The situation in Beijing remains serious and complicated, as paraphrased by the city government on Monday. 50 new cases – mainly in the Shunyi district – mean more mass testing for Beijing’s citizens. And restrictions are also being tightened again in Shanghai. Meanwhile, the situation in Hong Kong is quite different. Our team took a closer look at the Covid policy in the special administrative region – and the results could hardly be more different: Instead of lockdowns like on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong’s new Chief Executive John Lee wants to swiftly reopen the borders. The paradoxical consequence of these two different policies: Entry from faraway Europe would become easier than from the nearby mainland.
Meanwhile, my colleague Ning Wang has looked into a side effect of the Shanghai lockdown and discovered a massive problem for the Chinese government: securing the food supply. While food and drink security in Shanghai mainly fails due to the authorities’ strict Covid measures, a massive food supply crisis could hit nationwide. The reason: China’s soils are contaminated with heavy metals, plastics or phosphorus. The reasons for this are mostly man-made. Ning Wang shows that China’s authorities have certainly recognized the problem – but their measures are of staggering simplicity.
Escape from the dilemma: In his election speech on Sunday, Hong Kong’s future Chief Executive John Lee made it clear where he will set the priorities after he takes office on July 1. Lee and his new team want to try to liberate Hong Kong as quickly as possible from the Covid isolation that has been hurting the economy. The government under Carrie Lam also makes efforts to this end, but has not yet been able to report any success.
For more than two years, strict measures have been in place that turn any trip for Hong Kong’s citizens into an ordeal. Trips abroad result in long hotel isolation in Hong Kong upon return. Not even trips to neighboring Shenzhen in Mainland China are possible without quarantine. Numerous citizens were even locked out of their home country at times. Time and time again, flight and entry bans were imposed on short notice, making it impossible to return from countries hit particularly hard by Covid. For tourists and business travelers without Hong Kong citizenship, the city was even completely off-limits until a few days ago.
The situation not only takes a toll on the people, economic productivity also suffers massively. Companies and foreign chambers of commerce are putting pressure on the government by repeatedly urging for restrictions to finally be lifted.
And indeed: Unlike in Mainland China, where the government strictly maintains its controversial zero-covid policy, Hong Kong tries to return to normality with greater flexibility. It allowed Omicron to more or less sweep through the city without resorting to panic-driven lockdowns for months at a time in response to any rise in infection numbers. The trend seems to justify the choice of means: Hong Kong’s infection numbers dropped from more than 70,000 infections per day to fewer than 300 recently.
As a special administrative region, Hong Kong benefits from considerably more autonomy than Shanghai, for example. The local government there also tried to prevent a hard lockdown. But Beijing has put its foot down, which ultimately caused Shanghai authorities to isolate millions of people in their homes and apartment blocks for more than a month. While government media already believed there was “light at the end of the tunnel” last week, a new directive from the administration over the weekend destroyed the budding hope. (China.Table reported)
When the Covid cases skyrocketed in Hong Kong in February, things first looked similarly grim. Container camps were erected at lightning speed to house infected individuals and their close contacts. There were also plans for several rounds of forced mass testing. In case of a possible test, it would have been impossible to prevent getting sent to the Covid camp. But this never happened. The government showed no intention of returning to zero-Covid. Instead, there was a 180-degree turnaround: Today, restaurants, cinemas, gyms and swimming pools are largely open again.
The situation in Beijing is developing completely differently. On Monday, a spokesman for the city government called the situation in the capital “severe and complicated”. At the start of the week, another 50 new cases were reported, most of them in the northern district of Shunyi. There has been no success in breaking contact chains, the statement said. Controls would need to be tightened again. The start of a new round of mass testing in a total of 17 districts has been announced for Tuesday.
Cinemas and gyms remain closed, and even parks are off-limits until further notice. Since the middle of last week, care and classes in kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools have only been held online. In Chaoyang and Shunyi, all public transportation has been suspended. As of Thursday, citizens are required to provide a recent negative PCR test result to enter public facilities.
