It’s a nine-hour flight to China – and yet the People’s Republic was practically inaccessible for almost three years. Unacceptable quarantine rules and considerable restrictions on air travel brought exchanges to a standstill. Important business trips had to be canceled, as did private visits. On Monday, this period ends – travel restrictions will be lifted. Germany and other European countries take small steps in the other direction, requiring travelers from China to present a negative Covid test. Currently, both sides have met in the middle with the simple mandatory testing rule. We have summarized the current regulations for you today.
President Marcos Jr, the new President of the Philippines, is a sought-after man – at least politically. The United States and China consider the Philippines strategically important and want to strengthen relations. The US values the Philippines as an important partner in the Indo-Pacific and, as a former colonial power, exercises a kind of patronage. The status between Manila and Beijing, on the other hand, is highly ambivalent. Disputes over maritime territorial claims coexist with the island nation’s hopes for infrastructure investment and increased trade with the People’s Republic. This week, Marcos Jr. traveled to Beijing. Christiane Kuehl reports on his quest for a profitable balance.
Only the Bible sold more copies: Mao’s Little Red Book was printed more than a billion times. This not only caused an enormous consumption of paper, but also royalties in the millions, which flowed into Mao’s pockets. Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is well on his way to financially surpassing the Great Chairman’s literary achievements. Although China’s party and state leader officially has to make do with a meager salary, he publishes a steady stream of publications and receives a handsome amount of royalties for them. With 96 million party members, he is sure to have customers – whether they read his works or throw them away. Johnny Erling has taken a look around the world of profitable propaganda texts.
On Thursday, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced the introduction of mandatory testing for travelers from China. To this end, he had the German entry regulation amended on short notice. All inbound travelers from China will have to present at least one rapid test in order to be allowed into the country. In addition, there will be additional wastewater controls for Aircraft from China, announced Lauterbach. The EU Commission’s Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) recommended mandatory testing on Wednesday evening (China.Table reported).
The concern is not bringing the virus into the country, but the emergence of new variants. With Omicron, the same pathogen has been circulating in China to which the German population has already built up good immunity. So, for the time being, there is nothing to fear from carriers from China that is not already present in Germany. But the infection numbers in China are astronomically high. And where there is a high virus concentration, there will be many mutations. Sorting out sick travelers is intended to give the authorities more time in case a new variant emerges. Nevertheless, China considers tests for its own citizens “unacceptable”.
Even though the wave supposedly subsided by now, the virus is still very active in China. Hospitals are over capacity, even in the well-equipped capital of Beijing: Patients have to lay and sit in the corridors, and oxygen is in short supply. The World Health Organization now openly criticizes China for its lack of transparency. The data that the country still provides is not enough to get a picture of the situation, it argues.
After the abrupt end of the strict zero-Covid policy on December 7, the Coronavirus is sweeping across the country. Several hundred million Chinese have probably been infected in recent weeks. And while the wave is said to have peaked in the big metropolises, an even higher wave is building up in the provinces.
Numerous other countries therefore already require Covid tests from travelers from China, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan (China.Table reported). France, too, will impose mandatory testing on travelers entering the country from China starting today (Friday). Travelers will also be required to sign a declaration under oath that they have had no contact with a person who tested positive two weeks before entering France. Paris, with its iconic Eiffel Tower and endless luxury shopping opportunities, is one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations.
Italy requires a rapid test both before departure and after arrival. In the event of a positive result, a PCR test is mandatory, and positive samples will also be sequenced to detect new variants. Austria planned to begin analyzing wastewater from aircraft toilets on planes from China on Wednesday. If the sequencing of the material reveals variants, they would be reported to the EU and WHO.
In accordance with the instructions of the Health Minister, Frankfurt Airport is also preparing to conduct wastewater tests. The corresponding infrastructure is in place, said a spokesman for the operator Fraport. Special ground handling vehicles supply the aircraft with water and dispose of the wastewater, which would also be examined. Now the company awaits more detailed implementation regulations.
Air traffic, which had been severely reduced for a long time, is also likely to be gradually resumed. Before the pandemic, there were around 2,500 to 3,000 international flights a day, but this figure had at times fallen to between 100 and 150. Lufthansa, for example, counted 90 flights a week from German airports to China before the pandemic. Currently, it is still only 17, a spokesman told China.Table. By Monday, the airline had not yet increased the number of flights. However, the spokesman added that this is expected to happen very quickly in the coming weeks. The German Airports Association (ADV) welcomed the fact that passengers will be tested before they depart China, rather than upon arrival at a European airport.
So even if a travel frenzy breaks out again in China, there are still not enough available flights for mass tourism in the short term. “The airlines will still need time to ramp up their connections and meet demand accordingly,” says Jens Hildebrandt, Executive Board Member of the German Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.
