Volume No.

66 November 2018
CULTURE
Band of Brothers:
Jia Zhangke's
Tribute to Lost
Youth
POLITICS
Richer and Poorer:
Segregated School
Shows Learning Gap
SOCIETY
Fan Bingbing:
Tax Scandal That
Shocked the World

Face
Value
How China’s shadowy unlicensed plastic
surgery market preys on the pursuit of fame

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ISSN 2053-0463
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
EDITORIAL
US Vice President Pence’s ‘new Cold War’
speech is a troubling sign
I
n a high-profile speech at the start potentially harms Democratic candidates?
of October, US Vice President Mike Pence Pence’s speech may serve a domestic agenda to
launched a string of attacks against almost promote the Republican position in the mid-term
every aspect of China’s policies on trade, industry, elections, calling on voters to rally behind Trump
the South China Sea, military expenditure, Taiwan, against a common evil enemy, China. Trump him-
human rights, religion and cultural exchanges. self has used accusations against China to distract the
Coming against the backdrop media’s focus away from allegations
of escalating trade friction, Pence’s of Russia’s involvement in the US
speech, the strongest made by a US By sowing elections.
President or Vice President since the seeds of he US should stop using China
the normalisation of US-China Sinophobia and as a scapegoat for its domestic prob-
relations in 1972, sparked concerns encouraging the lems. Take the issue of trade. Main-
among diplomats and analysts. stream economists agree that the
public to question
Some compared it to Winston US trade deicit to other industrial
Churchill’s historic “Iron Curtain any interaction powers is not a result of “unfair
Speech” of 1946, which essentially with China, there deals,” but a by-product of the
began the Cold War. is a risk that status of the US dollar being a global
Given the complexity of the US- Washington will reserve currency. his status has con-
China relationship, disputes and lose its ability to ferred on the US a range of economic
disagreements between the two and inancial advantages such as low
think rationally
nations are not new. But Pence’s at- interest rates and high stock prices.
tack is unprecedented in tone. about its China he trade deicit is also the result of
Most notable is that the speech policy the US’s liberal monetary policy that
reiterated earlier accusations, then spurs capital-intensive industries at
took the attack further by accus- the cost of labour-intensive ones, and
ing China of meddling in the US elections with “a in China’s case, a ban on high-tech exports to China,
whole-of-government approach” to sway US pub- which distorts the complementary trade relationship
lic opinion. Just days before, US President Donald between the two countries.
Trump had made similar accusations, which China Unfortunately, rather than a rational debate, the
refuted as “groundless” and “slander.” In the US Trump administration has taken an increasingly
press, many described the allegations as far-fetched. feverish tone, resorting to emotion over reason. his
As evidence, Pence seized on an advertorial about tone has the potential to transform into a danger-
the trade war published in a newspaper in Iowa and ous new form of McCarthyism. By sowing the seeds
paid for by a Chinese media outlet. But such prac- of Sinophobia and encouraging the public to ques-
tices have long been considered a form of “public tion any interaction with China, there is a risk that
diplomacy” in the US, and have been used by many Washington will lose its ability to think rationally
nations. US allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, about its China policy. Reports about debates within
Japan and European countries have contracted lob- the Trump administration over whether to ban
byists to inluence the US Congress in ways that go Chinese students already hint at such a trend.
far further than anything China has allegedly done. he US should think twice before confronting
Trump also hinted that China’s retaliation – China on every front. here is no doubt that a more
increased tarifs on American agricultural products, confrontational approach will harm China, but it
such as soybeans, was an attempt to meddle in the would damage US interests as well. After decades of
US elections, as it is perceived to target Trump’s voter globalisation, China has been a major player in the
base. But if China’s tarif on American soybeans, an international community and staunch supporter of
issue completely under the remit of China, consti- multilateralism. Treating China as the number one
tutes US election meddling, what about the Europe- strategic enemy of the US will force other countries
an Union and Japan’s decision to buy more soybeans to take sides, which would have catastrophic conse-
from the US, which obviously pleases Trump but quences for global peace, stability and prosperity.
1
 CONTENTS

Beauty contest
Photo by CFP
Young wannabe celebrities are risking it all – just to get the ideal face P20

EDITORIAL
01 US Vice-President Pence’s ‘new Cold War’ speech is a dangerous sign

INTERNATIONAL
10 Tourism :
Going Global
12 Korean Peninsula:
Peace on the Horizon
14 China-Japan Relations:
Blowing Hot and Cold P40
POLITICS
17 School System:
Educational Divide

COVER STORY
20 Plastic Surgery:
Trading Faces/Under the Knife, Under the Radar
P48

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

2
 CONTENTS

P36

P52 P56

SOCIETY OUTSIDE IN
30 Agronomy Education: 60 Lijiang:
Growing Ambitions Taking the Tiger by the Tail
32 Celebrity Tax Evasion:
Debt and Taxes 04 MEDIA FOCUS
36 Gender Views: 05 WHAT THEY SAY
Fragile Masculinity 06 NEWS BRIEF
40 Winter Sports: 08 NETIZEN WATCH
On Thin Ice 51 CHINA BY NUMBERS
44 Medical Reform: 62 ESSAY
Generic Options 64 FLAVOUR OF THE MONTH/REAL CHINESE

ECONOMY
48 Social Insurance Reform:
Balancing the Scales

CULTURE P32
52 Jia Zhangke:
Lost Brotherhood

VISUAL REPORT
56 Transcendental in Yunnan

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

3
ChinaReport, Chinese Edition
September 9, 2018
Gaokao Reform
On August 23, 2018, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission
released its plan to reform the national university entrance examina-
tion (gaokao). This will enable students to choose three test subjects
they like or are good at from chemistry, physics, biology, politics,
history and geography, in addition to the three compulsory subjects
– maths, Chinese and a foreign language. The reform is aimed at
boosting education quality and giving full play to students’ personal
interests. In 2014, Shanghai and Zhejiang Province started the irst
round of pilot gaokao reform and to date it remains mired in contro-
versies over the extent of students’ personal choice. The pilot reform
was scheduled to be applied to 18 municipalities and provinces this
autumn, but the number was reduced to only eight at a time when
gaokao examination scores remain the most important thing for a
student’s future. Some high schools failed to empower students and
parents, causing them great anxiety. What’s more, a growing number
of students rushed to select subjects in which they believe they can
obtain a high score, resulting in a new set of problems and wasted
educational resources.
Southern People’s Weekly
September 13, 2018
Meagre Payments
Before the slight increase in the
amount of authors’ remuneration
by literary magazines in 2010,
Chinese writers and translators
have for dozens of years earned 60
to 80 yuan (US$8.7 to US$11.6)
per thousand words. To date, some magazines ofer
a maximum of 1,000 yuan (US$145) per thousand
words but literary translators are still paid 80 yuan
per thousand words. Over the past 120 years, pay-
ments for writers and translators have fallen. When
the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949,
the pay for writing a book could buy a traditional
courtyard dwelling in Beijing. But since the 1990s,
writers and translators have been hardly able to make
ends meet amid the rising cost of living, and many
talented writers have switched to other jobs. Nowa-
days in China, most writers and translators devote
themselves to the profession out of enthusiasm and
passion alone.
4
Caijing
September 23, 2018
Rising Rents
In the summer of 2018, over eight million tenants in
Beijing sufered due to a surge in the cost of rent. Within
three months, rent has risen by 15 to 40 percent – the
rent and utility fees combined surpassed 40 percent of
many tenants’ monthly income. Several rental enterprises
have been jumped on for pushing up rents after they monopolised the market.
Some enterprises were even publicly criticised by the rental regulatory authority.
Insiders cautioned that rental agencies are not the masterminds behind the
soaring prices and said the real villain was the imbalance between supply and
demand. Regulation of rental prices has also made matters worse, and the
solution lies in increasing housing supply.
Oriental Outlook
September 20, 2018
Celebrity Reset
In the irst half of 2018, many ilm and TV programmes
featuring “little fresh meat,” a buzzword in China to describe
young and handsome male celebrities, were less sought af-
ter than before. Some improper remarks and behaviour
by these young celebrities on reality shows even generated
controversies for breaking social values and norms. Over the
years, the fan economy driven by these young stars has constituted an important
part of the show business economy and the entertainment industry. Nowadays,
however, the market has become increasingly reasonable, relecting the transition
from mass consumption to the return of rationality.
Vista
October 7, 2018
Let the Bullet Trains Fly
On September 23, 2018, Hong Kong inaugurated its
irst high-speed train link to the Chinese mainland. It
now takes just 40 minutes to get from the international
economic hub to the southern city of Guang-
zhou, Guangdong Province, and just nine hours to 
get to Beijing. After 18 years of discussions, debates
and delays, Hong Kong has inally became part of China’s high-speed train
network – which has a length of 25,000 kilometres – opening a new chan-
nel for interconnection between Hong Kong and the mainland. Analysts
say the high-speed rail link will bring economic beneits of HK$260 billion
(US$33.17b), three times the construction costs. he rail link also suggests
that an overall system of politics, law, immigration and quarantine is taking
shape under the “one country, two systems” framework. It now takes less
than four hours to get to major cities south of the Yangtze River, which will
help consolidate Hong Kong’s status as a regional centre – and help attract
mainland talent.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
“Just as every outstanding kid is backed by
excellent parents, wild kids have wild parents.
Many parents don’t realise that the easiest way
to spoil a child is setting no limits for them.”
Chen Zhiwen, editor-in-chief of the education portal
www.eol.com, saying parents influence how their children turn
out, in a commentary for financial portal Caixin
“I’m a down-to-earth doctor. People will not know how
express delivery is connected with world history until
they’ve attained a high enough level [of education].”
Thirty-four-year-old doctor of history Tan Chao responding
to people sniping about his eight-year express delivery, which
supported his studies, in an interview with sina Weibo.
“It is possible that farmers will desire to live in a big lat as
urban people do, but whether or not such psychological
desires turn into practical demands depends on whether
or not those migrant farmers’ incomes rise and whether or
not they can aford such lats.”
Renowned economist Wu Jinglian saying that you cannot equate
increasing urbanisation to promoting consumption growth, at the
latest China Economic Forum held in Hebei Province.
“China’s domestic market has supported the manufacturing
industry far more than the export market has... So, the
US’s tarif increase on China’s exports will not exert a big
inluence on China’s domestic supply chain, no matter how
much bilateral exports are damaged.”
Zhang Zhiwei, chief Chinese economist of the Deutsche Bank,
concluding in his recent report on the sino-Us trade conlict
that the Us tarif increases on Chinese exports will not push
many suppliers to move out of China.
“What we should worry about in the AI era is not that
robots might be smarter than humans, but that humans’
intelligence might stop growing.”
Jack Ma, founder of China’s biggest online shopping website
Alibaba, speaking at the 2018 World Artiicial Intelligence
Conference held in shanghai in mid-september.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Illustration by Wu Shangwen
“A real tax cut should reduce the rate of value-added tax or
the business tax on enterprises. Is it of any use to merely shout
slogans?”
Wei Sen, deputy director of school of Economics, Fudan
University, pointing out that the government’s tax-cut measures
in recent years have had little efect in easing the burden on
enterprises, at the latest Chinese Economic Forum held in Hebei
Province.
“The key to digitising China’s manufacturing industry is to
balance the uneven level between diferent manufacturers
– we have to tailor the upgrade process based on the
characteristics of the Chinese manufacturing industry.”
Wang Yu, cloud project director of telecom giant Huawei, talking
about the diiculties of digitising a large number of low-end
Chinese manufacturers, at the 2018 International Industrial Internet
Conference held in shanghai on september 20.
“Many oicials are not clear about the logic of administration.
They do not know that the right position for the government is
neither to be deicient nor to be ‘ofside.’”
Yao Yang, director of national school of Development,
Peking University, talking about how to improve government
administration, cited by the Beijing Daily.
“In industries [monopolised by State enterprises], many people
are pretending to work – as discussed by Hungarian economist
Janos Kornai [known for his criticism of the command
economy]. Those seemingly busy people enjoy a good life, but
they don’t actually create any value.”
Zhu Haijiu, a professor of the school of Economics, Zhejiang
Gongshang University, arguing that exploitation stems from power
rather than capital, writing on isixiang.com, a Chinese website for
sharing academic information and exchanging ideas.
5
 Top Story BMW To Take Controlling Share in China Joint Automotive Venture
BMW announced on October 11 that
it would increase by half its stake in BMW
Brilliance Automotive (BBA), a long-run-
ning joint venture with Brilliance China
Automotive, from 50 percent to a domi-
nating 75 percent.
his move was announced on the
ifteenth anniversary of the founding of
BBA when BMW and Brilliance China
revealed that they would extend their
collaboration contract until 2040. BBA
also announced a three billion euro
Policy
New Rural Revitalisation Plan Announced
China’s State Council held a press confer-
ence on September 29, detailing the newly-
passed Five-Year Programme on Rural Re-
vitalisation (2018-2022) which was initiated
and drafted in early 2018.
he programme is predicated on the fact
that the development of Chinese villages
and agriculture continues to lag far behind
China’s general modernisation, plagued by
a fractured supply of agricultural products,
deep poverty in some regions, worsening
pollution, low production eiciency, a short-
age of talent, a broken social welfare system,
and more. It focuses on the preferential devel-
6
(US$3.4b) injection of funds into its plants
in the city of Shenyang, and an increased
annual production target of 650,000 cars
starting from the early 2020s.
According to the announcement,
the share deal, valued at 3.6 billion euro
(US$4.1b) will take efect in 2022, coin-
ciding with the deadline by which China
has pledged to relax restrictions which
ban foreign automakers from holding
more than half the shares in a domestic
joint venture, which the government has
opment of villages and agriculture to quicken
modernisation.
Over the next ive years, the Chinese gov-
ernment will concentrate on better balanc-
ing urbanisation and rural development by
improving the rural living environment, up-
grading agriculture, training next-generation
professional farmers, increasing inancial
assistance to rural industries, setting up an
all-around guarantee and social insurance
system for rural people and enterprises, and
more.
All these tasks, according to the press con-
ference, are supposed to be achieved in three
described as a strong measure to expand
reform and opening-up.
According to Chinese media reports,
BMW is the irst beneiciary of the policy
change. After the deal takes efect, BBA’s
new eight-seat board of directors will
include six from BMW and two from
Brilliance China, and the chairman and
general manager will also be nominated by
BMW.
China’s ban on foreign automotive
investor majority ownership start-
ed in 1994 when the nation’s auto
industry was performing poorly in an
efort to protect domestic carmakers. Since
then, domestic automakers have learned
much from cooperation, but have been left
too reliant on foreign investors.
It is hoped that lifting the ban will urge
domestic automakers to prioritise self-
suiciency and innovation. As more in-
ternational brands follow BMW and pur-
sue a larger share of the Chinese market,
local brands – though they already occupy
nearly half of the market – will face greater
threats to their survival. he market has
already shown concern about domestic
makers. Straight after the latest share deal
the stock price of Brilliance China plunged
by around 27 percent.
phases, each of which will be accompanied
by speciic targets. his marks the irst time
China has established an appraisal index
system for rural revitalisation.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Tourism Science

China Biggest Source of Tourists Chinese Scientist

Fresh data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics Wins SOFT
(NBS) suggests China was the biggest source of outbound
tourism from 2013 to 2016. Innovation Prize
he data were cited in the NBS’s recent reports on Chi-
na’s achievements in its 40 years of reform and opening-up, Chinese scientist
which indicated that the number of Chinese people visiting Wu Yican has won
diferent regions and nations has risen from ive million in the SOFT Innovation
1995 to 135 million in 2016, with annual growth averaging 17.6 percent. he growth raised China’s ranking Prize for 2018, mak-
in outbound tourism from 17th in 1995 to number one in 2013. ing him the irst Asian
he reports did not reveal the relevant data for 2017, but a 2017 report jointly published by China winner of the biennial
Tourism Academy and the popular tourism platform Ctrip cited data from the former China National award established by the
Tourism Administration as saying that in 2017, Chinese visits to foreign regions and nations reached around European Union in
130 million, the highest worldwide. 2014 to honour scientists
he Chinese yuan’s appreciation and China’s fast economic growth over recent years are believed to be who have contributed to
major drivers of the outbound tourism boom. According to the NBS, Chinese tourists spent a total of innovation in nuclear
US$261.1 billion abroad in 2016, more than 70 times that in 1995. fusion.
Wu, who works with
the Hefei Institute
Economy of Physical Science,
Chinese Academy of
Perfect Partners to Boost Trade Sciences, has been
Representatives from Chinese and UK buinesses were among those who gathered at an event in the UK Parlia- studying neutrons for
ment’s House of Commons on 10 October. he event featured indings from the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable 30 years, the Xinhua
Chinese Brands 2018 ranking and separately its Top 50 Chinese Global Brand Builders study. News Agency reported.
British International Trade Secretary Liam Fox was efusive. “As a champion for free trade, the UK is In the nuclear energy
an ideal partner for trail-blazing innovative Chinese brands looking to expand and invest abroad, and system, neutrons are
with world-leading expertise in creative industries, we are perfectly placed to support them,” Fox said. VIP the source of nuclear
attendees at the BrandZ event included Minister Ma Hui of the Chinese Embassy in London and Sir heat and radiation, and
Geofrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chairman of the Conservative Friends of the Chinese group. directly inluence the
he UK seems to be backing the right partner as it increases eforts to attract overseas investment for the post- safety of nuclear power
Brexit era. BrandZ reported that the aggregate brand value of China’s Top 10 brands grew more than double that stations. Wu was recog-
of US brands last year (47 percent compared to 23 percent year-on-year) and that the China Top 100 grew 80 nised for designing and
percent over ive years, against the BrandZ Global Top 100 which grew 27 percent. developing safety soft-

Photos by CNS, VCG

ware that has reportedly
been used in more than
Education 30 large-scale nuclear
power projects in more
Smart Move to Attract Students to UK than 60 regions and
he UK educational establishment is naturally concerned that the UK could become a less attractive loca- countries.
tion for overseas students after Brexit. his includes Chinese students, of which 95,000 are currently studying
at British universities.
In most cases only an A-level equivalent or International Baccalaureate enables overseas students to go
straight from school onto a UK degree course without doing foundational studies.
But now the fourth-largest recipient of Chinese students, the University of Birmingham, has said it will
accept the gaokao, China’s gruelling further education entrance exam. “We are further opening access to
Birmingham’s wealth of education opportunities for the brightest and most dedicated Chinese students by ac-
cepting this rigourous and important qualiication,” said Birmingham’s vice chancellor, Sir David Eastwood.
he catch is that Birmingham will require an 80% score in the test as well as additional academic and English
language requirements.
Elsewhere in the world, the gaokao is becoming increasingly accepted for university entry. In June, the
University of New Hampshire became the irst top university in the US to recognise it. It is also recognised by
30 universities in Australia and 30 in Canada, as well as universitys in Italy, France and Spain.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

7
Passengers Abandoned by High-speed Rail
On October 4, in the middle of the week-
Poll the People
long National Day holidays, passengers on As the supply of high-speed train tickets fell far
short of demand during the seven-day National
a high-speed train from Shijiazhuang in Day holidays, many third-party ticket booking
Hebei Province to Tianjin found that eight platforms charged for their service – allowing
users to pay extra to be prioritised for a ticket.
train cars were missing, even though they Lawyers said the practice fell into a grey area
had been sold tickets. he passengers had and criticised it for disturbing the ticket market.
Some passengers argued that it is convenient
to cram into the other eight cars to make for those who have no time to line up at the rail-
the journey. What irritated them most way station or stick to the computer and keep
clicking the “buy” button.
was that the railway department neither notiied them of the missing train cars in
Do you think paying extra to get a train ticket is fair?
advance nor gave them a clear explanation afterwards. Many netizens have blamed their (by October 11)
monopoly for the railway department’s disastrous customer service.

