03/05/2020
SHANGHAI, May 2 (Xinhua) — Shanghai’s 130 main tourist attractions have received over 1 million visitors in the first two days of the five-day May Day holiday.
The scenic sites received 456,000 visitors on Friday and 633,000 more on Saturday, marking a growing travel and leisure demand, according to the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism.
The city requires reservations for tours of all tourist attractions to prevent crowding while tourist sites should not exceed 30 percent of their daily or real-time visitor capacity.
Tourists are also required to wear face masks, show their health QR codes and have their body temperatures taken for their safety.
“I feel safe and confident with the new reservation measures,” said Li Zhi, who has booked tours to the Zhujiajiao ancient town and Shanghai Oriental Land.
Under the reservation system, tourist sites are also better prepared to prevent crowding and provide better tour experiences to customers, according to Huang Ying with Shanghai Oriental Land.
Source: Xinhua
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28/04/2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory activity likely rose for a second straight month in April as more businesses re-opened from strict lockdowns implemented to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which has now paralysed the global economy.
The official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI), due for release on Thursday, is forecast to fall to 51 in April, from 52 in March, according to the median forecast of 32 economists polled by Reuters. A reading above the 50-point mark indicates an expansion in activity.
While the forecast PMI would show a slight moderation in China’s factory activity growth, it would be a stark contrast to recent PMIs in other economies, which plummeted to previously unimaginable lows.
That global slump, caused by heavy government-ordered lockdowns, as well as the cautious resumption of business in China, suggests any recovery in the world’s second-largest economy is likely to be some way off.
“The recovery so far has been led by a bounce-back in production, however, the growth bottleneck has decisively shifted to the demand side, as global growth has weakened and consumption recovery has lagged amid continued social distancing,” Morgan Stanley said in a note.
“The expected slump in external demand has likely capped further recovery in industrial production.”
The latest official data showed 84% of mid-sized and small business had reopened as of April 15, compared with 71.7% on March 24.
Hobbled by the coronavirus, China’s economy shrank 6.8% in the first quarter from a year earlier, the first contraction since current quarterly records began.
That has left Chinese manufacturers with reduced export orders and a logistics logjam, as many exporters grapple with rising inventory, high costs and falling profits. Some have let workers go as part of the cost-cutting efforts.
A China-based brokerage Zhongtai Securities estimated that the country’s real unemployment rate, measured using international standards, could exceed 20%, equal to more than 70 million job losses and much higher than March’s official reading of 5.9%.
Sheng Laiyun, deputy head at the statistics bureau, said on Sunday migrant workers and college graduates are facing increasing pressures to secure jobs, while official jobless surveys show nearly 20% of employed workers not working in March.
Chinese authorities have rolled out more support to revive the economy. The People’s Bank of China earlier in April cut the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves and reduced the interest rate on lenders’ excess reserves.
Source: Reuters
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22/04/2020
- 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.
Source: SCMP
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14/04/2020
- People’s Liberation Army resumes drills, including flotilla exercise in Miyako Strait
- Military observers say China is demonstrating its ability while virus hampers US aircraft carriers
The Liaoning aircraft carrier strike group has resumed activities after being interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Handout
The People’s Liberation Army has resumed regular military drills at home and overseas, moves that military experts say are a show of strength and control over
.
The ground forces, navy and air force of the PLA’s five theatre commands started military drills this month, with some exercises involving joint operations, according to several reports published by the PLA Daily in recent days.
As the epidemic surged in China, the PLA was forced to suspend all large-scale joint drills because of disruptions to transport and allocations of military resources around the country.
China’s People Liberation Army conducts drills. Photo: Handout
On Saturday, one of the large-scale drills resumed. A six-ship flotilla, led by the
, sailed through the Miyako Strait – just 330km (205 miles) due east of the northernmost tip of Taiwan – on its way to the western Pacific.
“In the future, the Chinese navy will continue to organise similar training schedules to accelerate and improve the combat capability of its aircraft carrier strike groups,” navy spokesman Gao Xiucheng was quoted as saying in PLA Daily.
