Xi criticises protectionism at APEC summit, meets Biden in Peru
Plus, why tens of thousands of Chinese students joined a 40-mile nighttime bike ride.
Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly update on the latest news and developments from the country.
Apologies for the delay in this issue—I was waiting for updates on the Xi-Biden meeting, held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Lima, Peru.
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Let’s get into it.
— PC
Update (Nov 16, 2024, 11:37 PM GMT): Included a reference to the White House's Readout of President Joe Biden’s Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China.
Through the Lens
In Focus
I. Bizarre love triangle
The urgency of a unified Euro-American front against China cannot be overstated. Both sides must recognize that their approaches to trade, technology, and security are inextricably linked, and that their divisions will only embolden Beijing. Trade-offs will have to be made to reach some common ground on China. Europe will have to adopt a more assertive stance, not only in terms of economic policy but also in articulating its strategic interests and taking over more responsibility for its own security. Understanding and developing its own approach to burden-shifting will also be critical, especially as the United States reduces its defense spending and refocuses on the Indo-Pacific region. This requires avoiding the scenario of a dormant NATO or a European security architecture shaped by the United States without the Europeans at the table.
Furthermore, Europe will have to craft a more robust economic security strategy that integrates both defensive measures against Chinese practices and opportunities for collaboration in technology and trade. Using these instruments in a systematic manner but also in coordination with the United States will be key. Similarly, Europe will be tested on its capacity to rebalance its technology entanglement with China and restrict technology flows to China.
The United States will have to rebuild trust by coordinating its defensive measures with Europe. One way to do this is joining forces on trade disputes. However, this cannot start with a trade war with Europe, launching 10–20 percent tariffs across the board. Finding a way to secure sectoral trade agreements and supply chains, especially in light of the fundamental disagreements over the World Trade Organization, should be the starting point of a renewed transatlantic relationship.
Read: Toward a Transatlantic Deal on China (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
II. An American walks into the Central Party School in Beijing
I delivered my talk — about 35 or 40 minutes — and then hands flew up. I thought, This is it. I had tried to be careful, but now I’d be denounced as a capitalist roader or a stalking horse for American imperialism.
The moderator tried to control things, but people weren’t waiting for their turn. The first person said, “We need democracy in the Chinese Communist Party,” and suddenly voices, arguments, and opinions bursted out. The translator was quickly overwhelmed. There was a profusion of views—people were not just repeating but expanding on what I’d said, it was astonishing. There was pent-up frustration about the lack of voice and space, and at least within the Party School, they wanted more democracy.
Read: When I Taught At Central Party School in Beijing - with Larry Diamond ()
III. Mi casa es su casa
In Eason Lin’s cramped one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, the living room is a maze of hundreds of boxes. All of the packages will soon ship out to Americans who shop on Temu and TikTok Shop.
Lin, 28, hails from a small town in China’s southeastern province of Fujian and arrived in New York in 2022. Lin worked as a waiter at Chinese restaurants for a few months but grew frustrated with the grueling hours and low pay. When he heard the logistics industry was thriving, he saw an opportunity. He turned his small living room into a makeshift warehouse, offering order fulfillment services to sellers in Shenzhen, China’s e-commerce hub.
“It’s a comfortable job,” says Lin, who wakes up each morning to check orders, print shipping labels, and pack items. He transports packages on foot, either in a backpack or on a trolley, to a nearby post office, since he doesn’t own a car. For every package he processes, he charges Chinese sellers about $1.
Read: Chinese immigrants run e-commerce hubs out of their homes (Rest of World)
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Politics & Society
Silence descends around China’s deadliest mass killing in years as flowers cleared away (AP)
Online discussion about China’s deadliest mass killing in years was being censored Wednesday as authorities in a southern city cleared candles and flowers from the memorial to the 35 people dead.
Police have offered little information about the 62-year-old driver who rammed his vehicle into a sports complex in Zhuhai on Monday, mowing down people as they were exercising. They said the man, identified only by his surname of Fan, was upset about his divorce settlement. He was arrested as he tried to flee the scene.
The attack, which also severely injured 43 people, took place on the eve of the Zhuhai Airshow, sponsored by the People’s Liberation Army and held every other year. China often makes extra efforts to tightly control information around major or sensitive events.
As China mourns, some question delay in release of information about deadly car attack (The Guardian)
In the hours since a 63-year-old man rammed his car into a sports centre in Zhuhai, killing 35 people and severely injuring 43 others, questions have swirled on Chinese social media about why it took authorities so long to reveal the details.
The driver, identified by his family name of Fan, was discovered in the car with self-inflicted knife wounds to his neck. Police said their preliminary investigation suggested he was dissatisfied with the split of assets in his divorce.
But little of that, or the full scale of the casualties, was known until a full day later.
Immediately after the incident, the deadliest mass killing in a decade, searches about what had happened were heavily censored, videos of the scene posted to social media were deleted, and early state media reports were removed from the internet.
It was only after the police released their report on Tuesday evening that news articles appeared in state media, and social media users could discuss the event more freely.
Eight killed and 17 injured in mass stabbing in eastern China (CNN)
Eight people were killed and 17 others injured in a stabbing attack on a college campus in the eastern Chinese city of Yixing on Saturday, police say.
“Around 6:30 p.m. on November 16, 2024, a stabbing incident that resulted in casualties occurred at Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing city, causing 8 deaths and injuring another 17, The suspect was apprehended on the scene,” according to a police statement.
