Only a fraction of the microchips used worldwide are manufactured in Europe. By revenue, the share is so small that it only shows up in statistics under “Other”. The US at least makes an appearance with a single-digit percentage. In short, almost all chips come from Asia. It is no wonder that Joe Biden has taken the initiative and is subsidizing the restoration of an American semiconductor industry.
And the EU? It has launched an initiative that is showing initial success. But it will be years before more semiconductors are produced domestically again. Until then, we can only pray and hope that nothing else goes wrong in geopolitical terms. Otherwise, the assembly lines in German industry, the basis of our prosperity, will grind to a halt. The semiconductor situation could turn into an even worse repeat of the drama surrounding Russian energy sources, analyzes Felix Lee.
There are many Sinologists who are not fluent in Chinese. But there have hardly been any graduate Sinologists who have never been to Asia at all. The pandemic has brought about a new phenomenon here as well. This summer semester marks the graduation of the first bachelor’s degree class that has been largely barred from traveling to the Far East. Amelie Richter has summarized the devastating psychological effect this has had on the new generation of students interested in China.
They are at the heart of modern industrial products, and whoever masters their production will decide who is the leader in future technologies: Semiconductors, more commonly known as microchips. That is why China, the USA and the EU are currently doing everything to bolster their technological position.
The USA is now pressing ahead. The Senate passed a bill to this effect on Wednesday. All that remains is the approval of the House of Representatives, which is considered certain. But the EU and China are also trying hard to boost their own semiconductor production with subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives. The EU has already presented a corresponding proposal for a bundle of measures with the European Chips Act (Europe.Table reported).
The stakes are high. It is no longer just a matter of principle to be at the forefront of technology. In the wake of geopolitical and trade rivalries, national economies aim to restore their manufacturing independence after decades of relying on foreign sourcing. The pandemic has shown, not least to the German electronics and automotive industries, what happens when supplies from the Far East fail to arrive. Some car manufacturers have had to cut their production by a third at times.
Currently, more than two-thirds of all modern semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan. The Germans do not want to rely on supplies from Taiwan in particular in the long term. After all, there is a fear that the leadership in Beijing will launch an attack on the democratically governed island state because it considers Taiwan to be its own territory. Recently, the People’s Republic has made this clearer than ever.
Not least in light of the Chinese catch-up campaign, Albert Heuberger, chip expert and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, believes that the European Chips Act is both right and important. The chip industry is a key industry that strongly determines the technological foundations in this country. “We also have to fight for such manufacturing industries to be located in Germany and Europe so that we have the know-how,” Heuberger said. “Chip companies will base their location decisions on where the right workforce is available.”
The EU already acted in the spring with the European Chips Act and initiated a program of around €15 billion to expand the domestic chip industry, in addition to the already planned public investment of €30 billion.
Admittedly, there is also criticism of the Commission’s approach (Europe.Table reported): The focus on ultra-modern chips ignores the fact that simpler components are also needed as workhorses of the industry. In addition, Brussels is not providing enough money out of its own pocket. Of the €43 billion, only €4 billion will actually come from EU funds; the rest is to be provided by member states or private investors.
But the EU’s subsidy programs show effect: Bosch has announced plans to take advantage of the subsidies and invest almost €1 billion in its semiconductor development centers in the German cities of Reutlingen and Dresden, among others. The chip giants STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries want to invest around €5.7 billion in a new semiconductor plant in France. The US company Intel even wants to build a new mega-chip site in Germany and has budgeted €17 billion for the construction of two semiconductor plants.
Washington now wants to directly stimulate the domestic semiconductor industry with $52 billion. In addition, the US government intends to exempt chip factories from taxation and provide no less than $170 billion for the R&D of new semiconductors. Both the European Chips Act and the US program are designed to attract private investment through public subsidies.
China is putting up a similar amount of money as the USA. The state development fund is equipped with €170 billion. Regional players are also getting involved. The technology metropolis of Shenzhen currently has a manufacturer of memory chips in the works for €40 billion. Not all money always flows into the right channels when things need to happen fast (China.Table reported). But overall, funding already has an impact.
