Propaganda on screens + E-charging station in Shenzhen
Patriotic films no guaranteed success for China’s cinemas
Thousands of e-pumps in fight against air pollution
Covid variant: Hong Kong blocks entry from Britain
Xi and Putin consolidate cooperation
Another Apple Daily journalist arrested
Renault to build battery factory with Envision
Great Wall Motors wants to sell more EVs
Accommodating China is unavoidable
Dear reader,
Chinese cinemas are increasingly showing “classics” again these days. However, this does not mean “Gone with the Wind” or “Psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock, but rather propaganda films, which above all let the Chinese Communist Party shine in all its glory. However, this particular “genre” does have its pitfalls: Even star directors like Zhang Yimou attract only a few viewers to the cinemas with such films. And censors and ardent patriots alike keep a very close eye on propaganda films. All of this ultimately harms the Chinese cinema market, analyzes our team of authors in Beijing.
Shenzhen is already considered the electric car capital of the world. But these vehicles also need to be “refueled”. In Shenzhen, this is done at the world’s largest e-charging station. Frank Sieren took a look at what it looks like when up to 5,000 cars are charged every day. Not all that glitters is gold – the electricity is heavily subsidized and largely produced from coal. And yet the environment in the southern Chinese metropolis benefits from the switch to electromobility.
The images from Baihetan are impressive: The walls of the world’s second-largest hydroelectric power plant tower almost 300 meters into the sky. On Monday, the huge hydroelectric power plant began generating electricity. It is still a test run, but when fully operational the dam is expected to generate around 62 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That would save 20 million tons of coal a year.
I wish you many new insights while reading.
Your Michael Radunski
Feature
Propaganda films weaken the cinema market
On July 1, the historical film “1921” will be released to mark the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. The film deals with the founding of the CCP 100 years ago, and the trailer suggests a visually stunning spectacle. The film has been promoted on the Chinese website Maoyan for quite some time. “1921” fits in with the China Film Administration’s policy of increasingly using films to promote socialism and Xi Jinping’s views on the occasion of the 100th anniversary.
To this end, a directive already came into force on April 1, which means that cinemas must actively promote and screen at least two such films per week until the end of the year. Additionally, there are film screenings at exhibitions and similar events that deal thematically with the party’s history.
Chinese state media are callingthefilms, some of which are now returning to cinemas, “classics”. Some of the films are so old that they date back to the black-and-white era. In terms of content, they deal with themes such as the founding of the Communist Party, stories about national heroes, and the war of resistance against the Japanese in the 1930s. “It’s a charming and effective way to strengthen party education, especially for younger party members,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told the Global Times newspaper.
But the new film by world-famous director Zhang Yimou also fits into this genre. Zhang, who enjoyed great success in an international arthouse cinema in the 1980s and 1990s (among other things, he was the first Chinese to receive the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for “Red Sorghum” as well as various prizes in Venice) and belongs to the legendary fifth generation of the Beijing Film Academy, has released “Cliff Walkers”, a film in which a group of special agents of the Communist Party must assert themselves against a multitude of dangers.
Cooperation between authorities and production
The more recent films are cinematically quite contemporary and successful at the box office. They are narratively based on modern Hollywood films and attract many viewers to the cinemas with special effects and high-caliber acting ensembles. They are also no longer produced by state-owned enterprises, but by private production companies that also put out other, commercial productions. The party, meanwhile, ensures that the films are given preference in marketing and secures them the best screening times in cinemas. US researcher and filmmaker Amanda Morrison summed up the chances of success for these films as “too red to fail”.
In theory, it’s a game where both sides win: The party gets positive PR, and the production company earns money with the movie tickets. Yet in practice, the picture looks somewhat different: Since the Chinese cinema market is full of productions from home and abroad that compete for the attention of viewers every day. Most of the time, overly political films do not generate particularly large audience figures. As a result, movie theaters are moderately filled or not filled at all at the best screening times. The number of total cinema visits is falling.
The Chinese film market needs Hollywood
For one thing, it hurts Chinese production companies, whose films are screened for shorter periods or advertised less prominently because of the inserted propaganda films. And unlike the international blockbusters that come to China, most Chinese film productions generally generate more than 98 percent of their revenue in the domestic market. Internationally, the films usually find only minimal audience figures.
However, removing foreign productions from cinema schedules as recently happened with the re-release of “The Lord of the Rings”, also hurts the domestic market. This is because both distribution companies and cinema operators rely on US blockbusters to get enough viewers into the cinemas. Even now, US movies are still strong in the Chinese market. “F9: The Fast Saga,” the ninth installment of the “Fast and Furious” series, which has not even been released in the US, has already earned more than $200 million in China. That makes“F9” more successful than Zhang Yimou’s “Cliff Walkers”, which had a US release but has earned less there so far. “We need more ‘Avatars’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies to save the movie market,” CNN quotes film industry analyst Ke Tan as saying.
