Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 61/No. 25 i Beijing Review

FRANCE Police officers stand by near the site where an armed man took two hostages in Paris on June 12. The rescue operation ended with no casualties UNITED STATES Guests cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony of 3 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, on June 11. The 80-story, 329-meterhigh office building is the fifth tallest tower in the city CANADA Participants of the Group of Seven (G7) Summit pose for a photo on the first day of their meeting in La Malbaie, Quebec, on June 8 BURUNDI President Pierre Nkurunziza signs the new constitution into law in Gitega, the country’s second largest city, on June 7 GERMANY A robot helps a worker to disassemble a ceiling during CeBIT, the world’s largest trade exhibition for computer…

President Xi Jinping hosted a banquet on the evening of June 9 to welcome guests gathered in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit. Xi recounted that Shandong is the hometown of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), one of the greatest educators and philosophers in Chinese history, and the birthplace of Confucianism. Confucianism states that “a just cause should be pursued for the common good” and it champions harmony, unity and a shared community of all nations. There is much in common between Confucianism, which emphasizes unity and harmony, and the Shanghai Spirit. As the SCO’s underlining values, it advocates mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations and the pursuit of common development, Xi said. A book series about…

With whistles cutting through the crisp coastal air, two China Railway Express trains pulled out of the railway station in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, on the morning and afternoon of June 8. They were destined for Almaty in Kazakhstan. Among the train’s freight was artificial turf produced by a company in Qingdao. After arriving in Kazakhstan 12 days later, the turf will be taken to Russia where it will be installed at a venue for an activity at the ongoing FIFA World Cup football tournament. Qingdao’s connection to Europe is more than just a railway line. It is the host city of the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit that opened on June 9, the first major meeting since the expansion of the organization’s membership. Qingdao, one of the…

With a flurry of recent property market controls, Chinese authorities have demonstrated their will to keep a lid on housing prices, not just in large metropolises but also in smaller cities. Over 40 cities unveiled property market regulations a total of 50 times in May, a monthly record, according to the latest statistics from Centaline Property. While home prices in the country’s top-tier cities remain stable due to tight regulations, the market in smaller cities has shown signs of perking up. In third-tier cities, month-on-month new home price growth accelerated by 0.2 percentage points in April. For second-hand homes it was 0.1 percentage point faster, official data showed. “The housing price fluctuations in third- and fourth-tier cities were the major reason behind the intensive regulations,” said Zhang Dawei, a Centaline…

Beginning in July, the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce will take tough measures against shops that continue to sell substandard non-motor electric vehicles, and in serious cases, distributors will have their licenses taken away This came after local quality watchdogs, police and fire departments sat down with big- and medium-sized electric vehicle distributors and various sales outlets to review their business practices. Many shops have already received notices, sending the market into shock. People who have immediate plans to buy are warned against buying substandard electric bicycles or tricycles and encouraged to buy ones that live up to national standards. In particular, they are discouraged from buying scooters that run at a speed that exceeds the national speed limit. Beijing is now home to more than 4 million non-motor…

Artful Touch One of 24 volunteers works on a museum collection piece at a “hospital” for conservation in Beijing’s Palace Museum on June 9. The institution was opened to the public as part of China’s Cultural and Natural Heritage Day activities. Visitors watched as “doctors” repaired calligraphy pieces, paintings, bronzeware and clocks. Online Complaint Platform The General Office of the State Council, China’s cabinet, launched an online platform to receive public complaints on June 11. The platform, accessible via the Central Government website, www.gov.cn, will receive complaints from the public about arbitrary charges for enterprises, failure to implement enterprise-related policies, as well as inconvenient and insufficient government services. The office pledged to carefully check and handle the complaints, make sure relevant departments conduct thorough investigations into the causes of the…

On June 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping chaired the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Qingdao, Shandong Province, and delivered a keynote speech, which was a summary of the positive development trends and the great changes currently taking place in the world. Xi laid out requirements for the further promotion of the Shanghai Spirit and provided solutions to address the problems of the world today. He also made major suggestions for building an SCO community with a shared future and promoting the construction of a new type of international relations, making China’s contribution to the SCO’s new development stage and era. Over the past 17 years, the SCO has developed into a comprehensive regional cooperation body that covers the…

Experts and scholars met prior to the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit to discuss how it can promote peace in Asia and Europe and enhance cooperation among the countries at a seminar which focuses on the SCO and Asia-Europe peace and cooperation in the new era. The seminar, which took place in Beijing on June 8, was organized by the Charhar Institute, a non-governmental think tank focusing on diplomacy and international relations. “It is the second major diplomatic event hosted by China in 2018 and of great significance for China to practice a new type of major country diplomacy,” said Yu Hongjun, former Vice Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, who was one of the keynote speakers. Yu pointed out that the…

