On the night of Friday to Saturday, the Presidents of the United States and China spoke on the phone and discussed the war in Ukraine. Biden tried warnings, Xi vague appeasements. Biden threatens sanctions against Chinese companies that undermine the blockade on Russia. Xi tended to present himself as a friend of Russia, but at the same time urged global peace. No surprises there. But pressure is mounting on China to distance itself from Russia’s invasion, Christiane Kuehl writes. China is still resisting the pressure and ever-growing accusations from the West. How long can it maintain this kind of pro-Russian neutrality?
Meanwhile, changes are transpiring in China’s domestic politics that may be indirectly related to Ukraine. Forces within the CCP that call for international integration have once again the upper hand. Has Putin’s nationalist go-it-alone weakened the position of Chinese hardliners? In his analysis, Frank Sieren notes a thaw for IPOs in New York as the first sign of a change of course.
Regardless of this, efforts to achieve greater economic independence are continuing. The best example is automotive electronics. China’s powerful tech companies have anchored themselves as an indispensable part of the automotive industry, analyzes Christian Domke Seidel. This is a difference to Europe, where AI conglomerates like Tencent and Baidu do not even exist. Alibaba is now making a splash as a new player. The e-commerce giant is actively investing in car manufacturers.
Even a good three weeks after the war in Ukraine broke out, not a single critical word has been heard from China about the Russian invasion. Beijing is sticking to its diplomatic tightrope act, for which it has to begin to justify itself in the face of growing international pressure. China’s position on the Ukraine conflict is “objective and fair,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi defiantly stressed Saturday. Time would prove that Beijing is “on the right side of history.” China will make “an independent judgment,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying. “We will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and we will also oppose any groundless accusations and suspicion against China.”
But this pressure grows with each passing day. The United States and the EU are urging China to finally distance itself from Moscow. On Saturday, Ukraine also appealed to China to condemn the war of aggression and “Russian barbarism.” Were China to make the right decision, it could “be an important element of the global security system,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mychailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Saturday, according to AFP.
Last Friday, President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden spoke for almost two hours via video call. According to the White House, Biden warned Xi of “consequences” should Beijing provide “material” support to Moscow. According to Chinese state media, Xi called on the US to work with Beijing for global peace, saying, “The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see. Events once again show that state-to-state relations cannot go to the stage of confrontation, conflict and confrontation are not in the interests of anyone” In any case, China and the US intend to remain in contact.
But what does China, or what does Wang’s foreign office, consider the “right side of the story” in light of reports of Russian attacks, including against civilian targets in Ukraine? Ministry spokesmen continue to fail to mouth the words “invasion” or “war”. Instead, they rant about Western sanctions and NATO’s eastward expansion – attacking the US in particular. It can only be guessed what debates are being held behind the scenes in the party.
“China is not a party to the (Ukraine) crisis, nor does it want the sanctions to affect China,” Wang Yi had told his Spanish counterpart last week. That’s why, by all accounts, China has been complying with anti-Russia sanctions so far. According to isolated reports, several banks stopped financing Russian projects. China is also not supplying aircraft components to Russia. There have been no reports of Beijing undermining the sanctions so far.
It seems as if China wants to have it all: good relations with Russia, no hurdles in trade with Europe, eye level with the USA. But the problem in this conflict is that nothing comes for free. Every position involves costs – both tangible and intangible. Even China cannot escape this logic.
“China now finds itself defending Russia’s actions alongside a tiny number of failed states, including North Korea, Syria, and Belarus,” says Craig Singelton, China Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former US diplomat. “Leading this group of international outsiders is a far cry from Xi’s goal of ushering in an ‘international relations entering new era’ in which Beijing and Moscow replace the United States and the European Union,” Singleton writes in the US magazine Foreign Policy. “Frankly, it must now be an embarrassment to Beijing to have allowed itself to have become so closely tied to and complicit with Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine,” the South China Morning quoted George Magnus of Oxford University’s China Centre as saying.
Meanwhile, reports suggest that China may at least consider providing military aid to Russia. EU leaders had “very reliable evidence” that China was considering military aid to Russia, US news portal Politico reported on Friday, citing an unnamed “a senior EU official”. Politico did admit, however, that it was not clear whether this latest piece of EU information came from the EU’s own intelligence service or the same sources as US warnings last week.
