Wang Yi is currently in Moscow and will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday. Observers are interested in one thing above everything else: Will China’s chief diplomat also meet with Vladimir Putin? And if so, can any indications about the nature of the announced peace initiative be discerned?
On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping presented a concept paper on his Global Security Initiative (GSI), which was first announced in 2022. While details are still scarce, the tone is remarkably close to what various countries in the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, India and South Africa as well as Russia and China, have been saying lately. This is no coincidence: The GSI paper was coordinated with BRICS, as Frank Sieren analyzes. China is increasingly pulling emerging countries to its side.
A propagandistic glimpse into the future of this brave new world order is offered by the box-office hit The Wandering Earth II: A global cooperative spearheaded by China. In the impactful science fiction epic, Chinese experts prevail in a “United World Government” in the face of the sun’s expansion. They save the planet by hurling it out of the solar system using gigantic propulsion engines.
Fabian Peltsch watched and analyzed the film for us: With a lot of dedication and effort, the Chinese protagonists convince the rest of the world of their idea. And in the end, there is no single superhero in the propaganda-tinged film, but rather everyone joins forces to achieve the miracle. This is the very spirit of harmonic international cooperation that also permeates Xi’s GSI paper.
China’s President Xi Jinping has fleshed out his Global Security Initiative (GSI), first presented in April 2022. The paper forms the foundation for the ongoing transformation away from a US-dominated world order, a goal that a resurgent China strives for. Thus, the concept mainly tries to appeal to other emerging countries.
The cornerstones of the new GSI paper, which is about ten pages long in English:
In conjunction with the paper’s presentation, Foreign Minister Qin Gang gave a speech on the state of the world on Tuesday. In his speech, he drew the first conclusions from the principles for which the GSI is supposed to stand. China will work for peace in Ukraine; the situation surrounding Taiwan is not comparable to that of Ukraine. “Certain countries should stop pouring oil on the fire.” He said China stands for peace and has never taken even one inch of foreign territory.
Xi’s concept paper presented on Tuesday is intentionally not a solo effort. Rather, the text was coordinated with the countries of the BRICS group – including China, Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. Table.Media learned this from diplomatic circles in Beijing.
It shows a consensus with significant implications. Because it is new. The BRICS countries combined now have a greater population and economic weight than the G7 countries. While the G7 represents eleven percent of the global population and generates about 30 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) when adjusted for purchasing power, the BRICS countries account for 40 percent of the population and also about 30 percent of the GDP. They have even slightly overtaken the G7 in terms of GDP.
At a second level, China has also involved some not fully westernized G20 countries: Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey. BRICS country India holds this year’s G20 presidency. This is considered helpful in advancing the Beijing Security Initiative.
On a third level, Beijing is trying to find a majority in the UN. Some 170 out of 193 countries in the United Nations do not participate in the sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war. The countries that do participate in sanctions represent only 16 percent of the global population. For some time now, China has been successfully working to persuade more and more states at the UN to vote in unison with Beijing.
Xi first announced the GSI on 21 April 2022 at the Boao Forum, the Chinese equivalent of the World Economic Forum. Via video link, he described his concept as a Chinese alternative to the “Cold War mentality” he accuses the countries in America’s sphere of influence. Xi wants to use it to shoulder the international responsibility that he believes his country deserves as the second-largest economic and military power in the world.
The paper now presented is the next step after the announcement to breathe life into the concept. It provides for institutionalized global mechanisms to balance interests. It aims to eliminate the causes of international conflicts. Security is the right of all countries, not the privilege of individual countries, said a government spokesperson in Beijing. In the future, GSI events are to be held in Beijing to put the ideas into practice.
The United States may dismiss China’s initiative as propaganda, but elsewhere it is arousing considerable interest. The BRICS countries have already committed in advance to the positions that Xi has now set out in the GSI paper. The democracy South Africa, the most important country on the emerging continent, clearly stated that it does not solely wish to stand by the side of the West.
