Life is shifting more and more into virtual space. What seemed like science fiction a few years ago has long since become everyday life. And it now has a name: The worlds made of pure information are collectively called the “metaverse”. The denser and more entangled they become, the more economic activity will shift there. We are already paying a lot of money for increasingly immaterial goods. In the future, an ever greater part of value creation will probably take place detached from ordinary reality.
And it is this money that companies like Facebook and Tencent are after. They want to stake their claims in the metaverse while it is still in its earliest stages. The Facebook group has just renamed itself Meta for good reason, bringing a lot of attention to the trend. Tencent, meanwhile, is blithely building its own Metaverse around WeChat. Its behavior resembles the first settlers and businesses on a new continent. China, unsurprisingly, is at the forefront. What the People’s Republic had to learn so painfully as a late industrial nation in classic sectors, it is now applying with remarkable agility to set the pace this time.
Chinese companies are thus not only supplying the physical technology for the Metaverse, which is a big deal in itself. The state also helps its service providers and software companies to gain an edge by shielding its own players from US competition and at the same time setting standards with a global claim, as Fabian Peltsch analyses.
But the modernity and agility in its tech sectors have no counterpart in China’s political structures. The crude handling of the accusations made by tennis player Peng Shuai against a high cadre shows this, as does the growing cult of personality around Xi.
Our second feature turns to the state’s nervous reaction to the cancellation of tennis tournaments by international organizers. After all, even Germany’s future foreign minister has already used the terms “Olympic Games” and “Peng Shuai” in the same sentence.
Johnny Erling, meanwhile, listens closely when songs of praise are sung about Xi Jinping. As part of the increasingly grotesque cult of personality, the Ballad of the Liangjiahe River, which glorifies Xi’s deeds as a youth, is regularly recited. But Erling also notes growing resentment in the party over the focus on a single person.
Although Facebook is still banned in China, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was rebranding his company “Meta” and would henceforth devote himself to the development of a so-called metaverse also made waves in the People’s Republic. Only one day after the name change, the Chinese search engine provider Baidu secured the brand name “metaapp” on October 29. Chinese gaming giant NetEase and e-commerce giant Alibaba also pushed forward to get in early on “metaverse” business models, at least in name – for example, with an unspecified “Ali Metaverse.” According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the metaverse industry could be worth $800 billion by 2024. And according to forecasts by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), it could even be worth $1.54 trillion by 2030.
All of this is baffling, given that no one can explain in detail what the metaverse (Chinese Yuánjiè 元界) actually is. The term itself first appeared in the science fiction novel “Snow Crash” published in 1992. In it, US writer Neal Stephenson describes a virtual reality similar to the Matrix in which people live escapist second lives as avatars. “The Metaverse has its own economy. Companies and individuals can invest, buy, sell, and get paid for work within the Metaverse,” writes tech investor Matthew Ball in his essay “The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It.”
Mark Zuckerberg, who recommends the text to his employees as required reading, sees the metaverse above all as a “successor to the mobile Internet”, which is no longer consumed only via screens, but in which one is actually present as a person. One scenario, for example, would be that a user buys an item of clothing in the real world, and the avatar in the metaverse receives the virtual equivalent, which he can then wear in a wide variety of digital spaces. Individual Internet platforms such as Facebook or Weibo are then no longer isolated from each other but merge into a huge digital space supported by cloud servers. The metaverse is “It’s a ways off, but you can start to see some of the fundamental building blocks take shape,” the Facebook founder explained in an hour-and-a-half-long keynote video. These include live streams, social networks, and computer games, which already form an interface between the digital and real worlds.
In the future, for example, virtual reality glasses will enable access to the metaverse. This is where Chinese companies come into play at the latest. According to the American consulting firm IDC, China’s market for virtual reality (VR) applications will grow by 68 percent over the next five years. Startup Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, is still the world’s leading manufacturer of VR headsets with a global market share of two-thirds, but Chinese firms DPVR and Pico are following on its heels. Beijing-based Pico was just acquired by ByteDance in August for the equivalent of about $1.4 billion. The TikTok parent company says it plans to focus more on developing “consumer-oriented VR devices” in the coming years.
Augmented reality (AR) applications represent an intermediate stage between the real and virtual worlds. These can be glasses or windshields which could display additional information, like in the movie “Terminator”, from the outside temperature to personal information about others. China also has promising players in the field of AR, such as Nreal. In September, the Beijing-based company, founded in 2017, raised over $100 million in series C funding and now has a valuation of around $700 million. The company’s AR glasses already look like cool sunglasses. Soon, the devices could shrink to the size of contact lenses. IDC predicts that the global AR market, which is expected to reach $30.7 billion this year, will be worth $300 billion as early as 2024.
The fact that VR glasses have not been able to establish themselves so far was not only due to their clunkiness but also due to so-called “motion sickness”, a kind of seasickness that is triggered by the fact that one’s own body sensation does not coincide with the programmed world. At many VR presentations in the past, vomit bags were handed out along with the glasses.