Even in the medium term, it is still uncertain how great travel demand will be in the first place. This also applies to the tourism hotspot Paris. Whether Chinese tourists will return to the French capital in the same numbers as before cannot yet be predicted, Inès de Ferran from the Paris Tourism Office told China.Table.
China’s regional authorities are also getting nervous and are calling for people to refrain from visiting relatives during the upcoming Chinese New Year. “We recommend that no one return to their hometowns at the height of the outbreak,” said the district government in Shaoyang in central China. Authorities in Shouxian, southeast of Beijing, and Qingyang in the northwest made similar recommendations. The government of Weifang on the east coast called on the public to celebrate the festival via video and telephone: “Avoid visiting relatives and friends to protect yourself and others!”
While the authorities are trying to counteract domestic travel, the country is opening up to the outside world. Next Monday, China will lift its mandatory quarantine, which all healthy travelers had to endure for the past two years. These are the changes in detail:
The greatest relief is currently being felt by companies doing business in China. “We are seeing a significant increase in interest in entering China, partly because postponed business trips are now being made up with high priority,” Hildebrandt said. The departure from zero-Covid is also making China a more attractive secondment location for specialists and executives from German companies again, he added.
The travel restrictions not only meant that companies and their customers were increasingly estranged from each other, but communication between the headquarters in Germany and local subsidiaries was also difficult in some cases. Engineers were also unable to enter the country for the installation and maintenance of machines. Chamber managing director Hildebrandt: “It remains to be seen whether the number of personnel secondments will approach pre-pandemic levels or whether the localization trend will prove sustainable.” Felix Lee, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk, Amelie Richter
The United States and China are vying for influence in Southeast Asia. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Philippines, where the US, as a former colonial power, has held a kind of patronage for decades, including a bilateral defense treaty. For the US, the island nation is an important partner in the region, which has traditionally avoided alliances.
But the Philippines are also strategically important for Beijing. Also because they are part of the so-called First Island Chain, which shields China’s access to the open Pacific Ocean. The country is a member of the New Silk Road infrastructure program, but at the same time, no neighboring state in the South China Sea has experienced more clashes with Chinese ships in disputed waters in recent years than the Philippines (China.Table reported).
The Philippines had to endure these conflicts even though President Rodrigo Duterte, who left office in June 2022, had loudly “separated” from the United States and turned to Beijing. However, the realignment did not bring any tangible benefits for his country, and during his final days in office, Duterte angrily terminated talks on joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea that he himself had launched in 2018.
His successor Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. now wants to resume these talks. He agreed to this with his counterpart Xi Jinping during his three-day state visit to Beijing. They want to discuss maritime differences amicably. Marcos and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping both called for “friendly consultation to appropriately resolve maritime issues,” Joint extraction of raw materials in disputed waters has long been considered a possible solution to territorial disputes between China and neighboring states.
Both sides want to establish a direct communication mechanism. This hotline is to be laid between the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Maritime and Ocean Affairs Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines. This was arguably the most important of the 14 bilateral agreements signed during the state visit. The others involved cooperation in agriculture, infrastructure or development, according to a joint statement on Thursday. Chinese investors promised Marcos delegation 14 billion US dollars for renewables, 7.3 billion US dollars for electric vehicles and processing of raw materials, and 1.7 billion dollars for agriculture, according to a report by Nikkei Asia. The two sides also agreed to a missile alert system following a diplomatic row over Chinese missile debris repeatedly found in Philippine waters.
Marcos emphasized, according to the Philippines’ presidential office, that Xi had promised him a compromise that would allow Filipino fishermen to work in their historic fishing grounds – even in disputed waters. In the past, there have been repeated incidents involving Chinese vessels driving fishermen away.
Overall, Marcos said he was “very optimistic” during his meeting with China’s leader. Xi “seemed to be genuinely interested in all of these issues and finding a way to move forward to again strengthen the relationship between China and the Philippines.” Such improvement is also in China’s own best interest. And so the friendly attitude toward Marcos may also be part of Beijing’s efforts to slow Manila’s rapprochement with the United States.
But that is probably not going to be so easy. From his first months in office, it is clear that the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. wants to remain open to both the United States and China. In September, he met with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations. On that occasion, Biden reiterated his country’s “ironclad commitment” to the defense of the Philippines. Conversely, Marcos assured his US counterpart, “We are your partners. We are your allies. We are your friends.” Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to Manila.
Washington is unlikely to react negatively now to a deepening of relations between the Philippine leader and Beijing, said Renato DeCastro, professor of international studies at De La Salle University in Manila. “Improved relations with the US have made the US very comfortable with this administration.”
In any case, the achievements of Marcos’ trip must first withstand the difficult reality. It was only in December that Manila accused Beijing of “swarming” into the South China Sea with dozens of boats and lodged a diplomatic protest against a Chinese coast guard vessel. According to the Philippine military, the latter had used force to retrieve a missile part that had been hanging in the tow of a Philippine ship. Washington supported Manila’s complaint, to Beijing’s anger.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Chinese fishing boats are piling up land on four reefs around the Spratly Islands. The area is claimed by Beijing and Manila as well as Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. The Philippine military expressed “serious concern” about the maritime area and announced plans to increase its presence in the area.
