Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.24 från Beijing Review

Since China dispatched its first overseas medical support team to Algeria in 1963, approximately 30,000 medical personnel have treated 290 million cases in 76 countries and regions across five continents, with a focus on Africa. Active in remote areas with harsh conditions, Chinese medical teams make every effort to contribute to local healthcare and wellbeing. Medical services are an important part of the assistance China offers to other developing countries. It is an example of the country’s commitment to building a global community of health for all. This idea, first proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2020 at a time when managing the COVID-19 pandemic topped the global agenda, calls on all countries to make concerted efforts to address public health challenges. Over the past decades, China has developed advanced…

Although latecomers to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), following in the footsteps of Asia, Europe and Africa, Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries tend to spare no efforts to implement its core missions and step up cooperation. President Xi Jinping proposed the BRI in 2013 with the aim of boosting connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. The BRI consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Since 2017, 21 of the 33 countries in the LAC region have signed BRI-related memoranda of understanding and announced related business deals. Referred to by China as “a natural extension of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road,” the LAC region has already become an inseparable part of the BRI. BRI cooperation mainly works to promote the…

The sage on the yellow crane was gone amid cloud white. To what avail is the Yellow Crane Tower left here? —Excerpts from Yellow Crane Tower by Cui Hao (704-754) The poem Yellow Crane Tower is an iconic work about Wuhan’s most iconic building, recited by generations of locals and visitors to the capital of Hubei Province in central China. Celebrated in nearly 1,500 poems, the imposing structure is considered the symbol of the city. Standing on the bank of the Yangtze River, it has witnessed the city’s ups and downs for 1,800 years. The sweeping curvature of the tower’s many yellow-tiled eaves was designed to resemble a crane spreading its wings to take flight. On May 30, over 170 representatives from 36 political parties in 28 countries gathered at…

The year 2022 was a significant one for me. I first landed in China in 2010, during the previous Year of the Tiger, which meant that as of last year, I’d spent an entire zodiac cycle in this wondrous country that I now call home. Professionally speaking, 2022 also marked 25 years of my career of working with wildlife, which metaphorically speaking was the Silk Road that led me to China. It was 25 years ago, in 1997, that I began working as a volunteer at the Coney Island Aquarium in New York City. I had always been interested in animals and scored high in biology at school. After graduating from college, I decided I would have a go at being a zookeeper. Fast forward 15 years, to 2012, and…

Together with her twins, Binta Jolloh returned to the Sierra Leone-China Friendship Hospital one year after their birth there. This time, she was there to thank Doctor Yu Ling, who had helped deliver the babies. Yu, an obstetrician from the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Hunan Province in China, was a member of the 23rd Chinese medical team dispathed to Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. Sierra Leone has long struggled with some of the world’s worst health outcomes—including a maternal mortality epidemic in which a woman’s lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 20, according to estimates from the United Nations in 2022. In the early hours of February 13, 2022, Jolloh struggled to cope with the pain as her twins made…

‘Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.” The 26th president of the U.S., Theodore Roosevelt, often used this saying to describe his foreign policy tactics. Described by him in 1900 as a West African proverb, the idea is to negotiate peacefully but simultaneously maintain the threat of the military power. Nearly 120 years later, one can easily see how the U.S. is still pursuing this kind of “big stick ideology” in Sino-U.S. relations. Throughout May, against the backdrop of slightly thawing Sino-U.S. relations and the gradual resumption of high-level dialogues, the U.S. repeatedly expressed its “desire” to hold a meeting between the defense ministers of the two countries during Asia’s premier security summit, the Shangri-La Dialogue, which took place in Singapore from June 2 to 4. One…

Within some 40 hours, Elon Musk’s high-caliber whirlwind trip to Beijing and Shanghai from May 30 to June 1 saw him meeting with high-ranking Chinese officials, in addition to visiting his electric car company Tesla’s Gigafactory. He also had in-person discussion with Robin Zeng, the founder of electric-vehicle (EV) battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. As Tesla is expanding in the Chinese market and beyond, so too are its Chinese counterparts, leading to China’s rise to become the world’s largest auto exporter. Conjoined twins In the first quarter of this year, Tesla sold 267,171 Model Ys, of which 94,469 were sold in China, accounting for nearly 30 percent of its total sales, higher than 83,664 in the United States and 71,114 in Europe, according to data from market research…

Bu Jiayu, who is studying for a master’s degree in Beijing, received a special certificate on May 2. Twenty-three days earlier, she had donated her hair to an organization that collects hair donations to make free wigs for female patients dealing with chemotherapy-induced hair loss during treatment of cancer and other diseases. The organization is Tsingsi Hair Donation Charity, or Tsingsi Hair for short, a student initiative that took off at Shanghai International Studies University in 2014. Its main undertaking is hair donation, which includes collecting hair nationwide, then asking manufacturers to make wigs and finally donating the wigs to patients. “I grew my hair for one year without dyeing or perming it and overall took great care of it,” Bu told Beijing Review. Her signature long locks have now…

BASKETBALL SUPERSTAR ADDED TO HALL OF FAME Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming has been added to the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Hall of Fame Class of 2023. The FIBA, basketball’s international governing body, made the announcement on June 2. Yao made history at the 2002 U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) draft when he was selected with the No.1 overall pick by the Houston Rockets, becoming the first international player to be chosen with the first pick. He retired in 2011 after being selected eight times as an NBA All-Star. Yao also played on the Chinese national basketball team. Yao now heads the Chinese Basketball Association, a professional and nonprofit organization spearheading the development of the sport in China. In addition to Yao, the FIBA recognized nine other players and two…

An Lijuan, a deputy to the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, believes valuable suggestions are often gained through direct engagement instead of office-based deliberations. One night in 2021, An, who is also the secretary of the Communist Party of China Committee of Shougang Kuangshan Sub-district in Beijing, received a phone call from a retired resident, who expressed his concerns that his pension barely covered the high monthly medication and outpatient care expenses for his heart disease and high blood pressure. Him being diagnosed with liver cancer two years earlier had made the situation even more difficult. An immediately consulted the regulations on basic medical insurance in Beijing. Although 70-90 percent of outpatient expenses are reimbursable for retired employees, there was an annual cap of 20,000 yuan ($2,809). “But isn’t 20,000 enough?”…

In the eastern waters of the South China Sea stands an oil platform located 200 km southwest of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province. Known as Enping 15-1 and put into operation last December, it is the largest offshore oil production platform in Asia. The platform is independently designed, built, installed and operated by China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), the largest offshore oil and gas producer in China. Among the network of yellow pipelines that pierce the sea floor beneath the platform, one green pipeline stands out. It is through this pipe that liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) is injected into seabed. The pipe is part of China’s first offshore million-ton carbon storage project, which went into operation on June 1. The project is designed to store more than 1.5 million tons…

Tsai Menghan and her husband Zhang Hang currently live in Shanghai where both work as photographers. Usually, Tsai shoots portraits and Zhang does still lifes. Tsai is also a part-time blogger. “I often share my photography and things I find inspirational on Xiaohongshu [an immensely popular lifestyle and e-commerce platform in China]. I also share other art-related content on it,” Tsai, a young adult from China’s Taiwan region, told Beijing Review. “Every video Menghan makes features new take-aways. And I enjoy it every time,” Zhang, who was born and grew up in the southwestern mainland municipality of Chongqing, proudly remarked. Tsai and Zhang met in 2017 during their master’s degree studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York in the United States. “Inside the naturally romantic atmosphere of…