Data rules burden app providers + Cloned pigs

Dear reader,

In China, people can do even less without a smartphone than in Germany. When it comes to mobile payment or fully integrated super apps, the People’s Republic is already much further ahead. But the Internet market has always been difficult for foreign providers. Large platforms like Facebook have almost no significance in China outside the VPN bubble. Today’s feature shows how new data regulations have now made it even harder for even the last few remaining Western apps and online service providers to reach their users. New regulations on the collection and export of personal data, as well as on censorship and the content of apps, are making life difficult for western providers. Soon, western carmakers could also be affected.

Our second feature also has a tech focus: artificial intelligence and robots that clone pigs. As a vegetarian, I sarcastically wonder: What could possibly go wrong? Chinese scientists are working on methods to clone pigs fully automatically using robots, as Frank Sieren writes. These robots supposedly work more accurately than any human could. In the People’s Republic, the process could help satisfy the country’s appetite for pork. China imports pork meat by the hundreds of thousands of tons – including from Germany. But cloning is turning animals more than ever into mere goods instead of living beings.

Your
Nico Beckert

New data regulations drive out western apps

By

Nico Beckert

China has always been a difficult market for many western app and software companies. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter are almost trivial in the People’s Republic. In recent weeks and months, more companies have withdrawn from the market or are changing their business model. Nike withdrew a running app with more than eight million users. Airbnb is no longer offering overnight accommodation on the Chinese market. Amazon is withdrawing its e-book service. Previously, LinkedIn and Yahoo had already ended important services.

China’s new data strategy pushes western apps out of the market

China has been pursuing a new data strategy for several years. At the end of last year, two new laws came into force that also affect western app and platform companies. They regulate, for example, cross-border data flows and the protection and further processing of personal data (China.Table reported). US social media, app and online service providers are particularly affected by China’s new Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), says tech expert Kai von Carnap of China think tank Merics. “PIPL makes it harder to export and collect personal data“. Complying with new laws and rules comes at a very high cost. In addition to other factors such as the Covid pandemic and the US-China trade war, von Carnap says China’s new digital strategy is the main cause of the withdrawal of western app providers.

According to von Carnap, there could be further withdrawals from the Chinese market in the near future. “It is assumed that more American platforms will follow”. And the new data laws could also become problematic for German companies such as car companies. Modern cars, for example, collect data on driving behavior. Making this data collection and processing compliant with the law will be a major challenge, says von Carnap. Especially since the new laws contain some gray areas. For example, it is not clearly defined under what conditions “personal data” may be exported from China or what exactly constitutes “critical infrastructure operators” – both terms are found in the new laws. “Many details are still unclear”.

Authorities want to dictate what can be seen in apps

Other new tech regulations are also complicating the China business of foreign software and tech companies. “The Personal Information Protection Law is only one of about 10-15 major new laws and regulations impacting social networks and foreign platforms,” said Kendra Schaefer, a tech expert at consulting firm Trivium China. These include rules on recommendation algorithms, censorship regulations and deep fakes. Adapting to these laws and rules comes at a high cost for companies, according to Schaefer.

Most recently, new rules on mobile apps were issued. Providers must now know the real names of users and are responsible for the content presented in the apps. They are also not allowed to produce or distribute “illegal information” and are supposed to promote socialist core values instead (China.Table reported). Currently, it is not clear what exactly this means. But the lack of clarity is in the government’s interest. By holding app providers accountable, Beijing is increasing the pressure on providers to censor content in anticipatory obedience.

Poorly adapted to the Chinese market

Another reason for the withdrawal of Nike, Airbnb, Kindle, and LinkedIn is that they are not sufficiently adapted to the needs of Chinese users. “Kindle, for example, was the leader in the e-reader market, but the e-reader market in China is small, with few users buying separate devices to read books, preferring their phones [to read e-books],” says Kendra Schaefer. She believes that LinkedIn has also not adapted its user experience sufficiently to Chinese users.

Nike is not withdrawing completely with its app, but wants to offer a smaller app for WeChat in the future – in a more user-friendly way, according to Schaefer. The company announced plans to offer “an ecosystem from China for China”. It is very likely that this localization also has privacy reasons and the data of the respective apps will be stored in China. LinkedIn has also founded an offshoot for the Chinese market with Incareer. The stricter rules for handling data and censorship were given as reasons. The new service no longer has a social media feed and no options to share articles or posts.

In addition: Unlike in many western markets, there are some strong national competitors for western apps and providers of online services in many areas in China. Airbnb has not generated much revenue in the People’s Republic – partly because of other providers. China has also built national champions in the software sector, such as Baidu, Weibo, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance. Competition from Western tech giants only would have interfered.