China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the reports as “fake news.” Just as it did a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which in July 2016 dismissed China’s claims to the South China Sea on the grounds that there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control over the important waterway in the past. As long as this uncertainty continues, Marcos is unlikely to back away from his goal of improving ties with the United States.
Nevertheless, Chinese economic pledges are welcome in Manila. The economic agreements signed include loans of 202 million US dollars with the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank) for bridge projects. China is already funding the construction of the Davao-Samal Bridge in the south of the country, which began in October, with $350 million as part of the Belt and Road Initiative; it is one of the Philippines’ largest infrastructure projects.
China’s Premier Li Keqiang promised Marcos on Wednesday to raise bilateral trade volume to more than 100 billion US dollars. Goods exchanged between China and the Philippines stood at just over 82 billion US dollars in 2021, 34 percent higher than in 2020. Xi reportedly said China was preparing to allow imports of Philippine agricultural products.
Jan Robert Go of the University of the Philippines Diliman, however, warned in the South China Morning Post against too much optimism. During Duterte’s presidency, many infrastructure projects were promised, but few of them were realized.
China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping is generally regarded as the most powerful man in the world. But the leader of 1.4 billion Chinese receives what is probably the lowest salary in comparison to other presidents. Since 2014, he has received a monthly base salary of 11,385 yuan – around 1,560 euros. Although his salary has increased since then (without any specific figures being available), a German chancellor like Olaf Scholz with a monthly salary of around 30,000 euros would probably earn a dozen times more than Xi does now.
However, the nominal state wage does not count in China. Mao received a salary of only 404 yuan per month until he died in 1976. Nevertheless, he died a yuan millionaire. His income was supplemented by legal author’s fees and book royalties, which accumulated on their own thanks to the gigantic print runs of his works. Xi Jinping set out to eclipse Mao, constantly pumping out books for domestic and foreign markets. He can rely on 96 million party members alone as mandatory subscribers.
As with Mao, the amount of Xi’s income is completely unclear, as is the question of whether he has to pay taxes or what he does with it. Such topics are taboo for the public. The only certain thing is that no Chinese leader has published as many books and publications as Xi in just ten years of office. And that he is entitled to generous compensation for this.
Yet Xi, back when he was still vice president, only used to play the mailman for the works of other top officials. The Frankfurt Book Fair had chosen the People’s Republic as its international partner country in 2009. Xi went to Germany as head of the delegation. On October 12, 2009, he paid his respects to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for 90 minutes. He presented her with two Chinese non-fiction books on energy and information technology that had been translated into English. With the best regards of former President Jiang Zemin, who had written them and personally signed them for Merkel.
At the time, the Beijing correspondent of Singapore’s newspaper Lianhe Zaobao wondered about the meaning of the gift. Jiang, who retired in 2002, and Merkel, who assumed office in 2005, did not know each other personally. The gift was probably more of a tribute by Xi to Jiang, who still maintained power in the background. Merkel showed surprised gratitude: These books were helpful for a better understanding of China.
It was the first and only time Xi honored a foreign head of government with books written by others. Since his rise to power, he only gifts his own books. Most recently, on Nov. 19, 2022, he graced Thailand’s Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha, head of the country’s military junta, with a complete set of his four-volume compendium, The Governance of China (习近平谈治国理政), in English translation. According to Xinhua, the Premier was “very happy” with the gift (收到 这份礼物，巴育总理十分高兴). China’s news agency revealed that the premier had previously recommended the books to his cabinet members at a meeting. “Everyone should get them and read them carefully.” Xinhua commented, “Xi’s books are on bestseller lists in many countries and are on the desks of many foreign politicians.”
This is no exaggeration. Beijing has done everything it can to win international advocates for Xi’s works. Even for Volume 1, former German Chancellors Helmut Schmid and Gerhard Schroeder wrote and gave enthusiastic praise. In England, Prince Andrew, Duke of York (2018, even before the scandal surrounding him) praised Xi’s book as a “milestone.” Mark Zuckerberg, who had hopes for Facebook’s China business, prominently displayed a copy on his desk.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2022, the China International Publishing Group, which distributes Xi’s works internationally, advertised on a huge billboard the newly published volumes 3 and 4, which, like volumes 1 and 2, will be translated into more than 20 languages and distributed in 160 countries. The domestic Chinese print run is unknown. By mid-2018 alone, however, Beijing’s propaganda boasted foreign sales of 6.6 million copies for Volume 1 and 13 million copies for Volume 2. With the four volumes, Xi has caught up with Mao, who also published four volumes of his selected works. And Xi’s four “Governance of China” volumes are just the beginning, having been given the go-ahead by the 20th Party Congress to continue ruling for the rest of his life. Each volume costs 80 yuan (hardcover 120 yuan), of which Xi is entitled to at least seven percent.