Despite sanctions imposed by the US on China’s high-tech sector, leading Chinese chipmaker SMIC has apparently managed to pull off a technical leap, also with massive government backing. The company has managed to ship its first chips with a structure width of just 7 nanometers. At least that is what the news agency Bloomberg reports. If this news proves true, then the learning curve would be considerable. Because until now, many observers assumed that China’s chip industry was behind the top countries Taiwan, South Korea and the USA by about four years.
The Chinese manufacturer SMIC has so far mainly been active in the 14-nanometer segment, i.e. in much larger semiconductors. The rule here is that the fewer nanometers wide the current paths are, the faster and more efficiently the components calculate. China is already extremely successful in the 14-nanometer range. With the transition to the 7-nanometer range, however, applications and thus market opportunities for Chinese products are broadening. Recently, Korean economics professor Keun Lee called older generation chips “almost worthless” in a guest article for China.Table.
It is not known whether the 7-nanometer chips are really market-ready and can be produced in large quantities while maintaining good quality. But what can be gleaned from this development is that the Chinese are obviously not as out of touch as the USA would like them to be. The harder it becomes to stock up on the global market, the more attractive it becomes to order from Chinese suppliers.
The fact is that German companies are also purchasing more and more chips from China. In 2001, China’s share of the global chip market was still less than one percent. By 2010, it had surpassed 10 percent. At the beginning of the pandemic, it reached 20 percent. According to US observers, it could reach nearly one quarter by 2030.
German experts have also been pointing to the rapid development in the People’s Republic for some time: “China already has a stronger ecosystem for chip design than Europe,” according to a joint analysis by the Berlin-based China think tank Merics and the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung last December. High investments would also enable Chinese companies to scale more quickly, i.e., to achieve higher quantities and thus lower prices.
Nevertheless, there is “a lot of catching up to do” in China compared to the US and its Asian neighbors, says Heuberger. The production of modern chips is a particularly challenging undertaking that requires a great deal of experience.
Heuberger also believes that the EU initiative will only show a clear effect in a few years. “In a growing market, we need to triple to quadruple production in Europe to get to the targeted 20 percent global market share. A period of five to eight years is needed before we catch up,” said Heuberger, who is also a spokesman for the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics.
The Merics study identifies European weaknesses primarily in so-called back-end manufacturing, that is, the assembly, testing and packaging of high-tech chips. However, this part of the production will become significantly more important in the future, especially for the development of high-performance and energy-efficient chips. China, on the other hand, already has a considerable global market share in back-end manufacturing, experts say. That is why Europe is likely to continue to rely on chips from China in the foreseeable future.
Sara Kettenmeyer puts it rather bluntly: “If I had known how my studies would turn out, I probably wouldn’t have started them the way I did.” Kettenmeyer is studying sinology, has completed six semesters, and should now actually be writing her bachelor’s thesis at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich to complete her degree. She is part of the first cohort of sinology students in Germany who were unable to set foot in the People’s Republic during their entire studies due to the Covid pandemic.
Kettenmeyer began her sinology studies in the 2019/20 winter semester. In the first semester, everything was still normal, the 22-year-old says. Then she spent four semesters taking online classes. The summer semester of 2022, which runs at most German universities until the end of the month, was then back to presence classes. Her stay in China, which is actually part of the curriculum after the fourth semester, never happened.
“I applied several times to Chinese universities, received an acceptance letter from Beijing Normal University, but then the exchange didn’t happen,” says the student. The student council and staff of the sinology institute always tried to help, she says. “But they didn’t really know what was going on either.” For students, the lack of time studying abroad has had two consequences: “Some have dropped out in an advanced semester because it’s just frustrating,” Kettenmeyer says. And, “I don’t really know the language.” Other fellow students without any experience in China have similar feelings.
This became particularly apparent in the higher semesters when, for example, newspaper reading was added to the language lessons. You notice a difference between students who were able to travel to China before the Covid pandemic began – and sinologists who were not in a Mandarin-speaking environment during their studies, Kettenmeyer notes. She has decided not to complete her studies with her bachelor’s thesis at this point and instead to work for a year so that she can then follow-up her stay in China in the 2023/24 academic year.
