Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 62/No.34 i Beijing Review

UNITED STATES A cameraman films a new subway car in service in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 14, the first day the first six of 152 cars built by a Chinese company started running on the Orange Line of the city’s subway system GREECE Firefighters extinguish a blaze at Makrymalli, a village on Evia Island, on August 14. Fanned by strong winds, a wildfire threatened villages some 80 km northeast of Athens, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents CROATIA People cool off on the beach in Moscenicka Draga in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on August 12 as a new round of heat waves hit the country and other parts of Europe MYANMAR A clean-up operation is carried out at a landslide-hit area in Mon State on August 11. At least 51…

Summer used to be a slack season for Fu Yonglin, owner of Jiuyuan Plastic Products in Taizhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province. “We used to sell only a few dozen trash bins in summer,” Fu said. But it’s a different story this year. His factory has remained ablaze with lights even at midnight since May. Stacks of bins that have different compartments for different kinds of garbage have been rolling off the busy production lines, when they are immediately loaded onto trucks lined up in front of the factory. Fu attributes the surging demand to the mandatory garbage sorting implemented in neighboring Shanghai on July 1. On June 28, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced that garbage sorting would become mandatory in 46 big cities by the end of…

After protesters storming the Hong Kong International Airport on August 13 assaulted a reporter, scores of Hong Kong residents came to visit the injured journalist at hospital the next day, voicing their support for his bravery and opposition to the escalating violence in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). Fu Guohao, a journalist from Global Times, a Beijing-based newspaper, was seized by a group of masked protesters while covering the situation at the airport on August 13. He was assaulted and detained as protesters flooding the airport refused to let him and first-aid personnel go. He was finally rescued by the police. During the demonstration, radicals intensified their sit-in to massive blockades, causing chaos at one of the world’s busiest airports. Most outbound flights were canceled as the airport terminal…

The U.S. Department of the Treasury officially designated China a “currency manipulator” on August 5. The designation followed the Chinese yuan (renminbi), both onshore and offshore, falling beyond 7 against the U.S. dollar the same day, making Chinese exports cheaper in the U.S. While it helped to offset the impact of the additional U.S. tariffs on Chinese exports to some extent, the depreciation was actually due to the invisible hand of the market and not the result of any deliberate act by the Chinese authorities. China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBC), said the weakening of the yuan was attributable to U.S. unilateralism and protectionism as well as U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to impose an additional 10-percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese goods. A report by…

On July 26, U.S. President Donald Trump asked his Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to increase pressure on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to change how it designates developing members including China. In a memorandum, he threatened if there was no “substantial progress” toward changing the special and differential treatment for developing members within 90 days, the U.S. would take unilateral action, including no longer regarding some members as developing economies and not supporting their joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Trump also took a shot at seven of the 10 wealthiest economies in the world as measured by GDP per capita on a purchasing power parity basis—Brunei, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, Kuwait, Macao SAR of China, Qatar, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates—all…

Fruit Feast Tourists feed Asian elephants during a public awareness activity on World Elephant Day in a tourism area in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, on August 12. Green Energy Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has transmitted 62.67 billion kWh of electricity generated from renewable sources from 2011 to July this year, according to local authorities. The electricity, which was mainly generated by wind and solar power, helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 48.88 million tons and sulfur dioxide by more than 60,000 tons, State Grid Xinjiang Electric Power Co. Ltd. said on August 12. The installed generating capacity of wind power in Xinjiang reached 19.25 million kw, and that of photo-voltaic power totaled 10.22 million kw, according to the Development and Reform Commission of…

China’s performance in domestic and foreign affairs is being appreciated more and its image as a major contributor to global development is gaining more recognition, according to a global survey. The main findings of the 2018 China National Image Global Survey were released by the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies (ACCWS) under the China International Publishing Group at the Sixth Seminar on International Communication in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China, on August 12. The survey was conducted in 2018 by ACCWS, U.S.-based market research firm Kantar Millward Brown and Canada-based software provider Lightspeed with 500 respondents each from 22 countries in Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and Africa. The topics included China’s overall national image and influence, politics, the economy, culture and science and technology.…

With the mounting uncertainties brought about by the China-U.S. trade war, Huawei—China’s giant telecommunication equipment provider targeted by U.S. President Donald Trump in recent months—is paving its way out of reliance on U.S. partners. On August 9, the opening day of a three-day Huawei Developer Conference in Dongguan, south China’s Guangdong Province, the company announced the launch of its own operating system (OS), a step toward shaking off threats and actions by Washington to choke Huawei by banning U.S. companies from doing business with it. The Chinese name for the new OS is Hongmeng, a term from Chinese mythology referring to the chaotic state of the universe before the creation of heaven and earth. In English, it is called HarmonyOS. New system, greater harmony Rumors flying for months that Huawei…

