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Embassy in France removes ‘false image’ on Twitter in latest online controversy amid accusations of spreading disinformation
After months of aggressive anti-US posts by Chinese diplomats Beijing is cracking down on ‘smear campaigns’ at home
Beijing’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy has coincided with a rise of nationalist content on Chinese social media. Photo: Reuters
Beijing is battling allegations that it is running a disinformation campaign on social media, as robust posts by its diplomats in Western countries promoting nationalist sentiment have escalated into a spat between China and other countries, especially the United States.
In the latest in a series of online controversies, the Chinese embassy in France claimed its official Twitter account had been hacked after it featured a cartoon depicting the US as Death, knocking on a door marked Hong Kong after leaving a trail of blood outside doors marked Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. The inclusion in the image of a Star of David on the scythe also prompted accusations of anti-Semitism.
Top China diplomats call for ‘Wolf Warrior’ army in foreign relations
25 May 2020
“Someone posted a false image on our official Twitter account by posting a cartoon entitled ‘Who is Next?’. The embassy would like to condemn it and always abides by the principles of truthfulness, objectivity and rationality of information,” it said on Monday.
The rise of China’s aggressive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has been regarded by analysts as primarily aimed at building support for the government at home but the latest incident is seen as an attempt by Beijing to take back control of the nationalist narrative it has unleashed.
Florian Schneider, director of the Leiden Asia Centre in the Netherlands, said the removal of the embassy’s tweet reflected a constant concern in Beijing about the range of people – including ordinary citizens – who were involved in spreading nationalistic material online.
“The state insists that its nationalism is ‘rational’, meaning it is meant to inspire domestic unity through patriotism but without impacting national interests or endangering social stability,” he said.
“This makes nationalism a mixed blessing for the authorities … if nationalist stories demonise the US or Japan or some other potential enemy, then any Chinese leader dealing diplomatically with those perceived enemies ends up looking weak.
“Trying to guide nationalist sentiment in ways that further the leadership’s interests is a difficult balancing act and I suspect this is partly the reason why the authorities are currently trying to clamp down on unauthorised, nationalist conspiracy theories.”
Too soon: Chinese advisers tell ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomats to tone it down
The report came after months of social media posts – including by Chinese diplomats – defending China against accusations it had mishandled the coronavirus pandemic and attacking the US and other perceived enemies.
In March, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian promoted a conspiracy theory on Twitter suggesting the virus had originated in the US and was brought to China by the US Army. His comments were later downplayed, with China’s ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai saying questions about the origin of the virus should be answered by scientists.
Schneider said this showed that the state-backed nationalistic propaganda online was at risk of backfiring diplomatically.
“The authorities have to constantly worry that they might lose control of the nationalist narrative they unleashed, especially considering how many people produce content on the internet, how fast ideas spread, and how strongly commercial rationales drive misinformation online,” he said.
Last month, a series of widely shared social media articles about people in different countries “yearning to be part of China” resulted in a diplomatic backlash against Beijing. Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador in April to lodge a formal protest against the article.
Following the incident, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator which manages the “firewall” and censors material online, announced a two-month long “internet cleansing” to clear privately owned accounts which engage in “smear campaigns”.
The article had at least 100,000 readers, with 753 people donating money to support the account. According to Xigua Data, a firm that monitors traffic on Chinese social media, the account garnered more than 1.7 million page views for 17 articles in April.
According to a statement from WeChat, the account was closed for fabricating facts, stoking xenophobia and misleading the public.
A journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong said this case differed from the Chinese embassy’s tweet, despite both featuring anti-US sentiment.
Masato Kajimoto, who leads research on news literacy and the misinformation ecosystem, said the closure of the WeChat account seemed to be more about Chinese authorities feeling the need to regulate producers of media content whose motivations were often financial rather than political.
“I would think the government doesn’t like some random misinformation going wild and popular, which affects the overall storylines they would like to push, disseminate and control,” he said.
One way for China to respond to the situation was to fact-check social media and to position itself as a protector facts and defender of the integrity of public information, he said.
