Vaccination start China + Sanctions + CAI + Nio + UAE + Iran + Felbermayr + So To Speak
Beijing and Shanghai vaccinate Germans
Tit for tat or the whole nine yards?
No clear line – the CAI and nuclear power
Chip shortage: Nio closes factory for five days
United Arab Emirates to produce Sinopharm vaccine
China-Iran cooperation agreement
Gabriel Felbermayr: EU supply chain law hits the wrong people
So To Speak: 他/她/它 – he, she, it
Dear reader,
China has launched a vaccination campaign for foreigners. This is a good and important message for their health, but also for the mobility of employees and their families. The China.Table team compiled what expats and employers with foreign employees in China should know now.
The disagreement among EU member states is likely to suit Chinese suppliers of nuclear technologies just fine. After all, the responsibility for the use of Chinese plant components in European nuclear power plants remains with the member states even after the negotiations on the CAI investment agreement. But is this good for Europe? After all, safety-relevant infrastructure is at stake. Frank Sieren and Amelie Richter have the details.
Gabriel Felbermayr reports in today’s Opinion that well intended is not always the same as well done. The president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) examines the Europeans’ plans for a supply chain law and comes to the conclusion that the EU has far more effective means of enforcing higher social and environmental standards.
Your Antje Sirleschtov
Feature
Beijing and Shanghai vaccinate Germans
The Beijing municipal government has issued general information for foreign citizens who wish to be vaccinated. Shanghai had already issued a similar notice on Tuesday last week. Guangzhou is expected to follow suit soon. The only requirement listedis to be over 18 years old. The vaccination is voluntary. According to the Foreign Office, the Chinese health service alone is responsible for the vaccination of Germans on-site; the embassy doctors do not offer it.
The contact persons in Beijing are the employers or the housing estates.Large companies are encouraged to look after their employees. Students, language and university teachers should contact the educational institution where they work. The compound administration is responsible for all others. After appointments have been made through the institutions, vaccination should be carried out by the district authorities.
Those who have health insurance in China receive the injections free of charge. Everyone else will have to pay ¥93.50 (about €12). The vaccination is noted in the ubiquitous app “Health Cloud”, which is a key part of China’s pandemic management. It is available in an English version, but not all functions are available in English.
Few reservations about Chinese vaccines
The mass vaccination in China uses the preparations of Sinopharm and Sinovac, which use dead COVID viruses. This technique is more traditional than those on which the Western and Russian vaccines are based. In fact, those concerned about a lack of experience with genetic engineering techniques regarding mRNA and vector vaccines are better off with the Chinese products. Despite initial confusion about Sinovac efficacy rates, both are considered safe and fit for purpose. They are already being mass inoculated in numerous markets. There are no reports of major problems.
In general, there are few concrete reservations about the Chinese vaccines to be heard from the German community. The willingness to get vaccinated quickly is particularly high where smooth entry and exit is important for business. Therefore, some local Germans intend to get an appointment as soon as possible. Others want to wait and see how the situation develops.
Diplomats vaccinated
Diplomats and media representatives already had the opportunity to be vaccinated the previous week. The appointment was for a half-hour window; this effectively avoided waiting times. The staff was friendly and spoke English. From clarification of pre-existing conditions to vaccination by a nurse in a single cubicle, the whole process took only a few minutes. Those who received their first dose on March 23 would have to come back on April 13 for the second shot. The vaccination offer was apparently very well received by diplomats and media representatives.
However, for expatriates, the crucial question now is what relief there will be for them after vaccination. China has now introduced a digital vaccination certificate for travelers. For a good week now, the certificate has been available via the Chinese online service WeChat and displays users’ vaccinations and test results. The program is intended to help with “global economic recovery” and also “facilitate cross-border travel”, said a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing. Via a QR code, other countries can theoretically also read the data of users when they enter the country.
Hope for international certificate
Although the document is currently only available to Chinese, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has already expressed the hope of international networking. The goal of the certificate is to achieve mutual verification of information such as test results and vaccinations. His statement at least fed the expectation that the passport will be available to foreigners living in China.
However, it is not yet clear whether the quarantine on the re-entry into China will really cease. So far, there has been no clear statement on this. A spokesperson for the National Health Commission last commented on this issue in mid-February. At that time, however, it was still said that existing quarantine requirements should remain in place for people arriving in China, as it is possible that even vaccinated people can still be infected with the virus. China is one of the first countries in the world to issue a vaccination certificate for travelers. A certificate for proof of vaccination and testing is also planned for the EU to make travel easier. Gregor Koppenburg, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk, Frank Sieren
It has been a week now since the European Union and China imposed sanctions on each other. The EU has punished individuals and institutions related to the actions of the security apparatus in Xinjiang province. In return, the Chinese government has imposed sanctions on four European organizations and ten China-focused individuals. These are accused of “damaging China’s statehood and interests and maliciously spreading lies and misinformation”.
Over the weekend, the People’s Republic has now extended sanctions to the chair and co-chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin, and Tony Perkins, as well as Canadian MP Michael Chong. They, too, are no longer allowed to enter Chinese territory. Chong described the sanctions as a “badge of honor”. The Canadian government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demonstratively stood behind the MP and promised not to be intimidated by China.
Ambiguity as a proven tool
By striking back on a broader front than it has been attacked, China aims to deter critics. An important – and proven – tool here is systematic ambiguity about the specific effects. For example, what does the reference to the families of employees of sanctioned organizations mean? It is found in the statement to the EU, but not in the one to the North Americans.