It is the first time the Liaoning has reappeared in waters near Taiwan since sailors on four United States aircraft carriers sent to the Indo-Pacific region were infected by the coronavirus, making the Chinese carrier the only vessel of its kind active in the western Pacific.
The reappearance of the Liaoning strike group prompted Taiwan to send warships, while the US sent a P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft to follow the Chinese flotilla. Taiwanese media reported that the aircraft was the seventh American warplane sent to the region in a week.
Hong Kong-based military analyst Song Zhongping said the Liaoning’s appearance near Taiwan was not only a demonstration of military deterrence to the independence-leaning ruling party in Taiwan, but also a gesture to show off the PLA’s greater ability to contain the coronavirus pandemic than its American counterpart.
“Compared with the PLA, the United States military is weaker and lacks experience in dealing with non-traditional military operations such as battles against epidemics, because those aspects are mostly carried by the US National Guard in various states,” Song said.
“Since the threat of Covid-19 is decreasing, the PLA needs to return to their regular training to prepare for a war to reunify Taiwan by force when necessary. The possible war is very complicated as it [would] involve dealing with foreign militaries, such as US and Japanese navies.”
Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming said that the PLA so far had been able to control the infection sources and channels among soldiers and officers, but that the threat of Covid-19 remained.
In pictures published by the PLA Daily, PLA officers do not wear masks while conducting drills.
Both Zhou and Song said that the Covid-19 pandemic had hit the US Navy and left a power vacuum in the region but that the PLA would not use the chance
to attack Taiwan.
“Using force to take Taiwan back is still the last step, not the first priority,” Zhou said. “How to manage and maintain Taiwan’s prosperity is the most important issue of the cross-strait relationship.”
Song said the PLA still believed the US Navy had maintained a degree of combat capability even though hundreds of US sailors were infected by the novel coronavirus.
Source: SCMP
Posted in aircraft carriers, anti-submarine aircraft, control, Coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, flexes, flotilla exercise, Hong Kong, Liaoning, Military, Miyako Strait, near, P-3C Orion, People’s Liberation Army, PLA, PLA Daily, show, strike group, Taiwan, Uncategorized, US National Guard |
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13/09/2019
- Top law enforcement body starts campaign to rally mainland support for officers amid anti-government protests
- Maxim’s described as ‘company that loves the country and loves Hong Kong’ after condemnation of unrest by daughter of founder
Officer Lau (third from left) and police colleagues receive a delivery of mooncakes. Photo: Weibo
China’s top law enforcement agency has shown its support for Hong Kong’s embattled police by delivering 650 boxes of mooncakes to the force’s dormitories and stations ahead of Friday’s
Mid-Autumn Festival.
The festive gifts were sent after an online campaign titled “I want to send hometown delicacies to Hong Kong Police”, launched last Friday by Chang An Jian, an official social media account of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Beijing’s top political body responsible for law and order.
The commission – a Communist Party organ, rather than a government body that police report to – said in a blog post that seven people had donated about 150,000 yuan (US$21,000) between them.
The campaign represents the latest display of mainland support for the force, with no end in sight to mass protests in Hong Kong triggered in June by opposition to an
that would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China. Hong Kong police have faced numerous accusations of excessive use of force during the unrest.
But the mooncake delivery was complicated by customs regulations, with most major Chinese courier services unwilling to take deliveries containing processed meat and egg yolk across the border with Hong Kong.
“[We] were panicking because a lot of enthusiastic netizens had their salted duck and mooncake deliveries to Hong Kong rejected by couriers!” a Chang An Jian blog post said on Wednesday night.
In the end, 650 boxes of mooncakes that were bought from Hong Kong were sent to police dormitories and stations on Wednesday evening.
Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most important traditional Chinese holiday after Lunar New Year.
“[The mooncakes] were from Maxim’s, a company that loves the country and loves Hong Kong!” the blog post also said.