Currently, South Africa, China and Russia are even holding a joint naval exercise off the coast of South Africa. South Africa’s neutrality manifests itself in the fact that it not only holds maneuvers with China or Russia but also “with many other countries, including the USA”, emphasized a spokesperson for the South African Department of Defence. Germany is also participating in these drills.
The latest political guidelines of the South African Foreign Ministry speak an even clearer language: They call for a South African alliance with forces “that oppose the dominance of the West and the liberal international economic order“. So it is not just about the traditional relations between the ruling party ANC and Moscow, which already backed the ANC during the apartheid – but also about more involvement of the Global South against the former colonial powers.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi also refuses to side with NATO and instead wants to be on good terms with all parties. India’s oil imports from Russia, for example, skyrocketed, albeit from a low level. However, five days ago, Modi also agreed on a “strategic technology partnership” with the US, which also involves defense cooperation. The US recently sold India 200 Boeings, the largest bilateral deal to date.
This means that the Americans are fighting for every meter of influence with India. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will also feel this when he arrives in Delhi next Saturday. However, Scholz will no longer be as easily put on the spot as he was at the meeting with Brazil’s President Inácio Lula da Silva in late January. At the meeting, Scholz’s request for 300,000 rounds of 105-millimeter ammunition for the Gepard tanks for Ukraine was turned down: “Brazil doesn’t want any participation in this war, not even indirectly,” Lula said. At the moment, “the word ‘peace’ is being used very little.”
Instead, Lula proposed that “it is necessary to form a group of countries that is strong enough and respected and sit down with the two at a negotiating table”. The new world order must be “based on dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity”, Lula demands. This sounds like Beijing’s GSI. He sees China’s role as particularly important: “Our Chinese friends can make a great contribution.” While Lula criticized Russia, he also criticized the West: “I think Russia made the classic mistake of invading another country’s territory, so Russia is wrong,” Lula said. “But I still think that when one won’t, two won’t fight. You have to want peace”
None of the BRICS countries currently lists a complete withdrawal of Russia from occupied Ukraine territories as a requirement for peace talks. This is a crucial difference to the EU and the USA.
In the meantime, the long-term goal of the BRICS states is emerging as China grows into a leadership role: A new security order is supposed to be gradually established, with ground rules defined by the global majority and apply to both Russia and the USA. National unilateralism is to be outlawed. The era of the law of the fittest has long since been history in most nations. According to the ideas of the GSI paper, it should now also end globally. A high ambition.
Shortly after the lights come on, a man jumps from his seat and shouts at the movie audience as if his favorite football team had just scored a goal: “I want to announce: ‘Wandering Earth‘ is brilliant! China’s science fiction is brilliant! The Chinese are brilliant!!!” Some moviegoers react with reserved clapping. Others reach for their heads at witnessing this bizarre scene. A video of the outburst went viral on the internet not long after.
The clip perfectly captures the patriotic euphoria with which the Chinese have been praising “The Wandering Earth II” as a cultural milestone for weeks. The basic sentiment: With the almost three-hour science fiction epic, which grossed more than half a billion US dollars since its release on 22 January, director Frant Gwo has finally pushed China’s movie industry out of Hollywood’s shadow. “The Wandering Earth II”, a prequel to the 2019 film of the same name, is qualitatively better than Avatar and Star Wars, users write on social media channels such as Weibo. And, as China’s state media never tire of emphasizing, the blockbuster tells the story of “global visions and Chinese wisdom“.
The plot of the movie, which is only loosely based on the short story of the same name by bestselling author Liu Cixin (“The Three Suns”), is quickly explained: A rapidly expanding sun threatens to engulf the earth. A “United World Government”, which emerged from the UN, is collectively looking for a solution – but cannot agree due to conflicts between different nations. The US-Americans propose to upload human civilization into the cloud as a digital memory before its annihilation.