Gay Teacher Protests Firing

Ming Jue, a 31-year-old teacher in Qingdao, Shandong
Yes. 734 21.4%
Province, recently applied for arbitration after he was
dismissed by the kindergarten he was working at. Accord- No. 2,567 74%
ing to Ming, he was ired after he revealed to his students’ Don’t know. 160 4.6%
parents that he is homosexual. “I told my students to be honest, so I can’t lie. I am
homosexual,” read a sign Ming held while standing in front of the local labour ar-
bitration bureau. A great many netizens have posted their support for Ming, calling
for equality for people who have diferent sexual orientations. Ming’s lawyer said that Source: he Paper
China’s current labour law does not go into detail about workplace discrimination,
but he believes the bureau will ind the dismissal as unreasonable as he did.

Resignation Just ‘One Small Step’ Most Circulated Post

Technician Zhang Xiaoping’s resignation has become a hot topic in the Chinese Retweeted by 13,158,784 times by October 11
online community after it was revealed that it may impact China’s lunar exploration
programme. he post cited a document from the Xi’an Aerospace Propulsion Insti- “We’ve partaken in sweat and
tute as saying that Zhang was involved in the development of low-temperature liquid tears and shared glories and
propellant engines vital for the rockets, but that he had also been paid meagre wages dreams over the past 69 years.
for a long time, which led to him inding new employment at a Beijing company for China’s future is in the hands
a vastly bigger salary. he State-owned institute attempted to get Zhang back by iling of everyone. Please retweet
documentation to the local labour bureau which apparently exaggerated his role. he the post and work together
institute came under ire, with netizens shifting the debate onto why State-owned with us.”
enterprises ind it increasingly hard to keep skilled staf.

October 1 marked
Prosecutors Under Fire for ‘Pardoning’ Rape the 69th an-
Prosecutors in Lushan County, Henan Province, have been heavily criticised after niversary of the
they revealed that they “successfully” helped two underage parties involved in a rape founding of the
case to “make up with each other.” Prosecutors said that the 17-year-old suspect had People’s Republic
allegedly raped the 16-year-old victim on impulse and both parties had returned to of China. Party
school following mediation and psychological counselling. Prosecutors felt it was an Paper the People’s
accomplishment as the suspect’s parents sent them a banner as a reward. Netizens, Daily posted a pic-
however, viewed it as perverting the law, saying that if an act of rape could be par- ture of the People’s
doned, could murder? Amid the criticism, the prosecutor’s oice said their words had Liberation Army that day, saying that China has
been inappropriate, and that the suspect had been released on bail. Several days later, revived following years of poverty and diicul-
the suspect was indicted for his alleged crime, although netizens said that if the case ties, and encouraging people to continue their
were not made public, they doubted local prosecutors would have done so. hard work.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

8
tOp Five SearcH QuerieS WHat’S
On for the week ending October 13
BMW Holds More Stock in BBA 446,773
BMW raised its holdings in BBA (BMW Brilliance Automotive, a joint
HOt?WHat’S
NOt?
company invested in by BMW and Brilliance China) from 50 percent to 75
percent at around US$4.1 billion.

Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team Defeats US 425,235

The Chinese women’s volleyball team got to the final six in the
2018 Volleyball Women’s World Championship after beating the US
team 3-0 on October 10.

Former South Korean President Sentenced to 15 Years 359,876 Robot Dreams

On October 5, South Korea’s former president Lee Myung-bak was Han Lei, a young man in Beijing,
sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption and bribery. Lee will shot to online fame after he and
appeal, according to his lawyer. his team spent millions of yuan
building a huge robot which can
run 30 kilometres per hour. It can
also transform and do jobs such as
Jack Ma Back on Top of China Rich List 316,684 cleaning cars. Han said he planned
to utilise the robot for disaster
Jack Ma, founder of China’s biggest online shopping platform Alibaba, has rescue. He told media that he has
regained his top spot on the annual Hurun 2018 China Rich List (China’s loved science since he was three
equivalent of the Forbes ranking). years old and now he is providing a
personalised robot-making service
on online shopping site Taobao.
Netizens showed admiration for
PBOC Lowers RRR 305,707 Han’s persistence in achieving his
dreams, but also joked that what
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced on October 7 a further
Some of the images used in this section are from the internet
Official-title Show-off
Officials from a family in Putian, Fujian
Province,were put under disciplinary
inspection after one woman from the
family listed all the official titles the
family members had in a message
to her son’s teacher in a bid to get the
son preferential treatment in class.
Her conversation with the teacher on
WeChat was later exposed online and
disgusted many netizens who criticised

they lack was not the dreams, but

one percent cut in the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks to the money needed to realise them. the woman for attempting to overawe
enable more liquidity to repay loans from the PBOC. the teacher with power. It proves, they
said, that there are still many people in
or close to officialdom who believe in
power and hope to exploit it for their
own personal gain.

tOp BlOgger prOFile

Huang Zhixian (Huang Chih Hsien)
Followers: 162,330 by October 16

Huang Zhixian, an anchorwoman of a Taiwanese political commentary

programme, gained many more followers on her Sina microblog after she Self-Taught Translator
posted a strong response to US Vice President Mike Pence’s latest speech A woman rubbish collector surnamed
Yuan from Qingdao, Shandong
on China delivered on October 4, in which he claimed that the US has Province won public praise after
made a great contribution to China’s rise, while China repaid the US by media reports revealed that she is University Airs
skilled at English and has translated and Graces
going against freedom and fair trade and even trying to “meddle in the an English novel and several English
articles on journalism, education and The whif of bureaucracy on campuses
US election.” he speech triggered strong protest from the Chinese academic research. Yuan told media has caused great public concern after a
that she has spent every penny she chat record from the student union of a
government and the public, and Huang’s open letter to Pence earned buying study materials over university in Chengdu, Sichuan Province
which listed how the US took part in bullying, partitioning the past 20 years and she wished leaked online, showing someone in the
to prove herself with her works. group being scolded for directly asking
and controlling China in the late Qing Dynasty and the Netizens found it a waste for Yuan to the chairman of the student union
do cleaning and suggested she shift about a meeting time. “How dare you
Republican era (from around 1900-1949), was viewed as to a language-related profession directly @Chairman Yang? I don’t wanna
after receiving some systemic see this next time,” and “Mind your
one of the best ripostes. “We understand the US’s negative education. manner of speaking and act according
imagination of China’s rise based on its desire to control the to your identity,” was the response from
the moderator of the chat group. The
whole globe, but it is not wise for the US to dimensionally remarks caused netizens to discuss why
even a campus had been so polluted by
suppress China’s rise all around,” Huang wrote in the bureaucratic airs.
open letter. Huang is well known across the Strait
for her staunch support of reuniication between the
mainland and Taiwan. Her letter has been shared over
14,000 times and liked more than 22,000 times.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

9
InTERnATIOnAL
Tourism
GoInG GloBal
The recent weeklong national Day holiday saw Chinese tourists spend more than ever as they travelled
around the globe. How can destinations capitalise on the inlux?
By Mafalda Borea and Shirong Chen
C
hina is the largest generator of trips in the world, with over
150 million outbound travellers in 2016, according to the
UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation).
In fact, China became the top spender in international tourism in
2012 which currently generates 21 percent of tourism receipts in des-
tinations worldwide.
he magnitude of these numbers has had a great impact on tour-
ism around the world and therefore destinations and regions have put
special emphasis on this vital source market, a great example being the
10
UNWTO Secretary General Pololikashvili
addressing the 7th UNWTO Global Summit
on Urban Tourism in Seoul, South Korea in
September 2018
European Union’s announcement to proclaim 2018 the EU-China
Tourism Year.
During the Golden Week, China’s weeklong National Day holiday,
Europe sees fast growth in Chinese mobile payment use. European
countries have started to provide Chinese mobile payment services
and some countries have seen fast growth in Alipay use during the
Golden Week this year (1-7 October), according to the latest igures.
he London-based EMEA oice of Chinese tech giant Ant Finan-
cial – a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Alibaba – updated mid-
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
 With China opening up to
the world and its population
increasingly having the economic
October Alipay statistics during the Golden
power to explore the globe, made headlines last year as residents took to
Week. Among the 19 European countries destinations have to plan the streets and protested against what they
that have already started providing the Alipay accordingly to accommodate the claimed was a tourist invasion of their cities.
service, Britain, which begun to ofer the extra inlux of tourists he conference engaged 900 participants
service to Chinese customers in 2016, ranks from 50 countries in how to build cities for
irst in terms of transaction volume, while both residents and tourists.
Switzerland saw the fastest growth – 27 times Urban tourism makes an important contri-
the volume of transactions than that of 2017. bution to the socio-economic development of
Mobile payments are of course only one aspect of Chinese tourism. destinations and should contribute to creating better cities for all. It
How are destinations worldwide going to cope with the growth of is a priority to help better manage supply and demand in order to
tourists, especially the increased number from China? As we reported diminish the problem, and the UNWTO has been key at guiding
in the May issue of this magazine (Issue 60), Chinese tourists have government and private sector enterprises from diferent countries
developed diferent expectations and have brought with them speciic around the globe towards a solution.
spending modes, such as paying for everything from their mobiles.
Vision for 2030
Long-Term Solution “A vision of urban tourism for 2030 needs to be inclusive, resilient,
In September, two events highlighted the priority given to China innovative and smart,” said Secretary-General Pololikashvili at the
by the UNWTO. Its Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili visited event, referencing the wider United Nations 2030 Sustainable Devel-
Beijing to reinforce the organisation’s cooperation with China. He opment Goals (SDGs).
met with Vice Premier Sun Chunlan and Culture and Tourism Min- Understanding residents’ attitude towards tourism and engaging
ister Luo Shugang, emphasising the importance of high-level political communities is crucial, and the message taken away from these three
support for tourism to advance on the economic policy agenda, and days of presentations and high-level discussions was that while urban
also met UnionPay Chairman’s Ge Huayong amongst other private tourism needs to be part of the wider urban agenda, tourism conges-
sector tourism representatives. tion needs to be addressed through cooperation: tourism and non-
With China opening up to the world and its population increas- tourism administrations, private sector, communities as well as tour-
ingly having the economic power to explore the globe, destinations ists. Measures cannot focus only on tourist numbers and behaviour
have to plan accordingly to accommodate the extra inlux of tourists, – they should also focus on local stakeholders.
not just from China but also from other countries that are increasing As Dr. Ko Koens of Breda University of Applied Sciences stated
their outbound tourist population. while presenting their joint study with the UNWTO on overtour-
he second event was the 7th UNWTO Global Summit on Urban ism (a report that proposes eleven strategies and 68 measures to help
Tourism in Seoul, South Korea in partnership with the Seoul Metro- understand and manage visitor growth in cities), “here is no one-
politan Government, with pretty much the same theme. size-its-all solution to deal with overtourism. Instead, tourism needs
Also of concern to delegates was “overtourism.” Even though this to be part of a city-wide strategy for sustainable development.”
label was disliked by many destinations, the challenge of coping with Another key conclusion of this summit was that technology and
success is real. innovation will play a key role in this vision, but only if cities invest in
Adequately managing tourism to the beneit of visitors and resi- the right infrastructure and skills. Speakers also stressed the role that
dents alike has always been a fundamental issue for the sector. Long tourists themselves play in respecting the local communities, tradi-
before the emergence of buzzwords such as “overtourism” the UN- tions and values of cities.
WTO deined tourism’s carrying capacity as “the maximum number Hopefully these important measures will be slowly implemented
of people that may visit a tourist destination at the same time, with- by tourism boards and private sector companies around the world so
out causing destruction of the physical, economic and sociocultural destinations are better prepared to handle not only the strong inlux
environment and an unacceptable decrease in the quality of visitors’ of Chinese travellers, but also tourists from all over the globe, with a
satisfaction,” stated Secretary-General Pololikashvili. projected overall expected growth of 3.3 percent annually until 2030,
Local residents of Venice, Barcelona and other top destinations a year in which 1.8 billion tourists will cross borders.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

11
 INTERNATIONAL
Korean Peninsula
Peace on the horIzon
The US looks likely to reach a compromise with North Korea – if both parties can build trust
By Li Jing
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un welcomes US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang on October 7, 2018
“
It’s a very nice day that promises a good
future for both countries,” said a smil-
ing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
as he sat down for a meal with US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo at a welcome lun-
cheon in Pyongyang on October 7, 2018.
From October 5 to 8, Pompeo visited
Japan, North Korea, South Korea and China.
Before the luncheon, Pompeo went so far as
to put his arm around Kim’s shoulder. It was
the fourth time the US secretary of state vis-
ited Pyongyang this year. he previous time
– after the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore
– he failed to even secure a meeting with the
North Korean leader.
“We had a great, great visit this morning,”
Pompeo responded. “President Trump sends
his regards. And we had a very successful
morning, so thank you.” According to US
State Department spokeswoman Heather
Nauert, the two discussed a time and place
for the next summit between their nation’s
leaders, and said that North Korea would al-
12
low international nuclear inspectors to enter
the dismantled Punggye-ri nuclear test site to
ensure it will never be used again.
“Had a good trip to Pyongyang to meet
with Chairman Kim. We continue to make
progress on agreements made at Singapore
Summit,” Pompeo later posted on his Twitter
account.
Paving the Road
Despite the Singapore Summit in June
2018 and the release of a joint statement, the
two nations have to date failed to resolve their
disputes over the outcome of the historic talk.
he US insisted that North Korea
dismantle its nuclear programmes before any
further talks can be held but North Korea’s
stance is that denuclearisation measures and
concessions will be matched “action for ac-
tion.” he negotiations reached a deadlock.
Pompeo originally planned to visit North
Korea in late August 2018, but cancelled the
trip because Trump was dissatisied with the
Photo by VCG
progress of bilateral relations.
One month later, however, Trump an-
nounced during the UN General Assembly
on September 24 that he was likely to meet
Kim Jong-un for a second time soon and that
Pompeo would arrange the talks. Several days
later, Trump made an odd revelation at a do-
mestic rally that he and North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un “fell in love” because of Kim’s
“beautiful letters.”
On September 26, Pompeo held talks with
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho
in New York where he was attending the UN
General Assembly. According to the US State
Department, it was then that Pompeo ac-
cepted Kim’s invitation to visit North Korea.
On October 2, US State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert said during a
routine press conference that Pompeo would
visit North Korea for the fourth time within
a year, which relected the momentum of bi-
lateral relations, as well as US determination
to turn the consensus reached by leaders of
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
the two sides into concrete action.
Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies
at the Carnegie Endowment for Internation-
al Peace, told ChinaReport that the American
people believe tensions are cooling down on
the Korean Peninsula, making Trump feel
that his personal political endeavours are
widely supported and have yielded fruitful
political results.
Trump’s public discussion of Kim’s let-
ters and the forthcoming second US-North
Korea leaders’ meeting, he added, show the
US is considering reaching a compromise
with North Korea on the basis of the Pyong-
yang Joint Declaration – publication of an
end of war statement in exchange for North
Korea’s pledge to dismantle its nuclear facili-
ties at Yongbyon, the nation’s major nuclear
facility.
New Order
On September 19, Kim Jong-un held
his third talk with South Korean President
Moon Jae-in, who visited Pyongyang for
the irst time. he two countries inked the
Pyongyang Joint Declaration and reached
agreements on the denuclearisation of the
Korean Peninsula, strengthening mutual
communication and cooperation, and striv-
ing to bring permanent peace to the area.
North Korea pledged that if the US takes
measures as per the joint statement released
after the Singapore Summit, North Korea
will take action to permanently disable its nu-
clear facilities at Yongbyon. It also decided to
permanently dismantle Tongchang-ri
missile launch pad and the engine test site.
According to the Blue House press secre-
tary Yoon Young-chan, the Pyongyang Joint
Declaration actually marked the end of the
Korean War.
When delivering a keynote speech during
the 73rd UN General Assembly on Septem-
ber 26, Moon Jae-in mentioned the name
Kim Jong-un eight times, saying that it was
time for the international community to
reward the choice and endeavour made by
North Korea.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
In the opinion of Douglas H. Paal, South
Korea has made a great contribution to the
dynamic interaction between the US and
North Korea.
Paal argues Moon Jae-in has stressed the
importance of establishing mutual trust be-
tween the US and North Korea. After the US
and North Korea leaders’ meeting, negotia-
tions over the denuclearisation of the Korean
Peninsula once again came to a standstill
which forced members of both governments
to rethink their communication tactics. Since
the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, North
Korea has not launched any nuclear tests and
the peninsula situation has eased. It is gener-
ally recognised that Moon Jae-in has played a
very active role.
On the other hand, scepticism towards
Moon Jae-in’s actions also abounds, with
some worrying the international community
is likely to fall prey to a North Korean push
to accept its nuclear status.
During a UN general debate on Sep-
tember 29, North Korean Foreign Minister
Ri Yong-ho argued that the North Korean
leader has irm conidence in the denucle-
arisation process, which will be successful as
long as the US shows enough sincerity to win
the trust of North Korea. Without trust, he
added, North Korea could not be conident
in its national security. Under such circum-
stances, North Korea would never demilita-
rise unilaterally.
After Pompeo’s visit to North Korea, he
arrived in Seoul on October 7 to meet and
inform Moon of his activities in Pyongyang.
According to a report by Yonhap News
Agency, Moon said it was an important day
for the three countries. he next day, Moon
disclosed that Kim Jong-un would visit
Russia, and Chinese President Xi Jinping was
expected to visit North Korea, which was also
expected to hold leaders’ talks with Japan.
Yonhap commented that a new order
is taking shape on the Peninsula. South
Korea’s  Uniication Ministry spokesperson
revealed on the same day that in order to
implement the Pyongyang Joint Declaration,
the North and South are considering holding
high-level meetings.
Joint Goal
As the last stop on his four-nation tour,
Pompeo arrived in Beijing on October 8.
Analysts said the main goal of his visit to
China was to win support from the nation
to put pressure on Pyongyang and com-
municate about Sino-US relations amid the
intensifying trade conlict and impasse.
US President Donald Trump and
Vice  President  Mike  Pence have publicly
criticised China for attempting to “interfere
in the internal afairs of the US.” Meanwhile,
the Trump Administration announced it
had approved US$330 million in arms sales
to Taiwan.
Da Wei, a  professor  at the  University  of
International Relations in Beijing, told
ChinaReport that even though disagreements
and problems persist in Sino-US relations,
the two countries have reached a consensus
in resolving the North’s nuclear issue and eas-
ing tension on the Korean Peninsula.
“Concerning the nuclear issue, the US
and North Korea are undoubtedly the most
crucial players, but the cooperation and in-
volvement of various parties is needed. China
and South Korea are the main hands pushing
towards the denuclearisation of the region,
and the US is incapable of meeting the de-
mands of North Korea alone,” he said. “he
US also needs other countries to support UN
sanctions on North Korea and continue to
put pressure on it.”
On October 5, Pompeo said publicly that
though China and the US have disagree-
ments, China has been supporting US eforts
to talk with North Korea, adding that if a
peace treaty is signed to end the war, China
will be part of it.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said
after meeting Pompeo in Beijing that China
will support direct talks between the US and
North Korea and is willing to play a unique
and crucial role on the basis of mutual respect
and catering to each other’s interests.
13
InTERnATIOnAL
China-Japan Relations
BlowInG hot and cold
Ongoing trade friction with the Us has concentrated the minds of leaders in China and
Japan as they make concerted eforts to mend political disagreements and strengthen
economic cooperation
By Feng Wei
J
apanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reportedly set to visit
China in late October to mark the 40th anniversary of the sign-
ing of the peace and friendship treaty between the two coun-
tries and to improve bilateral ties, after he met Chinese President
Xi Jinping at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia
held in early September. Some media reports have quoted a date of
October 23 for the visit; a more recent report suggested the trip would
be pushed back a day or two at the request of the Chinese side.
Ties between China and Japan have been strained since Japan
announced it would nationalise the disputed Diaoyu Islands (known
as Senkaku in Japan) in 2012, which triggered strong protests from
China. Although Abe has previously travelled to China to attend in-
ternational summits, the October visit to China, if it happens, would
be the irst bilateral trip by a Japanese leader since 2011.
Abe irst proposed a China visit during a meeting with Xi on the
sidelines of the Asia-Paciic Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum
held in Vietnam, in November 2017. he leaders agreed that the
meeting should mark a fresh start to relations between the two coun-
tries.
In the same month, a business delegation of 250 representatives
from Japan led by Japanese Business Federation Chairman Sadayuki
Sakakibara and Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chair-
man Akio Mimura visited China, where they held talks with their
14
Chinese counterparts to discuss cooperation between the two coun-
tries’ private and public sectors.
hen in May 2018, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Japan, the
irst visit in eight years by a Chinese premier. Li wrote in the Japa-
nese newspaper Asahi Shimbun that China-Japan relations stood “at
an intersection for returning to a normal path of development.” It
was reported that Li proposed the resumption and expansion of a
currency swap arrangement between their central banks. he previous
arrangement had expired in 2013 amid rising tensions over territorial
disputes.
More recently, on August 31, Liu Kun, China’s Finance Minister,
and Taro Aso, Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister,
co-chaired the Seventh China-Japan Finance Dialogue. China’s State-
owned Xinhua News Agency said the meeting had injected “posi-
tive energy” into the bilateral relationship and global and regional
economics.
Behind the changing tone of the rhetoric at high-level meetings, the
economic relationship appears to have warmed up again. According
to data released by the Japanese authorities, the total volume of bilat-
eral trade for the irst three months of 2018 between China and Japan
increased by 10.1 percent to reach US$76.4 billion. Japan’s exports
to China increased by 14.2 percent, accounting for 18.5 percent of
its total exports, while imports from China increased seven percent,
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

