Names such as Kion, Putzmeister, Kuka, and Volvo are examples of high-profile, long-term acquisitions by Chinese groups in Europe. Now another one could be added: According to media reports, Hisense has expressed interest in the Siemens Mobility subsidiary Yunex. The standing offer is one billion US dollars. Given the rapid digitization of transportation in China, the acquisition would be particularly fitting, analyzes Finn Mayer-Kuckuk.
Chinese Wimbledon winner Peng Shuai has vanished without a trace over two weeks ago. Peng had publicly accused a top Chinese official of sexual abuse earlier this month. Since then, there has been no trace of her. In an email presumably written by Peng, the athlete states, “All is well.” But there are doubts about the authenticity of the message. But only internationally. And in the People’s Republic? Our colleagues in China report: Instead of trying to resolve the situation, Beijing is resorting to widespread censorship.
We also take a look at the railway project between Kunming and Laos. After six years of construction, China has completed the first high-speed rail line with an international connection, and the first trains are scheduled for December 2nd. Elsewhere, however, the People’s Republic’s ambitious railway plans are at a standstill, partly due to the Covid pandemic. But this won’t make Beijing change its plans, writes Frank Sieren – because the People’s Republic wants to pull neighboring nations close with a high-speed train network.
He notes: Five years after Xi Jinping was declared the “core” of the party, he is now sitting more firmly in the saddle than ever before. He lets himself be addressed as people’s leader, commander-in-chief, or China’s helmsman, almost the same way Mao was once described. However, he still has not received the highest honorary title: That the nation will honor him with the call 万岁, the wish that he will live for “ten thousand years”.
Have a great weekend!
The Chinese household appliance group Hisense is interested in acquiring Siemens’ transport technology division “Yunex”. This was reported by the Chinese business medium 21st Century Business Herald. Yunex Traffic, as the Siemens sub-company is known since July 2021, offers complete IT packages for traffic control. These include traffic lights and cameras, but also servers and software. This, in turn, fits in perfectly with Hisense’s TransTech division. Its president Zhang Sihai announced in an interview a steady international expansion. The acquisition price is reportedly one billion US dollars.
Siemens Mobility refused to comment on the report to Table.Media on Thursday. However, a takeover by Hisense would make sense, at least from a Chinese perspective. Rumors had already surfaced last week that Siemens was looking for a buyer for Yunex. Other bidders reportedly include Italian toll operator Autostrade and financial investor Bridgepoint. However, there has been no mention of Hisense as a possible buyer in the German press so far. Yunex is a subsidiary of Siemens Mobility, which manufactures trains, for example.
China’s urbanization is still in full swing. By 2035, 75 percent of the population is expected to live in cities. The current urbanization rate is still at 64 percent. Approximately 150 million people will therefore move from a rural to an urban environment in the coming years. However, cities are already suffering from traffic problems. Modern technology is supposed to help bring order to the chaos.
China’s cities are therefore particularly open to digitization. Germany, on the other hand, essentially considers its transport infrastructure to be fully developed and harbors resistance to change. German city administrations report considerable obstacles to digital traffic management. There is no money. There are not enough employees who know their way around computers. Data protection officials can shoot down projects without being required to make constructive counterproposals. Citizens are annoyed by change.
In China, on the other hand, not only are entire new city districts being built from scratch. A technically driven development and restructuring of the traffic system is taking place. Currently, for example, the introduction of an app-based driver’s license is underway. All you need to do is carry your mobile phone with you when you drive. Telecom equipment supplier Huawei is already testing smart roads. Traffic lights, sensors built in the road surface, cameras, radar masts, and transmitters on traffic signs are networked and communicate with vehicle computers. By 2025, half of all cars sold should have the necessary equipment to utilize such infrastructure. China’s market for modern mobility equipment is huge and growing.
Hisense TransTech wants to be at the forefront here. The company is based in the coastal city of Qingdao. It was founded in 1998. It focuses on the development and production of intelligent traffic technology and surveillance products. The company’s portfolio also includes surveillance cameras – a market that is known to be particularly large in China. The company has recently filed numerous patents in the field of traffic control. Recently, for example, Hisense secured the rights to further develop signal controls for high-speed train lines.
Yunex Traffic describes itself as the global market leader in mobility equipment “on roads and in cities”. The company has a turnover of around €600 million. It has long since left the pure traffic light business behind. The driving idea today is that of an intelligent city. Together with networked cars, it is to become part of a huge mobility machine. Order intake is growing by eight percent a year. The company currently operates in 40 countries. It has already supplied Dubai, London, Bogotá, and Miami with cutting-edge technology. Until this summer, the division was called “Intelligent Traffic Systems”.
