Taiwan’s former President Ma Ying-jeou has been visiting China since Easter Monday – for the second time since March 2023. Once again, he is officially there in private, but his mission is to promote ties between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. On his eleven-day trip, Ma will also hold political talks again and is even expected to meet President Xi Jinping next week.
Although Ma no longer holds a political office, his trip has significant symbolic value. While in office, he had campaigned for the expansion of economic relations with China and for emphasizing Taiwan’s cultural identity as Chinese, as Leonardo Pape explains.
Both continue to cause discussion and controversy in Taiwan to this day. Therefore, the ruling DPP is not the only party to criticize the ex-president’s trip; his own party, the KMT, also finds its former leader’s China tour certainly controversial.
The Chinese app Xiaohongshu has achieved what Western platforms such as Instagram have so far failed to do: fully combining social media lifestyle and e-commerce. Anonymous reviews are taboo on the app. Users are supposed to be able to trust the influencers there completely, as Fabian Peltsch describes.
Xiaohongshu claims to have had more than 300 million monthly active users in 2023 – 20 percent more than the previous year. Most of them are young and live in metropolises such as Shanghai.
At the start of his eleven-day China visit, former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) called for more dialogue and cooperation between Taiwan and China. During his first stop in Shenzhen in southern China, Ma met with Song Tao, Chairman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, among others.
Song passed on greetings from President Xi Jinping and took the opportunity to reaffirm the Communist Party’s political line: China opposes all “separatist activities” in Taiwan and any external interference. The leadership in Beijing has increased political and military pressure on Taiwan in recent years.
Ma, Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016, continues to strive for economic and political rapprochement with China. He already visited the People’s Republic a year ago – as a private individual, as he emphasized. But even then, Ma held political talks. Ma no longer holds a high party office, and his visit to China is being organized by his private foundation. He is accompanied by a youth delegation, which is intended to symbolize civil society exchange with China.
The KMT leadership has stated that it is not involved in the planning of the trip. However, party MPs welcomed the prospect of political dialogue with China’s leadership. In contrast, the China-critical ruling party DPP criticized the trip. Member of Parliament Wu Su-yao pointed out, among other things, that Ma and his delegation had visited the tech company Tencent and drone manufacturer Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies, both of which had been sanctioned by the US. Among other things, the drones from Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies are used by both sides in the war in Ukraine.
President Tsai Ing-wen and her Vice President Lai Ching-te, who won the presidential election in January, did not comment on the visit. Lai will be sworn in as Tsai’s successor on May 20.
Taiwanese media have reported in recent days, citing anonymous sources, that Ma was planning to meet with Xi Jinping near the end of his China visit. Neither Ma nor the Chinese leadership have confirmed this yet. When asked, the chairman of Ma’s foundation only said that Ma hoped to meet his “old friend” in China. So far, Ma has only met his “old friend” once in public. The meeting between Ma and Xi in Singapore in 2015 was supposed to be the high point of the rapprochement between Taiwan and China. At the time, however, Ma’s political position was already significantly weakened.
The year before, students in the Sunflower Movement had opposed a services agreement negotiated by the KMT government with China. They feared that stronger economic dependencies would also threaten Taiwan’s political sovereignty. The pressure of the protests led to the ratification of the agreement being overturned in parliament, and Ma’s approval ratings collapsed. The meeting with Xi Jinping then turned into an empty, symbolic political gesture. In 2016, the people of Taiwan elected DPP politician Tsai Ing-wen as president by a large majority.
Ma’s family is from the mainland. In 1949, they fled to Taiwan as part of the KMT following the defeat in the civil war against the communists. Against this background, Ma sees himself and his party as having a duty to preserve Taiwan’s Chinese cultural identity – an identity that the KMT imposed on the entire population during the dictatorship under General Chiang Kai-shek until the end of the 1980s, including those who were not from the mainland. The Chinese identity still characterizes the KMT today, while the DPP cultivates a Taiwanese identity.
When Ma visited China in March 2023, the Taiwanese public was divided. Ma received much criticism, especially for statements made a few days before the presidential election this January: “When it comes to relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, you have to trust Xi Jinping,” Ma said in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The KMT leadership then stopped Ma from appearing in public at the last major election rallies.