accounting for 22.8 percent of Japan’s total imports.
Analysts believe that after years of stagnation in bilateral economic
cooperation, economic ties between the world’s second- and third-
largest economies are inally getting back on track.
The Trump Factor
It may be no coincidence that China and Japan’s eforts to improve
their relationship are happening against a backdrop of trade frictions
between the US and China. While the trade conlict has simmered
and escalated in recent months, Japan also faces pressure from the US
regarding their bilateral trade relationship.
Upon assuming the presidency in early 2017, US President Donald
Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Paciic Partnership (TPP), a
free trade pact involving 12 countries that Japan had been actively
promoting. In November 2017, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross urged Japanese automakers to reduce exports from Japan and
Mexico while boosting production in the US in order to slash the
huge trade deicit. he US and Japan also failed to reach a deal that
would exempt Japan from the US’s steel and aluminium tarifs.
During the irst round of trade talks held in August between US
Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Japanese Economy
Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, the two sides failed to reach an agree-
ment on whether to open up negotiations on a bilateral free trade
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Photo by VCG
agreement. While Washington has been complaining about its huge
trade deicit with Japan, Tokyo has been trying to fend of US de-
mands for a free trade agreement and avert potentially steeper tarifs
on its exports.
As the US resumed sanctions on Iran in August, it asked Japan
to halt oil imports from the country. Given Iran is a major source
of oil for Japan, Tokyo has been seeking a waiver, although its
appeals so far appear unsuccessful. It is unclear whether Japan will
completely terminate oil imports from Iran. But on August 2, Japan’s
Foreign Minister Taro Kono held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif in Singapore on the sidelines of the ASEAN
Foreign Ministers Meeting. Kono reiterated that Tokyo has upheld
the 2015 nuclear agreement reached by Iran and six major powers,
rhetoric that would surely irritate Washington.
In recent months, Japan has become increasingly frustrated with
the Trump administration’s policies. In a June interview with Reuters,
Katsuyuki Kawai, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmak-
er who advises Abe on foreign afairs, said that the alliance between
Japan and the US has become “a transactional alliance,” and that the
Japanese people have begun to “realise that it is risky to leave Japan’s
destiny to another country.”
In late September, Abe met Trump in New York City on the side-
lines of the United Nations General Assembly, and in early October,
15
INTERNATIONAL
it was announced that Tokyo and Washington had signed a trade deal
limited to agricultural products, which experts said indicates Abe still
wants to take leadership of the reformed TPP.
Nevertheless, according to an article published by the Economist
in early September, concerns over Japan’s relationship with the US
are “prompting Japan’s leader to step up his eforts to fashion a more
independent and assertive foreign policy,” which includes mending
fences with China.
Politics Still Cold
Despite the improving economic relationship, there is no sign that
China or Japan will back down from their territorial dispute over the
Diaoyu Islands. For several years, coast guard vessels from both coun-
tries have routinely shadowed each other in the waters surrounding
the islets. While China continues to send patrol vessels, Japan has also
been strengthening the presence of its coast guard to counter China’s
moves.
In 2017, Japan added ive large new patrols to its coast guard leet
and increased the number of coast guard personnel by more than
200. In January 2018, the Japan Times reported that the Japan Coast
Guard was planning to build bases for seven new large patrol ships to
boost its response time.
In March, Japan unveiled a plan to launch an amphibious rapid
deployment brigade, widely regarded as Japan’s version of the US
Marines. With a 2,100-strong force, it will comprise a mainstay
amphibious unit and a landing unit equipped with amphibious as-
sault vehicles and Osprey transport aircraft, which are currently used
by the US Marines.
On August 28, Japan’s defence ministry released its annual defence
white paper for 2018. A big portion of the paper is devoted to China’s
national defence system and its maritime activities in the East and
South China Seas, which the paper said constitutes “a strong concern”
for Japan. he document immediately drew protest from China.
Few believe that the political and military relationship between
China and Japan will see a major rapprochement in the foreseeable
future. But with an improvement in economic ties, the recent pe-
riod, dubbed “cold economics, cold politics,” may be drawing to a
close, to be replaced by the resumption of what many describe as “hot
economics, cold politics,” which has characterised the China-Japan
relationship for much of the time since the normalisation of the bilat-
eral relationship in 1978.
Potential for Cooperation
While the territorial disputes between the two countries may
persist, there is still room to develop economic cooperation, after con-
certed eforts in the last few years to manage their disputes.
By the end of 2017, China and Japan had engaged in 15 rounds of
16
security dialogues, 13 rounds of strategic dialogues, and eight rounds
of high-level maritime talks. On May 9, the two countries agreed
to set up a “conlict communication mechanism,” which includes
a hotline, to prevent maritime and air incidents over the disputed
islands in the East China Sea. It also provides for regular meetings
between both nations’ defence oicials and a mechanism for their
naval vessels to communicate at sea to avert maritime incidents.
Regarding trade issues, both China and Japan support multilater-
alism. his is the realm where Japan’s policies depart from Ameri-
can policies the most. Following the US’s withdrawal from the TPP,
Japan persuaded the remaining countries to reach a new deal called
the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Paciic Part-
nership (CPTPP). Earlier, Japan had signed a separate free-trade pact
with the European Union, creating the world’s biggest bilateral free-
trade area. Japan is also actively promoting the Regional Comprehen-
sive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which involves the 10 member
states of ASEAN as well as ive regional countries – China, India,
Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
While Japan has resisted China’s Belt and Road Initiative and
refused to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,
its policy has evolved from reticence to acknowledging the potential
synergies in recent months. During the keynote meeting between Xi
and Abe held in November 2017 in Vietnam, Abe said Japan could
ofer help with the Belt and Road Initiative and proposed that Japan
and China cooperate in doing business in third countries.
In recent years, China and Japan have been competing for
infrastructure projects, especially high-speed rail projects throughout
South and Southeast Asia. But since the Xi-Abe meeting in 2017, the
two sides have started to explore potential areas for cooperation. In
May 2018, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation proposed
that a joint Japan-China consortium  build a high-speed railway
system in hailand, which, if it materialises, would be the irst time
contractors from both countries would be working together on an
infrastructure project in a third country.
On September 25, China and Japan held the irst meeting of a
joint public-private committee on economic cooperation in Beijing.
Analysts believe that agreements on infrastructure and other projects
would be signed during Abe’s upcoming visit to China in October.
After years of animosity, the dynamic changes in global geopolitics
have granted both countries a rare chance to look beyond their political
disagreements to enlarge their scope for economic cooperation.
Leaders from both countries should seize the opportunity, which will
help reduce regional tension and promote peace and prosperity to a
region that is increasingly challenged with uncertainties.
(he author is a professor from the Institute of Japanese Studies at the
Shanghai-based Fudan University.)
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

School System
educational divide
After an elite elementary school divided its campus with a steel fence to separate its students from
those of a relocated school catering to students from migrant families, the backlash from both sides
focused attention on the imbalance of educational resources
By Li Hang and Du Guodong
A
t 2pm on September 2, 2018, one day prior to the start of
the new school year, security guards were patrolling each
loor of Qinxi Experimental Primary School in Suzhou in
East China’s Jiangsu Province. In the conference room of the century-
old school, leaders from the district education authority tried to pacify
parents over the division of school premises to accommodate 800 new
arrivals.
Two weeks prior, Lixin Primary School, a private school mainly
catering to children of migrant families – meaning people who had
moved from another province for work, often low-income work –
was forced to close after its lease expired. Since children in China are
entitled by law to nine years of free schooling, local education authori-
ties temporarily relocated these students to a vacant building in the
campus of the nearby Qinxi school.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
POLITICS
Photo by LI Xing
A worker stands beneath the steel fence
at Qinxi Experimental Primary School in
Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, September 2, 2018
To separate the two schools, a steel fence was erected across the
campus, dividing the less well-of students from the wealthier stu-
dents of Qinxi school. hought to be a well-meant solution to avoid
interrupting the Lixin children’s education, the move was soon mired
in controversy and outcry after news of the school segregation went
viral.
Segregated System
Zhang Hainan moved to Suzhou several years ago to work in the
jade business. He did not own a lat in the city, nor did he pay into
China’s social insurance fund. His two children could only attend pri-
vate schools for migrant families because most public schools require
both a property ownership certiicate and a hukou, an all-important
document in China which states where a person was born, and which
17
 POLITICS
entitles them to social security, education and healthcare in the area
where they are from. For people moving within China, whether they
are low- or high-income earners, this document dictates what beneits
they can access – and what they cannot – in the place they reside.
On August 16, 2018, Zhang received a notice from the local educa-
tion authority informing him that Lixin school would be relocating
to the Qinxi campus, ive kilometres away. His children needed to
register at Qinxi school for the new semester.
Zhang did not think the notice was a big deal. But four days later,
Qinxi parents started to share the notice on social media chat groups.
he comments were overwhelmingly negative, as the wealthy parents
that had bought expensive lats in the Qinxi school district to secure
their children a place started bitterly complaining.
Liu Gang, whose only daughter is in irst grade at Qinxi, thought
the notice was fake when he irst saw it. According to China’s Com-
pulsory Education Law, no organisations or individuals have the right
to infringe on or disrupt a school’s campus or teaching facilities, nor
can they transfer, rent out or change the use of the school campus,
premises and facilities without a legal process.
“I thought it was fake. On September 19, the school organised
a parents’ meeting and we weren’t told anything, so when we saw
the registration desk for Lixin school [at Qinxi], we parents got
really angry,” he told ChinaReport. “No school authorities explained
anything to parents beforehand – we had no right to know anything.”
18
The steel fence that
separates Qinxi
Photo by CNS
school, which is being
temporarily used by
Lixin school, and the
rest of the campus
Another parent told our reporter on condition of anonymity that
he had called the mayor’s hotline and was told “the teaching building
was not rented to Lixin because there is no Lixin anymore, and the
two schools have been merged.” Some parents went so far as to put up
banners to protest the new arrivals.
“Education itself is unfair. Whether the steel fence is erected or
removed, it generates new inequality,” a parent from Qinxi school told
the Beijing News on condition of anonymity. “On moral grounds, it
is unacceptable for those students to quit school simply because of
the lack of a campus. On the other side, parents of Qinxi students are
morally hijacked because our children were enrolled [at Qinxi] after
we bought expensive lats in the school district.”
“For my part, I disagree with the erection of a steel fence and the
move to Qinxi. It is a kind of discrimination and both parents and
children will feel inferior to those from Qinxi. It will deinitely afect
the mental development of students from Lixin,” a parent of a student
at Lixin, surnamed Jiang, told the Beijing News.
Another Lixin parent surnamed Luo argued that the new
campus and classrooms are much better than the previous ones but
he hoped Lixin could secure a new campus as soon as possible. “After
the completion of the school term this year, I will consider sending
my child back to our hometown for their schooling,” he told China
News Service.
In contrast to the concerns of parents, Lixin students are quite
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
excited and laughter is illing the classrooms. “he new classroom is
much brighter and the campus has so many trees,” said a third-year
student at Lixin. Another student pointed to a projector and told the
China News Service, “I saw it at a good school in my hometown and
right now I am happy to ind that my classroom also has this ‘high-
tech’ gadget.”
It turned out that the local education authorities had consulted with
Lixin school before a decision was made to build the fence. “he fence
was erected to facilitate the separate management of two schools. We
expected some complaints but we never expected such intense oppo-
sition,” Jiang Lijun, headteacher of Qinxi, told ChinaReport.
On the Move
Prior to this, Lixin had been relocated at least four times. he pre-
vious lease had expired only on June 30, 2017. Because the school
failed to renew the land lease contract or move out, Gusu Education
Investment Company (GEIC), the land owner, sued the school.
“According to the contract, Lixin was not allowed to enroll new
students since 2014 because it has no playground, not enough grass
and trees which is mandated for schools, and there are traic prob-
lems as it is inside a small alley,” said Jiao Lu, head of GEIC.
When Jiao visited the school, she was astonished to discover that
instead of the maximum allowed 12 classes, Lixin had been running
double the number. To make matters worse, some students were be-
ing taught inside makeshift shelters. She added that the school had
still enrolled students in 2015 and there were more than 60 students
to each classroom. She ordered Lixin to demolish the makeshift build-
ings, but the school refused.
“he 1,500 students [at Lixin] are not allowed to leave the building
except to use the toilet. here were no sports classes and no play-
ground activities at all,” she said. “Before the lease expired, we decided
not to rent out the premises to the school.”
Failing to secure a new place to accommodate all its students, Lix-
in school was given the green light by the local education authority
to start the new semester in 2017. But by the end of 2017, GEIC
demanded the school pay for the rent, but the school insisted it would
only pay if it were ofered a new lease.
he court sided with GEIC. Xu Bing, headteacher of Lixin, told
our reporter his school did not move out because he failed to ind
other suitable premises. Xu said the school was established in 2001
inside a defunct camera factory in Suzhou to meet the demands of the
growing number of school-age children.
In 2003, China released its Law on the Promotion of Non-pub-
lic Schools, and Lixin then beneited from a string of preferential
policies. In 2008, Suzhou government issued permits to over 70 pri-
vate schools for migrant children, including Lixin. “We cooperated
with the government every time we had to relocate, and we never
asked for any preferential treatment,” Xu said.
To date, Gusu District is home to only four private schools for
migrant families and each has been relocated at least once. Xu argued
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
that apartment buildings and public schools were constructed on the
former locations, adding that the most irksome problem for private
schools is to ind a long-term location.
Imbalance of Resources
Xie Fang, oice director of Gusu Cultural and Education
Committee, told ChinaReport that after Lixin moved, a new public
school would be built in their old location. She said the district is
short of educational resources and the local government has set aside
50 plots to build new schools in the next ive years, but construction
has only started on a few of them so far.
“It involves demolition compensation as well as the change of land
use,” she said. “It is diicult to get hold of enough land to build pub-
lic schools, let alone private ones. What’s more, private schools can’t
really aford the hefty cost of construction.”
According to a research paper on compulsory education for
children from migrant families in Suzhou, part of the Blue Book
of Migrant Children (2016), drafted by the 21st Century Educa-
tion Research Institute, it costs over 200 million yuan (US$29m) to
build an elementary school and over 300 million yuan (US$44m)
to build a secondary school. Meanwhile, it has become a challenge
to provide the rapidly growing student population with qualiied
teachers. In 2014 alone, Gusu district received an inlux of 7,000
children after their parents moved in, and at least 450 new teachers
will be needed.
After the school segregation incident, local education authorities
communicated with parents of Qinxi students several times. he
south gate of the school has been reserved for students from Lixin
and the west gate is for students of Qinxi. Students of the two schools
can use the playground at diferent times. “he two schools have their
own teaching staf, buildings and school registration systems,” Xie
Fang said.
According to the Law on the Promotion of Non-public Schools,
when a private school is shut down, students have to be placed in
other schools. Xie said Qinxi is the closest to Lixin which has three
teaching buildings and 48 classrooms at the northern building. Its
southern building and the surrounding areas were cleared as tempo-
rary teaching classrooms for Lixin. When a new place is secured for
Lixin, the premises will be returned to Qinxi.
For many parents of Lixin students interviewed by ChinaReport,
erecting the steel fence is not a serious ofence. Parents of Qinxi
students, however, worry that the “invasion” into campus space and
teaching resources are highly likely to afect the healthy development
of their children.
Xu Bing is not sure whether he can ind appropriate premises to
relocate to this time. Students from Lixin have only prepaid meals
and part of their tuition fees and nowadays the school is virtually
operating at a loss. “he government is the last hope and I trust in the
government,” Xu said. At the time of going to press, the steel fence
remains. he only change is the addition of many lowerpots.
19
COVER STORY