Propaganda films are risky productions
From the production side, too, the films are riskier than one might expect at first glance, as can be seen in the film “The Eight Hundred”. The censors look particularly closely at historical content that comes into contact with the official version of party and national history. Although it is quite close to the Party, the production company Huayi Brothers felt the full force of the censors here when they demanded “corrections” just days before the premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival. The censors criticized the film for glorifying Chiang Kai-Shek’s army too much. Chiang Kai-Shek was Mao Zedong’s fiercest rival for power over China. The film had to be taken out of the program at short notice and was only released later in a significantly changed version.
Even before its release, “1921” is facing headwind. In this case, however, not so much from the authorities as from patriotic netizens. They complain, for example, that Mao Zedong is played by the boy band star Wang Renjun and complain about the tarnishing of the memory of the “great leader” with such a casting. To do this, they use a hotline set up by the state to report people who make disparaging remarks about the party.
“1921” will probably become a national box office success anyway, even if this plan cannot be repeated indefinitely. That’s because the Chinese cinema market is too intertwined with the US market to return to a time when there were almost only propaganda films to be seen, as in the 1990s. Back then, the Chinese government decided to allow some US films into the Chinese market – to save the film industry. The result was a 7000 percent growth in movie ticket sales by 2019 and some transfer of filmmaking know-how. So despite poor US-China relations, it’s likely that US blockbusters will be welcomed with open arms as soon as they appear. Gregor Koppenburg/Jörn Petring
The density of charging stations per million inhabitants in Shenzhen is higher than in the best European cities (Amsterdam and Oslo) and higher than in any American city anyway. There are 4,000 per million inhabitants and a total of 60,000 charging stations in Shenzhen. And it doesn’t stop there. The metropolis of twelve million also has the largest EV charging station in the world: the Minle charging station in Longhua District.
It is operated by three companies, including China Southern Power Grid. However, the station looks far less spectacular than one would expect. And futuristic, certainly.
673 charging columns stand in a former parking lot under six long, shady rows of white plastic carport roofs. In each parking bay, a yellow, round steel beam is anchored in the ground to prevent cars from accidentally hitting the charging station when reversing into parking spaces.
Taxis from BYD ‘refuel’ the most
After all, 5,000 vehicles can be charged at this facility every day, using an average of 160 MWh. Most of the cars that “refuel” there all look the same. They are blue and white taxis from BYD. That’s one of the largest EV manufacturers and is also one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world. With the help of the Shenzhen city government, BYD has ensured that all of the city’s 22,000 taxis and 16,000 buses run on electricity.
The largest EV charging station in the world has been built primarily for taxis. However, drivers are not allowed to take a break in their vehicles. Instead, they sit in an air-conditioned waiting room where they can watch videos or drink tea on their 5G phones or get kneaded in one of the massage chairs that are very popular in the country. Or they can loiter on the sidewalk between gas pumps. Some have brought folding chairs, others lie on raffia mats on the ground and sleep. “It’s convenient,” says one of them, who, like everyone who works for the taxi company, wears a blue short-sleeved shirt. “I stay here for an hour and then I can drive for ten hours.”
If you want it to go faster, there are also 172 50-kilowatt fast-charging stations, instead of the normal ones that only offer 20 or 30 KWh. And even 70 60-KWh stations with so-called constant charging modules, “which are 20-30 percent more efficient,” as one of the operators, Chen Haozhou, vice director of CSPG Electric Vehicle Service Co. Ltd points out. “We are also 20-30 percent cheaper than our competitors.” And the electricity offered here is cheaper than gasoline anyway: Instead of ¥200 for a tank of gas (about €25), you pay less than ¥10.
The electricity is subsidized by the government
But what the taxi drivers pay for a charge is not market prices. The electricity is subsidized by the government. It gets even cheaper if you come to fill up outside peak hours. But more important than saving a few more yuan is the result: The taxi drivers are happy and the air is clean.
The electricity, however, is not yet. 70 percent of China’s electricity is produced from coal. The government still has to make improvements. The traditional charging stations look very similar to the old gas pumps. The only difference is that instead of a tap, there is a plug – made by Mennekes, a company from the Sauerland region of Germany that has been producing in China for years. The more modern charging stations from BYD are more like old coin-operated telephones – except that they have a color display that shows the most important information. Payment is made with a QR code via Wechat or Alipay. It’s also nice and quiet on the square. Charging EVs doesn’t make any noise.
Meanwhile, Shenzhen has built a large charging station just for trucks. It’s not only the first in China but the first in the world. After the city successfully converted virtually all motorcycles, public buses, and taxis to electricity, it’s now the trucks’ turn. In 2020, BYD already sold more than 800 heavy-duty e-trucks, which are 30-ton trucks used as concrete mixers, garbage trucks, and earth dump trucks. The trucks have a range of 200 kilometers and can travel 100 kilometers per hour. With a fast-charging system, they can be fully recharged in two hours. But most of the time they are plugged into a 240-volt socket overnight anyway. This means that the charging process takes about 14 hours.
All public charging stations are currently subsidized by the Shenzhen city government with a 30 percent share. You first have to be able to afford that as a city. But here, too, it’s the result that counts. By promoting e-mobility, the city now saves 850,000 tons of CO2 a year. The air quality index for particulate matter pollution has been reduced from an average of 100 to 26 within a decade. This is also due to the fact that for new registrations of gasoline cars, license plates are only issued by lot. And here, success may well be a long time coming. Green license plates for EVs, on the other hand, can be obtained quickly and easily.