Such an acquisition would be particularly pleasing to the Chinese. An acquisition price of one billion is very generous, which would give Hisense a real chance in the bidding war. The takeover would join the ranks of larger acquisitions on the European market. It would then stand alongside names such as Kion, Putzmeister, Kuka, or Volvo as an example of high-profile, long-term acquisitions by Chinese companies.
Two weeks after the disappearance of Chinese professional tennis player Peng Shuai, a supposed sign of life surfaced. On Wednesday evening, Head of the Women’s Tennis Association Steve Simon received an email sent on behalf of the 35-year-old, who accused a top Communist Party official of sexual assault on November 2nd (China.Table reported) and has since vanished from the public. However, it is unclear whether Peng even wrote the message herself and of her own free will or may have been forced to do so.
Peng started everything with a post on the Chinese short message service Weibo. Although the post was deleted just a few minutes after it was published, screenshots of it spread on the Internet. In it, Peng claimed that she and former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli had been in a relationship for ten years. Her post, whose authenticity could not be verified, also mentions love and affection. However, Peng also accuses the 75-year-old of non-consensual sexual assault.
The issue is strictly censored in China. Searches queries for Peng’s name or #MeToo are blocked on the Chinese web. And state media are not reporting either – at least not in Chinese. Instead, Chinese foreign broadcaster CGTN spread the mysterious email, allegedly sent by Peng herself and addressed to the head of the WTA. The email stated the reports about her, “including the accusation of sexual assault”, were “not true”. She was currently at home resting, it said, “All is well.”
“I have a hard time believing that Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received,” Simon wrote in his statement. In the past, there have been repeated cases in China of detained people allegedly voluntarily sending written messages to reassure a concerned public.
While the issue may be suppressed in China, the waves are running high abroad. “The WTA and the rest of the world need independent and verifiable proof that she is safe,” Simon said. The publication by Chinese state media had increased his concerns about her safety and whereabouts, adding that he had repeatedly tried to reach the tennis star through various channels to no avail. US tennis icon Chris Evert, who has known Peng for many years, had also sounded the alarm on social media, asking for clues about Peng’s whereabouts.
Whereas in previous #MeToo cases in China, for example, a university professor and a well-known TV presenter were at the center of the allegations, Peng made public accusations against a high-ranking politician for the first time. The matter is extremely delicate. As a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Zhang was part of the Communist Party’s closest circle of power between 2012 and 2017. The case has the potential to initiate a public debate about morality and responsibility among top cadres. However, the regime has no interest in such debates and tries to quell them.
After Peng’s posting on Weibo, there was at least a brief public outcry before the censors intervened and stifled the debate. Many Chinese expressed the wish for the case to be cleared up and that Zhang Gaoli is held accountable if necessary.
Unsurprisingly, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry is also feigning ignorance. “I haven’t heard anything about the matter. It is also not a diplomatic issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday during a daily briefing in response to a journalist’s question about Peng.
But the issue could become even more political than Beijing’s leadership would like, with Peng’s disappearance giving a new voice to human rights activists calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Games. “The Chinese government has a long history of arbitrarily detaining people involved in controversial cases, controlling their ability to speak freely, and making them give forced statements,” Human Rights Watch commented. “These allegations should not be censored, but rather trigger an impartial and fair investigation,” said William Nee of the organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
Japanese tennis superstar Naomi Ōsaka joined the growing number of athletes and organizations expressing concerns over Peng’s safety. “Censorship is never ok and any cost,” the 24-year-old wrote on Twitter under the hashtag #WhereisPengShuai: “I am in shock of the current situation and I’m sending love and light her way.”Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
China has completed an important part of an international high-speed train line after six years of construction: The roughly 1,000-kilometer link between Kunming, the capital of China’s province of Yunnan, and Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is scheduled to go into operation on December 2nd. The route will initially transport cargo with Passenger traffic to follow later. “The train will used to transport goods first, not passengers yet, because the number of COVID-19 cases is still high, most of the country is still under strict lockdown, and borders are still closed,” said an official of the Laos Ministry of Public Works and Transport.
The railway line runs through five Laotian provinces. In the long run, it is supposed to reduce costs for exports and consumer goods and boost tourism. The six billion US dollar project was launched back in December 2016, and since then, numerous bridges and 167 tunnels with a length of 590 kilometers have been pulled through the mountainous terrain.
A first train from China with nine carriages and a capacity of 720 passengers already arrived in Vientiane in mid-October. The trains are expected to travel up to 160 kilometers per hour on the route, which will eventually include 45 stations.