The 5G mobile standard is supposed to solve this problem. The fast data transmission rates make the VR experience more smooth and immersive: In the best case, the feeling of immersion becomes so convincing that the simulated environment is perceived as real. China has set its sights on achieving 56 percent 5G coverage over the next five years. According to an Ericsson estimate, the People’s Republic had about 175 million 5G users by the end of 2020. Measured against the global user numbers of 220 million, this corresponds to a share of 80 percent.
Immersive 3D worlds with their own currency already exist in computer games such as “Fortnite” and “Roblox”. That is why market observers assume that the foundations of the Metaverse will be laid in the gaming sector. As the world’s largest video game company by revenue, Tencent already dominates this sector. The Shenzhen-based tech giant owns stakes in the world’s biggest game publishers, including Fortnite developer Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Roblox as well as online concert promoter Wave. “Anything that makes the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences can become part of the metaverse,” Tencent CEO Pony Ma explains his company’s metaverse strategy. Those are wooly words, but what’s quite real is the fact that Tencent already has a kind of proto-metaverse with its universal app WeChat. The service’s roughly 1.24 billion users can chat, shop, and attend concerts or visit doctor appointments via live streams on WeChat. These functions can be seamlessly linked in a digital universe.
An important milestone for establishing one’s own economy in a metaverse is the so-called NFT – Non-Fungible Tokens: Whoever acquires such a “non-exchangeable token” buys a digital object, which can be art, trading cards, weapons in a computer game, or even virtual land. In late November, a virtual property in the Metaverse game Axie Infinity was sold for cryptocurrency worth $2.5 million. The ownership rights of an NFT are stored on the blockchain, making them unique, authenticated, and tamper-proof. In digital worlds, NFTs can thus become the fundamental form of ownership. In 2020, $55 billion were already spent on virtual goods worldwide.
The numerous virtual influencers who already have pop star status in China seem to have sprung from a metaverse. For example, Ayayi, programmed by Shanghai-based startup Ranmai Technology. For Singles’ Day on November 11, the severely parted AI model presented a “Metaverse Art Exhibition” on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao, where global brands such as Burberry or Chinese EV manufacturer Xiaopeng exhibited NFT artworks.
Blue-haired Luo Tianyi, who was created in 2012 and has around 500 million followers on Weibo, even made it into the New Year’s gala of the state television station CCTV in the past two years, where she performed a traditional Chinese folk song, among other things. Virtual celebrities are not only unassuming brand ambassadors, they are also easier to control than stars like Kris Wu or Zhao Wei (China.Table reported).
Despite all these good basic conditions, Beijing has so far remained skeptical of the idea of a metaverse. In September, state-owned financial newspaper Securities Times warned that “those who blindly pursue an illusory concept such as the metaverse could end up getting hurt in the end.” Decentralized cryptocurrencies, which are also expected to play a significant role in the metaverse, have already been banned by Beijing. NFTs don’t have it easy in the People’s Republic, either. Because the government regards them as speculative assets, trading them for profit is banned. Companies like Tencent are now only allowed to offer NFTs in China as “digital collectibles” and accept transactions exclusively in renminbi.
China will also seek to go it alone in the metaverse, decoupled from Western products. In November, the country established its first “Metaverse Industry Committee,” led by state-owned enterprises China Mobile and China Unicom, to coordinate efforts toward a Chinese Metaverse concept. However, if the vision of a global metaverse is to truly come true, it will require international cooperation between governments and companies. As with e-mobility, Beijing’s motto is likely to be: He who comes first, sets the standards.
The Peng Shuai case has finally arrived in world politics. On day one after the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) suspended all tennis tournaments in China, the country is fuming. Support for the WTA’s tournament cancellation around the world is strong, and Beijing is likely to take note. The attempt to get rid of Peng’s accusations of sexual assault by Ex-Vice-President Zhang Gaoli with dubious methods has failed spectacularly – mainly thanks to the WTA.
Accordingly, the government and state media showed themselves furious over the suspension of the tournaments on Thursday. China strictly opposes measures that “politicize” sport, a foreign office spokesman said in Beijing on Thursday. State-run Global Times, known for its nationalist fervor, was not satisfied with such meager words. “The unilateral decision of the WTA, in name of “protecting its players”, was made based on fictitious information,” the paper commented. This would not only hurt the athlete in question but also affect the fair competition chances of female tennis players. Strangely, however, the text did not appear on the paper’s English-published website, but only on Twitter.
Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, notorious for his fierce tweets, went even further: “WTA is coercing Peng Shuai to support the West’s attack on Chinese system. They are depriving Peng Shuai’s freedom of expression, demanding that her description of her current situation must meet their expectation.” With that, Hu turned the matter upside down in an astonishing fashion. Moreover, he tried to ridicule the WTA’s announcement: “Steve Simon is boycotting in a high profile manner some events that only have a slim chance of being held due to COVID-19.” This would not bring the WTA any additional economic losses and would only attract attention in the West.