In Hong Kong, on the other hand, things have eased: For the first time in two years, foreign travelers are once again allowed to enter the city. The duration of the hotel quarantine has been reduced from 14 days to only 7 days. There are already calls to allow this quarantine to be spent in the visitor’s own home. Flight bans that were previously imposed on airlines if too many passengers tested positive are only to be sparingly imposed.
The newly-elected Chief Executive John Lee is not yet openly saying that Hong Kong will have to live with the virus in the future. However, it seems clear that the current Covid policy will be history. Until now, it has always been stated that borders to Mainland China would have to be opened first. Now, Lee only speaks in more general terms of an “opening of the borders” – meaning that, if necessary, Hong Kong should first be freed from its international isolation while the Mainland has to wait.
In any case, after his election victory, John Lee said, “I’m very conscious of the need to make Hong Kong accessible to the world and also it is an important thing for Hong Kong to be able to resume normal travel with the mainland.” In this order. Joern Petring/ Gregor Koppenburg
It was a mere side note among the myriad news stories about the chaotic food distribution to the people of Shanghai. In several districts, residents complained of stomach pains and diarrhea after consuming food distributed by the authorities. Flashbacks of contaminated food such as milk, oil and vegetables quickly emerged among China’s urbanites. Social media is rife with stories of the greed of sales-driven companies that risked people’s lives just to keep their balance sheets in the black. Censors do not even touch these stories, because they also benefit Beijing and distract from deeper problems.
According to a 2020 study by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, an estimated 12 million tons of vegetables grown each year are contaminated by heavy metals in the soil. The main factors here are residues from industrial wastewater and animal feed.
It is often overlooked that the main prerequisite for safe food is healthy ground. For agricultural production to harvest healthy crops such as vegetables, corn or rice for further processing, only agricultural land whose soil is not polluted is required. And authorities have issued clear requirements in this regard.
“For China, the efficient use of natural resources is an urgent matter as its agricultural area is comparatively small for sustaining the world’s largest population,” wrote Lea Siebert in a recent analysis on soil contamination in China by the Sino-German Agricultural Center (DCZ), supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).
About 135 million hectares (not including forest and grassland) of the approximately 645 million hectares of land are used for agriculture in the People’s Republic. That is 0.09 hectares per capita. This compares to 0.14 in Germany and as much as 0.22 in the European Union. According to a World Bank report, around 20 percent of China’s farmland is now polluted. In the 1980s, the proportion of contaminated soil was just 5 percent.
The problem of food shortages in the country is becoming correspondingly more pressing. To fill the gaps, the People’s Republic has to import larger quantities from elsewhere. This creates dependency, which Beijing actually wants to avoid (China.Table reported). After all, the government recognized a geostrategic threat in this constellation.
But there is a lack of transparency that is actually necessary to properly assess the condition of China’s soil. Although there have been a number of such studies in the past, they were often meta-analyses limited to specific regions or pollutants.
The most comprehensive approach to date is the National Soil Pollution Survey Report, which was conducted between 2005 and 2013. However, the report only published statistics on percentage pollution levels. More detailed or location-specific data, on the other hand, have not been made public, criticizes the Sino-German Agricultural Center (DCZ).
Several recent studies show that the steps taken so far to fight soil contamination have hardly yielded any tangible improvements or even solutions. Back in 2013, the then-Minister of Land and Resources, Wang Shiyuan, announced a long-term plan to clean up the land and pledged billions for this. But little has happened, and it is unclear to outsiders where the money has gone.
Even a decade later, the urgency of the issue still does not seem to have sunk in with involved parties. For example, according to a recent study by financial news provider Caixin, two-thirds of companies surveyed risk contaminating their farmland with chemical or toxic substances. Scientists from a Sino-English project also discovered that many farmers used far too much fertilizer and pesticides to maximize their harvest. These then usually end up directly in the groundwater because the large quantity can simply no longer be absorbed by the plants.
Since 66 million hectares of arable land in China – almost 50 percent of the total area – are irrigated, the poor quality of irrigation water is also a major contributor to soil pollution.
