Indholdsfortegnelse for Vol.66/No.10 i Beijing Review

Should democracy necessarily be characterized by partisan politics? A look at the workings of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, sheds light on an alternative model. Nearly 3,000 deputies are attending the First Session of the 14th NPC, which opened in Beijing on March 5. They were elected by the country’s provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, special administrative regions and armed forces. Of them, 16.69 percent are workers and farmers, while 32.55 percent are Party and government officials. Being elected is not merely an honor; deputies shoulder important responsibilities. Effectively representing public interests is their top priority, and they must maintain close contact with their communities to do so. They also need to have both an in-depth knowledge of their own industries, professions and communities, and a good command…

The world is changing. Peace and stability are no longer taken for granted. Three years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented challenges do not always lead to joint action and it is here where the role of the China-European Union relationship becomes crucial. Both sides value the world’s multilateral character and are determined in their pursuit of synergies to secure a minimum level of cooperation. In late February, Wang Yi, Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, paid an official visit to four European countries. He first traveled to Germany, where he spoke at the Munich Security Conference; he then went to France, Italy and Hungary. One of the purposes of Wang’s short tour was to contribute to…

Four months after a series of explosions damaged three of the four offshore lines of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines, it remains unclear if the pipe’s operating consortia or Russia’s Gazprom, a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation, will ever repair the lines. What also remains unclear is who actually was the driving force behind the blasts. On September 26, 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines, connecting Russia to Germany, exploded almost simultaneously. At that time, the U.S. and its allies took the lead in launching a wave of public opinion offensives, claiming Russian warships had been near the scene and implying that Russia had blown up its own facilities. But according to Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s investigative report released on February 8, as…

At a modern agricultural park on Shanghai’s Chongming Island, containers-turned-plant factories stood ready for action on February 13. This is the venue of the Third Smart Agriculture Competition, an annual precision farming contest launched by e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, an app originally designed to connect farmers with consumers directly. The competition, with around 80 percent of participants born after 1990, has become a platform where young and talented researchers in the fields of agriculture and technology can work on real-life problems faced by smallholder farmers. It has also become a testing field for agricultural technology born in the laboratory. This year’s edition was organized by Pinduoduo and Bright Seedbase Technology, the seedling arm of Chinese food and beverage conglomerate Bright Food. Four teams from Beijing and Shanghai have stood out from…

As one Chilean proverb goes: “Have patience to walk with short steps until you have wings to fly.” This popular saying largely sums up Gonzalo Matamala’s experience in China. Throughout the past 15 years, he has forged a unique bond with the country and helped open new markets for a variety of Chilean export products. Paving the way Matamala’s first contact with the country was through an invitation in 2006 from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. In spite of being a brief visit, Matamala was immediately impressed by the level of development that China was experiencing, especially at a time when Beijing was preparing to host the 2008 Olympic Games. “I saw that Chile was becoming more and more connected with China in economic and commercial matters,” he pointed out.…

Ten years ago, a group of young adults arrived in Rongzhong Village of Fujian Province in southeast China to learn from the village’s development experience. They came one month after Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, had visited the village and called on his fellow Chinese citizens to “work together in the pursuit of a prosperous life.” At that point, Rongzhong was already famous for its economic development, with its main economic indicators ranking at the forefront of Fujian’s rural economies. The group was from Yuangudui Village of Weiyuan County in Dingxi, Gansu Province in northwest China. As of late 2012, the per-capita annual income in Yuangudui stood at 1,465 yuan ($211), well below the then poverty line of 2,300 yuan ($331) per…

One year after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, it remains difficult to predict the final outcome of the armed conflict. A protracted war looks probable, if not inevitable. It has become an established fact, however, that the post-World War II (WWII) international system is under the heaviest pressure since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. A new arms race has emerged in many parts of the world, triggered largely by the Ukraine crisis. Trust between major countries is waning, multilateralism is under attack, and unilateralism is rampant. The once-in-a-century pandemic, the Ukraine crisis, the unparalleled sanctions on Russia, the spiraling inflation and a looming recession all overlap one another and have sounded the alarm in the boiler room of the international system. Lingering…

