- Interview with China economist Doris Fischer
- How easy will diplomacy be with the new “helmsman”?
- Watered-down compromise on coal at COP26
- Compass and Gateway – Brussels presents strategies
- Traffic light coalition speaks of systems rivalry
- Xi and Biden video summit
- COVID measures: online outrage over killed dog
- Profile: Hong Kong activist Glacier Kwong
- Executive Moves: SMIC loses several board members
US whistleblower Frances Haugen is currently on tour in Europe: In Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, the 37-year-old warned of the power of the Facebook platform and its newly named parent company Metaverse. Chances are that Beijing listened eagerly to the deliberations on data theft and manipulation because, while it is not news that Western networks are not particularly welcome in the People’s Republic, it did come as a surprise how relentlessly the leadership in China has been cracking down on the tech sector since the middle of this year. After all, the sector is highly innovative and a growth engine for the country.
For economist Doris Fischer of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg, however, the move is understandable to a certain extent: “Of course the leadership knows that the country needs these vital companies. At the same time, however, it also looks at other countries and sees how uncontrollable and dangerous social networks, in particular, can become. They want to prevent that.”
In an interview with Felix Lee, Fischer talks about the Chinese government’s “headache” regarding tech companies. The economist also explains why bad news in individual sectors does not immediately mean that growth will collapse. Unlike other experts, she cannot currently identify any foreclosure in the country.
But it is precisely such an increasingly isolated China that observers now fear after the “historic resolution” of the 6th Plenum last week. China.Table asked politicians and China experts for their assessment of President Xi Jinping’s expansion of power. It turns out that the hope that Xi’s hard-line could weaken internally and externally is visibly fading into the sand. The personality cult around the “party emperor” does not suggest an easy diplomatic future between Brussels and Beijing.
We wish you a good start to the week!
Amelie Richter
Interview
“China does not want to close itself off”
Disclaimer: This interview has been translated into English and is not considered an official translation by any party involved in the interview.
Ms. Fischer, delivery bottlenecks, power outages, tech companies under pressure, then the crisis of the real estate giant Evergrande – the problems are piling up. What is the current state of the world’s second-largest economy?
I recently spoke to a German entrepreneur who described how rapidly the transport costs from China to Germany have risen for many companies. There are not enough containers. There are various reasons for this. But COVID is still one of them. Although China has the pandemic mostly under control in its own country, the virus still plays a serious role. In the summer months, it was the ports of Ningbo and Shenzhen that the authorities partially closed down because of a few cases. Now it is also hitting rail traffic. The Chinese authorities recently closed two border crossings for freight trains because there were two cases. There is now also a backlog in rail traffic.
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