Will the spouses, parents, or children of all the employees of the above-mentioned institutions really no longer receive visas? What if they are Chinese citizens? Or Germans of Chinese origin with family in China? Inquiries by China.Table with German EU parliamentarians from the sanctioned human rights committee show: Even those affected are not sure. Hannah Neumann, a Green MEP and committee member assumes that she is no longer allowed to enter China, even though she is not named individually on the sanctions list. The EU politician said it was not clear what the situation would be for family members. At the moment, a general legal examination is underway in order to create clarity, according to circles around the Human Rights Committee.
In addition, with the ban from Beijing, companies and institutions that are “connected” to the sanctioned group of people are also no longer allowed to do business in China. This circle would be enormously wide if the authorities really exhausted the possibilities of the wording.
Speak plainly and risk goodwill?
So far, there is a widespread assumption that the threat will not be implemented consistently – but this is fed by experience with previous waves of outrage from China. In fact, however, the tone is getting harsher, and fears are spreading that implementation is more likely to be at the stricter end of the scale. The intended effect is thus already occurring. Institutions and individuals who rely on access to China will have to consider carefully in the future: Speak plainly and lose Beijing’s goodwill – or rather be a little more cautious?
The sanctions are definitely perceived as harsh. For anyone who has studied sinology and spent a good part of their adult life dealing with China, an entry ban is a heavy blow. If knowledge of Mandarin and the country is an important part of one’s qualifications, then traveling to China is simply part of life and work. Many of those affected have also spent years in China. They have friends and relatives there. The sanctions are not only a professional restriction, but they also hurt personally. These are generally the very people who understand China best and value it most.
Not only do the sanctions feel disproportionate because of the individual impact – objectively they are not. Until now, the tit for tat strategy has been more common here. But while the EU has specifically named those responsible in Xinjiang, Chinahasfired a whole broadside against everyone who has recently spoken out about Xinjiang.
The only organization affected by the EU sanctions was the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. In addition, the chief of the local security bureau was the individual with the highest rank. However, all those affected do not rely on contacts with Europe for their work; their field of activity is exclusively in Xinjiang. The response from Beijing, on the other hand, concerned China experts in Europe’s capitals. The think tank Merics, in particular, has no political role at all but has primarily done academic work. The Danish association Alliance of Democracies, on the other hand, has taken a global perspective and worked to strengthen democracy. A proportionate response would have been limited to the relevant EU parliamentarians, for example, and not additionally included academics and associations across the board.
Curiosity about the West has run dry
The undifferentiated reaction also shows that the Chinese leadership has lost contact with Western thinkers and business representatives. The government under Zhou Rongji still actively sought it, and Wen Jiabao’s government at least cultivated it professionally. Today’s leadership is disconnected from world public opinion; it has hardly any personal contacts in the West. In wider circles of society, curiosity about thoughts from the West has run dry. Instead, dialogue with European and American individuals and institutions brings mainly disadvantages. An appointment with a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is therefore almost impossible to get.
Among other things, China’s leadership has now formally expressed its mistrust of the most important center of German research on China, which is likely to considerably impede its work. Whether contacts with the institutions and individuals concerned will now become toxic for Chinese citizens remains to be seen. In any case, there is no end in sight to this state of affairs. The statement by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides for sanctions until the EU side has “seen and corrected” its mistakes. But who is the “EU side”? Does Brussels have to give in and roll back its own sanctions to allow Danish members to travel to China again? Here, too, uncertainty becomes a political tool.
At the end of December, China and the European Union agreed on the CAI investment agreement after years of negotiations. China’s demands for the European energy sector were a bone of contention until the very end: Both sides could not agree on the extent to which mutual market access should be facilitated here. Brussels was particularly concerned about nuclear power. However, the EU did not give in and excluded the nuclear sector “in its entirety from its market access offer”, as the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade explained in response to a question from China.Table. The CAI, therefore, had no impact on the sector.
Foreign direct investment in the EU thus remains a matter for the individual member states. Thequestion of whether Chinese technologymay be installed in European power plants thus also remains open or rather is also left to the EU states. Until almost shortly before the political agreement on the CAI, China had, according to media reports, demanded to be allowed to use its own technology in European nuclear power plants. Commission circles stressed that this had not been the case. The issue is highly controversial within the EU states because Chinacouldalsogainaccess to sensitive infrastructures by investing in and using its own technologies.
EU disagrees on role of nuclear power
Entry 26 of the annex to the agreement, which concerns the Chinese side, says practically nothing new – and the old one is worded extremely succinctly: “Chinese control” is required for investments by foreign investors in this area. Foreign companies are also “not allowed to invest in exploration, mining, purification, conversion, isotope separation, or engage in nuclear export transactions for materials and items listed in the nuclear export control list.”
China also reserves the right to “adopt or maintain measures relating to the storage, transportation, and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the management of radioactive waste, as well as the nuclear import business,” according to another paragraph.
On the EU side, one sentence simply says: “The production, trade or transport of nuclear energy is prohibited in some EU countries.” The main reason why the agreement is not very meaningful is also due to the disagreement among the member states. The EU countries do not agree among themselves what role nuclear power should play in Europe in the future.
Study: Timmermans must rethink goal
While the French are voting for a stronger role, more likely to go the way of the Chinese – for whom nuclear power is green energy – theGermans have opted out of nuclear power. Renew Europa, the third-largest group in the European Parliament, which includes French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, just released a study in January promoting an expansion of nuclear power. The “ambitious” goals of reducing CO2 emissions have only been achieved in the past in France and Sweden through the use of nuclear power, it says.
The paper argues that nuclear power would also contribute to Europe’s energy security. The study shows that the position of the Dutch EU Commission Vice President and Commissioner for Climate Action, Frans Timmermans, that nuclear power is “very expensive” needs to be reconsidered, Renew said. More than 70 percent of France’s energy production is nuclear power. The UK also continues to rely on electricity from nuclear power plants and is currently building a new power plant with French and Chinese help, with more already planned.
Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, on the other hand, are following Germany’s example with a longer time lag. They intend to phase out in the next 14 years.
India, USA and Russia build new nuclear power plants
Outside Europe, all the major economies and populous countries continue to rely on nuclear power. The USA as well as India and Russia, but also South Korea. New nuclear power plants are currently being built in all these countries. Even in Japan, whichwas hitby the Fukushima nuclear disaster ten years ago, there is currently no attempt to phase out nuclear power. Quite the contrary.
Some developing countries are following suit. Pakistan, for example, has recently put into operation a nuclear power plant built by the Chinese. It has a capacity of 1100 megawatts. Another of the same size is to be connected to the grid at the end of the year.
China is on a nuclear course
Nuclear power will remain “a part of the global energy mix for many decades to come as the use of fossil fuels comes to an end”, the science magazine Nature summarises the situation. Currently, nuclear power still accounts for one-third of the world’s carbon-free energy supply, Scientific American magazine has calculated, summing up, “It looks like nuclear power is getting back into its stride ten years after Fukushima.” According to a study by Strategic Studies Quarterly, a journal published by the US Air Force, 96 nuclear reactors have been connected to the power grid in 13 countries since 2000. Forty-five of them were built in China and 12 in Russia.
However, the share of nuclear power in the global electricity mix has fallen over the past decade. From 13 to ten percent. This is mainly because the share of clean energies, such as hydro, wind, and solar energy, has risen disproportionately. The most important player for Europe is also: China.
There are currently 16 reactors under construction in China, with further 39 planned. As of January 2021, China had 49 nuclear power plants in operation, generating a total of 47,498 MW of energy. The People’s Republic produced four times as much nuclear energy in 2019 as it did in 2011.
Earlier this year, the Chinese began commercial operation of their first nuclear power plant built without foreign assistance in the city of Fuqing in eastern China’s Fujian province. The reactor, called Hualong One (HRP1000), can generate ten billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and prevent 8.16 million tons of CO2 emissions, Beijing says. A technology that China is keen to export (China.Table reported).
Resistance to Chinese nuclear power grows
As long as the situation in Europe is not clear, China will export to other countries: As early as 2013, Beijing declared increasing exports of nuclear reactors to be a national strategy within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). EU states are also part of the BRI. According to the World Nuclear Industry Council (WNISR), Chinese projectsaccount for almosta third of all the 50 or so new nuclear power plants currently under construction worldwide.
In Europe, however, opposition to Chinese nuclear power is growing: Romania has transferred the construction of two nuclear reactors, which it had previously agreed with the People’s Republic, to the United States. In Poland, too, the US has beaten the Chinese to the punch.
In the UK, plans by the Chinese to take part in the construction of reactor units in Suffolk, Somerset and Essex are causing political opposition. Several Conservative MPs have drawn a parallel between the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), which is involved, and the telecoms equipment supplier Huawei – both are a threat to national security, critics say. However, the criticism has not dissuaded the British government from changing course.
Formulations in CAI too weak
The British exit from the EU has strengthened the position of the Germans on the nuclear energy issue. The French have lost an important ally – the disunity within the EU remains. In view of global developments, it would have made sense to clarify these issues in detail in the investment agreement between Beijing and Brussels. The agreements contained are meager given the global situation. With Amelie Richter
Pakistan
News
Chip shortage: Nio temporarily closes factory
Due to a shortage of semiconductors,Nio halts production at one of its plants in Hefei for five days starting today. This makes the EV maker the first “high-profile casualty”intheChinese auto industry to be hit by the chip shortage, Bloomberg reports.
“The general supply shortage of semiconductors affected the company’s production volume in March,” Nio announced. The company still plans to deliver 19,500 cars in the first quarter. Previously, the target was 20,000 to 20,500 vehicles.
Mass manufacturers such as Volkswagenalso complain that theshortage of chips has caused “a lot of trouble“. It is expected that the supply of semiconductors will remain tight in the first half of 2021. nib
Car Industry
Electromobility
Technology
United Arab Emirates produce Sinopharm vaccine
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will begin production of the Chinese Sinopharm-vaccine next month. Drugmaker Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries PSC (Julphar) said yesterday that it had signed a contract to produce the vaccine starting April, Bloomberg reported. According to the statement, the UAE will be the first Gulf state to set up a coronavirus vaccine manufacturing plant. Supplies to the Middle East will also be boosted from there.
Julphar signed the relevant agreement with Abu Dhabi-based Group 42, according to the report, which said the artificial intelligence and cloud computing company had previously helped conduct trials of the Sinopharm vaccine in the country.
The Sinopharm vaccine has already been licensed in the UAE since last year. According to the report, the state has one of the fastest running vaccination campaigns in the world, with most people receiving the Chinese vaccine. ari
Corona-Impfstoffe
Pharma
China and Iran conclude cooperation pact
China and Iran have signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. According to state television, the comprehensive cooperation pact was signed by the foreign ministers of the two countries, Wang Yi and Mohammed Jawad Sarif, on Saturday, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
According to media reports, the agreement will cover trade, economics, and transport. It is intended to pave the way for billions of dollars of investment by China – including in Iran’s energy and infrastructure, as South China Morning Post reported before the deal. In return, Iran wants to supply oil at favorable prices. Cooperation in the military field is also said to be planned.
