India and China share a roughly 3,500-kilometer-long border. Since the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, its partly unclear location has repeatedly caused conflicts. This month, border troops from both countries clashed in the Arunachal Pradesh region. Fortunately, there were no casualties – at an altitude of 5,000 meters, the soldiers of the two nuclear powers fought almost archaically. In order to prevent a drastic escalation, they are mostly equipped only with clubs.
Nevertheless, the local skirmishes have geopolitical significance, writes Michael Radunski. After all, in the rivalry between the US and China, Washington begins to discover India as a partner – from an economic and security perspective. It seems unlikely that the potentially volatile border situation will improve any time soon. With new roads and runways, both sides show that they do not plan to back down even an inch.
Since Tuesday, more than 100 countries have been negotiating a new global agreement on the protection of ecological diversity under the Chinese presidency at the COP15 Biodiversity Conference. However, the conference is not taking place in China, but in Montreal, Canada. Zero-Covid has made a meeting in China impossible; now Beijing will have to accept a shared host role.
Time is short: Around one million species face extinction, and half of the world’s economic output depends on healthy ecosystems. With the topic of biodiversity, Xi Jinping wanted to set global accents. In October 2021, China’s president announced a biodiversity fund of just over 200 million euros at the first, virtual part of COP15. But in Montreal, China has yet to take a clear position on many crucial issues, write Timo Landenberger and Christiane Kuehl. In the run-up to the conference, Beijing had not yet made any binding commitments on any agenda items.
Today marks the first anniversary of our Sinolytics.Radar format. This popular section has so far featured 52 charts with explanations of current issues, which have met much acclaim for their visual presentation of complex topics. To mark this anniversary, we now offer all charts in one publication. Click here for the free download.
Indian and Chinese troops have once again engaged in violent clashes on their disputed border in the Himalayas. The bloody incident in the Tawang sector in the Arunachal Pradesh region last Friday resulted in injuries on both sides.
It was the most violent incident between China and India since 2020 – and brings back bad memories of the border war between the two nuclear powers in 1962. Fortunately, the current situation is far from that. But the incidents at an altitude of around 5,000 meters show how tense and fragile the relationship between China and India is. On top of that, the United States is increasingly betting on India in its rivalry with China.
The border between India and China in the Himalayan Mountains has been disputed for decades; time and again skirmishes erupt there. This is because the exact line of the border has not been defined. Rather, it is a “line of actual control” (LAC). This line is around 3,500 kilometers long and stretches across the harsh heights of the Himalayas – from Ladakh in the west to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the east.
In 1962, the two nuclear powers fought a bloody border war that claimed the lives of some 2,000 people. The war ended with a Chinese victory, but it did not bring major territorial changes or even a final border settlement. The last violent confrontation to date happened in June 2020 – in the so-called western sector of the Ladakh region. And again, people were killed – 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers. And also, again, no solution.
The current incident occurred last Friday in the east, in the Tawang sector on the so-called McMahon Line 麦克马洪线, (màikèmǎhóng xiàn) east of Bhutan. From Beijing’s perspective, India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh actually belongs to Tibet and thus to the People’s Republic. According to Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Chinese troops have attempted to change the status quo.
Not without a sense of pride, Singh told the parliament in Delhi on Tuesday, “Our army faced this attempt of China with firmness. A scuffle ensued in this face-off. The Indian Army bravely prevented the PLA from encroaching on our territory, and forced them to withdraw to their posts. Some soldiers from both sides were injured in the skirmish.”
Meanwhile, Beijing tried to downplay the incident. The situation on the India-China border is “generally stable,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. Both sides reportedly communicate through diplomatic and military channels to discuss the border issue.
The reason for this supposed soberness may be because no one was killed this time. Since 1988, both sides have patrolled only lightly armed along the LAC to avoid escalating the situation. And so cell phone videos show how downright archaic a conflict between two nuclear powers can be – luckily: In the barren landscape of the Himalayas, between rugged mountains at an altitude of around 5,000 meters, Chinese and Indian soldiers attack each other with fists and sticks, throwing stones and hurling wild insults.