“In the age of social media, both fake news and fact-checking are being weaponised by people who try to influence or manipulate the narrative in one way or another,” Kajimoto said.
“Not only China but also many other authoritarian states in Asia are now fact-checking social media. Governments in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and other countries all do that.
“Such initiatives benefit them because they can decide what is true and what is not.”
– The last nine poverty-stricken county-level regions in east China’s Anhui Province have been removed from the country’s list of impoverished counties.
– This marks that all county-level regions in the Yangtze River Delta, consisting of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, have been officially lifted out of poverty for the first time in history.
HEFEI, April 29 (Xinhua) — Sitting in front of his smartphone, Zhang Chuanfeng touts dried sweet potatoes to viewers on China’s popular video-sharing app Douyin, also known as TikTok.
“These are made from sweet potatoes I grew myself. They are sweet and have an excellent texture,” said Zhang while livestreaming in Tangjiahui Township of Jinzhai County in east China’s Anhui Province. Tucked away in the boundless Dabie Mountains, the township used to have the biggest poor population in the county.
Aerial photo taken on April 16, 2020 shows residential buildings in Dawan Village of Jinzhai County, east China’s Anhui Province. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)
Jinzhai County is among the last nine county-level regions in Anhui that have been removed from the country’s list of impoverished counties, according to an announcement issued by the provincial government Wednesday. They are also the last group of county-level regions that bid farewell to poverty in the Yangtze River Delta.
E-COMMERCE
Zhang might seem like a typical e-commerce businessman reaping success in China’s booming livestreaming industry. But his road to success has been a lot bumpier: he suffers from dwarfism.
A little more than 1.4 meters tall, Zhang has a babyface, making him “look like a junior school student,” he said. But the man, 38, is the father of a nine-year-old boy.
For Zhang, life was tough before 2014. “Nobody wanted me because of my ‘disabilities’ when I went out to look for jobs,” he said. “I was turned down again and again.”
Zhang was put on the government’s poverty list in 2014 as China implemented targeted poverty-relief measures. With the help of local officials, he got a bank loan of 10,000 yuan (about 1,400 U.S. dollars) and bought 22 lambs. He tended the animals whole-heartedly and seized every opportunity to learn how to raise them more professionally.
Zhang Chuanfeng feeds his lambs in Zhufan Village of Jinzhai County, east China’s Anhui Province, April 26, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Duan)
Within a year, the number of his lambs expanded to hundreds. In 2016, Zhang’s earnings exceeded 100,000 yuan, more than enough for him to cast off poverty.
Riding on this success, Zhang began to seek new opportunities. He rented a shop and started selling products online to embrace an e-commerce strategy the local government introduced in 2017.
More than 100 online shops, including Zhang’s, in the county have helped more than 7,000 poverty-stricken households sell about 73 million yuan worth of local specialties since 2018. Zhang alone earned 500,000 yuan from a sales revenue of 5 million yuan last year.
A villager arranges local specialties for sale at Dawan Village of Jinzhai County, east China’s Anhui Province, April 17, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)
WICKERWORK SUCCESS
About 100 km north of Jinzhai lies Funan, a place that used to be vulnerable to constant floods.
Zhang Chaoling, who lives by the Huaihe River in Funan County, had to flee her hometown at a young age due to floods, but has flourished on a willow plantation along the river later.
“The land is largely covered by silt following continual flooding in the past. It is an ideal place to plant willows and make wickerwork,” Zhang said.
Zhang left her hometown for Guangzhou in 1993 and found a job in a garment factory. A few years later, she founded a trading company with her husband in Guangzhou, selling wickerwork products from her hometown to other countries.
Zhang returned to her hometown and set up a wickerwork production base in 2011. Funan is famous for its delicate wickerwork. Skilled craftsmen traditionally use local willow as a raw material to weave products such as baskets, furniture and home decorations.
A villager arranges wickerwork products in Funan County, east China’s Anhui Province, April 15, 2020. (Photo by Zhou Mu/Xinhua)
“The flood is well controlled now. I remember the last huge flood came in 2007,” Zhang said.