In addition, chemical and organic pollutants cause soils to acidify, which lowers the pH value in the soil. However, in such a pH environment, plants absorb more metals, which in turn leads to crops being contaminated with heavy metals – which ultimately harm consumers further along the food chain.
Yet China’s scientists are well aware of this – and voice their concerns: “Increased nitrogen, phosphorus and greenhouse gas emissions exceed safety limits. Currently, China has the largest use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the world,” says Kong Xiangbin, a professor at the Institute of Soil Science at China Agricultural University. China’s use of nitrogen fertilizer accounts for 33 percent of the global total, and 36 percent for phosphate fertilizer. “In 2018, the consumption of nitrogen and phosphorus was 8.214 million tons and 2.138 million tons, respectively, greatly exceeding the safety limits …,” Kong’s study said.
Yet soil contamination in the agricultural sector is by no means only a Chinese problem, as the DCZ study shows. By comparison, heavy metals are responsible for around 35 percent of all soil contamination in Europe, followed by mineral oils with 24 percent.
Although agricultural soils are also polluted by natural erosion, most direct pollution is caused by human intervention in agriculture. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides plays a major role, but so do the residues of plastic films designed to protect against wind and weather or animals damaging the seeds.
In 1994, China’s farmers used about 426,300 tons of these films. By 2020, that figure had risen to 2.389 million tons. The problem: These films are often discarded at the edges of fields, with the result that plastic residues are found in the soil, which in turn negatively affects soil moisture and thus the growth of seeds planted there.
On top of this, there is indirect pollution, for example, resulting from flooding or also caused by so-called atmospheric deposition, which coal consumption in the People’s Republic contributes to: in 2018, coal consumption totaled 3.97 billion tons. This amount contains about 51,600 tons of lead, 38,300 tons of arsenic, 1,100 tons of cadmium and 750 tons of mercury. These huge quantities deposit in the atmosphere and sink into the soil by either gravity or – faster – by rain.
Last year, the Environment Ministry issued a detailed guideline to reduce soil contamination. Its three main recommendations to companies are “no leaks, no propagation and early detection.” But these proposals are not only woefully late. Their simplicity also shows how detached the authorities are from the real world. In collaboration with Renxiu Zhao.
China’s regulatory authorities have banned minors from live streaming (直播, zhíbò) on the Internet. This was to protect “their physical and mental health,” according to the corresponding statement.
This involves dividing minors into groups: Those under 16 will be banned from any live streaming, while users between 16 and 18 will have to get permission from their parents or guardians before going live. The statement continues, “Internet platforms should … strictly implement the real-name registration requirement, and prohibit offering minors’ tipping services such as cash top-up, gift purchase, and online payment.”
The new regulations were issued Saturday by four regulatory agencies – including the National Radio and Television Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).
As Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reports, regulators also want China’s tech companies to improve their “youth mode”. This is a feature introduced last year to protect teenagers from gambling addiction and “inappropriate” content. Since 2018, for example, a blacklist has been introduced for influencers who are perceived to exert a bad influence on society and, in particular, on China’s youth.
Now, platforms are being asked to deploy special censorship teams for content aimed at minors. In addition, user activity in youth mode must cease after 10 PM to “ensure they have enough time to rest.” These are the latest measures taken by the government to help Beijing better protect minors in cyberspace.
Should the new rules not be implemented by tech companies, authorities have threatened to take drastic measures, ranging from the suspension of money donation features to the complete shutdown of individual companies’ live streaming businesses. rad
Has Niao Wu reached her goal? What a question. Of course not. Never. Although the 35-year-old architect has already built the innovation center for BMW in Shanghai, kicked it up a notch at the Boston Consulting Group, and founded her start-up Onyo in Munich in 2021. With her company, she provides sustainably produced work furniture for the home – for lease. “Homeoffice-as-a-service,” she advertises. But for Wu, the journey is always the destination. “Getting better, getting stronger,” she says, “and giving back to society.” That’s how the energetic woman describes the inner drive that led her from Haining in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, its capital Hangzhou, and now to Munich.
