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Beware the Waking Dragon
Aerial photo taken on May 19, 2020 shows staff members performing via livestreaming on a cellphone at a historical and cultural area of Fuzhou, southeast China’s Fujian Province. May 19 marks the China Tourism Day. Local authorities in Fuzhou conduct livestreaming via cellphones to enable people elsewhere to have a chance to taste the local cultures.
Source: Xinhua
— As the continued global spread of COVID-19 is weighing on the world economy, China’s foreign trade is under considerable downward pressure.
— Many export-oriented companies in China are turning to the domestic market for a lifeline while grappling with dropping overseas orders as major markets remain in the grip of the pandemic.
by Xinhua writers Zhang Yizhi, Li Huiying, Hu Guanghe, Xu Ruiqing
FUZHOU, May 9 (Xinhua) — Walking back and forth between shelves of neatly stacked shoes, some 20 live streamers dashed at the instructions of their followers on the phone, grabbing a shoe now and then from the shelves for a close-up in front of the camera.
At around eight o’clock every night, the supply chain platform 0594 in the city of Putian, east China’s Fujian Province, springs to life as live streamers flock to the exhibition area to sell shoes produced by the local manufacturers, many of which are troubled by the cancellations or delays of overseas orders amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
“To get rid of the excess inventory, many manufacturers in Putian are turning to live streaming to explore the domestic market,” said Chen Xing, general manager of 0594. “We are now cooperating with over 40 manufacturers and there will be more of them joining us in the future.”
The platform is also building an internet celebrity incubator and has so far organized seven rounds of influencer training courses enrolling more than 200 attendees.
Huang Huafang, 39, signed up for the two-day crash course in late March and soon after started her first live streaming session. She works from around 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., attracting over 500 followers and selling more than 20 pairs of shoes every day.
Though she is not a well-known live streamer, she is optimistic about the future. “There is a long way to go, but I believe live streaming is a trend. It is an essential skill for anyone who wants to market online,” said Huang.
A staff sells shoes through live streaming at an e-commerce warehouse in Putian, southeast China’s Fujian Province, May 7, 2020. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
According to Chen, the platform 0594 sold almost 130,000 pairs of shoes in April alone. As the domestic economic outlook continues to pick up, the sales target of May has been set at 200,000 pairs.
Like manufacturers in Putian, a city with a large number of export-oriented enterprises, many Chinese factories are turning to the domestic market for a lifeline, while grappling with dropping overseas orders as major markets remain in the grip of the pandemic.
ADAPT OR DIE
With decades of experience in manufacturing and developing products for overseas clients, some export-oriented companies in China are rolling out products catering to the domestic market.
After months of gloomy business, Wu Songlin, general manager of Putian-based Hsieh Shun Footwear Co., Ltd., heaved a sigh of relief as trucks loaded with therapeutic shoes tailored to the home market left his factory.
It was the first shipment for the domestic market since Wu and his partners started the company in 2010. In the past, his company only had two clients, one from Europe and the other from Japan. Business used to run smoothly and life was good.
But his factory was on the brink of a shutdown in March when the coronavirus pandemic started to ravage the global economy. No new orders came in and shipments of existing orders were requested to be delayed until June.
People work in a footwear workshop in Putian, southeast China’s Fujian Province, April 27, 2020. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
“Orders were canceled after completion of production, and our capital flow is stuck in our inventory. The pressure is mounting to keep the factory running,” Wu said. “By the end of June, workers would be left with no work to do as soon as we complete the existing orders.”
After losing almost all their orders from overseas clients, the desperate shoemaker turned to the domestic market. He called one of his old business partners and secured an order for massage footwear, which is selling like hot cakes in the domestic market as health tops the agenda in the time of the novel coronavirus.
The factory produced 10,000 pairs of massage shoes in April, and the number is expected to reach 30,000 in May, enough to keep the production lines running.
Thanks to the company’s quick adaptation, about 200 workers kept their jobs in the factory, while 20 percent were furloughed and the remaining workers were arranged to work in other companies as part of the city’s employee sharing program.
“If domestic orders keep coming in, our operation will hopefully get back to normal by September when the monthly output of massage shoes will reach 90,000,” Wu said. “By then the company will live and thrive without any orders from overseas customers.”
