Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 60/No. 25 i Beijing Review

Inflation Quickens China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 1.5 percent year on year in May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on June 9. The CPI expansion in May is in line with estimates. It quickened from April’s 1.2 percent, March’s 0.9 percent and February’s 0.8 percent. On a monthly basis, however, the CPI declined 0.1 percent, accord-ing to the NBS. Of the 1.5-percent CPI growth in May, 1 percentage point was con-tributed by the carryover effect of price increases last year, NBS senior statistician Sheng Guoqing said. The NBS attributed the pick-up in CPI partly to higher non-food prices, which grew 2.3 percent year on year in May. At the same time, China’s producer price inflation continued to ease in May as commodity…

Comments to liuyunyun@bjreview.com China has maintained rapid economic growth for over 30 consecutive years since it began reform and opening up in 1978. It has become the second largest economy in the world whose development grabs the world’s attention. However, the Chinese economy still faces challenges, both domestically and externally. They include slowing growth, increasing risks of economic fluctuations, a widening income gap, a deteriorating environment and industrial overcapacity. In response, the Chinese Government is adjusting its policy to adapt to the new trends in its economy. A vision of innova- tive, coordinated, green, open and inclusive development has been put forward while supply-side structural reform has been introduced to break the bottlenecks in modernization efforts. The focus is on pursuing steady and sustainable economic growth. With all these measures,…

Comments to lifangfang@bjreview.com On an extraordinary day in March 2002, from a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England, Kevin Warwick became a cyborg, the tribe of the fic- tional superhero who is half living flesh and half biomechatronic. Yet the procedure was quite humdrum. Warwick quietly drove himself to the hospital where a chip was implanted in his left arm. It stayed connected to his nervous system for three months, in the process linking his nervous system to the Internet in Columbia University, New York City. The risky venture, in which he may have lost his arm, saw him being given a new name, Captain Cyborg. During the experiment, Warwick could connect with a robotic hand at the University of Reading when he was in Columbia…

Caihong, or Rainbow, China’s first near-space solar drone, prepares for a test flight. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. announced on June 13 that the unmanned aerial vehicle had successfully conducted a test flight at an altitude of 20 km for over 15 hours. With this China has become the third country after the U.S. and the UK to master the technology for making solar-powered near-space drones. With a wingspan of 45 meters, Caihong is capable of cruising at a speed of 150-200 km per hour . It will be used mostly for meteorological observation, communications relay and disaster monitoring.…

PANAMA Overseas Chinese in Panama City celebrate the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Panama on June 12 as the two governments signed a joint communique in Beijing on that day TURKEY Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urges Gulf and Arab countries to solve the diplomatic crisis with Qatar in his address to lawmakers of the ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara on June 13 KENYA Rescuers work at the debris of a collapsed sevenstory residential building in Nairobi on June 13 GERMANY Police officers stand guard at the entrance of the subway station in Munich on June 13 after a shooting injured several people UNITED KINGDOM The death toll of a deadly overnight fire that engulfed a 24story London apartment tower on June 14 has risen to…

Comments to yanwei@bjreview.com The First Economic Cooperation Forum be-tween Shenyang and Sachsen-Anhalt, a state in east Germany, was held in Magdeburg on May 30. Dong Feng, Mayor of Tiexi District, Shenyang in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, said the event will be held in other cities in Germany in the coming years to expand the influence of the China-Germany Equipment Manufacturing Industrial Park and promote all-round cooperation between China and Germany. From the late 1940s to the 1970s, Tiexi was one of China’s most important heavy industrial bases. However, as marketoriented economic reforms went deeper in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 95 percent of enterprises in the district operated at a loss and more than 130,000 workers were laid off. Tiexi, where the industrial park is located, started renovating its…

