Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.63/No.51 i Beijing Review

With President Xi Jinping’s statement on December 3 that the goal of absolute poverty elimination has been achieved with all remaining rural poor lifted out of poverty in China, the official seal on the achievement has been put. The accomplishment lays a solid foundation for China to achieve its first centennial goal, that is, to enter a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2021, the centenary of the Communist Party of China’s establishment. China has not only achieved the poverty reduction goal of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule, but has also provided experience and set an example for other developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty. After the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, due to nearly a…

Wang Haibian and Wang Min, two men living in Maniao, a fishing community in Lingao County, Hainan Province in south China, could serve as an illustration of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s famous line, “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Both fell into poverty for different reasons and emerged out of it in their own respective way. Wang Haibian is a former drug addict who was the first in the community to kick his habit with de-addiction treatments and poverty with a loan to start a small business. Wang Min, the father of five who struggled to make ends meet, received education subsidies for his children and a job offer for his wife to support his big family. Like the two Wangs, in the past eight years, nearly…

The author is a Pakistani senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee The third volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China follows the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2019, and the 40th anniversary of the historic reform and opening-up policy, which has been transformative for contemporary China, in 2018. Also, it has been published on the eve of the centennial of the founding of the Communist Party of China in July 2021. With the novel coronavirus pandemic shaking the world, a collective response to this common challenge has become urgent. There are also inexorable shifts in the global balance of economic and political power from the West to the East, resulting in the relative decline of the…

For Hu Hongwei, an army veteran, undertaking risky tasks is a part of his work. Since retiring from the army and joining the State Grid Hubei Electric Power Co. in 2000, his work is to repair faulty ultra-high voltage power transmission lines, a dangerous job. In 2009, he was selected to do maintenance work on live 800-kilovolt transmission lines, an even more challenging assignment. He needed to undergo intensive training for half a year, during which he had to carry out simulated operations in the day and analyze his performance at night to ensure that every step was done correctly. Finally on June 10, 2009, Hu became the first person in the world to work on an ultra-high voltage transmission line with power still on after he climbed onto a…

When new college graduate Zhang Kunyue moved to Shanghai in June to work there as a data analyst, she found accommodation through Phoenix Tree, popularly known as Danke, one of the largest online home rental platforms in China. Danke leases homes from their owners for long term, renovates them, splits them up into sub-units and then rents them out. It also provides cleaning and maintenance services, which are included in the rent. Tenants usually have their own rooms but the kitchen and bathroom are shared. On November 22, Zhang had to move out of her room into a friend’s place and has since run from police to court, trying to terminate an associated loan agreement. She was not alone. In November, the rental industry saw an unprecedented situation with tenants,…

CALL FOR NEW INFLATION MEASUREMENT SYSTEM Zhou Xiaochuan, former Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, has proposed to change the way to define and measure inflation. In a recent article in a magazine affiliated with the PBC, he said the current inflation measurement system is basically useless and could even lead to asset bubbles. Traditionally, it is believed that if there is excessive monetary supply, the effects will be transmitted to asset prices and lead to inflation, which will in turn prompt decision-makers to adjust monetary policies. But this law is being challenged. Central banks in advanced economies are struggling to cope with ultra-low inflation rates even as benchmark interest rates have been cut to levels near or below zero. Zhou suggests a broader concept…

When I was young, a film made in Bollywood movie industry became famous, not so much for its content but for the title, which remains on people’s lips even now. The title, Roti, Kapda Aur Makan, sums up the three basic necessities of life—food, clothing and shelter. Almost five decades later, when I came to work in China, I saw the catchphrase resurrected. China hurtled through last-mile hurdles to announce on November 23 that it had eradicated absolute poverty and the measures taken included ensuring these three basic necessities, as well as a few other essentials, like education and healthcare. To see for ourselves how these measures have worked, we went to places that ensured food security for the nation and also to new residential communities for people who earlier…

Du Zhanyuan, President of the China International Publishing Group In the Moscow Declaration released at the 12th BRICS Summit in November, innovation became a keyword. BRICS has evolved from a concept to an organization and continues to develop. The members, representing emerging forces, have put forward new perspectives on major global issues and global governance reform. The BRICS mechanism itself is a product of innovation, and we should be confident that it will continue to be a source of innovation and take on a more active role in leading the world through its many current obstacles. Therefore, first, we should promote new ideas through innovation and get rid of stereotyped thinking. Facing increasing global challenges, we must oppose unilateralism and pursue multilateralism, reject false narratives that prioritize self-interests over others’…

Asatirical computer-generated (CG) image featuring an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a child in Afghanistan has created a furor since November 29, when it was posted by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded China apologize for the “doctored image,” successfully redirecting the international attention from focusing on the country’s war crimes to blaming China. Following Morrison, the media in Australia and its allies such as New Zealand, France, the UK and the U.S., criticized the tweet as misinformation while keeping mum on the Australian soldiers’ gruesome deeds in Afghanistan. Neither did they express outrage about the mistreatment of David McBride, a former Australian army lawyer who faces five charges, and possible jail, for informing the media about the soldiers’ involvement. Having suffered a…

That’s a huge task that requires a lot of work, good investment and policy strategy as well as very strong and dedicated leadership. My colleagues who visited the areas most affected by poverty [in China] and saw the poverty alleviation efforts were very impressed. We in Ethiopia would also like to lift our people out of poverty. We have about 20 million poor. What China did gives us hope and encourages us. It is a source of inspiration and we believe we can also do it. We also aspire to have a better life for our people, so there are definitely experiences we’d like to learn and see how each village was identified, and experts and officials were assigned and given a certain timeframe and the necessary resources, and then…

The author is a researcher with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top Iranian nuclear scientist, was shot dead near Tehran on November 27. The killing has sparked outrage in the country, with key leadership figures announcing they would retaliate. There is speculation about who carried out the attack. In addition to suspicions, the killing has raised regional tensions, and also brought new uncertainties to Iran-U.S. relations and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal. The deal was reached in 2015 between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, the U.S., UK and Russia—plus Germany and the EU. However, the U.S. announced its exit from it in 2018 under President Donald Trump…

Before Zhou Qingwen went to a chain dessert shop recently, she was not using e-vouchers to get a discount on her purchases. At the shop, she did it for the first time when the assistant told her that if she spent more than 80 yuan ($12), she would get an e-voucher. “It seems I’ve missed out on a fortune,” the 27-year-old exclaimed. An office clerk in Beijing, Zhou had seen some of her colleagues use e-vouchers in the malls since June, when the first e-vouchers were issued by the local government to boost consumption hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. “This shopping experience taught me that I have to grab my e-vouchers at the year-end,” she said. According to online payment service Alipay, 9 million brick-and-mortar stores have their end-year…

($1=6.6 yuan) China’s foreign exchange reserves grew to more than $3.17 trillion at the end of November. It was up by $50.5 billion, or 1.61 percent, from the end of October, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Industrial robot production surged 38.5 percent year on year in October to 21,467 units. In the first 10 months of the year, China produced 183,447 industrial robots, up 21 percent from the same period last year. Bike exports hit $1.1 billion during the third quarter of the year, the highest quarterly tally in 25 years, buoyed by booming overseas demand.…