Car Industry
Coal power
Energy
News
Hong Kong bans entry from UK over virus variant
Due to the rapid spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus, flights from the UK will no longer be allowed to land in Hong Kong from Thursday. The UK is classified as an “extreme high-risk country“, the Hong Kong government announced on Monday. Passenger planes will no longer be allowed to fly to the airport. Transit travel is also to be put a stop to.
Anyone who has been in the UK for more than two hours in the past 21 days will no longer be able to enter Hong Kong, according to the statement. Only a few days ago, Hong Kong tightened the COVID-19 measures for travelers from Great Britain: According to this, the country was upgraded from “high-risk” to “very high-risk”, which meant that vaccinated as well as unvaccinated people have to be quarantined for 21 days after their entry.
Nine COVID-19 cases with the “L452R” mutation have been detected in travelers from Britain in the past seven days, the statement added. On Sunday alone, 14,876 new infections were registered in the UK, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported. According to the report, a total of 104,052 new infections were recorded in the entire past week, an increase of 58 percent compared to the previous week. rad
Coronavirus
Health
Hongkong
Travel
Xi and Putin consolidate cooperation
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met via video linkfor thesecond time in a month on Monday. The leaders issued a joint statement opposing “interference in the internal affairs of other countries under the guise of democracy and human rights” and “unilateral sanctions”, state media reported. Xi and Putin also expressed their opposition to the “politicization” of the COVID-19 pandemic and sporting events, according to the reports.
Accordingly, the two presidents expressed concern over the accelerated withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan, saying it has created a more complex and serious security situation in the country.
Xi and Putin also extended the treaty on good neighborliness and friendly cooperation. The cooperation would otherwise have expired at the end of July. Putin sees China-Russia relations“at their peak,” according to Russia’s TASS news agency. “At present, in accordance with the wording and spirit of the treaty, we have managed to raise Russian-Chinese relations to an unprecedentedly high level and turn them into an example of interstate cooperation in the 21st century,” Putin reportedly said.
Moscow and Beijing have left no field of potential cooperation untouched, be it “economic, political, geostrategic, security, humanitarian, cultural or any other form of interaction,” Russian International Affairs Council expert Danil Bochkov told the South China Morning Post. He pointed out that there were some minor cracks in the relationship, such as Beijing’s activities in Central Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative and ambitions in the Arctic (China.Table reported). “The bottom line is that China and Russia are now growing together at the same time, but over time that could change as China narrows the gap in many areas where Russia has traditionally held leading positions,” Bochkov said. niw
Geopolitics
Nato
Russia
USA
Vladimir Putin
Xi Jinping
After Apple Daily went out of business: a well-known journalist arrested in Hong Kong
Another well-known journalist from the Apple Daily newspaper, which was recently forced to cease production, has been arrested in Hong Kong. Fung Wai Kong was detained at the Chinese Special Administrative Region’s airport on Sunday as he tried to leave Hong Kong, media reported on Monday. Apple Daily had last been published last week (China.Table reported) after Hong Kong authorities massively increased pressure on the paper, which is allied with the democracy movement.
Fung Wai Kong, 57, was the senior commentary writer on Apple Daily’s English-language website. He published his articles under the name Lo Fung. Hong Kong police confirmed the arrest of a 57-year-old at the airport for “conspiring with foreign states or foreign powers” to “endanger national security”, according to media reports. His former work colleague Jack Hazelwood wrote on Twitter that Fung was planning to fly to London and called on British authorities to intervene.
Fung Wai Kong is the seventh employee to be arrested in recent weeks on national security grounds, reports South China Morning Post and others. Authorities had detained several media workers in recent weeks under the National Security Law, including Apple Daily editor-in-chief Ryan Law and managing director Cheung Kim Hung. ari
Apple Daily
Civil Society
Hongkong
National Security Act
Renault: battery factory planned with Envision
French carmaker Renault will build a battery factory in northern France together with Chinese battery manufacturer Envision AESC. Envision will invest around €2 billion in the planned “Gigafactory” near Renault’s plant in Douai, French media reported on Monday, citing the Élysée Palace. The new battery factory will complement the recently announced Renault ElectriCity mobility industry cluster, which consists of three factories in Douai, Maubeuge, and Ruitz dedicated exclusively to electric vehicles.
The partnership with Envision received confirmation from the highest level, as the French state holds 15 percent of Renault shares. The factory is expected to create around 2500 new jobs, according to the daily Le Figaro. It is due to come on stream in2024 and initially reach a capacity of 9 GWh. By 2030, a capacity of 43 GWh is targeted, of which Renault is to purchase 24 GWh. The batteries from Douai are to be used in the future, among other things, in the electric R5.