For days, China has been fighting back against these accusations. “There is misinformation about China providing military assistance to Russia. We reject it,” Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang told CBS television on Sunday. “What China is doing is sending food, medicine, sleeping bags and infant formula, not weapons or ammunition to any party.”
But it brought these accusations on itself with its unclear position. Especially since Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday: Cooperation with China will become stronger and stronger, Lavrov said, according to Reuters: “At a time when the west is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, we, as two great powers, need to think how to carry on in this world.”
Are these the advantages that China sees? Taking a stand together with Russia against the supposed hegemony of the despised West, and that at any price?
Last week, the regional government of Lviv in western Ukraine had quoted China’s ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong as saying, “China will never attack Ukraine, we will help, particularly in the economic direction.” Beijing reiterated those comments on Wednesday. But this fits less and less with its position not to comment further on Russian attacks, even on Ukrainian supply lines.
China continues to insist on discussing the situation in Ukraine as little as possible. Last week, for example, Wang Yi and even head of state Xi Jinping pressured the host Indonesia to exclude the crisis from the agenda of this year’s G20 summit in Bali. Indonesia was said to be open to the proposal. An outcry in the West would likely ensue.
Tech giants have discovered the automotive industry. As the industry maintains a steady shift towards digitalization, key strengths of traditional manufacturers are playing a decreasing role. So they have to reinvent themselves to keep up. The starting point for such a renewed shift in the global mobility market is China. Despite supply chain problems, semiconductor shortages, and the war in Ukraine, business is booming (China.Table reported).
The latest example is the L7 from IM Motors. The premium sedan will be available for purchase on March 29. Three Chinese economic giants are behind the brand. Car company SAIC owns 54 percent, real estate developer Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park Development 18 percent and IT giant Alibaba another 18 percent. After Huawei, Xiaomi and Baidu, this makes Alibaba the next tech group to seek fortune and profits in the car industry.
Car expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer sums up this trend for China.Table: “The car of tomorrow will be equipped with a great deal of technology for autonomous driving. That’s why value creation will largely happen in software. So it makes sense for high-tech groups to get involved in companies that are in the car business.” And the electric car business seems big enough. Although large and high-profile manufacturers such as Tesla, Xpeng and Nio have long since secured huge chunks of the EV market in the People’s Republic, the China Passenger Car Association expects growth of 84 percent to 5.5 million EVs in 2022. So the pie, of which everyone wants a piece, is still growing considerably.
Timo Moeller, head of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, also highlights the opportunities of this development to Table.Media: “The dynamics in the automotive market are basically very high right now. The shift toward a greater emphasis on software, new electronics architectures and, of course, the electrified powertrain require a change in thinking.” The way cars are built is changing radically. Customers were asking for other features. In addition, automakers are reorganizing themselves and would require far more IT specialists.
This poses greater challenges for traditional manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW. Their core competencies are different. The investment required to compete on an equal footing in the software sector with Chinese tech giants would be tremendous. It is true that the brands are working at full speed to further develop their software and electronics architecture, Moeller reports. “But one thing is clear: It will be difficult for traditional manufacturers to score equally in all elements along the value chain.”
The solution lies in cross-sector cooperation. Alibaba, for example, has been partnering with SAIC since 2016. Some of the automaker’s vehicles run the YunOS operating system, including smart maps, cameras, and voice control and connected car software. IM Motors primarily receives money and is likely to be a buyer of such technologies in the future.
Baidu has founded the joint venture Jidu Automotive with Geely and is bringing its expertise in artificial intelligence to the table. The goal is to launch a vehicle that is capable of level 4 autonomous driving – in other words, fully automated driving.
Dudenhoeffer does see the problems posed by the changes in the market and new competitors. But he believes that automakers should see this change as an opportunity rather than a threat. “Automakers can consider how they want to enter this new world.” Some claim they will be able to acquire the necessary expertise on their own. “Others prefer to source them because the investment and learning costs are relatively high.” However, only time will tell whether in-house development or partnerships with Chinese companies promise more success.
In the end, cars are more than simply software on wheels, says the car expert. “The handling, the safety, the engineering of the vehicle and the knowledge of how to translate these things into components that generate the desired performance, that’s not so easy. It’s not a simple programming task. That’s where traditional manufacturers have a huge head start.”