Iran is in an acute economic crisis partly because of the sanctions imposed by the US in 2018, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since even the new US President Joe Biden does not want to lift the sanctions in the short term, the government is aligning itself more with China and Russia. asi
Iran
Raw materials
Opinion
An EU Supply Chain Act hits the wrong people
By Gabriel Felbermayr
President of the Institute for the World Economy
A supply chain law burdens the wrongpeople if it makes European companies liable for human rights violations or violations of minimum environmental or social standards by their foreign suppliers. Thanks to the international division of labor, local companies have access to a huge and complex network of suppliers. If they were now subjected to far-reaching liability rules for supply chains that are de facto not fully controllable, they would have to reduce their risk. This would mean limiting supplier portfolios to larger suppliers that are active in countries where the risks of violations of social and environmental standards are lower.
At first glance, one might say: a good thing. After all, it could increase incentives for other countries to improve their standards to stay in business. At second glance, however, it means an increased closure of the European market to suppliers from developing and emerging countries, which often cannot guarantee the standards desired in Europe due to their economic and social history. However, the integration of these countries into Western supply chains has massively reducedpoverty there in recent decades and thus also improved working and environmental conditions in the countries. If supply links there are now cut back, this positive effect threatens to be lost.
EU Supply Chain Act helps China in Africa
New suppliers, for example, from Africa will have a more difficult time to be integrated into supply chainsof European companies. They will then have to rely onfinding customers in countries that place less value on sustainable social and environmental standards, such as China or Russia. Companies from there will take the place of European buyers of goods from developing and emerging countries. This would probably not improve the situation there: The incentives to converge with European standards will fall away. China is already active in many of these poorer countries as a lender, for example, for infrastructure projects, thus gaining geostrategic influence. If Chinese companies also increasingly become the main buyers of goods produced in these countries, their dependency on China will increase further. However, the EU actually wants to prevent such a development. With a strict supply chain law, it could counteract these efforts.
So should we stand idly by and let the companies violate social and environmental standards? By no means. But we should start with those who are actually responsible: The best way to punish misconduct by foreign companies is to impose direct sanctions on the offenders. The best way to do this is for a central EU institution, after consultations with all parties involved, to keep negative lists of all companies in the world that have been proven to have committed misconduct and ban these companies from participating in European value chains. This would provide transparency and legal certainty; the many European companies involved in foreign trade would not each be forced to monitor their supplier networks at great cost and with uncertain effectiveness; and politicians would not transfer their very own tasks – foreign policy – to companies that should play quite a different role. Incidentally, such an approach would also have strong extraterritorial effects: Who in another country, such as Switzerland or Australia, would want to work with a company that the EU has blacklisted?
US Magnitsky Act as a model
The EU is just beginning to use this approach to demonstrate to China that it is not powerless when the country violates human rights or other sustainability standards. For the first time, it has made use of the global human rights sanctions regime against China adopted by the European Council in December, which is modeled on the US Magnitsky Act. This means that the EU too can now impose global sanctions on individuals, companies, or organizations involved in human rights abuses. These sanctions are much better than general trade restrictions, which would always hit the wrong companies in China.
Whoever wants to do business with the EU now has this sword of Damocles hanging over them. Such targeted interventions can be much more effective than setting general incentives for less diversification of the supplier network through a strict supply chain law.
Smarter ways: ratifying CAI
It is important for the credibility of the EU’s new sanctions instruments that they are also used when there are no other avenues left. Only in this way will they develop the intended deterrent effect. That China has now reacted very robustly with counter-sanctions is also logical. If the leadership in Beijing succeeds in getting the EU to back down, then the instrument would haverun its course. The EU must therefore get through this phase. But it should also not overstretch the instrument because a political escalation between the EU and China is an enormous risk for the German economy.
Ratification of the investment agreement with China (CAI), which was adopted in December, couldnow becomeevenmore likely because the EU Parliament can show that it has very effective instruments at its disposal to punish human rights violations in China. It can therefore approve the agreement, even though it is in Hong Kong or Xinjiang, because it now has its own instruments for these issues. For Beijing, the agreement with the EU also remains key: The logic that got China to give in just before Christmas still applies. A strong shoulder between the EU and the US would be extremely difficult for China.
This shows that there are smarter ways for the EU to promote better social and environmental standards worldwide than restrictive laws for local companies, which in case of doubt tend to benefit or harm the wrong people.
Gender asterisks, colons, internal I? The Chinese hardly have to worry about gender-appropriate language. This is simply due to the nature of Chinese grammar. Chinese words generally do not differentiate according to grammatical gender.
So if someone talks about the 老师 lǎoshī, the conversation is initially completely open as to whether it is a female or male teacher. While German-speaking Chinese learners quickly notice an information gap here and sometimes try to clarify the gender by asking questions, Chinese learners remain relaxed. Depending on the context and further narration, the Chinese listeners simply form their own picture of the protagonist over time and develop their own gender hypothesis, which is then confirmed or not in the further course of the conversation. In case of doubt, the listener simply adapts their mental narrative construct retrospectively; the Chinese are mentally flexible in this respect.
However, China is not completely out of the woods when it comes to linguistic gender issues! Chinese personal pronouns are also completely gender-neutral in the spoken language: The pronouns “he, she, it” are all pronounced identically as tā. But in writing, there is a clear distinction between masculine (他), feminine (她), and neuter (它). The plural pronoun tāmen – “they” also holds particular gender conflict potential. This is because the feminine 她们 tāmen only appears when the group of people is exclusively female. If, on the other hand, even one male contemporary is present in a large group of women, the general – masculine – plural pronoun 他们 tāmen must be used grammatically correctly.
So it’s a gender cul-de-sac? No way! China’s Internet and advertising language has long since found an elegant solution to creatively circumnavigate the problem. In China, for example, it is not uncommon to find the Latin capital letters TA or TAMEN in online texts or on posters – so that everyone can feel addressed. This is how gendering works in Chinese!
