Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.25 från Beijing Review

Cost Cutting Sectors dedicated to technological innovation or key industrial chains will enjoy personalized tax and fee cuts, alongside a further optimization of current favorable tax policies, according to a circular issued on June 13 by four departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission. By the end of this year, small-scale taxpayers with monthly sales of less than 100,000 yuan ($13,969) will be exempted from value-added tax, it said. While seeking to lower loan interest rates, the country will also continue to increase loans to small and micro firms, according to the document. To alleviate firms’ labor burdens, the existing policies of lowering the premium rates for unemployment insurance and work-related injury insurance will be extended to late 2024. The country will also retain a zero-tariff policy toward coal…

Hou Xiaolei, a professor at the School of Architecture of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, has found an innovative way of bringing new life to the hutongs, the city’s ancient alleyways. Since 2015, she has led a microgarden project to build tiny gardens in hutongs, usually along the sides of the narrow alleys. The project was carried out as Beijing’s urban renewal entered a phase where massive demolition and reconstruction gave way to small-scale “regeneration” projects. “We hope to bring art into ordinary people’s lives through the project and upgrade the public spaces of Beijing’s old city, increase residents’ participation in community governance and contribute to the improvement of the city’s environment and culture,” Hou told Beijing Review. Along one section of Chongyong Street, a historically significant…

The origins of traditional Chinese painting can be traced back to the Neolithic period thousands of years ago when humans began to create primitive symbols and drawings. It has since evolved into a way to express ideas and emotions through the exquisite use of brushes soaked with ink. A newly launched exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing showcases landscape paintings from the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). The exhibition paints a picture of how the ancient Chinese observed life and understood the world. Comments to weiyao@cicgamericas.com…

Moving to China was not only a professional turning point for Liubin Lima, but also a challenge that led him to explore new horizons to win the hearts and smiles of the public. For the Cuban artist and performer, China did not even appear on his radar when he was young. “I saw it as something impossible and far away,” he said. In fact, many of his friends and classmates went to China after being selected by recruitment agents for dance performances, according to Lima. As he had only basic training as a dancer, he never joined his friends at dance auditions. However, fate had a surprise in store for him. In April 2019, he was hired to incarnate different characters as a performer at Hefei Sunac Land, an amusement…

The flame of Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games, or Asiad, is lit at the archaeological ruins of Liangzhu City in Zhejiang Province on June 15, marking the 100-day countdown to the opening of the games. The Asiad, scheduled to take place from September 23 to October 8, will see an estimated 12,000 athletes from all 45 national and regional Olympic committees in Asia compete in 483 medal events. E-sports and breakdancing will make their debut as official competition events.…

REPUBLIC OF KOREA Thousands of fishermen gather near the parliamentary building in Seoul on June 12 to protest against Japan’s planned discharge of radioactive wastewater from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean LEBANON A woman eats cherries at the Hammana Cherry Festival in the village of Hammana, Mount Lebanon Governorate on June 11. The village is known for its cherries and hosts an annual cherry festival between the end of May and mid-June NEW ZEALAND A man drives a tractor at Fieldays, the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest agricultural event, at Mystery Creek, Hamilton, on June 17 UNITED NATIONS Secretary General António Guterres speaks at a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York on June 12. He expressed support for establishing an artificial intelligence watchdog…

Anticipation ran high as Iranian businessman Mahdi Baridolyaei finally arrived in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, for the offline edition of the 19th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair (ICIF) which took place in the southern Chinese tech hub from June 7 to 11. In the previous three years, he’d only been able to attend the event online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cultural industries, which include arts and crafts, design, entertainment, architecture, media and so on, have become a vital force in accelerating human development. They empower people to take ownership of their development and stimulate innovation that can drive inclusive and sustainable growth. Hosted in Shenzhen every year since 2004, the ICIF has become one of the country’s leading cultural fairs as well as an important platform for cultural exchanges…

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to boost connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes, in 2013, its scope and geographical reach have grown considerably. While the initiative’s first land and maritime economic corridors geographically focused on Eurasia and part of the East African coast, its projects have expanded to include other regions, including Latin America and the Caribbean. On June 2, for example, China and Argentina signed a plan in Beijing to jointly promote Belt and Road cooperation. More than 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries have officially joined the BRI, but even though recent decades have marked China’s rise as Brazil’s main economic partner in terms of trade, investment and finance, Brazil as of yet has not.…

New Publications The fourth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China has recently been published in French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese and traditional Chinese characters, according to a publisher statement issued on June 11. The volume contains a compilation of 109 spoken and written works of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, from February 3, 2020 to May 10, 2022, along with 45 photographs taken since January 2020. It is divided into 21 sections by topic. It records the practices of the Party Central Committee with Xi at its core in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and drastic changes unseen in a century, and in rallying and leading the whole Party and the Chinese people…

The baffling variety of the vast collection found at the National Archives of Publications and Culture (NAPC) might pleasantly surprise visitors—classics from thousands of years ago, newspapers and magazines published before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, yellowing packages of different cigarette brands, cassette tapes from the 1980s when pop music started to thrive on the Chinese mainland and DVDs of foreign films like the 1939 Hollywood blockbuster Gone With the Wind… Their diversity records and carries on China’s traditional culture and communication with others. Rather than a museum, a library, an exhibition center or a gallery, the NAPC is something much more, something that cannot be pinned down by one category. Preserving all kinds of literature and art resources embedded with historical and cultural value,…

In his keynote speech at the China-Central Asia Summit on May 19, Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) envoy Zhang Qian’s westward journey from Chang’an—today’s Xi’an in Shaanxi Province in northwest China—around two millennia ago. With the mission to open the door to friendship and exchanges between China and countries west of China, Zhang had also featured in Xi’s speech on September 7, 2013 at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. Titled Promote People-to-People Friendship and Create a Better Future, it outlined some of the basic principles of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a China-proposed initiative that aims to boost connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. But what does the reference to an ancient dignitary signify? Both speeches resonate throughout Europe today, especially in Spain,…

Ancient Greece and Rome are recognized as the cradle of Western civilization. The Naples National Archaeological Museum in Italy is home to the world’s most extensive collection of ancient Roman sculptures and frescoes from the ancient city of Pompeii, buried and preserved by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Some of the museum’s world-renowned masterpieces are now on display in an exhibition titled The Light of Ancient Roman Civilization, on show at the China World Art Museum in Beijing, from June 10 to October 8. Through nearly 70 groups of ancient Roman artifacts, including sculptures, frescoes, bronzes, glassware and other art categories, the beauty of ancient Rome is on show for the Chinese public. Comments to kangcaiqi@cicgamericas.com…