The 22-year-old from Munich is not alone in her rather negative experience. In recent years, there has been an average higher number of dropouts than before the Covid pandemic, according to a sinology institute in the northern German region. The fact that the “run” on the field of study has not been the highest in recent years and that students are dropping out due to frustration is not a big surprise, according to a staff member who prefers to remain anonymous. The images of the harsh lockdown in Shanghai have been discussed among students, and have led to concerns among some about staying in China in the future. Despite everything, should it become evident that students will be able to enter the country again in 2023, she expects a sharp increase in enrollment for the winter semester.
Korbinian Rausch, also a student at LMU, began his sinology studies during and despite the pandemic. He has never visited the People’s Republic before. The 29-year-old previously studied history and politics and wrote his bachelor’s thesis on the relationship between Taiwan and China. When he reached his limits in understanding the sources, he decided to start studying sinology in 2020 – even though entering the People’s Republic was already practically impossible at that point. He had not planned a full year abroad anyway, since he already had a job. “But I had hoped to maybe attend a summer school in China.” Nothing came of that. He put his studies on hold, and is now officially only in his second semester. “But I’ll keep at it,” Rausch says.
Meanwhile, many scientists who already know China are urging the chance to return there. This does not only include German students. On Twitter, Instagram and other social networks, groups have formed that are calling to let academics back into the country under the hashtag #takeusbacktochina. In these groups, students exchange news – or vent their frustration about the situation. For many, a semester abroad in China is directly related to job prospects after graduation. Due to the entry restrictions, they potentially also face financial difficulties. Not everyone can afford to delay their studies.
The “substitute program” with online classes at Chinese universities does not equal a real exchange, says Greta Biondi. The Italian just this month finished her double degree at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and Capital Normal University in Beijing – and has completed two years of Chinese online studies, but has never been to the People’s Republic. While she thought it was great that she was able to study at a Chinese university at all, Biondi says.
But the second year, in particular, had not been a good experience due to the time difference and dwindling motivation among students and teachers. Classes and exams took place partly at night in Europe, and language exchanges almost didn’t happen at all, Biondi said. “Now I feel like I can do an economic transaction in Mandarin but not ask for simple everyday things.”
Veronica decided against studying online at a Chinese university altogether. The 24-year-old Spanish student earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020 and was accepted by universities in China. “I wanted to study in China, but by then it was already clear that it was not possible.” She had never been to the People’s Republic. She chose a master’s program at Leiden University and now wants to pursue her Ph.D. in China afterward. “It’s not just about the language,” Veronika says. “You can’t really work towards China without having ever been there.”
To revive academic exchanges, the Chinese government is working on several ideas, a representative of a European-Chinese university joint venture told China.Table. Charter flights, for example, are being considered, as is the establishment of “academic hubs” in several cities to allow students to re-enter the country, at least for important fieldwork. There seems to be a strong effort by the government to bring students back. However, she does not want to talk about it openly, because then “my students might get their hopes up that it will happen quickly, and we can’t guarantee that.”
“Don’t take any drugs,” Chen Tianzhuo urges his 12-member troupe shortly before the big show. But stimulants would certainly be helpful tonight: the “Asian Dope Boys,” as Chen’s art collective is called, want to dance, sing, scream, roll around in mud they’ve scraped together themselves, and perform tribal rituals they’ve invented themselves for a whole twelve hours at the Berlin techno club “Traumabar” until they, and the audience, enter an out-of-body state. Drugs, says the shy master of ceremonies, would only distort the authentic trance experience.
Born in Beijing in 1985, Chen Tianzhuo is one of China’s most original and provocative artists. His productions blend contemporary art, avant-garde theater, archaic rituals and ecstatic club culture into a surreal dream world. His sets and costumes appear as if the demons of Tibetan Thangka scroll paintings were resurrected in brightly colored computer game aesthetics.