What is clear is that neither side will give up a single inch without a fight. Not today – and not tomorrow. And this is precisely where the danger lies. Both sides have recently massively expanded and upgraded their borders. This includes not only roads, but also runways for aircraft. Since July 2021, a Chinese high-speed train has been running from Chengdu via the Tibetan capital Lhasa to Nyingchi near the border with the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Travel time: a short three and a half hours.
“If a scenario of a crisis happens at the China-India border, the railway will provide a great convenience for China’s delivery of strategic materials,” said Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University. And so some experts in Delhi also expected that the next clash could happen at that very spot on Friday.
And the Indian side is also investing: Between March 2018 and 2020, more than 1,500 kilometers of road were built in the border region and troop numbers increased from 50,000 to 200,000 in the past year. “India’s efforts to improve border infrastructure has certainly created some uncertainty among the PLA leadership,” says Niranjan Sahoo, a researcher at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi told China.Table.
When India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke recently about the China-India relationship, he specifically mentioned the ongoing border disputes. Time and again, Chinese troops would try to unilaterally change the LAC. And Jaishankar clarified, “So long as they continue to seek to do that, and if they have built up forces, which in our minds constitute a serious concern in the border areas, then our relationship is not normal.”
However, the local border disputes also have a global impact. After all, tensions between India and China are heating up again, and not just on the disputed border. In the rivalry between the United States and China, Washington begins to discover India as a potential partner – both economically with the relocation of production facilities from the People’s Republic to the Indian subcontinent, and in security matters via formats such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, consisting of India and the United States as well as US allies Japan and Australia (China.Table reported).
“China keeps causing such low-intensity conflicts on the border to keep India tied to its eastern border instead of focusing on its regional and global ambitions, such as in the Indo-Pacific,” Sahoo says. In Delhi, China’s President Xi Jinping is believed to be sending a warning to Delhi not to get too drawn to the US side.
It’s half-time at the COP15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal. Officially until December 19, the 196 signatory states to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will negotiate a new global agreement on the protection of ecological diversity. Around one million species face extinction. But half of the global economy’s output depends on healthy ecosystems. According to the WWF 2022 Living Planet Report presented in October, the observed wildlife populations worldwide declined by an average of 69 percent between 1970 and 2018.
So the situation is grim. And yet COP15 is proving to be a difficult conference. This is because of hardened positions, the complexity of the challenges – but also because of how the conference came about: With Canadian hosts and yet under Chinese presidency. Originally, the meeting was supposed to be held in Kunming in 2020. But then, the Covid pandemic virtually crippled China. “Due to the zero-Covid policy, hardly any officials could travel abroad. The usual diplomacy of the COP presidency in the background did not happen this time. This had a decisive impact on the preparations, which is still felt today,” Li Shuo of Greenpeace China told Table.Media in Montreal.
The COP15 was divided into two parts: A virtual kick-off event in Kunming was supposed to be followed by the big physical conference. But it had to be postponed several times because of Covid. Finally, Canada stepped in, as the CBD Secretariat is located in Montreal. But China should lead the negotiations. In a press conference on Tuesday, China’s Minister of Environment and COP15 President Huang Runqiu praised the “good and constructive cooperation” between the negotiating parties. Around one-third of all items on the COP agenda have already been ticked off.
What sounds good at first, however, also means that two-thirds are still missing. In particular, crucial issues, such as implementing the targeted goals or financing, remain unresolved. At the same time, time is running out. On Thursday, the so-called high-level segment begins with the environment ministers of the signatory states to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Huang announced the drafting of a roadmap for the high-level meeting, which will rank the issues according to urgency. After COP15, a new UN agreement on biodiversity by 2050 is expected to be drawn up, entitled the Post-2020 Global Diversity Framework (GBF), which will set out specific binding targets.
China had already applied to host the conference in 2016, shortly after the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris generated global attention. “The Chinese government wanted to create something similar and produce a Paris moment for biodiversity,” says Li Shuo. But in 2015, about 150 heads of state and government traveled to the French capital, and that alone gave the meeting the dimension it needed. Only one came to Montreal: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The loss of ecological diversity is seen more as a regional and less as a transnational problem, which is how Li Shuo explains the lack of interest. But there is another reason. The Chinese presidency did not invite top officials to Montreal. Not enough time for preparation, was the official justification. The unofficial one from the hallways at the conference grounds: China wanted not to draw too much attention to the hosts. In fact, COP15 President Huang Runqiu never tires of emphasizing that Montreal is only the second part of the conference, which was actually supposed to take place in Kunming.