Robots are to mass produce test-tube pigs

By

Frank Sieren

Chinese scientists have developed the world’s first process to clone pigs for the meat industry, completely using artificial intelligence and robots. If the technology proves ready for mass production, the People’s Republic could soon become independent of imports. Cloning could also prove useful for testing new drugs or preserving endangered species, researchers from the College of Artificial Intelligence at Nankai University in Tianjin announce.

The technological breakthrough was already achieved back in March. At that time, seven cloned pigs were brought into the world by a mother animal. Every step up to the birth was completely automated, explains Liu Yaowei, a researcher who helped develop the process: “No human operation was involved.” The robots are said to work so accurately that, in contrast to manual cloning, no cells were damaged.

The problem of human clumsiness had so far repeatedly set back cloning technology. The most common method for cloning animals has been somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In this process, a scientist removes the nucleus from an animal’s egg cell by hand, which is then replaced with a nucleus taken from another, “normal” body cell. The embryo with the transplanted nucleus is then implanted into a surrogate animal.

The conventional process had a high error rate and was very time-consuming, the researchers explain. Over the past five years, they reportedly managed to improve the success rate of machine-cloned embryos from 21 percent to 27.5 percent. With manual procedures, the success rate is only about ten percent, the researchers say. “Our AI-powered system can calculate the strain within a cell and direct the robot to use minimal force to complete the cloning process.”

A research publication with the technical details is currently under peer-review in China. It is expected to be published soon in the Journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, SCMP scientists explain.

Pork is essential to the system

This procedure, which is not only horrifying for animal rights activists, was born out of necessity. As wealth grows in China, so does the amount of consumed meat. And the swine fever that was rampant in China before Covid showed just how vulnerable the supply of meat is.

China is now the world’s largest producer – and consumer – of pork. According to official customs data, China imported 140,000 tons of pork in April alone. However, this figure is still low in comparison due to Covid, as are the prices. In December before the pandemic, imports were almost 270,000 tons.

Chinese consume more than 30 kilograms of pork per capita each year, the same as the USA. In Ge r many, it is 45 kilograms. So Chinese demand is massive.

China’s pig industry, however, still has not fully recovered from the 2018 and 2019 outbreaks of African swine fever, which decimated the Chinese breeding population. The virus, which survives even when meat is cooked or frozen, had spread from northeast China across the country. Hundreds of millions of pigs had to be put down.

But since because pork is such an integral part of Chinese cuisine, China imported millions of tons from abroad, which also affected prices in Germany – in both directions. Even the “strategic pork reserves” created by the government in 2007 in nationwide cold storage facilities had to be broken into to keep prices stable. With cloning technology ripe for mass production, Chinese farmers could keep their herds stable in such cases in the future. They would also be less dependent on the breeding cycle that now leads to oversupply.

Profitable but risky business

The question is by when automated pig cloning will reach market maturity. There was already an attempt in 2015, but it never made it to implementation. The company Boyalife wanted to mass-produce identical cows and dogs. The company is still in business with genetic engineering for agriculture and continues to pursue its cloning plans, but is years behind schedule. Boyalife, however, already sells cloned guard dogs to security agencies.

Cloning of farm animals has a number of advantages in the mass production of meat. Embryos are produced in large numbers in a central factory. The animals all have identical, perfect characteristics. The use of robots is also expected to reduce the previously high rejection rate in cloning in the future. However, the young animals will still have to be carried by sows and raised and fattened on farms.

But this can also be applied to large-scale production structures. Since experiments with extreme collectivization, China’s agricultural sector is once again organized on a smaller scale. A renewed consolidation would promote professionalism

All these ideas also fundamentally contradict the predominant European approach to improving the agricultural sector. The EU pr omotes organic farming. A ban on cloned meat has been debated in Europe for years and has even been passed by the EU Parliament. But the regulations have not yet taken effect due to objections from member states. But cloning of farm animals is not yet common practice in the EU, nor is it to be introduced on a large scale.

Foreign companies lose importance

Dieser Inhalt ist Lizenznehmern unserer Vollversion vorbehalten.

As China increases its efforts to become more self-sufficient, market access for foreign companies will highly depend on the industries’ “utility”.
Utility points to the importance of the sector to China’s development ambitions in the eyes of the Chinese government. This means being able to bring technology and innovation to the country, creating jobs and investment opportunities, and crucially, contributing to the Chinese government’s goals.
However, as the Chinese market moves more towards local branding, as local competencies grow, and as the government demands substitution, foreign companies will decrease in utility. Foreign luxury clothing, for example, is not critical to China’s growth and will see a dramatic decrease in utility to the market
Some sectors that can make important contributions in terms of technology will still become more “replaceable” in the long term due to a number of factors. Companies in network devices and cloud industries, for example, are likely to be substituted by local players due to security concerns. These companies will become highly replaceable even if utility does not decrease for the sector.

Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.

New US rules for goods from Xinjiang in force

New stricter import rules for products from Xinjiang have been in effect in the US since Tuesday. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) stipulates that importers must prove that goods or components of products from the region were not produced using forced labor (China.Table reported). Until proven, respective goods will be confiscated by US Customs. The import rule is expected to further exacerbate the brewing trade dispute between the US and China. The practical impact is still uncertain, as it is unclear how many goods will be affected by the law.

The burden of proof lies entirely on the importer under the act. All goods from Xinjiang are presumed to be manufactured using forced labor. To be allowed to import goods into the US, importers must provide documents proving that forced labor was not involved in the manufacturing process, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. Also, there cannot be any connection to blacklisted companies from Xinjiang.

More Xinjiang goods to Europe?

There is hope that the new import rules will change the situation in Xinjiang: Scott Nova, Director of the US-based Workers Rights Consortium in Washington, told the BBC that the law “will likely substantially reduce the practice of forced labor in Xinjiang” by “eliminating a large part of the market”. There is concern that exporters of goods from Xinjiang will now turn to the EU market. “A crucial question is whether brands selling goods in the US will try to take advantage of the weaker protections in other consumer markets by directing goods with content from Xinjiang to those markets,” Nova said.

Brussels is currently working on its own EU supply chain law and legislation to ban imports of forced labor goods. However, the import ban is expected to take a less stringent approach than the US law. A regulation that places certain products under general suspicion and an obligation for importers to provide proof was viewed rather negatively by the responsible EU Directorate General for Trade (China.Table reported). ari

Germany wants to reduce dependence on China

The German industry wants to reduce its dependence on business with China. “Asia is much bigger than China,” Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), said in Berlin on Tuesday. “The order of the day is to open up other markets as well.” The People’s Republic is important for the German economy. “And yet there are a few things we don’t think are good.” He cited the lack of openness of some market segments and the social system as examples. “We say very clearly: We don’t want to reduce business in and with China, but we want to position ourselves more broadly.” However, it would be necessary to remain in dialogue, the BDI president said. China is Germany’s largest trading partner.

Russwurm pointed to a growing systemic rivalry – autocracy versus liberal democracy. “With China, we are moving between partnership, competition, and rivalry,” the association president said. “Currently, the rivalry has increased significantly.” Partnership-based cooperation would currently be practiced in hardly any area. Opposing blocs would contradict his idea of the world. “However, if we are forced into a bloc, then the position of German industry is clear: We are firmly located in the transatlantic alliance.” Democratic market economies, however, still have the chance to close ranks, for example, to set standards in strategic technology fields.

The BDI complained that the questionable zero-Covid strategy was paralyzing global trade. The effects of the now lifted Covid lockdowns in China in the form of production bottlenecks and disrupted supply chains are likely to be felt in the summer months. rtr/nib

Floods and heat waves plague parts of China

In southern China, millions of people had to flee record rainfall and flooding. In Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, rainfall in the first half of June was at the heaviest in 60 years. 117 rivers burst their banks in the Pearl River Basin, causing flooding of large swaths of land, Bloomberg reports. While summer flooding is a regular occurrence in China, climate change is making extreme weather events more numerous and severe.

At the same time, parts of northeast and central China have been hit by heat waves. In some regions, such as the capital of Zhengzhou with 10 million inhabitants, the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for several days in a row. In Henan province, temperatures reached 40 degrees in nearly every other city. The region is home to nearly 100 million people. Ground temperatures of over 60 degrees were recorded at nearly 100 monitoring stations in the province. Sealed surfaces further increase temperatures near the ground. Power demand in the province rose to a record high as many air conditioners are running at full blast.

East China’s Jiangxi province declared a red alert for flooding on Monday

If temperatures were to rise to such high levels more frequently in the coming weeks, China may be forced to limit or ration industrial power consumption during peak periods, Reuters reported. “For this region, it is rare to see such persistence and intensity in high temperatures at this time in June,” the China Meteorological Administration said. Power demand in Jiangsu and Hefei also rose to a record level in 2022. nib

China trains African politicians

A cadre school in Africa co-funded by the Chinese government has completed its first training session, with 120 “future leaders” from ruling parties in Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola attending, South China Morning Post reports.

The $40 million construction of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School outside Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was funded by the six ruling parties of the respective countries and China’s Department of International Relations. This organization is responsible for promoting Chinese ideology abroad. The goal of the school, which was inaugurated in March, was to improve the governing capabilities of the six parties through exchanges and communication with China.

