the reliance on international evaluation systems in China’s scientific community.

Li Gang, dean of the Wuhan Data Intelligence Research Institute at Wuhan University, who was involved in the development of the list, stressed that the establishment of a rating system was actually a matter of narrative power in international academia.

“China has long lacked an influential and internationally recognised journal list,” Li said.

He said the new index could encourage international researchers to accept Chinese academic publications and therefore play a fundamental role in supporting the country’s scientific and technological development.

People in China Swim in Freezing River for Health, Happiness

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/people-in-china-swim-in-freezing-river-for-health-happiness/7934973.html

From VOA Learning English, this is the Health & Lifestyle report.

Even as temperatures kept dropping in China’s northeastern “ice city” of Harbin, excitement rose among a group of swimmers who enjoy jumping into freezing waters.

The daily event, known as ice swimming, is a winter tradition in Harbin. Swimmers train daily throughout the year to get their bodies ready for the unusual swim. Reporters from The Associated Press recently visited the city and spoke with some of the swimmers.

To create a pool in the Songhua River, the swimmers first had to break a 10-centimeter thick cover of ice. Then they removed the ice pieces, took off all clothes except bathing suits and prepared to enter. One by one, they jumped into a freezing, 10-meter-long pool.

Some of the swimmers reported that their legs and arms quickly went numb after entering the water. The outside temperature was about minus 13 degrees Celsius and the water temperature remained near freezing.

One of the swimmers was Chen Xia. She came from Zhejiang province about 1,700 kilometers further south. She decided to jump into the river even though she had a cold. Chen said the winter waters where she lives are warmer than those in Harbin.

She said the experience strengthened her confidence in winter swimming. She has been taking part in the activity for about 20 years.

The 56-year-old Chen said the freezing waters made her skin feel like small pins were attacking her body. But, she added that the experience still brought her happiness. “I felt prickling all over my body. But it still made me feel blissful,” she said.

 

Yu Xiaofeng lives in Harbin, a city that sits near the border with Russia. The 61-year-old said winter swimming in the city dates back to the 1970s. At that time, locals saw Russian Orthodox religious believers being baptized in the river. Later in 1983, an official winter swimming group was established in Harbin.

The city also holds an ongoing winter celebration known for its huge, detailed ice and snow sculptures.

 

Winter swimming is considered a sport in China. But it gained popularity much faster in Harbin than in other parts of the country. Today, Yu said the city is considered a “holy land” for winter swimming.

Yu said the winter swimmers appear to have better health than others. She added that she has felt a great sense of family and joy in the community during her 30 years of winter swimming.

While the AP reporters did not quote medical experts for this story, some of the swimmers said they believe ice swimming is good for their health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the group even came up with a new saying to describe the experience. They would rather “suffer through winter swimming than line up at the hospital,” Yu said.

You Decang is a 76-year-old winter swimmer who said he believes the activity helps keep him healthy. He noted that he has never caught a cold. You added, “If I go just one day without winter swimming, I feel quite uncomfortable.”

And that’s the Health & Lifestyle report. I’m Anna Matteo.

Andy Wong reported this story for The Associated Press. Olivia Zhang and Caroline Chen contributed to this report. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English.

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Words in This Story

numb –v. to cause (a part of the body) to lose sensation

further –adj. going or extending beyond

confidence -n. a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances

pin –n. a piece of wood, metal, or plastic used especially for fastening things together or for hanging one thing from another

prickling –v. to cause or feel a slight stinging or tingling sensation : prickle –n. a tingling sensation

blissful –adj. full of, marked by, or causing complete happiness

baptize –v. to dip in water or sprinkle water on as a part of the ceremony of receiving into the Christian church

sculpture –n. a three-dimensional work of art (such as a statue)

quote –v. to speak or write (a passage) from another usually with credit acknowledgment

uncomfortable –adj. feeling discomfort