“I come from a family that suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution,” Wu says. One grandfather lost his life in the prison camp, the other was a journalist and secretary in the Taiwanese government. Wu’s father felt the effects of that. “He was not allowed to practice his passion, traditional painting, professionally and became a teacher.” In private, he inked, sculpted and calligraphed, and his mother – an accountant – kept the money together. “She was the rational figure in my life.” But her childhood was almost all about art. “I practically painted for the first few years of my life, nothing else.”
At the same time, her father shaped the young girl with his consistency. “Nothing is handed to you in life, you have to work for it” – this lesson stuck. When everyone was still asleep, Niao Wu had to get up at five in the morning and was sent to the kung fu master in the dark. “I hated it,” she says. Only now she is doing martial arts again, taekwondo, by choice.
Architecture as a major was a logical choice. “I was good at math and physics and loved art.” Her high school diploma was the tenth or eleventh best in the city, she says. That’s why she was allowed to enroll at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou – to this day, the tech metropolis on West Lake is her favorite Chinese city. Two and a half years later, a new university partnership with the Technical University of Munich led to a student exchange program, and Wu was offered one of the five spots. She had already learned German in an evening class.
“I enjoyed the structure of the German university, everything made sense to me,” she says enthusiastically. It was soon clear: she wanted to stay. She started her studies from scratch. “My professors in Hangzhou understood my decision.” She graduated in 2014, majoring in structural engineering and construction. “If you’re going to study architecture in Germany, go hardcore.” By that, she means deciding to delve deeply into the foundations of architecture. Her trained precision serves her well when it comes to founding, Wu says. “The logic, the way you deal with numbers, the structure: in a young company, it’s also about putting up scaffolding.”
Her first professional stop in Munich began with a letter of rejection. She applied for the global trainee program at BMW, was one of the last four candidates, but was disappointed: “I don’t fit in with the culture,” she quotes the explanation. One jury member, however, BMW’s head of department, recognized her potential and recruited her to join his team. Her expertise in both Chinese and German cultures became an asset when she was entrusted with the structural construction of the German automaker’s Shanghai Center for Research and Development. “It was my baby, from the first user requirement, to selecting the land, to coordinating the trades.” Later, she also took over project management in Beijing for the construction of the local research center.
Despite the demanding tasks, she sensed an alarming stagnation after just over three years. “The world out there is moving so fast, there’s a calm in the company. You go out for coffee three times a day, it’s so comfortable.” She took advantage of a BMW accelerator program and drafted bold battery plans as part of the team. “There, too: Everything is nice on paper, but no one is interested in real implementation.” The decision began to grow: She wanted to become an entrepreneur. She took business administration courses on weekends and ended up briefly at the management consultancy BCG. After this nine-month “crash course,” as she says, the business idea came to her.
Onyo was born during Covid, when the BCG consultant was sent to a home office. “I was able to set up my workspace at home, but many around me had a hard time with it.” There was a lack of competence and leisure. Kitchen tables and bad lighting became the health-threatening standard. ” I definitely believe that employers have an obligation to support their employees with ergonomic furniture in the hybrid work that is now emerging – and not literally save money on their backs,” says Wu. Together with Jens Woehrle, an ex-banker and software professional, she is putting her vision into reality. “We individually provide employees with high-quality and sustainable products without the employer having to worry about procurement, logistics or insurance.”
Her life as a “first-generation Chinese immigrant,” as she perceives it, is “not always straightforward”. It seems that she always takes a step back to look at herself. As a wanderer between cultures, a motivated cosmopolitan and a member of a generation that has understood that they matter. She hasn’t been able to visit her mother for three years, which is hard. Does she miss China apart from that? “Not terribly,” she says. “Here in Munich and also digitally, there are so many great exhibitions on Chinese culture – that gives me a lot.” Stefan Merx
So far, there is no information about Covid vaccinations for cats, so protective clothing is a must. On Taobao, the well-known Covid protective suits of the “Big Whites” are also now available for small pets. A bargain at 67 yuan. However, there is probably no guarantee for their effectiveness.
