Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Every morning and night for the past four years, businessman Zhong Congrong has been on the streets of Chongqing to stop people dropping their litter
Admired as a welfare champion, the 54-year-old says he has been beaten and insulted for his cause
Zhong Congrong is a familiar figure on the streets of his hometown. Photo: Handout
Zhong Congrong owns three businesses in southwestern China which together are worth more than 100 million yuan (US$14.3 million), but he prefers to risk being labelled as an environment “nut” who wants to clean up Chongqing.
Every morning after breakfast and each evening after supper, the entrepreneur pulls on an orange T-shirt, gets into his Mercedes-Benz SUV and heads downtown. For one or two hours, he walks the streets, picking scraps of rubbish off the road and talking to passers-by about littering.
“It is my mission to change people’s bad habits and to raise their awareness of protecting the environment,” said Zhong, who has been on this mission for four years. It has brought the 54-year-old civic rewards, earned him a bruising or two from people who do not want to listen to his message and it nearly cost him his marriage.
Throughout it all, he has remained a persistent voice for the environment in the city of more than 30 million people and, as some of them have learned, he refuses to give up.
Yang Zuhui (right) has come to admire Zhong Congrong’s dedication to his litter picking mission, but she fears for her husband’s safety. Photo: Weibo
On mainland China, cities have banned littering and some hit offenders with fines as high as 200 yuan. However, the rules are rarely obeyed and feebly enforced, and while there are plenty of dustbins in public places, litter is still a nuisance.
Zhong said his mission started in 2015 after he met a woman in her 70s in Sanya, the southern coastal city on the South China Sea island of Hainan. He was struck by how dedicated she and her husband were when they went litter picking each day.
“They are retired professors from a prestigious university in Beijing,” Zhong said. “I chatted a lot with her and I asked her, ‘What’s the point of collecting rubbish every day? You clean up the beach today, but tomorrow new rubbish appears’.”
The way to solve the problem was to teach people to not litter, she told him, but she said she “dared not” try to do that. Zhong said that encounter gave him his purpose and he would dare to change attitudes.
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Back home, Zhong watched and learned – concluding that customers of restaurants and fast food businesses tended to be the people who dropped rubbish most.
“Perhaps it’s because when people dine in restaurants, they throw their rubbish wherever they like. Going outside, they keep on doing it,” he said.
“People in shopping malls are generally more civilised.”
Zhong says his mission began in 2015 during a holiday on the island of Hainan. Photo: Dickson Lee
While on patrol, Zhong makes himself easy to see in an orange T-shirt that bears his clean-up message. His tools include a metal pincer for picking up tissue paper, plastic bags, drinks bottles, nappies and other everyday detritus and putting it into bins.
He also carries a voice recorder that sends out an appeal to restaurant customers: “To protect our environment and not to affect our kids’ healthy growing up, dear friends, please don’t throw rubbish.”
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Zhong said that at first he felt afraid and self-conscious when he stood in front of a crowd of diners with his green gospel. But time and practise taught him he had almost nothing to fear, he said.
One of the bigger challenges is getting through to the many people who do not listen to him and refuse to dispose of their rubbish the right way.
“It’s normal that our society has various kinds of people and I need to face this reality,” Zhong said. “I was prepared in my mind that I would be called ‘nut’ since this is such an arduous but fruitless cause.”
He tackles the problem with his usual persistence, so argument and persuasion is all part of the job. When Zhong insists the rule breakers take their rubbish and bin it, some ignore him and others walk away – but he is ready with an answer.
“I tell them, ‘If you don’t pick it up, I guarantee that you will lose face today. I will let passers-by see and hear what a humiliating thing you have done. Everybody will then condemn you and you will be embarrassed’,” he said.
When people tell him what they do is none of his business, Zhong replies that what he is doing is in the public interest.