The artist, who practices Tibetan Buddhism, wants to create “collective rituals” that are anchored in the present, but also draw their inspiration from traditional trance dances from Tibet, Indonesia and the Philippines. Especially in China’s big cities, ritual spirituality is all but extinct, Chen says. “Our modern age lacks fairy tales and mythologies. As a capitalist society, we have created new mantras: ‘Just Do It!’. I want to create rituals that create a community based on self-empowerment and freedom from rigid systems.”
Chen, who usually remains in the background during his performances, started out as a painter and designer. He earned his master’s degree at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. After graduating, however, he was eager to return to China. “The art scene in China lags behind almost every major European city. But that also means you can still get challenging things going here.” In his home country, his performances, which often involve nudity, are mostly seen in techno clubs and other off-spaces. This is less official than theaters and galleries, and thus less subject to censorship, Chen says.
Although this means that he also bypasses the Chinese art market and its wealthy collectors, his influence has grown steadily in recent years. Artists from all over Asia, but also from Europe, came to Shanghai to work with him. His Asian Dope Boys represented a new self-confidence among young Asian artists who were going global but no longer pandering to Western expectations. “Young people were hungry for our events, for art and music,” Chen says. But then came the pandemic: “I felt like I had retired.” He says he spent more than two years in his Shanghai studio planning events that then couldn’t happen. The club scene, his favorite habitat, was shut down for months. “At some point, I got tired of it and started painting again,” Chen says.
His appearance in Berlin will be his first major performance in more than two years. “I don’t know if the pandemic has completely sucked out my energy. Can I still pull something like this off?” Chen asks uncertainly as his crew swarms out into the summer evening for dinner. The next morning shows that the fear was unfounded. Exhausted and happy, the performers lie in each other’s arms. The stage sets lie shot to pieces on the floor. “We definitely pushed our own limits and created a universe that kind of grew on its own,” Chen says. “That night will motivate me for a long time to come.” Fabian Peltsch
Critical artist Badiucao is currently exhibiting his works in Prague. They include performances, graphics, paintings, videos and multimedia installations. Topics include human rights and censorship in China, the repression of protests in Hong Kong and the situation of the Uyghurs, but also the situation in Myanmar. Badiucao lives in Australia.
Only a fraction of the microchips used worldwide are manufactured in Europe. By revenue, the share is so small that it only shows up in statistics under “Other”. The US at least makes an appearance with a single-digit percentage. In short, almost all chips come from Asia. It is no wonder that Joe Biden has taken the initiative and is subsidizing the restoration of an American semiconductor industry.
And the EU? It has launched an initiative that is showing initial success. But it will be years before more semiconductors are produced domestically again. Until then, we can only pray and hope that nothing else goes wrong in geopolitical terms. Otherwise, the assembly lines in German industry, the basis of our prosperity, will grind to a halt. The semiconductor situation could turn into an even worse repeat of the drama surrounding Russian energy sources, analyzes Felix Lee.
There are many Sinologists who are not fluent in Chinese. But there have hardly been any graduate Sinologists who have never been to Asia at all. The pandemic has brought about a new phenomenon here as well. This summer semester marks the graduation of the first bachelor’s degree class that has been largely barred from traveling to the Far East. Amelie Richter has summarized the devastating psychological effect this has had on the new generation of students interested in China.
They are at the heart of modern industrial products, and whoever masters their production will decide who is the leader in future technologies: Semiconductors, more commonly known as microchips. That is why China, the USA and the EU are currently doing everything to bolster their technological position.
The USA is now pressing ahead. The Senate passed a bill to this effect on Wednesday. All that remains is the approval of the House of Representatives, which is considered certain. But the EU and China are also trying hard to boost their own semiconductor production with subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives. The EU has already presented a corresponding proposal for a bundle of measures with the European Chips Act (Europe.Table reported).
The stakes are high. It is no longer just a matter of principle to be at the forefront of technology. In the wake of geopolitical and trade rivalries, national economies aim to restore their manufacturing independence after decades of relying on foreign sourcing. The pandemic has shown, not least to the German electronics and automotive industries, what happens when supplies from the Far East fail to arrive. Some car manufacturers have had to cut their production by a third at times.