The situation in Beijing remains serious and complicated, as paraphrased by the city government on Monday. 50 new cases – mainly in the Shunyi district – mean more mass testing for Beijing’s citizens. And restrictions are also being tightened again in Shanghai. Meanwhile, the situation in Hong Kong is quite different. Our team took a closer look at the Covid policy in the special administrative region – and the results could hardly be more different: Instead of lockdowns like on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong’s new Chief Executive John Lee wants to swiftly reopen the borders. The paradoxical consequence of these two different policies: Entry from faraway Europe would become easier than from the nearby mainland.
Meanwhile, my colleague Ning Wang has looked into a side effect of the Shanghai lockdown and discovered a massive problem for the Chinese government: securing the food supply. While food and drink security in Shanghai mainly fails due to the authorities’ strict Covid measures, a massive food supply crisis could hit nationwide. The reason: China’s soils are contaminated with heavy metals, plastics or phosphorus. The reasons for this are mostly man-made. Ning Wang shows that China’s authorities have certainly recognized the problem – but their measures are of staggering simplicity.
Escape from the dilemma: In his election speech on Sunday, Hong Kong’s future Chief Executive John Lee made it clear where he will set the priorities after he takes office on July 1. Lee and his new team want to try to liberate Hong Kong as quickly as possible from the Covid isolation that has been hurting the economy. The government under Carrie Lam also makes efforts to this end, but has not yet been able to report any success.
For more than two years, strict measures have been in place that turn any trip for Hong Kong’s citizens into an ordeal. Trips abroad result in long hotel isolation in Hong Kong upon return. Not even trips to neighboring Shenzhen in Mainland China are possible without quarantine. Numerous citizens were even locked out of their home country at times. Time and time again, flight and entry bans were imposed on short notice, making it impossible to return from countries hit particularly hard by Covid. For tourists and business travelers without Hong Kong citizenship, the city was even completely off-limits until a few days ago.
The situation not only takes a toll on the people, economic productivity also suffers massively. Companies and foreign chambers of commerce are putting pressure on the government by repeatedly urging for restrictions to finally be lifted.
And indeed: Unlike in Mainland China, where the government strictly maintains its controversial zero-covid policy, Hong Kong tries to return to normality with greater flexibility. It allowed Omicron to more or less sweep through the city without resorting to panic-driven lockdowns for months at a time in response to any rise in infection numbers. The trend seems to justify the choice of means: Hong Kong’s infection numbers dropped from more than 70,000 infections per day to fewer than 300 recently.
As a special administrative region, Hong Kong benefits from considerably more autonomy than Shanghai, for example. The local government there also tried to prevent a hard lockdown. But Beijing has put its foot down, which ultimately caused Shanghai authorities to isolate millions of people in their homes and apartment blocks for more than a month. While government media already believed there was “light at the end of the tunnel” last week, a new directive from the administration over the weekend destroyed the budding hope. (China.Table reported)
When the Covid cases skyrocketed in Hong Kong in February, things first looked similarly grim. Container camps were erected at lightning speed to house infected individuals and their close contacts. There were also plans for several rounds of forced mass testing. In case of a possible test, it would have been impossible to prevent getting sent to the Covid camp. But this never happened. The government showed no intention of returning to zero-Covid. Instead, there was a 180-degree turnaround: Today, restaurants, cinemas, gyms and swimming pools are largely open again.
The situation in Beijing is developing completely differently. On Monday, a spokesman for the city government called the situation in the capital “severe and complicated”. At the start of the week, another 50 new cases were reported, most of them in the northern district of Shunyi. There has been no success in breaking contact chains, the statement said. Controls would need to be tightened again. The start of a new round of mass testing in a total of 17 districts has been announced for Tuesday.
Cinemas and gyms remain closed, and even parks are off-limits until further notice. Since the middle of last week, care and classes in kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools have only been held online. In Chaoyang and Shunyi, all public transportation has been suspended. As of Thursday, citizens are required to provide a recent negative PCR test result to enter public facilities.