China advocates the “Moving Mountain” project, which intends to hurl the Earth out of the solar system using gigantic propulsion engines. “A civilization without people is meaningless,” the Chinese declare. And with heart and soul and technocratic feasibility studies, they are eventually able to convince the rest of the world of the idea of a “wandering earth”.
The film shows a world in which not a single hero saves the world, but “humans work as a team to face the overwhelming crisis”, a guest author writes in the state-run Global Times. “The international unity and solidarity” depicted in “Wandering Earth II” would reflect “China’s current attitude and approach in a world of changes“. Fu Ruoqing, the film’s executive producer, also emphasizes the film’s “Chinese values”. Fu quotes Xi Jinping’s notion of a “shared future for humanity”, which is what the film would be really about.
Technologically, too, the film reflects China’s rise as a world power, according to the praise of the state press. Director Gwo is said to have been inspired by the strides made in China’s tech sector, explains the People’s Daily. The J-20, China’s most advanced stealth aircraft, plays an important role in the film in countering saboteurs. Other key technologies defined by Beijing also find a prominent place in the plot, such as quantum computing or exoskeleton suits. The latter are allegedly already used by Chinese soldiers in the rough Himalayan mountains.
A giant space lift designed to help advance the Chinese-promoted “Mountain Project” is moved in the film to Libreville, a city in the central African nation of Gabon which China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang visited as recently as January to promote more cooperation. Many “leading industrial enterprises in China”, including the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSTC), would tirelessly contribute to “turning science fiction into reality”, writes the Global Times.
One of the characters, a diplomat from whom even the US seeks counsel, is based on Premier Zhou Enlai, who passed away in 1976. And the foreign heroes in the film are also Russians rather than US-Americans. The journey of the wandering earth takes 2,500 years in the end. Even in the distant future, the emblem of the Chinese Communist Party is still emblazoned on the uniforms. “I see ‘The Wandering Earth’ as a propaganda project of the Communist Party, which uses writers like Liu Cixin to wrap nationalism and authoritarianism into the science genre,” Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany, told Radio Free Asia.
So it is no wonder that both the Ministry of Propaganda and China’s Internet patriots are not taking any criticism of the film lightly. An only moderately enthusiastic review in the New York Times already caused storms of outrage. “The fact that China will lead all humanity in the future is causing great panic among anti-Chinese forces,” wrote one user on Weibo. The widely followed film blog Yingshi Zongyi Jun 影视综艺君 proclaims on Weibo, “If the enemy gets scared, it means we are doing something right. Our cultural export was successful.” The post received more than 120,000 likes.
English film review sites such as IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are also filled with user comments hailing the film as a “historical” masterpiece and “the best science fiction film of the century.” Patriotism and propaganda blend into one here, as they so often do. However, as far as special effects are concerned, “The Wandering Earth II” does actually rival Hollywood.
Western audiences, on the other hand, will probably be put off by the less-than-subtle Chinese nationalism, even though state propaganda is already celebrating “Wandering Earth II” as a great success in the UK, Australia and North America. The fact that the film is getting such a global release at all – South Africa and Russia will follow in the spring – shows how much hope the state is placing in it. Audiences outside of China, however, will probably mainly consist of Chinese expatriates.
.
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.
Xi Bei’s kindergarten teacher in Beijing already knew that art should not be rushed. She stayed in the classroom with Bei long after the actual lessons were over, until she had finished her drawings and paintings. The patient eye for art has rubbed off. Xi Bei is now a consultant for various art organizations and private collections, as well as a board member of the Times Art Center Berlin, which she helped establish as artistic director and executive director from 2018 to 2022. “I describe myself first and foremost as a passionate art promoter,” Bei says today.
Despite all the support, the decision to make art her profession was a gut decision. “The pursuit of spiritual and intellectual freedom is the ideal state of life for me, and the art world offers it.” Bei graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing, studied architecture and design in Paris, and later multimedia art and cultural management at the Sorbonne.