Currently, more than two-thirds of all modern semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, South Korea, China and Japan. The Germans do not want to rely on supplies from Taiwan in particular in the long term. After all, there is a fear that the leadership in Beijing will launch an attack on the democratically governed island state because it considers Taiwan to be its own territory. Recently, the People’s Republic has made this clearer than ever.
Not least in light of the Chinese catch-up campaign, Albert Heuberger, chip expert and Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, believes that the European Chips Act is both right and important. The chip industry is a key industry that strongly determines the technological foundations in this country. “We also have to fight for such manufacturing industries to be located in Germany and Europe so that we have the know-how,” Heuberger said. “Chip companies will base their location decisions on where the right workforce is available.”
The EU already acted in the spring with the European Chips Act and initiated a program of around €15 billion to expand the domestic chip industry, in addition to the already planned public investment of €30 billion.
Admittedly, there is also criticism of the Commission’s approach (Europe.Table reported): The focus on ultra-modern chips ignores the fact that simpler components are also needed as workhorses of the industry. In addition, Brussels is not providing enough money out of its own pocket. Of the €43 billion, only €4 billion will actually come from EU funds; the rest is to be provided by member states or private investors.
But the EU’s subsidy programs show effect: Bosch has announced plans to take advantage of the subsidies and invest almost €1 billion in its semiconductor development centers in the German cities of Reutlingen and Dresden, among others. The chip giants STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries want to invest around €5.7 billion in a new semiconductor plant in France. The US company Intel even wants to build a new mega-chip site in Germany and has budgeted €17 billion for the construction of two semiconductor plants.
Washington now wants to directly stimulate the domestic semiconductor industry with $52 billion. In addition, the US government intends to exempt chip factories from taxation and provide no less than $170 billion for the R&D of new semiconductors. Both the European Chips Act and the US program are designed to attract private investment through public subsidies.
China is putting up a similar amount of money as the USA. The state development fund is equipped with €170 billion. Regional players are also getting involved. The technology metropolis of Shenzhen currently has a manufacturer of memory chips in the works for €40 billion. Not all money always flows into the right channels when things need to happen fast (China.Table reported). But overall, funding already has an impact.
Despite sanctions imposed by the US on China’s high-tech sector, leading Chinese chipmaker SMIC has apparently managed to pull off a technical leap, also with massive government backing. The company has managed to ship its first chips with a structure width of just 7 nanometers. At least that is what the news agency Bloomberg reports. If this news proves true, then the learning curve would be considerable. Because until now, many observers assumed that China’s chip industry was behind the top countries Taiwan, South Korea and the USA by about four years.
The Chinese manufacturer SMIC has so far mainly been active in the 14-nanometer segment, i.e. in much larger semiconductors. The rule here is that the fewer nanometers wide the current paths are, the faster and more efficiently the components calculate. China is already extremely successful in the 14-nanometer range. With the transition to the 7-nanometer range, however, applications and thus market opportunities for Chinese products are broadening. Recently, Korean economics professor Keun Lee called older generation chips “almost worthless” in a guest article for China.Table.
It is not known whether the 7-nanometer chips are really market-ready and can be produced in large quantities while maintaining good quality. But what can be gleaned from this development is that the Chinese are obviously not as out of touch as the USA would like them to be. The harder it becomes to stock up on the global market, the more attractive it becomes to order from Chinese suppliers.
The fact is that German companies are also purchasing more and more chips from China. In 2001, China’s share of the global chip market was still less than one percent. By 2010, it had surpassed 10 percent. At the beginning of the pandemic, it reached 20 percent. According to US observers, it could reach nearly one quarter by 2030.
German experts have also been pointing to the rapid development in the People’s Republic for some time: “China already has a stronger ecosystem for chip design than Europe,” according to a joint analysis by the Berlin-based China think tank Merics and the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung last December. High investments would also enable Chinese companies to scale more quickly, i.e., to achieve higher quantities and thus lower prices.
Nevertheless, there is “a lot of catching up to do” in China compared to the US and its Asian neighbors, says Heuberger. The production of modern chips is a particularly challenging undertaking that requires a great deal of experience.