Taking advantage of the fertile land along the Huaihe River, she plants over 130 hectares of willow trees and employs hundreds of locals mostly in their 50s and 60s.
“I can process 100 to 150 kg of willow twigs per day, from which I make around 80 yuan,” said Geng Shifen, who peels willow twigs with a clamp next to the plantation.
A total of 130,000 people are engaged in the wickerwork industry in Funan, creating an output of nearly 9 billion yuan in 2019, and helping 15,000 locals shake off poverty, local statistics showed.
POVERTY REDUCTION FEAT
The Anhui provincial government Wednesday announced that its last nine county-level regions including Jinzhai and Funan are removed from the country’s list of impoverished counties.
This marks that all 31 impoverished county-level regions in Anhui have shaken off poverty, echoing China’s efforts to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of 2020.
With the announcement, all county-level regions in the Yangtze River Delta have been officially lifted out of poverty for the first time in history.
A bus runs on a rural road in Jinzhai County, east China’s Anhui Province, April 17, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)
Covering a 358,000-square-km expanse, the Yangtze River Delta, consisting of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, is one of the most populated and economically dynamic areas in China, contributing one-fourth of the country’s GDP.
Anhui had a population of 63.65 million as of 2019, official data showed. The poor population in the province had decreased from 4.84 million in 2014 to 87,000 in 2019, and the poverty headcount ratio had been reduced from 9.1 percent to 0.16 percent during the period, according to the provincial poverty relief office.
A county can be removed from the list if its impoverished population drops to less than 2 percent, according to a national mechanism established in April 2016 to eliminate poverty in affected regions. The ratio can be loosened to 3 percent in the western region.
By the end of 2019, 5.51 million people in China were still living in poverty.
“We will continue our work to prevent people from returning to poverty, and help the remaining poor population shake off poverty by all means,” said Jiang Hong, director of the Anhui provincial poverty relief office.
The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world.
“One world, one fight!” Jack Ma enthused in one of his first messages. “Together, we can do this!” he cheered in another.
The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation to ship medical supplies to more than 150 countries so far, sending face masks and ventilators to many places that have been elbowed out of the global brawl over life-saving equipment.
But Ma’s critics and even some of his supporters aren’t sure what he’s getting himself into. Has this bold venture into global philanthropy unveiled him as the friendly face of China’s Communist Party? Or is he an independent player who is being used by the Party for propaganda purposes? He appears to be following China’s diplomatic rules, particularly when choosing which countries should benefit from his donations, but his growing clout might put him in the crosshairs of the jealous leaders at the top of China’s political pyramid.
Other tech billionaires have pledged more money to fight the effects of the virus – Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is giving $1bn (£0.8bn) to the cause. Candid, a US-based philanthropy watchdog that tracks private charitable donations, puts Alibaba 12th on a list of private Covid-19 donors. But that list doesn’t include shipments of vital supplies, which some countries might consider to be more important than money at this stage in the global outbreak.
The world’s top coronavirus financial donors
How Alibaba compares to the top five. No one else other than the effervescent Ma is capable of dispatching supplies directly to those who need them. Starting in March, the Jack Ma foundation and the related Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US.
Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. But it’s the medical shipments that have been making headlines, setting Ma apart.
“He has the ability and the money and the lifting power to get a Chinese supply plane out of Hangzhou to land in Addis Ababa, or wherever it needs to go,” explains Ma’s biographer, Duncan Clark. “This is logistics; this is what his company, his people and his province are all about.”
A friendly face
Jack Ma is famous for being the charismatic English teacher who went on to create China’s biggest technology company. Alibaba is now known as the “Amazon of the East”. Ma started the company inside his tiny apartment in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou, in the centre of China’s factory belt, back in 1999. Alibaba has since grown to become one of the dominant players in the world’s second largest economy, with key stakes in China’s online, banking and entertainment worlds. Ma himself is worth more than $40bn.
Officially, he stepped down as Alibaba’s chairman in 2018. He said he was going to focus on philanthropy. But Ma retained a permanent seat on Alibaba’s board. Coupled with his wealth and fame, he remains one of the most powerful men in China.