In Hong Kong, on the other hand, things have eased: For the first time in two years, foreign travelers are once again allowed to enter the city. The duration of the hotel quarantine has been reduced from 14 days to only 7 days. There are already calls to allow this quarantine to be spent in the visitor’s own home. Flight bans that were previously imposed on airlines if too many passengers tested positive are only to be sparingly imposed.
The newly-elected Chief Executive John Lee is not yet openly saying that Hong Kong will have to live with the virus in the future. However, it seems clear that the current Covid policy will be history. Until now, it has always been stated that borders to Mainland China would have to be opened first. Now, Lee only speaks in more general terms of an “opening of the borders” – meaning that, if necessary, Hong Kong should first be freed from its international isolation while the Mainland has to wait.
In any case, after his election victory, John Lee said, “I’m very conscious of the need to make Hong Kong accessible to the world and also it is an important thing for Hong Kong to be able to resume normal travel with the mainland.” In this order. Joern Petring/ Gregor Koppenburg
It was a mere side note among the myriad news stories about the chaotic food distribution to the people of Shanghai. In several districts, residents complained of stomach pains and diarrhea after consuming food distributed by the authorities. Flashbacks of contaminated food such as milk, oil and vegetables quickly emerged among China’s urbanites. Social media is rife with stories of the greed of sales-driven companies that risked people’s lives just to keep their balance sheets in the black. Censors do not even touch these stories, because they also benefit Beijing and distract from deeper problems.
According to a 2020 study by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, an estimated 12 million tons of vegetables grown each year are contaminated by heavy metals in the soil. The main factors here are residues from industrial wastewater and animal feed.
It is often overlooked that the main prerequisite for safe food is healthy ground. For agricultural production to harvest healthy crops such as vegetables, corn or rice for further processing, only agricultural land whose soil is not polluted is required. And authorities have issued clear requirements in this regard.
“For China, the efficient use of natural resources is an urgent matter as its agricultural area is comparatively small for sustaining the world’s largest population,” wrote Lea Siebert in a recent analysis on soil contamination in China by the Sino-German Agricultural Center (DCZ), supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).
About 135 million hectares (not including forest and grassland) of the approximately 645 million hectares of land are used for agriculture in the People’s Republic. That is 0.09 hectares per capita. This compares to 0.14 in Germany and as much as 0.22 in the European Union. According to a World Bank report, around 20 percent of China’s farmland is now polluted. In the 1980s, the proportion of contaminated soil was just 5 percent.
The problem of food shortages in the country is becoming correspondingly more pressing. To fill the gaps, the People’s Republic has to import larger quantities from elsewhere. This creates dependency, which Beijing actually wants to avoid (China.Table reported). After all, the government recognized a geostrategic threat in this constellation.
But there is a lack of transparency that is actually necessary to properly assess the condition of China’s soil. Although there have been a number of such studies in the past, they were often meta-analyses limited to specific regions or pollutants.
The most comprehensive approach to date is the National Soil Pollution Survey Report, which was conducted between 2005 and 2013. However, the report only published statistics on percentage pollution levels. More detailed or location-specific data, on the other hand, have not been made public, criticizes the Sino-German Agricultural Center (DCZ).
Several recent studies show that the steps taken so far to fight soil contamination have hardly yielded any tangible improvements or even solutions. Back in 2013, the then-Minister of Land and Resources, Wang Shiyuan, announced a long-term plan to clean up the land and pledged billions for this. But little has happened, and it is unclear to outsiders where the money has gone.
Even a decade later, the urgency of the issue still does not seem to have sunk in with involved parties. For example, according to a recent study by financial news provider Caixin, two-thirds of companies surveyed risk contaminating their farmland with chemical or toxic substances. Scientists from a Sino-English project also discovered that many farmers used far too much fertilizer and pesticides to maximize their harvest. These then usually end up directly in the groundwater because the large quantity can simply no longer be absorbed by the plants.
Since 66 million hectares of arable land in China – almost 50 percent of the total area – are irrigated, the poor quality of irrigation water is also a major contributor to soil pollution.
