Real estate speculators rush to site of planned new city
Top China news for April 3, 2017. Get this daily digest delivered to your inbox by signing up atย supchina.com/subscribe.
New city created by fiat, creating immediate property boom
On Saturday, the Chinese government announced the creation of a new city: The Xiongan New Area (้ๅฎๆฐๅบ xiรณng ฤn xฤซnqลซ) will be a special economic zone about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Beijing in Hebei Province. According toย Xinhua News Agency, Xiongan โwill become home to facilities not related to the capital that were relocated from Beijing, where breakneck urban growth has given rise toโฆtraffic congestion and air pollution,โ but will also make the protection of local ecology a priority. The China Dailyย has an article and mapย showing Xionganโs location, and โseven major tasksโ for the planned development, which include โbuilding a world-class, green, modern and smart new city, with scenic ecological environment, blue skies, fresh air and clean water, and developing high-end innovative industries as new growth engines.โ The area is right next to a group of Baiyang lake, the largest freshwater body in Hebei.
State media articles are also comparing the new area with the Shenzhen and Pudong development zones, which played a vital role in the early years of Chinaโs economic boom after the โreform and opening upโ policy began in the early 1980s. The new area is also connected to the โBeijing-Tianjin-Hebei integrationโ (ไบฌๆดฅๅไธไฝๅ jฤซng jฤซn jรฌ yฤซtวhuร ) project, which seeks to collectively develop Chinaโs two largest northeastern cities together with the province that surrounds them.
This being China, the news on Saturday was followed by an immediate rush on real estate: Reutersย reportsย that local real estate agents in the area โshut up shop on Monday, hours after Beijing ordered a ban on property sales in a frantic effort to curb a sudden housing boomโ triggered by the announcement of plans for the new area. Many commenters on the social media platform Weibo were not impressedย (in Chinese), withย some warning that if Chinaโs economy only depends on real estate, all will end in disaster, and others asking what right the government has to stop real estate transaction.
In a separate development,ย ECNS.cnย reportsย that seven new free trade zones โbegan operation across China on April 1, with the aim of further opening up the country and coordinating development between various regions.โ
Xi, Trump, Kushner
Excitement and uncertainty are building about the upcoming meetings between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump set to take place in Florida on April 6 and 7, and media organizations and pundits are trying to understand what is going on behind the scenes and predict possible outcomes.
In a story headlined โXi Jinpingโs summit plan to tame Donald Trump,โ the Financial Timesย saysย (paywall) that China has tried to influence the American president by befriending his family and looking โfavorably on Mr Trumpโs business,โ but it is unclear whether this strategy will pay off. However, as the New York Timesย points outย (paywall), despite all of Trumpโs tough talk on trade with China, there has been no โreal actionโ so far.
On the weekend, the Financial Timesย also printed the transcript of an interviewย (paywall) with Trump in which he said that he would tell China โthat we cannot continue to trade if we are going to have an unfair deal like we have right now,โ and that โif China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.โ Reacting to this statement, China-watcher Bill Bishopย commented this morning in the Axios AMย newsletterย that โthe U.S. does need a different approach, and Trump is right to threaten unilateral actions if Beijing does not do what it can.โ
Finally, the Washington Post has a thoroughly reported pieceย on the โkey channel for high-level interactions between the White House and Chinese leadership run by Trumpโs son-in-law, Jared Kushner.โ
Australia-based professor leaves China after detention
Feng Chongyiย ๅฏๅดไน, associate professor of China Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, was allowed to return to Australia on Saturday after being held for a week and questioned by Chinese security forces. He toldย Reutersย that he still plans to return to China in the future, and that โif they wanted to scare me they failed miserably.โ
Meanwhile, there is still no official word on the whereabouts of Lee Ming-chehย ๆๆๅฒ, a Taiwanese activist who disappeared in the southern city of Zhuhai on March 19. The Straits Timesย reportsย that about 20 civic groups in Taiwan held a press conference to urge the Chinese authorities to release him.
The prejudice against journalists who are Party members
Xinhua News Agencyโs Twitter account published a schmaltzy eight-minute-long videoย set to poignant music featuring Chinese journalists who are Communist Party members. They speak about the prejudice they face because of their Party affiliations, and the reasons they chose to join.
โJeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
This issue of the The China Projectย newsletter was produced by Sky Canaves, Lucas Niewenhuis, Jia Guo, and Jiayun Feng. More China stories worth your time are curated below, with the most important ones at the top of each section.