The statement said that the suspect was a recent graduate and was motivated by “failing [an] exam, not receiving a graduation certificate, and dissatisfaction with internship compensation.” An investigation is ongoing.
The attack is the latest mass casualty incident to hit China.
China's 'Night Riding Army' snarls traffic on quest for soup dumplings (NBC News)
They rode for soup dumplings — and a sense of youthful liberation in pressured times.
But the band of university students who cycled through the night would ultimately be met by a red light from authorities, after their viral quest grew so popular that it snarled traffic in central China and overwhelmed the ancient capital, Kaifeng.
The nocturnal rides became a trend on Chinese social media in recent weeks after four female university students from Zhengzhou, the capital of China’s north-central Henan province, traveled to neighboring Kaifeng for a taste of its famous soup dumplings, known locally as “tangbao,” Chinese state media People’s Daily reported.
By the weekend, tens of thousands of students had joined this self-proclaimed "night riding army," seeking not just breakfast, but also a way to travel and socialize without spending much money.
They rented shared bikes and cycled in groups through the night from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng. Waves of riders propelled by the slogan "youth is priceless" joined this 40-mile journey along a major road beside the Yellow River.
This is ultimately just a bunch of young people exercising agency for the first time in their life and feeling the associated exhilaration. So what they stop traffic? So what if the streets are filled with abandoned bikes? So what you can’t find a bike to ride to work with? So what if there’s trash everywhere? They’re precisely exploring the concept that they don’t have to care about anyone else’s opinions. That they can do something just because they want to, no matter how much other people disapprove.
How Do Chinese Spend Their Time? (Sixth Tone)
In contemporary China, it’s time — and not love — that’s a battlefield.
Workers complain of grueling schedules with no time to relax. Kids and parents say that homework is keeping them up late into the night. No one is sleeping enough and everyone spends too much time glued to their phones.
But is any of it true? China’s National Bureau of Statistics keeps surprisingly detailed records of how Chinese spend their days. Released roughly once a decade, the National Time-Use Survey is perhaps the best window into how the country splits its days between work, play, and sleep.
Related: Communiqué on China’s Third National Time Use Survey (No. 1), Communiqué on China’s Third National Time Use Survey (No. 2), Communiqué on China’s Third National Time Use Survey (No. 3) (National Bureau of Statistics of China)
Chinese workers to get 2 extra days’ holiday, including longer Lunar New Year (SCMP)
China announced on Tuesday that two days will be added to the public holiday calendar next year, taking the total to 13.
The move does not create new holidays but extends two existing ones, including Lunar New Year, the country’s biggest festival.
As of next year, Spring Festival will be extended from three days to four with the addition of Lunar New Year’s Eve.
The traditional Labour Day holiday on May 1 will also be extended with the addition of the following day.
The Chinese authorities have typically banked on extended breaks as a way of boosting consumer spending and this is a particular concern at present amid faltering growth and a strategy of boosting domestic consumption to help the economy.
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Chinese social media reels over young woman’s illegal surrogacy case (The Straits Times)
A 22-year-old Chinese woman's account of how she was lured into the country's illegal surrogacy industry before suffering a miscarriage went viral on Chinese social media this week and raised heated debates over women's rights and social inequality.
Surrogacy is banned in China, and authorities have vowed to severely crack down on illegal practices, including the buying and selling of sperm, egg and surrogacy services.
[…]
Ms Zhang Jing, 22, told state-backed Phoenix TV magazine that she donated her eggs out of financial desperation and then agreed to "rent out her uterus" to be impregnated for a total of 30,000 yuan (S$5,579).
If she "successfully" delivered the baby, she would be paid a total of 240,000 yuan. At five months pregnant, she experienced severe complications and had to have an abortion.
Ms Zhang's story amassed more than 86 million views and 10,000 comments on Chinese social media platform Weibo, with the hashtag "#2000s-born Surrogate Miscarriage Girl Speaks Out#."
The majority of comments strongly opposed surrogacy.
Making Fun of Men in China Comes at a Cost (WSJ)
Attitudes of Chinese women and men on gender equality increasingly diverge, according to a 2020 study by professors at the University of British Columbia and the Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Most strikingly, the researchers found that highly educated men born in the 1990s were significantly more inclined than their female counterparts to agree with a statement that men should put career first and women should put family first. The researchers said that was likely to make more educated women delay or forgo marriage.
Chinese authorities treat feminism with special caution. Beijing has in the past decade detained and jailed feminist activists and promoted traditional family values. Pop-culture icons like Yang don’t fit into the feminine ideals that were historically celebrated in Chinese literature and popular culture. But Yang and others have to tread a fine line in shining a light on women’s circumstances without veering into content that could be seen as political.
In 2021, after feminist activist Xiao Meili posted a video on social-media platform Weibo of her confronting a man who refused to stop smoking at a restaurant, a number of male nationalist influencers started a campaign against Xiao and a dozen other feminist activists, cobbling together what they felt was evidence of the women’s disloyalty to China. The activists have said that soon afterward, their Weibo accounts were deleted without explanation.
After one of them sued Weibo for damaging her reputation, Weibo responded that her account had been closed for posting “illegal and harmful information.”
Women have sometimes challenged brands and companies over what they see as sexist content. In 2021, tens of thousands of women boycotted the video-streaming site Bilibili after it promoted an animated show that was criticized for portraying women as objects of male desire and using humor to put women down. Female users also pressured several brands to cut ties with Bilibili, which later removed the series for what it claimed was “technical reasons.”
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