A woman works in a workshop of Hsieh Shun Footwear Co., Ltd. in Putian, southeast China’s Fujian Province, May 7, 2020. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
But switching to another market is not easy, explained Wu. In the past, export-oriented factories were only in charge of manufacturing, while brands would take care of sales, promotion as well as customer support.
“If you are selling to the domestic market, you need to have your own brand and marketing capacity,” he said. “Working with e-commerce platforms could be one way out, but it’s more important to understand domestic consumers and meet their needs.”
CUSTOMIZE THE FUTURE
For years, many export-focused manufactures have been trying to climb up the value chain and tap the uncharted waters of the domestic market. As the pandemic continues to spread, there is a strong push for them to embrace customized manufacturing.
In an experience store located in downtown Putian, customers line up waiting to have their feet measured on a smart device. After a few seconds, they get their readings on the phone, and a few swipes and clicks later, they place their orders with unique features, colors, and shapes.
Adjacent to the experience store, there is a flexible manufacturing workshop, which gives quick responses to orders and produces shoes following the customized demands of individual buyers.
SEMS, a longstanding sports footwear manufacturer that has established a partnership with several international brands, started to adopt flexible manufacturing years ago in an effort to adapt to the evolving domestic market.
A customer has her feet measured on a smart device in sports footwear manufacturer SEMS in Putian, southeast China’s Fujian Province, May 8, 2020. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
Customization gives consumers the benefit of products that fit their needs, and at the same time allows factories to utilize improved workflows and technology to maintain high output and omit the process of inventory and distribution, said Zhu Yizhen, the executive vice president of the company.
“Currently we only sell over 100 pairs of customized shoes a day, but we are at the dawn of a new era,” Zhu said. “We hope more companies awaken to the developing trend and join in the practice of mass customization.”
Customer to manufacturer, or C2M, which allows consumers to place orders directly to factories for customized products, has become a buzzword among export-oriented manufacturers hoping to reach domestic consumers amid the pandemic.
Li Junjie, who runs a ceramic flowerpot plant in Fujian’s Dehua County, one of the manufacturing centers of ceramics in China, did not sell a single pot to his overseas customers since the coronavirus outbreak in late January.
The factory used to export 30 percent of its flowerpots to the United States and Spain, but Li managed to make up for the lost deals by selling on domestic e-commerce platforms. Instead of bulk orders placed by foreign clients, domestic consumers tend to purchase customized products in small amounts.
Photo shows the automatic production line of a customized workshop in sports footwear manufacturer SEMS in Putian, southeast China’s Fujian Province, May 8, 2020. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
With the big data provided by e-commerce platforms, Li can tell which items will be a hit so as to increase their production and develop new products based on a thorough analysis of different consumer groups.
“Our online sales almost doubled over the past year, and we have sold over 100,000 customized pots this year, thanks to the C2M business model,” Li said.
Li’s company is one of many Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have benefited from the e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Spring Thunder Initiative, which is aimed at helping export-focused SMEs expand into new markets.
The initiative will also help some SMEs to transform and develop their business in the Chinese market through measures such as resource support, fee reductions, and fast-track processing.
Source: Xinhua
The Chinese government has resumed a job placement scheme for tens of thousands of Uygur Muslims who have completed compulsory programmes at the “re-education” camps in the far-western region of Xinjiang, sources said.
The plan, which includes a quota for the numbers provinces must take, was finalised last year but disrupted by the outbreak of Covid-19.
The delay threatens to undermine the Chinese government’s efforts to justify its use of internment camps in Xinjiang.
Critics have said these camps were part of the measures designed to eradicate the ethnic and cultural identity of Uygurs and other Muslim minorities and that participants had no choice but to undertake the re-education programme.
Now with the disease under control, the Chinese government has resumed the job placement deal for other provinces to absorb Xinjiang labourers, sources said.
, a source said.
“Excellent graduates were to be taken on as labourers by various inland governments, in particular, 19 provinces and municipalities,” said the source. It is unclear what constitutes “excellent graduates”.
Some sources earlier said that the programme may be scaled back in light of the new economic reality and uncertainties.
But a Beijing-based source said the overall targets would remain unchanged.
“The unemployment problem in Xinjiang must be resolved at all costs, despite the outbreak,” the source said.
The South China Morning Post has learned that at least 19 provinces and cities have been given quotas to hire Muslim minorities, mostly Uygurs, who have “graduated” from re-education camps.