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

20
 slIce and dIce
In underground plastic surgery clinics nationwide, China’s internet
celebrity hopefuls are gambling everything – going under the
knife in search of a face that will help them blend in, rather than
stand out. But many are left butchered in the process

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

21
COVER sTORY
Plastic Surgery
trading Faces
With China’s internet celebrity economy burgeoning, more women are undergoing
cosmetic procedures to achieve an appearance they hope will yield considerable proits
By Fu Yao
“
I’d rather be identically beautiful than distinctively ugly.” It’s a
common refrain for many of China’s young women.
A pair of wide double-eyelids, an arched nose, a round fore-
head, a pointy chin, straight brows and fair skin make up the prized
internet celebrity face.
he ubiquitous look has crept into every inch of society: on live-
streaming websites, countless pretty and nearly identical women sing,
dance or just eat in front of their fans; on e-commerce platforms,
products may vary but the models look like they were cast in the same
mould; and the public is increasingly inundated by billionaires and
ilm stars and regular women with uniform faces.
With the internet celebrity economy thriving amid the rapid
growth of livestreaming websites and applications since 2014, more
young Chinese are placing their appearance above all else as the key to
success. Unlike other plastic-surgery-obsessed cultures such as Japan
22
and South Korea, in China, plastic surgery has not been simply seen
as a way to gain self-esteem or increase one’s romantic prospects – it’s
an investment that can directly yield monetary beneits and buttress
a career.
Wanghong Economy
Like their western counterparts, Chinese internet celebrities,
known as wanghong, achieve fame on social media and in online com-
munities. hey share their lifestyle, experience, and opinions on their
platforms, interact with followers and guide them to shops, products
and other services. In the West they are referred to as inluencers.
Livestreaming has expanded at a breakneck pace in China since
2014, and having a pretty face is an asset that can earn one huge
proits. Good-looking people, whether male or female, can generate
considerable traic just by singing or dancing in a real-time video, or
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

Photo by zhen hongge
At an internet celebrity incubator company in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, the
manager helps a camgirl ix her makeup before she does a livestream
simply interacting with the audience. hese celebrities – most are not
professionals – use livestreaming as an efective tool to market their
shops or products and convert fans into real cash.
his internet celebrity economy has incubated a standard female
face of prettiness with featureless features: a pair of large oval eyes,
conspicuous double eyelids, a V-shaped jaw, a high nose and fair skin.
he quest for this distinctive look has lined the pockets of plastic
surgeons around the nation. China has the world’s fastest-growing
plastic surgery market, with a growth rate six times faster than the
global average, according to SoYoung, an app focused on the industry.
In 2017, an estimated 14 million Chinese people had some form
of cosmetic surgery, up 42 percent year-on-year, according to China
Money Network. And that’s not counting Chinese medical tourists
who go abroad for surgery.
In China, the demographics of those seeking cosmetic procedures
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
skew young massively. According to SoYoung, patients under the
age of 35 account for 96 percent of the total. Half are under 25, in
marked contrast to US igures that suggest three-quarters of consum-
ers are over 35.
Obtaining an internet celebrity face is quite simple, according
to popular cosmetic surgery blogger Pink Bear, who lays out the
standard procedures on Twitter equivalent Weibo: “Create a pair of
double-eyelid creases, arch the brows and open up the eye corners,
sculpt a high nose bridge, grind down the jawbone into a pointed
V-shape, plump the forehead and inject it with hyaluronic acid and
fat so that it looks round and soft.”
Some clinics ofer an internet celebrity package, consisting of
double-eyelid creation, eye-corner-opening, a nose job, a chin
implant, lip injections to create a parted lower petals shape, jawbone
grinding and Botox injections. One can have a totally new face for the
price of around 100,000 yuan (US$15,600).
Bought and Paid For
Teng Lu’s plastic surgery journey began in 2013 when she was just
18. Teng was moonlighting as a model for online shops on Taobao,
China’s biggest e-commerce platform. Shortly after she started, she
realised the women in the industry all looked beautiful – and that this
beauty was bought and paid for. his fuelled Teng’s desire to perfect
her own.
Teng is an attractive woman with a pair of big bright eyes and natu-
ral double eyelids. But she prefers Caucasian-looking eyelids with a
conspicuous crease, and feels her own lids are not dramatically double
enough.
To have a satisfying internet celebrity face, Teng chose a plastic
surgery studio over a certiicated hospital because she believed the lat-
ter would be too concerned about safety and stop short of giving her
the dramatic efect she desired.
She came across an online ad for a plastic surgery studio that ofered
cheap procedures and decided to try it. he operation, consisting of
double-eyelid creation and eye-corner-opening, was priced at only
10,000 yuan (US$1,500).
But the studio turned out to be a private bedroom in a shabby lat,
with a regular bed for an operating table and an ordinary household
lamp to light the procedure. Teng had no idea whether the surgical
instruments had even been sterilised.
“I was so reckless. It was a gamble. I kept telling myself that so
many other patients had successful operations so I would not be the
one who had bad luck,” Teng recalled.
One week after the operation, the Caucasian-looking eyes she
had hoped for had not materialised. But the efect was nonetheless
23
COVER STORY
Photo by zhen hongge
Teng Lu
dramatic – a pair of red, swollen eyelids and a scar in the corner of her
left eye. he surgery had been a complete failure.
“I broke down. I wasn’t ugly before, but the operation ruined
my looks. It was like a sharp knife cutting deep in my heart,” Teng
recalled bitterly. Depressed, she hid at home for three months. She
would later discover the examples of success on the ad were achieved
through Photoshop – a common practice among illegal plastic sur-
gery clinics and studios.
In recent years, more and more women who have been disigured
by botched operations carried out in unlicensed beauty salons or cos-
metic surgery clinics have rushed to hospitals for restorative work.
And the cost of repairing their botched faces are typically far higher
than the price of their initial procedure.
he price for a nose repair procedure ranges from 60,000 yuan
(US$9,370) to 120,000 yuan (US$18,740), Tina, a surgeon at a
Shanghai-based plastic surgery hospital, told ChinaReport.
Shi Lei, a maxillofacial surgery expert at the Plastic Surgery
24
Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, is known for
her skill in creating double eyelids. Nevertheless, she told our reporter
that last year alone, one-third of her work was “repairing the failures
of others.”
“You can’t imagine how hard the restoration work is! hose
unskilled internet celebrity face-makers only know how to open up
the eye corner – they don’t know how to repair it if they fail,” Shi said.
“Barbie eyes,” a new term used in the industry, has become a trend
among beauty seekers. It refers to extremely large oval eyes, and usu-
ally involves a controversial procedure called lowering the lower eyelid
(LLL) or lower eyelid shortening.
Imported from Japan, the novel procedure is designed speciically
for Asian women who desire large Caucasian-looking oval eyes. It
requires removing approximately four to six millimeters of the subcili-
ary skin (one-third to two-thirds of the lower eyelids) and shortening
the lower eyelid retractors.
“his is a risky procedure which can easily have complications. he
crux of the problem does not lie in the operation itself but the tech-
niques of the surgeons,” Shi explained.
he procedure is not scary as it sounds, Shi claimed, but compli-
cations are largely due to the malpractice of the quack surgeons in
unlicensed cosmetic surgery clinics. Many patients who undergo the
procedure wind up with swollen and inlamed eyes, double vision,
scarring or an asymmetric appearance.
Not all patients are suitable subjects for the procedure – only those
with a narrow, long, upward eye shape, Shi explained. But unscrupu-
lous surgeons are unlikely to pass on that information before they’ve
cashed their cheque.
Distorted Vision
“Barbie eyes, petal lips – cosmetic surgery clinics create plenty of
marketing terms, creating false hopes that you will be a goddess after
you undergo their procedures,” Pink Bear told ChinaReport.
“Livestreamers who found success early on gave their followers an
illusion that the [internet celebrity] industry is all about beauty. So
many immature girls got obsessed with this illusion and thought they
could make a fortune by changing their face,” Pink Bear said.
his is used by the plastic surgery clinics in advertising that employs
provocative language: “If you hesitate to spend money on your own
face, what makes you think that men will be willing to spend money on
you? he more beautiful you are, the more your chance of being loved.”
Pink Bear has written a number of posts about the risks of unneces-
sary procedures. She hopes her followers can have a healthier sense of
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
beauty. To her disappointment, many internet users still ask her how
they can get an internet celebrity face.
Shi Lei says China’s plastic surgery era has just begun. At an inter-
national academic seminar Shi discussed with Japanese cosmetic sur-
gery experts the current internet celebrity face mania in China. he
Japanese doctors told her a similar phenomenon occurred in Japan
thirty years ago.
In the 1980s, the most popular face in the Japanese beauty indus-
try was the Hollywood celebrity look. Japanese women longed for
faces with double eyelids and an arched nose bridge. Almost everyone
wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn. his obsession with Cauca-
sian facial structures lasted a decade until the Japanese sense of beauty
returned to the Asian norm, alongside rising national pride.
“In the past 20 years, Japanese cosmetic surgery patients have be-
come more reasonable. Many know exactly what they want when
they come to a clinic. hey don’t seek a signiicant change but just
some tiny adjustments which make their face look better without
being noticed,” Shi said, claiming that this is a healthy attitude to-
wards plastic surgery – making improvements based on one’s own

Photo by zhen hongge

individual features.
But this natural-style surgery faces resistance in China. “Can we call
it medical negligence if one’s face looks so natural after the procedure
that it’s like they never had one?” one plastic surgery recipient wrote
online.
“he internet celebrity face mania is chaos which comes from a
socially-distorted sense of beauty in the era of livestreaming. It is
further fuelled by illegal plastic surgery clinics,” said Li Bin, the presi-
dent of BeauCare Clinics, a Beijing-based cosmetic surgery corpora-
tion. “hose internet-celebrity-face-making clinics are violating the
basic principle of plastic surgery – it is basically an act of medical
treatment.”
A veteran industry player who entered the sector in the 1990s, Li
told ChinaReport that the industry has been slow to mature over the
past two decades.
“Compared with the past, today’s products have improved and
techniques been reined, but the ethics of the industry have not – in
some cases they’ve degenerated. Due to many corporate players’ long-
term pursuit of short-term interests, our society’s sense of beauty has
made little progress in the past two decades,” Li said.
Teng Lu, who had sufered a failed eye procedure, later had a
successful correction procedure in hospital. Now she has the pair of
Caucasian-looking big, bright eyes she so longed for. he experi-
ence did not scare her away. Instead, she has become a plastic surgery
A cosmetic physician tattoos a customer’s eyebrows
addict, undergoing regular injections of the facial iller hyaluronic
acid as well as Botox, she has come to resemble a kind of Eurasian
Barbie doll.
Her new look has brought success in her modelling career, more
job opportunities, and, she says, 10 times as much money as she used
to earn.
“If I didn’t do this job, I wouldn’t have had the nose job or injected
my chin with iller. But everybody [in the internet celebrity industry]
does it. You can’t avoid the inluence,” Teng said.
Some of her old friends believe her face looks unnaturally pointy
but she ignores them. To Teng, though her face might seem artiicial
in real life, it looks great in front of the camera.
“I have to make money in this industry. Most of the time I do my
work in front of the camera,” Teng said. “It’s a price I have to pay.”

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

25
COVER sTORY
Plastic Surgery
under the Knife, under the radar
soaring demand for prettier faces has created a large underground market for cosmetic surgery
– what’s known in China as medical cosmetology. But many of the ‘surgeons’ have no professional
qualiications, and leave customers mutilated and scarred
By Qian Wei
Y
ang Jinwen’s decision to undergo cosmetic surgery at her
regular hair salon must have seemed like a good deal at the
time – but it left her nose rotting on her face. A beautician
convinced the Shanghai woman, who had long desired a higher nose
which is considered a sign of beauty in China, to have her face in-
jected with a type of acid used in facelifts. Soon after the procedure,
Yang noticed the injected area was bleached white.
When she asked, the salon told Yang this was a normal reaction to
the procedure, and that her nose would heal after several days. But
when the pain became too much to bear, Yang rushed to hospital,
where a professional plastic surgeon told her that her nose had been
disigured.
“It was discoloured and had started to rot from the inside when I
saw her,” the surgeon, Wang Jigeng, told ChinaReport. “We had to do
an operation to cut open her nose and get the injected material out.
26
But since the injection had already penetrated into the nose tissue,
the operation could not avoid impacting her appearance,” Wang said.
Wang concluded that whoever administered the injection had
wrongly injected it into her bloodstream through a nose capillary,
instead of into the tissue.
Yang’s operation went smoothly but left her a large, obvious scar
on her nose which would not fade for a year. he major operation
required Yang to take plenty of bed rest, and she ultimately lost her
job at a large bank. Yang has sufered from depression and anxiety
since the incident.
She’s not alone. Numerous media reports have revealed wom-
en being disigured as a result of underground cosmetic surgery.
Experts say few customers are aware that a range of cosmetic proce-
dures, including many that don’t involve a surgeon’s scalpel, constitute
medical treatment and should only be performed by a licensed doctor
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