Back then, in October 2021, China’s President Xi Jinping announced in a video speech a financial fund called the Kunming Biodiversity Fund with a Chinese contribution of 1.5 billion yuan (205 million euros). The fund is intended to help developing countries preserve biodiversity. Xi also invited other countries to participate. He also promised to step up China’s efforts to fight species extinction, including the continued expansion of China’s nature reserves. They currently cover about 18 percent of China’s land area.
The member states passed the rather vaguely formulated “Kunming Declaration” online, which at least already includes the target set for the Global Biodiversity Framework of placing 30 percent of land and marine areas under protection by 2030 (China.Table reported). This was said to be the goal of “many states”.
In total, the draft framework for the GBF agreement contains more than 20 targets, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), including proposals such as
Instead of unity, however, there is a web of different groups forging their own alliances or submitting proposals, depending on the topic. And China has yet to take a clear position on most of the issues. According to the environmental and climate expert service Carbon Brief, there was no full support from Beijing for any of the topics in the run-up to the conference. It is known that China rejects quantifiable targets for a gradual phase-out of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
China will “spare no effort” to persuade all parties to adopt the GBF and coordinate the talks, Huang Runqiu said in his opening speech – “to write a new chapter of global biodiversity conservation.” Time is short. Timo Landenberger, Christiane Kuehl
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
After thirty years in Germany, Wenhai Wang clearly saw the demand: The longer he worked for German companies, the more frequently the native Chinese was asked for more exchange with his economically ambitious home country. In fact, he found no simple framework in which such a bridging function could be established in everyday life. So in 2017, without further ado, he decided to set up a foundation that mediates between Germany and China and supports projects in the media, education, culture, business and technology sectors.
After three years, the Foundation German and Chinese Culture already employed a dozen people who were responsible for coordinating the incoming inquiries. For Wang, this was a sign that his assessment was correct that the field of German-Chinese cultural exchange had been dramatically understaffed up to that point. “Every month, the team receives around 600 mails and messages on WeChat,” he says. “There’s everything from private individuals, institutions from the arts and education, to medium-sized companies and large corporations.”
Wang and his team get involved whenever someone is enthusiastic about an idea but has no clue who to turn to in order to realize it. They pass on information to the relevant authorities, occasionally help people fill out forms and give advice when uncertainties arise: “The Chinese relationship culture is simply different from the German consulting culture. But we can sense risks and, in case of doubt, tell you when it’s better to take a different turn.”
One of the more recent projects involved setting up a media center for Messe Berlin at the IFA. Here, the foundation handled the conceptualization, provided staff to coordinate national news coverage, and recruited a German production company.
Other collaborations included the Berlinale, where the foundation assisted with the import of Chinese films. Or with several schools and universities in China and Germany, which are always knocking on the door for exchange opportunities. At present, the team develops a program with Berlin galleries to organize an art tour of China for 2024. Conversely, more and more Chinese artists want to relocate to the EU, Wang explains.
In addition to cultural exchange, a core component of the foundation’s work is economic dialog. In cooperation with the German Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, numerous satellite offices have been opened in China, for which Wang’s team has provided links between German companies and Chinese service providers in matters relating to copyright, business settlement policy and business promotion: “We don’t carry out these processes, but we always place people in the right places to ensure that they can proceed smoothly.”
The “unpredictable lines of development in the political landscape,” as Wang carefully puts it, also worry him. But Wang’s pragmatic optimism remains unbroken regardless: “If connections are put on hold in the next five years, then that is the way it will be. But there will always be curious people – in China as well as here. We will work wherever we can.” Julius Schwarzwaelder
Every December, the city of Harbin in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang transforms into a gigantic sculpture park made of snow and ice. Here, a worker uses a shovel to put the finishing touches on a majestic snow steed. The “International Ice and Snow Festival” ends on February 28, 2023.