Envision founder Lei Zhang was visiting France on Monday, where he attended the Choose France business summit in Versailles. “We will bring the best battery technology to Renault,” Le Figaro quoted Lei Zhang as saying. The Élysée called the investment “absolutely significant” for France. ari
Batteries
Car Industry
Electromobility
France
Technology
Great Wall Motors goes electric
Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motor (GWM) is tackling the domestic market with plans to sell significantly more cars in China in the future – especially with alternative powertrain options. From 2025, the carmaker, known for SUVs and pickups, aims to “sell four million vehicles a year and achieve sales of ¥600 billion (€78 billion),” GWM Chairman Wei Jianjun said at a strategy briefing at the company’s Baoding headquarters on Monday.
GWM, which sold 1.1 million cars last year, also plans to increase sales to 2.8 million by 2023. Up to 80 percent of annual sales are expected to come from neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) – including cars with electric batteries, plug-in hybrids as well as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles – from 2025. Together with BMW, Great Wall is currently building a plant in China to produce EVs.
In their latest communiqué, NATO leaders declared that China presents “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order.” The response from China’s mission to the European Union was clear: “We will not present a ‘systemic challenge’ to anyone, but if someone wants to pose a ‘systemic challenge’ to us, we will not remain indifferent.” Such a tit-for-tat rhetoric is unnecessary, and most of the world’s population probably does not want it to escalate. Yet escalation is becoming more likely every day.
That is largely because China is one of the few policy areas where US President Joe Biden has largely upheld the approach of his predecessor, Donald Trump: compete fiercely, cooperate when needed, and confront when necessary. So, as China’s response to the NATO communiqué implies, it has adopted its own three-pronged response: don’t look for a fight, don’t be afraid to fight, and fight when necessary.
NATO is hardly the only forum where Biden is pushing the US approach. At the recent G7 summit and during his meeting with EU leaders, Biden also sought to convince America’s allies to form a united front against China (and Russia).
‘Beating the drums’ for a new cold war
US Senator Bernie Sanders sees the problem. He recently warned that, by casting China as an existential threat, the US political establishment is effectively “beating the drums” for a new cold war, which will have no winner. As he put it, organizing US foreign policy around a “zero-sum global confrontation with China” would be “politically dangerous and strategically counterproductive.”
America’s flawed approach to China is rooted in an enduring belief in the concept of absolute national security. But, while this might have been a reasonable goal for the United States in the decades after World War II, when the country stood at the helm of a unipolar world order, it is not realistic in today’s multipolar system.
In today’s world, attempting to “contain and confront” those with different values or systems, rather than negotiating a new global compact that accommodates them, is a recipe for conflict. It certainly impedes the ability to pursue mutually beneficial economic engagement and cooperation on shared challenges like climate change. As a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London noted after the G7 summit, “The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone.”
Stiglitz: USA more plutocracy than representative democracy
But the problem runs deeper: even within this “small group of countries,” decisions like courting conflict with China do not necessarily reflect the will of the majority. As Joseph E. Stiglitz has argued, the US today looks more like a plutocracy – with the top 1% of income earners able to steer most public policy in their favor – than a representative democracy.
If the top 1% in a country that accounts for 5% of the world’s population pushes the two largest economies into conflict, the entire world will suffer immensely, with the vast majority of people getting no say in the matter. If the US and its Western allies genuinely believe in democracy, they should find this unacceptable.
A better approach – and one that reflects the values Western liberal democracies claim to hold dear – would account for the interests of “One Earth,” encompassing all of humanity and the planet on which we depend. That means expanding our perspective beyond national security to pursue global security – the greatest good for the greatest number – and ensuring that every human being has a say in determining our collective future.
Rhetoric of the global elite must be broken through
We are not arguing for global government. The natural and social sciences have shown the fragility of monoculture. In human civilization, as in nature, diversity brings stability and progress. Even competition can be a good thing, but only if it is balanced by effective cooperation, and violence, against humans or the environment, is eschewed.
So, how would a One Earth system be realized? Bottom-up feedback mechanisms, enabled by technology, will be crucial. The objective must be to break the silos that global elites, aided by abstruse language, have traditionally created. This would enable more people – with expertise in more areas – to contribute to discussions.
‘Clash of civilizations’
The benefits of such an approach are thrown into relief by the tension between traditional economic thinking – focused on ever-more consumption, investment, and growth – and environmental imperatives, like reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and protecting biodiversity. In a One Earth system, more of a “good thing” can often be very bad.
The obsolete, siloed approach is also reflected in the facile narrative that the US and China are locked in a “clash of civilizations.” Empires clash. Civilizations should be “civil” to one another, not least because we are all sharing the same Earth.
To that end, leaders must move beyond a narrow focus on national security to broad, inclusive discussions about how to deliver global security, in the form of peace, stability, adequate nutrition, and environmental sustainability. But, first, the US must give up on containing China and start accommodating it.
Andrew Sheng, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, is a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance. Xiao Geng, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, is a professor and Director of the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
The giant Baihetan hydropower plant began generating electricity for the first time on Monday for a test run. The dam is located downstream of the Jinsha River, an upper section of the Yangtze River, on the border of southwest China’s Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. According to state media, the power plant has 16 generating units with an expected capacity of 62 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The centerpiece is a 50-meter-high, one-million-kilowatt generator. When fully operational, Baihetan will be the world’s most powerful power plant after the Three Gorges Dam in the central Chinese province of Hubei.