This trend toward electrification and more and more IT in cars is still taking place primarily in China. This is partly because Chinese customers are far more open to digitization in all areas than their European peers. Secondly, because the government has boosted EV sales with massive subsidies. But this program is coming to an end. In 2022, the People’s Republic will cut subsidies for the purchase of EVs by around a third (China.Table reported). And this comes amid a very complicated market situation.
This is why Moeller believes that while China will remain the largest EV market, Europe will attract manufacturers with higher growth rates. “Many Chinese manufacturers have already set their sights on Europe because demand for electric cars is picking up strongly here. They will provide additional offers and competition in many car sectors in the years to come.”
Fifteen years ago, many people in Taiwan would have thought that the next war of this magnitude would break out in Taiwan or on the border to North Korea, not in Ukraine. However, I believe in Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong one day. That was true for Hong Kong, and it is true for an invasion from China. The only question is when it will happen.
What happened in Crimea could happen similarly in Jinmen, a group of islands that mostly belongs to Taiwan but is geographically closer to the mainland. Many people there feel closer to the People’s Republic. Like the pro-Russian residents in Crimea, they could serve as a pretext for China to justify an invasion.
As a dictator, Putin is the perfect role model for Xi Jinping. Putin has taken the sanctions into account from the very beginning. They are harsher than those against Chinese cadres in Hong Kong, but many Taiwanese, like the people in Ukraine, think that sanctions are not enough of a deterrent. We see that Western countries are not providing direct military assistance in the form of troops to Ukraine, but are at best supplying war material. The consensus in the West: This is all that can be done.
Now that many Taiwanese see that neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is providing military aid to Ukraine, the government is trying to reassure its people. The situation in Taiwan should not be overly confused with the situation in Ukraine. Taiwan is of greater geopolitical importance than Ukraine. If Taiwan falls, the USA will lack an important base in the Pacific region. This is also how most media and opinion leaders communicate it. Moreover, it looks like Russia cannot win this war as easily as it thought. And this is even though the Russian forces do not even have to cross a strait or any other natural obstacle. Therefore, many Taiwanese believe that it will be much harder for China to take Taiwan.
While China could cripple infrastructure with targeted missile strikes and wreak the maximum amount of destruction, controlling the island will be a considerable challenge, as the people would resist. But like Ukraine, Taiwan is not a member of any international security alliance. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is not even a member of the United Nations. We do have mandatory military training, but it is not very structured, and only the healthiest are drafted. However, I think that, like in Ukraine, most Taiwanese would volunteer for national defense in one way or another. People may then do things that they can’t imagine doing now. Like in Hong Kong, if you had told people ten years ago that they would throw a Molotov cocktail at the police, they certainly wouldn’t have believed it.
I don’t have any great expectations of Germany when it comes to Taiwan. We thought there would be stronger support for us after the change of government. But although Germany now even has a green foreign minister, nothing has happened. After talks with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, she even said that they wanted to intensify cooperation in various areas. Of course, we are disappointed about this. But this is the trend all over the world: people talk a lot, regret the situation, but do not act. This is how dictatorships have been able to grow stronger and stronger around the world over the past 20 years. Recorded by Fabian Peltsch
Covid and war, competition and city fever – the world doesn’t seem very welcoming at the moment. In China, too, the adversities of modernity and media storms are constantly trickling through all the cracks of consciousness. Young urbanites in particular are longing for a place of refuge for their troubled souls, or at least a soul massage as a compromise. A new genre promises healing in this respect, with the program already in its name. 治愈 zhìyù “healing” or 治愈系 zhìyùxì “healing school” or “healing system” is the name of the trend that is now tenderly budding in many areas of everyday life and lifestyle in China.
The term was paved by the composted exhaustion, which finds its linguistic expression in buzzwords like 内卷 nèijuǎn (excessive competition revolving around itself) and 996-grind (九九六 jiǔ jiǔ liù – working from 9 to 9, 6 days a week), but also in the resulting “lying-flat” movement (躺平 tǎngpíng – resignation and refusal to compete) and the so-called sang culture (丧文化 sàng wénhuà – a melancholy culture that promotes, for example, a slower lifestyle). The salubriousness trend now virtually nudges the pendulum of mind in the opposite direction.
