- Xi targets billionaires
- The end of migrant workers
- Cosco and Port of Hamburg near agreement
- US restricts number of passengers from China
- Hong Kong activist pressured to incriminate jimmy Lai
- Demands for Tibet’s cultural adaptation
- Johnny Erling: Qincheng – China’s notorious prison
- Executive Moves: Evergrande founder steps down as Hengda chairman
The number 13 is not to blame should Apple not be able to ship its new iPhone 13 model to customers on time next month. The reason lies in the labor shortage at Foxconn’s factories in China. The Taiwan-based company is Apple’s largest contract manufacturer. Migrant workers at Foxconn assemble 80 percent of Apple’s iPhones. But because the major industrial centers are less and less attractive to workers, they are now being lured with higher salaries and extra payments. Beijing also wants to better handle migration to the country in the future, as Frank Sieren analyses.
“Fight inequality!” – this could also be the slogan on German election posters. But it actually is the new program of China’s President Xi Jinping. His idea of the Chinese Dream lies in a more equal distribution of wealth. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has looked into the details and sees a departure from Deng Xiaoping’s precept that “some should be allowed to get rich faster” in order to pull all others with them. The new goal is “shared prosperity for all,” and as equally distributed as possible.
Yan Mingfu, Mao’s former Russian interpreter and later vice-minister of civil affairs, has shed tears thinking back to his time in Qincheng Prison near Beijing. Johnny Erling spoke with him. He also conducted in-depth investigations to shed light on some myths surrounding the infamous prison, where Mao’s widow also served time. The prison is such a taboo that even China’s judiciary has no access to it.
Have a pleasant weekend!
Ning Wang
Feature
Xi targets billionaires
China is still communist according to its title. Therefore, one question is particularly pressing there, and it is currently a concern for many other countries – including Germany and the US. The rich are getting richer much faster than the poor are gaining income. President Xi Jinping has now given China a direction to counteract this: China needs a more equal distribution of income growth, is his policy guideline, which state media proclaimed on Wednesday evening. Plans for more redistribution from the bottom to the top also resonate within his words.
In Party language, it read, “We should spare no effort to establish a ‘scientific’ public policy system that allows for fairer income distribution. In addition, Xi added, “the needs and opportunities of all must be coordinated according to financial sustainability.” Living standards should be strengthened “inclusively and from the bottom up.” A framework for development in which all can participate is needed. “Shared prosperity is the prosperity of all, […] not the wealth of a few,” Xi said. Common prosperity 共同富裕, in turn, is a precept of socialism.
Xi’s remarks on the occasion of the 10th meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission mark a policy change. For he is addressing a sentiment of the great reformer Deng Xiaoping and for the first time explicitly invalidating it. The People’s Daily report on the meeting stresses that those present agreed on the historic course: The party had “broken the chains of the traditional system and allowed some people and some regions to get rich faster.” Those were Deng’s words. Some were supposed to “get rich faster” and pull along everyone else. But things are different now under Xi, the commission stresses. The Central Commission now “focuses on the steady realization of common prosperity.” By focusing on the prosperity and happiness of all Chinese people, the party is securing the foundation of its rule, the People’s Daily candidly reports on the meeting.
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