Sometimes there is a heavier price. Zhong said he once watched several men in their 20s throw rubbish onto the road from their car. He set off after them in his SUV. He waylaid them and asked them to clean up after themselves – the men refused, swore at him and beat him up. Their day ended in a police station.
Zhong said he hoped his work would bring “positive energy” to the employees of his vehicle components and packaging materials companies, but his mission was not about business prestige.
However, last year, he was named as one of the top 10 public welfare figures of Chongqing by the municipal government, while his family was honoured as a Chinese good family by the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, a women’s rights organisation established in 1949.
Street cleaner who found US$22,000 in rubbish refuses to accept a reward
There were trials for Zhong closer to home – his wife, Yang Zuhui, did not support his mission at first and threatened to divorce him.
“It’s OK that you picked up trash on the street and you were just another cleaner there,” she told him in an interview with Hunan Television in 2017. “But what worried me was that you tried to persuade others – physical violence [against him] was inevitable.”
She also said: “My husband is not very tall and, on many occasions, he was at a disadvantage and got beaten up. I am worried about his personal safety.”
Zhong impressed his daughter’s schoolfriends with an inspiring speech. Photo: Weibo
But two years ago, their 10-year-old daughter helped change Yang’s attitude towards her husband’s mission after a school outing.
After lunch that day, Zhong gave the adults and children who had left rubbish behind one of his lectures.
His daughter, who was embarrassed by Zhong’s speech, came to appreciate him when classmates told her: “Your father is awesome. He is like a hero who protects the Earth.”
Yang was won over because she knew her husband was a determined man and once he decided on a course of action would not change his mind.
Their son – who is in his 20s and has returned to Chongqing after studying in France – always stands by his father, Zhong said.
“My son told me that environmental voluntary work normal abroad and it is respected,” he said.
Going out to collect rubbish has become part of Zhong’s life, he said.
“In the evening, if I stay at home, my wife and daughter will ask me ‘Why don’t you go to pick up rubbish?’”
He said it was important to go litter picking every day because the more he did it the more people he could influence.
“By breaking the littering habit, Chinese people can stand tall when they travel abroad,” Zhong said.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption A worker applying a capping layer to a landfill site in Hangzhou
China’s largest dump is already full – 25 years ahead of schedule.
The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day.
But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day – the most of any landfill site in China.
China is one of the world’s biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate.
How big is the landfill site?
The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi’an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044.
The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area of almost 700,000 square metres, with a depth of 150 metres and a storage capacity of more than 34 million cubic metres.
Until recently, Xi’an was one of the few cities in China that solely relied on landfill to dispose of household waste – leading to capacity being reached early.
Earlier this month, a new incineration plant was opened, and at least four more are expected to open by 2020. Together, they are expected to be able to process 12,750 tonnes of rubbish per day.
The move is part of a national plan to reduce the number of landfills, and instead use other waste disposal methods like incineration.
The landfill site in Xi’an will eventually become an “ecological park”.
The country had 654 landfill sites and 286 incineration plants.
It is not clear what China’s recycling rate is, as no figures have been released. China plans to recycle 35% of waste in major cities by the end of 2020, according to one government report.
This July, sorting and recycling rubbish was made mandatory in Shanghai – leading to “a sense of panic” among some residents.
French leader calls for restraint and says he raised the topic ‘on several occasions’ during his visit
Two sides find common ground on need to defend free trade and fight climate change as Donald Trump starts process of pulling US out of Paris Climate Agreement
Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron at a welcome ceremony ahead of their talks in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron said he raised human rights and the Hong Kong situation during his talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday.
Macron’s visit to China concluded with pledges to work together on climate change, but the French leader also said he also called for a de-escalation of the situation in the city through dialogue after months of protests.
Macron, who had promised to raise “taboo” topics during the visit, told a press conference: “I obviously raised this with President Xi Jinping on several occasions.
“We have repeatedly called on the parties involved to [engage in] dialogue, to show restraint, to de-escalate.”