Photo by VCG
Women with a similar internet celebrity face at an anniversary
celebration of a bar in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, August 28, 2016
at a licensed hospital or clinic. “We have too many underground cos-
metic clinics and salons,” said Wang. “Too many.”
Alarming Rise
Wang, who graduated from a military medical university of the
People’s Liberation Army in 1984 and has been engaged in plastic
surgery for more than 30 years, says medical cosmetology is expand-
ing at an alarming rate. his unique Chinese term refers to all medi-
cal means, including medication, surgery and injections, employed to
improve one’s appearance.
“When I graduated, there were few dedicated hospitals and those
who worked in the plastic surgery departments of big, public hospitals
only took patients who had been disigured in accidents or disasters,”
Wang said.
“Few thought that plastic surgery should be done on healthy peo-
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
ple. Plastic surgeons were looked down upon by other surgeons at that
time,” he added.
Wang sees the growth of the industry as a result of China’s re-
form and opening-up, which got in full swing in 1992 when Deng
Xiaoping, during his Southern Tour, emphasised in a speech that
marketisation was not the essential diference between capitalism and
socialism, and encouraged the Chinese economy to more aggressively
open up.
Private businesses sprang up like mushrooms and government
organs also tried to get a piece of the pie. In the year of Deng’s speech,
Beijing-based Huangsi Plastic Surgery Hospital, the irst hospital
Wang worked at, established a cosmetic clinic and saw crowds of
people queuing for appointments. “It’s my turn! It’s my turn!” rang
out across the clinic each day, Wang recalled, and at peak times, he
performed more than 30 cosmetic procedures in a day.
“Public hospitals and clinics do not usually serve healthy people,
so medical cosmetology emerged to ill the gap. Given social medical
insurance did not cover it, there was a lot of space for commercialisa-
tion from the very beginning.”
In 2000, Wu Jianwei, a businessman from Putian, Fujian Province,
set up China’s irst private cosmetic clinic and made a pot of money
from the introduction of Amazingel, an injection used mostly for sur-
gery-free breast enhancements. “Amazingel sold for 25 yuan (US$3.9)
per millilitre then, and a breast enhancement needed several hundred
millilitres,” Wang recalled.
Wu’s fortune attracted loods of enthusiasts and before long Pu-
tian was a medical cosmetology hub. Although Amazingel was later
revealed to have terrible side efects, including causing inlammation
and even deformities, and was banned by the government, the medi-
cal cosmetology craze did not abate. Instead the available procedures
advanced and diversiied. According to a 2017 report by SoYoung, a
popular Chinese medical cosmetology App described as a plastic sur-
gery marketplace, the industry has grown an astounding 40 percent
each year since 2015, much higher than the global average of seven
percent. A report issued the same year by US pharmaceutical com-
pany Allergan found Chinese women’s monthly spending on medi-
cal cosmetology had doubled the global average level, and the China
Association of Plastics and Aesthetics once predicted that China’s
medical cosmetology industry would expand to be the world’s third
largest – valued at around 800 billion yuan (US$123.1b) – by 2019.
Practicing on Chickens
he rapid expansion is said to be in part due to Wu Jianwei’s trou-
bling innovation – the position of the “cosmetic consultant.” At irst,
those seeking medical cosmetology were received by the doctors who
would perform their surgery. For professional liability reasons they
tended to lay out the risks, which inevitably scared many customers
away. “Cosmetic consultants” thus came to take over the reception
work – diferent from surgeons, they treat medical cosmetology as an
ordinary product to be sold, and tend to exaggerate its efects while
27
COVER STORY
A young woman from Shandong Province live-broadcasts her rhinoplasty in
Beijing to crowdfund money for the procedure
holding back on potential risks and side efects.
“Medical cosmetology is a kind of medical treatment, and all medi-
cal treatment has risks,” Wang said. “For example, injecting acid into
blood vessels can cause tissue injury and even blindness. One side-
efect of double eyelid surgery is chronically dry eyes, and in extreme
cases patients may be unable to close their eyes. Meanwhile liposuc-
tion can cause cardiovascular disease.”
However, as these so-called consultants deliberately hide the risks,
many customers are misled and think medical cosmetology, especially
seemingly minor procedures, are risk-free and safe. hat all changes
when they ind themselves disigured and forced to repair their faces
at a proper hospital.
Jin Qi, who works in a plastic surgery department at a Beijing-
based public hospital, told ChinaReport that one-third of his patients
were in for these repairs – whether for restoring function or improv-
ing cosmetic efects.
Wang and Jin both claim cosmetic malpractice remains at a
low rate –  much lower than ordinary medical malpractice – but
unlicensed clinics and surgeons have contributed to a rise in incidents.
“During my time at Huangsi Plastic Surgery Hospital, I saw many
doctors from other departments shift to medical cosmetology, many
of whom were even older than me,” Wang told ChinaReport.
Experts say a professional plastic surgeon should have at least 10
years’ training before they can independently perform cosmetic
surgery. Unlicensed ones typically receive 10-15 days of training and
are said to practise their skills on chickens.
Worse, as the actual number of licensed cosmetic surgeons falls
far short of demand, many clinics secretly rent professional licences
from real surgeons to meet the requirement of applying for a busi-
ness licence. his means the actual number of licensed, professional
28
Photo by VCG Customs oficers in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, show off smuggled
cosmetic surgery injections, October 29, 2015
cosmetic clinics is even lower than oicial statistics suggest. All
of these have increased the risks of dodgy medical cosmetology. A
2015 report by he Mirror, a Beijing-based legal paper, revealed that
in the past 10 years when the sector was growing rapidly, customer
complaints about failed medical cosmetology totalled 200,000
– meaning 20,000 Chinese people were disigured or wronged by
medical cosmetologists every year.
Irrational Expectations
According to Wang, a professional surgeon is liable to refuse ex-
cessive or unworkable demands from customers, but many surgeons
have been swept up in the pursuit of proits. “Few would shake their
head in the face of money, especially given the pressure to perform...
and customers can simply turn to other surgeons if one refuses them,”
Wang said.
Li Zhanqiang, a plastic surgeon who works at the same hospital
as Jin Qi, echoed the sentiment. He said most customers are so de-
termined to become more beautiful that they will not give up easily.
“his group of people are generally hypercritical and place high de-
mands on themselves... hey have irrational expectations of medical
cosmetology, thinking it will transform them into [Chinese super-
stars] Huang Xiaoming or Angelababy after one small procedure. It’s
impossible,” he said.
On his public WeChat account, Li once listed 10 sins of those
who expect too much of medical cosmetology. hey include being
conceited, sceptical, greedy, unrealistic, and eager for quick success.
“Medical cosmetology is actually against nature,” Li wrote on his
WeChat public account. “You pay for going against the nature – not
just with money, but in pain, scars and various possible long-term
conditions brought about by procedures.”
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
 Li Bin, president of BeauCare Clinics, a large Chinese medical cos-
metic chain-clinic, however, has a diferent point of view. “Cosmetic
surgeons should be professional and experienced enough to tell which
are the customers with excessive demands,” he said.
“Issues seldom arise at licensed clinics, as the surgeons communicate
with customers about their demands, psychology and the purpose of
the surgery. Seen from this angle, cosmetic consultants are unreliable
and cosmetic clinics should bear full responsibility for failures and
Photo by VCG
surgeries gone bad,” he told ChinaReport, adding that overtreatment is
rampant in the industry where many clinics coax customers into un-
dergoing unnecessary treatments or altering their faces signiicantly,
regardless of the potential risks.
Customer education is Wang’s solution to the current crisis in med-
ical cosmetology. “It should be publicised that even minor procedures
that do not need a scalpel, such as injections and photorejuvenation,
are potentially risky and should always be performed by a licensed
surgeon at a licensed clinic. No matter who works the reception,
patients should have a clear idea about who is going to perform sur-
gery on them,” he said.
“People tend to ind an experienced and reputable doctor when
they have a disease, but when it comes to medical cosmetology they
care more about price. Medical cosmetology is not an everyday prod-
uct, but one in need of a set of medical solutions,” he added.
Poor Regulation
Guo Shuzhong, director of the Plastic Surgery Association under
the Chinese Medical Association, says the abnormal development of
the Chinese medical cosmetology market is part of the problem.
“he market is overheated,” he told ChinaReport, “Investment is
pouring in, even if only one-third of private clinics are actually mak-
ing money.”
A leading cause of such low returns is believed to be the high cost of
advertising, especially on China’s biggest search engine Baidu, which
has been criticised for taking payments from companies to increase
their search rankings.
Baidu was listed fourth in advertising revenue in Zenith Media’s
Top 30 Global Media Owners for 2017, with medical cosmetology
representing a large portion of its takings.
A 2017 report by Caixin, a Chinese inancial magazine, cited
a study by Guosen Securities which found marketing took up 50
percent of the total cost of medical cosmetology, with clinics spending
on average 6,000 yuan (US$923) to attract each customer. Although
a batch of medical cosmetology apps have emerged in recent years, the
search mogul Baidu still plays a decisive role.
In reality, apps have further increased competition, becoming yet
another platform for advertising medical cosmetology. Many people,
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Photo by zhen hongge
A 19-year-old girl in Qingdao, Shandong Province, prepares for her plastic
surgery which she hopes will make her look like Chinese actress Liu Yifei
some allegedly employed by cosmetic clinics, post their photos before
and after procedures, luring more customers to go under the knife,
and to pay more attention to their appearance. Medical cosmetology
is now so common that many live-streaming stars have their faces
surgically altered before they sit down in front of their webcams.
“Mercantilism has created a money-worshipping society where
good-looking people are more popular, gain advantages and make
money... With such ierce social competition, many hope they will
improve their prospects by improving their appearance,” Guo said.
However, the Chinese government has been caught of guard by
the burgeoning demand for cosmetic procedures. According to a
2017 report by GengMei (literally, more beautiful), another Chinese
medical cosmetology app, only 9,500 clinics in China have licenc-
es – about one-sixth of the estimated number of clinics. Hiding in
beauty salons and even homes, the unlicensed ones are thought to see
around two and a half times as many customers as licensed ones, and
employ around 150,000 unlicensed surgeons.
In May 2017, six government departments launched a joint crack-
down on unlicensed cosmetic clinics and surgeons, but the punish-
ments meted out were a soft touch. Typically, surgical instruments
were coniscated and companies ined no more than 20,000 yuan
(US$3,100). his did little to dent the growth of unlicensed clinics.
“We have to tighten up the punishments,” Guo emphasised
during the interview. “he underground market can be regulated if
the relevant departments want to do so.”
According to Guo, China has a number of large, high-quality
licensed cosmetic clinics and many, like Li Bin’s, hope to ight the
industry’s reputation for putting proits above people. However, with
the government missing in action on guidance and management,
these eforts will likely be too weak to reign in the chaos.
29
sOCIETY
Agronomy Education
GrowInG amBItIons
After being long neglected, China’s top universities are lining up to ofer
agronomy programmes in a bid to attract funding and gain higher status
By Yang Zhijie
O
n August 31, 2018, Sun Yat-sen University, a comprehen-
sive university in South China’s Guangdong Province with
a history of more than 100 years, established a School of
Agriculture, making it one of the few universities in China to ofer
virtually all major academic categories.
Since early 2018, at least six reputable universities nationwide,
including Peking University and Nanjing University in Jiangsu Prov-
ince, opened agricultural colleges at a time when business, law and
computer sciences were the most sought-after academic programmes.
As early as 2013, Deng Xingwang delivered a proposal to Peking
University about the establishment of a modern agricultural school.
Deng is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences and a for-
mer Daniel C. Eaton Professor at Yale University, specialising in plant
biology. In July 2014, he began to work for Peking University as a full
professor.
Having grown up in rural Hunan Province, Deng has personally
experienced rural and urban life, both in China and the US. He is
fully aware of the substantial gap between China’s and the world’s
advanced agronomies. His desire is that China’s drive to modernity in
agriculture will gain momentum, enabling “farmers to live like uni-
versity professors with dignity.”
Deng launched several start-ups in China years ago in a bid to
solve rural problems from the perspective of industry. Nevertheless,
he eventually came to realise that the establishment of agricultural
schools at top universities would prove to be the best solution.
Yang Weicai, deputy director of the College of Advanced Agricul-
tural Sciences under the University of the Chinese Academy of Sci-
ences (UCAS), told ChinaReport the school was established in early
2018 under the advice of Ding Zhongli, the university’s former presi-
dent.
In comparison with other universities, UCAS has a unique strength
30
in its 104 institutes nationwide, ofering support in research and
teaching resources, including more than 20 institutes focusing on ar-
eas related to agriculture. According to Yang, its agricultural college
specialises in agricultural sciences with a priority in cutting-edge top-
ics, including smart control and advanced materials.
Several agricultural experts and scholars ChinaReport interviewed
revealed that the fast expansion of agricultural colleges across the
country relects that the government has started to pay increased
attention to the development of modern agriculture.
“China faces severe challenges in preserving arable land and
water resources, as well as food security. It is urgent to develop modern
agriculture to solve rural problems,” Chen Yuling, Party chief of the
College of Agricultural Engineering under the Nanjing-based Hohai
University, told ChinaReport. Among the recently established agricul-
tural schools, Hohai University is the only one to admit students at
both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as the others only admit
graduate students.
Deng Xingwang told our reporter that one of the problems is
recruiting enough qualiied staf, and it can sometimes take up to
ive years to enable them to start an undergraduate programme.
he School of Advanced Agricultural Sciences at Peking University,
opened in late 2017, still has only 10 postgraduate students under the
supervision of 11 professors.
Shooting for Top Status
In addition to keeping abreast of modern agricultural development,
universities established agricultural colleges so they can better pursue
the title of double irst-class universities. Double irst-class refers to
“world-class university” and “world-class discipline” – programmes
released by China’s Ministry of Education in September 2017 as a
new impetus to develop the higher education sector.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
 Being a double irst-class university means more inancial support at UCAS, it was originally named the College of Future Agricultural
from the government and the ability to attract more top students. Sciences in a bid to distinguish itself from other universities. Yang
China has only 42 double irst-class universities and 95 universities argued that the college focuses on interdisciplinary research in agricul-
with irst-class subjects. he evaluation is conducted every ive years ture and the school will attach great importance to both fundamental
and those who were not added to the list in the last round are squaring and cutting-edge areas in the future.
of to ight for the title ahead of the new round of reviews. Deng Xingwang told our reporter that unlike many agricultural
Yang Weicai argued that under the current selection criteria, it is universities, Peking University has a great advantage in its multidisci-
easier for comprehensive universities to be awarded the title of double plinary background of being a key comprehensive university.
irst-class thanks to their overall strength.
What’s more, many research areas related to agriculture come under
the overall category of biology. “If quite a few universities compete
for the ‘double irst-class’ subjects of biology, the competition will be
very ierce,” he told ChinaReport. hat is also one of the main rea-
sons why universities have opened agricultural schools or are ofering
agriculture-related disciplines.
According to the disciplinary development outlines on agricultural
engineering at Hohai University, released in June 2018, the universi-
ty’s agricultural engineering course has a clear aim – getting to the top
ive in China for the study of agronomy and being awarded double
irst-class status in ive to 10 years.
Chen Yuling admitted that the College of Agricultural Engineering
under Hohai University was established as a major move to compete
for the title of “double irst-class,” adding that the university will give
priority to talent recruitment, scientiic research and the establish-
ment of a leading sci-tech platform in agriculture-related subjects.
During the major government reshule in early 2018, the Ministry

Photo by vcg
of Agriculture and Rural Afairs (MARA) was established after the
integration of the water resources and agriculture agencies. Chen said
that previously, universities mainly cooperated in research with the
Ministry of Water Resources, but after the government overhaul, uni-
Students perform experiments at China Agricultural University, Beijing
versities will communicate directly with MARA, in this way hoping
to gain more inancial support and resources.

Overcoming Prejudice
According to a 2008 PhD dissertation by Chen Ran from Xiamen
University on the development of China’s agricultural and forestry
universities, Chinese society has a strong prejudice towards univer-
sities specialising in agriculture and forestry, and it has become in-
creasingly diicult for them to attract talented students and teaching
staf. Universities in agriculture-related subjects have long been largely
overlooked, and they have relatively poor infrastructure and teaching
resources.
In the opinion of Yang Weicai, traditional agriculture teaching in-
stitutions are mainly ailiated to the sector, which maintains a long-
term relationship with agriculture-related government departments.
Scientiic investment and input from the government largely went
to research institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences, and it has become a major challenge for the College of Ad-
vanced Agricultural Sciences under UCAS to obtain funding from
the agricultural system.
Yang said that during the planning stages for the agricultural school
According to Li Qi, a professor with the Institute of Higher
Education under Beijing Normal University. he establishment of ag-
ricultural colleges at comprehensive universities is a good sign.
Li says that agricultural education should play a crucial role at uni-
versities. Some universities in the US, he said, developed and grew
stronger on the basis of agriculture-related subjects, and it would be
a great boon for Chinese agricultural development if comprehensive
universities in China would attach greater importance to the sector.
But Li also warned that if too many universities establish agricul-
tural schools in haste, it would be a great waste of resources.
Nowadays, virtually each province has an agricultural university
and it needs discussions and detailed planning before comprehensive
universities start up agricultural schools from scratch.
“An orderly development that suits the national or local social and
economic conditions should be the guideline to establish agricultural
colleges,” he said. “Blind mass action should be avoided.”

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

31
sOCIETY

Celebrity Tax Evasion

deBt and taxes

What started as a celebrity spat has embroiled Fan Bingbing,
one of China’s best-known and wealthiest ilm actors, in a tax
evasion scandal that is threatening to engulf China’s entire
entertainment industry
By Yu Xiaodong

Photo by vcg

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

32
S
ince Fan Bingbing, one of China’s
most famous ilm stars, disappeared
from public view in June, speculation
has been rife as to her whereabouts. Much
of that speculation was that she had been
detained by the authorities under suspicion
of tax avoidance.
Finally, after more than 100 days, both
the authorities and Fan herself broke their
silence. On October 3, the State Administra-
tion of Taxation (SAT) released a statement
saying that it had completed a tax probe into
Fan and had found that she and companies
represented by the superstar had evaded
taxes of 255 million yuan (US$36.8m).
he SAT issued a ine of 596 million yuan
(US$86.1m), and ordered Fan to pay a total
penalty of 882 million yuan (US$127.4m),
including back taxes, overdue penalties and
ines. If Fan makes the payment by an un-
disclosed deadline, she will be exempt from
criminal punishment, said the statement.
On the same day, Fan, who topped Forbes
2017 list of high-earning Chinese celebrities,
with an annual income of US$43 million,
issued a statement via social media apologis-
ing for the tax evasion. “For a long time, I
have failed to recognise the rightful relation-
ship between national interest, social inter-
est and my personal interest... I am deeply
ashamed and guilty [about what I have
done].” Fan said she accepted the punish-
ment and will pay the back taxes and ines
in due time.
Fan’s tax evasion scandal has touched on
sensitive issues of income disparity and taxa-
tion inequality between China’s rich and
poor. While the total penalty of 882 million
yuan is a huge amount, the fact that Fan has
efectively escaped a harsher punishment,
such as jail, has met with criticism from the
public. For many, it is a classic example of
how China’s super rich obtained their wealth,
evaded taxes, and then got away with it even
when they were caught red-handed.
Others drew comparisons to the case of
1980s actress Liu Xiaoqing who was con-
victed of tax evasion of less than two million
yuan (US$289,000) in 2002. Liu was ined
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
7.1 million yuan (US$1.03m) and served
one year in jail, leading people to ask if the
law had been applied fairly in Fan’s case.
But for the various players in the entertain-
ment industry, the storm appears to have just
started. In its statement, the SAT requested
others in the entertainment industry pay tax-
es owed by end of this year to obtain an am-
nesty from further punishment. For many,
the rhetoric suggests that the authorities may
expand the tax probe within the entertain-
ment industry, though how serious the threat
is remains unclear.
Yin-Yang Contracts
he tax probe was triggered in a quite
sensational fashion by a feud between Feng
Xiaogang, an award-winning ilm director,
and Cui Yongyuan, a former TV host, that
had been simmering since 2003. hat year,
Feng helmed the Fan Bingbing-starring
blockbuster Cell Phone, which saw Fan play-
ing an editor at a publishing company who
was having an afair with a hypocritical TV
host called Yan Shouyi, played by actor
Ge You.
Due to perceived similarities between the
ictional TV host and Cui, many thought the
character was based on him, although Feng
denied this was so. Nevertheless, Cui, best
known for hosting a show called Tell It Like
It Is at the time, was infuriated, demanding
Feng and his team apologise – which was not
forthcoming.
When it was announced in early 2018 that
Feng would make a sequel to Cell Phone to be
released in 2019, which would also star origi-
nal cast members Fan Bingbing and Ge You,
the feud between Cui and Feng that had sim-
mered for a decade and a half erupted again.
Cui, who has styled himself as a truth teller
following his high-proile campaign against
GM foods and a massive documentary proj-
ect focusing on China’s WWII veterans in
past years, declared that he would embark
on a personal crusade to bring Feng and “his
gang” down.
In early May, ilming began on Cell Phone
II, and on May 28, Cui published screenshots
on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, of a
contract that purported to show Fan being
paid the sum of 10 million yuan (US$1.4m)
and various other demands, including script
approval and access to two luxury cars, for
just four days’ work on the ilm.
More explosively, Cui then posted a sec-
ond contract showing payment of 50 million
yuan (US$7.2m) for the exact same work.
Known as yin-yang contracts, with one set-
ting out the real payment (the yin), and
the other yang contract showing a smaller
amount to be shown to the authorities for tax
purposes, the practice has long been used as
a clever means to evade tax in many sectors.
hey are believed to be widely used in the en-
tertainment industry in China.
While Fan denied the allegation, the ex-
posure sent shockwaves through China’s en-
tertainment market, with the ramiications
felt far beyond Fan and Feng. Many were
shocked at how much China’s celebrities are
making, and how much tax they may have
been evading. As the public outcry spiralled,
Chinese authorities released a decree that put
a cap on screen performers’ salaries at 40 per-
cent of the total production costs, with lead
actors receiving no more than 70 percent of
the total wages of the cast.
In the meantime, the State Administration
of Taxation responded that it had ordered
the relevant bureaus to investigate the issue.
hese moves immediately caused shares in
some of China’s biggest ilm studios to plum-
met amid fears that the investigation would
reveal more scandals. Hundreds of entertain-
ment companies and studios shut down their
operations, apparently to avoid possible tax
investigations.
Chinese media reported that in Khorgas,
a small border city in the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region bordering Kazakhstan,
more than 100 entertainment companies
and studios have been de-registered. Among
them were companies associated with some
of the biggest names in China’s ilm circles,
such as Xu Jinglei, known for ilms  Go
Lala Go! and Somewhere Only We Know, and
Vincent Zhao (Once Upon a Time in China),
33
SOCIETY
Fan Bingbing (C) hugs ilm director Feng Xiaogang before receiving the Silver
Shell award for Best Actress during the 64th San Sebastian International Film
Festival closing ceremony on September 24, 2016
as well as three companies in which Feng was
a major shareholder.
Khorgas has been used as a tax haven by the
entertainment industry for a long time, as it
not only ofered tax exemption for ive years
and a subsidy accounting for a big portion of
the business tax collected after the ive-year
period, it also ofered to reimburse a portion
of the personal tax collected by the national
government. Other similar tax havens to have
attracted ilmmakers include the cities of Xu-
zhou and Wuxi in Jiangsu Province. Fan has
three entertainment companies registered in
Wuxi. According to a report from sina.com.
cn, one of these companies reported revenue
of 34.7 million yuan ($US5m) in 2015, but
paid no tax at all for the iscal year.
he tax probe into Fan Bingbing coincided
with China’s ongoing tax reform. In July, au-
thorities announced that China’s provincial
and local taxation oices would be merged
into the national taxation system, which ana-
lysts said would put a stop to local authorities’
lax taxation practices. Following the SAT’s
statement on Fan’s case, the agency declared
on October 8 that it held the provincial tax
bureau in Jiangsu Province accountable for
its poor management. It also announced that
34
Photo by vcg
as a result of the investigation, a number of
oicials at the oice have been disciplined.
he SAT also declared that it has launched
a campaign to regulate tax payments in the
ilm and TV industry, as well as targeting vio-
lations and dereliction of duty by tax oicials.
As for Feng Xiaogang, so far the only
blowback seems to be that he has been cut
out of some ilms he also starred in, in-
cluding the Jia Zhangke-helmed Ash is the
Purest White, which premiered with him in
it at the Cannes Film Festival this year. here
has been no conirmation of a connection
between the tax scandal and his roles being
cut, however. He has been widely quoted
in media reports as saying that Cell Phone
II would be released on schedule, although
ChinaReport could not establish on what
occasion Feng apparently said this. here has
been no other oicial statement from the
ilm’s producers, nor indication whether Fan
will still have a role in it.
End or Beginning?
But despite the authorities’ tough rheto-
ric, many are doubtful about how far the
tax probe will go. Since the tax probe was
triggered, there have been numerous reports
A street scene in Khorgas
and discussions on the dark side of China’s
booming ilm industry. As China’s annual
gross box oice increased from 3.3 billion
yuan (US$476.6m) in 2007 to 55.9 billion
yuan (US$8.1b) in 2017, the industry is said
to not only be awash with serious problems
of tax evasion and fraud, but also to have
become a hotbed for money laundering.
As the current investigation has only
resulted in the punishment of Fan Bingbing,
who even escaped criminal charges, many are
disappointed over the scope and the scale of
the investigation.
Cui Yongyuan, who triggered the inves-
tigation, is among the most disappointed.
Acknowledging that he received a reward
of 100,000 yuan (US$14,430) from the au-
thorities for his whistle-blowing, a tiny frac-
tion of the ines levied on Fan, he wrote on
social media that he was deeply disappointed
that only Fan had been targeted. “How come
a hand of good cards brought this result?”
Cui asked, apparently referring the docu-
ments he handed over to the authorities.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