Ma Ying-jeou has lost influence within the party. A meeting with Xi Jinping could shed light on whether and under what conditions China’s leadership still seeks political dialogue with Taiwan.
The leadership in Beijing refuses any dialogue with the DPP government. The latter has been weakened after the elections in January: Lai Ching-te only received just over 40 percent of the vote in his election victory; the DPP also lost its majority in parliament. China’s government could now exploit and deepen Taiwan’s political polarization by offering dialogue with Ma and other pro-China political actors. Internally, Ma’s visit is therefore above all a welcome opportunity for the Communist Party to spread its narrative of the inseparable connection between Taiwan and China.
After the presidential elections in January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that the DPP would not represent the majority opinion of the Taiwanese population. However, despite the political polarization, the overwhelming majority of the people are united in maintaining Taiwan’s democratic system and de facto sovereignty. Leonardo Pape
Over the past year, Duesseldorf has become the culinary capital of Germany, if not all of Europe, among overseas Chinese. Many of them arranged to meet in the Rhine metropolis to indulge in a real feast. The popularity was mainly due to the social media and e-commerce app Xiaohongshu 小红书, where users reported that authentic Chinese specialties could also be found in Japanese-influenced places such as the Immermannstraße.
The “Little Red Book” – the name of the Shanghai-based app – has been the most influential newcomer among Chinese apps over the past five years. Somewhere between Instagram and Pinterest, it has stolen the show from top dogs such as WeChat and Douyin, especially among younger women of the post-95 generation.
Xiaonhongshu was founded in 2013 as a shopping guide for weekend trips to Hong Kong. Over time, it developed into a channel where users can share recommendations, tutorials and reviews for products, restaurants and hotspots from all over the world with photos and short videos. But the app is much more than that. Many Chinese people use it as a kind of search engine to optimize their everyday lives, but also as a compass to keep them informed about the latest trends. Apart from the algorithms, the unique selling point is the swarm intelligence of the organically grown community.
For example, if users want to navigate through Berlin using the app, they can use the relevant keyword to find user instructions on what to wear in clubs such as Berghain, where to buy the best vintage clothes or what Asians can find in Turkish supermarkets. Those who regularly post popular content can earn commissions. Anonymous reviews are taboo. The idea is that users can trust the KOLs, the Key Opinion Leaders, completely. Xiaohongshu claimed to have more than 300 million monthly active users in 2023 – 20 percent more than in the previous year. Over 50 percent are between 18 and 35 years old and live in China’s wealthier cities such as Shenzhen or Shanghai. This makes the app highly interesting for both domestic and foreign brands looking to present themselves as premium companies in the Chinese market.
Xiaohongshu has achieved what Instagram and Pinterest have failed to do so far: Combining lifestyle with e-commerce. Users who scroll through the videos can purchase individual products with a click on the integrated “RED Mall.” The trust of the community is intended to spread to the goods on offer there. The message: it is not about commerce, but about quality. It is fitting that Xiaohongshu also mediates between influencers and brands that want to be featured in the app. The idea is to avoid the AI-generated junk image of other providers. Brands and retailers must apply for an official brand account. Influencers, in turn, must register advertising partnerships and disclose whether they have been paid for a video. Otherwise, there is a risk of reprimands and suspension. Inserting links to other e-commerce providers is also prohibited.
According to the latest estimates from the Financial Times, Xiaohongshu turned a profit for the first time in 2023. With a revenue of 3.7 billion US dollars, the app generated a net profit of 500 million US dollars. The year before, Xiaohongshu had posted a loss of 200 million US dollars on a revenue of around two billion US dollars. The lifestyle app is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Temasek and achieved a valuation of 20 billion US dollars in its last financing round in 2021. At the beginning of the year, the platform announced that the number of retailers selling goods with a total value of over 100 million yuan on Xiaohongshu had increased fivefold compared to the previous year.