Media caption The BBC’s Secunder Kermani and Anne Soy compare how prepared Asian and African countries are
It appears that Ma’s donations are following Party guidelines: there is no evidence that any of the Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation donations have gone to countries that have formal ties with Taiwan, China’s neighbour and diplomatic rival. Ma announced on Twitter that he was donating to 22 countries in Latin America. States that side with Taiwan but who have also called for medical supplies – from Honduras to Haiti – are among the few dozen countries that do not appear to be on the list of 150 countries. The foundations repeatedly refused to provide a detailed list of countries that have received donations, explaining that “at this moment in time, we are not sharing this level of detail”.
However, the donations that have been delivered have certainly generated a lot of goodwill. With the exception of problematic deliveries to Cuba and Eritrea, all of the foundations’ shipments dispatched from China appear to have been gratefully received. That success is giving Ma even more positive attention than usual. China’s state media has been mentioning Ma almost as often as the country’s autocratic leader, Xi Jinping.
AFP
So far…
Over 150 countries have received donations from Jack Ma, including about:
120.4mface masks
4,105,000testing kits
3,704ventilators
Source: Alizila
It’s an uncomfortable comparison. As Ma soaks up praise, Xi faces persistent questions about how he handled the early stages of the virus and where, exactly, the outbreak began.
The Chinese government has dispatched medical teams and donations of supplies to a large number of hard-hit countries, particularly in Europe and South-East Asia.
However, those efforts have sometimes fallen flat. China’s been accused of sending faulty supplies to several countries. In some cases, the tests it sent were being misused but in others, low-quality supplies went unused and the donations backfired.
In contrast, Jack Ma’s shipments have only boosted his reputation.
“It’s fair to say that Ma’s donation was universally celebrated across Africa,” says Eric Olander, managing editor of the China Africa Project website and podcast. Ma pledged to visit all countries in Africa and has been a frequent visitor since his retirement.
“What happens to the materials once they land in a country is up to the host government, so any complaints about how Nigeria’s materials were distributed are indeed a domestic Nigerian issue,” Olander adds. “But with respect to the donation itself, the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, called it a “shot in the arm” and pretty much everyone saw it for what it was which was: delivering badly-needed materials to a region of the world that nobody else is either willing or capable of helping at that scale.”
Walking the tightrope
But is Ma risking a backlash from Beijing? Xi Jinping isn’t known as someone who likes to share the spotlight and his government has certainly targeted famous faces before. In recent years, the country’s top actress, a celebrated news anchor and several other billionaire entrepreneurs have all “disappeared” for long periods. Some, including the news anchor, end up serving prison sentences. Others re-emerge from detention, chastened and pledging their allegiance to the Party.
“There’s a rumour that [Jack Ma] stepped down in 2018 from being the chairman of the Alibaba Group because he was seen as a homegrown entrepreneur whose popularity would eclipse that of the Communist Party,” explains Ashley Feng, research associate at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC. Indeed, Ma surprised many when he suddenly announced his retirement in 2018. He has denied persistent rumours that Beijing forced him out of his position.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma discussed trade with then-President-elect Donald Trump in January 2017
Duncan Clark, Ma’s biographer, is also aware of reports that Ma was nudged away from Alibaba following a key incident in January 2017. The Chinese billionaire met with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, ostensibly to discuss Sino-US trade. The Chinese president didn’t meet with Trump until months later.
“There was a lot of speculation of time that Jack Ma had moved too fast,” Clark says. “So, I think there’s lessons learned from both sides on the need to try to coordinate.”
“Jack Ma represents a sort of entrepreneurial soft power,” Clark adds. “That also creates challenges though, because the government is quite jealous or nervous of non-Party actors taking that kind of role.”
Technically, Ma isn’t a Communist outsider: China’s wealthiest capitalist has actually been a member of the Communist Party since the 1980s, when he was a university student.
But Ma’s always had a tricky relationship with the Party, famously saying that Alibaba’s attitude towards the Party was to “be in love with it but not to marry it”.