Heuberger also believes that the EU initiative will only show a clear effect in a few years. “In a growing market, we need to triple to quadruple production in Europe to get to the targeted 20 percent global market share. A period of five to eight years is needed before we catch up,” said Heuberger, who is also a spokesman for the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics.
The Merics study identifies European weaknesses primarily in so-called back-end manufacturing, that is, the assembly, testing and packaging of high-tech chips. However, this part of the production will become significantly more important in the future, especially for the development of high-performance and energy-efficient chips. China, on the other hand, already has a considerable global market share in back-end manufacturing, experts say. That is why Europe is likely to continue to rely on chips from China in the foreseeable future.
Sara Kettenmeyer puts it rather bluntly: “If I had known how my studies would turn out, I probably wouldn’t have started them the way I did.” Kettenmeyer is studying sinology, has completed six semesters, and should now actually be writing her bachelor’s thesis at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich to complete her degree. She is part of the first cohort of sinology students in Germany who were unable to set foot in the People’s Republic during their entire studies due to the Covid pandemic.
Kettenmeyer began her sinology studies in the 2019/20 winter semester. In the first semester, everything was still normal, the 22-year-old says. Then she spent four semesters taking online classes. The summer semester of 2022, which runs at most German universities until the end of the month, was then back to presence classes. Her stay in China, which is actually part of the curriculum after the fourth semester, never happened.
“I applied several times to Chinese universities, received an acceptance letter from Beijing Normal University, but then the exchange didn’t happen,” says the student. The student council and staff of the sinology institute always tried to help, she says. “But they didn’t really know what was going on either.” For students, the lack of time studying abroad has had two consequences: “Some have dropped out in an advanced semester because it’s just frustrating,” Kettenmeyer says. And, “I don’t really know the language.” Other fellow students without any experience in China have similar feelings.
This became particularly apparent in the higher semesters when, for example, newspaper reading was added to the language lessons. You notice a difference between students who were able to travel to China before the Covid pandemic began – and sinologists who were not in a Mandarin-speaking environment during their studies, Kettenmeyer notes. She has decided not to complete her studies with her bachelor’s thesis at this point and instead to work for a year so that she can then follow-up her stay in China in the 2023/24 academic year.
The 22-year-old from Munich is not alone in her rather negative experience. In recent years, there has been an average higher number of dropouts than before the Covid pandemic, according to a sinology institute in the northern German region. The fact that the “run” on the field of study has not been the highest in recent years and that students are dropping out due to frustration is not a big surprise, according to a staff member who prefers to remain anonymous. The images of the harsh lockdown in Shanghai have been discussed among students, and have led to concerns among some about staying in China in the future. Despite everything, should it become evident that students will be able to enter the country again in 2023, she expects a sharp increase in enrollment for the winter semester.
Korbinian Rausch, also a student at LMU, began his sinology studies during and despite the pandemic. He has never visited the People’s Republic before. The 29-year-old previously studied history and politics and wrote his bachelor’s thesis on the relationship between Taiwan and China. When he reached his limits in understanding the sources, he decided to start studying sinology in 2020 – even though entering the People’s Republic was already practically impossible at that point. He had not planned a full year abroad anyway, since he already had a job. “But I had hoped to maybe attend a summer school in China.” Nothing came of that. He put his studies on hold, and is now officially only in his second semester. “But I’ll keep at it,” Rausch says.
Meanwhile, many scientists who already know China are urging the chance to return there. This does not only include German students. On Twitter, Instagram and other social networks, groups have formed that are calling to let academics back into the country under the hashtag #takeusbacktochina. In these groups, students exchange news – or vent their frustration about the situation. For many, a semester abroad in China is directly related to job prospects after graduation. Due to the entry restrictions, they potentially also face financial difficulties. Not everyone can afford to delay their studies.
The “substitute program” with online classes at Chinese universities does not equal a real exchange, says Greta Biondi. The Italian just this month finished her double degree at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and Capital Normal University in Beijing – and has completed two years of Chinese online studies, but has never been to the People’s Republic. While she thought it was great that she was able to study at a Chinese university at all, Biondi says.