India and China share a roughly 3,500-kilometer-long border. Since the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, its partly unclear location has repeatedly caused conflicts. This month, border troops from both countries clashed in the Arunachal Pradesh region. Fortunately, there were no casualties – at an altitude of 5,000 meters, the soldiers of the two nuclear powers fought almost archaically. In order to prevent a drastic escalation, they are mostly equipped only with clubs.
Nevertheless, the local skirmishes have geopolitical significance, writes Michael Radunski. After all, in the rivalry between the US and China, Washington begins to discover India as a partner – from an economic and security perspective. It seems unlikely that the potentially volatile border situation will improve any time soon. With new roads and runways, both sides show that they do not plan to back down even an inch.
Since Tuesday, more than 100 countries have been negotiating a new global agreement on the protection of ecological diversity under the Chinese presidency at the COP15 Biodiversity Conference. However, the conference is not taking place in China, but in Montreal, Canada. Zero-Covid has made a meeting in China impossible; now Beijing will have to accept a shared host role.
Time is short: Around one million species face extinction, and half of the world’s economic output depends on healthy ecosystems. With the topic of biodiversity, Xi Jinping wanted to set global accents. In October 2021, China’s president announced a biodiversity fund of just over 200 million euros at the first, virtual part of COP15. But in Montreal, China has yet to take a clear position on many crucial issues, write Timo Landenberger and Christiane Kuehl. In the run-up to the conference, Beijing had not yet made any binding commitments on any agenda items.
Today marks the first anniversary of our Sinolytics.Radar format. This popular section has so far featured 52 charts with explanations of current issues, which have met much acclaim for their visual presentation of complex topics. To mark this anniversary, we now offer all charts in one publication. Click here for the free download.
Indian and Chinese troops have once again engaged in violent clashes on their disputed border in the Himalayas. The bloody incident in the Tawang sector in the Arunachal Pradesh region last Friday resulted in injuries on both sides.
It was the most violent incident between China and India since 2020 – and brings back bad memories of the border war between the two nuclear powers in 1962. Fortunately, the current situation is far from that. But the incidents at an altitude of around 5,000 meters show how tense and fragile the relationship between China and India is. On top of that, the United States is increasingly betting on India in its rivalry with China.
The border between India and China in the Himalayan Mountains has been disputed for decades; time and again skirmishes erupt there. This is because the exact line of the border has not been defined. Rather, it is a “line of actual control” (LAC). This line is around 3,500 kilometers long and stretches across the harsh heights of the Himalayas – from Ladakh in the west to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the east.
In 1962, the two nuclear powers fought a bloody border war that claimed the lives of some 2,000 people. The war ended with a Chinese victory, but it did not bring major territorial changes or even a final border settlement. The last violent confrontation to date happened in June 2020 – in the so-called western sector of the Ladakh region. And again, people were killed – 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers. And also, again, no solution.
The current incident occurred last Friday in the east, in the Tawang sector on the so-called McMahon Line 麦克马洪线, (màikèmǎhóng xiàn) east of Bhutan. From Beijing’s perspective, India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh actually belongs to Tibet and thus to the People’s Republic. According to Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Chinese troops have attempted to change the status quo.
Not without a sense of pride, Singh told the parliament in Delhi on Tuesday, “Our army faced this attempt of China with firmness. A scuffle ensued in this face-off. The Indian Army bravely prevented the PLA from encroaching on our territory, and forced them to withdraw to their posts. Some soldiers from both sides were injured in the skirmish.”
Meanwhile, Beijing tried to downplay the incident. The situation on the India-China border is “generally stable,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. Both sides reportedly communicate through diplomatic and military channels to discuss the border issue.
The reason for this supposed soberness may be because no one was killed this time. Since 1988, both sides have patrolled only lightly armed along the LAC to avoid escalating the situation. And so cell phone videos show how downright archaic a conflict between two nuclear powers can be – luckily: In the barren landscape of the Himalayas, between rugged mountains at an altitude of around 5,000 meters, Chinese and Indian soldiers attack each other with fists and sticks, throwing stones and hurling wild insults.