Even if Ma and the foundations connected to him are making decisions without Beijing’s advance blessing, the Chinese government has certainly done what it can to capitalise on Ma’s generosity. Chinese ambassadors are frequently on hand at airport ceremonies to receive the medical supplies shipped over by Ma, from Sierra Leone to Cambodia.
China has also used Ma’s largesse in its critiques of the United States. “The State Department said Taiwan is a true friend as it donated 2 million masks,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted in early April. “Wonder if @StateDept has any comment on Jack Ma’s donation of 1 million masks and 500k testing kits as well as Chinese companies’ and provinces’ assistance?”
Perhaps Ma can rise above what’s happened to so many others who ran afoul of the Party. China might just need a popular global Chinese figure so much that Ma has done what no one else can: make himself indispensable.
“Here’s the one key takeaway from all that happened with Jack Ma and Africa: he said he would do something and it got done,” explains Eric Olander. “That is an incredibly powerful optic in a place where foreigners often come, make big promises and often fail to deliver. So, the huge Covid-19 donation that he did fit within that pattern. He said he would do it and mere weeks later, those masks were in the hands of healthcare workers.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma at an Electronic World Trade Platform event with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year
Duncan Clark argues that Ma already had a seat at China’s high table because of Alibaba’s economic heft. However, his first-name familiarity with world leaders makes him even more valuable to Beijing as China tries to repair its battered image.
“He has demonstrated the ability, with multiple IPOs under his belt, and multiple friendships overseas, to win friends and influence people. He’s the Dale Carnegie of China and that certainly, we’ve seen that that’s irritated some in the Chinese government but now it’s almost an all hands on deck situation,” Clark says.
There’s no doubt that China’s wider reputation is benefiting from the charitable work of Ma and other wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs. Andrew Grabois from Candid, the philanthropic watchdog that’s been measuring global donations in relation to Covid-19, says that the private donations coming from China are impossible to ignore.
“They’re taking a leadership role, the kind of thing that used to be done by the United States,” he says. “The most obvious past example is the response to Ebola, the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The US sent in doctors and everything to West Africa to help contain that virus before it left West Africa.”
Chinese donors are taking on that role with this virus.
“They are projecting soft power beyond their borders, going into areas, providing aid, monetary aid and expertise,” Grabois adds.
So, it’s not the right time for Beijing to stand in Jack Ma’s way.
“You know, this is a major crisis for the world right now,” Duncan Clark concludes. “But obviously, it’s also a crisis for China’s relationship with the rest of the world. So they need anybody who can help dampen down some of these those pressures.”
KUNMING, April 25 (Xinhua) — Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province announced Friday it will issue e-vouchers worth 100 million yuan (about 14.12 million U.S. dollars) to promote consumption.
According to the Kunming Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the e-vouchers can be used for consumption in tourism, catering, and sports. The city will also issue special e-vouchers to groups of needy people.
The e-vouchers will be issued through an app online from April 28 to 30. Citizens can use the e-vouchers from May 1 to 31.
Industries in the city including tourism, catering and sports were seriously affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in the last few months.
Documentary puts China’s literary hero into context: there is Dante, there’s Shakespeare, and there’s Du Fu
Theatrical legend Sir Ian McKellen brings glamour to beloved verses in British documentary
A ceramic figurine of Du Fu, a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Du is the subject of a new BBC documentary, thrilling devotees of his poetry. Photo: Simon Song
The resonant words of an ancient Chinese poet spoken by esteemed British actor Sir Ian McKellen have reignited in China discussion about its literary history and inspired hope that Beijing can tap into cultural riches to help mend its image in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The BBC documentary Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet has provoked passion among Chinese literature lovers about the poetic master who lived 1,300 years ago.
Sir Ian Mckellen read works of ancient Chinese poet Du Fu in Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet. Photo: BBC Four / MayaVision International
The one-hour documentary by television historian Michael Wood was broadcast on television and aired online for British viewers this month but enthusiasm among Chinese audiences mean the trailer and programme have been widely circulated on video sharing websites inside mainland China, with some enthusiasts dubbing Chinese subtitles.