According to Chinese state media, Xi Jinping personally addressed the workshop participants in a letter. In it, he reiterated his hope that they would “take an active part in the cause of the China-Africa friendship, carry forward and pass on the spirit of China-Africa friendship and cooperation”. fpe

Honda expands EV production

Honda Motor has begun construction of a new $522 million EV factory in Guangdong province. The company made the announcement on Tuesday. The production facility will be operated with Chinese joint venture partner Guangzhou Automobile Group. The plant is expected to be fully operational in 2024, with an annual production capacity of 120,000 units.

The Japanese automaker is also planning another EV plant in China, which is also scheduled to go into operation in 2024 and will be operated in a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group. With the new production facilities, the Japanese carmaker intends to further expand its EV business in China. By 2024, Honda’s annual production capacity in China is expected to increase by around 16 percent to 1.73 million units.

In Japan, Honda recently announced a partnership with electronics group Sony. The two companies want to offer a “new generation of mobility and services” in a joint venture. Among other things, a “high-end electric car” with a wide range of entertainment options is planned for market launch in 2025. The Japanese industry is therefore jumping on the digitalization bandwagon together. fpe

Philipp Niemietz – cinema for a more diverse image of China

Philipp Niemietz in Luzhi, Jiangsu Province 2019.

Since 2019, he has been working as a cultural coordinator at the Leipzig Confucius Institute. The institute’s mission is to promote the Chinese language and culture. For Niemietz, that means he and his team organize the annual Chinese film festival “CHAI”. “We try to give a space to voices that are otherwise not heard,” he says, talking about a film about an almost unknown youth movement called Shamate. “There are always things that even we, who deal with China on a daily basis, don’t know about yet,” Niemietz says.

With the film festival, he wants to show a more diverse picture of China and encourage viewers to think. “We choose films that surprise us, that are topical but are not found in the media or even in Chinese discourse.”

Making movies under difficult conditions

Among the films selected for the festival, many are censored or banned in China – media censorship is also part of his daily work. “It’s not that we pay special attention to showing films that are censored or banned in China. But I do take note of the difficulties, of course.”

Filmmakers often don’t know why certain scenes are censored, he says. “The whole process is extremely unclear.” Just recently, he spoke with a director who said it was becoming harder to make movies in China – especially documentaries. Niemietz hopes that this trend will eventually turn around, toward more free filmmaking.

As a German assistant in the 10-million-metropolis

Looking back on his first touches with the People’s Republic, Niemietz says, “China has become a very everyday part of me.” He was 18 when he first visited the country, in Suzhou, west of Shanghai. He applied to a cultural organization for volunteer service abroad – without being able to specify where he would like to go. It became China.

So Niemietz traveled to the city of 10 million without speaking a word of Chinese and without knowing much about the country where he would live for a year. “I was completely unbiased, I didn’t even have any prejudices,” he recalls.

Niemietz worked as a German assistant at a school, lived in the teachers’ dormitory and stood in front of young people in the classroom who were barely younger than himself. But the small age difference also had its advantages: “In the afternoons they took me to town and we went on little trips.”

In his first year in China, Niemietz became enthusiastic about the language, the people, and the food. He tells of the hospitality and selflessness of those who have hardly anything themselves. And, of course, about the speed of change in this country. “It was all incredibly fascinating.”

Back in Germany, Niemietz then studied sinology in Leipzig, and later Chinese and translation in Bonn. Svenja Napp

Distress on China’s housing market provokes resourcefulness. The slump in China’s housing market has prompted a real estate developer in the province of Henan to use a new form of marketing. Down payments can also be made by buyers in the form of wheat or garlic deliveries, according to advertisements by Central China Real Estate. A recent ad titled “Swap Wheat for House” says that buyers are allowed to make down payments of up to ¥160,000 (the equivalent of about €22,600) in the form of grain. A similar advertising campaign with garlic as advance payment currency a few weeks ago brought the company more than 30 business deals within 16 days.

CHINA.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Amelie
Richter

Marcel
Grzanna

Fabian
Peltsch

Julia
Fiedler

Angela
Köckritz

Jörn
Petring

Dear reader,

In China, people can do even less without a smartphone than in Germany. When it comes to mobile payment or fully integrated super apps, the People’s Republic is already much further ahead. But the Internet market has always been difficult for foreign providers. Large platforms like Facebook have almost no significance in China outside the VPN bubble. Today’s feature shows how new data regulations have now made it even harder for even the last few remaining Western apps and online service providers to reach their users. New regulations on the collection and export of personal data, as well as on censorship and the content of apps, are making life difficult for western providers. Soon, western carmakers could also be affected.