Royalties for the country’s leaders are a politically sensitive issue for China’s media. “China’s Youth Newspaper” published an article about it in September 2015 because many Politburo bigwigs donated their million-dollar earnings to foundations. Their report confirmed for the first time that members of even the Standing Committee are entitled to author’s fees or book royalties. For articles they write for Party media, they receive between 100 and 150 yuan per 1,000 characters; for books, 7 to 10 percent of the retail price. The report cites Premier Li Keqiang or ex-premiers Zhu Rongji and Li Peng as examples. By 2015, for example, Zhu Rongji had sold more than 1.3 million copies of his four-volume compilation of speeches (朱镕基讲话实录), published in 2013. At 196 yuan retail price, he received 7 percent royalty minus 11.2 percent taxes, or a total of more than 15 million yuan remuneration. The premier, who was considered incorruptible during his tenure, publicly declared that he would donate his foundation’s earnings to education support. This is how the Shanghai Hurun Philanthropic List (2014胡润慈善榜) documents it.
The youth newspaper did not mention China’s party chief Xi Jinping. In immediately deleted posts during the recent Party Congress, bloggers claimed that Xi “published 125 volumes under his name during his nine and a half years in office since March 2013. They earned him remunerations of about 3.1 billion yuan.” Then they scoffed, “Xi is the great master who publishes most of the books that no one reads, no one buys themselves, that are publicly procured and eventually thrown away.”
Since 2013, new ideology brochures, training booklets, essay compilations, thematic volumes or essays of all kinds under the author name Xi have appeared in the party publishing houses almost every three weeks. The country is being flooded with Xi books. Propaganda announces sales successes: on September 27, 2019, for example, the newspaper of the Party College Xuexibao reported that the illustrated volume “Xi Jinping’s Seven Years of Educated Youth,” published in August 2017, had sold 7.3 million copies, and “Xi Jinping in Zhending,” published in March 2019, had already sold 4.3 million copies.
Mao is still considered the true master of the propaganda battle over his own words. Beijing’s business newspaper Caijing reminded readers about his Little Red Book, which reached one billion copies during the Cultural Revolution until 1969, 370 million of which were printed in 1967 alone. For this and other inflationary Mao works, which were also published abroad in 14 languages, the book printers had to procure more than 650,000 tons of paper between 1966 and 1970 – more than all the book printing paper consumed in the entire People’s Republic between 1949 and 1966.
Such cost-benefit calculations are taboo in Xi’s China. They were not even possible until 30 years after Mao’s death, when renowned party research and theory magazines looked into Mao’s publications, including the amount of fees Mao received. Their findings caused a shock. The communist egalitarian and opponent of all private property had saved up a fortune in earnings at the People’s Bank of China: The main portion of his 76 million yuan renminbi was in the hands of the Beijing head office. The funds were deposited for him under the name “First Party Cell of the Central Committee in Zhongnanhai”.
After Mao died in 1976, his bank deposits doubled to 131 million yuan by May 2001, thanks to the investment strategies of the socialist market economy, interest and new royalties from Mao books that continued to be sold. But the account no longer belonged to Mao’s heirs. In the early 1980s, the Politburo had decided that Mao’s works were the “essence of the collective wisdom of the entire Party” and those author royalties, therefore, belonged to the Party.
This was not so wrong. The only tolerated liberal journal published by reform communists, Yanhuang Chunqiu (which Xi shut down in 2016), published text-critical research in 2011 showing that of the 160 articles in Mao’s collected works, only a small fraction was written or edited by him. Most came from his secretaries or other fellow Communist compatriots.
But that was one step too far. Beijing party leaders rallied against a heated public debate that branded the Great Chairman a “multimillionaire” with a knack for money who appropriated the intellectual property of others in return. Four of his once closest servants, Wang Dongxing, the commander of his bodyguards, and especially Wu Liandeng (吴连登), who had run Mao’s household for 12 years, took the public witness stand. Mao had been frugal and left only 1.24 million yuan in fees, it was said. Everything else was fiction, rumors and vicious lies. Mao allegedly even had poor allied states such as North Korea and Albania return already-paid book royalties. He had never cared about money, property or possessions. In a twist of historic irony, Beijing used Mao’s own earnings to absolve him of accusations of money-grubbing. The debate is again taboo. But Mao’s portrait was printed on all renminbi notes circulating in China. Xi’s likeness, on the other hand, does not adorn any Chinese banknote. Yet.
This picture brings back memories of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, who threatened New York City in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Here, however, it is not a paranormal monster, but a cheerful – albeit oversized – snowman. And this is not the Big Apple, but the ice festival in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin.