In addition, chemical and organic pollutants cause soils to acidify, which lowers the pH value in the soil. However, in such a pH environment, plants absorb more metals, which in turn leads to crops being contaminated with heavy metals – which ultimately harm consumers further along the food chain.
Yet China’s scientists are well aware of this – and voice their concerns: “Increased nitrogen, phosphorus and greenhouse gas emissions exceed safety limits. Currently, China has the largest use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the world,” says Kong Xiangbin, a professor at the Institute of Soil Science at China Agricultural University. China’s use of nitrogen fertilizer accounts for 33 percent of the global total, and 36 percent for phosphate fertilizer. “In 2018, the consumption of nitrogen and phosphorus was 8.214 million tons and 2.138 million tons, respectively, greatly exceeding the safety limits …,” Kong’s study said.
Yet soil contamination in the agricultural sector is by no means only a Chinese problem, as the DCZ study shows. By comparison, heavy metals are responsible for around 35 percent of all soil contamination in Europe, followed by mineral oils with 24 percent.
Although agricultural soils are also polluted by natural erosion, most direct pollution is caused by human intervention in agriculture. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides plays a major role, but so do the residues of plastic films designed to protect against wind and weather or animals damaging the seeds.
In 1994, China’s farmers used about 426,300 tons of these films. By 2020, that figure had risen to 2.389 million tons. The problem: These films are often discarded at the edges of fields, with the result that plastic residues are found in the soil, which in turn negatively affects soil moisture and thus the growth of seeds planted there.
On top of this, there is indirect pollution, for example, resulting from flooding or also caused by so-called atmospheric deposition, which coal consumption in the People’s Republic contributes to: in 2018, coal consumption totaled 3.97 billion tons. This amount contains about 51,600 tons of lead, 38,300 tons of arsenic, 1,100 tons of cadmium and 750 tons of mercury. These huge quantities deposit in the atmosphere and sink into the soil by either gravity or – faster – by rain.
Last year, the Environment Ministry issued a detailed guideline to reduce soil contamination. Its three main recommendations to companies are “no leaks, no propagation and early detection.” But these proposals are not only woefully late. Their simplicity also shows how detached the authorities are from the real world. In collaboration with Renxiu Zhao.
China’s regulatory authorities have banned minors from live streaming (直播, zhíbò) on the Internet. This was to protect “their physical and mental health,” according to the corresponding statement.
This involves dividing minors into groups: Those under 16 will be banned from any live streaming, while users between 16 and 18 will have to get permission from their parents or guardians before going live. The statement continues, “Internet platforms should … strictly implement the real-name registration requirement, and prohibit offering minors’ tipping services such as cash top-up, gift purchase, and online payment.”
The new regulations were issued Saturday by four regulatory agencies – including the National Radio and Television Administration and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).
As Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reports, regulators also want China’s tech companies to improve their “youth mode”. This is a feature introduced last year to protect teenagers from gambling addiction and “inappropriate” content. Since 2018, for example, a blacklist has been introduced for influencers who are perceived to exert a bad influence on society and, in particular, on China’s youth.
Now, platforms are being asked to deploy special censorship teams for content aimed at minors. In addition, user activity in youth mode must cease after 10 PM to “ensure they have enough time to rest.” These are the latest measures taken by the government to help Beijing better protect minors in cyberspace.
Should the new rules not be implemented by tech companies, authorities have threatened to take drastic measures, ranging from the suspension of money donation features to the complete shutdown of individual companies’ live streaming businesses. rad
Has Niao Wu reached her goal? What a question. Of course not. Never. Although the 35-year-old architect has already built the innovation center for BMW in Shanghai, kicked it up a notch at the Boston Consulting Group, and founded her start-up Onyo in Munich in 2021. With her company, she provides sustainably produced work furniture for the home – for lease. “Homeoffice-as-a-service,” she advertises. But for Wu, the journey is always the destination. “Getting better, getting stronger,” she says, “and giving back to society.” That’s how the energetic woman describes the inner drive that led her from Haining in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, its capital Hangzhou, and now to Munich.