Patriotic films no guaranteed success for China’s cinemas
Thousands of e-pumps in fight against air pollution
Covid variant: Hong Kong blocks entry from Britain
Xi and Putin consolidate cooperation
Another Apple Daily journalist arrested
Renault to build battery factory with Envision
Great Wall Motors wants to sell more EVs
Accommodating China is unavoidable
Dear reader,
Chinese cinemas are increasingly showing “classics” again these days. However, this does not mean “Gone with the Wind” or “Psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock, but rather propaganda films, which above all let the Chinese Communist Party shine in all its glory. However, this particular “genre” does have its pitfalls: Even star directors like Zhang Yimou attract only a few viewers to the cinemas with such films. And censors and ardent patriots alike keep a very close eye on propaganda films. All of this ultimately harms the Chinese cinema market, analyzes our team of authors in Beijing.
Shenzhen is already considered the electric car capital of the world. But these vehicles also need to be “refueled”. In Shenzhen, this is done at the world’s largest e-charging station. Frank Sieren took a look at what it looks like when up to 5,000 cars are charged every day. Not all that glitters is gold – the electricity is heavily subsidized and largely produced from coal. And yet the environment in the southern Chinese metropolis benefits from the switch to electromobility.
The images from Baihetan are impressive: The walls of the world’s second-largest hydroelectric power plant tower almost 300 meters into the sky. On Monday, the huge hydroelectric power plant began generating electricity. It is still a test run, but when fully operational the dam is expected to generate around 62 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That would save 20 million tons of coal a year.
I wish you many new insights while reading.
Your Michael Radunski
Feature
Propaganda films weaken the cinema market
On July 1, the historical film “1921” will be released to mark the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. The film deals with the founding of the CCP 100 years ago, and the trailer suggests a visually stunning spectacle. The film has been promoted on the Chinese website Maoyan for quite some time. “1921” fits in with the China Film Administration’s policy of increasingly using films to promote socialism and Xi Jinping’s views on the occasion of the 100th anniversary.
To this end, a directive already came into force on April 1, which means that cinemas must actively promote and screen at least two such films per week until the end of the year. Additionally, there are film screenings at exhibitions and similar events that deal thematically with the party’s history.
Chinese state media are callingthefilms, some of which are now returning to cinemas, “classics”. Some of the films are so old that they date back to the black-and-white era. In terms of content, they deal with themes such as the founding of the Communist Party, stories about national heroes, and the war of resistance against the Japanese in the 1930s. “It’s a charming and effective way to strengthen party education, especially for younger party members,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told the Global Times newspaper.
But the new film by world-famous director Zhang Yimou also fits into this genre. Zhang, who enjoyed great success in an international arthouse cinema in the 1980s and 1990s (among other things, he was the first Chinese to receive the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for “Red Sorghum” as well as various prizes in Venice) and belongs to the legendary fifth generation of the Beijing Film Academy, has released “Cliff Walkers”, a film in which a group of special agents of the Communist Party must assert themselves against a multitude of dangers.
Cooperation between authorities and production
The more recent films are cinematically quite contemporary and successful at the box office. They are narratively based on modern Hollywood films and attract many viewers to the cinemas with special effects and high-caliber acting ensembles. They are also no longer produced by state-owned enterprises, but by private production companies that also put out other, commercial productions. The party, meanwhile, ensures that the films are given preference in marketing and secures them the best screening times in cinemas. US researcher and filmmaker Amanda Morrison summed up the chances of success for these films as “too red to fail”.
In theory, it’s a game where both sides win: The party gets positive PR, and the production company earns money with the movie tickets. Yet in practice, the picture looks somewhat different: Since the Chinese cinema market is full of productions from home and abroad that compete for the attention of viewers every day. Most of the time, overly political films do not generate particularly large audience figures. As a result, movie theaters are moderately filled or not filled at all at the best screening times. The number of total cinema visits is falling.
The Chinese film market needs Hollywood
For one thing, it hurts Chinese production companies, whose films are screened for shorter periods or advertised less prominently because of the inserted propaganda films. And unlike the international blockbusters that come to China, most Chinese film productions generally generate more than 98 percent of their revenue in the domestic market. Internationally, the films usually find only minimal audience figures.
However, removing foreign productions from cinema schedules as recently happened with the re-release of “The Lord of the Rings”, also hurts the domestic market. This is because both distribution companies and cinema operators rely on US blockbusters to get enough viewers into the cinemas. Even now, US movies are still strong in the Chinese market. “F9: The Fast Saga,” the ninth installment of the “Fast and Furious” series, which has not even been released in the US, has already earned more than $200 million in China. That makes“F9” more successful than Zhang Yimou’s “Cliff Walkers”, which had a US release but has earned less there so far. “We need more ‘Avatars’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies to save the movie market,” CNN quotes film industry analyst Ke Tan as saying.
