China news roundup / Nachrichten 2024-02-27
China touts economic prospects amid ‘rising East and declining West’
"The “rising East and declining West” concept was raised by President Xi Jinping in 2021 as the “most prominent” in “today’s world which is undergoing major changes unseen in a century.”
[...] in the 1950s Mao Zedong had also viewed the world as one where “the east wind prevails over the west wind.”"
--- Emperor Xi emulating Mao again. & he will most probably also emulate Mao's failure.
Interestingly, though, in the West the far right as well as the far left is blowing into the same horn as Xi.
China’s National Team Bought $57 Billion of Shares, UBS Says
"China’s state-backed funds have poured more than 410 billion yuan ($57 billion) into onshore shares this year in a bid to prop up the market, according to estimates by UBS Group AG, which expects further purchases.
The Swiss bank based its calculations on “excess” transactions of 54 Chinese exchange-traded funds. More than 75% of the inflows went into products tracking the benchmark CSI 300 Index while another 13% flowed to those mirroring the CSI 500 Index"
--- That great free market in China. For the time being they actually stopped the rout, it seems.
"“We like the China domestic market more than the offshore market because the domestic market has policy support with evidence of national team buying,” Sunil Koul, Asia Pacific equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said on Bloomberg TV."
--- GS likes China, no matter what. China shills of the first order.
China's C919 Jet Displayed at Singapore Air Show, But It's Not Ready to Compete
"So far, the state-owned company says it has received 1,061 domestic orders for the C919, but it has yet to secure many international customers. Brunei-based GallopAir, which is backed by Chinese investors, signed a letter of intent in September to purchase 30 aircraft from COMAC, including a C919 jet, in a deal estimated to be worth $2 billion.
COMAC faces supply chain challenges like those of Boeing and Airbus, which have backlogs of thousands of aircraft yet to be delivered. While the C919 is designed in China, much of its technology and many of its parts are from foreign suppliers. Its engine, for example, is made by CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aerospace and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines"
--- Not very successful, internationally. I wouldn't take a flight on any such plane, even though most of its technology is Western-sourced. Maybe if it has flown for at least ten years without a major incident...
The role of informal ruralization within China’s rapid urbanization
"In stagnant construction sites, neglected landscaping and forgotten spaces under viaducts and highways, China’s expanding cities are secretly ‘sprouting’ with vegetables owing to a practice called chengshi kaihuang (CK, 城市开荒)—an informal practice where citizens infiltrate the neglected spaces of China’s rapid urbanization for the cultivation of vegetables. The name CK is a combination of two terms—chengshi (城市), meaning ‘urban’, and kaihuang (开荒), an evocative term meaning ‘the opening of wasteland.’ In the long span of China’s history as an agrarian nation, kaihuang has been both a pragmatic and a symbolic practice of resilience. From an ancient poet’s opening of rural wasteland to escape the corruptions of the city11 to the Communist call for self-sufficiency through wasteland cultivation during the Sino-Japanese War12,13,14, kaihuang is a deceptively simple act of vegetable growing that carries within itself an almost utopic desire to survive and create alternative futures from precarity."
--- Very common to see that in Chinese cities. Every spot of land that is not used for something else is turned into vegetable gardens. But in many cases this is not so much a sign of resilience, but people simply trying to save some money (& perhaps having control over what is used to grow the stuff).
"To this day, a sculpture of the ‘Kaihuang Bull’ stands before the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee Building as a symbol of the pioneering kaihuang spirit of laborers that turned a small fishing village into a megacity through hard work, perseverance and creativity15. In the case of CK, isolated individual citizens have turned this pioneering spirit on the wastelands of China’s rapidly expanding cities and informally created thousands of acres of urban agriculture"
--- & that's where I stopped reading. Obviously it's just another Chinese propaganda piece in Nature.
Wife of jailed free speech activist Wang Aizhong on 'no fly' list
"Wang Henan, the wife of jailed press freedom activist Wang Aizhong, says her employer is trying to get her to quit her job due to her husband's status as a political prisoner, and has barred her from working further shifts as a flight attendant.
She says the move means she is effectively being punished by association with her husband, a tactic that is commonly used by the authorities as a retaliatory measure against dissidents and peaceful critics of the regime."
--- That's how the system works in China: the whole family is punished for the deeds of one person (particularly if those deeds were political in nature).
Hotel official apologizes for ring-toss game with Lao women
Satellite images reveal floating barrier at mouth of disputed atoll in South China Sea
--- China Uncensored: "How China Bought Off US Factcheckers"
Offenbar Massenfestnahmen nach Protesten in Tibet
"Es dringt nicht viel durch an Informationen aus Tibet. Am Samstag soll die chinesische Polizei mit groß angelegten Verhören begonnen haben. Dabei sollen einige Tibeter so schwer geschlagen worden sein, dass sie ärztlich behandelt werden mussten. Das berichtet der von den USA finanzierte Sender Radio Free Asia unter Berufung auf mehrere Quellen vor Ort."
--- Diese Nachricht macht aber schon seit Tagen die Runde. Seltsamerweise bringen das dann heute gleich eine Anzahl deutscher Medien simultan. So nach dem Motto: Wir warten, bis eine Nachrichtenagentur was bringt & verkaufen es dann als eigene Nachricht.
"Für die jetzt verhafteten Tibeter bedeute das nichts Gutes, sagt der Menschenrechtler Müller: "Wir müssen davon ausgehen, dass sie in großer Gefahr sind, gefoltert zu werden und dass viele von ihnen lange Haftstrafen antreten müssen oder manche gar verschwunden bleiben.""
--- Wenn die werte Lamby-Schmitt wenigstens auch aktuelle Nachrichten verfolgen würde, wüsste sie, daß es schon Berichte über Mißhandlungen gibt.
Taiwan meldet nach tödlichem Vorfall chinesische Schiffe vor Kinmen
Philippinen werfen China neue Blockade vor