Our second feature also has a tech focus: artificial intelligence and robots that clone pigs. As a vegetarian, I sarcastically wonder: What could possibly go wrong? Chinese scientists are working on methods to clone pigs fully automatically using robots, as Frank Sieren writes. These robots supposedly work more accurately than any human could. In the People’s Republic, the process could help satisfy the country’s appetite for pork. China imports pork meat by the hundreds of thousands of tons – including from Germany. But cloning is turning animals more than ever into mere goods instead of living beings.

Your
Nico Beckert

New data regulations drive out western apps

By

Nico Beckert

China has always been a difficult market for many western app and software companies. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter are almost trivial in the People’s Republic. In recent weeks and months, more companies have withdrawn from the market or are changing their business model. Nike withdrew a running app with more than eight million users. Airbnb is no longer offering overnight accommodation on the Chinese market. Amazon is withdrawing its e-book service. Previously, LinkedIn and Yahoo had already ended important services.

China’s new data strategy pushes western apps out of the market

China has been pursuing a new data strategy for several years. At the end of last year, two new laws came into force that also affect western app and platform companies. They regulate, for example, cross-border data flows and the protection and further processing of personal data (China.Table reported). US social media, app and online service providers are particularly affected by China’s new Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), says tech expert Kai von Carnap of China think tank Merics. “PIPL makes it harder to export and collect personal data“. Complying with new laws and rules comes at a very high cost. In addition to other factors such as the Covid pandemic and the US-China trade war, von Carnap says China’s new digital strategy is the main cause of the withdrawal of western app providers.

According to von Carnap, there could be further withdrawals from the Chinese market in the near future. “It is assumed that more American platforms will follow”. And the new data laws could also become problematic for German companies such as car companies. Modern cars, for example, collect data on driving behavior. Making this data collection and processing compliant with the law will be a major challenge, says von Carnap. Especially since the new laws contain some gray areas. For example, it is not clearly defined under what conditions “personal data” may be exported from China or what exactly constitutes “critical infrastructure operators” – both terms are found in the new laws. “Many details are still unclear”.

Authorities want to dictate what can be seen in apps

Other new tech regulations are also complicating the China business of foreign software and tech companies. “The Personal Information Protection Law is only one of about 10-15 major new laws and regulations impacting social networks and foreign platforms,” said Kendra Schaefer, a tech expert at consulting firm Trivium China. These include rules on recommendation algorithms, censorship regulations and deep fakes. Adapting to these laws and rules comes at a high cost for companies, according to Schaefer.

Most recently, new rules on mobile apps were issued. Providers must now know the real names of users and are responsible for the content presented in the apps. They are also not allowed to produce or distribute “illegal information” and are supposed to promote socialist core values instead (China.Table reported). Currently, it is not clear what exactly this means. But the lack of clarity is in the government’s interest. By holding app providers accountable, Beijing is increasing the pressure on providers to censor content in anticipatory obedience.

Poorly adapted to the Chinese market

Another reason for the withdrawal of Nike, Airbnb, Kindle, and LinkedIn is that they are not sufficiently adapted to the needs of Chinese users. “Kindle, for example, was the leader in the e-reader market, but the e-reader market in China is small, with few users buying separate devices to read books, preferring their phones [to read e-books],” says Kendra Schaefer. She believes that LinkedIn has also not adapted its user experience sufficiently to Chinese users.

Nike is not withdrawing completely with its app, but wants to offer a smaller app for WeChat in the future – in a more user-friendly way, according to Schaefer. The company announced plans to offer “an ecosystem from China for China”. It is very likely that this localization also has privacy reasons and the data of the respective apps will be stored in China. LinkedIn has also founded an offshoot for the Chinese market with Incareer. The stricter rules for handling data and censorship were given as reasons. The new service no longer has a social media feed and no options to share articles or posts.

In addition: Unlike in many western markets, there are some strong national competitors for western apps and providers of online services in many areas in China. Airbnb has not generated much revenue in the People’s Republic – partly because of other providers. China has also built national champions in the software sector, such as Baidu, Weibo, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance. Competition from Western tech giants only would have interfered.

Robots are to mass produce test-tube pigs

By

Frank Sieren

Chinese scientists have developed the world’s first process to clone pigs for the meat industry, completely using artificial intelligence and robots. If the technology proves ready for mass production, the People’s Republic could soon become independent of imports. Cloning could also prove useful for testing new drugs or preserving endangered species, researchers from the College of Artificial Intelligence at Nankai University in Tianjin announce.

The technological breakthrough was already achieved back in March. At that time, seven cloned pigs were brought into the world by a mother animal. Every step up to the birth was completely automated, explains Liu Yaowei, a researcher who helped develop the process: “No human operation was involved.” The robots are said to work so accurately that, in contrast to manual cloning, no cells were damaged.