This year, Laos and China are celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations. In a press conference in mid-October, Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the train link would transform Laos from “a landlocked country to a land-linked hub”. Laos, which has no direct access to the sea, plans to export more agricultural products by rail via this route. China is the biggest foreign investor and aid donor to the still-poor nation of seven million people. The People’s Republic is Laos’ second-largest trading partner after Thailand.
The Kunming-Vientiane Railway is one part of a much larger project to connect China with the most important center in Southeast Asia: The Kunming-Singapore railway, also known as the Pan-Asia Railway Network. It includes several high-speed rail lines that will connect Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Myanmar with Singapore at one end and Kunming at the other.
This would make the route an important economic corridor for the countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The RCEP free trade agreement, which Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the ten ASEAN countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, and Singapore signed at the end of 2020 under the leadership of the People’s Republic, is the largest free trade agreement in the world.
In fact, the line from Kunming to Laos is so far China’s first international high-speed rail link to be completed. Elsewhere, the construction of planned lines is progressing only slowly. For example, in Thailand, just 3.5 kilometers of new track have been laid in four years. Completion of the first section between the capital Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima, which began in 2017, was scheduled for this year. However, it has now been postponed until 2026.
Primarily, the closed borders due to the Covid pandemic are cited as the reason. The completion of the Laos line now increases pressure. As early as December 2020, the China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) was granted the contract for the first segment of the China-Thailand high-speed line for $415 million. In total, the 900-kilometer line is expected to cost $5.2 billion.
A second line, expected to cost more than $7.2 billion, will link Bangkok with eastern Thailand via Pattaya to U-Tapao airport in the province of Rayong on the Cambodian border. Contracts have yet to be issued for this route. Rising pressure to tackle climate change is making the investment increasingly attractive. The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers trains “the most efficient means of transport”.
Despite Covid delays and a noticeable political and economic inward shift, China is still betting on international rail transport as the means of transport of the future. Over the past decade, the country has added more than 35,000 kilometers to its high-speed rail (HSR) network – more than the rest of the world has built combined. More than a third of the global high-speed network is now in China. The Chinese call their high-speed trains, which reach between 200 and 350 kilometers per hour, “fuxing,” meaning renewal or revitalization.
The success of China’s railway expansion is partly due to years of cooperation with foreign companies. German, French, and Japanese companies gained access to the Chinese market – in exchange for technology. Another reason for China’s traction is the strength of the China State Railway Group (CRRC). It was created through the merger of Chinese railway giants CNR and CSR by Beijing to form the world’s largest train manufacturer.
With very favorable conditions, the company is now also pushing into North America and Africa, India, Turkey, and Russia. In Tel Aviv, Israel, CRRC has begun operations recently. A train factory is currently being built in Mexico, where 5,000 people are expected to find employment. In July, CRRC unveiled the new trains for the Los Angeles Metro system. CRRC has already been manufacturing trains in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the domestic market since 2014. Despite political discussions about the access of Chinese train providers to the US market, especially under former President Donald Trump, CRRC has not yet been excluded from the American market.
CCP leader Xi Jinping immortalized himself 22 times with his name in a 25-page resolution declared “historic”. Xi declared that the policy document published on Tuesday was drafted by himself, together with his chief theoretician Wang Huning and Zhao Leji, senior Chinese leader of the Communist Party of China. It serves as a summary of the 100-year history of the Chinese Communist Party, but also as its “political manifesto” for a Marxist renewal, the technological modernization of the People’s Republic, and its reincarnation as a global superpower by 2050.
Five years after Xi was appointed “core” (核心) leader of the party in 2016, he is now more firmly in the saddle than ever before. He lets himself be addressed as People’s Leader (人民领袖), Commander-in-Chief (军队统帅) or, almost with the same words as once Mao, as China’s helmsman (掌舵者). All hurdles seem to have been eliminated so that the election party congress can bequeath Xi a carte blanche to continue his rule in winter 2022. However, he still missed one honorary title to match Mao, the master of the personality cults. That the nation exalts him with the chant 万岁, the wish for a life of “ten thousand years”.
The Chinese character for ten thousand (万) is actually reserved for the ruler of heaven. Therefore, the earthly imperial palace in Beijing (Gugong) was not allowed to have more than 9,999 rooms, with just half a room to boot. That’s what many guidebooks say. According to legend, Ming Emperor Yongle (永乐 – 1360 to 1424) had ordered his builder to furnish the new palace planned for him with as many rooms as possible. But he then dreamed that the Jade Emperor 玉皇大帝 heard about it and immediately summoned him. He showed him his heavenly palace with 10,000 rooms and warned: Does Yongle plan to own more rooms than he does?