What is clear is that neither side will give up a single inch without a fight. Not today – and not tomorrow. And this is precisely where the danger lies. Both sides have recently massively expanded and upgraded their borders. This includes not only roads, but also runways for aircraft. Since July 2021, a Chinese high-speed train has been running from Chengdu via the Tibetan capital Lhasa to Nyingchi near the border with the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Travel time: a short three and a half hours.
“If a scenario of a crisis happens at the China-India border, the railway will provide a great convenience for China’s delivery of strategic materials,” said Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University. And so some experts in Delhi also expected that the next clash could happen at that very spot on Friday.
And the Indian side is also investing: Between March 2018 and 2020, more than 1,500 kilometers of road were built in the border region and troop numbers increased from 50,000 to 200,000 in the past year. “India’s efforts to improve border infrastructure has certainly created some uncertainty among the PLA leadership,” says Niranjan Sahoo, a researcher at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi told China.Table.
When India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke recently about the China-India relationship, he specifically mentioned the ongoing border disputes. Time and again, Chinese troops would try to unilaterally change the LAC. And Jaishankar clarified, “So long as they continue to seek to do that, and if they have built up forces, which in our minds constitute a serious concern in the border areas, then our relationship is not normal.”
However, the local border disputes also have a global impact. After all, tensions between India and China are heating up again, and not just on the disputed border. In the rivalry between the United States and China, Washington begins to discover India as a potential partner – both economically with the relocation of production facilities from the People’s Republic to the Indian subcontinent, and in security matters via formats such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, consisting of India and the United States as well as US allies Japan and Australia (China.Table reported).
“China keeps causing such low-intensity conflicts on the border to keep India tied to its eastern border instead of focusing on its regional and global ambitions, such as in the Indo-Pacific,” Sahoo says. In Delhi, China’s President Xi Jinping is believed to be sending a warning to Delhi not to get too drawn to the US side.
It’s half-time at the COP15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal. Officially until December 19, the 196 signatory states to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will negotiate a new global agreement on the protection of ecological diversity. Around one million species face extinction. But half of the global economy’s output depends on healthy ecosystems. According to the WWF 2022 Living Planet Report presented in October, the observed wildlife populations worldwide declined by an average of 69 percent between 1970 and 2018.
So the situation is grim. And yet COP15 is proving to be a difficult conference. This is because of hardened positions, the complexity of the challenges – but also because of how the conference came about: With Canadian hosts and yet under Chinese presidency. Originally, the meeting was supposed to be held in Kunming in 2020. But then, the Covid pandemic virtually crippled China. “Due to the zero-Covid policy, hardly any officials could travel abroad. The usual diplomacy of the COP presidency in the background did not happen this time. This had a decisive impact on the preparations, which is still felt today,” Li Shuo of Greenpeace China told Table.Media in Montreal.
The COP15 was divided into two parts: A virtual kick-off event in Kunming was supposed to be followed by the big physical conference. But it had to be postponed several times because of Covid. Finally, Canada stepped in, as the CBD Secretariat is located in Montreal. But China should lead the negotiations. In a press conference on Tuesday, China’s Minister of Environment and COP15 President Huang Runqiu praised the “good and constructive cooperation” between the negotiating parties. Around one-third of all items on the COP agenda have already been ticked off.
What sounds good at first, however, also means that two-thirds are still missing. In particular, crucial issues, such as implementing the targeted goals or financing, remain unresolved. At the same time, time is running out. On Thursday, the so-called high-level segment begins with the environment ministers of the signatory states to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Huang announced the drafting of a roadmap for the high-level meeting, which will rank the issues according to urgency. After COP15, a new UN agreement on biodiversity by 2050 is expected to be drawn up, entitled the Post-2020 Global Diversity Framework (GBF), which will set out specific binding targets.
China had already applied to host the conference in 2016, shortly after the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris generated global attention. “The Chinese government wanted to create something similar and produce a Paris moment for biodiversity,” says Li Shuo. But in 2015, about 150 heads of state and government traveled to the French capital, and that alone gave the meeting the dimension it needed. Only one came to Montreal: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The loss of ecological diversity is seen more as a regional and less as a transnational problem, which is how Li Shuo explains the lack of interest. But there is another reason. The Chinese presidency did not invite top officials to Montreal. Not enough time for preparation, was the official justification. The unofficial one from the hallways at the conference grounds: China wanted not to draw too much attention to the hosts. In fact, COP15 President Huang Runqiu never tires of emphasizing that Montreal is only the second part of the conference, which was actually supposed to take place in Kunming.
