China’s Dragon Boat Festival coincides with second holiday, fuelling boom in family tourism | South China Morning Post
An unusual convergence of the Dragon Boat Festival and Children’s Day in China over the weekend led to a surge in domestic tourism bookings to campsites, amusement parks and other attractions, according to travel platforms.
Short-haul domestic travel bookings had grown 23 per cent year on year, according to travel platform Trip.com’s latest figures. The trend was driven by “summer escapes” with parent-child orders making up 35 per cent of overall bookings and “family-friendly” hotel searches increasing by 45 per cent, a company spokeswoman said.
The man who told China’s story to the world—and the stories still left untold (beijingscroll.com)
Edgar Snow holds a unique place in modern Chinese history as the first Western journalist to introduce China’s Red Army to the world. In 1936, at a time when China was embroiled in internal conflict and faced external aggression, Snow made his way to the remote headquarters of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, where he conducted extensive interviews with top Party leaders, including late Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Snow's firsthand reporting culminated in "Red Star Over China," which was published a year later and provided not only the West but also China with a rare and authentic account of the Red Army, its leadership and its steadfast commitment to improving the lives of the Chinese people.
New price wars among China carmakers mask hidden dangers, Beijing warns | South China Morning Post
Beijing has amplified its warnings over cutthroat price wars among carmakers as deflationary pressure persists in the world’s second-largest economy, and economists say a reflation is likely to remain elusive.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), party mouthpieces and a carmaker association aired concerns at the weekend over recent discounts offered by manufacturers, while collectively deeming price wars a threat to product quality and the long-term development of the industry.
China’s agritech brings water to Egypt’s giant beet sugar factory in Sahara Desert | South China Morning Post
Near the edge of the Sahara Desert, in Egypt’s West Minya, Chinese drillers bore deep into the earth, tapping groundwater to irrigate a once 500-hectare stretch of desert – now home to the world’s largest beet sugar factory.
China’s Zhongman Petroleum has drilled 193 wells over the past three years to irrigate the farm, which supplies Canal Sugar – a joint venture backed by investors from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – with an annual capacity of 900,000 tonnes, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
To tackle unstable aquifers and prevent the collapse of wells, Zhongman used air-foam drilling – a method that replaces traditional mud with a mix of air and foaming agents – to reduce leakage and improve efficiency. Many Egyptian drilling companies have since adopted the technique.
Harvard speech by Chinese graduate exposes class disillusionment and education gap at home | South China Morning Post
Controversy surrounding a speech given by a Chinese Harvard graduate reflects the Chinese public’s “disillusionment” with elite education and “anger at class rigidity”, according to a Chinese academic.
Last week, Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, a Chinese Harvard University graduate, delivered a controversial speech amid the ongoing clash between the university and the White House, and uncertainty over United States-China relations.
Jiang was the first Chinese woman selected as the student speaker at a Harvard graduation ceremony.
China never had free healthcare before its market reforms
Although only a tiny fraction of China’s population truly benefited from the so-called “free” medical care system in the planned economy era, the collective memory of that period remains heavily shaped, and often romanticised, by privileged groups and unsophisticated commentators. They continue to portray it as a utopian, universal free healthcare system that, in reality, never existed.
Before China’s urban medical insurance system reform started in the 1990s, employers largely bore the healthcare costs of the urban workforce. Because almost all urban employers at the time were either proper government or state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the state, or to be more exact, Chinese taxpayers, effectively paid for their healthcare. In the meantime, there was no health insurance and extremely scarce medical resources in the countryside, where most Chinese citizens lived….
Review | Book review: Chinese exclusion and mistreatment in 19th and 20th century America explored | South China Morning Post
The history of Chinese immigrants in America has always been about much more than one ethnic group.
As Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America shows, understanding America’s efforts to keep Chinese labourers out, and the violence enacted against those who got in, is essential to understanding the evolution of America’s immigration system as we know it today.
That is because restrictions against Chinese immigrants represented the first major flex in the modern era of the US federal government’s power to control its borders.
This weekly newsletter is put together by DeLisle Worrell, President of the ABCF. Visit us at Association for Barbados China Friendship | (abcf-bb.com).
Thanks to everyone who sent contributions for this week’s Update. Please send items of interest to me via the contact page at ABCF-BB.com or to info@DeLisleWorrell.com
The ABCF mission is to build a deeper understanding between the Chinese people and Barbadians and Caribbean people from all walks of life. The association’s focus is on personal experiences, people-to-people contact, cultural exchanges and exchanges of ideas, and the facilitation of travel, business and study. From the outset we aim to learn from and build on the experiences of the Caribbean and China, and to develop mutual understandings and support that will be to the benefit of both sides.
