Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 61/No. 26 i Beijing Review

RUSSIA Spanish and Iranian football fans pose for a photo ahead of a Group B match between Spain and Iran in Kazan at the 2018 FIFA World Cup on June 20 JAPAN Recovery work at the site of a damaged road in Osaka continues through the night on June 18. At least three people were confirmed dead and more than 90 others injured as a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Osaka Prefecture that morning GREECE Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (center) and Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Zoran Zaev (third right) attend the signing ceremony of an agreement to rename the Balkan nation the Republic of North Macedonia at Psarades on June 17. The agreement brought to an end a historical dispute over the use of the…

General Secretary Xi and Chairman Kim had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on the current development of China-DPRK relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula during their talks on June 19. They agreed to safeguard, consolidate and develop China-DPRK relations, and jointly push forward the sound momentum of peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula to make a positive contribution to safeguarding world and regional peace, stability, prosperity and development. Xi said that China was pleased to see the important summit between Comrade Chairman and U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore achieve principled consensus and positive results in realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and establishing a lasting peace mechanism on the peninsula. “China speaks highly of the summit,” Xi said. Comrade Chairman’s visit to China…

Yan Yushan left home after graduating from middle school with nothing but a few books and the dream of making it in the big city. The year was 1992, when China’s urban centers began to get a facelift from the country’s renewed efforts toward reform and opening up. One of the most drastic transformations was in Guangdong Province, where small towns and fishing villages would overnight become metropolises of highways and skyscrapers. And that was where Yan would flourish, eventually able to bring his success back home to Xiaogang. Success in the city Yan was born in 1973 to a farming family in Xiaogang, a small village in east China’s Anhui Province. The eldest of five siblings, Yan saw little prospects for his family in the way farming was conducted…

Key economic indicators for the January-May period offer a clear snapshot of a steady Chinese economy expanding with new impetus from high-quality development. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s industrial output expanded 6.8 percent year on year in May, 0.3 percentage points higher than the same period last year, while the figure for the first five months was 6.9 percent, also higher than 2017. A sector-by-sector breakdown of the NBS figures reveals improved economic structure and new dynamics in emerging industries. Industrial output from the hi-tech and equipment manufacturing sectors grew 12 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively, in the first five months, according to Wen Jianwu, head of NBS’s industrial statistics department. Wen said the fact that hi-tech industries make up a larger share of the industrial…

Artifacts and techniques of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) from eight provinces and cities along the Grand Canal—the world’s longest artificial river which runs 1,797 km from north China’s Beijing to Hangzhou in east China’s Zhejiang Province—were on display at an exhibition in Beijing from June 9 to 13. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the body responsible for its promotion and classification, ICH “includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.” The exhibition, Flowing Culture—the Grand Canal Cultural Belt ICH Exhibition, also known as the Fourth Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei ICH Joint Exhibition,…

Cosmic Observation An observatory for detecting cosmic rays under construction in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. The project, known as LHAASO, is located in the mountains at the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an average altitude of 4,410 meters. Blood Donations The number of voluntary blood donations in China reached nearly 5.97 million in the first five months of this year, up 3.6 percent year on year, according to the country’s National Health Commission. The amount of blood donated hit 2,065 tons during the same period, marking a 5.2-percent increase. The number of voluntary blood donations has seen 20 years of consecutive growth, from 328,000 in 1998 to 14.59 million in 2017, figures from the commission showed. Thanks to a system for more rational clinical use of blood, China…

It was the fourth time that Pakistani carpet trader Zaid Hamid was participating in the China-South Asia Expo (CSAEXPO) in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, and he was satisfied with his products’ sales. “Pakistan has the world’s top-quality handmade carpet. Sales volume in one day here equates to more than one month in my country,” he told Beijing Review. As a veteran CSAEXPO participant, Hamid explained how the expo’s host provides more and more preferential policies for foreign exhibitors such as concessions for booth rental and customized service, and so he has introduced his friends and relatives to join the event. Besides retail, Hamid is also planning to cooperate with Chinese agents to expand his business in China. Sri Lankan jewelry merchant Mohamed Insaff, owner of jewelry company…

The opening ceremony of the Eighth Dunhuang Tour—Silk Road International Tourism Festival got underway at the Jiayuguan Pass, in Jiayuguan City, northwest China’s Gansu Province, on June 19. The pass is famous for being the westernmost end of the Ming Great Wall and an important point on the Silk Road. The festival offers an important platform for tourism cooperation and exchange among countries and regions along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. During the month-long festival, a number of tourism activities will take place in 14 cities and prefectures across Gansu, which are expected to attract a large number of visitors and boost the local economy. (Photos by Yu Xiangjun)…