Since then, none of the 24 emperors who resided in the Gugong from 1420 until the end of the Qing period is said to have dared to exceed the magic limit in extensions or new buildings after fires. During the Ming period, some 8,000 rooms were counted in the halls and pavilions. After 1972, a systematic survey counted 9,371 rooms, according to China’s room measurement, jian (间).
The measure word 10,000 was not a complete taboo. As sons of heaven, human emperors were allowed to be addressed as Wansui (万岁) as “Ten Thousand Year Ruler”, or to be wished eternal life “for ten thousand years”. According to the 1979 revised edition of the “sea of words” encyclopedia Cihai, “Wansui” has been attested in the annals since the time of the Disputed Empires (475-221 BC). This continued until the reign of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861 -1908). Old photos show her sitting in front of repeated inscriptions such as, “The Holy Empress Mother of the Great Qing live 10,000 years, 10,000 years, ten thousand times ten thousand years.” (大清国當今聖母皇太后 万岁、万岁、万万岁). During the Cultural Revolution, the same exclamation was bellowed for Mao.
Chinese wansui entered other East Asian languages as a loanword, supposedly from the eighth century into Japanese as banzei or banzai. In Korean, it became “manse”, in Vietnamese “vạn tue”. Although the Cihai dictionary denounced “wansui” as a “feudalist legacy”, China’s communists adopted it in 1949. Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic to the present day the inscriptions on the Tiananmen Gate read: “Ten thousand years for the People’s Republic of China”(中华人民共和国万岁) and, as its counterpart, “Ten thousand years for the great unity of the people of the world”(世界人民大团结万岁).
Dictator Mao laid claim to everything the old emperors had, from his residence in Zhongnanhai to the Wansui call. At official rallies, he had marchers greet him on May Day in 1950 with the call, “May Mao Zedong live for ten thousand years.” In 2010, the courageous Beijing monthly for Marxist enlightenment, Yanhuang Chunjiu (炎黄春秋), revealed that Mao had single-handedly seen to it. It sparked an explosive debate about his cult of personality. It was based on the recollection of Chen Youqun, who worked as a political secretary for a high-ranking Chinese official in 1950. It was only years after Mao’s death that Chen revealed that Mao, in preparation for the May Day rally in 1950, had “Long live Comrade Mao for ten thousand years” added to the list of proposed “workers’ slogans”.
In the debate led by the magazine on this issue, the first to disagree was historical researcher Zhang Suhua, who claimed that she had found the original five-page draft of 35 slogans for May 1st, 1950, in the party archives, without any discernible change made by Mao. Other critical party intellectuals had rejected her objection, including Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao who later fell out of favor with the dictator and became a dissident. In the July issue of the Yanhuang Chunjiu, Li Rui wrote that Mao had already made sure in advance that his slogan was included in the draft. “Even then, he required many public voices to exalt him.”
Today’s People’s Tribune Xi Jinping is no different. The debate of 2010 (whose articles are now deleted from the Internet after the journal Yanhuang Chunjiu, accused of “nihilism”, was politically silenced in 2016, presumably on Xi’s instructions, and taken over by regime-compliant historians) would be particularly dangerous today.
After Mao’s death in 1976, his cult of personality was criticized, all Wansui calls meant to praise a single leader were outlawed overnight. They resurfaced after the big election party congress in autumn 2022 to affirm Xi’s continued rule. Since the publication of the new resolution this week, China’s state media have praised Xi as the party’s “dignified core,” leader of the people or commander-in-chief, even calling him helmsman “掌舵者.” The Chinese term for this hardly differs linguistically from the same cultural revolutionary term for Mao “舵手”. Millions of Chinese still know the song of helmsman Mao today. “大海航行靠舵手”.
On his own behalf, Xi even applies a whole new level in the resolution. Here, he has his thinking praised as “21st century Marxism, the essence of Chinese culture and Chinese spirit of the time”. He only still hesitates when it comes to the term Wansui: When, during an inspection tour, a spectator from the crowd in Gaotai in northwest China’s Gansu shouted “May chairman Xi live for ten thousand years,” Xi and his bodyguards appeared to be highly irritated. The cellphone footage shared on the Internet was completely deleted by the censors, at least in China. It was not the right time yet.
Mother Nature, the master-builder – impressive “earth forests” formed millions of years ago in Yuanmou County in the Province of Yunnan. From a distance, the pillar-like structures made of earth resemble skyscrapers.