The problem of human clumsiness had so far repeatedly set back cloning technology. The most common method for cloning animals has been somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In this process, a scientist removes the nucleus from an animal’s egg cell by hand, which is then replaced with a nucleus taken from another, “normal” body cell. The embryo with the transplanted nucleus is then implanted into a surrogate animal.

The conventional process had a high error rate and was very time-consuming, the researchers explain. Over the past five years, they reportedly managed to improve the success rate of machine-cloned embryos from 21 percent to 27.5 percent. With manual procedures, the success rate is only about ten percent, the researchers say. “Our AI-powered system can calculate the strain within a cell and direct the robot to use minimal force to complete the cloning process.”

A research publication with the technical details is currently under peer-review in China. It is expected to be published soon in the Journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, SCMP scientists explain.

Pork is essential to the system

This procedure, which is not only horrifying for animal rights activists, was born out of necessity. As wealth grows in China, so does the amount of consumed meat. And the swine fever that was rampant in China before Covid showed just how vulnerable the supply of meat is.

China is now the world’s largest producer – and consumer – of pork. According to official customs data, China imported 140,000 tons of pork in April alone. However, this figure is still low in comparison due to Covid, as are the prices. In December before the pandemic, imports were almost 270,000 tons.

Chinese consume more than 30 kilograms of pork per capita each year, the same as the USA. In Ge r many, it is 45 kilograms. So Chinese demand is massive.

China’s pig industry, however, still has not fully recovered from the 2018 and 2019 outbreaks of African swine fever, which decimated the Chinese breeding population. The virus, which survives even when meat is cooked or frozen, had spread from northeast China across the country. Hundreds of millions of pigs had to be put down.

But since because pork is such an integral part of Chinese cuisine, China imported millions of tons from abroad, which also affected prices in Germany – in both directions. Even the “strategic pork reserves” created by the government in 2007 in nationwide cold storage facilities had to be broken into to keep prices stable. With cloning technology ripe for mass production, Chinese farmers could keep their herds stable in such cases in the future. They would also be less dependent on the breeding cycle that now leads to oversupply.

Profitable but risky business

The question is by when automated pig cloning will reach market maturity. There was already an attempt in 2015, but it never made it to implementation. The company Boyalife wanted to mass-produce identical cows and dogs. The company is still in business with genetic engineering for agriculture and continues to pursue its cloning plans, but is years behind schedule. Boyalife, however, already sells cloned guard dogs to security agencies.

Cloning of farm animals has a number of advantages in the mass production of meat. Embryos are produced in large numbers in a central factory. The animals all have identical, perfect characteristics. The use of robots is also expected to reduce the previously high rejection rate in cloning in the future. However, the young animals will still have to be carried by sows and raised and fattened on farms.

But this can also be applied to large-scale production structures. Since experiments with extreme collectivization, China’s agricultural sector is once again organized on a smaller scale. A renewed consolidation would promote professionalism

All these ideas also fundamentally contradict the predominant European approach to improving the agricultural sector. The EU pr omotes organic farming. A ban on cloned meat has been debated in Europe for years and has even been passed by the EU Parliament. But the regulations have not yet taken effect due to objections from member states. But cloning of farm animals is not yet common practice in the EU, nor is it to be introduced on a large scale.

Foreign companies lose importance

As China increases its efforts to become more self-sufficient, market access for foreign companies will highly depend on the industries’ “utility”.
Utility points to the importance of the sector to China’s development ambitions in the eyes of the Chinese government. This means being able to bring technology and innovation to the country, creating jobs and investment opportunities, and crucially, contributing to the Chinese government’s goals.
However, as the Chinese market moves more towards local branding, as local competencies grow, and as the government demands substitution, foreign companies will decrease in utility. Foreign luxury clothing, for example, is not critical to China’s growth and will see a dramatic decrease in utility to the market
Some sectors that can make important contributions in terms of technology will still become more “replaceable” in the long term due to a number of factors. Companies in network devices and cloud industries, for example, are likely to be substituted by local players due to security concerns. These companies will become highly replaceable even if utility does not decrease for the sector.

Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.

New US rules for goods from Xinjiang in force

New stricter import rules for products from Xinjiang have been in effect in the US since Tuesday. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) stipulates that importers must prove that goods or components of products from the region were not produced using forced labor (China.Table reported). Until proven, respective goods will be confiscated by US Customs. The import rule is expected to further exacerbate the brewing trade dispute between the US and China. The practical impact is still uncertain, as it is unclear how many goods will be affected by the law.