But the second year, in particular, had not been a good experience due to the time difference and dwindling motivation among students and teachers. Classes and exams took place partly at night in Europe, and language exchanges almost didn’t happen at all, Biondi said. “Now I feel like I can do an economic transaction in Mandarin but not ask for simple everyday things.”
Veronica decided against studying online at a Chinese university altogether. The 24-year-old Spanish student earned her bachelor’s degree in 2020 and was accepted by universities in China. “I wanted to study in China, but by then it was already clear that it was not possible.” She had never been to the People’s Republic. She chose a master’s program at Leiden University and now wants to pursue her Ph.D. in China afterward. “It’s not just about the language,” Veronika says. “You can’t really work towards China without having ever been there.”
To revive academic exchanges, the Chinese government is working on several ideas, a representative of a European-Chinese university joint venture told China.Table. Charter flights, for example, are being considered, as is the establishment of “academic hubs” in several cities to allow students to re-enter the country, at least for important fieldwork. There seems to be a strong effort by the government to bring students back. However, she does not want to talk about it openly, because then “my students might get their hopes up that it will happen quickly, and we can’t guarantee that.”
“Don’t take any drugs,” Chen Tianzhuo urges his 12-member troupe shortly before the big show. But stimulants would certainly be helpful tonight: the “Asian Dope Boys,” as Chen’s art collective is called, want to dance, sing, scream, roll around in mud they’ve scraped together themselves, and perform tribal rituals they’ve invented themselves for a whole twelve hours at the Berlin techno club “Traumabar” until they, and the audience, enter an out-of-body state. Drugs, says the shy master of ceremonies, would only distort the authentic trance experience.
Born in Beijing in 1985, Chen Tianzhuo is one of China’s most original and provocative artists. His productions blend contemporary art, avant-garde theater, archaic rituals and ecstatic club culture into a surreal dream world. His sets and costumes appear as if the demons of Tibetan Thangka scroll paintings were resurrected in brightly colored computer game aesthetics.
The artist, who practices Tibetan Buddhism, wants to create “collective rituals” that are anchored in the present, but also draw their inspiration from traditional trance dances from Tibet, Indonesia and the Philippines. Especially in China’s big cities, ritual spirituality is all but extinct, Chen says. “Our modern age lacks fairy tales and mythologies. As a capitalist society, we have created new mantras: ‘Just Do It!’. I want to create rituals that create a community based on self-empowerment and freedom from rigid systems.”
Chen, who usually remains in the background during his performances, started out as a painter and designer. He earned his master’s degree at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. After graduating, however, he was eager to return to China. “The art scene in China lags behind almost every major European city. But that also means you can still get challenging things going here.” In his home country, his performances, which often involve nudity, are mostly seen in techno clubs and other off-spaces. This is less official than theaters and galleries, and thus less subject to censorship, Chen says.
Although this means that he also bypasses the Chinese art market and its wealthy collectors, his influence has grown steadily in recent years. Artists from all over Asia, but also from Europe, came to Shanghai to work with him. His Asian Dope Boys represented a new self-confidence among young Asian artists who were going global but no longer pandering to Western expectations. “Young people were hungry for our events, for art and music,” Chen says. But then came the pandemic: “I felt like I had retired.” He says he spent more than two years in his Shanghai studio planning events that then couldn’t happen. The club scene, his favorite habitat, was shut down for months. “At some point, I got tired of it and started painting again,” Chen says.
His appearance in Berlin will be his first major performance in more than two years. “I don’t know if the pandemic has completely sucked out my energy. Can I still pull something like this off?” Chen asks uncertainly as his crew swarms out into the summer evening for dinner. The next morning shows that the fear was unfounded. Exhausted and happy, the performers lie in each other’s arms. The stage sets lie shot to pieces on the floor. “We definitely pushed our own limits and created a universe that kind of grew on its own,” Chen says. “That night will motivate me for a long time to come.” Fabian Peltsch
Critical artist Badiucao is currently exhibiting his works in Prague. They include performances, graphics, paintings, videos and multimedia installations. Topics include human rights and censorship in China, the repression of protests in Hong Kong and the situation of the Uyghurs, but also the situation in Myanmar. Badiucao lives in Australia.
