Innehållsförteckning för Vol.66/No.35 från Beijing Review

The first offline summit since 2020 of BRICS, a group named after the world’s five leading emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August. Key agenda items discussed included closer cooperation and the expansion of the group’s membership. The BRICS mechanism originated with the BRIC concept coined by Jim O’Neill, Chief Economist of financial services giant Goldman Sachs, in 2001. The First BRIC Summit was held in Russia in 2009 before South Africa joined a year later and debuted at the 2011 BRICS Summit in China. At this year’s summit, leaders agreed to invite six more countries—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—to become members as of January 1, 2024. As the BRICS concept gains increasing recognition, the group…

BRICS held its 15th heads of state and government summit in the South African city of Johannesburg from August 22 to 24. On the agenda was the alliance’s expansion, with the inclusion of new countries in the New Development Bank (NDB) and the revival of the idea of creating a common currency. Established in 2015 by the BRICS countries, the NDB is a multilateral development bank aimed at mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging and developing countries. In an interview with Fortune magazine in early August, Jim O’Neill, former Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs, expressed his skepticism about the creation of a BRICS currency, “Are you going to create a BRICS central bank? How would you do that?” The top economist said he…

When Chun Fan and his friends arrived in Maui, Hawaii, from the U.S. mainland on August 5, they were ready for a sun-soaked stay in tropical paradise. Over the two days that followed, they enjoyed the soft sands, cruised along picturesque coastal highways and savored the highly Instagrammable sights and servings of local restaurant Monkeypod Kitchen by Merriman. Never could they have imagined how abruptly their journey into bliss would be set ablaze. “As I gazed at the stars from my balcony on August 7, I could feel the wind picking up,” Chun told Beijing Review. “This persisted well into the next morning, alongside an unsettling shroud of heavy smoke on the horizon. And then the electricity went out.” Electricity and mobile network services remained suspended through the afternoon. As…

The 2023 World Robot Conference (WRC), held in Beijing from August 16 to 22, showcased the latest technological innovations in robotics from around the world. It featured a main forum and more than 20 subforums, each with a different focus—ranging from technological innovation, industrial application and regional coordination to industry development. Eight sessions of the WRC have been held since 2015. Xu Guanghong, deputy director of science and innovation at the China Association for Science and Technology, said the conference has become a platform for scientific and technological exchange and industrial cooperation to promote the high-quality development of robotics and intelligent equipment. The seven-day event also saw the release of the 2023 Report on China’s Robotics Technology and Industrial Development. The further application of robotics in areas such as new-energy…

Late South African leader Nelson Mandela once said bravery is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. This sentiment rang true for me when I first visited Shanghai in 2012 and had the opportunity to climb the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. As a small-town girl from Molepolole, Botswana, I was awestruck by the towering skyscrapers that dominated the city’s skyline. During my two-week winter camp sponsored by the Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana, I had the chance to visit many of Shanghai’s famous landmarks, but it was walking on the transparent glass floor of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower that left the biggest impression on me. Confucius Institutes, named after ancient Chinese philosopher and educator Confucius (551-479 B.C.), serve as nonprofit public institutions to help…

Western mainstream media and pundits have long derided BRICS as an awkward mishmash of different economies and cultures with little in common. For the past decade and a half, their echo chambers assured us that BRICS was very little to do about nothing. But now, as BRICS has come of age, as it has begun to provide what many view as both a shared philosophy and practical framework for advancing a more equitable and multipolar world order, and with more than 40 countries reportedly seeking membership, the talk in Washington, London and elsewhere has shifted predictably. Indeed, now that BRICS is no longer easily dismissed by its naysayers, it’s being recast by some in the West as a “Sino-centric conspiracy,” one that wants to align what have been described as…

On August 18, Camp David, the American presidential country retreat in the state of Maryland, welcomed two dignitaries from East Asia: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Yoon Suk-yeol. U.S. President Joe Biden hoped to make Japan and the ROK closer partners while “institutionalizing” the U.S.-Japan-ROK alliance, meaning that cooperation between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul can be sustained no matter how the governments or domestic politics of the three countries change. The prospects for this new trilateral mechanism, however, remain to be seen. In a scientific way, when the centripetal force cannot resist the centrifugal force, an alliance tends to fall apart. Although both countries are important allies of the U.S. in Asia, the hostility between the ROK and Japan has long hindered…

In the early morning of August 3, a delegation from Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), comprised of two lecturers and eight undergraduate and postgraduate students, touched down in Australia after a 12-hour flight from China’s capital. This brisk winter morning was filled with a mixture of flight fatigue and excitement as these young people, without even checking into their hotel, headed straight to La Trobe University on the outskirts of Melbourne, the first stop of their study trip. Back in June, when the delegation reached out to the Australian Visa Application Center via e-mail to inquire about the type of visas they should apply for, they were quite uncertain about the trip. However, the visa processing went unexpectedly smoothly, with nearly everyone obtaining a visitor visa (subclass 600) within 10…

PIONEERING EDUCATOR DIES AT 107 Isabel Crook, a Canadian educator and anthropologist who pioneered English language teaching in China, died on August 20 in Beijing at the age of 107. Crook lived and worked in China for nine decades, teaching English for more than 70 years at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She helped compile China’s first English language textbooks for college students and was instrumental in the development of foreign language education in the country. As an anthropologist and sociologist, she wrote books on China’s development and presented to the world a real and vivid picture of the country, promoting communication with the rest of the world and people-to-people exchanges. She was a recipient of the Friendship Medal, China’s highest honor for internationals. Photo Buddies Eastday.com August 19 While some…

At the China Computational Power Conference 2023, held in Yinchuan, capital city of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, in mid-August, Jin Zhuanglong, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said China is in the process of improving the infrastructure development for computing power and accelerating its application. These efforts aim to build a more accessible information superhighway for China’s economic and social development. Computational power, the ability to process data by computers, is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). All that computers do relies on highly complex floating-point operations. The more such operations a computer can conduct per second, the smoother it runs. In the digital era, computing power is presenting itself as a new driver of economic and social development and the bedrock for the transition…

When her father’s factory director failed to finish an order that was to be delivered the next day, Gloria Liang finally lost her cool. After a heated argument, the director threatened to resign. This startled her semi-retired father, who then decided to fly in from another city to mediate. “It was like throwing pebbles into a pool of stagnant water,” Liang, 27, told Beijing Review when describing her feelings about taking over her father’s metal processing business. In her first six months at the helm, whatever efforts she exerted to reform the production processes all proved to be in vain, she explained. After a lot of back and forth, Liang finally decided to heed her father’s advice and reconcile with the director. A golden decade In Liang’s eyes, her father…