Zhìyù combines a whole array of genres, products and phenomena that have recently sprouted in China. What they all have in common is the idea of deceleration, simplicity and a return to nature. In the West, this trend is known as mindfulness, simplify your life, do-it-yourself, or work-life balance. But zhìyù is much more than that. The label of “Healing” has become a genre label of its own, for example for wholesome movies and streaming shows, music, comics, and animated films.
In fact, the term is a loanword from Japanese. The country experienced a “healing wave” in the mid-nineties, under the words “iyashi” 癒し and “iyashikei” 癒し系, which the Chinese have now simply translated. In Japan, “iyashi” first appeared as a distinct subgenre in 1995, as a result of the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin attack. These events ultimately pushed the country’s public mood barometer, already depressed by the economic recession, to a low point. The remedy that many Japanese subsequently prescribed themselves were movies, literature and mangas, in which the characters led peaceful, mostly natural lives in soothing environments. The healing effect was meant to jump over to the audience. As the mood in the country slowly cleared, the genre remained. To this day, “iyashi” enjoys unwavering popularity in Japan.
In China, the trend is taking on a life of its own. On social media, for example, where DIY videos, nature films and minimalist clips of simple everyday activities such as cooking, baking or DIY are becoming click magnets. Formerly considered elderly hobbies, zen pastimes of China’s older generation such as gardening (养花 yǎng huā), fish farming (养鱼 yǎng yú), tea culture (茶文化 chá wénhuà) or walking in the park (逛公园 guàng gōngyuán) are now back in vogue among young urbanites and considered a new remedy. Indeed, some are scrambling back even further on the timeline and throw on traditional Han garb, called 汉服 hànfú, for park strolls or pagoda visits. These both nostalgic and photogenic garments are selling like hotcakes on Taobao.
The indispensable healing vocabulary also includes terms such as 复古 fùgǔ (“retro” or “back to the roots” – literally: reviving the old), 乡愁 xiāngchóu (homesickness), and refueling of 正能量 zhèngnéngliàng (positive energy). Anything that helps the wandering soul to rest is considered “genuinely healing” (很治愈 zhìyù) to young Chinese. And if the mood cure was successful in the end, one “was cured” (被治愈 bèi zhìyù). Perhaps words already have a certain healing effect at times.
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
On the night of Friday to Saturday, the Presidents of the United States and China spoke on the phone and discussed the war in Ukraine. Biden tried warnings, Xi vague appeasements. Biden threatens sanctions against Chinese companies that undermine the blockade on Russia. Xi tended to present himself as a friend of Russia, but at the same time urged global peace. No surprises there. But pressure is mounting on China to distance itself from Russia’s invasion, Christiane Kuehl writes. China is still resisting the pressure and ever-growing accusations from the West. How long can it maintain this kind of pro-Russian neutrality?
Meanwhile, changes are transpiring in China’s domestic politics that may be indirectly related to Ukraine. Forces within the CCP that call for international integration have once again the upper hand. Has Putin’s nationalist go-it-alone weakened the position of Chinese hardliners? In his analysis, Frank Sieren notes a thaw for IPOs in New York as the first sign of a change of course.
Regardless of this, efforts to achieve greater economic independence are continuing. The best example is automotive electronics. China’s powerful tech companies have anchored themselves as an indispensable part of the automotive industry, analyzes Christian Domke Seidel. This is a difference to Europe, where AI conglomerates like Tencent and Baidu do not even exist. Alibaba is now making a splash as a new player. The e-commerce giant is actively investing in car manufacturers.
Even a good three weeks after the war in Ukraine broke out, not a single critical word has been heard from China about the Russian invasion. Beijing is sticking to its diplomatic tightrope act, for which it has to begin to justify itself in the face of growing international pressure. China’s position on the Ukraine conflict is “objective and fair,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi defiantly stressed Saturday. Time would prove that Beijing is “on the right side of history.” China will make “an independent judgment,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying. “We will never accept any external coercion or pressure, and we will also oppose any groundless accusations and suspicion against China.”
But this pressure grows with each passing day. The United States and the EU are urging China to finally distance itself from Moscow. On Saturday, Ukraine also appealed to China to condemn the war of aggression and “Russian barbarism.” Were China to make the right decision, it could “be an important element of the global security system,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mychailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Saturday, according to AFP.
