- Effeminate youth? China debates masculinity
- Diplomatic escalation in the South China Sea
- Will Xi join the 17+1 meeting?
- France approves ‘anti-Huawei law’
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- China drives up global food prices
- Dirk Ehnts: Should Beijing be afraid of a financial crisis?
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The continuing public criticism of the European-Chinese investment agreement (CAI) is apparently prompting Beijing to take confidence-building measures. The Chinese government wants to “promote the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment”, Premier Li Keqiang told thirty high-ranking representatives of European companies at a virtual meeting on Friday. All sides should meet “halfway” to do so, he said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also let know who listened to the words of the Prime Ministerin extracts after the meeting: Volvo, Airbus, JCDecaux, AstraZeneca, L’Oreal, BASF and SAP – the crème de la crème of European business. That’s how you send messages to your negotiating partners in Brussels.
And the most direct way to do it is this: None other than Zhang Ming spoke directly to the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade. The Chinese EU ambassador, participants in the internal committee meeting recalled, had promised in “big words” that Beijing would adhere to all the obligations laid down in the CAI and would push ahead with the controversial ILO provisions on forced labor.
Whether the round of such friendly messages will continue at tomorrow’s meeting of the 17 Central and Eastern European states and China (17+1 format) is questionable, however. Amelie Richter has taken a look behind the scenes of the summit diplomacy – and observed mostly disgruntlement.
Antje Sirleschtov
Feature
China debates masculinity
Is the Chinese man too effeminate? That is the subject of a social debate that is spreading ever wider. Conservative politicians demand to oppose an alleged trend towards the “feminization” of young men. For now, the Ministry of Education has responded with a basically innocuous regulation: It is strengthening physical education classes nationwide.
However, in a poll conducted by the Phoenix news portal, 64 percent of respondents believe the country’s male youth need “masculine education“. The question in the same polls about whether China’s youth need “heterosexualization” is concerning. More than half of the respondents agreed, with only 30 percent clearly rejecting the idea. While this is only one portal’s poll, it is still based on one million participants. The coverage in Chinese media shows along which lines the discussion is running. It revolves primarily around the term “yanggang” (阳刚), which is composed of the character for “male” (known from “yin and yang”) and the one for “hard, strong, powerful”. Meanwhile, the state media tries to boil down the debate. “Masculinity” should not be about emphasizing gender differences but about developing healthy physiques and inner strength, commented the Xinhua news agency.
Business CEO Si Zefu sparked the debate last May with a political push. Si is the head of the utility company Dongfang Electric. In his capacity as a deputy to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, he had diagnosed a “crisis of masculinity”. In a draft resolution, he claimed China’s boys have become too “delicate, timid and effeminate”. The “effeminate” generation of young men was now a “danger to the continued existence of the Chinese people”.
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