This angry posturing suggests that China is genuinely shocked by the WTA’s tournament cancellation. Because China knows differently. In the past, companies, governments, and even sports federations have always buckled under the pressure and the huge market of the People’s Republic. In any case, the WTA is the first international sports federation ever to stand up to China despite expected financial losses. The US basketball organization NBA had already folded after the manager of the 2019 Houston Rockets supported the democracy movement in Hong Kong on Twitter. China banned all NBA broadcasts, prompting the NBA to quickly regret the manager’s tweet. It even claimed it was “disappointed” by his comments. The Chinese market seems just too important.
In fact, WTA tournaments in China would have been unlikely anyway due to the Covid entry restrictions expected to remain in place till next year. However, the WTA left the end of the suspension open. One thing is certain: It will only really hurt if the WTA still cancels tournaments when China’s borders are open once again. But even so, the public suspension remains an effective signal that has been welcomed around the world. “Literally what we should all be doing. Uphold values and do what we must to defend them,” commented Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law from his exile in London, for example. World number one Novak Djokovic also welcomed the WTA’s tournament cancellations, as did the US tennis legends Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King.
The People’s Republic had not met the demands of the federation for a full and transparent investigation of the case, WTA boss Simon had justified the previously threatened decision on Wednesday evening (China.Table reported). “While we now know where Peng is, I have serious doubts that she is free, safe, and not subject to censorship, coercion, and intimidation.”
The IOC, on the other hand, was obviously overwhelmed with the balancing act of showing concern for Peng Shuai on the one hand, and on the other hand not snubbing the organizer of the imminent Winter Olympics. The IOC always demonstratively stays out of politics – which was not possible in the case of the three-time Olympian Peng. So on November 21, they organized a video phone call between IOC President Thomas Bach, the chairwoman of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, and a senior IOC member in China and Peng. Peng Shuai was doing well and wanted her privacy respected, was the unconcerned conclusion. Criticism mounted that Bach and the committee had allowed themselves to be instrumentalized by China. How could the IOC be sure there wasn’t a minder sitting next to Peng, not visible on the video? Why was no one suspicious?
Peng was happy to receive the call, long-time IOC official Dick Pound has now defended the action once again. The common conclusion of the three callers had been “that she was OK and not under duress,” Pound told Reuters on Thursday. “And that’s what we wanted to know.” He stressed that the IOC was the only organization in the world that had even managed to contact Peng.
Nevertheless, the IOC contacted Peng again on Wednesday. They share the same concern about the 35-year-old, the IOC announced on Thursday. It once again officially defended its approach: “There are different ways to achieve her well-being and safety. We have taken a very human and person-centered approach to her situation.” Since Peng is a three-time Olympian, the IOC is addressing her concerns directly with Chinese sports organizations. “We are using “quiet diplomacy” which, given the circumstances and based on the experience of governments and other organizations, is indicated to be the most promising way to proceed effectively in such humanitarian matters.”
The IOC had offered Peng full support and would remain in regular contact with her. A personal meeting has also been arranged for January. But whether that will silence the critics is more than questionable. The procedure seems too much like window dressing. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) also refused to take a clear position when approached by China.Table.
There is now an unpleasant-sounding suspicion: Olympian Peng Shuai is being held captive by the organizer of the upcoming Winter Olympics. And the IOC is doing nothing about it.
That’s why the debate about a diplomatic boycott of this year’s Winter Games in Beijing from February 4 to 20, 2022, is gaining momentum. Such a boycott would mean that nations would not send official government delegations to the Olympics, but the athletes would be allowed to participate. In connection with the Peng Shuai case, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had already mentioned such a boycott.
Now, the designated German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is also considering this: “When I see how China’s leadership is dealing with the tennis player Peng Shuai or with the arrested citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, we should of course also take a closer look at the Olympic Games,” Baerbock said in an interview with China.Table and journalists from the German daily (taz). Zhang Zhan was detained because of her articles from Wuhan on the beginnings of the Covid pandemic.
Countries are also making increasingly direct references to the drama surrounding Peng. Already on Tuesday, for example, the spokeswoman for EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Josep Borrell had weighed in: “The EU expresses its solidarity with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared shortly after she had posted allegations of sexual assault on Chinese social media. Her recent public reappearance does not ease concerns about her safety and freedom.” The EU joined growing international demands for assurances that Peng was free and not under threat. US President Biden had also already expressed concern for Peng. But without a more robust approach, these words are likely to fall flat without much effect.
The Liuyang River bends through nine bends, and the fifty-mile waterway reaches the Xiangjiang River. There is Xiangtan County by the river. Ah, there is a Chairman Mao, who “leads the people to liberate”. The song to the Great Chairman and his river, “Liuyanghe,” which has been sung for 70 years, has become an evergreen among revolutionary hits that millions of Chinese still warble along with today. Meanwhile, the new chairman Xi Jinping is following in Mao’s footsteps. A hymn dedicated to him and his river “Liangjiahe” in Shaanxi, from which he set out on his political career, has appeared in the copy-happy People’s Republic. The sonorously recited cycle of poems is the latest highlight in the increasingly grotesque Chinese cult of personality. But opposition is also stirring within the party.
