Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol.64/No.37 i Beijing Review

UNITED NATIONS The multinational peacekeeping exercise, Shared Destiny-2021, begins at a military training base in Henan Province, central China, on September 6. The 10-day-long drill focused on the joint operations conducted by peacekeepers from different nations SPAIN A teacher checks the temperature of students in Madrid on September 8. Around 8 million children in Spain started the new school year that day GERMANY Visitors take photos of the illuminated Brandenburg Gate during the Festival of Lights in Berlin on September 3. The festival lasted until September 12 AFGHANISTAN Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announces the formation of Afghanistan’s caretaker government during a press conference in Kabul on September 7. The spokesman said the remaining posts would be announced at a later date FRANCE A little boy is intrigued by plants at…

Absorbed by the appreciation of illustration, 11-year-old Zhang Duoduo is one of the children joining their parents at the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition China Tour, which was launched in Beijing in mid-August. Such leisure time was previously rather rare as she used to attend hours of math class on the weekend. After education authorities introduced a new guideline to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students in the compulsory education system from primary to middle school in July, curriculum-subject tutoring services of many education companies have come to a full halt. Although math has been taken out of the equation, Zhang has continued participating in after-school painting courses. “I started learning creative art and traditional Chinese painting when I was 5 and have developed a great interest…

More than 3.5 million people find themselves currently displaced from Afghanistan due to the deteriorating security situation in the country, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi. Significant movements across borders are not yet taking place. The Office of the UNHCR envisages a worst-case scenario of 500,000 Afghan refugees arriving in neighboring countries by the end of the year, seeking a total of $299 million to allow the UNHCR, other UN agencies and partners to pre-position aid and prepare for large outflows of refugees. Two suicide bombings near Kabul’s airport on August 26 killed over 100 Afghans and wounded many others. Following the blasts, the U.S. military opened fire, leading to more civilian casualties and plunging the country into further chaos. On August 29, U.S. forces based…

At the 10th meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs on August 17, President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, called for the promotion of common prosperity after China has built a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Common prosperity is part of the Party’s people-centered national governance concept. In the 1980s, then leader Deng Xiaoping proposed to encourage certain regions and individuals to get rich first and then realize common prosperity by the rich giving the poor a helping hand. Nowadays, the catch is how to realize common prosperity, a topic that has been elevated to a more important position since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012. An array of policies since then has been adopted to…

Ever since winning first place in the masonry category at the First Vocational Skills Competition of China in December of last year, Wu Yuanzhou has been busy continuing to enhance his craftsmanship with bricks and mortar and impart his knowledge as a lecturer at the Changsha Construction Engineering School, a vocational school in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province. Eight years ago, Wu graduated from middle school and chose to study architectural engineering at a vocational school. Gradually, he developed a passion for masonry and became one of the top stoneworkers nationwide. “It’s not easy to master a technique. Only by remaining persistent and attentive during the boring and difficult moments of the learning process, can you solidify your knowhow and become a true technician,” Wu told Beijing Review. The 22-year-old…

After having studied Chinese for almost three years in Jordan, I chose northeast China as my destination in an attempt to improve my standard Chinese and learn the northeastern dialect. I arrived in China for the first time in 2017, with Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, embarking on my journey. It is home to one of China’s most significant imperial artifacts, the Shenyang Imperial Palace, today’s Shenyang Palace Museum, which is usually compared to the Forbidden City in Beijing. Shenyang’s Imperial Palace may be smaller in size than the one in Beijing, but it is equally worthy of attention. The palace, also known as the Mukden Palace, was the birthplace of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Shenyang was the first capital of the Qing Dynasty before it expanded its power to…

Flood Preparedness A view of the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province on September 6. Chinese authorities have called for rigorous anti-flooding measures along the Yangtze River as water levels continue to rise following heavy rainfall, the Ministry of Water Resources said on the same day. Nurses Awarded Three Chinese nurses were awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal on September 2 for their outstanding contributions to healthcare. Wang Qishan, Chinese Vice President and Honorary President of the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), presented the medals to the nurses during a ceremony inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The Chinese awardees are Cheng Shouzhen from Guangdong Province, Hu Minhua from Jiangxi Province, and Tuo Yali from Gansu Province. A total of 25 nurses from 18 countries won the…