It’s a nine-hour flight to China – and yet the People’s Republic was practically inaccessible for almost three years. Unacceptable quarantine rules and considerable restrictions on air travel brought exchanges to a standstill. Important business trips had to be canceled, as did private visits. On Monday, this period ends – travel restrictions will be lifted. Germany and other European countries take small steps in the other direction, requiring travelers from China to present a negative Covid test. Currently, both sides have met in the middle with the simple mandatory testing rule. We have summarized the current regulations for you today.
President Marcos Jr, the new President of the Philippines, is a sought-after man – at least politically. The United States and China consider the Philippines strategically important and want to strengthen relations. The US values the Philippines as an important partner in the Indo-Pacific and, as a former colonial power, exercises a kind of patronage. The status between Manila and Beijing, on the other hand, is highly ambivalent. Disputes over maritime territorial claims coexist with the island nation’s hopes for infrastructure investment and increased trade with the People’s Republic. This week, Marcos Jr. traveled to Beijing. Christiane Kuehl reports on his quest for a profitable balance.
Only the Bible sold more copies: Mao’s Little Red Book was printed more than a billion times. This not only caused an enormous consumption of paper, but also royalties in the millions, which flowed into Mao’s pockets. Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is well on his way to financially surpassing the Great Chairman’s literary achievements. Although China’s party and state leader officially has to make do with a meager salary, he publishes a steady stream of publications and receives a handsome amount of royalties for them. With 96 million party members, he is sure to have customers – whether they read his works or throw them away. Johnny Erling has taken a look around the world of profitable propaganda texts.
On Thursday, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced the introduction of mandatory testing for travelers from China. To this end, he had the German entry regulation amended on short notice. All inbound travelers from China will have to present at least one rapid test in order to be allowed into the country. In addition, there will be additional wastewater controls for Aircraft from China, announced Lauterbach. The EU Commission’s Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) recommended mandatory testing on Wednesday evening (China.Table reported).
The concern is not bringing the virus into the country, but the emergence of new variants. With Omicron, the same pathogen has been circulating in China to which the German population has already built up good immunity. So, for the time being, there is nothing to fear from carriers from China that is not already present in Germany. But the infection numbers in China are astronomically high. And where there is a high virus concentration, there will be many mutations. Sorting out sick travelers is intended to give the authorities more time in case a new variant emerges. Nevertheless, China considers tests for its own citizens “unacceptable”.
Even though the wave supposedly subsided by now, the virus is still very active in China. Hospitals are over capacity, even in the well-equipped capital of Beijing: Patients have to lay and sit in the corridors, and oxygen is in short supply. The World Health Organization now openly criticizes China for its lack of transparency. The data that the country still provides is not enough to get a picture of the situation, it argues.
After the abrupt end of the strict zero-Covid policy on December 7, the Coronavirus is sweeping across the country. Several hundred million Chinese have probably been infected in recent weeks. And while the wave is said to have peaked in the big metropolises, an even higher wave is building up in the provinces.
Numerous other countries therefore already require Covid tests from travelers from China, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan (China.Table reported). France, too, will impose mandatory testing on travelers entering the country from China starting today (Friday). Travelers will also be required to sign a declaration under oath that they have had no contact with a person who tested positive two weeks before entering France. Paris, with its iconic Eiffel Tower and endless luxury shopping opportunities, is one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations.
Italy requires a rapid test both before departure and after arrival. In the event of a positive result, a PCR test is mandatory, and positive samples will also be sequenced to detect new variants. Austria planned to begin analyzing wastewater from aircraft toilets on planes from China on Wednesday. If the sequencing of the material reveals variants, they would be reported to the EU and WHO.
In accordance with the instructions of the Health Minister, Frankfurt Airport is also preparing to conduct wastewater tests. The corresponding infrastructure is in place, said a spokesman for the operator Fraport. Special ground handling vehicles supply the aircraft with water and dispose of the wastewater, which would also be examined. Now the company awaits more detailed implementation regulations.
Air traffic, which had been severely reduced for a long time, is also likely to be gradually resumed. Before the pandemic, there were around 2,500 to 3,000 international flights a day, but this figure had at times fallen to between 100 and 150. Lufthansa, for example, counted 90 flights a week from German airports to China before the pandemic. Currently, it is still only 17, a spokesman told China.Table. By Monday, the airline had not yet increased the number of flights. However, the spokesman added that this is expected to happen very quickly in the coming weeks. The German Airports Association (ADV) welcomed the fact that passengers will be tested before they depart China, rather than upon arrival at a European airport.
So even if a travel frenzy breaks out again in China, there are still not enough available flights for mass tourism in the short term. “The airlines will still need time to ramp up their connections and meet demand accordingly,” says Jens Hildebrandt, Executive Board Member of the German Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.