Names such as Kion, Putzmeister, Kuka, and Volvo are examples of high-profile, long-term acquisitions by Chinese groups in Europe. Now another one could be added: According to media reports, Hisense has expressed interest in the Siemens Mobility subsidiary Yunex. The standing offer is one billion US dollars. Given the rapid digitization of transportation in China, the acquisition would be particularly fitting, analyzes Finn Mayer-Kuckuk.
Chinese Wimbledon winner Peng Shuai has vanished without a trace over two weeks ago. Peng had publicly accused a top Chinese official of sexual abuse earlier this month. Since then, there has been no trace of her. In an email presumably written by Peng, the athlete states, “All is well.” But there are doubts about the authenticity of the message. But only internationally. And in the People’s Republic? Our colleagues in China report: Instead of trying to resolve the situation, Beijing is resorting to widespread censorship.
We also take a look at the railway project between Kunming and Laos. After six years of construction, China has completed the first high-speed rail line with an international connection, and the first trains are scheduled for December 2nd. Elsewhere, however, the People’s Republic’s ambitious railway plans are at a standstill, partly due to the Covid pandemic. But this won’t make Beijing change its plans, writes Frank Sieren – because the People’s Republic wants to pull neighboring nations close with a high-speed train network.
He notes: Five years after Xi Jinping was declared the “core” of the party, he is now sitting more firmly in the saddle than ever before. He lets himself be addressed as people’s leader, commander-in-chief, or China’s helmsman, almost the same way Mao was once described. However, he still has not received the highest honorary title: That the nation will honor him with the call 万岁, the wish that he will live for “ten thousand years”.
Have a great weekend!
The Chinese household appliance group Hisense is interested in acquiring Siemens’ transport technology division “Yunex”. This was reported by the Chinese business medium 21st Century Business Herald. Yunex Traffic, as the Siemens sub-company is known since July 2021, offers complete IT packages for traffic control. These include traffic lights and cameras, but also servers and software. This, in turn, fits in perfectly with Hisense’s TransTech division. Its president Zhang Sihai announced in an interview a steady international expansion. The acquisition price is reportedly one billion US dollars.
Siemens Mobility refused to comment on the report to Table.Media on Thursday. However, a takeover by Hisense would make sense, at least from a Chinese perspective. Rumors had already surfaced last week that Siemens was looking for a buyer for Yunex. Other bidders reportedly include Italian toll operator Autostrade and financial investor Bridgepoint. However, there has been no mention of Hisense as a possible buyer in the German press so far. Yunex is a subsidiary of Siemens Mobility, which manufactures trains, for example.
China’s urbanization is still in full swing. By 2035, 75 percent of the population is expected to live in cities. The current urbanization rate is still at 64 percent. Approximately 150 million people will therefore move from a rural to an urban environment in the coming years. However, cities are already suffering from traffic problems. Modern technology is supposed to help bring order to the chaos.
China’s cities are therefore particularly open to digitization. Germany, on the other hand, essentially considers its transport infrastructure to be fully developed and harbors resistance to change. German city administrations report considerable obstacles to digital traffic management. There is no money. There are not enough employees who know their way around computers. Data protection officials can shoot down projects without being required to make constructive counterproposals. Citizens are annoyed by change.
In China, on the other hand, not only are entire new city districts being built from scratch. A technically driven development and restructuring of the traffic system is taking place. Currently, for example, the introduction of an app-based driver’s license is underway. All you need to do is carry your mobile phone with you when you drive. Telecom equipment supplier Huawei is already testing smart roads. Traffic lights, sensors built in the road surface, cameras, radar masts, and transmitters on traffic signs are networked and communicate with vehicle computers. By 2025, half of all cars sold should have the necessary equipment to utilize such infrastructure. China’s market for modern mobility equipment is huge and growing.
Hisense TransTech wants to be at the forefront here. The company is based in the coastal city of Qingdao. It was founded in 1998. It focuses on the development and production of intelligent traffic technology and surveillance products. The company’s portfolio also includes surveillance cameras – a market that is known to be particularly large in China. The company has recently filed numerous patents in the field of traffic control. Recently, for example, Hisense secured the rights to further develop signal controls for high-speed train lines.
Yunex Traffic describes itself as the global market leader in mobility equipment “on roads and in cities”. The company has a turnover of around €600 million. It has long since left the pure traffic light business behind. The driving idea today is that of an intelligent city. Together with networked cars, it is to become part of a huge mobility machine. Order intake is growing by eight percent a year. The company currently operates in 40 countries. It has already supplied Dubai, London, Bogotá, and Miami with cutting-edge technology. Until this summer, the division was called “Intelligent Traffic Systems”.