As early as February, when the daily number of infections started to come down outside Hubei province, China already begun to send Uygur workers to their new jobs.
A photo taken in February showed thousands of young Uygurs, all wearing face masks and with huge red silk flowers pinned to their chests, being dispatched to work in factories outside their hometowns.
By the end of February, Xinjiang alone has created jobs for more than 60,000 Uygur graduates from the camps. A few thousand were also sent to work in other provinces.
Many have been employed in factories making toys and clothes.
Xinjiang’s new rules against domestic violence expand China’s ‘extremism’ front to the home
Sources told the Post that the southern city of Shenzhen – China’s hi-tech manufacturing centre – was given a target last year to eventually resettle 50,000 Uygurs. The city is allowed to do this in several batches, with 15,000 to 20,000 planned for the first stage.
He said the preparation work includes providing halal food to the workers as well as putting in place stronger security measures to “minimise the risks of mass incidents”. It is not known whether they will be given access to prayer rooms.
There are no official statistics of how many Uygurs will be resettled to other provinces and the matter is rarely reported by the mainland media.
But in March, Anhui Daily, the province’s official newspaper, reported that it had received 1,560 “organised labourers from Xinjiang”.
The Uygur workers on average could earn between 1,200 yuan (US$170) to 4,000 yuan (US$565) a month, with accommodation and meals provided by the local authorities, according to Chinese media reports.
However, they are not allowed to leave their dormitories without permission.
Such arrangements are not unique to Uygurs and local governments have made similar arrangements for ethnic Han workers in other parts of China.
After screening them for Covid-19, local governments have arranged for workers to be sent to their workplaces in batches. They are checked again on arrival, before being sent to work.
China is accelerating such placement deals on a massive scale to offset the impact of the economic slowdown after the outbreak.
Sources told the South China Morning Post that the job placement deal was first finalised by governments in Xinjiang and other provinces last year.
The aim is to guarantee jobs for Uygur Muslim who have “completed vocational training” at the re-education camps and meet poverty alleviation deals in the region, one of the poorest parts of China.
The training they receive in the camps includes vocational training for various job types such as factory work, mechanical maintenance and hotel room servicing. They also have to study Mandarin, Chinese law, core party values and patriotic education.
Xinjiang’s massive internment camps have drawn widespread international condemnation.
The United Nations has estimated that up to 1 million Uygur and other Muslim minority citizens are being arbitrarily detained in the camps, which Beijing insists are necessary to combat terrorism and Islamic radicalisation.
Late last year, Xinjiang’s officials announced that all the inmates of these so-called vocational training centres had “graduated” and taken up employment.
Before this labour placement scheme was introduced, it was extremely difficult for Uygurs to find jobs or live and work in inland regions.
The 2009 brawl at the factory in Shaoguan was one of the factors that triggered a deadly riot in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, that left 192 people dead and more than 1,000 wounded.
Muslim ethnic minorities, Uygurs in particular, have been subjected to blatant discrimination in China and the situation worsened after the 2009 clashes.
Earlier this month, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report saying more than 80,000 Uygurs had been moved from Xinjiang to work in factories in nine Chinese regions and provinces.
It identified a total of 27 factories that supplied 83 brands, including household names such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Sony, Huawei, Samsung, Nike, Abercrombie and Fitch, Uniqlo, Adidas and Lacoste.
‘Psychological torture’: Uygurs abroad face mental health crisis over plight of relatives who remain in Xinjiang
The security think tank concluded that the Chinese government had transferred Uygur workers “under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour” between 2017 and 2019, sometimes drawing labourers directly from re-education camps.
The report also said the work programme represents a “new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens”.
Workers were typically sent to live in segregated dormitories, underwent organised Mandarin lessons and ideological training outside working hours and were subject to constant surveillance, the researcher found.
They were also forbidden from taking part in religious observances, according to the report that is based on open-source documents, satellite pictures, academic research and on-the-ground reporting.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian criticised the report saying it had “no factual basis”.
Source: SCMP
Rescue workers are still searching the rubble of the five-storey Xinjia Hotel in the southern province of Fujian.
Seventy-one people were in the building when it collapsed and dozens have been rescued, authorities say.
It is not clear what caused the collapse on Saturday evening.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESState media say the hotel was being used as a quarantine facility monitoring people who had had close contact with coronavirus patients. It’s reported 58 of the 71 people in the building were under quarantine.