In his 2023 New Year Address, President Xi Jinping pointed out that “innovations are gushing out in the coastal areas, development is picking up pace in the central and western regions, the momentum of revitalization is building in the northeast, and there is greater development and affluence in the border regions,” which paints a rosy picture of China’s prosperous development in all regions. Achieving coordinated development means minimizing imbalances in development across the country. Imbalances in development exist between China’s regions, with the central and western regions lagging behind the eastern region in economic growth. Transport networks on the map tell the story clearly: Eastern regions are covered by concentrations of highways and high-speed railways, while in the western region, roads and railways are sparsely distributed. The gap between rural…

Despite Ilaf Elard, an associate professor of practice in economics at New York University Shanghai, China’s first Sino-American research university, having sifted through extensive coverage of China’s modernization efforts over the past four decades, some of the content still remained rather obscure. “Some concepts were a bit unclear and undefined. For example, that of the Special Economic Zone—or SEZ,” the German scholar told Beijing Review, adding it was difficult to get, through just a handful of news snippets, a good grasp of how exactly an SEZ works. A recent trip to Xiamen City in coastal Fujian Province in southeast China proved enlightening. A group of international youth from about 10 countries visited the city from February 25 to 27 under the Global Young Leaders Dialogue (GYLD), a program that regularly…

NEW MINISTER OF JUSTICE He Rong has been appointed Minister of Justice, replacing Tang Yijun, who was elected as chairperson of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, in January. He has worked within China’s judicial system for more than 30 years. Before her new appointment, the 60-year-old from Shandong Province had served as vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, China’s top court, since April 2020. He started her career at the Beijing High People’s Court after graduating from the China University of Political Science and Law in 1984. Over the next 20 years or so, she worked within the capital’s court system. In 2011, she went to the country’s top court and, two years later, became its vice president. From March 2017 to April…

1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. 2. Abandoning the Cold War mentality. The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns…

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) on December 6 last year said it would triple its investment at its Arizona plant in the U.S. from $12 billion planned in May 2020 to $40 billion. On the same day, U.S. President Joe Biden visited the site and hailed the project, saying “American manufacturing is back, folks.” Is it? Recent interviews with 11 TSMC employees conducted by The New York Times revealed how doubts are rising inside the world’s chipmaking leader—headquartered in China’s Taiwan region. Calvin Su, President of chemical supplier Chang Chun Arizona, told the newspaper on February 22 that the factory’s construction would cost 10 times than that in Taiwan due to “unfamiliarity with U.S. regulations and building permits, as well as an insufficient supply of production materials.” Then there’s…

The considerable increase in bank deposits has drawn much attention to so-called “excess savings.” According to the People’s Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, renminbi deposits registered a significant rise in 2022 over the previous year. Household deposits contributed most, with its increase last year 7.94 trillion yuan ($1.14 trillion) more than that in 2021. Outstanding renminbi deposits totaled 258.5 trillion yuan ($37.28 trillion) by the end of 2022, up 11.3 percent year on year. Excess savings are usually defined as money on top of what consumers are on pace to accumulate, though how they are calculated may vary. The Minsheng Securities Research Institute estimated China’s household excess savings in 2022 at 7.4 trillion yuan ($1.07 trillion). Transforming the extra cash into spending power that will drive growth has…

Last fall, I spent a couple of days in Gubei Water Town, two hours away from downtown Beijing in the city’s northeastern suburbs. Located in the mountains, adjacent to the Simatai section of the Great Wall, the town is a reproduction of the typical water towns found in the southern parts of China. Walking around the town is a pleasure from the moment you walk through the main entrance. Gazing at scenes of the canals, leisure boating and the small bridges characteristic of such towns, you’ll pass by well-designed closed-knit agglomerations of houses on each side of the narrow brick walkways and streets. Everywhere you turn your head is a picture-perfect setting for your photo collection. Make sure your cellphone has plenty of megabytes remaining. The Gubei Water Town was…