Last Friday, President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden spoke for almost two hours via video call. According to the White House, Biden warned Xi of “consequences” should Beijing provide “material” support to Moscow. According to Chinese state media, Xi called on the US to work with Beijing for global peace, saying, “The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see. Events once again show that state-to-state relations cannot go to the stage of confrontation, conflict and confrontation are not in the interests of anyone” In any case, China and the US intend to remain in contact.
But what does China, or what does Wang’s foreign office, consider the “right side of the story” in light of reports of Russian attacks, including against civilian targets in Ukraine? Ministry spokesmen continue to fail to mouth the words “invasion” or “war”. Instead, they rant about Western sanctions and NATO’s eastward expansion – attacking the US in particular. It can only be guessed what debates are being held behind the scenes in the party.
“China is not a party to the (Ukraine) crisis, nor does it want the sanctions to affect China,” Wang Yi had told his Spanish counterpart last week. That’s why, by all accounts, China has been complying with anti-Russia sanctions so far. According to isolated reports, several banks stopped financing Russian projects. China is also not supplying aircraft components to Russia. There have been no reports of Beijing undermining the sanctions so far.
It seems as if China wants to have it all: good relations with Russia, no hurdles in trade with Europe, eye level with the USA. But the problem in this conflict is that nothing comes for free. Every position involves costs – both tangible and intangible. Even China cannot escape this logic.
“China now finds itself defending Russia’s actions alongside a tiny number of failed states, including North Korea, Syria, and Belarus,” says Craig Singelton, China Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former US diplomat. “Leading this group of international outsiders is a far cry from Xi’s goal of ushering in an ‘international relations entering new era’ in which Beijing and Moscow replace the United States and the European Union,” Singleton writes in the US magazine Foreign Policy. “Frankly, it must now be an embarrassment to Beijing to have allowed itself to have become so closely tied to and complicit with Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine,” the South China Morning quoted George Magnus of Oxford University’s China Centre as saying.
Meanwhile, reports suggest that China may at least consider providing military aid to Russia. EU leaders had “very reliable evidence” that China was considering military aid to Russia, US news portal Politico reported on Friday, citing an unnamed “a senior EU official”. Politico did admit, however, that it was not clear whether this latest piece of EU information came from the EU’s own intelligence service or the same sources as US warnings last week.
For days, China has been fighting back against these accusations. “There is misinformation about China providing military assistance to Russia. We reject it,” Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang told CBS television on Sunday. “What China is doing is sending food, medicine, sleeping bags and infant formula, not weapons or ammunition to any party.”
But it brought these accusations on itself with its unclear position. Especially since Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday: Cooperation with China will become stronger and stronger, Lavrov said, according to Reuters: “At a time when the west is blatantly undermining all the foundations on which the international system is based, we, as two great powers, need to think how to carry on in this world.”
Are these the advantages that China sees? Taking a stand together with Russia against the supposed hegemony of the despised West, and that at any price?
Last week, the regional government of Lviv in western Ukraine had quoted China’s ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong as saying, “China will never attack Ukraine, we will help, particularly in the economic direction.” Beijing reiterated those comments on Wednesday. But this fits less and less with its position not to comment further on Russian attacks, even on Ukrainian supply lines.
China continues to insist on discussing the situation in Ukraine as little as possible. Last week, for example, Wang Yi and even head of state Xi Jinping pressured the host Indonesia to exclude the crisis from the agenda of this year’s G20 summit in Bali. Indonesia was said to be open to the proposal. An outcry in the West would likely ensue.
Tech giants have discovered the automotive industry. As the industry maintains a steady shift towards digitalization, key strengths of traditional manufacturers are playing a decreasing role. So they have to reinvent themselves to keep up. The starting point for such a renewed shift in the global mobility market is China. Despite supply chain problems, semiconductor shortages, and the war in Ukraine, business is booming (China.Table reported).
The latest example is the L7 from IM Motors. The premium sedan will be available for purchase on March 29. Three Chinese economic giants are behind the brand. Car company SAIC owns 54 percent, real estate developer Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park Development 18 percent and IT giant Alibaba another 18 percent. After Huawei, Xiaomi and Baidu, this makes Alibaba the next tech group to seek fortune and profits in the car industry.