Back then, in October 2021, China’s President Xi Jinping announced in a video speech a financial fund called the Kunming Biodiversity Fund with a Chinese contribution of 1.5 billion yuan (205 million euros). The fund is intended to help developing countries preserve biodiversity. Xi also invited other countries to participate. He also promised to step up China’s efforts to fight species extinction, including the continued expansion of China’s nature reserves. They currently cover about 18 percent of China’s land area.
The member states passed the rather vaguely formulated “Kunming Declaration” online, which at least already includes the target set for the Global Biodiversity Framework of placing 30 percent of land and marine areas under protection by 2030 (China.Table reported). This was said to be the goal of “many states”.
In total, the draft framework for the GBF agreement contains more than 20 targets, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), including proposals such as
Instead of unity, however, there is a web of different groups forging their own alliances or submitting proposals, depending on the topic. And China has yet to take a clear position on most of the issues. According to the environmental and climate expert service Carbon Brief, there was no full support from Beijing for any of the topics in the run-up to the conference. It is known that China rejects quantifiable targets for a gradual phase-out of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
China will “spare no effort” to persuade all parties to adopt the GBF and coordinate the talks, Huang Runqiu said in his opening speech – “to write a new chapter of global biodiversity conservation.” Time is short. Timo Landenberger, Christiane Kuehl
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
After thirty years in Germany, Wenhai Wang clearly saw the demand: The longer he worked for German companies, the more frequently the native Chinese was asked for more exchange with his economically ambitious home country. In fact, he found no simple framework in which such a bridging function could be established in everyday life. So in 2017, without further ado, he decided to set up a foundation that mediates between Germany and China and supports projects in the media, education, culture, business and technology sectors.
After three years, the Foundation German and Chinese Culture already employed a dozen people who were responsible for coordinating the incoming inquiries. For Wang, this was a sign that his assessment was correct that the field of German-Chinese cultural exchange had been dramatically understaffed up to that point. “Every month, the team receives around 600 mails and messages on WeChat,” he says. “There’s everything from private individuals, institutions from the arts and education, to medium-sized companies and large corporations.”
Wang and his team get involved whenever someone is enthusiastic about an idea but has no clue who to turn to in order to realize it. They pass on information to the relevant authorities, occasionally help people fill out forms and give advice when uncertainties arise: “The Chinese relationship culture is simply different from the German consulting culture. But we can sense risks and, in case of doubt, tell you when it’s better to take a different turn.”
One of the more recent projects involved setting up a media center for Messe Berlin at the IFA. Here, the foundation handled the conceptualization, provided staff to coordinate national news coverage, and recruited a German production company.
Other collaborations included the Berlinale, where the foundation assisted with the import of Chinese films. Or with several schools and universities in China and Germany, which are always knocking on the door for exchange opportunities. At present, the team develops a program with Berlin galleries to organize an art tour of China for 2024. Conversely, more and more Chinese artists want to relocate to the EU, Wang explains.
In addition to cultural exchange, a core component of the foundation’s work is economic dialog. In cooperation with the German Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, numerous satellite offices have been opened in China, for which Wang’s team has provided links between German companies and Chinese service providers in matters relating to copyright, business settlement policy and business promotion: “We don’t carry out these processes, but we always place people in the right places to ensure that they can proceed smoothly.”
The “unpredictable lines of development in the political landscape,” as Wang carefully puts it, also worry him. But Wang’s pragmatic optimism remains unbroken regardless: “If connections are put on hold in the next five years, then that is the way it will be. But there will always be curious people – in China as well as here. We will work wherever we can.” Julius Schwarzwaelder
Every December, the city of Harbin in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang transforms into a gigantic sculpture park made of snow and ice. Here, a worker uses a shovel to put the finishing touches on a majestic snow steed. The “International Ice and Snow Festival” ends on February 28, 2023.
