Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.8 från Beijing Review

The private sector is an important part of China’s economy and China would not have witnessed the astounding development it has without its contributions. Today, the private sector is responsible for more than 50 percent of the country’s tax revenue, 60 percent of its GDP, 70 percent of its tech innovation and 80 percent of urban jobs. In the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a blow to both the Chinese economy and entrepreneurial confidence. Many private enterprises have had to manage a host of business complications. The Chinese Government, for its part, has adopted supporting policies offering critical assistance and relief options. For instance, commercial banks have been encouraged to increase credit granted to private enterprises in the manufacturing sector as well as extend bigger medium- nand long-term…

It’s America’s annual exercise in patriotic rhetoric, indomitable optimism and global leadership. The presidential State of the Union (SOTU) address—first delivered by George Washington in 1790 and repeated every year since 1913—showcases each leader’s policy priorities and persuasion skills. The SOTU oration reflects the president’s personality, from the soaring spirit of Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan to the plucky persistence of the current president, Joe Biden, who annually reminds his audience, “It’s never a good bet to bet against America.” The speech is grand political theater with two audiences in mind: foreign governments and domestic voters. The Super Bowl of American politics, it attracts the highest TV ratings of any regularly scheduled political event. Politicians, pundits and diplomats parse the text for hidden meaning and for shifts in tone and priorities.…

Three layers of cotton quilts and a large pile of firewood lay inside a conical tent in the middle of a vast wood on the night of February 7. The outdoor temperature was expected to drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius by midnight. These materials were almost all that Suo Yuguo, a 28-year-old Evenki man, had prepared to survive a night in the tent. Challenging himself to spend a freezing night in a traditional Evenki tent was an idea that had lingered in his mind since 2020, several months after he returned to live in his hometown in the forests of the Greater Hinggan Mountains in northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. He considered doing so a tribute to his mother, Liu Xia, an Evenki woman who has lived in the…

‘I am so happy to meet you, my African brother,” “It’s a pleasure to have friends visiting from afar,” “Building an African-Chinese community with a shared future in the new era,” “China will always be Africa’s partner of mutual respect,”… These are just a handful of expressions I have often heard over the more than six months I have been in China. They came from some Chinese friends and officials whom I met on different occasions in this beautiful country with the world’s largest population and second largest economy. As a citizen of Tanzania, a country where China is the No.1 foreign investor and a major business partner, the Chinese people’s remarks about and reflections on Africa bear great significance for me and my colleagues. Other developing countries can, without…

TENNIS ACE MAKES HISTORY Wu Yibing made tennis history on February 12, when he became the first Chinese men’s player to win an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour event in a thrilling comeback victory at the Dallas Open in Texas, the U.S. The 23-year-old saved four match points to defeat U.S. favorite John Isner, triggering celebrations across China’s tennis community for the breakthrough in the men’s division, and following the great strides made by the nation’s women’s players. The win helped Wu climb to No.58, his highest position on the ATP men’s world rankings, and propelled him toward his goal of cracking the Top 30 by the end of the season. Before Wu, no men’s player from the Chinese mainland had ever reached a tour-level final in the Open…

Following a stint at his uncle’s farm in China’s Qinghai Province in 2018, seeing the amount of milk, milk products and all dairy-processing wastes, Robert Luo began contemplating how to manage these surpluses. And so, that same year, he co-founded Mi Terro in the U.S., a company that originally intended to use milk waste for the creation of degradable textile fibers to make clothes. “These clothes are soft to the skin and smooth to the touch,” Luo told Beijing Review. But his ambitions went well beyond fashion and today, Mi Terro has transformed itself into a biotechnology company that is revolutionizing the flexible packaging industry by making biodegradable materials from agricultural byproducts and surplus food, for example, potato peels and a distiller’s spent grains. A graduate of the University of…