Propaganda films are risky productions
From the production side, too, the films are riskier than one might expect at first glance, as can be seen in the film “The Eight Hundred”. The censors look particularly closely at historical content that comes into contact with the official version of party and national history. Although it is quite close to the Party, the production company Huayi Brothers felt the full force of the censors here when they demanded “corrections” just days before the premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival. The censors criticized the film for glorifying Chiang Kai-Shek’s army too much. Chiang Kai-Shek was Mao Zedong’s fiercest rival for power over China. The film had to be taken out of the program at short notice and was only released later in a significantly changed version.
Even before its release, “1921” is facing headwind. In this case, however, not so much from the authorities as from patriotic netizens. They complain, for example, that Mao Zedong is played by the boy band star Wang Renjun and complain about the tarnishing of the memory of the “great leader” with such a casting. To do this, they use a hotline set up by the state to report people who make disparaging remarks about the party.
“1921” will probably become a national box office success anyway, even if this plan cannot be repeated indefinitely. That’s because the Chinese cinema market is too intertwined with the US market to return to a time when there were almost only propaganda films to be seen, as in the 1990s. Back then, the Chinese government decided to allow some US films into the Chinese market – to save the film industry. The result was a 7000 percent growth in movie ticket sales by 2019 and some transfer of filmmaking know-how. So despite poor US-China relations, it’s likely that US blockbusters will be welcomed with open arms as soon as they appear. Gregor Koppenburg/Jörn Petring
The density of charging stations per million inhabitants in Shenzhen is higher than in the best European cities (Amsterdam and Oslo) and higher than in any American city anyway. There are 4,000 per million inhabitants and a total of 60,000 charging stations in Shenzhen. And it doesn’t stop there. The metropolis of twelve million also has the largest EV charging station in the world: the Minle charging station in Longhua District.
It is operated by three companies, including China Southern Power Grid. However, the station looks far less spectacular than one would expect. And futuristic, certainly.
673 charging columns stand in a former parking lot under six long, shady rows of white plastic carport roofs. In each parking bay, a yellow, round steel beam is anchored in the ground to prevent cars from accidentally hitting the charging station when reversing into parking spaces.
Taxis from BYD ‘refuel’ the most
After all, 5,000 vehicles can be charged at this facility every day, using an average of 160 MWh. Most of the cars that “refuel” there all look the same. They are blue and white taxis from BYD. That’s one of the largest EV manufacturers and is also one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world. With the help of the Shenzhen city government, BYD has ensured that all of the city’s 22,000 taxis and 16,000 buses run on electricity.
The largest EV charging station in the world has been built primarily for taxis. However, drivers are not allowed to take a break in their vehicles. Instead, they sit in an air-conditioned waiting room where they can watch videos or drink tea on their 5G phones or get kneaded in one of the massage chairs that are very popular in the country. Or they can loiter on the sidewalk between gas pumps. Some have brought folding chairs, others lie on raffia mats on the ground and sleep. “It’s convenient,” says one of them, who, like everyone who works for the taxi company, wears a blue short-sleeved shirt. “I stay here for an hour and then I can drive for ten hours.”
If you want it to go faster, there are also 172 50-kilowatt fast-charging stations, instead of the normal ones that only offer 20 or 30 KWh. And even 70 60-KWh stations with so-called constant charging modules, “which are 20-30 percent more efficient,” as one of the operators, Chen Haozhou, vice director of CSPG Electric Vehicle Service Co. Ltd points out. “We are also 20-30 percent cheaper than our competitors.” And the electricity offered here is cheaper than gasoline anyway: Instead of ¥200 for a tank of gas (about €25), you pay less than ¥10.
The electricity is subsidized by the government
But what the taxi drivers pay for a charge is not market prices. The electricity is subsidized by the government. It gets even cheaper if you come to fill up outside peak hours. But more important than saving a few more yuan is the result: The taxi drivers are happy and the air is clean.
The electricity, however, is not yet. 70 percent of China’s electricity is produced from coal. The government still has to make improvements. The traditional charging stations look very similar to the old gas pumps. The only difference is that instead of a tap, there is a plug – made by Mennekes, a company from the Sauerland region of Germany that has been producing in China for years. The more modern charging stations from BYD are more like old coin-operated telephones – except that they have a color display that shows the most important information. Payment is made with a QR code via Wechat or Alipay. It’s also nice and quiet on the square. Charging EVs doesn’t make any noise.
Meanwhile, Shenzhen has built a large charging station just for trucks. It’s not only the first in China but the first in the world. After the city successfully converted virtually all motorcycles, public buses, and taxis to electricity, it’s now the trucks’ turn. In 2020, BYD already sold more than 800 heavy-duty e-trucks, which are 30-ton trucks used as concrete mixers, garbage trucks, and earth dump trucks. The trucks have a range of 200 kilometers and can travel 100 kilometers per hour. With a fast-charging system, they can be fully recharged in two hours. But most of the time they are plugged into a 240-volt socket overnight anyway. This means that the charging process takes about 14 hours.
All public charging stations are currently subsidized by the Shenzhen city government with a 30 percent share. You first have to be able to afford that as a city. But here, too, it’s the result that counts. By promoting e-mobility, the city now saves 850,000 tons of CO2 a year. The air quality index for particulate matter pollution has been reduced from an average of 100 to 26 within a decade. This is also due to the fact that for new registrations of gasoline cars, license plates are only issued by lot. And here, success may well be a long time coming. Green license plates for EVs, on the other hand, can be obtained quickly and easily.
