Links for Tuesday, December 15, 2020

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Supermarkets threatened by online group buying
  Retailers see red over surge in neighborhood group shopping / Caixin (paywall)
  “Multiple grain, oil and grocery suppliers are moving to restrict partner wholesalers from taking orders from community group-buying (CGB) entities, groups made up of residents combining to buy fresh food at discount prices through platforms like bargain shopper Pinduoduo.”
• Passenger drones
  China’s EHang self-flying vehicles set for takeoff in Austria / Caixin
• Ongoing fallout from apartment rental platform Danke’s financial troubles
  Chinese tenants, landlords left dismayed by Danke debacle after U.S.-listed firm fails to pay up, leading to evictions / SCMP (porous paywall)
  Context on The China Project:

• After rental firm Danke’s crash: Conflicts and a 20-year-old’s suicide
• Apartment rental platforms apologize for exploiting customers during COVID-19 outbreak

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

• Astronomy
  China to open giant telescope to international scientists / Phys.org
  “The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwestern China’s Guizhou Province is the only significant instrument of its kind.”
• Coronavirus origin
  WHO’s coronavirus detectives look to Wuhan market as undisclosed map surfaces / SCMP (porous paywall)
  “A previously unpublished floor plan of the city’s Huanan market shows where people with the first recorded COVID-19 cases worked or shopped. This comes as the WHO investigates the source of the virus, which China says originated elsewhere.”

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Foreigners in Chinese jails
  Peter Humphrey was once locked up in China. Now he advises other prisoners and their families how to take on Beijing / CNN
  “Humphrey described the prison system in China as ‘inhumane and too harsh,’ with ‘all these cases based on extracted confessions and sentencing which is completely reckless.’”
• Australia tries to deal with Chinese sanctions
  Australia says coal import ban by China would breach WTO rules / Bloomberg (porous paywall)  
  Australia PM warns of ‘lose-lose’ in any China coal shift / Reuters
• Kiwi naivete?
  New Zealand foreign minister offers to help broker peace deal between Australia and China / Guardian
• Suppressing the Jews of Kaifeng
  China’s tiny Jewish community in fear as Beijing erases its history / Telegraph via Yahoo
  “The crackdown is so intense that Kaifeng residents are afraid to dine together in public. ‘It’s a small place,’ one Jewish man said. ‘Restaurant managers know that we are the Jews, and they will report us to the authorities.’”
• COVID-19 diplomacy
  Construction of China-aided Africa CDC HQ commences in Ethiopia / Xinhua
  “Construction of the China-aided future headquarters of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) commenced in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa on Monday as part of the ever-growing Sino-Africa cooperation in the public health sector.”
• Foreign lending  
  China’s policy banks are lending differently, not less / Diplomat
  An argument that the way that “Chinese policy and commercial banks are behaving operationally in their foreign lending activities is shifting, but not necessarily diminish[ing].”
  This is a different view from recent pieces we’ve published and linked to:
  • China’s Belt and Road lending dries up / The China Project
  • China is changing course in Africa / The China Project
• See also this tweet from Kevin P. Gallagher: “We’ve seen a lot of comments/takes on our new dataset on China’s Overseas Development Finance and want to set the record straight.” 
• Removing the minorities from minority policymaking
  陈小江任国家民族事务委员会党组书记 / National Ethnic Affairs Commission

China has appointed a new head of it State Ethnic Affairs Commission, Chén Xiǎojiāng 陈小江 (Han) ousting ethnic Mongol Bagatur after a turbulent Autumn of protests spurred by the removal of Mongol language from core subjects.

As China’s push to unify ethnic minorities is intensifying, Chen will be the first non-ethnic minority to head the agency managing ethnic minority affairs since…1954.

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Pop singer raises awareness of violence against women
  Chinese song amplifies awareness for violence against women / Sixth Tone
  Since July, one of China’s most popular singers, Tán Wéiwéi 谭维维, “has been releasing [in Chinese] new singles from her album 3811, with each of the 11 songs chronicling stories [in Chinese] of women from diverse backgrounds, including a taxi-driving single mom, an illiterate elderly woman, and a female poet from the Tang dynasty.” Excerpt from the lyrics of the final track:

Using a fist, using gasoline, using sulfuric acid. Being flushed into the sewer, sinking from a wedding room into a riverbed. Being stuffed into a suitcase, frozen in a fridge on a balcony.