“I come from a family that suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution,” Wu says. One grandfather lost his life in the prison camp, the other was a journalist and secretary in the Taiwanese government. Wu’s father felt the effects of that. “He was not allowed to practice his passion, traditional painting, professionally and became a teacher.” In private, he inked, sculpted and calligraphed, and his mother – an accountant – kept the money together. “She was the rational figure in my life.” But her childhood was almost all about art. “I practically painted for the first few years of my life, nothing else.”
At the same time, her father shaped the young girl with his consistency. “Nothing is handed to you in life, you have to work for it” – this lesson stuck. When everyone was still asleep, Niao Wu had to get up at five in the morning and was sent to the kung fu master in the dark. “I hated it,” she says. Only now she is doing martial arts again, taekwondo, by choice.
Architecture as a major was a logical choice. “I was good at math and physics and loved art.” Her high school diploma was the tenth or eleventh best in the city, she says. That’s why she was allowed to enroll at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou – to this day, the tech metropolis on West Lake is her favorite Chinese city. Two and a half years later, a new university partnership with the Technical University of Munich led to a student exchange program, and Wu was offered one of the five spots. She had already learned German in an evening class.
“I enjoyed the structure of the German university, everything made sense to me,” she says enthusiastically. It was soon clear: she wanted to stay. She started her studies from scratch. “My professors in Hangzhou understood my decision.” She graduated in 2014, majoring in structural engineering and construction. “If you’re going to study architecture in Germany, go hardcore.” By that, she means deciding to delve deeply into the foundations of architecture. Her trained precision serves her well when it comes to founding, Wu says. “The logic, the way you deal with numbers, the structure: in a young company, it’s also about putting up scaffolding.”
Her first professional stop in Munich began with a letter of rejection. She applied for the global trainee program at BMW, was one of the last four candidates, but was disappointed: “I don’t fit in with the culture,” she quotes the explanation. One jury member, however, BMW’s head of department, recognized her potential and recruited her to join his team. Her expertise in both Chinese and German cultures became an asset when she was entrusted with the structural construction of the German automaker’s Shanghai Center for Research and Development. “It was my baby, from the first user requirement, to selecting the land, to coordinating the trades.” Later, she also took over project management in Beijing for the construction of the local research center.
Despite the demanding tasks, she sensed an alarming stagnation after just over three years. “The world out there is moving so fast, there’s a calm in the company. You go out for coffee three times a day, it’s so comfortable.” She took advantage of a BMW accelerator program and drafted bold battery plans as part of the team. “There, too: Everything is nice on paper, but no one is interested in real implementation.” The decision began to grow: She wanted to become an entrepreneur. She took business administration courses on weekends and ended up briefly at the management consultancy BCG. After this nine-month “crash course,” as she says, the business idea came to her.
Onyo was born during Covid, when the BCG consultant was sent to a home office. “I was able to set up my workspace at home, but many around me had a hard time with it.” There was a lack of competence and leisure. Kitchen tables and bad lighting became the health-threatening standard. ” I definitely believe that employers have an obligation to support their employees with ergonomic furniture in the hybrid work that is now emerging – and not literally save money on their backs,” says Wu. Together with Jens Woehrle, an ex-banker and software professional, she is putting her vision into reality. “We individually provide employees with high-quality and sustainable products without the employer having to worry about procurement, logistics or insurance.”
Her life as a “first-generation Chinese immigrant,” as she perceives it, is “not always straightforward”. It seems that she always takes a step back to look at herself. As a wanderer between cultures, a motivated cosmopolitan and a member of a generation that has understood that they matter. She hasn’t been able to visit her mother for three years, which is hard. Does she miss China apart from that? “Not terribly,” she says. “Here in Munich and also digitally, there are so many great exhibitions on Chinese culture – that gives me a lot.” Stefan Merx
So far, there is no information about Covid vaccinations for cats, so protective clothing is a must. On Taobao, the well-known Covid protective suits of the “Big Whites” are also now available for small pets. A bargain at 67 yuan. However, there is probably no guarantee for their effectiveness.