The documentary has drawn such attention in Du’s homeland that even the Communist Party’s top anti-graft agency has discussed it in its current affairs commentary column. Notably, Wood’s depiction of Du’s life from AD712 to 770 barely mentioned corruption in the Tang dynasty (618-907) government.
“I couldn’t believe it!!” Wood said in an email. “I’m very pleased of course … most of all as a foreigner making a film about such a loved figure in another culture, you hope that the Chinese viewers will think it was worth doing.”
Often referred to as ancient China’s “Sage of Poetry” and the “Poet Historian”, Du Fu witnessed the Tang dynasty’s unparalleled height of prosperity and its fall into rebellion, famine and poverty.
Writer, historian and presenter Michael Wood followed the footsteps of the ancient Chinese poet Du Fu in Yangtze River gorges. Photo: BBC Four / MayaVision International
Wood traced Du’s footsteps to various parts of the country. He interviewed Chinese experts and Western sinologists, offering historical and personal contexts to introduce some of Du’s more than 1,400 poems and verses chronicling the ups and downs of his life and China.
The programme used many Western reference points to put Du and his works into context. The time Du lived in was described as around the as the Old English poem Beowulf was composed and the former Chinese capital, Changan, where Xian is now, was described as being in the league of world cities of the time, along with Constantinople and Baghdad.
Harvard University sinologist Stephen Owen described the poet’s standing as such: “There is Dante, there’s Shakespeare, and there’s Du Fu.”
The performance of Du’s works by Sir Ian, who enjoyed prominence in China with his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie series, attracted popular discussion from both media critics and general audiences in China, and sparked fresh discussion about the poet.
“To a Chinese audience, the biggest surprise could be ‘Gandalf’ reading out the poems! … He recited [Du’s poems] with his deep, stage performance tones in a British accent. No wonder internet users praised it as ‘reciting Du Fu in the form of performing a Shakespeare play,” wrote Su Zhicheng, an editor with National Business Daily.
A stone sculpture at Du Fu Thatched Cottage in Chengdu city, China. Photo: Handout
On China’s popular Weibo microblog, a viewer called Indifferent Onlooker commented on Sir Ian’s recital of Du’s poem My Brave Adventures: “Despite the language barrier, he conveyed the feeling [of the poet]. It’s charming.”
Some viewers, however, disagreed. At popular video-sharing website Bilibili.com, where uploads of the documentary could be found, a viewer commented: “I could not appreciate the English translation, just as I could not grasp Shakespeare through his Chinese translated works in school textbooks.”
Watching the documentary amid the coronavirus pandemic, some internet users drew comparisons of Du to Fang Fang, a modern-day award-winning poet and novelist who chronicled her life in Wuhan during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Shanghai pictured in April. Devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has brought about a new suspicion of China. Photo: Bloomberg
The pandemic has infected more than 2.5 million people and killed more than 170,000. It has put the global economy in jeopardy, fuelling calls for accountability. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab last week called for a “deep dive” review and the asking of “hard questions” about how the coronavirus emerged and how it was not stopped earlier.
Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at University of London, said the British establishment and wider public had changed its perception of Beijing as questions arose about outbreak misinformation and the political leverage of personal protective gear supply.
“The aggressive propaganda of the Chinese government is getting people in the UK to look more closely at China and see that it is a Leninist party-state, rather than the modernising and rapidly changing society that they want to see in China,” Tsang said.
On Sunday, a writer on the website of the National Supervisory Commission, China’s top anti-corruption agency, claimed – without citing sources – that the Du Fu documentary had moved “anxious” British audience who were still staying home under social distancing measures.
“If anyone wants to put the fear of the coronavirus behind them by understanding the rich Chinese civilisation, please watch this documentary on Du Fu,” it wrote, adding that promoting Du’s poems overseas could help “healing and uniting our shattered world”.
English-language state media such as CGTN and the Global Times reported on the documentary last week and some Beijing-based foreign relations publications have posted comments about the film on Twitter.