In Paris, Bei worked as an exhibition curator and transnational cultural consultant before eventually accepting the position at the Times Art Center in Berlin. “It was primarily the outstanding Chinese diaspora art community in Paris that shaped me and continues to play an irreversible role in the direction of my work today,” Bei says.
The influence of the Chinese diaspora was also noticeable at the Times Art Center Berlin (TACB), which was established in 2018 by the Guangdong Times Museum from Guangzhou. The independent art institution showed, among others, works by Wong Ping, a provocative animation artist from Hong Kong with a network in Berlin, or the collective exhibition “Neither Black/ Red/ Yellow Nor Woman,” which explored feminist and postcolonial issues. In 2022, the exhibition venue in Berlin Mitte announced its “temporary” closure. The reasons are the “historic moment of global crises, when socio-political and economic turbulences have already, or will soon, affect every aspect of our lives,” Bei writes on the Times Art Center website.
Looking back, it has been an exciting and invigorating four years, she summarizes. “Although the institution must suspend its activities for the time being, the connections and experiences that have resulted from this process are immeasurable.”
In the background, Bei is still working on ongoing projects for the TACB. Because she hopes it will be able to reopen soon. “The economic crisis caused by the pandemic and the politically uncertain climate worldwide make it impossible for the Chinese foundation to continue its support at the moment,” she explains. “It hasn’t been possible to compensate through other supporters on the ground.”
As a consultant, however, Bei continues to advocate for artistic exchange between China and Europe, regardless of the fate of TACB. In the process, she always has the larger goal in mind: “Only by strengthening cross-cultural communication can two different civilizations be connected.” Bei firmly believes that the art world can provide an important platform for this development. Svenja Napp
“Do we wanna let him in?” As far as China’s head of state Xi Jinping is concerned, the message of this carnival float is probably no. At the Shrove Monday procession in Cologne, Xi mutated into an octopus holding a tight grip on Scholz – a nod to the Chancellor’s state visit to Beijing in November and a commentary on Germany’s economic dependence on the People’s Republic.
Wang Yi is currently in Moscow and will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday. Observers are interested in one thing above everything else: Will China’s chief diplomat also meet with Vladimir Putin? And if so, can any indications about the nature of the announced peace initiative be discerned?
On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping presented a concept paper on his Global Security Initiative (GSI), which was first announced in 2022. While details are still scarce, the tone is remarkably close to what various countries in the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, India and South Africa as well as Russia and China, have been saying lately. This is no coincidence: The GSI paper was coordinated with BRICS, as Frank Sieren analyzes. China is increasingly pulling emerging countries to its side.
A propagandistic glimpse into the future of this brave new world order is offered by the box-office hit The Wandering Earth II: A global cooperative spearheaded by China. In the impactful science fiction epic, Chinese experts prevail in a “United World Government” in the face of the sun’s expansion. They save the planet by hurling it out of the solar system using gigantic propulsion engines.
Fabian Peltsch watched and analyzed the film for us: With a lot of dedication and effort, the Chinese protagonists convince the rest of the world of their idea. And in the end, there is no single superhero in the propaganda-tinged film, but rather everyone joins forces to achieve the miracle. This is the very spirit of harmonic international cooperation that also permeates Xi’s GSI paper.
China’s President Xi Jinping has fleshed out his Global Security Initiative (GSI), first presented in April 2022. The paper forms the foundation for the ongoing transformation away from a US-dominated world order, a goal that a resurgent China strives for. Thus, the concept mainly tries to appeal to other emerging countries.
The cornerstones of the new GSI paper, which is about ten pages long in English:
In conjunction with the paper’s presentation, Foreign Minister Qin Gang gave a speech on the state of the world on Tuesday. In his speech, he drew the first conclusions from the principles for which the GSI is supposed to stand. China will work for peace in Ukraine; the situation surrounding Taiwan is not comparable to that of Ukraine. “Certain countries should stop pouring oil on the fire.” He said China stands for peace and has never taken even one inch of foreign territory.