“Rise, become rich, become strong” (站起来，富起来, 强起来). The three terms introduce the refrain of the “Ballad of Liangjiahe” (梁家河组歌). They come from the mouth of party leader Xi and have become common words in the People’s Republic. Melodically performed (朗诵) by well-known artists, the spoonerism of the refrain goes like this: “You come from Liangjiahe, steering China into a new era, never forget how it all began, staying true to the mission, and carrying on the project of Chinese socialism in the new era!” (站起来，富起来，强起来. 你从梁家河走来，领航中国走进新时代。不忘初心，牢记使命，新时代中国特色社会主义继往开来！)
It almost sounds like the praise song “Liuyanghe” (浏阳河) written by poet Xu Shuhua (徐叔华) in 1950 that “Chairman Mao is the Red Sun in Our Hearts”. The new revolutionary ballad about Xi narrates his career in nine verses after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution sends the 15-year-old to the countryside in January 1969. For seven years he toils with and among the local farmers in the village of Liangjiahe on the eponymous river before he was allowed to return to Beijing to rise politically.
In the fifth verse, the poem praises young Xi, who was forced to abandon his secondary school education because of the Cultural Revolution, as a brilliant autodidact. After a hard day’s work, he keeps himself awake “half the night” to read world literature, from Goethe’s Faust (浮士德) to Shakespeare’s King Lear (李尔王), by the “light of an oil spark” in his “dark den”. Of course, he devoured the Marxist classics, especially Das Kapital (资本论) by Karl Marx. That’s what fascinated and enlightened him so much, China’s news agency Xinhua wrote in an endless eulogy to Xi that took China Daily seven parts to translate into English. Xi had read Marx’s “‘Das Kapital’ three times and filled 18 notebooks with his reflections on the text.
Ten (sic.) notes of the new poem on Xi explain what the poet Cheng Guanjun is alluding to. “Big guns” are hand-rolled coarse tobacco leaves that Xi smokes for his fatigue; the “mother’s heart and a small pouch for needle and thread” (娘的心。小小针线包) refers to an anecdote. According to it, “when he went to the countryside, Mother Qixin gave her son a cloth bag with sewing materials, on which she had embroidered the words ‘Mother’s Heart’.” Other touching recollections of Xi’s mother and her relationship with her son under the title “The Promise Two Generations of Communists Made to Each Other” are spread by major party media in China.
The eulogies in verse are an overture for the grand concert that the 20th Party Congress is supposed to put on for Xi to cement his absolute power at the end of 2022. There is a lot of calculation behind the enacted cult of personality. For example, Cheng Guanjun, as the author of the poem in praise of Xi, is not a part-time or hobby poet, but an author who writes for the main Party newspapers. He is also an expert on party history and a senior theoretician at the Beijing CC Party University. Before his recent Xi Anthem, he had already written a similar poem, “You Come from Liangjiahe.” It found its way into the Xi training material “Strong China” (中宣部 “学习强国”) published by the CCP and was distributed by all party media. His song poem is currently being performed by professional recitation artists over radio and stages.
Within the party, however, Xi’s personality cult seems to be met with resistance. An indirect hint of this is hidden in an extensive programmatic manifesto of the Central Committee, which the CC’s publications department published on August 26 under the title: “The Chinese Communist Party: Its Mission and Contributions.” The document was apparently so important that the English-published newspaper China Daily translated it in full on more than half a dozen of its pages.
In one particular paragraph, it says: “Upholding the leadership core of the CPC in no way involves the creation of any kind of personality cult – something the CPC has resolutely opposed ever since it was first founded. The Party’s Constitution explicitly stipulates that ‘The Party proscribes all forms of personality cult.’ The Party leadership core never wields unlimited power or engages in decision-making at will.”
Just ten weeks later, the Party’s “historical resolution,” adopted at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, appeared in mid-November as the ultimate statement of principles on its history and the maxims of its development. CCP chief Xi, who lets himself be called the “core of the party,” presided over the meeting, led the three-member drafting group for the resolution, and presented it. It no longer mentions personality cult. Xi did not explain why.
In exchange, the resolution praises “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era marked the third breakthrough in the adaptation. The Resolution points out that this Thought is the Marxism of contemporary China and of the 21st century. It embodies the best of the Chinese culture and ethos in our times.” This is written in prose. But it reads like another hymn by party poets to their leader.
A 15-meter high crayfish rises in the city of Qianjiang in Hubei. Crayfish are a local specialty. Qianjiang is particularly smart about it and has built up an integrated agricultural industry of rice cultivation and crayfish breeding. This has created the largest crayfish cluster in the world.