Tianjin, where five branches of the Haihe River meet, is to the west of the Bohai Sea and to the south of Yanshan Mountain. In ancient times, Tianjin was prosperous due to grain transport by water, and now it is the largest coastal city in north China. Historically Tianjin was one of China’s earliest trading ports open to foreign coun- tries, with many world-famous entrepreneurs and financiers once making money here; to- day the city is establishing itself as a national base for advanced manufacturing industries, an international shipping hub in north China, a demonstration zone for financial innovation and a pioneering zone for reform and opening up. With a sound investment environment, great atmosphere for business start-ups, promising market prospects and sub- stantial investment returns, Tianjin has attracted a…

Comments to zhouxiaoyan@bjreview.com Sanja Vasiljevic, a Serbian botanist, has got a new job title—assistant director for science at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops on the New Silk Roads, a newly founded research institution in Serbia in response to the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. Her institution is about to col-laborate with China’s Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, based in Shaanxi Province, on agricultural science and high-ef-ficiency agriculture in an attempt to harvest opportunities from the initiative. More and more such programs are cropping up in the northwestern province, as various organizations reach out for opportu- nities offered by the Belt and Road Initiative. At the 2017 Silk Road International Exposition held in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi, officials from various countries and Chinese provinces explained how they intended to…

On a Different Note A traditional opera show unfolds at the Sixth International Intangible Cultural Heritage Festival in Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, on June 10, China’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Day. Ocean Research China aims to build the world’s third ocean drilling research vessel and become a key leader in international deep-sea drilling scientific efforts by 2028, a senior government consul-tant said on June 12. Wang Pinxian, a marine geolo-gist from Tongji University, Shanghai, said this at a press conference to announce the successful conclusion of a China-led international drilling mission to discover how the South China Sea was formed millions of years ago. The four-month mission was conducted on board the American vessel JOIDES Resolution as part of the 367th and 368th expeditions of the Integrated…

Comments to liuyunyun@bjreview.com At its June summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) expanded its membership for the first time. With the accession of India and Pakistan at the 17th SCO Summit in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, the bloc now covers three-fifths of Eurasia from the North Pole to South Asia, which means nearly half the world’s population as well as one-fifth of global GDP. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of the SCO Charter as well as the 10th anniversary of the Treaty on Long-Term Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation signed by SCO members. Against this backdrop, the SCO’s expansion is historically significant. Pakistan’s Daily Mail reported foreign office spokesperson Nafees Zakria as say- ing that Pakistan’s membership would help strengthen its connectivity with the region. He also…

Comments to liuyunyun@bjreview.com Following the landmark meetings in April between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Chinese and American think tanks are coming together to further the dialogue on bilateral economic and trade ties. On June 14, the High-Level Dialogue on U.S.-China Economic Relations was held in New York City, jointly hosted by the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI). Over 30 scholars focused on three topics: the new common ground for cooperation, the 100-Day Plan since Mar-a-Lago and beyond, and U.S.-China cooperation in global economic governance. The 100-Day Plan refers to an agree ment between the two presidents to boost bilateral economic and trade cooperation within 100 days of their Mar-a-Lago meetings. Practical approaches…

Comments to yuanyuan@bjreview.com Liu Xuehong, the former manager of China Youth Daily who lives in Beijing as a retiree, said her fate was changed com-pletely by an exam 40 years ago. In October 1977, Liu, while working on a farm in a village in Beijing, got the news that the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao in Chinese, which was halted during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76), would be resumed and the first exam would take place in December. In those days, many scholars were sent to rural areas to work on farmlands. The news of the gaokao’s reinstallment swept the country, exciting numerous young people. “Some had almost lost hope of entering college and thought their life would consist of working in farms forever,” Liu told Beijing Review.…

The author is a research fellow with the China Academy of Regional Finance and this article was first published in National Business Daily Comments to zhouxiaoyan@bjreview.com Many commercial banks have recently raised the yield rates of their wealth management products for fund collecting. According to media reports, the annualized yield rates of such products of-fered by some banks surpass 5 percent or even 6 percent. How to interpret the wealth manage- ment war among commercial banks? To start with, it has some positive impact because it is favorable to ordinary investors, who will gain higher earnings through higher yield rates. This will help compensate the depreciation of their wealth caused by low bank deposit rates, hence making commercial banks more attractive to them. Moreover, although the wealth management war may…