On June 22, an important Chinese holiday was celebrated: Dragon Boat Festival! To commemorate it, we share with you the “Dragon Boat Song”, performed by Song Zuying.
Geopolitics
Meeting with Antony Blinken, Xi said positive statements must be translated into actions to stabilize and improve China-US relations
For his part, the US Secretary of State said that his country is not looking for a new Cold War or to change China’s system, and that he does not support “Taiwan independence” or seek conflicts with China; while Blinken was in Beijing, Biden stated that he hopes to meet Xi in the coming months, but the next day he called him“dictator”
Chancellor Scholz says Germany opposes any form of decoupling from China in newly-appointed Premier Li Qiang’s first overseas visit
In reference to the term“de-risking” coined at the last G7 meeting, Li told twelve CEOs from the main German corporations that the biggest risk is the lack of cooperation; shortly before the visit, Scholz’s office adopted its first national security strategy, where China is characterized as a “partner, competitor, and systemic rival”
National Politics
Communist Youth League of China held its 19th National Congress with over 1,500 delegates from across the country
Representing 73 million members from 4 million organizations, delegates coming from the grassroots represent 71.7% and women, 40.5% of the total; among the delegates chosen for the congress were young professionals dedicated to the rural revitalization policy and women who were at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19
Economy
Economic growth in May slows, with foreign trade up only 0.5% year-on-year (3.4 trillion yuan, US$481.6 billion), but overall remains strong
Two sectors continued to register double-digit growth in the May year-on-year comparison: services output (11.7%, down 1.8% from April) and consumption (12.7%, down 5.7% from April); among the reasons for the economy’s performance in May are slowing domestic demand, continued turbulence in the housing market, and a weakening global economy
People’s Bank of China cuts key loan rates to spur investment and consumption
The Chinese central bank lowered the one-year benchmark rate from 3.65% to 3.55%, and the five-year rate from 4.3% to 4.2%, which will lower borrowing costs for businesses and households; the five-year benchmark rate influences mortgage prices and lowering it could support the real estate sector reeling from dozens of unfinished housing projects by indebted developers
Agriculture and Environment
With a capacity of 180 MW, Tanque Novo wind complex from the Chinese subsidiary CGN Energy starts operating in the state of Bahia, in Brazil
With 40 wind turbines of the largest type in South America, the CGN Brasil project is expected to generate 720 million kWh per year, enough to produce energy for 430,000 homes and reduce CO2 emissions by 650,000 tons per year
Local governments prohibited from allocating land that is heavily polluted, ecologically fragile, or suffering severe soil erosion or desertification for agricultural use
Geared towards food security, this measure aims to reverse the process of using good agricultural land for construction; according to a scheme adopted in the 2000s, if a plot of agricultural land is used for non-agricultural purposes, a new area of agricultural land of the same size must be created, but this has resulted in many local governments earmarking good agricultural land for construction and compensating with infertile land or slopes on agricultural land
Science and Technology
China issues license for its first thorium reactor, a fuel that could power the country for 20,000 years
Compared to traditional uranium reactors, molten salt thorium reactors are safer, generate less waste and use fuel more efficiently; Thorium is also a more abundant resource compared to uranium, and China has significant reserves of the metallic element
People’s Life and Culture
The second “golden age” of museums, which took place in the 1990s globally, is now happening in China, according to historian Xu Jian
An important milestone in recent history occurred in 2008, when Chinese public museums adopted a free admission policy, which resulted in an exponential growth in the number of visits over the last 15 years; the total number of museums in China reached 6,565 in 2022, which is not considered a large number compared to the size of the population
Taken by Messi-mania, Chinese sell out the 68,000 tickets at the Workers’ Stadium for the Argentina-Australia game
Tickets for the friendly game cost as much as 4,800 yuan (US$686), a record for a football match in China; an interview with the Argentine star attracted around 410 million views and the teenager who entered the field and hugged him went viral on Chinese social media
Fans before entering the Argentina-Australia friendly at the Workers’ Stadium in Beijing [Xinhua]
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