On June 13, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark federal funds rate as expected by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 1.75 to 2 percent, marking the second interest rate increase this year. “The move was a response to market expectations,” E Yongjian, a senior analyst with the Bank of Communications, told Xinhua News Agency, noting that the lifting of the interest rate was widely anticipated prior to the announcement. E attributed the increase to improving economic fundamentals in the United States, particularly the job market. In May, the country’s non-agricultural unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, an 18-year low, with the inflation rate hovering around the set target of 2 percent. At a press conference on June 14, Mao Shengyong, spokesperson for China’s National…

Hangzhou, the provincial capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, has proposed deleting from a draft smoking ban references to a “full” smoking ban in “all indoor public places and offices” and instead has suggested the creation of indoor smoking areas. This has stirred debate and led to public outcry. Some lament that this amendment is against the growing trend in the country’s efforts to push forward smoking bans in indoor public places. The government is supposed to put people’s health ahead of local revenues from tobacco sales, they insist. The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, think tanks related to public health and others wrote a letter to the city’s top legislature, saying that the latest move was like “putting a car in reverse.” However, not everyone sees it as regression…

Google’s JD Investment Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com announced on June 18 that it had secured investment worth $550 million from Google as part of a new strategic partnership between the two leading tech companies. Google will obtain around 27.1 million newly-issued, Class-A, ordinary shares in JD.com at an issue price of $20.29 per share. The two companies will jointly explore the retail business in regions around the world, including Southeast Asia, the United States and Europe. The cooperation will combine JD.com’s advantages in supply chain and logistics and Google’s technology strengths. JD.com also plans to make a selection of products available for sale through Google Shopping in multiple regions. “This partnership with Google opens up a broad range of possibilities to offer a superior retail experience to consumers around the…

After the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, Chinese President Xi Jinping embarked on an inspection tour of the province, visiting historic sites, marine labs, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and villages. It was his second inspection tour of the province since taking office in 2012. Shandong, literally meaning “east of the mountain,” is mostly known as a major agricultural province located in the east of the country. Its rich marine resources—with a coastal area of 159,000 square km and a coastline of 3,345 km that accounts for one sixth of the country’s total—have been overlooked until recent years when China started to make efforts to enhance its maritime strength. The coastal advantages of the province have thus been thrust into the limelight.…

‘Except for the national football team, almost every other Chinese has gone to the 2018 FIFA World Cup.” Bai Yansong, a well-known anchor on state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), may have been joking when he uttered these now famous words, but he was nonetheless accurate in his description of China’s role at the world’s biggest celebration of football. Based on open figures and statistics from its members, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) recently calculated an account for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. “Although the Chinese national team failed to qualify for the tournament in Russia, this year’s World Cup is still full of Chinese factors. We estimate that 70,000-100,000 Chinese tourists will be in Russia for the games, and that Chinese fans will contribute nearly…

Following a friend’s suggestion, Hannah Krause, a 2015 U.S. graduate who majored in equine exercise physiology, put aside her career in horses and flew to China alone to start a totally new life as a preschool English teacher. It was a blind leap that has paid off for the adventurous 21-year-old. A horse lover is born Krause was born an animal lover because of her family. Her father is a veterinarian and so there were always animals around her home during her childhood. She still recalls her very first contact with a horse as miraculous and unbelievable. “My Dad lifted me to sit on a horse and it ‘kissed’ me gently. My grandmother told me I was just two years old at the time,” said Krause. The little girl was…

Summer is tourism season, and many foreigners flock to see Beijing’s historic sights and Shanghai’s sparkling lights, and maybe even the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. But another attraction merits mention—the Shaolin Monastery, a magnet for kungfu aficionados. Think Kung Fu Panda, Jet Li and Bruce Li—kungfu counts among China’s most popular cultural exports to the West, and Westerners appear to have an ongoing love affair with it. Kungfu, or Chinese martial arts, includes hundreds of fighting styles and different classification methods, with the most famous perhaps being the differentiation between “Northern Kicks” and “Southern Fists.” My Chinese boyfriend loves kungfu movies, and said that when he was a child he used to watch them during his summer and winter breaks. When I asked him…