Car expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer sums up this trend for China.Table: “The car of tomorrow will be equipped with a great deal of technology for autonomous driving. That’s why value creation will largely happen in software. So it makes sense for high-tech groups to get involved in companies that are in the car business.” And the electric car business seems big enough. Although large and high-profile manufacturers such as Tesla, Xpeng and Nio have long since secured huge chunks of the EV market in the People’s Republic, the China Passenger Car Association expects growth of 84 percent to 5.5 million EVs in 2022. So the pie, of which everyone wants a piece, is still growing considerably.
Timo Moeller, head of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, also highlights the opportunities of this development to Table.Media: “The dynamics in the automotive market are basically very high right now. The shift toward a greater emphasis on software, new electronics architectures and, of course, the electrified powertrain require a change in thinking.” The way cars are built is changing radically. Customers were asking for other features. In addition, automakers are reorganizing themselves and would require far more IT specialists.
This poses greater challenges for traditional manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW. Their core competencies are different. The investment required to compete on an equal footing in the software sector with Chinese tech giants would be tremendous. It is true that the brands are working at full speed to further develop their software and electronics architecture, Moeller reports. “But one thing is clear: It will be difficult for traditional manufacturers to score equally in all elements along the value chain.”
The solution lies in cross-sector cooperation. Alibaba, for example, has been partnering with SAIC since 2016. Some of the automaker’s vehicles run the YunOS operating system, including smart maps, cameras, and voice control and connected car software. IM Motors primarily receives money and is likely to be a buyer of such technologies in the future.
Baidu has founded the joint venture Jidu Automotive with Geely and is bringing its expertise in artificial intelligence to the table. The goal is to launch a vehicle that is capable of level 4 autonomous driving – in other words, fully automated driving.
Dudenhoeffer does see the problems posed by the changes in the market and new competitors. But he believes that automakers should see this change as an opportunity rather than a threat. “Automakers can consider how they want to enter this new world.” Some claim they will be able to acquire the necessary expertise on their own. “Others prefer to source them because the investment and learning costs are relatively high.” However, only time will tell whether in-house development or partnerships with Chinese companies promise more success.
In the end, cars are more than simply software on wheels, says the car expert. “The handling, the safety, the engineering of the vehicle and the knowledge of how to translate these things into components that generate the desired performance, that’s not so easy. It’s not a simple programming task. That’s where traditional manufacturers have a huge head start.”
This trend toward electrification and more and more IT in cars is still taking place primarily in China. This is partly because Chinese customers are far more open to digitization in all areas than their European peers. Secondly, because the government has boosted EV sales with massive subsidies. But this program is coming to an end. In 2022, the People’s Republic will cut subsidies for the purchase of EVs by around a third (China.Table reported). And this comes amid a very complicated market situation.
This is why Moeller believes that while China will remain the largest EV market, Europe will attract manufacturers with higher growth rates. “Many Chinese manufacturers have already set their sights on Europe because demand for electric cars is picking up strongly here. They will provide additional offers and competition in many car sectors in the years to come.”
Fifteen years ago, many people in Taiwan would have thought that the next war of this magnitude would break out in Taiwan or on the border to North Korea, not in Ukraine. However, I believe in Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong one day. That was true for Hong Kong, and it is true for an invasion from China. The only question is when it will happen.
What happened in Crimea could happen similarly in Jinmen, a group of islands that mostly belongs to Taiwan but is geographically closer to the mainland. Many people there feel closer to the People’s Republic. Like the pro-Russian residents in Crimea, they could serve as a pretext for China to justify an invasion.
As a dictator, Putin is the perfect role model for Xi Jinping. Putin has taken the sanctions into account from the very beginning. They are harsher than those against Chinese cadres in Hong Kong, but many Taiwanese, like the people in Ukraine, think that sanctions are not enough of a deterrent. We see that Western countries are not providing direct military assistance in the form of troops to Ukraine, but are at best supplying war material. The consensus in the West: This is all that can be done.
Now that many Taiwanese see that neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is providing military aid to Ukraine, the government is trying to reassure its people. The situation in Taiwan should not be overly confused with the situation in Ukraine. Taiwan is of greater geopolitical importance than Ukraine. If Taiwan falls, the USA will lack an important base in the Pacific region. This is also how most media and opinion leaders communicate it. Moreover, it looks like Russia cannot win this war as easily as it thought. And this is even though the Russian forces do not even have to cross a strait or any other natural obstacle. Therefore, many Taiwanese believe that it will be much harder for China to take Taiwan.