The discussion followed Xi’s meeting with Hong Kong’s embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor in Shanghai on Monday, where he expressed “high trust” in her and “fully affirmed” support for her response to the unrest that has gripped the city since June.
Earlier the French and Chinese leaders had restated their commitment to protect free trade and pledged their continued support for the Paris Agreement as the United States begins the process of formally withdrawing from the global climate deal.
Macron expressed “regret” over “some countries’ negative attitude” towards environmental protection and the fight against climate change and pledged to work with China to halt the loss of biodiversity.
The French president’s office also released a statement on Wednesday that reaffirmed France and China’s joint support for the “irreversible” Paris Agreement.
Macron points to common ground with China on tariffs and climate action
With the European Union, China and Russia backing the pact, he added, “the isolated choice of one or another is not enough to change the course of the world. It only leads to marginalisation.”
The two countries also agreed to work together to develop joint nuclear power projects and signed a series of contracts worth US$15 billion.
The deals covered aeronautics, energy and agriculture, including approval for 20 French companies to export poultry, beef and pork to China.
An additional action plan released after the talks said French utility giant EDF and China General Nuclear Power should be encouraged to cooperate on projects in China or third countries, citing the joint efforts by the two companies to build nuclear reactors at the Hinkley Point C station in Britain as an example.
The two sides also committed to signing a contract for the construction of a nuclear fuel recycling plant in China, which would involve French energy giant Orano, by January 31.
Xi took what appeared to be a veiled swipe at the United States, which is still embroiled in a protracted trade war and other confrontations with Beijing.
“We advocate for mutual respect and equal treatment, and are opposed to the law of the jungle and acts of intimidation,” Xi said.
“We advocate for openness, inclusion and for mutually beneficial cooperation, and are opposed to protectionism and a zero-sum game.”
Macron said China and the European Union should work in partnership as the world became more unstable, calling on the two sides to further open up market access.
“We call again for trade multilateralism to respond to distortions that have appeared in the global economy, which have led to a profound rise in inequalities and imbalances that explain the surge of challenges to the international systems,” he said.
“China and Europe also share the same views that the trade war only leads to loss.”
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Chinese state news agency Xinhua said the two countries agreed to work together to push forward with plans to assemble Airbus’s A350 model in China.
Meanwhile, Beijing Gas Group and French utility firm Engie will collaborate on a liquefied natural gas terminal and storage in the northern city of Tianjin, while France’s Total will set up a joint venture with China’s Shenergy Group to distribute liquid nitrogen gas by truck in the Yangtze River Delta.
The two countries also agreed to reach an agreement by the end of January 2020 on the cost and location of a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to be built by Orano, formerly known as Areva.
Wu Libo a professor and director of the Centre for Energy Economics and Strategies Studies at Fudan University, said there was “great potential” for further cooperation between the two countries on nuclear energy.
“France has many useful experiences in the operation and management of nuclear power plants and its plants have long-term safe and stable operation records,” she said.
The two sides agreed to work together on joint nuclear power projects. Photo: AP
Jiang Kejun, a senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said China’s cooperation with France would add credibility to potential third-country projects.
“China has advanced third-generation technology but it’s still a new member in the nuclear power market, while France has developed nuclear energy for a long time, and its EPR reactors – a technology designed and developed in France – are in business operation,” he said.
Jiang said possible markets for the joint projects included Argentina and India, while some Middle Eastern states – such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – had expressed interest in nuclear energy.
China’s ambassador hits out at Macron’s team for backing ‘hypocritical’ EU stance on Hong Kong
Tong Jiadong, professor of international trade at Nankai University, said that the deals between the two sides helped show that France and China could work together to counteract US unilateralism.
“Objectively speaking, this will form, or at least imply, an opposition to US unilateralism,” Tong said. “China hopes the cooperation between these two countries produces demonstrable effects for other EU member states.”