The building’s first floor had been undergoing renovation since before the Lunar New Year, the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that police had summoned the building’s owner.
The hotel reportedly opened in 2018 and had 80 guest rooms.
The city of Quanzhou has recorded 47 cases of the virus, which first emerged in the city of Wuhan, about 1,000km away.
Image copyright EPAOne woman told the Beijing News website that relatives including her sister had been under quarantine there.
“I can’t contact them, they’re not answering their phones,” she said.
“I’m under quarantine too [at another hotel] and I’m very worried, I don’t know what to do. They were healthy, they took their temperatures every day, and the tests showed that everything was normal.”
As of Friday, Fujian province had 296 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Meanwhile 10,819 people have been placed under observation because they have been in close contact with someone infected.
The number of new reported cases in China dropped on Saturday to 44, down from 99 the previous day.
The World Health Organization says more than 101,000 people worldwide have now contracted the virus. More than 80,000 of them are in China.
About 3,500 people have died – the majority in the Chinese province of Hubei where the outbreak originated.
Source: The BBC
FUZHOU, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) — Chinese and foreign experts have marveled at the archaeological and anthropological value of the Wanshouyan Paleolithic Relics in east China’s Fujian Province.
Dozens of archaeological experts from China, Malaysia, Poland, Russia and Japan gathered in Sanming City on Friday and Saturday for a visit to the relics and academic exchanges.
“I have never seen such a thing,” said Lucyna Domanska, a professor with the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Lodz from Poland, pointing to a 120-square-meter space floored with pebbles inside a cavern.
The artificial floor, built about 40,000 years ago, is part of the Wanshouyan Paleolithic Relics, a habitat of human ancestors dating back as early as 200,000 years ago.
“This site is very exciting,” Domanska said. “It is important not only for Asia but for the whole world.”
Some of the relics are “unusual,” said Evgeny Rybin, a senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noting that “it could be a source of scientific advancements.”
Standing inside a cavern named Lingfeng where ancient stone choppers, scraping devices and hammering tools were unearthed, Rybin said the relics from this site broadened their understandings about the capabilities of ancient people.
“The relics show that ancient people not only used caves but also changed them to fit their lifestyles,” he said.
It is a contribution to the world, said Mohd Mokhtar Saidin, a professor and director of Malaysia’s Center for Global Archaeological Research.
“This is very important. Not every country has evidence of human activities 200,000 years ago, and not every region has this type of cave,” he added.
Inside the limestone hill of Wanshouyan, archaeological remains of the Paleolithic Age have been found in several caverns, which provide important evidence for studying human life as early as hundreds of thousands of years ago.
In 2000, the Wanshouyan Paleolithic Relics was listed as one of China’s top 10 archaeological discoveries of the year.
Source: Xinhua
BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) — China has selected 30 outstanding grass-roots police officers, plus five awardees of special respect and 35 for nomination awards.
The list was selected in a campaign jointly launched by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Public Security in August this year.
The campaign was aimed at encouraging police across the country to work hard to maintain political security and social stability and to improve public understanding of the police work, according to a joint statement by the two departments.
The five awardees of special respect include a group of police officers in east China’s Zhejiang Province who risked their own lives in evacuating vehicles and personnel trapped in a tunnel after fire broke out.
They also include police officers who died on duty – one of them was guiding vehicles on an icy road in Fujian Province, southeast China, but was hit by an out-of-control heavy truck while trying to save passengers nearby.
The 30 outstanding police officers include criminal police, police with special duties, anti-drug police, police who remove explosives, plainclothes police, among others, who have worked diligently for years under dangerous circumstances.
They also include officers who have worked seemingly ordinary jobs but have demonstrated extraordinary perseverance or devotion in serving the public. Officers who have worked in difficult situations for a long time, such as the gobi desert and prisons with criminals living with HIV/AIDS, have also been selected.
Also on the list are some officers who actively seek innovations to incorporate the Internet, satellite and other new technologies into police work.
In addition, several female officers who have worked at a prison or as a forensic expert have received the award.