Verena Menzel 孟维娜 runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
Gabriel Felbermayr: EU supply chain law hits the wrong people
So To Speak: 他/她/它 – he, she, it
Dear reader,
China has launched a vaccination campaign for foreigners. This is a good and important message for their health, but also for the mobility of employees and their families. The China.Table team compiled what expats and employers with foreign employees in China should know now.
The disagreement among EU member states is likely to suit Chinese suppliers of nuclear technologies just fine. After all, the responsibility for the use of Chinese plant components in European nuclear power plants remains with the member states even after the negotiations on the CAI investment agreement. But is this good for Europe? After all, safety-relevant infrastructure is at stake. Frank Sieren and Amelie Richter have the details.
Gabriel Felbermayr reports in today’s Opinion that well intended is not always the same as well done. The president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) examines the Europeans’ plans for a supply chain law and comes to the conclusion that the EU has far more effective means of enforcing higher social and environmental standards.
Your Antje Sirleschtov
Feature
Beijing and Shanghai vaccinate Germans
The Beijing municipal government has issued general information for foreign citizens who wish to be vaccinated. Shanghai had already issued a similar notice on Tuesday last week. Guangzhou is expected to follow suit soon. The only requirement listedis to be over 18 years old. The vaccination is voluntary. According to the Foreign Office, the Chinese health service alone is responsible for the vaccination of Germans on-site; the embassy doctors do not offer it.
The contact persons in Beijing are the employers or the housing estates.Large companies are encouraged to look after their employees. Students, language and university teachers should contact the educational institution where they work. The compound administration is responsible for all others. After appointments have been made through the institutions, vaccination should be carried out by the district authorities.
Those who have health insurance in China receive the injections free of charge. Everyone else will have to pay ¥93.50 (about €12). The vaccination is noted in the ubiquitous app “Health Cloud”, which is a key part of China’s pandemic management. It is available in an English version, but not all functions are available in English.
Few reservations about Chinese vaccines
The mass vaccination in China uses the preparations of Sinopharm and Sinovac, which use dead COVID viruses. This technique is more traditional than those on which the Western and Russian vaccines are based. In fact, those concerned about a lack of experience with genetic engineering techniques regarding mRNA and vector vaccines are better off with the Chinese products. Despite initial confusion about Sinovac efficacy rates, both are considered safe and fit for purpose. They are already being mass inoculated in numerous markets. There are no reports of major problems.
In general, there are few concrete reservations about the Chinese vaccines to be heard from the German community. The willingness to get vaccinated quickly is particularly high where smooth entry and exit is important for business. Therefore, some local Germans intend to get an appointment as soon as possible. Others want to wait and see how the situation develops.
Diplomats vaccinated
Diplomats and media representatives already had the opportunity to be vaccinated the previous week. The appointment was for a half-hour window; this effectively avoided waiting times. The staff was friendly and spoke English. From clarification of pre-existing conditions to vaccination by a nurse in a single cubicle, the whole process took only a few minutes. Those who received their first dose on March 23 would have to come back on April 13 for the second shot. The vaccination offer was apparently very well received by diplomats and media representatives.
However, for expatriates, the crucial question now is what relief there will be for them after vaccination. China has now introduced a digital vaccination certificate for travelers. For a good week now, the certificate has been available via the Chinese online service WeChat and displays users’ vaccinations and test results. The program is intended to help with “global economic recovery” and also “facilitate cross-border travel”, said a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing. Via a QR code, other countries can theoretically also read the data of users when they enter the country.
Hope for international certificate
Although the document is currently only available to Chinese, Foreign Minister Wang Yi has already expressed the hope of international networking. The goal of the certificate is to achieve mutual verification of information such as test results and vaccinations. His statement at least fed the expectation that the passport will be available to foreigners living in China.
However, it is not yet clear whether the quarantine on the re-entry into China will really cease. So far, there has been no clear statement on this. A spokesperson for the National Health Commission last commented on this issue in mid-February. At that time, however, it was still said that existing quarantine requirements should remain in place for people arriving in China, as it is possible that even vaccinated people can still be infected with the virus. China is one of the first countries in the world to issue a vaccination certificate for travelers. A certificate for proof of vaccination and testing is also planned for the EU to make travel easier. Gregor Koppenburg, Finn Mayer-Kuckuk, Frank Sieren
It has been a week now since the European Union and China imposed sanctions on each other. The EU has punished individuals and institutions related to the actions of the security apparatus in Xinjiang province. In return, the Chinese government has imposed sanctions on four European organizations and ten China-focused individuals. These are accused of “damaging China’s statehood and interests and maliciously spreading lies and misinformation”.
Over the weekend, the People’s Republic has now extended sanctions to the chair and co-chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin, and Tony Perkins, as well as Canadian MP Michael Chong. They, too, are no longer allowed to enter Chinese territory. Chong described the sanctions as a “badge of honor”. The Canadian government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demonstratively stood behind the MP and promised not to be intimidated by China.
Ambiguity as a proven tool
By striking back on a broader front than it has been attacked, China aims to deter critics. An important – and proven – tool here is systematic ambiguity about the specific effects. For example, what does the reference to the families of employees of sanctioned organizations mean? It is found in the statement to the EU, but not in the one to the North Americans.
Will the spouses, parents, or children of all the employees of the above-mentioned institutions really no longer receive visas? What if they are Chinese citizens? Or Germans of Chinese origin with family in China? Inquiries by China.Table with German EU parliamentarians from the sanctioned human rights committee show: Even those affected are not sure. Hannah Neumann, a Green MEP and committee member assumes that she is no longer allowed to enter China, even though she is not named individually on the sanctions list. The EU politician said it was not clear what the situation would be for family members. At the moment, a general legal examination is underway in order to create clarity, according to circles around the Human Rights Committee.