Wood said he had received feedback from both Chinese and British viewers that talked about “the need, especially now, of mutual understanding between cultures”.
“It is a global pandemic … we need to understand each other better, to talk to each other, show empathy: and that will help foster cooperation. So even in a small way, any effort to explain ourselves to each other must be a help,” Wood said.
He said the idea for producing a documentary about Du Fu started in 2017, after his team had finished the Story of China series for BBC and PBS.
Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet first aired in Britain on April 7 on BBC Four, the cultural and documentary channel of the public broadcaster. It is a co-production between the BBC and China Central Television.
Wood said a slightly shorter 50-minute version would be aired later this month on CCTV9, Chinese state television’s documentary channel.
The film was shot in China in September, he said.
“I came back from China [at the] end of September, so we weren’t affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, though of course it has affected us in the editing period. We have had to recut the CCTV version in lockdown here in London and recorded two small word changes on my iPhone!” Wood said.
BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) — China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations, also known as the “new third board,” saw transactions exceed 26.4 billion yuan (3.67 billion U.S. dollars) so far this year.
From April 13 to 17, turnover on the board reached 1.8 billion yuan. As of Friday, the board had 8,718 listed firms.
Saidian, operator of Bestdo.com, a Chinese online sport service provider, recorded the highest weekly transaction on the board, raising 127 million yuan.
The exchange was launched in early 2013 to supplement the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges to serve small- and medium-sized enterprises.
It is seen as an easier financing channel for small businesses, with low costs and simple listing procedures.
BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) — New media platforms are reshaping China’s documentary industry, ushering in a new era of vigorous development, said Zhang Tongdao, director of the Documentary Center with Beijing Normal University.
There is a rapid growth of new media companies in the documentary market, according to an annual study report of the development of Chinese documentary in 2020, which was released Saturday by the center, the China Intercontinental Communication Center and other institutions.
China’s total investment in documentary making was 5.04 billion yuan (about 710 million U.S. dollars) last year, and the country was blessed with 6.66 billion yuan in total output value, according to the report.
“More and more documentaries are broadcast on the internet, even only on the internet media, which complement those aired on television,” Zhang said.
Some documentaries, including “Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan Cuisine” by Tencent video and the second season of “The Story Of Chuaner” by video-sharing platform Bilibili, gained the brand value in 2019 through exclusive streaming on the platforms.
The report also showed that the documentary production capacity of new media companies reached a new height in 2019.
Last year, Tencent produced 23 documentaries on its own, accounting for about one-third of its total online projects throughout the year. Bilibili produced and launched 16 documentaries, totaling 55.6 hours, while iQiyi, also an online platform, produced or co-produced 15 documentaries, said the report.
The report added that documentary producers and streamers are also foraying into the short video field, varying versions such as shorter or longer in length for different platforms.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will promote the sales of export products in domestic markets, as foreign trade faces unprecedented challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic, an assistant commerce minister said on Friday.
As the coronavirus spreads to almost all of China’s trading partners, the world’s second-largest economy is set to reach a grim milestone for full year growth, with the pace of expansion likely to be the slowest since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. And, the export sector is facing millions of job losses and factory shutdowns.
“Due to the rapid spread of the epidemic in the world, foreign demand has slumped and the biggest difficulty facing foreign trade companies is the plunge in orders,” said Ren Hongbin, the assistant minister at the Ministry of Commerce.
He said firms across the board have had their orders cancelled or delayed, and new orders are “very hard to sign”.
“The uncertainty about the pandemic has become the biggest uncertainty for foreign trade development.”
Forecasters expect China’s 2020 growth could be nearer the 2.0% mark – the slowest in over 40 years – due to the sweeping impact of the pandemic both at home and overseas. The economy grew 6.1% last year.
China’s overseas shipments fell 17.2% in January-February from the same period a year earlier, marking the steepest fall since February 2019. Imports sank 4% from a year earlier.
Among the government measures to support the sector, China is accelerating efforts to build online trade fairs and guiding exporters to work with e-commerce retailers for sales in domestic markets and coordinating with its trading partners to stabilise supply chains, said Ren.
