Innholdsfortegnelse for May 12, 2016 i Beijing Review

CUBA The U.S. cruise ship Adonia arrives in Havana on May 2 with 704 passengers on board, becoming the first such vessel to dock in Cuba from the United States since 1978 RUSSIA Performers wearing work clothes attend a rally in St. Petersburg on May 1 to celebrate International Workers’ Day ITALY Two Chinese police officers (first and second right) conduct a joint patrol with two Italian colleagues at Rome’s world-famous Coliseum. The joint patrol aims to help the local police handle issues involving Chinese tourists ISRAEL Police lead Yosef Ben David into the Jerusalem District Court for sentencing on May 3. He is sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khudair in Jerusalem two years ago JAPAN Some 50,000 people attend a protest rally in Tokyo…

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com When Zhang Yifan enrolled in the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing to start his master’s de-gree, he was given a set of textbooks containing a number of the world’s classic dramas. There were four plays by William Shakespeare among them—Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and Twelfth Night. “I had watched different perfor-mances of Hamlet and had even taken part in an informal performance in col-lege, but I had always wanted to watch a performance by a British theater group to see how a director and actors from Shakespeare’s home country interpreted this classic. Shakespeare will be the mas-ter of drama forever.” Zhang’s wish was soon to be fulfilled. A live broadcast As one of the top events planned during the 2015 China-UK Year of Cultural Exchange, the…

Residing in a Beijing courtyard for a long time, Shan Jixiang, curator of the Palace Museum, has been familiar with the city’s ancient architecture since childhood. Back then he never imagined he would grow up to work in one of the world’s grandest and the world’s most visited museum. With almost 600 years of history and numerous treasures, the Palace Museum, also called the Forbidden City, was inscribed on the UNESCO’s world heritage list in 1987. According to the Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China, issued by the China International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), “The aim of conservation is to preserve the authenticity of all the elements of the entire heritage site and to retain for the future its historic information and all its values.”…

Comments to wangjun@bjreview.com China’s cross-border mergers and acquisi-tions (M&As) increased in the first quarter, but Chinese and Western sources have differing explanations for the uptick. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) reported that Chinese companies had 142 overseas M&A projects during the first quarter of this year. The transaction amount totaled $16.56 billion, according to Shen Danyang, spokesperson for the ministry, who revealed the total at a press conference held on April 19. Overseas sources are reporting dif-ferent numbers, however. An analysis by Thomson Reuters shows that China’s cross- border activity totaled $95.1 billion during the first quarter, a 136-percent year-on-year increase. A Bloomberg report on March 30 said that the number is closer to $113 billion, which tops the total value of 2014 deals and is close to last…

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com In singsong rhymes, an American poet tackles the seemingly endless varieties of Chinese regional cuisine and the difficulties involved in keeping up with the latest trends. Yet his unappetizing piece sparked controversy over perceived elements of racism and preju-dice. The writer, 80-year-old Calvin Trillin, runs through a list of provinces as he pines sim-pler times of bygone days. His poem—titled Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?—was published on April 4 in The New Yorker. The magazine is known for its highbrow take on lo-cal culture and often elicits confusion from its poems and cartoons. Here are the opening six lines: Have they run out of provinces yet? If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret. Long ago, there was just Cantonese (Long ago, we were easy to…

Delicious Festival Women of the Dong ethnic group prepare a special treat for the Bamboo Rice Festival as part of celebration activities in Wugong Village, Rongjiang County, southwest China’s Guizhou Province, on May 3. Healthcare Input China has spent 5.64 trillion yuan ($871 billion) since 2009 to improve its healthcare system, according to official statistics. The health budget for 2016 is 1.24 trillion yuan ($190 billion), said the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) on April 28, adding that the average annual growth rate of medical input has surpassed 20 percent over the past seven years. The ongoing healthcare reform in China aims to create a universal health security system, which focuses on equal access to basic public services for all. The budget is also used to promote the…

Comments to tangyuankai@bjreview.com Huang Yuqing’s home décor is unusual, to say the least. The 54-year-old’s residence is packed with thousands of old newspapers, magazines and books— publications he started collecting from 1997. Many of them were published in Beijing. Huang, a Beijing resident who is fascinated by the history and culture of the city, is a heritage protection volunteer. The system of recruiting these volunteers was established by the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage and Beijing Charity Volunteer Association (BCVA) three years ago. “I love the city,” he said, talking about Beijing, a place with more than 3,000 years of history, including over 860 years as the national capital, and blessed with a rich cultural heritage. His passion for Beijing has motivated him to work to protect its cultural…

