Real estate speculators rush to site of planned new city

Business & Technology

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 (้›„ๅฎ‰ๆ–ฐๅŒบ xiรณng ฤn xฤซnqลซ) will be a special economic zone about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Beijing in Hebei Province. According toย Xinhua News Agency, Xiongan โ€œwill become home to facilities not related to the capital that were relocated from Beijing, where breakneck urban growth has given rise toโ€ฆtraffic 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 Xionganโ€™s location, and โ€œseven major tasksโ€ for the planned development, which include โ€œbuilding 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 Chinaโ€™s economic boom after the โ€œreform and opening upโ€ policy began in the early 1980s. The new area is also connected to the โ€œBeijing-Tianjin-Hebei integrationโ€ (ไบฌๆดฅๅ†€ไธ€ไฝ“ๅŒ– jฤซng jฤซn jรฌ yฤซtวhuร ) project, which seeks to collectively develop Chinaโ€™s 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 โ€œshut 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 Chinaโ€™s 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 โ€œbegan 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 โ€œXi Jinpingโ€™s 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 โ€œfavorably on Mr Trumpโ€™s business,โ€ but it is unclear whether this strategy will pay off. However, as the New York Timesย points outย (paywall), despite all of Trumpโ€™s tough talk on trade with China, there has been no โ€œreal 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 โ€œthat we cannot continue to trade if we are going to have an unfair deal like we have right now,โ€ and that โ€œif 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 โ€œthe 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 โ€œkey channel for high-level interactions between the White House and Chinese leadership run by Trumpโ€™s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.โ€

Australia-based professor leaves China after detention

Feng Chongyiย ๅ†ฏๅด‡ไน‰, 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 โ€œif they wanted to scare me they failed miserably.โ€

Meanwhile, there is still no official word on the whereabouts of Lee Ming-chehย ๆŽๆ˜Žๅ“ฒ, 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 Agencyโ€™s 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.

โ€”Jeremy 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

โ€œThere 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 worldโ€™s 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 Chinaโ€™s 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.



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POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

On democracy and individual rights in China

Orville Schell, director of the Asia Societyโ€™s Center on U.S.-China Relations, wrote a surprisingly optimistic pieceย (paywall) in the Wall Street Journal titledย โ€œChinaโ€™s 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 โ€™80s, and explains how they still give context to modern debates on the development of the country. He also compares Chinaโ€™s many โ€œdemocratic impulsesโ€ over the past century to โ€œrecessive genes that can skip a generation before expressing themselves again.โ€ Schell further speculates that, paradoxically, Donald Trumpโ€™s stunning silence on human rights could give those impulses room to breathe, as Chinaโ€™s 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 governmentโ€™s approval last month of the General Principles of the Civil Law, which she calls โ€œsimply the preambleโ€ to a modern civil code. She arguesย that surrounding this latest formalization of civil law in China, as with previous reforms, is โ€œan uneasy awareness that individual property rights are the basis from which other individual rights are derived.โ€



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SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

U.S. cities woo Chinese travelers with creature comforts

Chinese tourists โ€œalready 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 โ€œcampaigns 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 โ€œslippers, 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.


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