Ding Chun, a professor of European Studies at Fudan University, said he did not think the EU wanted to “choose a side” between the US and China.
But Ding continued: “If we are talking about free trade and multilateralism, there’s no doubt that the EU and China share a common view and can balance Donald Trump’s unilateralism.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam, who is here for the second China International Import Expo (CIIE), in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 4, 2019. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)
SHANGHAI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — President Xi Jinping on Monday met with Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam, who is in Shanghai for the second China International Import Expo.
After hearing Lam’s report on the recent situation in Hong Kong, Xi said the disturbances in Hong Kong have lasted five months. Lam has led the SAR government to fully discharge its duties, strive to stabilize the situation and improve the social atmosphere, and has done a lot of hard work, he said.
Xi voiced the central government’s high degree of trust in Lam and full acknowledgement of the work of her and her governance team.
Ending violence and chaos and restoring order remain the most important task for Hong Kong at present, he noted.
Xi demanded unswerving efforts to stop and punish violent activities in accordance with the law to safeguard the well-being of the general public in Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, effective efforts should be made in work including having dialogue with all sectors of the society and improving people’s livelihood, Xi said.
Xi expressed his hope that people from all walks of life in Hong Kong fully and faithfully implement the principle of “one country, two systems” and the HKSAR Basic Law, and make concerted efforts to safeguard Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.
SHANGHAI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan hosted a banquet Monday evening in Shanghai to welcome distinguished guests from around the world, who are here to attend the second China International Import Expo (CIIE).
The CIIE is designed to trade goods and services, exchange culture and ideas, welcome visitors from across the globe, benefit the whole world and respond to the aspirations of people from various countries to live a better life, Xi said.
Xi and Peng had photos with foreign leaders and their spouses, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic.
On behalf of the Chinese government and people, Xi extended a warm welcome to foreign leaders and guests.
China has made remarkable achievements over the past 70 years since the founding of New China, especially during the country’s 40-strong years of reform and opening up. “From the course of China’s development, we realize that China will do well only when the world does well, and vice versa,” Xi said.
In a short time, the CIIE started from scratch and quickly attracted wide participation of countries and enterprises from all over the world, said Xi, noting that it has become a major initiative in the history of global trade and an important platform for international cooperation in the new era.
By holding the CIIE and proactively expanding imports, China is taking the initiative to pursue a new round of high-level opening up, deepen international cooperation in advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and jointly foster an open global economy, Xi noted.
He expressed his hope that various countries can enhance cooperation and promote the development of the world economy.
The second CIIE will be held in Shanghai between Nov. 5 and 10.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, communicates with residents while visiting a section of the Yangshupu Waterworks located in Yangpu Binjiang public space in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 2, 2019. Xi made an inspection tour in China’s economic hub Shanghai Saturday. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
SHANGHAI, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) — Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that the concept of people-centered development must be carried out in urban construction.
Xi made the remarks during an inspection tour in China’s economic hub Shanghai Saturday.
“The cities are built by the people and are for the people,” Xi said while visiting a section of the Yangshupu Waterworks located in Yangpu Binjiang public space.
People now have a sense of happiness and gain as the previous rust-belt area, which had witnessed Shanghai’s century-old industrial development, has now turned into a beautiful livable zone, Xi said.
Xi called for efforts to reasonably arrange the space for production, living and ecological purposes and expand public space so that the public would have places for leisure, fitness and entertainment.
“We should let the city become a paradise for the public to comfortably live and work in,” Xi said.
Chinese academics and young scientists join global scientific elite to explore frontiers of research
International joint laboratory announced at Shanghai forum
More than three dozen Nobel Prize winners for science were among the gathering in Shanghai for the second annual forum of the World Laureates Association. Photo: Xinhua
Shanghai hosted one of the largest gatherings of Nobel laureates in the world last week, with 44 Nobel Prize-winning scientists in the city for a government-sponsored forum with the lofty goal of discussing science and technology for the “common destiny of mankind”.