Photo by vcg
In previous online posts, Cui said that the
documents he submitted to the authorities
included many related to the Huayi Broth-
ers, China’s largest media conglomerate and
producer of both Cell Phone and Cell Phone
II. In his post, Cui suggested that the tax eva-
sion practices are so widespread within the
entertainment industry that it is impossible
that Feng and executives at Huayi Broth-
ers were not involved. “It had to be a gang
crime,” Cui alleged.
Saying that he now faces threats from “all
sides” and that he himself had been inves-
tigated by tax oicials and police as part of
the inquiry into Fan, Cui then turned his ire
onto the police, particularly investigators in
Shanghai.
Accusing Shanghai police of taking
bribes during the investigation, and pre-
tending to be tax oicials and summoning
him for interrogation, Cui said the police
appeared to be more interested in how he
obtained the evidence than the tax case it-
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
A scene from the ilm Unbreakable Spirit, starring Fan Bingbing and Bruce
Willis. The ilm’s scheduled October release in China has been cancelled
self. “My answer is that I found them in
rubbish bins,” Cui said.
he publicity surrounding Cui’s com-
ments prompted Huayi Brothers to release
a statement denying all the allegations,
insisting that all its contracts were drawn up
in accordance with the law.
Shanghai police responded on social media
that they had formed an investigation team
to look into Cui’s complaints, but had not
been able to reach him, a response he imme-
diately ridiculed.
“Why couldn’t you reach me after your
thorough investigation of my companies?”
Cui retorted.
his time, Cui went further, directly nam-
ing the oicial who should be investigated.
“You can start by probing the deputy head of
[Shanghai’s] Changning district’s economic
crime investigation department, Peng Fen,
whose son’s name is Peng Mingda.”
According to reports emerging on so-
cial media, Peng Mingda, also known as
Frank Peng, 27, is currently the president of
Auckland-based New Zealand Chinese TV
(NCTV), and he was said to be the head
of the Shanghai Hehe Film and Television
Photo by vcg
Investment Co before he left China. It is al-
leged that Peng Mingda was a major player in
a high-proile inancial fraud case in 2015 in
which he used revenue from the 2015 block-
buster Ip Man 3 to raise funds through vari-
ous crowdfunding platforms.
he allegation claims that for more than
six months, Shanghai police refused to in-
vestigate the case after investors reported
fraudulent activities to them, which allowed
Peng Mingda to lee to New Zealand with
the collected funds. ChinaReport cannot in-
dependently verify these allegations.
After attacking the Shanghai police, Cui
turned to the Beijing police, accusing them
of ignoring death threats made against him.
Cui said he has received numerous death
threats from several netizens and the private
information of his daughter, who is studying
abroad, was also published. “I reported the
threats to the police station ive times, but
police have not taken any action.”
So far, the authorities have not responded
to Cui’s new allegations. But as Cui’s new rev-
elations have led to renewed discussions and
publicity, it seems that the storm he brewed
in China’s ilm industry is far from over.
35
SOCIETY

Gender Views

Fragile masculinity
What makes a man a man? China has been pondering that
question of late as it goes through a millennial-led cultural shift
in ideas about gender
By Yi Ziyi

Photo by vcg

T
raditionally, many have seen China as a nation of unshak-
able gender roles. But in today’s popular culture, young male
Chinese celebrities can often be seen wearing (and market-
ing) makeup and beauty products. he term “xiao xianrou,” which
literally translates as “little fresh meat,” has emerged to describe the
young, handsome men leading this male beauty revolution.
Sections of the Chinese press expressed concern and even an-
ger that the younger generation was losing its masculinity with the
increasing prominence of androgynous-looking men in youth
culture. In September, a ierce debate on the deinition of masculin-
ity dominated China’s social media, fuelled by a television show for
teenagers. A number of parents and others worried that the rise of
efeminate male idols would have an adverse impact on China’s
young, even using derogatory and homophobic terms like “sissy” to
refer to them.
But in contrast with the older generation’s apparent fear of the femi-
nine, more and more Chinese millennials, who yearn for freedom,
individuality and diversity, are embracing a culture of androgyny and
gender luidity as they attempt to subvert conventional gender roles.
‘Sissy Pants’ Phobia
“If teenagers are sissy, then the nation is sissy” – the phrase went
viral in mid-September after the television show First Class of the New
Semester fuelled public antagonism towards efeminate males.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

36
 A joint production between China Central Television and the
Ministry of Education, the show is compulsory viewing for the coun-
try’s elementary students and parents on the Saturday night before the
autumn semester begins. Nevertheless, the show sparked ierce reac-
tions as it invited makeup-wearing male celebrities with appearances
deemed by many to be “too efeminate.”
Parents worried gender-neutral celebrities would inluence their
sons to behave in a feminine way at school. Online, there were claims
that the trend had gone too far and that these “little fresh meat” were
“poisoning” the young.
In a particularly ugly editorial, the state media outlet Xinhua News
Agency lambasted the celebrities as “sissy pants” who are “slender and
weak” and warned that “the impact of this sick culture on our young
generation is immeasurable.”
Beijing Youth Daily, which is run by the Beijing Committee of the
Communist Youth League of China, joined the chorus warning: “If
we put no limit on this trend, more people will be proud of this ef-
feminacy and our country’s masculinity will be in crisis.”
Another state outlet, the People’s Daily, took a more open-minded
view, calling for respect of diverse aesthetics and an appreciation of
inner beauty.
In late September, China’s authorities took the drastic step of put-
ting an “efeminate ban” on the entertainment industry, limiting
androgynous-looking celebrities from making public appearances on
TV and at concerts. As a result, for the sake of their own careers, many
of the idols washed of their makeup, put on more masculine-style
clothing and took pictures at gyms, showing of their muscles and
hormones.
Some celebrities have thrown their support behind the ban and
harshly criticised the efeminate aesthetic.
Wu Jing, the action star and director of the 2017 high octane
shoot’em-up Wolf Warrior II, China’s highest-ever grossing ilm,
claimed that the series relected his pursuit of “more real men, fewer
sissy pants.”
Famed director Feng Xiaogang also berated the little fresh meat
phenomenon, accusing young male actors of being “too timid and
sweet.” “Talent agencies should take most of the blame. hey make
young men wear thick makeup and make various kinds of alluring
postures with their slender bodies half-shown, half-covered loosely by
clothes. Sometimes I wonder whether they are running a brothel,”
Feng said.
On July 10, during a press conference for his new show, he Patriot,
Wang Hailin, the screenwriter of a number of hit TV dramas, includ-
ing he Eloquent Ji Xiaolan, absurdly labelled stars who conform to
the aesthetic as “male prostitutes.”
“When ilmmakers say they want some ‘little fresh meat’ to play
roles in their works, they mean they want some male prostitutes,”
said Wang, arguing that countries with an “advanced understanding
of aesthetics,” such as powerful Western nations, often demonstrate
a strong sense of masculinity, represented by popular actors such as
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Tom Hanks, Dustin Hofman, and Robert Downey Jr.
He claimed the little fresh meat craze threatened the younger gen-
eration. “Male actors represent national ideology. If the most popular
male actors in our country are feminine-looking ones, it will threaten
our national aesthetics. hey can exist, but they should not be re-
warded. We should not encourage people to take this direction.”
hese remarks, many with homophobic overtones, have been criti-
cised as male chauvinism. hese “sissy haters” were deemed by many
netizens to be displaying symptoms of “straight men cancer,” a neolo-
gism that describes a group of men who are stubbornly sexist and call
for the return of conservative values.
“I don’t like the style of those efeminate men. But it is deinitely
wrong to take them of the screens. It’s their choice and their right,”
commented Yang Yi, a Weibo user.
“Every cloud has a diferent shape, every lower a diferent colour
and every road goes in a diferent direction. he diversity of human
beings should be respected rather than be repressed,” wrote Zhang
Dahua, a Zhihu user and LGBT rights activist.
Some also point out that public antipathy towards efeminate men
is indicative of misogyny. “Softness, tenderness and consideration –
aren’t these good qualities suitable for a harmonious society? he so-
called masculinity of traditional gender stereotypes can be a hotbed
for violence, belligerence and extremism. In modern China, where
gender equality should be encouraged, our society still views mascu-
linity as superior and femininity as inferior. hese voices remind us
that Chinese women still face prejudice and discrimination,” feminist
Lin Dingding commented on Weibo.
De-gendered Trend
“I basically wear makeup every time I go out. For me, polishing
myself and maintaining a clean and neat look is a way of showing
respect to other people. And that’s not an exclusive right of women,”
says Zeng Shun, a 23-year-old Shanghai-based makeup blogger who
regularly posts male makeup tutorials on social media. Preoccupied
with his look and style, Zeng estimates he spends half of his income
on clothing and cosmetics.
“I don’t see anything wrong with a man using skincare and beauty
products. For me, men wearing makeup is a choice and a lifestyle. It
has nothing to do with gender identity. Straight or gay, men have the
right to choose their own comfortable way of expressing themselves in
their appearance,” he told ChinaReport.
he young blogger also links looking good to success in the job
market. “Wearing makeup makes men conident. Whether we like to
admit it or not, we live in a society where people are judged more and
more by their appearance. Nowadays, being good-looking sometimes
means chances and opportunities – it helps you stand out from the
intense competition,” Zeng said.
Zeng is one of a growing number of young Chinese men showing
interest in male beauty products and unisex clothing and displaying a
softer form of masculinity.
37
SOCIETY
Photo by vcg
Young male stars participate in the online reality show Idol
Producer
he total market for male beauty consumption in China is ex-
pected to reach 13.2 billion yuan (US$2.1b) this year, according
to research irm Euromonitor International. he irm estimates that
China’s male beauty sector will grow by 6.5 percent in 2019, well
above the expected global category growth rate of 4.9 percent.
Research suggests that the grooming needs of Chinese men are not
conined to basic, traditional categories such as shaving, but are also
expanding to less-traditional categories such as skincare.
According to the De-gendered Consumption: China’s Gender Trends
Report recently released by e-commerce platforms VIP.com and
JD.com, 96 percent of male online shoppers purchased beauty and
cosmetic products at least once last year. he report found that for
the past three years, the sales volume of male beauty products has
almost doubled year-on-year, with cleansing face masks being the
most popular choice.
Chinese male consumers’ exploration of beauty has not stopped at
skincare, for more and more are showing interest in cosmetic prod-
ucts, such as beauty or blemish creams, makeup-removal, concealers,
38
lipstick and eyebrow pencils. Millennials are the major demographic
driving the male beauty trend. One in ive Chinese men born in or
after 1995 use cosmetics or light makeup such as creams, lipstick and
eyeliner, the report shows.
Major cosmetics companies and luxury brands around the
world are employing gender-neutral marketing by working with
androgynous-looking brand ambassadors. Last year, French cosmet-
ics brand L’Occitane saw a double-digit sales growth after introducing
Chinese superstar Lu Han as its brand ambassador. Lu has won mil-
lions of hearts for his efeminate face and lawless skin.
Japanese cosmetics brand SK-II uses young musician Dou
Jingtong as its brand ambassador. Dou is the daughter of Chinese pop
diva Faye Wang and rock songwriter Dou Wei.
he 21-year-old artist, who sports a conspicuous chin tattoo, is
loved by Chinese millennials with her distinct musical personality
and natural androgynous style.
In addition to skincare and cosmetics, fashion is another area where
Chinese millennials challenge traditional gender roles to express
themselves.
“Androgyny has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It’s just
style, choice and self-expression,” said Wang Chen, a 20-year-old stu-
dent of Nanjing University. he irst time Wang tried on a woman’s
dress was at a comic convention at the age of 16. Wang was cosplay-
ing as Kikyo, a female character in the Japanese manga Inuyasha. He
has cosplayed as various female characters since. With a soft look and
slender igure, Wang has been praised for his close resemblance to the
characters.
Cosplaying gives him an opportunity to try out diferent identities
and experience the female version of himself. In real life, he prefers
gender-neutral clothes, and frequents the female sections of shops like
Uniqlo and Zara when looking for more variety.
“Seldom do people scold a woman for wearing men’s clothing.
hey say it’s cool and charming. But when it comes to men wearing
women’s clothing, they may say it’s morbid. It’s a double standard that
on one really questions,” Wang told ChinaReport.
Redeining Masculinity
Deng Xiquan, the head of the China Youth & Children Centre’s
Youth Institute, says the trend of blurring gender roles shows the
inner desire of Chinese millennials to declare their independence and
nonconformity from traditional mainstream culture.
Despite the inluence of efeminate Korean and Japanese actors and
pop stars cited by many analysts, Deng claims the rise of feminine
aesthetics among men is also down to rapid economic growth and a
stable environment. he modern lifestyle has challenged traditional
gender roles. Feminine temperaments, which are more cooperative,
considerate and understanding, may lead to better interpersonal
communication and less conlict.
“he seeming dominance of little fresh meat in popular culture
CHINAREPORT I November 2018

Li Jiaqi, born in 1992, applies lipstick during a livestream on Taobao, China’s largest online shopping platform in Shanghai, January 3, 2018
is a temporary cultural phenomenon, a result of idol-making and
gender-neutral marketing. Efeminate aesthetics constitute one part
of contemporary China’s diverse cultural landscapes, yet they remain
subordinate,” Deng told the People’s Daily, adding that it is unneces-
sary to exaggerate the negative impact since being androgynous is still
a choice of the minority.
Many Chinese millennials argue that the deinition of masculinity
should be re-evaluated. hey see real masculinity as relevant to one’s
character and inner qualities, rather than gender expressions and ap-
pearance.
“I ind it a rather silly idea to equate makeup-wearing, androgy-
nous-looking men with weakness or a lack of courage. To me, being a
real man means to be brave and responsible. One’s looks are irrelevant.
If a muscular, tough guy is misogynistic, has no sense of responsibil-
ity to his family and is even a domestic abuser, can he be called a real
man?” asked Zeng Shun.
“he public’s antipathy towards the little fresh meat phenomenon
is unnecessary. It relects a traditional, outdated, rigid and binary gen-
der view – traditionally, people believed men should be masculine
and full of strength, and women should be soft and tender,” noted
Fang Gang, a well-known sexologist and professor at Beijing Forestry
University.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Photo by vcg
From Fang’s perspective, gender is a crucial aspect of self, but it
has long been narrowly deined and rigidly enforced. Individuals
who contravene gender norms may face innumerable challenges and
misunderstandings. Even those who vary slightly from the norms be-
come targets of disapproval.
“In an advanced society, individuals’ gender personalities and
expressions might vary. hey have the right to choose their own gen-
der temperament and stay true to themselves,” Fang told ChinaRe-
port, encouraging people to be liberal and tolerant of gender diversity.
“It’s good to break free from gender stereotypes and embrace gen-
der diversity. Even if you do not like certain gender traits, you need to
respect people’s own choices.”
“Society’s gender expectations of men are much higher and more
rigid than towards women,” said Zeng, suggesting that men are the
victims of conventional gender stereotypes. Compared to women,
men have to face more restrictions when they choose androgynous
styles.
“We are still living in a patriarchal society where the masculine men
dominate the power of discourse. As you can see, women are generally
more tolerant and understanding towards efeminate men. Masculine
men might regard androgynous men a threat to their own gender
identity and gender expression,” Zeng added.
39
SOCIETY
Winter Sports
on thin Ice
Spurred by hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics and the commercial potential of ice sports, Chinese
investment is pouring into ice rinks. But technology and talent are still missing
By Qian Wei
T
hree enormous “white bubbles”
stick out, breaking the monotony
of the grey box-like buildings
around them in the western Beijing suburb
of Shijingshan. his is the Civic Ice Sports
Centre, the irst indoor ice rink in the area,
which opened in May 2017. Despite the
summer holiday, there were only a handful of
children training at the rink.
“he summer holiday is the of season,
since many children travel with their par-
ents... he busy peak is during the afternoons
and nights of ordinary days,” Song Gang,
vice-president of Tus-Ice & Snow Group,
which built the rink, told ChinaReport, show-
ing of a picture of the adjacent parking lot
full of cars.
In the past, Beijing’s ice rinks were con-
centrated in the downtown Chaoyang and
northwest Haidian districts. But as soon as
Shijingshan was designated as the location
of the organising committee of the 2022
Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the district
government decided to build 10 ice rinks
before 2020. Besides the Civic Ice Sports
Centre, another four have just been com-
pleted and will be used as training venues
for the Chinese national teams of short-track
speed skating, igure skating, ice hockey and
curling.
In January 2015 when China submit-
ted its application to host the 2022 Winter
40
Olympic Games, it pledged to promote ice
sports to the extent that a staggering 300
million nationals would participate in them.
Following the successful bid, the Chinese
government issued an array of documents to
fulil this promise, and building new rinks
turned out to be a crucial part, given that
China had few suitable rinks at the time.
Experts say China will need some 3,000
rinks to meet the needs of the 300 million
ice sports participants, but they also warn it
could take 20-25 years to build and support
such a huge number, far longer than the four
or ive years between now and the Winter
Olympic Games.
Unfrozen Rinks
It was in 2008 that Tong Wei, a former
businessman who works in ilm production,
decided to move into the ice rink industry.
hat year, China successfully hosted a “truly
exceptional” Olympic Games in the words
of then-International Olympic Commit-
tee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge. China’s
GDP also surpassed Japan’s for the irst time,
becoming the world’s second highest. Tong
said ice sports, which are popular in devel-
oped countries, would quickly rise in China
alongside its fast economic growth.
Tong then did thorough market research
on Chinese rinks and found that China had
few that met international standards, and
most of the existing ones were either closed
for much of the year, or had already shifted to
other businesses due to high operating costs.
“Huge power costs have disabled many
rinks. We had to pay a lot of ‘freezing fees’
to local rinks when we went to North China
for training,” Yu Tiande, former hockey di-
rector of the Winter Sports Administration,
General Administration of Sport of China,
told ChinaReport. “For a long time, Chinese
rinks were left idle, since few operators had
enough money to support a rink,” he added.
Yu used the speed-skating venue built
beside the Capital Gymnasium in 1990 as an
example. According to him, the rink was part
of government eforts to promote diverse
sports as they were to host the 1990 Asian
Games. By the time the venue was inally
torn down, the rink had only been frozen for
use three times. “It was too costly to freeze
the rink. he refrigerators alone cost around
6,000 yuan a day [US$1,200 based on the
exchange rate then],” Yu said. “We once
invited Japan to the venue, only to ind that
they did not believe that China, with a GDP
lower than Japan, could aford to even use
a rink. Japan was wise enough to send their
athletes abroad for training. hat was much
more cost-efective,” he added.
Commercial and private rinks were in
worse shape. According to a study by Zhong
Lili, an associate professor at Shandong Sport
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
University, the rink built by tobacco giant
Hongta Group, the irst in Kunming, capital
of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, was
suspended in 2013 when the condenser pipes
and ice machines broke down. A person in
charge of the rink apparently told Zhong that
the maintenance cost more than building a
new one, and they could aford neither. he
rink’s 2012 balance sheet showed that power
bills alone amounted to 1.83 million yuan
(US$290,000), while the rink’s annual rev-
enue was only 785,000 yuan (US$124,603).
According to Zhong’s study report,

Photo by zhen hongge

published in 2016, few rinks said they had
made a proit and around 30 had closed in
recent years, a igure Zhong predicts will con-
tinue to rise.
he Chinese government has actually
tried to promote ice sports since the 1980s Ice hockey players in a training session on an indoor ice rink, Wuhan, Hubei Province
when it proposed moving northern rinks
to the south. he strategy, however, did not
take efect until the past decade. Tong Wei
attributed the slow development to GDP per
capita. He claims people do not care about
sports until their country’s GDP per capita
reaches US$5,000, and that ice sports do not
become popular until a country’s GDP per
capita reaches US$10,000. In 2017, China’s
GDP per capita hit US$8,000.
“Currently, ice sports on the mainland are
still viewed as an elite sport for rich people,”
Tong said.