Even in the medium term, it is still uncertain how great travel demand will be in the first place. This also applies to the tourism hotspot Paris. Whether Chinese tourists will return to the French capital in the same numbers as before cannot yet be predicted, Inès de Ferran from the Paris Tourism Office told China.Table.
China’s regional authorities are also getting nervous and are calling for people to refrain from visiting relatives during the upcoming Chinese New Year. “We recommend that no one return to their hometowns at the height of the outbreak,” said the district government in Shaoyang in central China. Authorities in Shouxian, southeast of Beijing, and Qingyang in the northwest made similar recommendations. The government of Weifang on the east coast called on the public to celebrate the festival via video and telephone: “Avoid visiting relatives and friends to protect yourself and others!”
While the authorities are trying to counteract domestic travel, the country is opening up to the outside world. Next Monday, China will lift its mandatory quarantine, which all healthy travelers had to endure for the past two years. These are the changes in detail:
The greatest relief is currently being felt by companies doing business in China. “We are seeing a significant increase in interest in entering China, partly because postponed business trips are now being made up with high priority,” Hildebrandt said. The departure from zero-Covid is also making China a more attractive secondment location for specialists and executives from German companies again, he added.
The travel restrictions not only meant that companies and their customers were increasingly estranged from each other, but communication between the headquarters in Germany and local subsidiaries was also difficult in some cases. Engineers were also unable to enter the country for the installation and maintenance of machines. Chamber managing director Hildebrandt: “It remains to be seen whether the number of personnel secondments will approach pre-pandemic levels or whether the localization trend will prove sustainable.” Felix Lee, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk, Amelie Richter
The United States and China are vying for influence in Southeast Asia. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Philippines, where the US, as a former colonial power, has held a kind of patronage for decades, including a bilateral defense treaty. For the US, the island nation is an important partner in the region, which has traditionally avoided alliances.
But the Philippines are also strategically important for Beijing. Also because they are part of the so-called First Island Chain, which shields China’s access to the open Pacific Ocean. The country is a member of the New Silk Road infrastructure program, but at the same time, no neighboring state in the South China Sea has experienced more clashes with Chinese ships in disputed waters in recent years than the Philippines (China.Table reported).
The Philippines had to endure these conflicts even though President Rodrigo Duterte, who left office in June 2022, had loudly “separated” from the United States and turned to Beijing. However, the realignment did not bring any tangible benefits for his country, and during his final days in office, Duterte angrily terminated talks on joint oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea that he himself had launched in 2018.
His successor Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. now wants to resume these talks. He agreed to this with his counterpart Xi Jinping during his three-day state visit to Beijing. They want to discuss maritime differences amicably. Marcos and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping both called for “friendly consultation to appropriately resolve maritime issues,” Joint extraction of raw materials in disputed waters has long been considered a possible solution to territorial disputes between China and neighboring states.
Both sides want to establish a direct communication mechanism. This hotline is to be laid between the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Maritime and Ocean Affairs Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines. This was arguably the most important of the 14 bilateral agreements signed during the state visit. The others involved cooperation in agriculture, infrastructure or development, according to a joint statement on Thursday. Chinese investors promised Marcos delegation 14 billion US dollars for renewables, 7.3 billion US dollars for electric vehicles and processing of raw materials, and 1.7 billion dollars for agriculture, according to a report by Nikkei Asia. The two sides also agreed to a missile alert system following a diplomatic row over Chinese missile debris repeatedly found in Philippine waters.
Marcos emphasized, according to the Philippines’ presidential office, that Xi had promised him a compromise that would allow Filipino fishermen to work in their historic fishing grounds – even in disputed waters. In the past, there have been repeated incidents involving Chinese vessels driving fishermen away.
Overall, Marcos said he was “very optimistic” during his meeting with China’s leader. Xi “seemed to be genuinely interested in all of these issues and finding a way to move forward to again strengthen the relationship between China and the Philippines.” Such improvement is also in China’s own best interest. And so the friendly attitude toward Marcos may also be part of Beijing’s efforts to slow Manila’s rapprochement with the United States.
But that is probably not going to be so easy. From his first months in office, it is clear that the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. wants to remain open to both the United States and China. In September, he met with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations. On that occasion, Biden reiterated his country’s “ironclad commitment” to the defense of the Philippines. Conversely, Marcos assured his US counterpart, “We are your partners. We are your allies. We are your friends.” Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to Manila.
Washington is unlikely to react negatively now to a deepening of relations between the Philippine leader and Beijing, said Renato DeCastro, professor of international studies at De La Salle University in Manila. “Improved relations with the US have made the US very comfortable with this administration.”
In any case, the achievements of Marcos’ trip must first withstand the difficult reality. It was only in December that Manila accused Beijing of “swarming” into the South China Sea with dozens of boats and lodged a diplomatic protest against a Chinese coast guard vessel. According to the Philippine military, the latter had used force to retrieve a missile part that had been hanging in the tow of a Philippine ship. Washington supported Manila’s complaint, to Beijing’s anger.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Chinese fishing boats are piling up land on four reefs around the Spratly Islands. The area is claimed by Beijing and Manila as well as Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. The Philippine military expressed “serious concern” about the maritime area and announced plans to increase its presence in the area.