The four-day forum, which brought together young Chinese scientists and the cream of the international scientific crop, was a signal of China’s ambitions for its own researchers to take their place at the forefront of development and bring home their own prizes.
Experts agreed the event – the second in an annual “World Laureates Forum” – was hardly a public relations stunt, but a testament to China’s deep-seated, steadfast desire to learn from the world’s top scientists and join them, and their home countries, as leaders on the frontier of science and produce regular home-grown contenders for top prizes.
“The Nobel Prize is the holy grail for China, and it is still quite elusive for Chinese indigenous scientists to be awarded this prestigious recognition,” said Chengxin Pan, an associate professor of international relations at Australia’s Deakin University. “You could say China has a Nobel Prize complex.”
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Becoming a leader in the sciences was more than just an issue of driving economic expansion through technology and innovation, it was a matter of national preservation with deep roots in Chinese history, Pan said.
“China sees the lack of power, lack of scientific achievements and modern technology as largely responsible for the backwardness and humiliation it suffered during much of the 19th century and early 20th century,” he said.
“They need to make up for lagging behind by engaging with the top leading scientists in the world, wherever they are from.”
To that end, celebrated theoretical physicists, organic chemists, neuroscientists and biologists joined Chinese academics and youth scientists for the conference organised by the Shanghai city government and an association of top global scientists known as the World Laureates Association.
Among them were 2019 Nobel Prize for physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, as well as winners of other top prizes including the Wolf Prize, Lasker Award, and Fields Medal for mathematics. Discussions included the latest breakthroughs in disease prevention and drug development, sustainability and new energy, aerospace and black holes, as well as what drives their scientific curiosity.
Swiss professor Michel Mayor, astrophysicist and director of the Geneva Observatory, was one of the co-winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics and among the attendees at the forum in Shanghai. Photo: EPA-EFE
The event, which culminated with the announcement of an international joint research laboratory for the world’s top scientists, to be established in Shanghai, was lauded by President Xi Jinping in an open letter to the attendees.
“China attaches great importance to the development of the frontier fields of science and technology,” Xi said, stressing China’s willingness to “work with all countries of the world” to “address the challenges of our age”.
The high calibre meeting was a rare opportunity for China to broadcast its message of commitment to scientific advancement, at a time when the reputation of its universities, academics and hi-tech companies have been taking a broad hit as part of a blowback from the US-China trade and tech wars, as well as suspicion among Western countries of China’s geopolitical aims.
In the past year, a number of major global Chinese tech companies, including Huawei and Hikvision, have been blacklisted in the US, while US tech giants like Google and Apple noticeably skipped out on China’s annual state-run World Internet Conference last month. Academic ties between Chinese and Western universities have also been called into question over suspicions of espionage, fraud, and intellectual property theft.
“China is saying we are still open for business and, at this juncture, we more warmly welcome foreign scientists and collaboration between countries in science and technology,” said Zhu Tian, an economics professor at the Chinese Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
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The past decade has seen China advance rapidly in the sciences. A surge in government funding, along with successive top level strategies to build up science and tech – including the Made in China 2025 innovation blueprint – and a significant uptick in international collaborations, have propelled the nation on to the global scientific stage.
Recent developments, like the first successful landing of a probe on the far side of the moon earlier this year, the dominance of the 5G network technology created by China’s Huawei, and the opening of the world’s largest radio telescope in Guizhou in 2017, have also raised the country’s profile in emerging tech and science.
But, so far, China’s rising visibility as a scientific powerhouse has been largely driven by scale. A June report by the journal Nature found researchers affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences contributed the greatest number of “high-quality natural sciences research” to international journals compared with their peers at other institutions, while last month the journal found the top four “fastest rising” new universities for research output were all from mainland China.
“To some in the outside world, China is already a powerhouse in innovation … but in terms of the quality of innovations or scientific research, China still lags behind developed countries like the US, UK or Switzerland,” Zhu said.