Out of the Cold

he coming Winter Olympic Games,

Photo by zhen hongge

however, are expected to hasten the process.
To deliver on their pledge to popularise ice
sports among at least 300 million nationals,
the government issued an array of documents
encouraging ice sports, and one of them A coach explains ice hockey techniques to his trainees, August 30, Haidian District, Beijing
states that China should possess no less than
650 rinks before 2022, including at least 500
newly-built ones.
Insiders say the industry grew quickly after
that. Yang Yifan, the deputy secretary-general “Rinks are popping up all over the country, no less than 1,800 square meters by 2022,
of the China Association of Refrigeration, and Beijing is seeing explosive growth,” Fan and at that time, Beijing plans to have a total
for example, told ChinaReport that while his Jun, founder of CenturyStar, a Beijing-based of 36 indoor rinks.
work once focused on cold storage and air skating club, told ChinaReport. Beijing already has 66 rinks already,
conditioners, in the past two years inquiries According to Beijing’s 2016 guidance doc- nearly half of which occupy an area of
about refrigeration of ice rinks have grown ument on promoting ice sports, every district 1,560 square meters (the standard of
signiicantly. of Beijing must build a new rink with an area North America’s National Hockey League)

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

41
SOCIETY
or 1,800 square meters (the Olympic
standard).
Unlike ordinary rinks, the Civic Ice sports
Centre in Beijing’s Shijingshan district is an
air-ilm structure, which is deined by the dis-
trict government as a “surface attachment.”
“It’s a brand-new type of structure which
is even excluded from the government dei-
nitions of building categories,” said Vice-
president Song Gang. “he structure’s main
purpose is to save costs. If the rinks were
built as ordinary buildings, they would
not have been approved so quickly, given
China’s complex formalities for commercial
land use... he new structure doesn’t need a
speciic type of land for construction, it was
quick and cheap to build,” he said.
It should be noted that since the new struc-
ture is not covered by any prevailing manage-
ment regulations, the rinks could not have
come to be without government support.
“We should thank the Shijingshan govern-
ment for supporting building the rinks. hey
were courageous to take this risk and gave us
opportunities,” he told ChinaReport. Song
revealed that as a State-owned enterprise, his
company keeps a good relationship with the
government, which has paved the way for
them to build rinks. But he then emphasised
that such rinks cater well to the government’s
demand for the rapid development of ice
sports.
The number of indoor ice rinks in China
42
Following the Civic Ice sports Centre,
Tus-Ice & Snow Group built another
rink in the tropical coastal city of Sanya,
Hainan Province. Song said many cities
have contacted him about rinks, and some
local governments have signalled they in-
tend to directly invest in developing some.
While Song admitted it generally takes six or
seven years to recover the cost of a rink, he is
optimistic about the future, considering the
promise of the government document.
Tus-Ice & Snow Group is only one ex-
ample of the numerous enterprises emerg-
ing now. Beijing-based Ice World Sport has
proposed building 100 rinks by 2020. Olymp-
joy Ice & Snow Sports Tourism, under Austri-
an company AST, announced plans to build
1,000 mobile rinks in China within the next
decade. China Resources Group claimed
they would equip every new shopping mall
with a rink.
“When China won the bid to host the
[2022] Winter Olympic Games, I felt glad
that I had taken the lead in the rink industry,
but now, it seems everyone has looded in,”
businessman Tong Wei said. “hey might
have been engaged in air conditioning, cold
storage or sewage before, and some had no
relevant experience at all. Anyone who had
a project in hand could enter the industry.
It has turned from a ‘blue ocean’ to a ‘red
ocean,’” he added.
Cold Water
Guy Evon Cloutier, the president of a
Canadian ice sports facility company and
also the vice-president of the International
League of Ammonia Refrigeration’s Asian
Branch, however, poured cold water on
the craze. As one of the people in charge of
building Beijing’s irst indoor rink in 1999,
Cloutier experienced the hardship of open-
ing and expanding the Chinese rink market
in the last decade, and he is now very doubt-
ful about the industry’s “overnight” boom.
Given the US and Canada have both spent
four to ive decades developing national rinks
to their current scale, he says it is impractical
for China to build several hundred new rinks
in just four years.
his view was echoed by Deng Gang,
a rink technician with the Winter Sports
Administration, General Administration of
Sport of China. He told ChinaReport that
most Chinese rinks have to import equip-
ment like ice sweepers and sprinklers to sup-
port them, and technicians like him are in
constant demand.
Visiting a new curling venue in Beijing’s
Shijingshan District, our reporter found that
the rink there had large discoloured areas
with water seeping in from the edges. Zhang
Ming, an employee of the rink, told Chin-
aReport that the discolouration and ponds
were caused by poor dehumidiication.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
 “he heavy humidity causes the beams to
drip and the ice to melt. In severe cases, it
feels like we need an umbrella in the venue,”
he said. “It’s a problem for many domes-
tic rinks... We have few technicians to give
design instructions and many rinks are reluc-
tant to switch on the dehumidiiers, given the
cost,” he added.
Tong Wei agreed, revealing that many
rinks have attempted to save money by
reducing the thickness of the ice or raising the
temperature, which has caused the ice to be
softer than needed.
“China’s small number of [past] rinks and
underdeveloped ice sports have led it to lag
far behind in designing, building and operat-
ing rinks... Due to bad pipe design, for exam-
ple, many domestic rinks cannot reach the
required temperature at their edges,” Yang
Yifan told ChinaReport.
“Due to poor design and management, the
power consumption of some domestic rinks
is often 20 times higher than that of a foreign
rink,” Zhang Ming said.
Refrigerants are another big headache for
domestic rinks. Since ammonia can explode
if it leaks into the air, many rink manag-
ers have chosen the more stable Freon as a
refrigerant. But the chloroluorocarbons
from Freon are known to exacerbate the
impact of climate change, and this has
attracted great concern from the United
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Nations. At the 2016 Conference of the Parties
of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that
Deplete the Ozone Layer, HFC, a type of
Freon, was listed as a chemical to be elimi-
nated from commercial use, with the devel-
oped countries required to cut down its use
from 2019, and China from 2029.
he type of refrigerant is of great
importance to the future operation of a rink,
especially those designed for Olympic use
like the Ice Ribbon, China’s new national
speed skating venue built for the 2022
Winter Games.
During the 2018 Winter Olympic Games,
South Korea was criticised for using HFC as
the refrigerant for all its rinks, and if the Ice
Ribbon follows, the criticism will be louder,
given growing concern about global warm-
ing. Worse, the rink might have to be rebuilt
years later when it fails the harsher future
requirements of international environmen-
tal protection organisations. Although some
insiders argue that currently, it is hard to ind
a perfect substitute for HFC, others believe
that venues for the Olympic Games should
be a model for the use of advanced technol-
ogy to reduce emissions.
“HFC is not the most environmentally
friendly refrigerant. Moreover, we could use
other advanced renewable energy technolo-
gies to reduce total carbon emissions,” said
Hu Min, director of the low-carbon emission
department of the non-governmental Energy
Foundation.
he thing is, advanced technology is not
easy to come by for many Chinese compa-
nies. “Existing refrigerants all have shortcom-
ings and the perfect solution is to develop
a new-generation refrigerant which is safe,
environmentally friendly and eicient. How-
ever, no domestic companies are capable of
doing that,” said Yang Yifan.
According to Yang, many foreign rinks
have adopted advanced indirect refrigera-
tion with non-polluting ammonia in which
ammonia’s risk of leaking into the air is mi-
nimised. Such technology, however, is not
within reach of Chinese domestic compa-
nies. “During a business visit to Japan last
year, I found a Japanese rink company had
improved its refrigeration system so much
that it had reduced the use of ammonia to an
incredibly low level. hat means the risks of
ammonia were also minimised. However, in
China, development of the industry and the
accompanying workforce – technicians and
managers – is far behind,” he said.
“Urban planners and managers should
think over how many rinks a city really needs
and how much the rinks will be used. It is
good to develop ice sports, but we should
keep the development at a reasonable pace
rather than [blindly] rushing [to an objec-
tive],” he added.
43
SOCIETY

Medical Reform

GenerIc
oPtIons
A series of incentive measures and new
policies have been adopted by the central
government and local administrations to
promote generic drugs
By Xu Dawei

Photo by zhen hongge

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

44
Z
eng Yixin, the vice minister of China’s National Health
Commission, announced in September that generic drugs
which have passed quality and efectiveness tests would
be prioritised for inclusion in the recently-updated national list of
essential drugs. “Health departments are also encouraged to purchase
and use generic drugs,” Zeng added, saying the national list would be
adjusted on a timely basis to include newly approved, efective and
reasonably priced medicines.
Just two days before the announcement, Jiangsu Provincial gov-
ernment released 15 new measures to promote research and develop-
ment of generic drugs to ensure their quality and include them in the
national health insurance system.
In April, China’s State Council began to increase support for ge-
neric drugs, with favourable policies. Soon afterward, local govern-
ments from Shaanxi, Heilongjiang and Guangxi provinces came up
with their own local promotion policies for generic drugs.
“hese measures are not isolated,” said Jiang Rong, a researcher
with the National Drug  Policy and Medical  Industry Economy
Research  Centre. According to Jiang, the new policies represent a
continuation of ongoing Chinese healthcare reforms which began in
earnest in 2015. Industry insiders say they could have immediate im-
pacts and completely reshule the industry.
Congested Market
For a long time, the speed of drug approvals in China has lagged
seriously, with a whopping 22,000 drugs currently on the waitlist, the
most in China’s history. Normally, a generic drug takes three or four
years to get to market. he long examination and approvals time low-
ers signiicantly the potential income of drug companies and delays
consumers from obtaining efective drugs.
Back in August 2008, the State Council released new policies
to reform the approval system for drugs and healthcare equipment.
Accordingly, generic drug reform began in earnest with a raft of new
policies issued.
On one hand, a big number of generic drugs are on the waitlist for
approval, while on the other hand, the market is congested with more
than 187,000 existing drug approvals. Of these approved drugs, fewer
than 50,000 are being manufactured, while the rest have not even
begun production.
Take Digoxin, a kind of heart medication. Eleven companies
in China have approval to produce it, but only two –  including
Shanghai Xinyi Pharmaceutical – are doing so at present.
“For companies, that approval letter is a kind of resource,” said
Jiang. One drug company owner, who asked not to be
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
identiied, told ChinaReport that many enterprises have obtained
approval letters, and some even make purchasing deals for these
letters. Behind this there are frequent price wars among drug compa-
nies over similar products. A signiicant number of domestic generic
drug producers make substandard drugs. At the same time, lack of
new packaging material, low quality APIs (Active Pharmaceutical
Ingredients – the active substances in drugs), outdated manufacturing
techniques, and a defective quality control system haunt the industry.
As a result, the gross proit rate is less than 10 percent, far lower than
the overall international standard of 40 to 50 percent.
“Domestically, in the past there was no regulation requiring generic
drugs to match the brand-name drug. Drug producers were certiied
as long as they followed domestic standards,” Jiang Rong told Chi-
naReport. He said generic drugs have little chance of replicating the
brand drugs. “Initially, generic drugs may copy brand drugs, then ge-
neric drugs themselves are copied two or three times, which results in
deteriorating medicinal efects one generation after another.”
Domestic quality is below Western standards in most cases. In the
US, regulations require the total quantity of ive kinds of impure ele-
ments in Azithromycin, an antibiotic, should not exceed 0.1 percent.
But in China, there is only one overall impurity requirement.
On July 5, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced it
had launched an investigation into Valsartan, a drug used to treat high
blood pressure and heart failure. Valsartan used an active pharma-
ceutical ingredient (API) from a Chinese supplier, Zhejiang Huahai
Pharmaceuticals, after batches were found to be contaminated with a
potentially cancer-causing substance.
he EMA said the contamination would have occurred as a re-
sult of “a change in the manufacturing process.” he substance,
N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), is an organic chemical from a
family of potent carcinogens. An oicial from the Jiangsu Provincial
medicine supervision department told ChinaReport that pharmaceu-
tical companies often pay little attention to potential carcinogens in
medical research in China as there are no domestic standards on this.
he National Drug Safety 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) clearly
put forward enhancing the quality of generic drugs and launching
a scheme to evaluate them. On March 5, 2016, the State Coun-
cil distributed guidelines on generic drug quality and evaluating
efectiveness, the starting point for nationwide evaluation of generic
drugs already on the market.
his means the generic drugs already approved must have the same
quality and efectiveness as brand name drugs. On May 28, 2016,
the former State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) released a
pending list of 289 kinds of drugs to obtain such an evaluation.
45
SOCIETY
Staff working in the lab of a pharmaceutical company in Jiangsu Province
“his is indeed a correction of past mistakes,” said Sun Zhongshi
from the Centre for Drug Reevaluation at the China Drug Admin-
istration. Sun told ChinaReport that generic drugs all require evalu-
ation, regardless of whether they are high or low-end products, in
order to improve the quality of generic drugs and chip away at the
dominant position of brand drugs.
Cutthroat Competition
he former SFDA required 289 kinds of generic drugs to complete
these evaluations by the end of 2018 or fail to receive a registration
certiicate. he requirement involves some 1,800 drug producers.
So far, 95 kinds of drugs have passed evaluation. “In Jiang-
su, up until now, the pass rate has been about 10 percent,” Wang
Zongmin from Jiangsu Provincial Food and Drug Administration told
ChinaReport. Wang said there were around 300 generic drug produc-
ers in Jiangsu, and a total of 1,100 approvals would be re-examined
46
Photo by vcg
during this round of evaluation. “By the end of this year, the best case
scenario is that maybe 100 approvals will pass the exam,” he added.
Sun Zhongshi estimated that around 60 percent of the approvals
inside China would be eliminated. “But the overall market will not
shrink,” he claimed. Statistics from the China National Pharmaceuti-
cal Industry Information Centre suggest that by 2020, China’s ge-
neric drug market could be worth some 1.4 trillion yuan (US$206b).
he generic drug industry faces cutthroat competition as new
approvals speed up and evaluations continue. According to national
rules, once three producers of the same kind of drug have passed eval-
uation, drug procurement will not consider other kinds of drug that
have not yet passed. hat means other producers of the same kind of
drug will be locked out of the market if they don’t hurry.
On August 17, the Jiangxi provincial drug purchasing service plat-
form announced it would adjust online purchasing qualiications,
claiming three producers of Amlodipine, a blood pressure control
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
drug, have passed, and that other producers would be eliminated
from the platform.
A technical director from a drug producer in Lianyungang, Jiangsu
Province, told ChinaReport it was a inancial challenge for most drug
producers to maintain high-quality manufacturing and management
of all the kinds of drugs that it produces.
“he purpose of the evaluation is to reduce the number of generic
drugs, and raise the quality of the drugs, so a reshule of the market
is unavoidable,” said Wang Zongmin, director of the Drug Registra-
tion Management Department of Jiangsu Provincial Food and Drug
Administration. According to Wang, the ongoing evaluation will not
lead to a shutdown of small- or medium-scale drug companies, since
they can still produce other drugs not included in the national list of
essential drugs.
No Time to Rest
But producers of generic drugs that have passed evaluation can-
not sit back and relax. Generic drugs are often shunned by public
hospitals, and it can take a long time for them to be included on an
individual hospital’s prescription list.
After a drug is included on the local online list for hospital purchas-
ing, the hospitals must hold a drug afairs conference and adjust their
own purchasing lists. Only then can doctors prescribe it. he whole
process can take years.
In February 2017, Qilu Pharmaceutical released a generic Geitinib
tablet onto the market. After obtaining approval, the cancer drug was
evaluated and found to have equal quality and efectiveness to the
brand name version. But there was more waiting while hospitals held
drug afairs conferences.
Doctors also shun the drugs. Due to their tarnished reputation,
many doubt the usefulness of generics. One industry research report
found that of 2,185 doctors surveyed, 87.5 percent believed imported
brand name drugs were of higher quality than local generics, and a
withering 1.1 percent of participants had more conidence in domes-
tic generics, while about 7.8 percent of the participants think the two
are the same.
One doctor from Nanjing Medical University Hospital told
ChinaReport that doctors prescribe drugs based on the drugs them-
selves. Some domestic generic drugs are simply not efective, they
said: “We dare not risk patients’ health.”
here is at present no policy compelling hospitals to prioritise
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
purchasing generic drugs, which has posed a hurdle for generic drugs
to replace brand name drugs in clinical settings. A document released
recently by the Jiangsu Provincial Government Oice vowed to
reform supply and adoption of generic drugs, stating the health
department would enforce their adoption and require doctors to
prescribe drugs based on the drug name rather than the brand name.
Another key aspect of the push to replace brand name drugs with
low-cost generics is reforming China’s health insurance payment
system. Consistency evaluation could make possible equal health
insurance payment for drug with the same China-approved drug names
no matter if they are brand name or generic drugs. “A patient then
could only get an equal reimbursement through health insurance no
matter whether they are branded or generic,” Jiang Rong said.
Take the cancer drug Gleevec as an example. he price for a pack of
this drug (which typically lasts a month) is 13,400 yuan (US$1,954)
while the price of a pack of Xiwei, a generic version produced by Ji-
angsu Hanson Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is 1,499 yuan (US$219).
According to the 70 percent reimbursement rate of existing health
insurance policies, patients who purchase Gleevec are reimbursed
9,380 yuan (US$1,369), while those who purchase Xiwei are only
reimbursed 1,049 yuan (US$153).
“So if a standardised reimbursement could be set up, say 2,000
yuan (US$292,) people would need to pay 11,000 yuan (US$1,605)
for Gleevec but nothing for Xiwei,” explained Wang Zongmin with
Jiangsu Food and Drug Administration.
Wang Yue, deputy chief of the Jiangsu Provincial Food and Drug
Administration, told ChinaReport that healthcare insurance should
start from the market, and relect personal payment ability and con-
sumer willingness. “he national healthcare plan should focus on
fulilling basic needs and securing drugs’ availability to the general
public,” Wang added.
In Jiang Rong’s opinion, to contain surging healthcare insurance
expenditure, the key is to reduce spending, and a transition from
percentage reimbursement to ixed-amount reimbursement for drugs
should be considered.
“Whether consistency evaluation becomes a one-time thing will
be decided by the implementation of follow-up policies,” said Kong
Xiangsen of Jiangsu Food and Drug Administration’s Drug Regis-
tration Department. Kong says the supply of generic drugs, pricing
and related healthcare insurance policies will together decide the inal
outcome of the reforms.
47
ECONOMY