It’s midnight but walking through Guijie Street, a popular night destination in downtown Beijing, you would think it’s a carnival evening. Lines of people pop in and out of the row of restaurants, and the mouth-watering smell of spicy crawfish wafting out stops passersby in their tracks and makes them head toward the source of the smell. At Huda Restaurant, a crawfish joint, people are still waiting in queue and connoisseurs say the dish there is worth several hours of waiting. Fang Xuhu, Assistant General Manager at Huda, told Beijing Review that the 24-hour restaurant gets around 5,000 customers daily during the peak seasons, especially in summer. Business is so brisk that it disdains to cater to online orders, on the ground that the fish doesn’t taste so great if…

($1=7 yuan) 777.1 bln yuan Total value of online retail sales in China’s rural areas in the first half of the year 1,190 Number of newly raised funds in China’s equity market in the first half of the year, down 47.2 percent year on year 234 mln tons Total output of coke in China in the first half of the year, up 6.7 percent year on year 99.6% China Bulk Merchandise Index reading in July. The index is a gauge of bulk commodity market growth and indicates downward pressure below the boom-or-bust line of 100 percent 1,558 Number of Chinese patents approved by other Belt and Road participants in the first half of the year 1.5 mln China’s passenger car sales in July, down 5.3 percent year on year 28.7%…

Economy Steady Facing mounting challenges at home and abroad, the Chinese economy continued to operate within a reasonable range with steady upward momentum in July, Liu Aihua, a spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, told a press conference on August 14, citing latest economic performance data. In the first seven months of the year, investment in hi-tech manufacturing surged 11.1 percent year on year, 5.4 percentage points faster than total fixed assets investment growth, while hi-tech manufacturing output rose 8.7 percent, 2.9 percentage points faster than total industrial output. Exports expanded 10.3 percent from a year ago to 1.53 trillion yuan ($218 billion) in July alone and imports went up 0.4 percent to 1.21 trillion yuan ($172 billion). Excluding auto sales, which were affected by the country’s new emissions…

Swipe, dump and get rewards. These are the three basic steps to dump sorted garbage in smart bins in Beijing and Li Ping, a 77-year-old Beijing resident, has mastered the procedure after three years of practice. According to Li, every resident in her community has an online “green account” with its unique QR code. The bin doors open only when one uses the unique code to activate the green account. But before you can put the trash in, on-the-spot supervisors will see if it has been correctly sorted into different piles. Once they give the thumbs-up and the trash bags are dropped into different bins, bonus points are added to your online account, to be accumulated and exchanged later for articles of daily use. “It’s a good way to encourage…

The development of China-India relations is deeply rooted in the people, originating from their exchanges. And the media have an important role in enhancing the mutual understanding and friendship, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the Fourth India-China High Level Media Forum in Beijing on August 12. Since 2013, the forum, as the largest institutionalized platform between the two countries for media exchanges and a part of the China-India high-level people-to-people exchange mechanism, has facilitated mutual understanding and become an important link in the bilateral cultural cooperation. This year’s forum, organized by the China Public Diplomacy Association and sponsored by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and India’s Ministry of External Affairs, had three sub-forums, focusing on promoting mutual trust in political and economic cooperation, people-to-people exchanges…

In the morning of August 10, Typhoon Lekima, the ninth of the year, made landfall in Wenling City, east China’s Zhejiang Province. It made a second landing the next afternoon on the coast of Qingdao in Shandong Province. According to the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM), about 12.88 million people in nine provincial-level regions of China—Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, Fujian, Hebei, Liaoning, Jilin and Shanghai—were affected by Lekima. Nearly 13,000 houses collapsed and some 119,000 were damaged, while 996,000 hectares of crops were affected by the typhoon. People suffered power cuts, shortage of tap water and disruption of communication. As of August 13, there were 48 dead and 21 missing in Zhejiang, Shandong and Anhui. Zhejiang was the worst hit as the typhoon made the first landing there, leaving 39…

Bao Yating, founder of a website focused on the maternal and infant industry Muyingqianyan.com, has closely tracked the development of China’s infant formula market. Her newest findings disappointed the participants in the China Maternal and Infant Frontiers Conference in Shanghai on July 23. Sales of infant formula products in 70 percent of the mother-and-baby stores throughout China are declining, affecting the general performance of the businesses since these products are a major source of profit, she said. “The infant formula market is slowing down, and the downtrend is very likely to accelerate in the next few years,” said Li Guoyong, President of Jiangxi New Born Nutritional Technology Co. Ltd., at the conference, adding that the decline in the birth rate is one of the major reasons behind lower market demand.…

The second edition of the Youth Games, a 10-day national sports extravaganza that kicked off in Taiyuan City, capital of Shanxi Province in north China, on August 8, made history by using 5G for the broadcasts, watched by people on television, mobile phones and other devices. The over 1,800 events in 49 categories included all Summer Olympic sports and most Winter Olympic ones. The nearly 58,000 athletes competing were all born after 2000. Some events such as sailing and surfing and most winter sports were spread out in 15 other locations outside Shanxi. Notably, traditional Chinese sports such as the dragon boat race were included for the first time. The First Youth Games took place in Fujian Province in the southeast in 2015. Comments to jijing@bjreview.com…