The burden of proof lies entirely on the importer under the act. All goods from Xinjiang are presumed to be manufactured using forced labor. To be allowed to import goods into the US, importers must provide documents proving that forced labor was not involved in the manufacturing process, according to the US Department of Homeland Security. Also, there cannot be any connection to blacklisted companies from Xinjiang.

More Xinjiang goods to Europe?

There is hope that the new import rules will change the situation in Xinjiang: Scott Nova, Director of the US-based Workers Rights Consortium in Washington, told the BBC that the law “will likely substantially reduce the practice of forced labor in Xinjiang” by “eliminating a large part of the market”. There is concern that exporters of goods from Xinjiang will now turn to the EU market. “A crucial question is whether brands selling goods in the US will try to take advantage of the weaker protections in other consumer markets by directing goods with content from Xinjiang to those markets,” Nova said.

Brussels is currently working on its own EU supply chain law and legislation to ban imports of forced labor goods. However, the import ban is expected to take a less stringent approach than the US law. A regulation that places certain products under general suspicion and an obligation for importers to provide proof was viewed rather negatively by the responsible EU Directorate General for Trade (China.Table reported). ari

Germany wants to reduce dependence on China

The German industry wants to reduce its dependence on business with China. “Asia is much bigger than China,” Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), said in Berlin on Tuesday. “The order of the day is to open up other markets as well.” The People’s Republic is important for the German economy. “And yet there are a few things we don’t think are good.” He cited the lack of openness of some market segments and the social system as examples. “We say very clearly: We don’t want to reduce business in and with China, but we want to position ourselves more broadly.” However, it would be necessary to remain in dialogue, the BDI president said. China is Germany’s largest trading partner.

Russwurm pointed to a growing systemic rivalry – autocracy versus liberal democracy. “With China, we are moving between partnership, competition, and rivalry,” the association president said. “Currently, the rivalry has increased significantly.” Partnership-based cooperation would currently be practiced in hardly any area. Opposing blocs would contradict his idea of the world. “However, if we are forced into a bloc, then the position of German industry is clear: We are firmly located in the transatlantic alliance.” Democratic market economies, however, still have the chance to close ranks, for example, to set standards in strategic technology fields.

The BDI complained that the questionable zero-Covid strategy was paralyzing global trade. The effects of the now lifted Covid lockdowns in China in the form of production bottlenecks and disrupted supply chains are likely to be felt in the summer months. rtr/nib

Floods and heat waves plague parts of China

In southern China, millions of people had to flee record rainfall and flooding. In Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, rainfall in the first half of June was at the heaviest in 60 years. 117 rivers burst their banks in the Pearl River Basin, causing flooding of large swaths of land, Bloomberg reports. While summer flooding is a regular occurrence in China, climate change is making extreme weather events more numerous and severe.

At the same time, parts of northeast and central China have been hit by heat waves. In some regions, such as the capital of Zhengzhou with 10 million inhabitants, the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for several days in a row. In Henan province, temperatures reached 40 degrees in nearly every other city. The region is home to nearly 100 million people. Ground temperatures of over 60 degrees were recorded at nearly 100 monitoring stations in the province. Sealed surfaces further increase temperatures near the ground. Power demand in the province rose to a record high as many air conditioners are running at full blast.

If temperatures were to rise to such high levels more frequently in the coming weeks, China may be forced to limit or ration industrial power consumption during peak periods, Reuters reported. “For this region, it is rare to see such persistence and intensity in high temperatures at this time in June,” the China Meteorological Administration said. Power demand in Jiangsu and Hefei also rose to a record level in 2022. nib

China trains African politicians

A cadre school in Africa co-funded by the Chinese government has completed its first training session, with 120 “future leaders” from ruling parties in Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola attending, South China Morning Post reports.

The $40 million construction of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School outside Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was funded by the six ruling parties of the respective countries and China’s Department of International Relations. This organization is responsible for promoting Chinese ideology abroad. The goal of the school, which was inaugurated in March, was to improve the governing capabilities of the six parties through exchanges and communication with China.

According to Chinese state media, Xi Jinping personally addressed the workshop participants in a letter. In it, he reiterated his hope that they would “take an active part in the cause of the China-Africa friendship, carry forward and pass on the spirit of China-Africa friendship and cooperation”. fpe

Honda expands EV production

Honda Motor has begun construction of a new $522 million EV factory in Guangdong province. The company made the announcement on Tuesday. The production facility will be operated with Chinese joint venture partner Guangzhou Automobile Group. The plant is expected to be fully operational in 2024, with an annual production capacity of 120,000 units.