China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the reports as “fake news.” Just as it did a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which in July 2016 dismissed China’s claims to the South China Sea on the grounds that there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control over the important waterway in the past. As long as this uncertainty continues, Marcos is unlikely to back away from his goal of improving ties with the United States.
Nevertheless, Chinese economic pledges are welcome in Manila. The economic agreements signed include loans of 202 million US dollars with the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank) for bridge projects. China is already funding the construction of the Davao-Samal Bridge in the south of the country, which began in October, with $350 million as part of the Belt and Road Initiative; it is one of the Philippines’ largest infrastructure projects.
China’s Premier Li Keqiang promised Marcos on Wednesday to raise bilateral trade volume to more than 100 billion US dollars. Goods exchanged between China and the Philippines stood at just over 82 billion US dollars in 2021, 34 percent higher than in 2020. Xi reportedly said China was preparing to allow imports of Philippine agricultural products.
Jan Robert Go of the University of the Philippines Diliman, however, warned in the South China Morning Post against too much optimism. During Duterte’s presidency, many infrastructure projects were promised, but few of them were realized.
China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping is generally regarded as the most powerful man in the world. But the leader of 1.4 billion Chinese receives what is probably the lowest salary in comparison to other presidents. Since 2014, he has received a monthly base salary of 11,385 yuan – around 1,560 euros. Although his salary has increased since then (without any specific figures being available), a German chancellor like Olaf Scholz with a monthly salary of around 30,000 euros would probably earn a dozen times more than Xi does now.
However, the nominal state wage does not count in China. Mao received a salary of only 404 yuan per month until he died in 1976. Nevertheless, he died a yuan millionaire. His income was supplemented by legal author’s fees and book royalties, which accumulated on their own thanks to the gigantic print runs of his works. Xi Jinping set out to eclipse Mao, constantly pumping out books for domestic and foreign markets. He can rely on 96 million party members alone as mandatory subscribers.
As with Mao, the amount of Xi’s income is completely unclear, as is the question of whether he has to pay taxes or what he does with it. Such topics are taboo for the public. The only certain thing is that no Chinese leader has published as many books and publications as Xi in just ten years of office. And that he is entitled to generous compensation for this.
Yet Xi, back when he was still vice president, only used to play the mailman for the works of other top officials. The Frankfurt Book Fair had chosen the People’s Republic as its international partner country in 2009. Xi went to Germany as head of the delegation. On October 12, 2009, he paid his respects to German Chancellor Angela Merkel for 90 minutes. He presented her with two Chinese non-fiction books on energy and information technology that had been translated into English. With the best regards of former President Jiang Zemin, who had written them and personally signed them for Merkel.
At the time, the Beijing correspondent of Singapore’s newspaper Lianhe Zaobao wondered about the meaning of the gift. Jiang, who retired in 2002, and Merkel, who assumed office in 2005, did not know each other personally. The gift was probably more of a tribute by Xi to Jiang, who still maintained power in the background. Merkel showed surprised gratitude: These books were helpful for a better understanding of China.
It was the first and only time Xi honored a foreign head of government with books written by others. Since his rise to power, he only gifts his own books. Most recently, on Nov. 19, 2022, he graced Thailand’s Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha, head of the country’s military junta, with a complete set of his four-volume compendium, The Governance of China (习近平谈治国理政), in English translation. According to Xinhua, the Premier was “very happy” with the gift (收到 这份礼物，巴育总理十分高兴). China’s news agency revealed that the premier had previously recommended the books to his cabinet members at a meeting. “Everyone should get them and read them carefully.” Xinhua commented, “Xi’s books are on bestseller lists in many countries and are on the desks of many foreign politicians.”
This is no exaggeration. Beijing has done everything it can to win international advocates for Xi’s works. Even for Volume 1, former German Chancellors Helmut Schmid and Gerhard Schroeder wrote and gave enthusiastic praise. In England, Prince Andrew, Duke of York (2018, even before the scandal surrounding him) praised Xi’s book as a “milestone.” Mark Zuckerberg, who had hopes for Facebook’s China business, prominently displayed a copy on his desk.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2022, the China International Publishing Group, which distributes Xi’s works internationally, advertised on a huge billboard the newly published volumes 3 and 4, which, like volumes 1 and 2, will be translated into more than 20 languages and distributed in 160 countries. The domestic Chinese print run is unknown. By mid-2018 alone, however, Beijing’s propaganda boasted foreign sales of 6.6 million copies for Volume 1 and 13 million copies for Volume 2. With the four volumes, Xi has caught up with Mao, who also published four volumes of his selected works. And Xi’s four “Governance of China” volumes are just the beginning, having been given the go-ahead by the 20th Party Congress to continue ruling for the rest of his life. Each volume costs 80 yuan (hardcover 120 yuan), of which Xi is entitled to at least seven percent.