Life is shifting more and more into virtual space. What seemed like science fiction a few years ago has long since become everyday life. And it now has a name: The worlds made of pure information are collectively called the “metaverse”. The denser and more entangled they become, the more economic activity will shift there. We are already paying a lot of money for increasingly immaterial goods. In the future, an ever greater part of value creation will probably take place detached from ordinary reality.
And it is this money that companies like Facebook and Tencent are after. They want to stake their claims in the metaverse while it is still in its earliest stages. The Facebook group has just renamed itself Meta for good reason, bringing a lot of attention to the trend. Tencent, meanwhile, is blithely building its own Metaverse around WeChat. Its behavior resembles the first settlers and businesses on a new continent. China, unsurprisingly, is at the forefront. What the People’s Republic had to learn so painfully as a late industrial nation in classic sectors, it is now applying with remarkable agility to set the pace this time.
Chinese companies are thus not only supplying the physical technology for the Metaverse, which is a big deal in itself. The state also helps its service providers and software companies to gain an edge by shielding its own players from US competition and at the same time setting standards with a global claim, as Fabian Peltsch analyses.
But the modernity and agility in its tech sectors have no counterpart in China’s political structures. The crude handling of the accusations made by tennis player Peng Shuai against a high cadre shows this, as does the growing cult of personality around Xi.
Our second feature turns to the state’s nervous reaction to the cancellation of tennis tournaments by international organizers. After all, even Germany’s future foreign minister has already used the terms “Olympic Games” and “Peng Shuai” in the same sentence.
Johnny Erling, meanwhile, listens closely when songs of praise are sung about Xi Jinping. As part of the increasingly grotesque cult of personality, the Ballad of the Liangjiahe River, which glorifies Xi’s deeds as a youth, is regularly recited. But Erling also notes growing resentment in the party over the focus on a single person.
Although Facebook is still banned in China, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was rebranding his company “Meta” and would henceforth devote himself to the development of a so-called metaverse also made waves in the People’s Republic. Only one day after the name change, the Chinese search engine provider Baidu secured the brand name “metaapp” on October 29. Chinese gaming giant NetEase and e-commerce giant Alibaba also pushed forward to get in early on “metaverse” business models, at least in name – for example, with an unspecified “Ali Metaverse.” According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the metaverse industry could be worth $800 billion by 2024. And according to forecasts by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), it could even be worth $1.54 trillion by 2030.
All of this is baffling, given that no one can explain in detail what the metaverse (Chinese Yuánjiè 元界) actually is. The term itself first appeared in the science fiction novel “Snow Crash” published in 1992. In it, US writer Neal Stephenson describes a virtual reality similar to the Matrix in which people live escapist second lives as avatars. “The Metaverse has its own economy. Companies and individuals can invest, buy, sell, and get paid for work within the Metaverse,” writes tech investor Matthew Ball in his essay “The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, and Who Will Build It.”
Mark Zuckerberg, who recommends the text to his employees as required reading, sees the metaverse above all as a “successor to the mobile Internet”, which is no longer consumed only via screens, but in which one is actually present as a person. One scenario, for example, would be that a user buys an item of clothing in the real world, and the avatar in the metaverse receives the virtual equivalent, which he can then wear in a wide variety of digital spaces. Individual Internet platforms such as Facebook or Weibo are then no longer isolated from each other but merge into a huge digital space supported by cloud servers. The metaverse is “It’s a ways off, but you can start to see some of the fundamental building blocks take shape,” the Facebook founder explained in an hour-and-a-half-long keynote video. These include live streams, social networks, and computer games, which already form an interface between the digital and real worlds.
In the future, for example, virtual reality glasses will enable access to the metaverse. This is where Chinese companies come into play at the latest. According to the American consulting firm IDC, China’s market for virtual reality (VR) applications will grow by 68 percent over the next five years. Startup Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, is still the world’s leading manufacturer of VR headsets with a global market share of two-thirds, but Chinese firms DPVR and Pico are following on its heels. Beijing-based Pico was just acquired by ByteDance in August for the equivalent of about $1.4 billion. The TikTok parent company says it plans to focus more on developing “consumer-oriented VR devices” in the coming years.
Augmented reality (AR) applications represent an intermediate stage between the real and virtual worlds. These can be glasses or windshields which could display additional information, like in the movie “Terminator”, from the outside temperature to personal information about others. China also has promising players in the field of AR, such as Nreal. In September, the Beijing-based company, founded in 2017, raised over $100 million in series C funding and now has a valuation of around $700 million. The company’s AR glasses already look like cool sunglasses. Soon, the devices could shrink to the size of contact lenses. IDC predicts that the global AR market, which is expected to reach $30.7 billion this year, will be worth $300 billion as early as 2024.
The fact that VR glasses have not been able to establish themselves so far was not only due to their clunkiness but also due to so-called “motion sickness”, a kind of seasickness that is triggered by the fact that one’s own body sensation does not coincide with the programmed world. At many VR presentations in the past, vomit bags were handed out along with the glasses.