Despite “making the fastest progress among all countries”, and significant leaps as a developing nation, “China is not at the frontier of technology or science yet,” he said, which is why international engagement, like the recent summit, is key to China’s growth.
“In order to catch up you have to know what is the frontier, you have to learn from those who are at the frontier.”
It is a point further underlined by the numerous blog posts and widely circulated articles in Chinese media about China’s meagre Nobel track record. Apart from one celebrated exception – 2015 Nobel laureate for medicine Tu Youyou – Chinese-born scientists who have won the prize did so for their work in overseas laboratories, or after changing citizenship.
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Tu was the People’s Republic of China’s first Nobel Prize winner in the sciences and the country’s first woman to win the prize in any category.
Among China’s other Nobel laureates in the sciences are 1957 physics prizewinners Li Zhengdao and Yang Chen-ning, who won their award while in the US, having left China before the Communist Party takeover in 1949. Both later became US citizens. In 2017,
relinquishing his US citizenship to become a Chinese citizen.
China has worked hard to reverse the damage of brain drain, for example with its flagship “Thousand Talents” programme, a high-profile, state-backed recruitment drive set up in 2008 to attract overseas Chinese students and academics back to China with generous funding.
But reaching the frontiers of science, and making Nobel-worthy advancements, will also require China to do some reshuffling of its domestic priorities, which have been heavy on producing innovations in applied sciences and tech, but lighter on the basics – like physics, chemistry, and biology – whose mysteries are probed by the leading labs around the developed world.
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“China in the past has been known as a place for incremental innovation, and not the place where really radical innovation and big breakthroughs have come from, but they don’t want to be tinkering at the margins, they want to be a major innovation powerhouse,” said Andrew Kennedy, an associate professor in the policy and governance programme at the Australian National University.
To change this, China has begun to raise investment in basic sciences, Kennedy said, pointing to National Bureau of Statistics figures which indicate an average spending increase of more than 20 per cent each year between 1995 to 2016. Even so, spending at the end of that period – some US$11.9 billion at market rates – still lagged well below the figure cited for the US in 2015, which rang up US$83.5 billion, he said.
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The gathering of science laureates itself was further indication of that shift to place more emphasis on basic sciences, the kinds of disciplines the laureates lead, and could be a major boost to that agenda, according to Naubahar Sharif, associate professor of social science and public policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
“This [event] is a rocket-propelled, massive injection of scientific power into one place, and China has ambitions to gear up their own scientists to this level,” Sharif said, “and I’m sure the local Chinese scientists have been prepped to take advantage of it.”
While China has work to do in pushing back on criticism of questionable practices in intellectual property transfer, or the extent to which they share their own advances with others, collaboration with leading scientists is a crucial part of China’s “long-haul” vision in the sciences, Sharif said.
“If you rub shoulders with the most prestigious scientists of your era, your local scientists will learn something, and there’s going to be knowledge exchange and making linkages and a start to partnerships,” he said.
“This is the way that getting to that frontier can be achieved.”
Negotiations going ‘as planned’, foreign ministry says after cancellation of Apec summit at which presidents were set to meet to sign ‘phase-one’ agreement
With an election looming and possible impeachment inquiry, Trump in more of a hurry to reach a deal than Xi, observers say
Talks between China and the US are going well, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. Photo: AFP
Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have “maintained contact”, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday after authorities in Chile announced the cancellation of the upcoming Apec summit at which the US and Chinese leaders were set to meet and possibly sign a trade deal.
Talks between the two nations were going well, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily press briefing.
“The negotiations are smooth and things are working out as planned,” he said.
“Regarding the meeting between the two state leaders, they have maintained contact through various means.”
Geng’s comments came after China’s commerce ministry said that top trade negotiators from the two countries would hold a telephone conversation on Friday.