Car Industry
Coal power
Energy
News
Hong Kong bans entry from UK over virus variant
Due to the rapid spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus, flights from the UK will no longer be allowed to land in Hong Kong from Thursday. The UK is classified as an “extreme high-risk country“, the Hong Kong government announced on Monday. Passenger planes will no longer be allowed to fly to the airport. Transit travel is also to be put a stop to.
Anyone who has been in the UK for more than two hours in the past 21 days will no longer be able to enter Hong Kong, according to the statement. Only a few days ago, Hong Kong tightened the COVID-19 measures for travelers from Great Britain: According to this, the country was upgraded from “high-risk” to “very high-risk”, which meant that vaccinated as well as unvaccinated people have to be quarantined for 21 days after their entry.
Nine COVID-19 cases with the “L452R” mutation have been detected in travelers from Britain in the past seven days, the statement added. On Sunday alone, 14,876 new infections were registered in the UK, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported. According to the report, a total of 104,052 new infections were recorded in the entire past week, an increase of 58 percent compared to the previous week. rad
Coronavirus
Health
Hongkong
Travel
Xi and Putin consolidate cooperation
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met via video linkfor thesecond time in a month on Monday. The leaders issued a joint statement opposing “interference in the internal affairs of other countries under the guise of democracy and human rights” and “unilateral sanctions”, state media reported. Xi and Putin also expressed their opposition to the “politicization” of the COVID-19 pandemic and sporting events, according to the reports.
Accordingly, the two presidents expressed concern over the accelerated withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan, saying it has created a more complex and serious security situation in the country.
Xi and Putin also extended the treaty on good neighborliness and friendly cooperation. The cooperation would otherwise have expired at the end of July. Putin sees China-Russia relations“at their peak,” according to Russia’s TASS news agency. “At present, in accordance with the wording and spirit of the treaty, we have managed to raise Russian-Chinese relations to an unprecedentedly high level and turn them into an example of interstate cooperation in the 21st century,” Putin reportedly said.
Moscow and Beijing have left no field of potential cooperation untouched, be it “economic, political, geostrategic, security, humanitarian, cultural or any other form of interaction,” Russian International Affairs Council expert Danil Bochkov told the South China Morning Post. He pointed out that there were some minor cracks in the relationship, such as Beijing’s activities in Central Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative and ambitions in the Arctic (China.Table reported). “The bottom line is that China and Russia are now growing together at the same time, but over time that could change as China narrows the gap in many areas where Russia has traditionally held leading positions,” Bochkov said. niw
Geopolitics
Nato
Russia
USA
Vladimir Putin
Xi Jinping
After Apple Daily went out of business: a well-known journalist arrested in Hong Kong
Another well-known journalist from the Apple Daily newspaper, which was recently forced to cease production, has been arrested in Hong Kong. Fung Wai Kong was detained at the Chinese Special Administrative Region’s airport on Sunday as he tried to leave Hong Kong, media reported on Monday. Apple Daily had last been published last week (China.Table reported) after Hong Kong authorities massively increased pressure on the paper, which is allied with the democracy movement.
Fung Wai Kong, 57, was the senior commentary writer on Apple Daily’s English-language website. He published his articles under the name Lo Fung. Hong Kong police confirmed the arrest of a 57-year-old at the airport for “conspiring with foreign states or foreign powers” to “endanger national security”, according to media reports. His former work colleague Jack Hazelwood wrote on Twitter that Fung was planning to fly to London and called on British authorities to intervene.
Fung Wai Kong is the seventh employee to be arrested in recent weeks on national security grounds, reports South China Morning Post and others. Authorities had detained several media workers in recent weeks under the National Security Law, including Apple Daily editor-in-chief Ryan Law and managing director Cheung Kim Hung. ari
Apple Daily
Civil Society
Hongkong
National Security Act
Renault: battery factory planned with Envision
French carmaker Renault will build a battery factory in northern France together with Chinese battery manufacturer Envision AESC. Envision will invest around €2 billion in the planned “Gigafactory” near Renault’s plant in Douai, French media reported on Monday, citing the Élysée Palace. The new battery factory will complement the recently announced Renault ElectriCity mobility industry cluster, which consists of three factories in Douai, Maubeuge, and Ruitz dedicated exclusively to electric vehicles.
The partnership with Envision received confirmation from the highest level, as the French state holds 15 percent of Renault shares. The factory is expected to create around 2500 new jobs, according to the daily Le Figaro. It is due to come on stream in2024 and initially reach a capacity of 9 GWh. By 2030, a capacity of 43 GWh is targeted, of which Renault is to purchase 24 GWh. The batteries from Douai are to be used in the future, among other things, in the electric R5.