Xi’s concept paper presented on Tuesday is intentionally not a solo effort. Rather, the text was coordinated with the countries of the BRICS group – including China, Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. Table.Media learned this from diplomatic circles in Beijing.
It shows a consensus with significant implications. Because it is new. The BRICS countries combined now have a greater population and economic weight than the G7 countries. While the G7 represents eleven percent of the global population and generates about 30 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) when adjusted for purchasing power, the BRICS countries account for 40 percent of the population and also about 30 percent of the GDP. They have even slightly overtaken the G7 in terms of GDP.
At a second level, China has also involved some not fully westernized G20 countries: Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey. BRICS country India holds this year’s G20 presidency. This is considered helpful in advancing the Beijing Security Initiative.
On a third level, Beijing is trying to find a majority in the UN. Some 170 out of 193 countries in the United Nations do not participate in the sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war. The countries that do participate in sanctions represent only 16 percent of the global population. For some time now, China has been successfully working to persuade more and more states at the UN to vote in unison with Beijing.
Xi first announced the GSI on 21 April 2022 at the Boao Forum, the Chinese equivalent of the World Economic Forum. Via video link, he described his concept as a Chinese alternative to the “Cold War mentality” he accuses the countries in America’s sphere of influence. Xi wants to use it to shoulder the international responsibility that he believes his country deserves as the second-largest economic and military power in the world.
The paper now presented is the next step after the announcement to breathe life into the concept. It provides for institutionalized global mechanisms to balance interests. It aims to eliminate the causes of international conflicts. Security is the right of all countries, not the privilege of individual countries, said a government spokesperson in Beijing. In the future, GSI events are to be held in Beijing to put the ideas into practice.
The United States may dismiss China’s initiative as propaganda, but elsewhere it is arousing considerable interest. The BRICS countries have already committed in advance to the positions that Xi has now set out in the GSI paper. The democracy South Africa, the most important country on the emerging continent, clearly stated that it does not solely wish to stand by the side of the West.
Currently, South Africa, China and Russia are even holding a joint naval exercise off the coast of South Africa. South Africa’s neutrality manifests itself in the fact that it not only holds maneuvers with China or Russia but also “with many other countries, including the USA”, emphasized a spokesperson for the South African Department of Defence. Germany is also participating in these drills.
The latest political guidelines of the South African Foreign Ministry speak an even clearer language: They call for a South African alliance with forces “that oppose the dominance of the West and the liberal international economic order“. So it is not just about the traditional relations between the ruling party ANC and Moscow, which already backed the ANC during the apartheid – but also about more involvement of the Global South against the former colonial powers.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi also refuses to side with NATO and instead wants to be on good terms with all parties. India’s oil imports from Russia, for example, skyrocketed, albeit from a low level. However, five days ago, Modi also agreed on a “strategic technology partnership” with the US, which also involves defense cooperation. The US recently sold India 200 Boeings, the largest bilateral deal to date.
This means that the Americans are fighting for every meter of influence with India. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will also feel this when he arrives in Delhi next Saturday. However, Scholz will no longer be as easily put on the spot as he was at the meeting with Brazil’s President Inácio Lula da Silva in late January. At the meeting, Scholz’s request for 300,000 rounds of 105-millimeter ammunition for the Gepard tanks for Ukraine was turned down: “Brazil doesn’t want any participation in this war, not even indirectly,” Lula said. At the moment, “the word ‘peace’ is being used very little.”
Instead, Lula proposed that “it is necessary to form a group of countries that is strong enough and respected and sit down with the two at a negotiating table”. The new world order must be “based on dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity”, Lula demands. This sounds like Beijing’s GSI. He sees China’s role as particularly important: “Our Chinese friends can make a great contribution.” While Lula criticized Russia, he also criticized the West: “I think Russia made the classic mistake of invading another country’s territory, so Russia is wrong,” Lula said. “But I still think that when one won’t, two won’t fight. You have to want peace”
None of the BRICS countries currently lists a complete withdrawal of Russia from occupied Ukraine territories as a requirement for peace talks. This is a crucial difference to the EU and the USA.