Xi and Trump were due to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago on November 16-17, but the event was cancelled due to the ongoing protests in the country. The leaders were also expected to sign an interim trade deal based on the ground made at the latest negotiations in Washington on October 11.
According to diplomatic observers, while Beijing wants a truce in the trade dispute it is in less of a hurry than Trump, who is facing the threat of impeachment and trying to prepare for an election campaign.
Shen Dingli, an expert in international relations based in Shanghai, said that China faced less domestic opposition to its handling of the trade talks than Washington.
“Trump is facing a lot of problems on both the diplomatic and domestic fronts,” he said. “[But] I think both sides still need an agreement. It is always better to have an agreement than not.”
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (left) and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He met in Washington early this month. Photo: AFP
Yuan Zheng, an expert on China-US relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that while the Apec summit had offered a convenient way for the presidents to meet, the substance of the deal was more important than where it might be signed.
“It’s true that the deal can be signed by representatives instead of the presidents but this depends very much on how keen Trump is for the presidential meeting to happen,” he said.
“He is facing an election and huge domestic pressure, so he … needs to show his strong leadership more than Xi. But of course, if the deal is set and if the details of the meeting are practical, the Chinese side would like a presidential meeting too.”
Shen Dingli, an expert in international relations, says China faces less domestic opposition to its handling of the trade talks than Washington. Photo: AP
Speaking after the talks in Washington between Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Trump said the two sides had reached a “substantial phase one deal” and that after it had been put down on paper it would be signed at the Apec meeting.
Tai Hui, chief market strategist for Asia at JPMorgan Asset Management, said the cancellation of the Chile summit should not stop the US and China agreeing a truce.
“If the two sides are genuinely willing to reach an interim deal before mid-December, when the next increase in tariffs on Chinese goods is due to take place, they will find a venue to get it done,” he said.
After nearly 10 years of planning, the country’s two shipbuilders will be reunited with a combined revenue of US$141.5 billion
China’s two shipbuilding giants have built hundreds of military vessels over the past few years as the country’s navy seeks to modernise rapidly. Photo: Xinhua
China on Friday announced the merger of the country’s two largest state-owned shipbuilding giants, a step Beijing has been preparing for nearly a decade to strengthen the competitiveness of its shipbuilding industry.
The intention to merge the Shanghai-based China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC) and the China Shipbuilding Industry Co (CSIC), based in Dalian, Northern Liaoning province, was announced in a statement on the website of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, China’s cabinet.
The merger would enable China to establish a shipbuilding giant with a combined revenue up to 1 trillion yuan (US$141.5 billion), capable of building vessels ranging from warships, like aircraft carriers, to civilian ships such as container ships and oil tankers, said a source familiar with the merger plan.
“This merger has been in the making since Hu Wenming, a former party leader of the state-owned aviation industry, was assigned to CSSC as party secretary in 2010,” the source said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“The merger plan was put on the drawing board at a time when the world shipping industry had entered a golden period in 2009, and the business of CSSC and CSIC was at its peak, but [China’s] analysis indicated a decline was on the horizon, as has actually happened in recent years.”
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CSIC and CSSC were part of the same group until 1999 when they were split into two separate entities. Since then, China has overtaken South Korea and Japan to become the world’s largest builder of merchant ships, a rise spurred by the boom in world trade and the country’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
CSSC manages shipbuilding business in the east and south of China, while CSIC oversees activities in the northern and western parts of the country. Both are also primary contractors for PLA naval ships.
Commercial shipbuilding was the major source of revenue for both enterprises, given they were generally less technologically challenging and of lower cost to build, the source said.
“Developing and building warships for the PLA needs more manpower and more advanced technologies because naval ships, which are built for sea battles, take longer to build and require cutting-edge technologies, hence the higher costs,” the source said.
China tests new warships in live-fire drills near Vietnam
CSSC and CSIC have built hundreds of military vessels over the past few years as the Chinese navy seeks to modernise rapidly. These have included aircraft carriers, Type 055 destroyers, Type 075 amphibious assault ships and Type 094A nuclear submarines.