Dear Readers, Forum is a column that provides a space for varying perspectives on contemporary Chinese society. We invite you to submit personal viewpoints on past and current topics (in either English or Chinese). yanwei@bjreview.com Please provide your name and address along with your comments Since last year, 25 provinces across the country have revealed their payment reform schemes for state-owned enter-prise (SOE) executives, aiming to impose certain limits on their salaries. In most areas, SOE ex-ecutives’ basic annual salaries are set to be no more than two times those of ordinary workers. Meanwhile, the combined sum of an execu-tive’s basic annual salary, performance-related pay, and incentive bonuses will be no more than eight times that of the salary of an ordinary SOE staff member. On the whole, this round…

VAT Scheme Completed China has replaced all business tax with value-added tax (VAT) after extending the policy to cover the construction, real estate, finance and consumer services sectors on May 1. They were the last four sectors still taxed based on their revenue. VAT refers to a tax levied on the difference between a commodity’s pre-tax price and its production cost. Revenue tax refers to a levy on a business’s gross revenue. The expansion of the VAT scheme is expected to ease tax burdens by more than 500 billion yuan ($76.9 billion) this year. China’s service sector is increasingly picking up the slack of manufacturing, as the world’s second largest economy is shifting toward more sustainable growth driven chiefly by consumer demand. Expanding VAT to more service sectors is also…

Comments to jijing@bjreview.com “China’s rich dramatic heritage mirrors the epic scale, complexity and universality of Shakespeare’s work.” —Gregory Doran, Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director Exactly 400 years ago and thou-sands of miles apart, two renowned playwrights, Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from China and the United Kingdom respectively, both died. As this year marks the quadricentennial anniversary of their deaths, a series of events have been held in the countries that gave rise to their legacies to celebrate their accomplishments. Cross-cultural links Dolphin Books, a subsidiary of the China International Publishing Group (CIPG), has seized the opportunity to promote China-UK cultural exchanges. The company has published an English version of Tang’s masterpiece, Dream in Peony Pavilion, and a Chinese translation of six of Shakespeare’s tragedies—King Lear, Romeo and…

Comments to yulintao@bjreview.com While visiting Bangkok shortly after his “good-will” trip to Beijing, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida called on the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to be united in response to China’s “assertive-ness” in the South China Sea, according to a Kyodo News report. Yet, during his stay in Beijing, Kishida said Japan is willing to strengthen mutual trust, control disputes, advance the bilateral relations initiated by former leaders of the two countries, and build a futurefacing Japan-China relationship. The sharp contrast in Kishida’s attitude has greatly disappointed those who have strived to rebuild Sino-Japanese ties, leaving many wondering: Is this how Japan expects to achieve healthy bilateral relations? In recent years, Japan has become adept at double-dealing when it comes to China. On…

Comments to zanjifang@bjreview.com On April 15, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited China’s two most prestigious uni-versities, Tsinghua University and Peking University, a week before the former celebrated its 105th anniversary. During his trip, the premier emphasized the importance of establishing more first-tier research labs and expanding academia in the country. At Tsinghua, Li inspected the School of Life Sciences and the Alzheimer’s Treatment Research Center headed by Shi Yigong, Dean of the school and a world renowned biologist of protein X-ray crystallography. Shi gained his PhD at the John Hopkins University in the United States and is also foreign associate at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Li pointed out that a chasm still exists between China and leading nations of higher education. “There is a lot China could learn…

Comments to yuanyuan@bjreview.com Zhao Xie plans to take her daughter back to Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from Beijing during the sum-mer vacation this year. The child, having stayed in Beijing for almost two years, is now 3 years and 7 months old—but despite having a hearing impairment, she is almost ready to return to a normal life. Zhao’s daughter, Wang Yunuo, was diagnosed with a hearing impairment in November 2014. “I felt like my world collapsed when we heard the diagnosis, and my husband felt the same way,” Zhao told Beijing Review. “No one we knew had experienced something similar, and we couldn’t imagine what it would mean for our daughter.” Even so, the family acted quickly upon hearing the news—20 days after the diagnosis, they gave their daughter a…

Chinese firms commonly purchased by multinationals a decade ago have now become important participants in global mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The last three years have seen a remarkable acceleration toward this. There has been explosive growth in the number and value of crossborder M&As. In 2013, Chinese investors made direct investments in 5,090 companies across 156 countries and regions. Direct investment in non- financial companies reached $90.17 billion, up 16.8 percent year-on-year and making China the third largest outbound investor in the world. In 2014, China overtook Japan to become the globe’s second largest investor, investing $123.12 billion overseas and becoming a net capital exporter for the first time. The number of big M&As from Chinese firms, such as ChemChina, China Investment Corp., Anbang and Fosun, increased rapidly in 2015.…