On the southern side of the Shandong Peninsula in east China lies the beautiful and economically developed city of Qingdao, host of the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit on June 9-10. Surrounded by mountains, the city faces the ocean, with big and small patches of beach scattered along the zigzagged coastline. The city has been repeatedly listed as the most livable city in China and is often described as having red tiles, green trees, blue sea and azure sky. But Qingdao is not satisfied with just being a tourist attraction. Today, it is also an open international port city with trade connections with more than 700 ports in more than 180 countries and regions. In 2017, the city’s total volume of imports and exports exceeded 500 billion yuan ($78…

On June 5, an exhibition marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was opened at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing. With a population of 132,000, the Daur is one of the oldest ethnic groups in China. The Daur people mainly live in Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In the Daur language, Morin Dawa means “mountains that are difficult for even a gallant horse to climb.” Many of the folk traditions of the Daur ethnic group have been included in the country’s list of intangible cultural heritage. (Courtesy Photos)…

($1=6.4 yuan) 1.8% Year-on-year increase of China’s consumer price index (CPI), the main gauge of inflation, in May 4.1% Year-on-year increase of China’s producer price index (PPI), which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, in May 12 mln tons Coal production to be phased out in north China’s Hebei Province this year $835 mln Spending by Chinese companies on advertising at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia 70.5% Decrease of Chinese investment in commercial property in the UK this year 48 mln Projected number of jobs to be created by e-commerce in China during 2018 $42 bln Expected value of China’s mobile game market by 2022 37.8 mln Mobile phones sold to dealers in the domestic market last month, up 1.2 percent year on year…

I recently played a modern-day hostess for a black tea commercial in Beijing. As an American, it was a great opportunity to learn more about China’s traditional beverage, which I have come to occasionally enjoy alongside my habitual coffee fix. We filmed the commercial in a Western-style hotel on the northeast outskirts of Beijing. The hotel in Huairou featured the trappings of the European aristocracy: statues of British beefeaters outside the entrance, chandeliers, fireplaces, a suit of armor, baroque-style paintings, and a copy of a large painting of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the lobby. The second actress who had been recruited for the commercial was a bubbly young Ukrainian woman. Her permed blonde hair, swept up, perfectly matched the 18th-century-style slate gray dress she was given to wear, while…

Foreign Trade Up China’s trade in goods rose 8.8 percent year on year to 11.63 trillion yuan ($1.82 trillion) in the first five months of 2018, customs data showed on June 8. Exports rose 5.5 percent year on year to 6.14 trillion yuan ($958.8 billion) in the period while imports grew 12.6 percent to 5.49 trillion yuan ($857.3 billion), resulting in a trade surplus of 649.8 billion yuan ($101.5 billion), which narrowed 31 percent, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC). In May, the goods trade surplus shrank 43.1 percent to 156.5 billion yuan ($24.4 billion), as exports rose 3.2 percent year on year to 1.34 trillion yuan ($209.2 billion) and imports surged 15.6 percent to 1.19 trillion yuan ($185.8 billion), according to the GAC. Private enterprises played a…

While the world fixated on the most iconic picture of this year’s Group of Seven (G7) Summit, where U.S. President Donald Trump sat with his arms crossed as German Chancellor Angela Merkel glowered at him from across the table, the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) kicked off in China’s picturesque coastal city of Qingdao on June 9. In stark contrast to the tension of the G7 Summit in Canada on June 8-9, which concluded with Trump’s refusal to endorse a joint communiqué due to his rifts with other participants over trade policy, events in Qingdao proceeded smoothly with SCO member states demonstrating unity by further consolidating the Shanghai Spirit, premised on mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for…

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit held from June 9 to 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping elaborated on his vision of global governance with the Shanghai Spirit at its core. The Shanghai Spirit, a set of values followed by the SCO, features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development. Over the past few years, Xi has frequently raised proposals on global governance and solutions to international issues at multilateral events, the most enduring of which is a community with a shared future for mankind. Xi’s vision on global governance is radically different from the Western model. The idea of a community with a shared future for mankind is based on China’s history, wisdom and path toward modernization, but it is also…

The Chinese Government has released new rules on investment and subsidies for photovoltaic (PV) installations to set the industry on a more rational development path and encourage advanced technologies in the sector. Jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) on June 1, the new rules state that no construction plans will be advanced for common PV projects this year. Furthermore, for new distributed PV projects, there will be a quota of about 10 gigawatts (GW) this year, while the national feed-in tariff will be cut by 0.05 yuan ($0.008) for every kilowatt-hour as of the beginning of June, except for national-level poverty alleviation PV projects. The new rules aim to cut the feed-in tariff and reduce corporate…

‘The Chinese The Lord of the Rings—now in English for the first time.” “The series every Chinese reader has been enjoying for decades!” This is how A Hero Born, the first volume of the English edition of the Chinese martial arts masterpiece Legends of the Condor Heroes, is being appraised on Amazon’s website. Since its release in February, A Hero Born has been republished seven times to satisfy the unprecedented demand from English-language readers. The book, translated by Anna Holmwood, a professional translator and literary agent in the UK, received a four-star rating on Amazon. In the UK, it has an average rating of 4.2 stars, with 53 percent of the readers giving it five out of five. So far, the rights to the book’s publication have been sold to…