While China could cripple infrastructure with targeted missile strikes and wreak the maximum amount of destruction, controlling the island will be a considerable challenge, as the people would resist. But like Ukraine, Taiwan is not a member of any international security alliance. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is not even a member of the United Nations. We do have mandatory military training, but it is not very structured, and only the healthiest are drafted. However, I think that, like in Ukraine, most Taiwanese would volunteer for national defense in one way or another. People may then do things that they can’t imagine doing now. Like in Hong Kong, if you had told people ten years ago that they would throw a Molotov cocktail at the police, they certainly wouldn’t have believed it.
I don’t have any great expectations of Germany when it comes to Taiwan. We thought there would be stronger support for us after the change of government. But although Germany now even has a green foreign minister, nothing has happened. After talks with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, she even said that they wanted to intensify cooperation in various areas. Of course, we are disappointed about this. But this is the trend all over the world: people talk a lot, regret the situation, but do not act. This is how dictatorships have been able to grow stronger and stronger around the world over the past 20 years. Recorded by Fabian Peltsch
Covid and war, competition and city fever – the world doesn’t seem very welcoming at the moment. In China, too, the adversities of modernity and media storms are constantly trickling through all the cracks of consciousness. Young urbanites in particular are longing for a place of refuge for their troubled souls, or at least a soul massage as a compromise. A new genre promises healing in this respect, with the program already in its name. 治愈 zhìyù “healing” or 治愈系 zhìyùxì “healing school” or “healing system” is the name of the trend that is now tenderly budding in many areas of everyday life and lifestyle in China.
The term was paved by the composted exhaustion, which finds its linguistic expression in buzzwords like 内卷 nèijuǎn (excessive competition revolving around itself) and 996-grind (九九六 jiǔ jiǔ liù – working from 9 to 9, 6 days a week), but also in the resulting “lying-flat” movement (躺平 tǎngpíng – resignation and refusal to compete) and the so-called sang culture (丧文化 sàng wénhuà – a melancholy culture that promotes, for example, a slower lifestyle). The salubriousness trend now virtually nudges the pendulum of mind in the opposite direction.
Zhìyù combines a whole array of genres, products and phenomena that have recently sprouted in China. What they all have in common is the idea of deceleration, simplicity and a return to nature. In the West, this trend is known as mindfulness, simplify your life, do-it-yourself, or work-life balance. But zhìyù is much more than that. The label of “Healing” has become a genre label of its own, for example for wholesome movies and streaming shows, music, comics, and animated films.
In fact, the term is a loanword from Japanese. The country experienced a “healing wave” in the mid-nineties, under the words “iyashi” 癒し and “iyashikei” 癒し系, which the Chinese have now simply translated. In Japan, “iyashi” first appeared as a distinct subgenre in 1995, as a result of the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin attack. These events ultimately pushed the country’s public mood barometer, already depressed by the economic recession, to a low point. The remedy that many Japanese subsequently prescribed themselves were movies, literature and mangas, in which the characters led peaceful, mostly natural lives in soothing environments. The healing effect was meant to jump over to the audience. As the mood in the country slowly cleared, the genre remained. To this day, “iyashi” enjoys unwavering popularity in Japan.
In China, the trend is taking on a life of its own. On social media, for example, where DIY videos, nature films and minimalist clips of simple everyday activities such as cooking, baking or DIY are becoming click magnets. Formerly considered elderly hobbies, zen pastimes of China’s older generation such as gardening (养花 yǎng huā), fish farming (养鱼 yǎng yú), tea culture (茶文化 chá wénhuà) or walking in the park (逛公园 guàng gōngyuán) are now back in vogue among young urbanites and considered a new remedy. Indeed, some are scrambling back even further on the timeline and throw on traditional Han garb, called 汉服 hànfú, for park strolls or pagoda visits. These both nostalgic and photogenic garments are selling like hotcakes on Taobao.
The indispensable healing vocabulary also includes terms such as 复古 fùgǔ (“retro” or “back to the roots” – literally: reviving the old), 乡愁 xiāngchóu (homesickness), and refueling of 正能量 zhèngnéngliàng (positive energy). Anything that helps the wandering soul to rest is considered “genuinely healing” (很治愈 zhìyù) to young Chinese. And if the mood cure was successful in the end, one “was cured” (被治愈 bèi zhìyù). Perhaps words already have a certain healing effect at times.
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