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BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:
Slow going for Chinese high-speed rail abroad
โThere is no case of China exporting high-speed rail that can be described as very successful,โ saidย a spokeswoman for the Beijing-based CRRC Qingdao Sifang, one of the largest train manufacturers in the world. While the rollout of new high-speed rail in China has gone at breakneck speed โ the country already has the worldโs largest rail network, with 22,000 kilometers (13,700 miles), and is set to expand it by 36 percent in the next three years โ major deals abroad have stalled. In 2015, Mexico canceled a plan to bring in Chinese high-speed trains, and in 2016, Indonesia suspended a joint rail project with China worth $5.1 billion. Indonesia recently approved the operational permit for that project, but only after a full year of delays. Another potential deal last year to connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles never made it past the drawing board.
Possible reasons for difficulties overseas, the South China Morning Postย reports, include customer base โ few countries have Chinaโs density or volume of commuters within and between major cities โ and geography, as China has enough land that mountains can usually be avoided โ a luxury not available in Southeast Asia, for example.
- China has its worst ever start to a year for defaultsย / Bloomberg
โWhile itโs still far from a crisis point, the defaults shows how policy makersโ efforts to reduce the liquidity that had propelled the bond market until late last year is exacting casualties.โ - South Korea Lotte Group says will continue to invest in China despite tensionsย / Reuters
โLotte has not outlined a strategy to cope with the difficulties besides โwaitingโ for it to blow over.โ - Less noodles, beer and movies? Clouds on Chinese consumption horizonย / Reuters
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POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:
On democracy and individual rights in China
Orville Schell, director of the Asia Societyโs Center on U.S.-China Relations, wrote a surprisingly optimistic pieceย (paywall) in the Wall Street Journal titledย โChinaโs once and future democracy.โ In it, Schell recalls the vibrant โ and government-approvedย โ expressions of support for human rights and democracy in China in the late 1970s and โ80s, and explains how they still give context to modern debates on the development of the country. He also compares Chinaโs many โdemocratic impulsesโ over the past century to โrecessive genes that can skip a generation before expressing themselves again.โ Schell further speculates that, paradoxically, Donald Trumpโs stunning silence on human rights could give those impulses room to breathe, as Chinaโs leaders feel less under attack and may again find use in harnessing the many liberal voices of the country.
Rebecca Liao, an international corporate attorney and The China Project contributor, wrote in Foreign Affairs about the significance of the governmentโs approval last month of the General Principles of the Civil Law, which she calls โsimply the preambleโ to a modern civil code. She arguesย that surrounding this latest formalization of civil law in China, as with previous reforms, is โan uneasy awareness that individual property rights are the basis from which other individual rights are derived.โ
- Beijing charm offensive curbs Philippine protestsย / Financial Times (paywall)
- Duterteโs China gambit yet to pay dividendsย / Asia Times
- Top official who rose amid corruption scandals now named party chief of Chinaโs hi-tech hubย – Wang Weizhong ็ไผไธญ moves from Taiyuan to Shenzhenย / SCMP
- In โChinaโs Jerusalem,โ โanti-terror camerasโ the new cross for churches to bearย / SCMP
- Language matters: How a minor mistranslation can affect U.S.-China relationsย / Lawfare
- Why the CIA is increasingly worried about Chinese molesย / Newsweek
- The new Chinese diasporaย / Lowy Institute
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SOCIETY AND CULTURE:
U.S. cities woo Chinese travelers with creature comforts
Chinese tourists โalready spend more in the U.S. than other international visitorsโ and their number continues to grow, according toย the Associated Press. Hotels andย city tourism organizations have taken note and are launching โcampaigns aimed at getting their member hotels, restaurants and tourism companies to better incorporate Chinese language and customs into their offerings.โ
At the Sheraton Boston, amenities include โslippers, robes, instant noodles, an electric kettle and green tea.โ Other hotels provide Chinese-language television and newspapers and Chinese dishes on room service and restaurant menus, and allow customers to use WeChat to book and pay for hotel rooms.
- Woks away: Chinaโs plan to make jet fuel from restaurant leftoversย / SCMP
- Why Hollywood should worry about the U.S.-China summitย / China Film Insider
- The kingdom of women: The Tibetan tribe where a man is never the bossย / The Guardian
- Beijing to introduce visa-free status for English teachersย / The Beijinger
- A Mao by Warhol sells for below estimate at Hong Kong auction, casting doubt on Asian appetites for Western contemporary artย / SCMP
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