In addition, with the ban from Beijing, companies and institutions that are “connected” to the sanctioned group of people are also no longer allowed to do business in China. This circle would be enormously wide if the authorities really exhausted the possibilities of the wording.
Speak plainly and risk goodwill?
So far, there is a widespread assumption that the threat will not be implemented consistently – but this is fed by experience with previous waves of outrage from China. In fact, however, the tone is getting harsher, and fears are spreading that implementation is more likely to be at the stricter end of the scale. The intended effect is thus already occurring. Institutions and individuals who rely on access to China will have to consider carefully in the future: Speak plainly and lose Beijing’s goodwill – or rather be a little more cautious?
The sanctions are definitely perceived as harsh. For anyone who has studied sinology and spent a good part of their adult life dealing with China, an entry ban is a heavy blow. If knowledge of Mandarin and the country is an important part of one’s qualifications, then traveling to China is simply part of life and work. Many of those affected have also spent years in China. They have friends and relatives there. The sanctions are not only a professional restriction, but they also hurt personally. These are generally the very people who understand China best and value it most.
Not only do the sanctions feel disproportionate because of the individual impact – objectively they are not. Until now, the tit for tat strategy has been more common here. But while the EU has specifically named those responsible in Xinjiang, Chinahasfired a whole broadside against everyone who has recently spoken out about Xinjiang.
The only organization affected by the EU sanctions was the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. In addition, the chief of the local security bureau was the individual with the highest rank. However, all those affected do not rely on contacts with Europe for their work; their field of activity is exclusively in Xinjiang. The response from Beijing, on the other hand, concerned China experts in Europe’s capitals. The think tank Merics, in particular, has no political role at all but has primarily done academic work. The Danish association Alliance of Democracies, on the other hand, has taken a global perspective and worked to strengthen democracy. A proportionate response would have been limited to the relevant EU parliamentarians, for example, and not additionally included academics and associations across the board.
Curiosity about the West has run dry
The undifferentiated reaction also shows that the Chinese leadership has lost contact with Western thinkers and business representatives. The government under Zhou Rongji still actively sought it, and Wen Jiabao’s government at least cultivated it professionally. Today’s leadership is disconnected from world public opinion; it has hardly any personal contacts in the West. In wider circles of society, curiosity about thoughts from the West has run dry. Instead, dialogue with European and American individuals and institutions brings mainly disadvantages. An appointment with a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is therefore almost impossible to get.
Among other things, China’s leadership has now formally expressed its mistrust of the most important center of German research on China, which is likely to considerably impede its work. Whether contacts with the institutions and individuals concerned will now become toxic for Chinese citizens remains to be seen. In any case, there is no end in sight to this state of affairs. The statement by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides for sanctions until the EU side has “seen and corrected” its mistakes. But who is the “EU side”? Does Brussels have to give in and roll back its own sanctions to allow Danish members to travel to China again? Here, too, uncertainty becomes a political tool.
At the end of December, China and the European Union agreed on the CAI investment agreement after years of negotiations. China’s demands for the European energy sector were a bone of contention until the very end: Both sides could not agree on the extent to which mutual market access should be facilitated here. Brussels was particularly concerned about nuclear power. However, the EU did not give in and excluded the nuclear sector “in its entirety from its market access offer”, as the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade explained in response to a question from China.Table. The CAI, therefore, had no impact on the sector.
Foreign direct investment in the EU thus remains a matter for the individual member states. Thequestion of whether Chinese technologymay be installed in European power plants thus also remains open or rather is also left to the EU states. Until almost shortly before the political agreement on the CAI, China had, according to media reports, demanded to be allowed to use its own technology in European nuclear power plants. Commission circles stressed that this had not been the case. The issue is highly controversial within the EU states because Chinacouldalsogainaccess to sensitive infrastructures by investing in and using its own technologies.
EU disagrees on role of nuclear power
Entry 26 of the annex to the agreement, which concerns the Chinese side, says practically nothing new – and the old one is worded extremely succinctly: “Chinese control” is required for investments by foreign investors in this area. Foreign companies are also “not allowed to invest in exploration, mining, purification, conversion, isotope separation, or engage in nuclear export transactions for materials and items listed in the nuclear export control list.”
China also reserves the right to “adopt or maintain measures relating to the storage, transportation, and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, the decommissioning of nuclear facilities and the management of radioactive waste, as well as the nuclear import business,” according to another paragraph.
On the EU side, one sentence simply says: “The production, trade or transport of nuclear energy is prohibited in some EU countries.” The main reason why the agreement is not very meaningful is also due to the disagreement among the member states. The EU countries do not agree among themselves what role nuclear power should play in Europe in the future.
Study: Timmermans must rethink goal
While the French are voting for a stronger role, more likely to go the way of the Chinese – for whom nuclear power is green energy – theGermans have opted out of nuclear power. Renew Europa, the third-largest group in the European Parliament, which includes French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, just released a study in January promoting an expansion of nuclear power. The “ambitious” goals of reducing CO2 emissions have only been achieved in the past in France and Sweden through the use of nuclear power, it says.
The paper argues that nuclear power would also contribute to Europe’s energy security. The study shows that the position of the Dutch EU Commission Vice President and Commissioner for Climate Action, Frans Timmermans, that nuclear power is “very expensive” needs to be reconsidered, Renew said. More than 70 percent of France’s energy production is nuclear power. The UK also continues to rely on electricity from nuclear power plants and is currently building a new power plant with French and Chinese help, with more already planned.
Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland, on the other hand, are following Germany’s example with a longer time lag. They intend to phase out in the next 14 years.
India, USA and Russia build new nuclear power plants
Outside Europe, all the major economies and populous countries continue to rely on nuclear power. The USA as well as India and Russia, but also South Korea. New nuclear power plants are currently being built in all these countries. Even in Japan, whichwas hitby the Fukushima nuclear disaster ten years ago, there is currently no attempt to phase out nuclear power. Quite the contrary.
Some developing countries are following suit. Pakistan, for example, has recently put into operation a nuclear power plant built by the Chinese. It has a capacity of 1100 megawatts. Another of the same size is to be connected to the grid at the end of the year.
China is on a nuclear course
Nuclear power will remain “a part of the global energy mix for many decades to come as the use of fossil fuels comes to an end”, the science magazine Nature summarises the situation. Currently, nuclear power still accounts for one-third of the world’s carbon-free energy supply, Scientific American magazine has calculated, summing up, “It looks like nuclear power is getting back into its stride ten years after Fukushima.” According to a study by Strategic Studies Quarterly, a journal published by the US Air Force, 96 nuclear reactors have been connected to the power grid in 13 countries since 2000. Forty-five of them were built in China and 12 in Russia.
However, the share of nuclear power in the global electricity mix has fallen over the past decade. From 13 to ten percent. This is mainly because the share of clean energies, such as hydro, wind, and solar energy, has risen disproportionately. The most important player for Europe is also: China.
There are currently 16 reactors under construction in China, with further 39 planned. As of January 2021, China had 49 nuclear power plants in operation, generating a total of 47,498 MW of energy. The People’s Republic produced four times as much nuclear energy in 2019 as it did in 2011.
Earlier this year, the Chinese began commercial operation of their first nuclear power plant built without foreign assistance in the city of Fuqing in eastern China’s Fujian province. The reactor, called Hualong One (HRP1000), can generate ten billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and prevent 8.16 million tons of CO2 emissions, Beijing says. A technology that China is keen to export (China.Table reported).
Resistance to Chinese nuclear power grows
As long as the situation in Europe is not clear, China will export to other countries: As early as 2013, Beijing declared increasing exports of nuclear reactors to be a national strategy within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). EU states are also part of the BRI. According to the World Nuclear Industry Council (WNISR), Chinese projectsaccount for almosta third of all the 50 or so new nuclear power plants currently under construction worldwide.
In Europe, however, opposition to Chinese nuclear power is growing: Romania has transferred the construction of two nuclear reactors, which it had previously agreed with the People’s Republic, to the United States. In Poland, too, the US has beaten the Chinese to the punch.
In the UK, plans by the Chinese to take part in the construction of reactor units in Suffolk, Somerset and Essex are causing political opposition. Several Conservative MPs have drawn a parallel between the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), which is involved, and the telecoms equipment supplier Huawei – both are a threat to national security, critics say. However, the criticism has not dissuaded the British government from changing course.
Formulations in CAI too weak
The British exit from the EU has strengthened the position of the Germans on the nuclear energy issue. The French have lost an important ally – the disunity within the EU remains. In view of global developments, it would have made sense to clarify these issues in detail in the investment agreement between Beijing and Brussels. The agreements contained are meager given the global situation. With Amelie Richter
Pakistan
News
Chip shortage: Nio temporarily closes factory
Due to a shortage of semiconductors,Nio halts production at one of its plants in Hefei for five days starting today. This makes the EV maker the first “high-profile casualty”intheChinese auto industry to be hit by the chip shortage, Bloomberg reports.
“The general supply shortage of semiconductors affected the company’s production volume in March,” Nio announced. The company still plans to deliver 19,500 cars in the first quarter. Previously, the target was 20,000 to 20,500 vehicles.
Mass manufacturers such as Volkswagenalso complain that theshortage of chips has caused “a lot of trouble“. It is expected that the supply of semiconductors will remain tight in the first half of 2021. nib
Car Industry
Electromobility
Technology
United Arab Emirates produce Sinopharm vaccine
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will begin production of the Chinese Sinopharm-vaccine next month. Drugmaker Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries PSC (Julphar) said yesterday that it had signed a contract to produce the vaccine starting April, Bloomberg reported. According to the statement, the UAE will be the first Gulf state to set up a coronavirus vaccine manufacturing plant. Supplies to the Middle East will also be boosted from there.
Julphar signed the relevant agreement with Abu Dhabi-based Group 42, according to the report, which said the artificial intelligence and cloud computing company had previously helped conduct trials of the Sinopharm vaccine in the country.
The Sinopharm vaccine has already been licensed in the UAE since last year. According to the report, the state has one of the fastest running vaccination campaigns in the world, with most people receiving the Chinese vaccine. ari
Corona-Impfstoffe
Pharma
China and Iran conclude cooperation pact
China and Iran have signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. According to state television, the comprehensive cooperation pact was signed by the foreign ministers of the two countries, Wang Yi and Mohammed Jawad Sarif, on Saturday, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
According to media reports, the agreement will cover trade, economics, and transport. It is intended to pave the way for billions of dollars of investment by China – including in Iran’s energy and infrastructure, as South China Morning Post reported before the deal. In return, Iran wants to supply oil at favorable prices. Cooperation in the military field is also said to be planned.