The Canton Fair, China’s oldest and biggest trade fair due to take place online, will feature live-streaming services for participants, Li Xingqian, another commerce ministry official, told the same briefing. The fair was originally scheduled to begin on April 15, but was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
China is willing to boost trade relations with other countries, including the United States, under the new circumstances, said Ren, adding that Beijing hopes to work together with Washington to promote bilateral trade.
Both countries have been engaged in a near two-year long trade war with tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods, before negotiators called a truce with an interim trade deal in January.
CHANGSHA, March 26 (Xinhua) — Du Xu, a postgraduate from Central South University of Forestry and Technology (CSUFT), turned on his laptop and prepared for his dissertation pre-defense online.
While at home in eastern China’s Shandong Province, Du presented his dissertation to five professors for the first time through the remote video connection.
“Half a month ago, the university informed us to prepare an online pre-defense, find out the tutors’ opinions on the first draft and then revise it,” the 26-year-old said. Although he had experience with an opening thesis defense and other face-to-face forms, he was not familiar with the process of online defense, which made him feel nervous.
According to the CSUFT, all the postgraduate dissertations must be pre-defended before being submitted for examination to ensure the quality. The graduate school of the university adjusted the arrangement amid the epidemic. Online defense started on Feb. 10 to ensure that the graduate students could graduate on time.
“Since our defense is open and anyone can click the link to join, there were 55 students online when I spoke,” Du said. The open online defense can help us check missing key points and learn from each other. Some students also recorded the defense process to follow up on the comments of the tutor to further modify their dissertation, according to Du.
The university said the pre-defense would be submitted via the Internet, and the degree management office has set up an online platform for it.
Feng Jiajin, a graduate of the Hunan Railway Professional Technology College (HRPTC), who works as an intern at the Nanchang Railway Bureau in eastern China’s Jiangxi Province, also needs to demonstrate his graduation project through an online defense.
On March 18, Feng launched a video conference for his final project defense in the office via software on his mobile phone during his lunch break. More than 10 teachers from his college attended the meeting.
In front of the camera, Feng talked about his graduation project “Ultrasonic Ranging and Reversing System” and displayed the slides on the screen with explanations.
When displaying his final product, he showed the results of the graduation project in different situations.
“Vocational schools focus on students’ practical ability. Before the formal defense, the instructor first reviewed the students’ graduation projects and the statements. Only when the work is qualified are the students are allowed to participate in the defense and display,” said Xiong Yi with HRPTC.
According to the college, members of the dissertation defense committee ask questions about the relevant theoretical knowledge and the design methods, which the students should answer one by one. Finally, the members of the defense committee discuss the defense process and results. The results will be announced after a secret ballot. The entire process of the dissertation defense will be recorded, screenshot and saved as the defense record.
“The outbreak of coronavirus won’t affect the students’ graduation and seeking employment. Before the start of the new semester, the university will use online defense to ensure their graduation on time,” said Zhang Ying, vice president of HRPTC, adding that in March, the school will have more than 600 graduates participate in online defense.
BEIJING, March 25 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua called for all-out efforts to make full use of online platforms to boost employment as the novel coronavirus outbreak has dampened the country’s job market.
Hu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks Wednesday during an investigation of a national online recruitment program.
The special hiring project, launched on March 20, offered over 10 million positions for job seekers.
After hearing reports of the program, Hu held video conferences to learn about work resumption of enterprises and online recruitment and paid special attention to key groups like college graduates and migrant workers.
Noting that this year’s employment situation could be tough due to the epidemic, Hu urged localities and relevant government agencies to guide all kinds of employers to provide more types of jobs and help those with employment difficulties.
The vice premier also underlined the use of online platforms in special recruitment plans, career guidance and vocational training as normal hiring activities were disrupted by the outbreak.
Meanwhile, public employment service agencies and relevant market institutions should be encouraged to share information on job vacancies and strengthen the coordination of online and offline recruitment activities to ensure a stable job market, Hu said.
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