Xiaohongshu is a particularly suitable place for luxury brands to showcase themselves. Foreign companies such as Chanel, Gucci and Dior, as well as Western celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, have already set up official accounts on the app. In March, the app even organized a conference and gala dinner for the fashion industry together with French Vogue on the fringes of Paris Fashion Week. Only a few German companies have utilized the platform’s potential so far. One of them is the German drugstore chain Rossmann, which makes perfect sense given the demand for cosmetics among young Chinese people.
“Xiaohongshu is one of the most important means of reaching our potential customers with high-quality content,” Rossmann told Table.Briefings. The company reaches a wide range of target groups there “with customized posts or blogger (KOL) collaborations.”
But there are also hurdles and problems. Xiaohongshu’s planned IPO in 2021 was postponed following a crackdown in which the Chinese government urged several tech companies to reconsider a listing in the US and switch to Hong Kong as an alternative. The sheer volume of stored user data that could migrate overseas is making Beijing nervous. In late 2023, the company announced that an IPO in Hong Kong was also still on hold.
There is also no English version yet, which is likely due to foreign security concerns regarding TikTok. In December 2022, the Taiwanese government banned public sector employees from using Xiaohongshu on government devices over national security concerns.
The app was also repeatedly accused of promoting unrealistic beauty standards. The app also portrayed tourist hotspots in an exclusively positive light without pointing out potential risks. The Shanghai local authorities fined Xiaohongshu 300,000 yuan in early 2022 because the app had failed to remove content harmful to minors. Scammers had also repeatedly infiltrated the community. This is hardly surprising given the growing number of users. Competing companies, such as Tiktok’s parent company, ByteDance, are ready to steal market share from Xiaohongshu.
Sinolytics is a research-based business consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and specific business activities in the People’s Republic.
For the first time since their crisis meeting in California last November, US President Joe Biden and China’s Head of State and Party Leader Xi Jinping have spoken to each other again. This was confirmed by the White House on Tuesday following the phone call. Topics included Taiwan, security in the Indo-Pacific and trade issues. According to US media reports, the conversation was quite contentious. The US reports that the phone call lasted one hour and 45 minutes.
The two presidents met in person in San Francisco last November after a year of complete radio silence. There they had agreed to speak regularly on the phone again. They honored this agreement for the first time on Tuesday.
The Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported a “candid and in-depth exchange” between the two leaders. However, Xi told Biden that the Taiwan issue was an “uncrossable red line.” The White House stated that Biden had called for “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait during the call.
Trade and sanctions issues are also said to have been contentious. State media reported that Xi warned his US counterpart of the consequences of the restrictions on technology exports. According to Xinhua, Xi said that the US was “not de-risking but creating risks.” Although relations between the two countries are in the process of stabilizing, they could “slide into conflict or confrontation.” Biden spoke out against China’s demands for a relaxation of export regulations on high-tech chips. In a statement, the US Office of the President said it would continue to take the necessary steps to prevent US technology from undermining the country’s national security.
In particular, observers consider the resumption of military communication between the two countries, which was agreed in November, to be important. The US Department of Defense previously complained that the usual direct exchange between the armed forces of the two powers was not working and that this could lead to dangerous misunderstandings and miscalculations in crisis situations. The defense ministers of both countries are expected to hold talks in the coming days.
A US government representative confirmed that the two presidents have agreed to further meetings between cabinet members of both countries. US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen will travel to Beijing in the coming days to discuss urgent trade issues. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also expected to visit the Chinese capital in the coming days. Conversely, visits by high-ranking representatives of the Chinese government to the USA are also planned. flee
“Digital parents” are becoming increasingly popular in China’s parallel social media world. These are older influencers who refer to their followers as “sons and daughters,” comfort them, encourage them before an exam, or give simple life advice.
Always-available moms and dads apparently satisfy a need. According to a 2018 UNICEF report on China, 26 percent of minors surveyed reported parental neglect. The number of children of divorce has been rising in the People’s Republic for years.
On top of this, there is a longing for a simpler life. Some of the most popular parent accounts come from rural provinces and take their audiences on walks through idyllic villages. This increases the nostalgia factor, even if many of the “adopted children” did not grow up in the countryside themselves.