According to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, by the end of January, China’s foreign exchange (forex) reserves had hit $3.18 trillion, up by $56.8 billion, or 1.82 percent, over the end of 2022, the fourth monthly hike in a row. Last year, China withstood severe tests from renminbi (RMB) exchange rate fluctuations and from the international foreign trade market, which have strengthened its ability to maintain steady economic growth this year. In 2022, jumbo interest rate increases by the U.S. Federal Reserve and COVIDinduced downward pressures on China’s economy caused the RMB to depreciate by 9 percent against the U.S. dollar. Particularly, in early November, when the exchange rate slid from a peak of 6.3 yuan to the rock bottom of 7.3 yuan against the dollar, there were widespread…

Just 30 seconds after receiving a slightly urgent and very optimistic request for help writing a love letter ahead of Valentine’s Day, ChatGPT offered the following response: “Writing a letter professing my love for you, it’s like something out of a cheesy romantic movie. But the truth is, I really do love you. Despite the fact that I can’t stand your constant singing in the shower, your weird obsession with pineapple on pizza, and the way you always leave the toothpaste cap off.” ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, is capable of generating human-like responses to natural language inputs. A survey conducted by global computer security software company McAfee found that one in three men surveyed planned to use ChatGPT to write love letters…

Asnow leopard was spotted wandering just outside the safety nets surrounding the Jiangjun Mountain ski resort in Altay, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Chinese New Year’s Eve on January 21. Videos of the big cat on the prowl went viral online, drawing all kinds of witty comments. Amid these lighthearted remarks, some netizens were calling attention to the protection of this rare animal species. “Humans are the invasive species, not the snow leopard,” one commenter wrote. Ghosts of the mountain This was not the first time the animal had ventured into human territory. Stories circulating among herders across Xinjiang tell of the mysterious disappearance of their animals in winter, which suggests the seasonal arrival of snow leopards in the human sphere due to a scarcity of wild prey in the…

U.S. President Joe Biden recently delivered his second State of the Union (SOTU) address to Congress after taking office in January 2021. During the February 7 speech, he said the U.S. seeks “competition, not conflict” with China, but also stressed that “winning the competition with China should unite all of us.” This address was the first of its kind before a divided Congress, with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives after last year’s midterm elections and Democrats still running the Senate. The Biden administration may meet opposition and resistance on major domestic issues, but U.S. foreign policy is an area less affected by political discord—on U.S. policy toward China, the two parties now have found more common ground. Some of Biden’s remarks during the address may further drive…

According to traditional Chinese culture, young people should show respect and obedience toward their seniors—family members, scholars or specialists—and the advice or instructions they give. In the digital age, Chinese “experts” have a tendency to express their opinions on anything and everything, from global affairs to professional and personal lifestyles, across the country’s social media platforms. Contemporary Chinese youth choose to stick to critical thinking rather than being told what (not) to do. This was proven once again very recently when a Ph.D. in economics posted a short essay on Weibo, China’s Twitter, stating China’s youth should get married and have children as early as possible; to achieve this goal, “the country should lower its legal age for marriage to 18—from the current 20 for women and 22 for men.”…

A new branch of the Palace Museum is expected to emerge on Beijing’s outskirts over the next few years to better showcase the museum’s cultural relics. After nearly a decade of preparation, construction of the new branch began last December. The Palace Museum is housed within the Forbidden City—China’s royal palace during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. The year after China’s last emperor, Puyi, left the royal residence in 1924, it became a public museum. Located in Xiyuhe, a village in Haidian District, about 30 km from the Forbidden City, the northern branch will cover more than 100,000 square meters, including an exhibition space of over 60,000 square meters for cultural relics and more than 35,000 square meters for relic restoration, according to the museum. Necessary expansion The…

Strolling through the hutongs, Beijing’s network of traditional narrow alleyways, one can easily get lost in their unique history-laden atmosphere. Among the capital’s thousands of old lanes, Shijia Hutong stands out for two reasons: its innate cultural value and the fact that it houses Beijing’s first hutong museum. Walking into the alleyway’s courtyard No.24, visitors are greeted with decorations reminiscent of the early 20th century. The 1,000-square-meter Shijia Hutong museum, which welcomed its first visitors in 2013, consists of eight exhibition rooms, with the displayed items showing hutong life as it was decades ago. The Memory of Time room holds more than 300 recordings capturing the sounds of old Beijing as curated by Colin Siyuan Chinnery, a British artist whose own family once upon a time happened to reside in…