It took Li Shang, a percussionist from Beijing, nearly 15 hours to reach Weiziba, a village in Gansu Province, on July 21. Local transportation from the airport in the provincial capital to the village, at an altitude of 2,450 meters, remains inconvenient, but Li and his colleagues didn’t seem to be bothered. They came to the village in northwest China to perform for students of the Weiziba Primary School. At 8:00 a.m. the next day, children started to trickle in, excited by the prospect of this new experience brought to them by the school’s annual art-themed summer camp. It was the first time for the musicians to bring Over the Moon, a percussion concert, which has been staged in Beijing many times already, to the rural areas. The “box-office hit”…

The Belt and Road Initiative has yielded substantive results since it was initiated eight years ago, and it is expected to inject impetus to promote the healthy development of globalization, experts said. In 2013, during his visits to Central and Southeast Asian countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the major initiatives of building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. This launched a new journey in China’s high-level opening up to the world. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released The Handbook of the Belt and Road 2020 in Beijing on September 7. The event gathered Chinese and foreign experts alike for a discussion on how to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. Edited excerpts of their views follow: Xie Fuzhan President of the Chinese Academy…

Major global financial services provider Ernst & Young (EY) was a highlight of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), taking place in Beijing from September 2 to 7. Especially its China Overseas Investment Network caught great attention. The system covers around 70 countries and regions, and helps Chinese companies enter these markets through services such as feasibility analysis, risk evaluation, policy introduction and legal consulting. “EY has provided these services to over 3,000 Chinese enterprises, launching more than 60,000 overseas investment projects over the past three years,” Beatrice Lian, Public Relations Manager of EY Beijing, told Beijing Review. The company was one of the enterprises attending the digital service zone at this year’s CIFTIS. Established for the first time in 2021, the zone carried the theme…

By posting attention-grabbing snippets on China’s short video platform Douyin, it took an account going by the name Hainan Boy only eight months to grow a following that evolved from three in November 2020 to 72,000 on September 6. The account comes courtesy of Los Angeles native Tommy Coleman who has been living in China since 2006. The videos he uploads, in which he speaks standard Chinese, Hainan dialect as well as English, usually go pretty heavy on the tongue-in-cheek humor. All in good spirits. The content is mainly based on Coleman’s life in Hainan, including local delicacies, traditional customs, beautiful landscapes, and basically anything and everything related to culture and daily life in the southernmost Chinese province. For example, he introduced what he likes most about Hainan, noshing on…

As the new semester started on September 1, Liu Jing, mother of a primary school pupil in Beijing, heaved a sigh of relief since her kid can now arrive at school at 8:20 a.m. on a weekday, about half an hour later than before. “Although it’s only half an hour later, it allows us to have breakfast and get ready for school in a more leisurely manner,” Liu told Beijing Review. The change comes courtesy of a new guideline issued by the central authorities in late July to further reduce the excessive burden from homework and after-school tutoring for primary and middle school students within three years, also known as the “double reduction” policy. In spite of previous government efforts to reduce academic pressure on students, the burden remains heavy.…

As the BRICS group enters its second decade, the collective is now ready to consolidate its early achievements. In this context, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa met virtually on September 9 for their 13th summit under India’s chairship, themed Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus. The situation in Afghanistan and its impact on the region, the reform of the multilateral system, the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as vaccine production and distribution topped the agenda of talks. Achievements and challenges In its first decade of existence, the BRICS was partially successful in pushing for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank quota redistribution. The five economies also offered an outside option to the international financial order through the creation of the New Development…

Watching Jurassic World, studying the scenes frame by frame, zooming in and out, was what Xing Yizhi did every day before embarking on the design and construction of Universal Beijing Resort (UBR). Xing is an engineer and project manager at China Construction Second Engineering Bureau (CCSEB), a major contractor of UBR. How many times did Xing watch the movie? He can’t even remember. “If we weren’t 100 percent sure about the subtlest of minutiae, we would circle back to the film just to make sure our final designs accurately represented Jurassic World down to the smallest detail,” Xing told Beijing Review. Jurassic World, one of seven themed lands at UBR, features a 49-meter-high landmark rockery, which is very different from your average rock garden. In order to recreate the most…

2017, the Moulin Rouge, Paris. A young Chinese man dressed in a traditional Miao costume was stopped by a doorman because the theater dress code recommends “elegant attire.” “What I’m wearing is the formal costume of my hometown, the dress code.” He explained. The doorman let him in and sighed, “I like your outfit. Where can I buy it?” This young man, Zhang Kejia, is a costume designer. Originally from the Miao ethnic group in Guizhou Province, he first dabbled in film and television design before pursuing further fashion studies in France. The 33-year-old has been forging a deeper connection with his Miao identity ever since that night at the Moulin Rouge. He has been exploring the integration of traditional mysticism and the modernity of the world. “We do have…