The 5G mobile standard is supposed to solve this problem. The fast data transmission rates make the VR experience more smooth and immersive: In the best case, the feeling of immersion becomes so convincing that the simulated environment is perceived as real. China has set its sights on achieving 56 percent 5G coverage over the next five years. According to an Ericsson estimate, the People’s Republic had about 175 million 5G users by the end of 2020. Measured against the global user numbers of 220 million, this corresponds to a share of 80 percent.
Immersive 3D worlds with their own currency already exist in computer games such as “Fortnite” and “Roblox”. That is why market observers assume that the foundations of the Metaverse will be laid in the gaming sector. As the world’s largest video game company by revenue, Tencent already dominates this sector. The Shenzhen-based tech giant owns stakes in the world’s biggest game publishers, including Fortnite developer Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Roblox as well as online concert promoter Wave. “Anything that makes the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences can become part of the metaverse,” Tencent CEO Pony Ma explains his company’s metaverse strategy. Those are wooly words, but what’s quite real is the fact that Tencent already has a kind of proto-metaverse with its universal app WeChat. The service’s roughly 1.24 billion users can chat, shop, and attend concerts or visit doctor appointments via live streams on WeChat. These functions can be seamlessly linked in a digital universe.
An important milestone for establishing one’s own economy in a metaverse is the so-called NFT – Non-Fungible Tokens: Whoever acquires such a “non-exchangeable token” buys a digital object, which can be art, trading cards, weapons in a computer game, or even virtual land. In late November, a virtual property in the Metaverse game Axie Infinity was sold for cryptocurrency worth $2.5 million. The ownership rights of an NFT are stored on the blockchain, making them unique, authenticated, and tamper-proof. In digital worlds, NFTs can thus become the fundamental form of ownership. In 2020, $55 billion were already spent on virtual goods worldwide.
The numerous virtual influencers who already have pop star status in China seem to have sprung from a metaverse. For example, Ayayi, programmed by Shanghai-based startup Ranmai Technology. For Singles’ Day on November 11, the severely parted AI model presented a “Metaverse Art Exhibition” on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao, where global brands such as Burberry or Chinese EV manufacturer Xiaopeng exhibited NFT artworks.
Blue-haired Luo Tianyi, who was created in 2012 and has around 500 million followers on Weibo, even made it into the New Year’s gala of the state television station CCTV in the past two years, where she performed a traditional Chinese folk song, among other things. Virtual celebrities are not only unassuming brand ambassadors, they are also easier to control than stars like Kris Wu or Zhao Wei (China.Table reported).
Despite all these good basic conditions, Beijing has so far remained skeptical of the idea of a metaverse. In September, state-owned financial newspaper Securities Times warned that “those who blindly pursue an illusory concept such as the metaverse could end up getting hurt in the end.” Decentralized cryptocurrencies, which are also expected to play a significant role in the metaverse, have already been banned by Beijing. NFTs don’t have it easy in the People’s Republic, either. Because the government regards them as speculative assets, trading them for profit is banned. Companies like Tencent are now only allowed to offer NFTs in China as “digital collectibles” and accept transactions exclusively in renminbi.
China will also seek to go it alone in the metaverse, decoupled from Western products. In November, the country established its first “Metaverse Industry Committee,” led by state-owned enterprises China Mobile and China Unicom, to coordinate efforts toward a Chinese Metaverse concept. However, if the vision of a global metaverse is to truly come true, it will require international cooperation between governments and companies. As with e-mobility, Beijing’s motto is likely to be: He who comes first, sets the standards.
The Peng Shuai case has finally arrived in world politics. On day one after the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) suspended all tennis tournaments in China, the country is fuming. Support for the WTA’s tournament cancellation around the world is strong, and Beijing is likely to take note. The attempt to get rid of Peng’s accusations of sexual assault by Ex-Vice-President Zhang Gaoli with dubious methods has failed spectacularly – mainly thanks to the WTA.
Accordingly, the government and state media showed themselves furious over the suspension of the tournaments on Thursday. China strictly opposes measures that “politicize” sport, a foreign office spokesman said in Beijing on Thursday. State-run Global Times, known for its nationalist fervor, was not satisfied with such meager words. “The unilateral decision of the WTA, in name of “protecting its players”, was made based on fictitious information,” the paper commented. This would not only hurt the athlete in question but also affect the fair competition chances of female tennis players. Strangely, however, the text did not appear on the paper’s English-published website, but only on Twitter.
Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, notorious for his fierce tweets, went even further: “WTA is coercing Peng Shuai to support the West’s attack on Chinese system. They are depriving Peng Shuai’s freedom of expression, demanding that her description of her current situation must meet their expectation.” With that, Hu turned the matter upside down in an astonishing fashion. Moreover, he tried to ridicule the WTA’s announcement: “Steve Simon is boycotting in a high profile manner some events that only have a slim chance of being held due to COVID-19.” This would not bring the WTA any additional economic losses and would only attract attention in the West.