Source: Xinhua
Aerial photo taken on Sept. 21, 2019 shows a steel girder being lifted by a crane at the construction site of the Pingtan Strait Road-rail Bridge in southeast China’s Fujian Province. China on Wednesday completed the main structure of the world’s longest cross-sea road-rail bridge in Fujian. The last steel girder, weighing 473 tonnes, was bolted on the Pingtan Strait Road-rail Bridge, another mega project in China, on Wednesday morning. With a staggering span of 16.34 km, the bridge connects Pingtan Island and four nearby islets to the mainland of Fujian Province. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
FUZHOU, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) — China on Wednesday completed the main structure of the world’s longest cross-sea road-rail bridge in its southeastern province of Fujian.
The last steel truss girder, weighing 473 tonnes, was bolted on the Pingtan Strait Road-rail Bridge, another mega project in China, on Wednesday morning.
Hundreds of bridge builders clad in orange overalls, as well as government officials, hailed the completion on the bridge deck, with several rounds of fireworks being set off to celebrate the moment.
With a staggering span of 16.34 km, the bridge connects Pingtan Island and four nearby islets to the mainland of Fujian Province.
The bridge, which is expected to open to traffic next year, can help shorten travel time from two hours to half an hour between Fuzhou, capital city of Fujian Province and Pingtan, a pilot zone set up to facilitate trade and cultural exchanges across the Taiwan Strait.
“Of all the bridges being built across the world, this is no doubt the most challenging,” said Wang Donghui, chief engineer of the project, adding that it is China’s first and the world’s longest cross-sea road-rail bridge.
The project has attracted worldwide attention from the start of construction in 2013 as it spans an area off the coast of southeast China long seen as a “no-go zone” for bridge-building.
The region has strong gales and high waves for most of the year and is known as one of the world’s three most perilous seas along with Bermuda and the Cape of Good Hope.
Workers had to battle the notoriously strong winds, choppy waters and rugged seabed in the region to drill 1,895 piles into the ocean.
MORE THAN MEGA PROJECT
The road-rail bridge has a six-lane highway on the top and a high-speed railway at the bottom, which is designed to support bullet trains traveling as fast as 200 km per hour. It is a part of the 88-km Fuzhou-Pingtan railway.
In the past, Pingtan was a backwater island of humble fisheries. It did not even have a bridge connecting it to the mainland until 2010 when the Strait Bridge began operating for cars only.
In 2010, China established the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone to facilitate cross-Strait exchange and cooperation, ramping up its efforts to improve the island’s infrastructure.
Today, skyscrapers are popping up all along the shoreline, with the glow of construction work filling the night sky. Meanwhile, thousands of Taiwan residents swarm into the booming island to live and start businesses.
The island has accommodated more than 1,000 shops and companies set up by Taiwan residents, according to government statistics.
Chen Chien-hsiang, a 29-year-old man who moved from Taiwan to Pingtan two years ago, believes that the new bridge will help attract more businesses to the island and further boost its economic development.
“The new bridge means more than a mere mega project,” Chen said. “It also promises a brighter future for people from Taiwan who chose to live and work here.”
INFRASTRUCTURE MANIAC
Huang Zhiwei, 22, found himself making history by lifting the last piece of the bridge girder from a ship about 80 meters below the bridge deck, an undertaking that he had never expected when he joined the project a year ago as an intern.
His parents, unhappy about their son’s career choice, felt relieved after several video chats during which their son showed them his working and living conditions at the construction site.
“With so many advanced technologies and safety measures, I am convinced that we will accomplish the mission, and I am very proud of my contribution,” said the young operator.
More than 1.24 million tonnes of steel have been used for the bridge, enough to build 190 Eiffel Towers, and 2.97 million cubic meters of cement, nine times the amount of cement used to build the Burj Khalifa towers in Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper.
“We could not possibly have realized the construction 15 years ago for lack of advanced construction technologies and equipment such as the drilling machine and ship cranes we have developed today,” said Xiao Shibo, an engineer of the China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. The bridge has made history in many aspects, Xiao added.
China is dubbed as an “infrastructure maniac” for countless dazzling megaprojects, with the Chinese builders breaking their own world records.
China is home to the world’s highest bridge, longest cross-sea bridge and 90 out of the 100 highest bridges built this century.
From 2015 to 2020, China’s transportation investment is expected to exceed 15 trillion yuan (2.1 trillion U.S. dollars), with a substantial portion reserved for bridge construction.
Source: Xinhua
People in Han-style costumes participate in a blessing ceremony celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in Fuzhou, southeast China’s Fujian Province, Sept. 14, 2019. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)
Source: Xinhua
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 