- Reputation of Western media collapses in China
- Private tutoring in China takes heavy hit
- Chip manufacture TSMC bonds with Germany
- China opposes EU CO2 Tax
- Faraday Future debuts on US stock market
- UK plans to exclude CGN
- Hamburg mayor backs stake acquisition by Cosco
- Tools: China’s new stamp tax law
It is a classic complaint among China’s rulers: foreign countries do not understand the People’s Republic. But to fully understand the full pictures, you need to look at both sides of the same coin. The everyday life of foreign journalists working in China, who set out to understand the country and its people, is becoming increasingly difficult. Marcel Grzanna describes how even reports on the Olympic Games or on the catastrophic flooding in Henan are provoking vicious threats against Western media.
Beijing is currently also cracking down on other unpopular industrial sectors: private education companies are under fire – if only metaphorically. Our team of authors in Beijing reports on how China’s authorities are brutally cracking down on companies that up until now stood for rapid growth and big profits. But if and how new rules and guidelines will actually give stressed-out students more free time and equal educational opportunities remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC is considering Germany as a location for one of its plants. Plans may still be at an early stage, but given the importance of chips for several economic branches, the construction of a new plant would be an important competitive advantage for TSCM. As one of many affected branches, German car manufacturers have had to reduce or even interrupt production in many cases over the recent months due to the shortage.
Last but not least, I would like to recommend our “Tool” for today. In it, we explain the incoming changes to China’s stamp duty tax – and how companies can benefit from it.
I hope you will enjoy our latest issue!
Feature
Incitement against foreign media
The Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka is in outrage. On Twitter, news agency Reuters had published the news of the victory by weightlifter Hou Zhihui at the Olympic Games in the weight class of up to 49 kg, accompanied by a picture of the athlete. The photo depicted the exact moment as Hou lifts the barbell upwards. Inevitably, the young woman’s face reflects the enormous effort required to pull almost twice her own body weight up from the ground over her head in one movement.
Chinese diplomats in Sri Lanka, however, recognized in the image selection a malicious move of Western media against their home country. The reason is probably that the face of the gold medal winner looks tense and distorted at this moment. Certainly a disadvantage for a model, but probably not of any concern for a power athlete. “Out of all the pictures in this contest, Reuters has chosen the one that proves how ugly they (Reuters) are… Shameless.” The tweet was linked with a polemical comment in which the accusing news agency labels itself as unbiased media, while putting politics and ideology above sports.
This raises the fundamental question of whether the portrayal of China in Western media is in fact part of a grand conspiracy against the second-largest economy, or whether the representatives of the Chinese government use every opportunity to categorically denigrate the reputation of foreign reporting on their country in order to divert attention from their own mistakes and marginalize critics.
- BBC
- BBC
- Chinese Communist Party
- Media
- Media
- Olympia
- Olympia
- Society
- Sports
- Sports
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