This angry posturing suggests that China is genuinely shocked by the WTA’s tournament cancellation. Because China knows differently. In the past, companies, governments, and even sports federations have always buckled under the pressure and the huge market of the People’s Republic. In any case, the WTA is the first international sports federation ever to stand up to China despite expected financial losses. The US basketball organization NBA had already folded after the manager of the 2019 Houston Rockets supported the democracy movement in Hong Kong on Twitter. China banned all NBA broadcasts, prompting the NBA to quickly regret the manager’s tweet. It even claimed it was “disappointed” by his comments. The Chinese market seems just too important.
In fact, WTA tournaments in China would have been unlikely anyway due to the Covid entry restrictions expected to remain in place till next year. However, the WTA left the end of the suspension open. One thing is certain: It will only really hurt if the WTA still cancels tournaments when China’s borders are open once again. But even so, the public suspension remains an effective signal that has been welcomed around the world. “Literally what we should all be doing. Uphold values and do what we must to defend them,” commented Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law from his exile in London, for example. World number one Novak Djokovic also welcomed the WTA’s tournament cancellations, as did the US tennis legends Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King.
The People’s Republic had not met the demands of the federation for a full and transparent investigation of the case, WTA boss Simon had justified the previously threatened decision on Wednesday evening (China.Table reported). “While we now know where Peng is, I have serious doubts that she is free, safe, and not subject to censorship, coercion, and intimidation.”
The IOC, on the other hand, was obviously overwhelmed with the balancing act of showing concern for Peng Shuai on the one hand, and on the other hand not snubbing the organizer of the imminent Winter Olympics. The IOC always demonstratively stays out of politics – which was not possible in the case of the three-time Olympian Peng. So on November 21, they organized a video phone call between IOC President Thomas Bach, the chairwoman of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, and a senior IOC member in China and Peng. Peng Shuai was doing well and wanted her privacy respected, was the unconcerned conclusion. Criticism mounted that Bach and the committee had allowed themselves to be instrumentalized by China. How could the IOC be sure there wasn’t a minder sitting next to Peng, not visible on the video? Why was no one suspicious?
Peng was happy to receive the call, long-time IOC official Dick Pound has now defended the action once again. The common conclusion of the three callers had been “that she was OK and not under duress,” Pound told Reuters on Thursday. “And that’s what we wanted to know.” He stressed that the IOC was the only organization in the world that had even managed to contact Peng.
Nevertheless, the IOC contacted Peng again on Wednesday. They share the same concern about the 35-year-old, the IOC announced on Thursday. It once again officially defended its approach: “There are different ways to achieve her well-being and safety. We have taken a very human and person-centered approach to her situation.” Since Peng is a three-time Olympian, the IOC is addressing her concerns directly with Chinese sports organizations. “We are using “quiet diplomacy” which, given the circumstances and based on the experience of governments and other organizations, is indicated to be the most promising way to proceed effectively in such humanitarian matters.”
The IOC had offered Peng full support and would remain in regular contact with her. A personal meeting has also been arranged for January. But whether that will silence the critics is more than questionable. The procedure seems too much like window dressing. The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) also refused to take a clear position when approached by China.Table.
There is now an unpleasant-sounding suspicion: Olympian Peng Shuai is being held captive by the organizer of the upcoming Winter Olympics. And the IOC is doing nothing about it.
That’s why the debate about a diplomatic boycott of this year’s Winter Games in Beijing from February 4 to 20, 2022, is gaining momentum. Such a boycott would mean that nations would not send official government delegations to the Olympics, but the athletes would be allowed to participate. In connection with the Peng Shuai case, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had already mentioned such a boycott.
Now, the designated German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is also considering this: “When I see how China’s leadership is dealing with the tennis player Peng Shuai or with the arrested citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, we should of course also take a closer look at the Olympic Games,” Baerbock said in an interview with China.Table and journalists from the German daily (taz). Zhang Zhan was detained because of her articles from Wuhan on the beginnings of the Covid pandemic.
Countries are also making increasingly direct references to the drama surrounding Peng. Already on Tuesday, for example, the spokeswoman for EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Josep Borrell had weighed in: “The EU expresses its solidarity with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared shortly after she had posted allegations of sexual assault on Chinese social media. Her recent public reappearance does not ease concerns about her safety and freedom.” The EU joined growing international demands for assurances that Peng was free and not under threat. US President Biden had also already expressed concern for Peng. But without a more robust approach, these words are likely to fall flat without much effect.
The Liuyang River bends through nine bends, and the fifty-mile waterway reaches the Xiangjiang River. There is Xiangtan County by the river. Ah, there is a Chairman Mao, who “leads the people to liberate”. The song to the Great Chairman and his river, “Liuyanghe,” which has been sung for 70 years, has become an evergreen among revolutionary hits that millions of Chinese still warble along with today. Meanwhile, the new chairman Xi Jinping is following in Mao’s footsteps. A hymn dedicated to him and his river “Liangjiahe” in Shaanxi, from which he set out on his political career, has appeared in the copy-happy People’s Republic. The sonorously recited cycle of poems is the latest highlight in the increasingly grotesque Chinese cult of personality. But opposition is also stirring within the party.