Such an acquisition would be particularly pleasing to the Chinese. An acquisition price of one billion is very generous, which would give Hisense a real chance in the bidding war. The takeover would join the ranks of larger acquisitions on the European market. It would then stand alongside names such as Kion, Putzmeister, Kuka, or Volvo as an example of high-profile, long-term acquisitions by Chinese companies.
Two weeks after the disappearance of Chinese professional tennis player Peng Shuai, a supposed sign of life surfaced. On Wednesday evening, Head of the Women’s Tennis Association Steve Simon received an email sent on behalf of the 35-year-old, who accused a top Communist Party official of sexual assault on November 2nd (China.Table reported) and has since vanished from the public. However, it is unclear whether Peng even wrote the message herself and of her own free will or may have been forced to do so.
Peng started everything with a post on the Chinese short message service Weibo. Although the post was deleted just a few minutes after it was published, screenshots of it spread on the Internet. In it, Peng claimed that she and former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli had been in a relationship for ten years. Her post, whose authenticity could not be verified, also mentions love and affection. However, Peng also accuses the 75-year-old of non-consensual sexual assault.
The issue is strictly censored in China. Searches queries for Peng’s name or #MeToo are blocked on the Chinese web. And state media are not reporting either – at least not in Chinese. Instead, Chinese foreign broadcaster CGTN spread the mysterious email, allegedly sent by Peng herself and addressed to the head of the WTA. The email stated the reports about her, “including the accusation of sexual assault”, were “not true”. She was currently at home resting, it said, “All is well.”
“I have a hard time believing that Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received,” Simon wrote in his statement. In the past, there have been repeated cases in China of detained people allegedly voluntarily sending written messages to reassure a concerned public.
While the issue may be suppressed in China, the waves are running high abroad. “The WTA and the rest of the world need independent and verifiable proof that she is safe,” Simon said. The publication by Chinese state media had increased his concerns about her safety and whereabouts, adding that he had repeatedly tried to reach the tennis star through various channels to no avail. US tennis icon Chris Evert, who has known Peng for many years, had also sounded the alarm on social media, asking for clues about Peng’s whereabouts.
Whereas in previous #MeToo cases in China, for example, a university professor and a well-known TV presenter were at the center of the allegations, Peng made public accusations against a high-ranking politician for the first time. The matter is extremely delicate. As a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Zhang was part of the Communist Party’s closest circle of power between 2012 and 2017. The case has the potential to initiate a public debate about morality and responsibility among top cadres. However, the regime has no interest in such debates and tries to quell them.
After Peng’s posting on Weibo, there was at least a brief public outcry before the censors intervened and stifled the debate. Many Chinese expressed the wish for the case to be cleared up and that Zhang Gaoli is held accountable if necessary.
Unsurprisingly, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry is also feigning ignorance. “I haven’t heard anything about the matter. It is also not a diplomatic issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday during a daily briefing in response to a journalist’s question about Peng.
But the issue could become even more political than Beijing’s leadership would like, with Peng’s disappearance giving a new voice to human rights activists calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Games. “The Chinese government has a long history of arbitrarily detaining people involved in controversial cases, controlling their ability to speak freely, and making them give forced statements,” Human Rights Watch commented. “These allegations should not be censored, but rather trigger an impartial and fair investigation,” said William Nee of the organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
Japanese tennis superstar Naomi Ōsaka joined the growing number of athletes and organizations expressing concerns over Peng’s safety. “Censorship is never ok and any cost,” the 24-year-old wrote on Twitter under the hashtag #WhereisPengShuai: “I am in shock of the current situation and I’m sending love and light her way.”Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
China has completed an important part of an international high-speed train line after six years of construction: The roughly 1,000-kilometer link between Kunming, the capital of China’s province of Yunnan, and Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is scheduled to go into operation on December 2nd. The route will initially transport cargo with Passenger traffic to follow later. “The train will used to transport goods first, not passengers yet, because the number of COVID-19 cases is still high, most of the country is still under strict lockdown, and borders are still closed,” said an official of the Laos Ministry of Public Works and Transport.
The railway line runs through five Laotian provinces. In the long run, it is supposed to reduce costs for exports and consumer goods and boost tourism. The six billion US dollar project was launched back in December 2016, and since then, numerous bridges and 167 tunnels with a length of 590 kilometers have been pulled through the mountainous terrain.
A first train from China with nine carriages and a capacity of 720 passengers already arrived in Vientiane in mid-October. The trains are expected to travel up to 160 kilometers per hour on the route, which will eventually include 45 stations.