In the meantime, the long-term goal of the BRICS states is emerging as China grows into a leadership role: A new security order is supposed to be gradually established, with ground rules defined by the global majority and apply to both Russia and the USA. National unilateralism is to be outlawed. The era of the law of the fittest has long since been history in most nations. According to the ideas of the GSI paper, it should now also end globally. A high ambition.
Shortly after the lights come on, a man jumps from his seat and shouts at the movie audience as if his favorite football team had just scored a goal: “I want to announce: ‘Wandering Earth‘ is brilliant! China’s science fiction is brilliant! The Chinese are brilliant!!!” Some moviegoers react with reserved clapping. Others reach for their heads at witnessing this bizarre scene. A video of the outburst went viral on the internet not long after.
The clip perfectly captures the patriotic euphoria with which the Chinese have been praising “The Wandering Earth II” as a cultural milestone for weeks. The basic sentiment: With the almost three-hour science fiction epic, which grossed more than half a billion US dollars since its release on 22 January, director Frant Gwo has finally pushed China’s movie industry out of Hollywood’s shadow. “The Wandering Earth II”, a prequel to the 2019 film of the same name, is qualitatively better than Avatar and Star Wars, users write on social media channels such as Weibo. And, as China’s state media never tire of emphasizing, the blockbuster tells the story of “global visions and Chinese wisdom“.
The plot of the movie, which is only loosely based on the short story of the same name by bestselling author Liu Cixin (“The Three Suns”), is quickly explained: A rapidly expanding sun threatens to engulf the earth. A “United World Government”, which emerged from the UN, is collectively looking for a solution – but cannot agree due to conflicts between different nations. The US-Americans propose to upload human civilization into the cloud as a digital memory before its annihilation.
China advocates the “Moving Mountain” project, which intends to hurl the Earth out of the solar system using gigantic propulsion engines. “A civilization without people is meaningless,” the Chinese declare. And with heart and soul and technocratic feasibility studies, they are eventually able to convince the rest of the world of the idea of a “wandering earth”.
The film shows a world in which not a single hero saves the world, but “humans work as a team to face the overwhelming crisis”, a guest author writes in the state-run Global Times. “The international unity and solidarity” depicted in “Wandering Earth II” would reflect “China’s current attitude and approach in a world of changes“. Fu Ruoqing, the film’s executive producer, also emphasizes the film’s “Chinese values”. Fu quotes Xi Jinping’s notion of a “shared future for humanity”, which is what the film would be really about.
Technologically, too, the film reflects China’s rise as a world power, according to the praise of the state press. Director Gwo is said to have been inspired by the strides made in China’s tech sector, explains the People’s Daily. The J-20, China’s most advanced stealth aircraft, plays an important role in the film in countering saboteurs. Other key technologies defined by Beijing also find a prominent place in the plot, such as quantum computing or exoskeleton suits. The latter are allegedly already used by Chinese soldiers in the rough Himalayan mountains.
A giant space lift designed to help advance the Chinese-promoted “Mountain Project” is moved in the film to Libreville, a city in the central African nation of Gabon which China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang visited as recently as January to promote more cooperation. Many “leading industrial enterprises in China”, including the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSTC), would tirelessly contribute to “turning science fiction into reality”, writes the Global Times.
One of the characters, a diplomat from whom even the US seeks counsel, is based on Premier Zhou Enlai, who passed away in 1976. And the foreign heroes in the film are also Russians rather than US-Americans. The journey of the wandering earth takes 2,500 years in the end. Even in the distant future, the emblem of the Chinese Communist Party is still emblazoned on the uniforms. “I see ‘The Wandering Earth’ as a propaganda project of the Communist Party, which uses writers like Liu Cixin to wrap nationalism and authoritarianism into the science genre,” Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany, told Radio Free Asia.