Taiwan’s former President Ma Ying-jeou has been visiting China since Easter Monday – for the second time since March 2023. Once again, he is officially there in private, but his mission is to promote ties between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. On his eleven-day trip, Ma will also hold political talks again and is even expected to meet President Xi Jinping next week.
Although Ma no longer holds a political office, his trip has significant symbolic value. While in office, he had campaigned for the expansion of economic relations with China and for emphasizing Taiwan’s cultural identity as Chinese, as Leonardo Pape explains.
Both continue to cause discussion and controversy in Taiwan to this day. Therefore, the ruling DPP is not the only party to criticize the ex-president’s trip; his own party, the KMT, also finds its former leader’s China tour certainly controversial.
The Chinese app Xiaohongshu has achieved what Western platforms such as Instagram have so far failed to do: fully combining social media lifestyle and e-commerce. Anonymous reviews are taboo on the app. Users are supposed to be able to trust the influencers there completely, as Fabian Peltsch describes.
Xiaohongshu claims to have had more than 300 million monthly active users in 2023 – 20 percent more than the previous year. Most of them are young and live in metropolises such as Shanghai.
At the start of his eleven-day China visit, former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) called for more dialogue and cooperation between Taiwan and China. During his first stop in Shenzhen in southern China, Ma met with Song Tao, Chairman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, among others.
Song passed on greetings from President Xi Jinping and took the opportunity to reaffirm the Communist Party’s political line: China opposes all “separatist activities” in Taiwan and any external interference. The leadership in Beijing has increased political and military pressure on Taiwan in recent years.
Ma, Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016, continues to strive for economic and political rapprochement with China. He already visited the People’s Republic a year ago – as a private individual, as he emphasized. But even then, Ma held political talks. Ma no longer holds a high party office, and his visit to China is being organized by his private foundation. He is accompanied by a youth delegation, which is intended to symbolize civil society exchange with China.
The KMT leadership has stated that it is not involved in the planning of the trip. However, party MPs welcomed the prospect of political dialogue with China’s leadership. In contrast, the China-critical ruling party DPP criticized the trip. Member of Parliament Wu Su-yao pointed out, among other things, that Ma and his delegation had visited the tech company Tencent and drone manufacturer Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies, both of which had been sanctioned by the US. Among other things, the drones from Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies are used by both sides in the war in Ukraine.
President Tsai Ing-wen and her Vice President Lai Ching-te, who won the presidential election in January, did not comment on the visit. Lai will be sworn in as Tsai’s successor on May 20.
Taiwanese media have reported in recent days, citing anonymous sources, that Ma was planning to meet with Xi Jinping near the end of his China visit. Neither Ma nor the Chinese leadership have confirmed this yet. When asked, the chairman of Ma’s foundation only said that Ma hoped to meet his “old friend” in China. So far, Ma has only met his “old friend” once in public. The meeting between Ma and Xi in Singapore in 2015 was supposed to be the high point of the rapprochement between Taiwan and China. At the time, however, Ma’s political position was already significantly weakened.
The year before, students in the Sunflower Movement had opposed a services agreement negotiated by the KMT government with China. They feared that stronger economic dependencies would also threaten Taiwan’s political sovereignty. The pressure of the protests led to the ratification of the agreement being overturned in parliament, and Ma’s approval ratings collapsed. The meeting with Xi Jinping then turned into an empty, symbolic political gesture. In 2016, the people of Taiwan elected DPP politician Tsai Ing-wen as president by a large majority.
Ma’s family is from the mainland. In 1949, they fled to Taiwan as part of the KMT following the defeat in the civil war against the communists. Against this background, Ma sees himself and his party as having a duty to preserve Taiwan’s Chinese cultural identity – an identity that the KMT imposed on the entire population during the dictatorship under General Chiang Kai-shek until the end of the 1980s, including those who were not from the mainland. The Chinese identity still characterizes the KMT today, while the DPP cultivates a Taiwanese identity.
When Ma visited China in March 2023, the Taiwanese public was divided. Ma received much criticism, especially for statements made a few days before the presidential election this January: “When it comes to relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, you have to trust Xi Jinping,” Ma said in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The KMT leadership then stopped Ma from appearing in public at the last major election rallies.