This year, Laos and China are celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations. In a press conference in mid-October, Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the train link would transform Laos from “a landlocked country to a land-linked hub”. Laos, which has no direct access to the sea, plans to export more agricultural products by rail via this route. China is the biggest foreign investor and aid donor to the still-poor nation of seven million people. The People’s Republic is Laos’ second-largest trading partner after Thailand.
The Kunming-Vientiane Railway is one part of a much larger project to connect China with the most important center in Southeast Asia: The Kunming-Singapore railway, also known as the Pan-Asia Railway Network. It includes several high-speed rail lines that will connect Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Myanmar with Singapore at one end and Kunming at the other.
This would make the route an important economic corridor for the countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The RCEP free trade agreement, which Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the ten ASEAN countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, and Singapore signed at the end of 2020 under the leadership of the People’s Republic, is the largest free trade agreement in the world.
In fact, the line from Kunming to Laos is so far China’s first international high-speed rail link to be completed. Elsewhere, the construction of planned lines is progressing only slowly. For example, in Thailand, just 3.5 kilometers of new track have been laid in four years. Completion of the first section between the capital Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima, which began in 2017, was scheduled for this year. However, it has now been postponed until 2026.
Primarily, the closed borders due to the Covid pandemic are cited as the reason. The completion of the Laos line now increases pressure. As early as December 2020, the China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) was granted the contract for the first segment of the China-Thailand high-speed line for $415 million. In total, the 900-kilometer line is expected to cost $5.2 billion.
A second line, expected to cost more than $7.2 billion, will link Bangkok with eastern Thailand via Pattaya to U-Tapao airport in the province of Rayong on the Cambodian border. Contracts have yet to be issued for this route. Rising pressure to tackle climate change is making the investment increasingly attractive. The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers trains “the most efficient means of transport”.
Despite Covid delays and a noticeable political and economic inward shift, China is still betting on international rail transport as the means of transport of the future. Over the past decade, the country has added more than 35,000 kilometers to its high-speed rail (HSR) network – more than the rest of the world has built combined. More than a third of the global high-speed network is now in China. The Chinese call their high-speed trains, which reach between 200 and 350 kilometers per hour, “fuxing,” meaning renewal or revitalization.
The success of China’s railway expansion is partly due to years of cooperation with foreign companies. German, French, and Japanese companies gained access to the Chinese market – in exchange for technology. Another reason for China’s traction is the strength of the China State Railway Group (CRRC). It was created through the merger of Chinese railway giants CNR and CSR by Beijing to form the world’s largest train manufacturer.
With very favorable conditions, the company is now also pushing into North America and Africa, India, Turkey, and Russia. In Tel Aviv, Israel, CRRC has begun operations recently. A train factory is currently being built in Mexico, where 5,000 people are expected to find employment. In July, CRRC unveiled the new trains for the Los Angeles Metro system. CRRC has already been manufacturing trains in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the domestic market since 2014. Despite political discussions about the access of Chinese train providers to the US market, especially under former President Donald Trump, CRRC has not yet been excluded from the American market.
CCP leader Xi Jinping immortalized himself 22 times with his name in a 25-page resolution declared “historic”. Xi declared that the policy document published on Tuesday was drafted by himself, together with his chief theoretician Wang Huning and Zhao Leji, senior Chinese leader of the Communist Party of China. It serves as a summary of the 100-year history of the Chinese Communist Party, but also as its “political manifesto” for a Marxist renewal, the technological modernization of the People’s Republic, and its reincarnation as a global superpower by 2050.
Five years after Xi was appointed “core” (核心) leader of the party in 2016, he is now more firmly in the saddle than ever before. He lets himself be addressed as People’s Leader (人民领袖), Commander-in-Chief (军队统帅) or, almost with the same words as once Mao, as China’s helmsman (掌舵者). All hurdles seem to have been eliminated so that the election party congress can bequeath Xi a carte blanche to continue his rule in winter 2022. However, he still missed one honorary title to match Mao, the master of the personality cults. That the nation exalts him with the chant 万岁, the wish for a life of “ten thousand years”.
The Chinese character for ten thousand (万) is actually reserved for the ruler of heaven. Therefore, the earthly imperial palace in Beijing (Gugong) was not allowed to have more than 9,999 rooms, with just half a room to boot. That’s what many guidebooks say. According to legend, Ming Emperor Yongle (永乐 – 1360 to 1424) had ordered his builder to furnish the new palace planned for him with as many rooms as possible. But he then dreamed that the Jade Emperor 玉皇大帝 heard about it and immediately summoned him. He showed him his heavenly palace with 10,000 rooms and warned: Does Yongle plan to own more rooms than he does?