So it is no wonder that both the Ministry of Propaganda and China’s Internet patriots are not taking any criticism of the film lightly. An only moderately enthusiastic review in the New York Times already caused storms of outrage. “The fact that China will lead all humanity in the future is causing great panic among anti-Chinese forces,” wrote one user on Weibo. The widely followed film blog Yingshi Zongyi Jun 影视综艺君 proclaims on Weibo, “If the enemy gets scared, it means we are doing something right. Our cultural export was successful.” The post received more than 120,000 likes.
English film review sites such as IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are also filled with user comments hailing the film as a “historical” masterpiece and “the best science fiction film of the century.” Patriotism and propaganda blend into one here, as they so often do. However, as far as special effects are concerned, “The Wandering Earth II” does actually rival Hollywood.
Western audiences, on the other hand, will probably be put off by the less-than-subtle Chinese nationalism, even though state propaganda is already celebrating “Wandering Earth II” as a great success in the UK, Australia and North America. The fact that the film is getting such a global release at all – South Africa and Russia will follow in the spring – shows how much hope the state is placing in it. Audiences outside of China, however, will probably mainly consist of Chinese expatriates.
.
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.
Xi Bei’s kindergarten teacher in Beijing already knew that art should not be rushed. She stayed in the classroom with Bei long after the actual lessons were over, until she had finished her drawings and paintings. The patient eye for art has rubbed off. Xi Bei is now a consultant for various art organizations and private collections, as well as a board member of the Times Art Center Berlin, which she helped establish as artistic director and executive director from 2018 to 2022. “I describe myself first and foremost as a passionate art promoter,” Bei says today.
Despite all the support, the decision to make art her profession was a gut decision. “The pursuit of spiritual and intellectual freedom is the ideal state of life for me, and the art world offers it.” Bei graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing, studied architecture and design in Paris, and later multimedia art and cultural management at the Sorbonne.
In Paris, Bei worked as an exhibition curator and transnational cultural consultant before eventually accepting the position at the Times Art Center in Berlin. “It was primarily the outstanding Chinese diaspora art community in Paris that shaped me and continues to play an irreversible role in the direction of my work today,” Bei says.
The influence of the Chinese diaspora was also noticeable at the Times Art Center Berlin (TACB), which was established in 2018 by the Guangdong Times Museum from Guangzhou. The independent art institution showed, among others, works by Wong Ping, a provocative animation artist from Hong Kong with a network in Berlin, or the collective exhibition “Neither Black/ Red/ Yellow Nor Woman,” which explored feminist and postcolonial issues. In 2022, the exhibition venue in Berlin Mitte announced its “temporary” closure. The reasons are the “historic moment of global crises, when socio-political and economic turbulences have already, or will soon, affect every aspect of our lives,” Bei writes on the Times Art Center website.
Looking back, it has been an exciting and invigorating four years, she summarizes. “Although the institution must suspend its activities for the time being, the connections and experiences that have resulted from this process are immeasurable.”
In the background, Bei is still working on ongoing projects for the TACB. Because she hopes it will be able to reopen soon. “The economic crisis caused by the pandemic and the politically uncertain climate worldwide make it impossible for the Chinese foundation to continue its support at the moment,” she explains. “It hasn’t been possible to compensate through other supporters on the ground.”
As a consultant, however, Bei continues to advocate for artistic exchange between China and Europe, regardless of the fate of TACB. In the process, she always has the larger goal in mind: “Only by strengthening cross-cultural communication can two different civilizations be connected.” Bei firmly believes that the art world can provide an important platform for this development. Svenja Napp
“Do we wanna let him in?” As far as China’s head of state Xi Jinping is concerned, the message of this carnival float is probably no. At the Shrove Monday procession in Cologne, Xi mutated into an octopus holding a tight grip on Scholz – a nod to the Chancellor’s state visit to Beijing in November and a commentary on Germany’s economic dependence on the People’s Republic.