Ma Ying-jeou has lost influence within the party. A meeting with Xi Jinping could shed light on whether and under what conditions China’s leadership still seeks political dialogue with Taiwan.
The leadership in Beijing refuses any dialogue with the DPP government. The latter has been weakened after the elections in January: Lai Ching-te only received just over 40 percent of the vote in his election victory; the DPP also lost its majority in parliament. China’s government could now exploit and deepen Taiwan’s political polarization by offering dialogue with Ma and other pro-China political actors. Internally, Ma’s visit is therefore above all a welcome opportunity for the Communist Party to spread its narrative of the inseparable connection between Taiwan and China.
After the presidential elections in January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that the DPP would not represent the majority opinion of the Taiwanese population. However, despite the political polarization, the overwhelming majority of the people are united in maintaining Taiwan’s democratic system and de facto sovereignty. Leonardo Pape
Over the past year, Duesseldorf has become the culinary capital of Germany, if not all of Europe, among overseas Chinese. Many of them arranged to meet in the Rhine metropolis to indulge in a real feast. The popularity was mainly due to the social media and e-commerce app Xiaohongshu 小红书, where users reported that authentic Chinese specialties could also be found in Japanese-influenced places such as the Immermannstraße.
The “Little Red Book” – the name of the Shanghai-based app – has been the most influential newcomer among Chinese apps over the past five years. Somewhere between Instagram and Pinterest, it has stolen the show from top dogs such as WeChat and Douyin, especially among younger women of the post-95 generation.
Xiaonhongshu was founded in 2013 as a shopping guide for weekend trips to Hong Kong. Over time, it developed into a channel where users can share recommendations, tutorials and reviews for products, restaurants and hotspots from all over the world with photos and short videos. But the app is much more than that. Many Chinese people use it as a kind of search engine to optimize their everyday lives, but also as a compass to keep them informed about the latest trends. Apart from the algorithms, the unique selling point is the swarm intelligence of the organically grown community.
For example, if users want to navigate through Berlin using the app, they can use the relevant keyword to find user instructions on what to wear in clubs such as Berghain, where to buy the best vintage clothes or what Asians can find in Turkish supermarkets. Those who regularly post popular content can earn commissions. Anonymous reviews are taboo. The idea is that users can trust the KOLs, the Key Opinion Leaders, completely. Xiaohongshu claimed to have more than 300 million monthly active users in 2023 – 20 percent more than in the previous year. Over 50 percent are between 18 and 35 years old and live in China’s wealthier cities such as Shenzhen or Shanghai. This makes the app highly interesting for both domestic and foreign brands looking to present themselves as premium companies in the Chinese market.
Xiaohongshu has achieved what Instagram and Pinterest have failed to do so far: Combining lifestyle with e-commerce. Users who scroll through the videos can purchase individual products with a click on the integrated “RED Mall.” The trust of the community is intended to spread to the goods on offer there. The message: it is not about commerce, but about quality. It is fitting that Xiaohongshu also mediates between influencers and brands that want to be featured in the app. The idea is to avoid the AI-generated junk image of other providers. Brands and retailers must apply for an official brand account. Influencers, in turn, must register advertising partnerships and disclose whether they have been paid for a video. Otherwise, there is a risk of reprimands and suspension. Inserting links to other e-commerce providers is also prohibited.
According to the latest estimates from the Financial Times, Xiaohongshu turned a profit for the first time in 2023. With a revenue of 3.7 billion US dollars, the app generated a net profit of 500 million US dollars. The year before, Xiaohongshu had posted a loss of 200 million US dollars on a revenue of around two billion US dollars. The lifestyle app is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Temasek and achieved a valuation of 20 billion US dollars in its last financing round in 2021. At the beginning of the year, the platform announced that the number of retailers selling goods with a total value of over 100 million yuan on Xiaohongshu had increased fivefold compared to the previous year.