The Japanese automaker is also planning another EV plant in China, which is also scheduled to go into operation in 2024 and will be operated in a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group. With the new production facilities, the Japanese carmaker intends to further expand its EV business in China. By 2024, Honda’s annual production capacity in China is expected to increase by around 16 percent to 1.73 million units.

In Japan, Honda recently announced a partnership with electronics group Sony. The two companies want to offer a “new generation of mobility and services” in a joint venture. Among other things, a “high-end electric car” with a wide range of entertainment options is planned for market launch in 2025. The Japanese industry is therefore jumping on the digitalization bandwagon together. fpe

Philipp Niemietz – cinema for a more diverse image of China

Since 2019, he has been working as a cultural coordinator at the Leipzig Confucius Institute. The institute’s mission is to promote the Chinese language and culture. For Niemietz, that means he and his team organize the annual Chinese film festival “CHAI”. “We try to give a space to voices that are otherwise not heard,” he says, talking about a film about an almost unknown youth movement called Shamate. “There are always things that even we, who deal with China on a daily basis, don’t know about yet,” Niemietz says.

With the film festival, he wants to show a more diverse picture of China and encourage viewers to think. “We choose films that surprise us, that are topical but are not found in the media or even in Chinese discourse.”

Making movies under difficult conditions

Among the films selected for the festival, many are censored or banned in China – media censorship is also part of his daily work. “It’s not that we pay special attention to showing films that are censored or banned in China. But I do take note of the difficulties, of course.”

Filmmakers often don’t know why certain scenes are censored, he says. “The whole process is extremely unclear.” Just recently, he spoke with a director who said it was becoming harder to make movies in China – especially documentaries. Niemietz hopes that this trend will eventually turn around, toward more free filmmaking.

As a German assistant in the 10-million-metropolis

Looking back on his first touches with the People’s Republic, Niemietz says, “China has become a very everyday part of me.” He was 18 when he first visited the country, in Suzhou, west of Shanghai. He applied to a cultural organization for volunteer service abroad – without being able to specify where he would like to go. It became China.

So Niemietz traveled to the city of 10 million without speaking a word of Chinese and without knowing much about the country where he would live for a year. “I was completely unbiased, I didn’t even have any prejudices,” he recalls.

Niemietz worked as a German assistant at a school, lived in the teachers’ dormitory and stood in front of young people in the classroom who were barely younger than himself. But the small age difference also had its advantages: “In the afternoons they took me to town and we went on little trips.”

In his first year in China, Niemietz became enthusiastic about the language, the people, and the food. He tells of the hospitality and selflessness of those who have hardly anything themselves. And, of course, about the speed of change in this country. “It was all incredibly fascinating.”

Back in Germany, Niemietz then studied sinology in Leipzig, and later Chinese and translation in Bonn. Svenja Napp

Distress on China’s housing market provokes resourcefulness. The slump in China’s housing market has prompted a real estate developer in the province of Henan to use a new form of marketing. Down payments can also be made by buyers in the form of wheat or garlic deliveries, according to advertisements by Central China Real Estate. A recent ad titled “Swap Wheat for House” says that buyers are allowed to make down payments of up to ¥160,000 (the equivalent of about €22,600) in the form of grain. A similar advertising campaign with garlic as advance payment currency a few weeks ago brought the company more than 30 business deals within 16 days.

CHINA.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

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Jörn
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Feature

New data regulations drive out western apps

China’s new data strategy pushes western apps out of the market

Authorities want to dictate what can be seen in apps

Poorly adapted to the Chinese market

Robots are to mass produce test-tube pigs

Pork is essential to the system

Profitable but risky business

Sinolytics.Radar

Foreign companies lose importance

News

New US rules for goods from Xinjiang in force

More Xinjiang goods to Europe?

Germany wants to reduce dependence on China

Floods and heat waves plague parts of China

China trains African politicians

Honda expands EV production

Profile

Philipp Niemietz – cinema for a more diverse image of China

Making movies under difficult conditions

As a German assistant in the 10-million-metropolis

Executive Moves

Dessert

China.Table editorial office

CHINA.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Feature

New data regulations drive out western apps

China’s new data strategy pushes western apps out of the market

Authorities want to dictate what can be seen in apps

Poorly adapted to the Chinese market

Robots are to mass produce test-tube pigs

Pork is essential to the system

Profitable but risky business

Sinolytics.Radar

Foreign companies lose importance

News

New US rules for goods from Xinjiang in force

More Xinjiang goods to Europe?

Germany wants to reduce dependence on China

Floods and heat waves plague parts of China

China trains African politicians

Honda expands EV production

Profile

Philipp Niemietz – cinema for a more diverse image of China

Making movies under difficult conditions

As a German assistant in the 10-million-metropolis

Executive Moves

Dessert

China.Table editorial office

CHINA.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

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