Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.19 från Beijing Review

Will artificial intelligence (AI) replace my job? This is a question that lingers in the minds of many these days. Similar concerns surfaced a couple of years ago when said technology narrowly defeated a champion of the game Go. At present, the application of AI robotics in a range of professional fields, as well as ChatGPT’s abilities to write essays, solve complex problems, compose song lyrics, do school homework, and more, have heightened moral concerns. The question today is: How should we, as humans, respond to the impact of AI? Should we embrace it or avoid it? Optimists see AI as the ultimate cure for society’s most fundamental problems, while pessimists fear that AI will overtake human intelligence. Underlying these two views is the assumption that AI is better and…

The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative, aiming to boost connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes, refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Ken Hammond, professor of global history and East Asian history at New Mexico State University, the U.S., shared his opinions on the initiative from a historical perspective with Beijing Review reporter Li Nan. Excerpts from their conversation follow: Beijing Review: How has the Western perception of the Belt and Road Initiative evolved over the past decade? Ken Hammond: When the Belt and Road Initiative got underway 10 years ago, one thing many Americans did know about China was the idea of the…

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea (ROK), President Yoon Suk-yeol paid a state visit to the U.S. from April 24 to 30. As a landmark event in the further strengthening of the U.S.-ROK alliance, the two sides announced the Washington Declaration, in which the U.S. promised to provide the ROK with a more solid “nuclear umbrella,” including the establishment of a new nuclear consultation working group by the two sides and the dispatch of U.S. ballistic missile nuclear submarines to ROK waters. Securing the nuclear protection commitment of the U.S. is considered the biggest “achievement” of Yoon’s visit. Since coming to power in May 2022, the Yoon administration has actively sought to play…

The Third Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Ambassadors Convention, themed High-Quality Development and the Chinese Path to Modernization, took place at Tsinghua University in Beijing on April 28. Ambassadors and representatives from 20 LAC countries attended the event. The convention focused on elaborating the Chinese path to modernization, which has brought opportunities for both China and other countries. Bai Chongen, Dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua, told participants that China aims to achieve sustainable growth based on innovation and high efficiency and, in the process, pursues common prosperity to ensure everyone can more fairly share the fruits of development. “In the past, China’s growth relied mainly on fixed assets investment and exports. But domestic consumption has become a major driver of its economic development today as…

Rather than contributing to the common good, today’s human rights discourse has become part of the problem. Firstly, it is seriously discredited by its hypocritical, inconsistent and clearly political application, which have made it a very debased currency around the world. But more than that, it has been recruited into a program that has little to do with protecting people and everything to do with securing global power above that of the sovereign state. After World War II, membership of the UN went from 51 in 1945 to 189 by the end of the century. According to the UN Charter, each of these states enjoys sovereign equality with every other member state. That means there is no power above the sovereign state. That’s the whole point of decolonization. Since the…

China’s effort to build a new development dynamic has the world wondering: Will China slow down foreign trade? Will it refuse foreign investments? Will it refrain from investing abroad? In a nutshell: Will China water down its opening up? As a cornerstone of the global supply chain, China’s decisions can sway the overarching global economic tendency. In this sense, the world’s question marks regarding the country’s policies are understandable. Yet any worries caused by a lack of understanding of the new development paradigm are unnecessary, as it is designed to sharpen China’s competitiveness against the backdrop of a volatile international landscape, rather than push the country to turn inward. The new development dynamic is composed of two parts: One is taking the domestic economy as the mainstay and the other…

On April 12, China’s artificial Sun, officially known as the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST), achieved a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for 403 seconds, Xinhua News Agency reported that same day. In 2017, China’s artificial Sun set a world record by achieving this operation for 101 seconds. A tokamak is a machine that confines a plasma using magnetic fields in a donut shape. A steady-state high-confinement plasma operation, then, is a process during which the plasma reaches a state of high-energy confinement and produces fusion power with very hot plasmas. The EAST is located at the Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei, capital city of Anhui Province in east China. The experimental reactor’s main goal is to create nuclear fusion like Sun, using…

Wildlife Protection China’s revised Law on the Protection of Wildlife, adopted by the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature, in December last year, went into effect on May 1, as part of the country’s efforts to better protect wildlife and their habitats. The revised law has refined measures for the regulation of wildlife populations. In view of the situation in which wild animals overflow and threaten people’s property and safety, as well as the productivity of agriculture and animal husbandry, the law stipulates that isolation and protection facilities, together with safety warning signs, should be built based on the actual situation. It also broadens the scope of national subsidies for losses caused by wild animals, expanding it from wildlife under state protection to terrestrial wildlife that cause serious damage.…

ALIBABA FOUNDER TAKES UP TEACHING POSTS Ma Yun, main founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. better known as Jack Ma, has joined Tokyo College at University of Tokyo as a visiting professor. He began the new position on May 1. The term will end on October 31. Ma, 58, is expected to contribute to several areas including conducting research projects in sustainable agriculture and food production. He will also give seminars on entrepreneurship and innovation. Ma spent his early professional years as an English teacher in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, before establishing Alibaba in 1999. Since handing over the reins to colleague Zhang Yong in 2019, Ma has focused on educational activities and philanthropy. In April, Ma accepted an appointment as honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong…

On September 25, 1953, when China’s intention of achieving common prosperity was first announced in the country’s largest-circulated newspaper People’s Daily, it must have seemed like an impossible dream. A census conducted earlier that year reported a total population on the Chinese mainland of 582.6 million, with 87 percent residing in the rural areas. A similar proportion of the population at the time was extremely poor and the literacy rate was just over 20 percent. Seventy years on, with the literacy rate today at 97.33 percent and extreme poverty eliminated as of late 2020, common prosperity is no longer a dream but a firm policy objective. However, this isn’t something the Chinese Government can accomplish all on its own. Eradicating poverty took the country decades. Not only were integrated policies…

The ongoing crisis in Sudan jeopardizes peace and stability in the African country. Clashes leading to killings and injuries are causing chaos for the Sudanese people and foreign nationals who live and work in the country. UN Secretary General António Guterres has appealed for warring parties to stop the fighting and work toward a permanent ceasefire. In particular, there are two main warring parties, namely the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two groups are at odds over the return to civilian rule. Current hostilities, however, cannot be understood without being placed into a bigger context. From a historical prism, Sudan has suffered two civil wars, with the second ending in 2005, leading to the creation of South Sudan as an independent state six years…

A recent post on social media revealed that a female passenger was automatically designated to share a soft-sleeper compartment on an overnight train with three male passengers she did not know. As the only woman in the closed compartment, the woman felt very uneasy and later managed to switch berths with a man in another compartment. She suggested railway ticketing systems be improved to prevent embarrassments such as three men and one woman, or vice versa, being confined to a small room. The post has since sparked heated discussions online. Both hard and soft sleepers are available on Chinese trains for long-distance journeys. The former, with six berths, are more popular among budget travelers given lower ticket prices; the latter, with four berths and doors that close, are intended to…