But, the source said, the two giants’ naval warship building mission would be cut back next year, as Beijing expected greater financial pressure as a result of slower economic growth. The merger would allow the two companies to pool their resources and enhance their competitiveness, especially in the development of mega vessels.
But the source said the two giants’ naval warships building missions would be cut back beginning next year as Beijing foresees greater financial pressure as a result of slower economic growth. The merger will allow the two companies to pool their resources and enhance their competitiveness, especially in areas of mega vessels.
“The merger is also part of China’s long-term maritime energy development plan to meet President Xi Jinping’s sustainable and clean energy goal, because China needs more giant vessels to help ship oil and gas from other countries,” the source said.
‘Snow Dragons’ Xuelong and Xuelong II leave on China’s 36th Antarctic expedition
Mission to resource-rich continent carries great scientific and economic weight
A ceremony is held for the maiden voyage of China’s home-built polar icebreaker Xuelong II in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Photo: Xinhua
China has sent two icebreakers to the Antarctic in its most ambitious polar expedition to the Earth’s resource-rich southernmost continent yet.
The Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, left Shanghai on Tuesday morning with a crew of 107 and 1,450 tonnes of supplies on board. It is expected to meet another icebreaker, Xuelong II, at Zhongshan Station on Prydz Bay in East Antarctica in late November before the ships carry out separate missions in the region.
This will be the 36th official Antarctic expedition for China, and the first involving two research icebreakers. Xuelong II, the first Chinese-built vessel of its kind, was commissioned in July and left for its maiden Antarctic journey last week. The ships will be back in China by late spring next year.
The voyages have been hailed by state media as “the start of China’s new era of polar exploration”. Zhao Yanping, the captain of Xuelong II, was quoted by the Science Daily website as saying that experts believed the ships could significantly expand Chinese science missions in the polar regions.
China’s Xuelong icebreaker was bought from Ukraine in 1994. Photo: Handout
Xuelong II, with propellers at bow and stern, can make up to 15 knots (28km/h) in open water and three knots (5.6km/h) when breaking ice. Observers said it could pave the way for a nuclear-powered icebreaker.
Xuelong, the country’s first polar research vessel, bought from Ukraine in 1994, is to carry out surveys in the Amundsen and Ross seas.
A report by The Beijing News said that Xuelong’s crew would also visit Inexpressible Island in Terra Nova Bay on the Ross Sea to help in construction work on China’s fifth Antarctic scientific station, which is expected to be operational in 2022.
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Since it joined the Antarctic Treaty in June 1983, China has steadily increased its stakes in a region that contains vast, untapped natural resources, including oil, gas and minerals.
Last year, China announced it would begin building its first permanent airfield on Antarctica – a 1,500 metre strip to be located on an ice cap about 28 kilometres from Zhongshan Station.
Meanwhile, Chinese businesses have taken an interest in the region. Food companies have been among the largest players in fishing krill – tiny, protein-rich shrimp-like creatures that are abundant in Antarctic waters. Tourists from China now account for 16 per cent of the total number of travellers to the world’s last great untouched wilderness, second to visitors from the United States, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators.
While Beijing said its engagement in the Antarctic would be “peaceful” and the focus of its expeditions was on protecting the environment, its growing presence there has raised concerns in the West, particularly among established explorers such as Australia and the US.
Australia said at the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in Hobart, Tasmania, this week, that despite opposition from China and Russia, it would push for the creation of marine reserves off East Antarctica.
China’s new icebreaker Snow Dragon II ready for Antarctica voyage later this year
China and Australia have also been at odds over Beijing’s proposal to establish a code of conduct for the region around Dome A on the Antarctic Plateau, an area on the top of the ice sheet ideal for space and satellite observation. Canberra rejected the proposal, saying that Dome A is inside its territory.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 