Xiaohongshu is a particularly suitable place for luxury brands to showcase themselves. Foreign companies such as Chanel, Gucci and Dior, as well as Western celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, have already set up official accounts on the app. In March, the app even organized a conference and gala dinner for the fashion industry together with French Vogue on the fringes of Paris Fashion Week. Only a few German companies have utilized the platform’s potential so far. One of them is the German drugstore chain Rossmann, which makes perfect sense given the demand for cosmetics among young Chinese people.
“Xiaohongshu is one of the most important means of reaching our potential customers with high-quality content,” Rossmann told Table.Briefings. The company reaches a wide range of target groups there “with customized posts or blogger (KOL) collaborations.”
But there are also hurdles and problems. Xiaohongshu’s planned IPO in 2021 was postponed following a crackdown in which the Chinese government urged several tech companies to reconsider a listing in the US and switch to Hong Kong as an alternative. The sheer volume of stored user data that could migrate overseas is making Beijing nervous. In late 2023, the company announced that an IPO in Hong Kong was also still on hold.
There is also no English version yet, which is likely due to foreign security concerns regarding TikTok. In December 2022, the Taiwanese government banned public sector employees from using Xiaohongshu on government devices over national security concerns.
The app was also repeatedly accused of promoting unrealistic beauty standards. The app also portrayed tourist hotspots in an exclusively positive light without pointing out potential risks. The Shanghai local authorities fined Xiaohongshu 300,000 yuan in early 2022 because the app had failed to remove content harmful to minors. Scammers had also repeatedly infiltrated the community. This is hardly surprising given the growing number of users. Competing companies, such as Tiktok’s parent company, ByteDance, are ready to steal market share from Xiaohongshu.
Sinolytics is a research-based business consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and specific business activities in the People’s Republic.
For the first time since their crisis meeting in California last November, US President Joe Biden and China’s Head of State and Party Leader Xi Jinping have spoken to each other again. This was confirmed by the White House on Tuesday following the phone call. Topics included Taiwan, security in the Indo-Pacific and trade issues. According to US media reports, the conversation was quite contentious. The US reports that the phone call lasted one hour and 45 minutes.
The two presidents met in person in San Francisco last November after a year of complete radio silence. There they had agreed to speak regularly on the phone again. They honored this agreement for the first time on Tuesday.
The Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported a “candid and in-depth exchange” between the two leaders. However, Xi told Biden that the Taiwan issue was an “uncrossable red line.” The White House stated that Biden had called for “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait during the call.
Trade and sanctions issues are also said to have been contentious. State media reported that Xi warned his US counterpart of the consequences of the restrictions on technology exports. According to Xinhua, Xi said that the US was “not de-risking but creating risks.” Although relations between the two countries are in the process of stabilizing, they could “slide into conflict or confrontation.” Biden spoke out against China’s demands for a relaxation of export regulations on high-tech chips. In a statement, the US Office of the President said it would continue to take the necessary steps to prevent US technology from undermining the country’s national security.
In particular, observers consider the resumption of military communication between the two countries, which was agreed in November, to be important. The US Department of Defense previously complained that the usual direct exchange between the armed forces of the two powers was not working and that this could lead to dangerous misunderstandings and miscalculations in crisis situations. The defense ministers of both countries are expected to hold talks in the coming days.
A US government representative confirmed that the two presidents have agreed to further meetings between cabinet members of both countries. US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen will travel to Beijing in the coming days to discuss urgent trade issues. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also expected to visit the Chinese capital in the coming days. Conversely, visits by high-ranking representatives of the Chinese government to the USA are also planned. flee
“Digital parents” are becoming increasingly popular in China’s parallel social media world. These are older influencers who refer to their followers as “sons and daughters,” comfort them, encourage them before an exam, or give simple life advice.
Always-available moms and dads apparently satisfy a need. According to a 2018 UNICEF report on China, 26 percent of minors surveyed reported parental neglect. The number of children of divorce has been rising in the People’s Republic for years.
On top of this, there is a longing for a simpler life. Some of the most popular parent accounts come from rural provinces and take their audiences on walks through idyllic villages. This increases the nostalgia factor, even if many of the “adopted children” did not grow up in the countryside themselves.