Annie Wu Suk-ching, whose father co-founded the Maxim’s chain, last week
the anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
She was lauded by Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily for “clearly adhering to the one country principle” – referring to “one country, two systems”, the principle under which Hong Kong was guaranteed a high degree of autonomy after it was handed over from British to Chinese rule in 1997.
One of Maxim’s biggest rival mooncake manufacturers in Hong Kong, Taipan Bread and Cake, had its products
removed from shops across the Chinese mainland and from its biggest e-commerce sites, Tmall.com and JD.com, after the son of its founder was vilified by
People’s Daily for a Facebook post that the newspaper said showed he backed the protests.
Recipients of the mooncakes included a police officer who in July was hailed as a hero by Chinese state media and nicknamed “bald sergeant Lau Sir” after pointing a shotgun at protesters who had besieged a police station. Lau has since been invited by Beijing to attend a grand celebration on October 1 for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Mooncake importer says stock will be destroyed after mainland backlash
Beijing has focused attention on the violent elements of the Hong Kong protests in its social media posts and media coverage, while businesses have been carefully monitored and expected to toe Beijing’s line on condemning violence and supporting one country, two systems.
“Hong Kong Police have been having a very difficult time,” said one mainlander, surnamed Lu, in a video posted by Chang An Jian. “We want to cheer them up.”
Posted in "one country, two systems", 70th anniversary, Beijing, boxes, campaign, Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, criminal suspects, Facebook, founding, Hong Kong police, lunar new year, mainland, Mainland China, Maxim’s mooncakes, mooncakes, October 1, officers, People’s Daily, People’s Republic of China, Police officer, Police station, protests, rally, sends, show, support, Top law enforcement body, Uncategorized |
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08/09/2019
- Two people from the circus have been detained after the animal managed to get out of its cage and run towards nearby cornfields on Friday evening
- It was found the next morning and police used a tranquilliser to subdue the tiger but it died on the way to the zoo, which believes it had been hit by a car
Video footage shows circus handlers using sticks to try to coax the tiger back inside the cage after it escaped on Friday night. Photo: Thepaper.cn
A circus tiger that escaped from its cage during a show in central China was captured by police after an overnight search, but died while it was being transported to a nearby zoo, according to media reports.
Two people from the circus where the tiger was raised in the county of Yuanyang, Henan province, have been detained, Beijing Youth Daily reported, without elaborating. It said the tiger escaped during the circus’ first public show, which had not been registered with the local authorities.
The tiger was part of a performance for a local school on Friday evening when it managed to get out of its cage and run towards nearby cornfields.
A video posted by news site Thepaper.cn shows the moment it escaped from the cage, with its handlers using sticks to try to coax the animal back inside. The scene is chaotic, as people scream and run from the venue.
A tranquilliser dart was used to subdue the tiger on Saturday morning and it was transported to a zoo in Xinxiang. Photo: Thepaper.cn
The police were called in, and officers used drones, police dogs and thermal imaging equipment to hunt for the tiger, according to the local government.
The authorities also put out an emergency advisory telling residents to stay indoors and contact police if they had any information on the tiger’s whereabouts.
It was spotted the following morning, and a tranquilliser dart was used to subdue the animal at about 10.30am on Saturday. The tiger was then transported to a zoo in the city of Xinxiang.
According to one of its zookeepers, the animal had already died by the time it was delivered to the zoo, China Youth Daily reported on Sunday.
The \jsq, surnamed Feng, said the tiger was hit by a car after it escaped and may have sustained internal injuries. The zoo is conducting an autopsy.
Chinese circus tiger attacks two children after breaking out of cage in middle of performance
Thousands of social media users expressed their sympathy for the tiger’s plight, saying it must have suffered greatly, with many people calling for animal circuses to be banned in China.
“Tigers don’t belong in cages, they belong in the wilderness,” one person wrote on microblog site Weibo.
Chinese circus defends using rare animals in its acts despite poor crowds at shows and criticism of its methods.
Source: SCMP
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 