Iran is in an acute economic crisis partly because of the sanctions imposed by the US in 2018, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since even the new US President Joe Biden does not want to lift the sanctions in the short term, the government is aligning itself more with China and Russia. asi
Iran
Raw materials
Opinion
An EU Supply Chain Act hits the wrong people
By Gabriel Felbermayr
President of the Institute for the World Economy
A supply chain law burdens the wrongpeople if it makes European companies liable for human rights violations or violations of minimum environmental or social standards by their foreign suppliers. Thanks to the international division of labor, local companies have access to a huge and complex network of suppliers. If they were now subjected to far-reaching liability rules for supply chains that are de facto not fully controllable, they would have to reduce their risk. This would mean limiting supplier portfolios to larger suppliers that are active in countries where the risks of violations of social and environmental standards are lower.
At first glance, one might say: a good thing. After all, it could increase incentives for other countries to improve their standards to stay in business. At second glance, however, it means an increased closure of the European market to suppliers from developing and emerging countries, which often cannot guarantee the standards desired in Europe due to their economic and social history. However, the integration of these countries into Western supply chains has massively reducedpoverty there in recent decades and thus also improved working and environmental conditions in the countries. If supply links there are now cut back, this positive effect threatens to be lost.
EU Supply Chain Act helps China in Africa
New suppliers, for example, from Africa will have a more difficult time to be integrated into supply chainsof European companies. They will then have to rely onfinding customers in countries that place less value on sustainable social and environmental standards, such as China or Russia. Companies from there will take the place of European buyers of goods from developing and emerging countries. This would probably not improve the situation there: The incentives to converge with European standards will fall away. China is already active in many of these poorer countries as a lender, for example, for infrastructure projects, thus gaining geostrategic influence. If Chinese companies also increasingly become the main buyers of goods produced in these countries, their dependency on China will increase further. However, the EU actually wants to prevent such a development. With a strict supply chain law, it could counteract these efforts.
So should we stand idly by and let the companies violate social and environmental standards? By no means. But we should start with those who are actually responsible: The best way to punish misconduct by foreign companies is to impose direct sanctions on the offenders. The best way to do this is for a central EU institution, after consultations with all parties involved, to keep negative lists of all companies in the world that have been proven to have committed misconduct and ban these companies from participating in European value chains. This would provide transparency and legal certainty; the many European companies involved in foreign trade would not each be forced to monitor their supplier networks at great cost and with uncertain effectiveness; and politicians would not transfer their very own tasks – foreign policy – to companies that should play quite a different role. Incidentally, such an approach would also have strong extraterritorial effects: Who in another country, such as Switzerland or Australia, would want to work with a company that the EU has blacklisted?
US Magnitsky Act as a model
The EU is just beginning to use this approach to demonstrate to China that it is not powerless when the country violates human rights or other sustainability standards. For the first time, it has made use of the global human rights sanctions regime against China adopted by the European Council in December, which is modeled on the US Magnitsky Act. This means that the EU too can now impose global sanctions on individuals, companies, or organizations involved in human rights abuses. These sanctions are much better than general trade restrictions, which would always hit the wrong companies in China.
Whoever wants to do business with the EU now has this sword of Damocles hanging over them. Such targeted interventions can be much more effective than setting general incentives for less diversification of the supplier network through a strict supply chain law.
Smarter ways: ratifying CAI
It is important for the credibility of the EU’s new sanctions instruments that they are also used when there are no other avenues left. Only in this way will they develop the intended deterrent effect. That China has now reacted very robustly with counter-sanctions is also logical. If the leadership in Beijing succeeds in getting the EU to back down, then the instrument would haverun its course. The EU must therefore get through this phase. But it should also not overstretch the instrument because a political escalation between the EU and China is an enormous risk for the German economy.
Ratification of the investment agreement with China (CAI), which was adopted in December, couldnow becomeevenmore likely because the EU Parliament can show that it has very effective instruments at its disposal to punish human rights violations in China. It can therefore approve the agreement, even though it is in Hong Kong or Xinjiang, because it now has its own instruments for these issues. For Beijing, the agreement with the EU also remains key: The logic that got China to give in just before Christmas still applies. A strong shoulder between the EU and the US would be extremely difficult for China.
This shows that there are smarter ways for the EU to promote better social and environmental standards worldwide than restrictive laws for local companies, which in case of doubt tend to benefit or harm the wrong people.
Gender asterisks, colons, internal I? The Chinese hardly have to worry about gender-appropriate language. This is simply due to the nature of Chinese grammar. Chinese words generally do not differentiate according to grammatical gender.
So if someone talks about the 老师 lǎoshī, the conversation is initially completely open as to whether it is a female or male teacher. While German-speaking Chinese learners quickly notice an information gap here and sometimes try to clarify the gender by asking questions, Chinese learners remain relaxed. Depending on the context and further narration, the Chinese listeners simply form their own picture of the protagonist over time and develop their own gender hypothesis, which is then confirmed or not in the further course of the conversation. In case of doubt, the listener simply adapts their mental narrative construct retrospectively; the Chinese are mentally flexible in this respect.
However, China is not completely out of the woods when it comes to linguistic gender issues! Chinese personal pronouns are also completely gender-neutral in the spoken language: The pronouns “he, she, it” are all pronounced identically as tā. But in writing, there is a clear distinction between masculine (他), feminine (她), and neuter (它). The plural pronoun tāmen – “they” also holds particular gender conflict potential. This is because the feminine 她们 tāmen only appears when the group of people is exclusively female. If, on the other hand, even one male contemporary is present in a large group of women, the general – masculine – plural pronoun 他们 tāmen must be used grammatically correctly.
So it’s a gender cul-de-sac? No way! China’s Internet and advertising language has long since found an elegant solution to creatively circumnavigate the problem. In China, for example, it is not uncommon to find the Latin capital letters TA or TAMEN in online texts or on posters – so that everyone can feel addressed. This is how gendering works in Chinese!
Verena Menzel 孟维娜 runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