“Rise, become rich, become strong” (站起来，富起来, 强起来). The three terms introduce the refrain of the “Ballad of Liangjiahe” (梁家河组歌). They come from the mouth of party leader Xi and have become common words in the People’s Republic. Melodically performed (朗诵) by well-known artists, the spoonerism of the refrain goes like this: “You come from Liangjiahe, steering China into a new era, never forget how it all began, staying true to the mission, and carrying on the project of Chinese socialism in the new era!” (站起来，富起来，强起来. 你从梁家河走来，领航中国走进新时代。不忘初心，牢记使命，新时代中国特色社会主义继往开来！)
It almost sounds like the praise song “Liuyanghe” (浏阳河) written by poet Xu Shuhua (徐叔华) in 1950 that “Chairman Mao is the Red Sun in Our Hearts”. The new revolutionary ballad about Xi narrates his career in nine verses after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution sends the 15-year-old to the countryside in January 1969. For seven years he toils with and among the local farmers in the village of Liangjiahe on the eponymous river before he was allowed to return to Beijing to rise politically.
In the fifth verse, the poem praises young Xi, who was forced to abandon his secondary school education because of the Cultural Revolution, as a brilliant autodidact. After a hard day’s work, he keeps himself awake “half the night” to read world literature, from Goethe’s Faust (浮士德) to Shakespeare’s King Lear (李尔王), by the “light of an oil spark” in his “dark den”. Of course, he devoured the Marxist classics, especially Das Kapital (资本论) by Karl Marx. That’s what fascinated and enlightened him so much, China’s news agency Xinhua wrote in an endless eulogy to Xi that took China Daily seven parts to translate into English. Xi had read Marx’s “‘Das Kapital’ three times and filled 18 notebooks with his reflections on the text.
Ten (sic.) notes of the new poem on Xi explain what the poet Cheng Guanjun is alluding to. “Big guns” are hand-rolled coarse tobacco leaves that Xi smokes for his fatigue; the “mother’s heart and a small pouch for needle and thread” (娘的心。小小针线包) refers to an anecdote. According to it, “when he went to the countryside, Mother Qixin gave her son a cloth bag with sewing materials, on which she had embroidered the words ‘Mother’s Heart’.” Other touching recollections of Xi’s mother and her relationship with her son under the title “The Promise Two Generations of Communists Made to Each Other” are spread by major party media in China.
The eulogies in verse are an overture for the grand concert that the 20th Party Congress is supposed to put on for Xi to cement his absolute power at the end of 2022. There is a lot of calculation behind the enacted cult of personality. For example, Cheng Guanjun, as the author of the poem in praise of Xi, is not a part-time or hobby poet, but an author who writes for the main Party newspapers. He is also an expert on party history and a senior theoretician at the Beijing CC Party University. Before his recent Xi Anthem, he had already written a similar poem, “You Come from Liangjiahe.” It found its way into the Xi training material “Strong China” (中宣部 “学习强国”) published by the CCP and was distributed by all party media. His song poem is currently being performed by professional recitation artists over radio and stages.
Within the party, however, Xi’s personality cult seems to be met with resistance. An indirect hint of this is hidden in an extensive programmatic manifesto of the Central Committee, which the CC’s publications department published on August 26 under the title: “The Chinese Communist Party: Its Mission and Contributions.” The document was apparently so important that the English-published newspaper China Daily translated it in full on more than half a dozen of its pages.
In one particular paragraph, it says: “Upholding the leadership core of the CPC in no way involves the creation of any kind of personality cult – something the CPC has resolutely opposed ever since it was first founded. The Party’s Constitution explicitly stipulates that ‘The Party proscribes all forms of personality cult.’ The Party leadership core never wields unlimited power or engages in decision-making at will.”
Just ten weeks later, the Party’s “historical resolution,” adopted at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, appeared in mid-November as the ultimate statement of principles on its history and the maxims of its development. CCP chief Xi, who lets himself be called the “core of the party,” presided over the meeting, led the three-member drafting group for the resolution, and presented it. It no longer mentions personality cult. Xi did not explain why.
In exchange, the resolution praises “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era marked the third breakthrough in the adaptation. The Resolution points out that this Thought is the Marxism of contemporary China and of the 21st century. It embodies the best of the Chinese culture and ethos in our times.” This is written in prose. But it reads like another hymn by party poets to their leader.
A 15-meter high crayfish rises in the city of Qianjiang in Hubei. Crayfish are a local specialty. Qianjiang is particularly smart about it and has built up an integrated agricultural industry of rice cultivation and crayfish breeding. This has created the largest crayfish cluster in the world.