Envision founder Lei Zhang was visiting France on Monday, where he attended the Choose France business summit in Versailles. “We will bring the best battery technology to Renault,” Le Figaro quoted Lei Zhang as saying. The Élysée called the investment “absolutely significant” for France. ari
Batteries
Car Industry
Electromobility
France
Technology
Great Wall Motors goes electric
Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motor (GWM) is tackling the domestic market with plans to sell significantly more cars in China in the future – especially with alternative powertrain options. From 2025, the carmaker, known for SUVs and pickups, aims to “sell four million vehicles a year and achieve sales of ¥600 billion (€78 billion),” GWM Chairman Wei Jianjun said at a strategy briefing at the company’s Baoding headquarters on Monday.
GWM, which sold 1.1 million cars last year, also plans to increase sales to 2.8 million by 2023. Up to 80 percent of annual sales are expected to come from neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) – including cars with electric batteries, plug-in hybrids as well as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles – from 2025. Together with BMW, Great Wall is currently building a plant in China to produce EVs.
In their latest communiqué, NATO leaders declared that China presents “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order.” The response from China’s mission to the European Union was clear: “We will not present a ‘systemic challenge’ to anyone, but if someone wants to pose a ‘systemic challenge’ to us, we will not remain indifferent.” Such a tit-for-tat rhetoric is unnecessary, and most of the world’s population probably does not want it to escalate. Yet escalation is becoming more likely every day.
That is largely because China is one of the few policy areas where US President Joe Biden has largely upheld the approach of his predecessor, Donald Trump: compete fiercely, cooperate when needed, and confront when necessary. So, as China’s response to the NATO communiqué implies, it has adopted its own three-pronged response: don’t look for a fight, don’t be afraid to fight, and fight when necessary.
NATO is hardly the only forum where Biden is pushing the US approach. At the recent G7 summit and during his meeting with EU leaders, Biden also sought to convince America’s allies to form a united front against China (and Russia).
‘Beating the drums’ for a new cold war
US Senator Bernie Sanders sees the problem. He recently warned that, by casting China as an existential threat, the US political establishment is effectively “beating the drums” for a new cold war, which will have no winner. As he put it, organizing US foreign policy around a “zero-sum global confrontation with China” would be “politically dangerous and strategically counterproductive.”
America’s flawed approach to China is rooted in an enduring belief in the concept of absolute national security. But, while this might have been a reasonable goal for the United States in the decades after World War II, when the country stood at the helm of a unipolar world order, it is not realistic in today’s multipolar system.
In today’s world, attempting to “contain and confront” those with different values or systems, rather than negotiating a new global compact that accommodates them, is a recipe for conflict. It certainly impedes the ability to pursue mutually beneficial economic engagement and cooperation on shared challenges like climate change. As a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London noted after the G7 summit, “The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone.”
Stiglitz: USA more plutocracy than representative democracy
But the problem runs deeper: even within this “small group of countries,” decisions like courting conflict with China do not necessarily reflect the will of the majority. As Joseph E. Stiglitz has argued, the US today looks more like a plutocracy – with the top 1% of income earners able to steer most public policy in their favor – than a representative democracy.
If the top 1% in a country that accounts for 5% of the world’s population pushes the two largest economies into conflict, the entire world will suffer immensely, with the vast majority of people getting no say in the matter. If the US and its Western allies genuinely believe in democracy, they should find this unacceptable.
A better approach – and one that reflects the values Western liberal democracies claim to hold dear – would account for the interests of “One Earth,” encompassing all of humanity and the planet on which we depend. That means expanding our perspective beyond national security to pursue global security – the greatest good for the greatest number – and ensuring that every human being has a say in determining our collective future.
Rhetoric of the global elite must be broken through
We are not arguing for global government. The natural and social sciences have shown the fragility of monoculture. In human civilization, as in nature, diversity brings stability and progress. Even competition can be a good thing, but only if it is balanced by effective cooperation, and violence, against humans or the environment, is eschewed.
So, how would a One Earth system be realized? Bottom-up feedback mechanisms, enabled by technology, will be crucial. The objective must be to break the silos that global elites, aided by abstruse language, have traditionally created. This would enable more people – with expertise in more areas – to contribute to discussions.
‘Clash of civilizations’
The benefits of such an approach are thrown into relief by the tension between traditional economic thinking – focused on ever-more consumption, investment, and growth – and environmental imperatives, like reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and protecting biodiversity. In a One Earth system, more of a “good thing” can often be very bad.
The obsolete, siloed approach is also reflected in the facile narrative that the US and China are locked in a “clash of civilizations.” Empires clash. Civilizations should be “civil” to one another, not least because we are all sharing the same Earth.
To that end, leaders must move beyond a narrow focus on national security to broad, inclusive discussions about how to deliver global security, in the form of peace, stability, adequate nutrition, and environmental sustainability. But, first, the US must give up on containing China and start accommodating it.
Andrew Sheng, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong, is a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance. Xiao Geng, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, is a professor and Director of the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
The giant Baihetan hydropower plant began generating electricity for the first time on Monday for a test run. The dam is located downstream of the Jinsha River, an upper section of the Yangtze River, on the border of southwest China’s Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. According to state media, the power plant has 16 generating units with an expected capacity of 62 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The centerpiece is a 50-meter-high, one-million-kilowatt generator. When fully operational, Baihetan will be the world’s most powerful power plant after the Three Gorges Dam in the central Chinese province of Hubei.