Since then, none of the 24 emperors who resided in the Gugong from 1420 until the end of the Qing period is said to have dared to exceed the magic limit in extensions or new buildings after fires. During the Ming period, some 8,000 rooms were counted in the halls and pavilions. After 1972, a systematic survey counted 9,371 rooms, according to China’s room measurement, jian (间).
The measure word 10,000 was not a complete taboo. As sons of heaven, human emperors were allowed to be addressed as Wansui (万岁) as “Ten Thousand Year Ruler”, or to be wished eternal life “for ten thousand years”. According to the 1979 revised edition of the “sea of words” encyclopedia Cihai, “Wansui” has been attested in the annals since the time of the Disputed Empires (475-221 BC). This continued until the reign of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861 -1908). Old photos show her sitting in front of repeated inscriptions such as, “The Holy Empress Mother of the Great Qing live 10,000 years, 10,000 years, ten thousand times ten thousand years.” (大清国當今聖母皇太后 万岁、万岁、万万岁). During the Cultural Revolution, the same exclamation was bellowed for Mao.
Chinese wansui entered other East Asian languages as a loanword, supposedly from the eighth century into Japanese as banzei or banzai. In Korean, it became “manse”, in Vietnamese “vạn tue”. Although the Cihai dictionary denounced “wansui” as a “feudalist legacy”, China’s communists adopted it in 1949. Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic to the present day the inscriptions on the Tiananmen Gate read: “Ten thousand years for the People’s Republic of China”(中华人民共和国万岁) and, as its counterpart, “Ten thousand years for the great unity of the people of the world”(世界人民大团结万岁).
Dictator Mao laid claim to everything the old emperors had, from his residence in Zhongnanhai to the Wansui call. At official rallies, he had marchers greet him on May Day in 1950 with the call, “May Mao Zedong live for ten thousand years.” In 2010, the courageous Beijing monthly for Marxist enlightenment, Yanhuang Chunjiu (炎黄春秋), revealed that Mao had single-handedly seen to it. It sparked an explosive debate about his cult of personality. It was based on the recollection of Chen Youqun, who worked as a political secretary for a high-ranking Chinese official in 1950. It was only years after Mao’s death that Chen revealed that Mao, in preparation for the May Day rally in 1950, had “Long live Comrade Mao for ten thousand years” added to the list of proposed “workers’ slogans”.
In the debate led by the magazine on this issue, the first to disagree was historical researcher Zhang Suhua, who claimed that she had found the original five-page draft of 35 slogans for May 1st, 1950, in the party archives, without any discernible change made by Mao. Other critical party intellectuals had rejected her objection, including Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao who later fell out of favor with the dictator and became a dissident. In the July issue of the Yanhuang Chunjiu, Li Rui wrote that Mao had already made sure in advance that his slogan was included in the draft. “Even then, he required many public voices to exalt him.”
Today’s People’s Tribune Xi Jinping is no different. The debate of 2010 (whose articles are now deleted from the Internet after the journal Yanhuang Chunjiu, accused of “nihilism”, was politically silenced in 2016, presumably on Xi’s instructions, and taken over by regime-compliant historians) would be particularly dangerous today.
After Mao’s death in 1976, his cult of personality was criticized, all Wansui calls meant to praise a single leader were outlawed overnight. They resurfaced after the big election party congress in autumn 2022 to affirm Xi’s continued rule. Since the publication of the new resolution this week, China’s state media have praised Xi as the party’s “dignified core,” leader of the people or commander-in-chief, even calling him helmsman “掌舵者.” The Chinese term for this hardly differs linguistically from the same cultural revolutionary term for Mao “舵手”. Millions of Chinese still know the song of helmsman Mao today. “大海航行靠舵手”.
On his own behalf, Xi even applies a whole new level in the resolution. Here, he has his thinking praised as “21st century Marxism, the essence of Chinese culture and Chinese spirit of the time”. He only still hesitates when it comes to the term Wansui: When, during an inspection tour, a spectator from the crowd in Gaotai in northwest China’s Gansu shouted “May chairman Xi live for ten thousand years,” Xi and his bodyguards appeared to be highly irritated. The cellphone footage shared on the Internet was completely deleted by the censors, at least in China. It was not the right time yet.
Mother Nature, the master-builder – impressive “earth forests” formed millions of years ago in Yuanmou County in the Province of Yunnan. From a distance, the pillar-like structures made of earth resemble skyscrapers.