Royalties for the country’s leaders are a politically sensitive issue for China’s media. “China’s Youth Newspaper” published an article about it in September 2015 because many Politburo bigwigs donated their million-dollar earnings to foundations. Their report confirmed for the first time that members of even the Standing Committee are entitled to author’s fees or book royalties. For articles they write for Party media, they receive between 100 and 150 yuan per 1,000 characters; for books, 7 to 10 percent of the retail price. The report cites Premier Li Keqiang or ex-premiers Zhu Rongji and Li Peng as examples. By 2015, for example, Zhu Rongji had sold more than 1.3 million copies of his four-volume compilation of speeches (朱镕基讲话实录), published in 2013. At 196 yuan retail price, he received 7 percent royalty minus 11.2 percent taxes, or a total of more than 15 million yuan remuneration. The premier, who was considered incorruptible during his tenure, publicly declared that he would donate his foundation’s earnings to education support. This is how the Shanghai Hurun Philanthropic List (2014胡润慈善榜) documents it.
The youth newspaper did not mention China’s party chief Xi Jinping. In immediately deleted posts during the recent Party Congress, bloggers claimed that Xi “published 125 volumes under his name during his nine and a half years in office since March 2013. They earned him remunerations of about 3.1 billion yuan.” Then they scoffed, “Xi is the great master who publishes most of the books that no one reads, no one buys themselves, that are publicly procured and eventually thrown away.”
Since 2013, new ideology brochures, training booklets, essay compilations, thematic volumes or essays of all kinds under the author name Xi have appeared in the party publishing houses almost every three weeks. The country is being flooded with Xi books. Propaganda announces sales successes: on September 27, 2019, for example, the newspaper of the Party College Xuexibao reported that the illustrated volume “Xi Jinping’s Seven Years of Educated Youth,” published in August 2017, had sold 7.3 million copies, and “Xi Jinping in Zhending,” published in March 2019, had already sold 4.3 million copies.
Mao is still considered the true master of the propaganda battle over his own words. Beijing’s business newspaper Caijing reminded readers about his Little Red Book, which reached one billion copies during the Cultural Revolution until 1969, 370 million of which were printed in 1967 alone. For this and other inflationary Mao works, which were also published abroad in 14 languages, the book printers had to procure more than 650,000 tons of paper between 1966 and 1970 – more than all the book printing paper consumed in the entire People’s Republic between 1949 and 1966.
Such cost-benefit calculations are taboo in Xi’s China. They were not even possible until 30 years after Mao’s death, when renowned party research and theory magazines looked into Mao’s publications, including the amount of fees Mao received. Their findings caused a shock. The communist egalitarian and opponent of all private property had saved up a fortune in earnings at the People’s Bank of China: The main portion of his 76 million yuan renminbi was in the hands of the Beijing head office. The funds were deposited for him under the name “First Party Cell of the Central Committee in Zhongnanhai”.
After Mao died in 1976, his bank deposits doubled to 131 million yuan by May 2001, thanks to the investment strategies of the socialist market economy, interest and new royalties from Mao books that continued to be sold. But the account no longer belonged to Mao’s heirs. In the early 1980s, the Politburo had decided that Mao’s works were the “essence of the collective wisdom of the entire Party” and those author royalties, therefore, belonged to the Party.
This was not so wrong. The only tolerated liberal journal published by reform communists, Yanhuang Chunqiu (which Xi shut down in 2016), published text-critical research in 2011 showing that of the 160 articles in Mao’s collected works, only a small fraction was written or edited by him. Most came from his secretaries or other fellow Communist compatriots.
But that was one step too far. Beijing party leaders rallied against a heated public debate that branded the Great Chairman a “multimillionaire” with a knack for money who appropriated the intellectual property of others in return. Four of his once closest servants, Wang Dongxing, the commander of his bodyguards, and especially Wu Liandeng (吴连登), who had run Mao’s household for 12 years, took the public witness stand. Mao had been frugal and left only 1.24 million yuan in fees, it was said. Everything else was fiction, rumors and vicious lies. Mao allegedly even had poor allied states such as North Korea and Albania return already-paid book royalties. He had never cared about money, property or possessions. In a twist of historic irony, Beijing used Mao’s own earnings to absolve him of accusations of money-grubbing. The debate is again taboo. But Mao’s portrait was printed on all renminbi notes circulating in China. Xi’s likeness, on the other hand, does not adorn any Chinese banknote. Yet.
This picture brings back memories of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, who threatened New York City in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Here, however, it is not a paranormal monster, but a cheerful – albeit oversized – snowman. And this is not the Big Apple, but the ice festival in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin.