Photo by vcg
Social Insurance Reform

Balancing the scales

Chinese companies worry the new social insurance collection system will add to
their burden. But the issue goes far deeper
By Zhao Yiwei and Xu Ming

C
hinese companies are growing
nervous about their social insurance
contributions. Recently, a glassmak-
ing company in Jiangsu Province, one of
China’s major economic powerhouses, made
headlines when a local court demanded it
pay 1.8 million yuan (US$260,870) for its
employees’ overdue social security bill dat-
ing back to 2007. Taxation authorities in
other places have taken similar legal action to
collect overdue social security contributions
from companies. hese cases renewed market
concern that increasing government expendi-
ture on social insurance will come along with
the upcoming implementation of a tougher
social insurance collection policy.
Starting on January 1, 2019, the basic social
insurance contribution in China will be uni-

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

48
Reforms to the
social insurance
system will affect
the majority of
employees in
China

formly collected by national tax departments,

which hold more information about the
income of both employers and employees
than social insurance agencies. he new
regulatory framework is expected to leave
much less room for companies to deliber-
ately dodge the fees, which has long been
common practice.
he high proile retrieval of huge cumu-
lative fees before the new policy comes into
efect has further fuelled anxiety that if all
employers have to do the same, many small
companies, which are already struggling to
survive, will go bankrupt. here are wide-
spread concerns that the country’s whole

economy will sufer.
In a swift response to the outcry, Chi-
nese Premier Li Keqiang stressed at a State
Council meeting on September 18 that all
places must keep their present collection pol-
icies unchanged until the reform is in place
next year, and no department is allowed to re-
trieve overdue social insurance contributions
at the discretion of local governments. Li also
asked relevant departments to study how to
reduce the social insurance rate to avoid bur-
dening companies after the regulations are
implemented.
While this has eased market jitters, the
dilemma of reducing social insurance con-
tribution burdens while easing the country’s
social insurance shortfall is yet to be solved.
Underpaid Contributions
According to a recent white paper on
social security released by 51shebao, an on-
line social security service provider for com-
panies, most enterprises now cover all ive
types of insurance for their employees – pen-
sions, health care, unemployment, work in-
jury and birth. his is progress, however, only
27 percent of the companies paid their con-
tributions in full in 2018. he number was
24.1 percent in 2017, the lowest since 2015.
Yang Liangchu, a specialist from the
The basic social insurance contribution in China will be uniformly collected
by tax departments starting from January 1, 2019
Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, revealed
that it is more common for labour-intensive
companies to pay contributions based only
on their basic salary instead of total income
(which comprises the basic salary plus bonus-
es and various subsidies for transportation,
communication, food, and more). Employ-
ers use this as a way to reward hardworking
employees and save on social insurance con-
tributions to reduce labour costs.
Fang Lianquan, a specialist in social in-
surance from the Chinese Academy of So-
cial Sciences, attributed the underpayment
culture to companies’ poor awareness of their
obligations and loopholes in the existing reg-
ulatory framework.
As he explained to ChinaReport, China’s
social insurance collection system is frag-
mented, with tax bureaus doing the work
of collecting and social insurance agencies
deciding the minimum and maximum
salaries subject to contribution in most
places. he complexity leaves room for many
Photo by vcg
companies to dodge their dues and causes
tax policy variations across diferent regions.
Furthermore, some local governments pro-
vided favourable social insurance policies to
attract investment.
Jin Lei, CEO of a biotech company in
Beijing, told ChinaReport that very few
companies will pay social insurance in full
like his company, which has a plan to go
public. Most of the companies dodge full pay-
ment by employing part-time workers, thus
employers are not obliged to pay social insur-
ance contributions, or could pay them based
on a fake wage level to decrease expenditure.
Meanwhile, concealing the actual wage
level of employees is sometimes a tacit agree-
ment between employers and employees.
According to Jin, employees sometimes don’t
want to pay either, feeling insecure about the
beneits they expect to get in the future and
preferring to take the money now – perhaps
to invest it or buy commercial insurance that
can give them higher and quicker returns.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

49
ECONOMY
People line up for information on how to get their pensions
Feeling the Pinch
Once the means for companies to shirk
their social insurance responsibilities are
blocked, many companies worry their opera-
tional costs will skyrocket, making it diicult
for some to survive.
Chinese companies’ tax rate accounted for
67.3 percent of their proits in 2017, rank-
ing 12th in the world, much higher than
the  global  average  of  40.5  percent, accord-
ing to a report from the World Bank that
surveyed 190 countries and regions. And its
social security insurance contributions, which
account for more than 40 percent of an em-
ployee’s total pay bill, are the second-highest
in the world. In social security contributions,
about 30 percent of the pay bill is paid by
employers and 10 percent by employees.
Sokon Industry Group, a company in
Chongqing dedicated to automobile research
and development, has set its own standards
for social security contributions based on its
employees’ salaries and positions, not their
50
Photo by cns
full salaries. here, social insurance contribu-
tions account for 19 percent of labour costs.
If they didn’t do things that way, the cost of
labour would increase by 12 percent, accord-
ing to the human resources department of
the company.
Liang Hong, an economist from China
International Capital Corporation Limited
(CICC), a joint venture investment bank,
pointed out that if all companies pay their
required social security insurance contribu-
tions, their overall expenditure on social
insurance will increase by 14 percent, leav-
ing 70 percent of Chinese companies feel-
ing the impact. According to recent CICC
research, that means the national social insur-
ance fund would increase by about 700 bil-
lion yuan (US$101.7b) each year. Research
by Shenwan Hongyuan Securities suggests
paying the social insurance contribution in
full would cause a decline in proits of 5.5
percent among irms listed at China’s A-share
market, with the net proit for listed private
companies expected to slide by 12.7 percent.
Jin Lei’s company has already abandoned a
talent plan after learning of the new policy. A
former employee with a private equity com-
pany in Beijing who asked not to be named
told ChinaReport the company had just ired
ive of its senior executives, himself included,
to reduce labour costs.
Many other companies interviewed told
ChinaReport that they would be more pru-
dent in adding employees and increasing
salaries, and consider cutting staf.
Some small companies where the new pol-
icy will have limited inluence are supportive
of the policy change. “If a company could go
broke simply from increased social insurance
expenditure, then the company is apparently
not making suicient proits. Social insur-
ance is not to blame,” Wang Ou, who works
at a media company in Beijing, told Chin-
aReport.
he majority of employees at her company
were born in the 1980s and most of them
care about paying social insurance, so the
company has been paying the contribution
in full.
Shi Zhengwen, director of the Centre for
Research in Fiscal and Tax Law at the China
University of Political Science and Law, said
worries over the new policy mainly come
from companies that have not paid their due
social insurance premiums, which consti-
tutes the majority in the market. he more
a company has dodged the fees, the bigger
the impact it will feel when the new policy
is in place.
Reducing the Rate
At the State Council meeting, Premier Li
also asked relevant departments to hasten the
process of iguring out how to reduce the so-
cial security costs after the new collection sys-
tem is in place. He noted that the reduction
could come out simultaneously alongside the
implementation of a new collection policy to
avoid increasing the burden to enterprises.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
 china
bynumbers
2.5% Y-o-y price increase of several main contributors to CPI growth in September
25
Year-on-year
growth of Chi- 20
na’s Consumer
According to a Shenwan Hongyuan Price Index (CPI) 15
Securities analysis, to completely balance in September,
out the impact on listed A-share private a seven-month 10
high
irms, social insurance contribution rates
Source: National 5
need to be reduced by nearly 14 percent.
Bureau of Statistics
hat’s not an easy decision. he gap of China 0
Vegetables Fruits Eggs Mutton Diesel Petroleum
in the social security  fund is becoming
increasingly pronounced. Even though
there is a surplus in the fund every year,
that’s only a result of increasing the iscal 39.4% us$70 billion
subsidies from the central government.
Without the subsidies, the gap between the Share of Chinese private enterprises in Foreign direct investment (FDI)
China’s total foreign trade in the first three flows into the Chinese mainland
income and expenditure of social insurance quarters of 2018 in the first half of 2018, an in-
could reach 458.1 billion yuan (US$66.7b) crease of 6% over the same peri-
in 2016, according to the CICC. Share of Chinese enterprises in the country’s exports in the od of last year, making it the larg-
irst three quarters of 2018, by ownership
As the tax department knows well, the est recipient of FDI, while global
real full income and salaries of companies State- FDI declined by 41 percent
and their employees and the cost of social owned FDI inlow to China
insurance contributions for enterprises will 10.5%
be clear once the national tax department 150
takes charge of contribution collection. Private
Analysts believe this will pave the way for Foreign-funded 47.9%
deciding the most reasonable rates. 41.6% 120
In addition, Fang stressed that
uniied national standards for contributions,
including the proportion of full salaries and 90
the baseline salaries subject to contribu- Source: General Administration of Customs of China
tions, must be set to ensure fair competi-
tion among enterprises.
60
he economic gap between devel- 2014 2015 2016 2017 H1,2018
oped and developing regions within
the country has to be considered when us$6.1 billion Source: United Nations Conference on
setting the standards. Fang explained Online retail imports in China via cross- Trade and Development
that the former, with a surplus in social border e-commerce sites by July, 2018, a
security funds, was less motivated to imple- year-on-year growth of 68%
ment the stricter collection system.
Besides, while there is no doubt about us$290 billion
the necessity of requiring employers to pay
Scale of venture capital (VC)
social security contributions in full, analysts under the management of more
have called for a grace period for struggling than in 3,500 VC companies
companies. in China, making China the
he competitiveness of Chinese compa- second-largest VC market
nies, the consumption power of Chinese globally
employees and the retirement years of Chi- Source: National Development and
na’s future retirees are all at stake. here is a Source: General Administration of Customs of China Reform Commission of China
delicate line to tread.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

51
CULTURE

Jia Zhangke

lost Brotherhood
Master writer-director Jia Zhangke tells ChinaReport about his latest
gangster ilm, Ash Is Purest White, a decades-spanning story exploring
the social and ideological changes overseen from the twists of fate of an
outlaw couple
By Wei Yanzhang

J
ia Zhangke has never forgotten one particular scene from his childhood: in the late 1970s,
in Fenyang, a small county in northwest Shanxi Province, dozens of boys from his primary
school decided to form a sworn brotherhood. he kids stole a piece of dried turnip from
the roof of a house and cut it into slices. hey shared the turnip, kneeled and kowtowed to each
other, and thus the brotherhood was sealed. Jia was one of these boys.
Decades later, Jia, already one of China’s most prominent ilm directors, revived the scene in
his latest gangster epic, Ash Is Purest White. At the beginning of the ilm, a group of mobsters
gather in a nightclub to pledge their brotherhood as they pour bottles of liquor into a pot before
drinking their share.
Released on September 21, Ash Is Purest White has become a big box-oice success and is Jia’s
highest-grossing ilm so far. he ilm centres on a tumultuous love story about a gangster couple
that transcends 17 years. he ilm also inds the director re-examining themes that he has ex-
plored over his lifetime in his ilms and writing: the passage of time, lost values, the predicament
of modernity and the dilapidation of parts of rural China.

Code of Brotherhood
Jianghu, which literally translates as “rivers and lakes,” refers to a network of communi-
ties that operate independently on the fringes of respectable mainstream society. hose living
in the jianghu – merchants, craftsmen, beggars, vagabonds, bandits, outlaws and gangsters,
follow their own moral code, which they view as superior to laws mandated by the government.
he jianghu concept has inspired countless ilms and novels, particularly wuxia (martial arts)
and action ilms.
Yiqi, meaning the code of brotherhood or a sense of obligation in personal relationships, is
the most essential value followed by adherents of jianghu. Relationships in the jianghu world
often take the form of voluntary kinship, with the sworn brotherhood being the most prevalent
form. Brothers are expected to put their brotherly relationships above all other commitments

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

52
 and create an environment of mutual support.
For more than two decades, Jia had dreamt of making a ilm based
on these concepts. Now the dream has been fulilled in his latest ilm,
Ash Is Purest White, in which he explores how a group of irm believers
of traditional brotherhood values have inevitably changed with the
march of time.
he story, told in three parts, begins in 2001 in Datong, a crum-
bling coal-mining city in Shanxi Province. Bin (Liao Fan) is a small-
time mobster who owns a nightclub and leads a group of men. Hong
Kong action ilms starring the likes of Chow Yun-fat had an inluence
on Bin, who expects to be treated as a godfather. His devoted girl-
friend Qiao (Zhao Tao), a terrifyingly independent and empowered
woman, claims that she is not part of her boyfriend’s jianghu under-
world.
In the meantime, a new generation of mob factions is growing,
ready to take Bin and his men down when given an opportunity. One
evening a sudden ambush by a gang of young bikers catches them
of-guard. When Bin is severely beaten by the violent youngsters, it
is Qiao who saves his life by iring of an illegal pistol that belongs to
Bin. After the couple is arrested, Qiao claims ownership of the gun, so
Bin gets out of jail after a year, and she has to stay in for ive.
After being released in 2006, Qiao has to cope with a totally difer-
ent world. Bin never visits her in jail and has moved to a town near the
hree Gorges Dam. Qiao ventures down the Yangtze River in search
of Bin, expecting to resume their life. After meeting various people
along the way and later being rejected by Bin, Qiao realises that noth-
ing stays the same and that there is no going back.
he third chapter of the story is set at New Year 2018. Qiao, who
never married, inds Bin back in Datong, though he is now wheel-
chair-bound after a stroke. Even though she has been rejected and
hurt by this man, Qiao silently takes care of the man and his wounded
pride, not only out of love, but more importantly out of her loyalty to
jianghu values that have vanished over the passage of time.
he ilm has been well-received for its feminist portrayal of the
character Qiao, a woman on the fringes who has wisdom, dignity and
an iron will. It is Qiao that seeks to restore the destroyed traditions
and values of the jianghu world and remains the same when other
characters change.
Zhao Tao, Jia’s real-life partner and his favourite actress, felt excited
when she landed the role of Qiao. In order to explore the character,
she read lots of reports and biographies about female criminals and
women in jail. She wrote a character history herself, imagining all
Qiao’s life experiences from birth to death.
Zhao initially imagined Qiao as a typical jianghu woman, strong,
Photo by Zhang Mo

tough and sticking to the jianghu code, but later she rejected this as-
sumption. “[Being a] jianghu woman is only one side of Qiao. Her
behaviour and actions are not merely those of a daughter of jianghu,
Jia Zhangke but, more essentially, as a woman,” Zhao told ChinaReport.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

53
CULTURE
A still from Ash Is Purest White
Fading Jianghu
One signiicant symbolic image in Ash Is Purest White is the golden
statuette of Guan Gong, a red-faced, long-bearded, sword-wielding
Chinese deity based on the historical Guan Yu, a third century mili-
tary commander. Guan Gong is widely revered by jianghu adherents
for epitomising righteousness and loyalty, which they seek among
themselves.
“What Guan Gong symbolises is the soul of jianghu culture,”
Jia told ChinaReport, “In history, Guan Gong hailed from Shanxi
Province, so Guan Gong worship plays a vital part in local culture.”
As a Shanxi native himself, Jia also used to be a worshipper of
jianghu and what it stood for.
In the late 70s and 80s, a time when entertainment and cultural
resources were seriously lacking, Hong Kong martial arts ilms
almost served as a religion for teens and youths. As Jia recalled, video
parlors could be found in every nook and corner of China, all playing
pirated Hong Kong martial arts or gangster ilms.
Jia spent much of his childhood in a dimly lit, small video parlor
thick with the odor of the tobacco and sweat, watching Hong Kong
martial arts and gangster ilms. Leaving the theatre, his head was still
reeling with the street ights, gun battles, fake bank notes, blood splat-
ters and luttering doves that were typical tropes of these pictures.
he ilms roused the imagination of a ictive jianghu world. Imi-
tating the gangsters on screen, Jia and his buddies formed their
brotherhood, took part in ights, borrowing the demeanor and
54
jargon. Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat, in particular, known for
portraying charismatic maia gangsters, was the teenager’s role model.
Nevertheless, the reality was nothing like so romantic and he-
roic as on the screen. After years of disorder, in August 1983, the
Chinese government launched a severe crackdown on crime, calling
for criminals to be punished “promptly and severely.” In the months
that followed, tens of thousands of mobsters were arrested. Many
were executed.
Jia cannot forget the scene when he witnessed his classmates and
“big brothers” being arrested, being paraded before the public with
their hands tied by a thick rope. “I was so shocked, as if my head had
been heavily hit by a club. It was at that moment that I realised I’d
already grown up and I had to say goodbye to those messy old days,”
Jia recalled.
he director has suggested that Ash Is Purest White in some way
relects his youth, with sentimentality and nostalgia for a lost jianghu
world. He stressed that what he is attempting to display is the real
jianghu culture and ideology rooted in people’s daily lives instead of
the imagined highly romanticised jianghu underworld in a ictional
wuxia setting.
“Jianghu in real life does not necessarily involve particular rules
and customs as they are shown in martial arts ilms or Hong Kong
gangster ilms. For example, workers at the same factory might very
naturally form an exclusive brotherhood; a small community might
produce its own ‘big brother’ igure; a group of people would establish
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
a strong connection out of a certain incident,” Jia told ChinaReport.
“What was the bond that connected them? In the past, it was
mainly the traditional code of brotherhood that bound them, and, of
course, having common interests also played a part,” he added.
In modern China, many jianghu traditions and values have been
lost. With the increasing inluence of free-market policies and the im-
pact of widespread urbanisation and globalisation, the brotherhood,
which used to be tied with loyalty and mutual support, has been
reduced to mere money relations.
“Nowadays gangs have transformed into companies and street
ights have a price list. here’s a joke in Shanxi about local mobsters
– two men had a ight and each called on a group of thugs-for-hire
to help them. he thugs from the opposing sides actually belonged to
one rogue company. So they took the money, just pushed and shoved
each other around a bit and then they went home together,” Jia told
ChinaReport.

Debate on Cinema Art

Ash Is Purest White has been well-received by ilmgoers with an av-
erage rating of 7.7 out of 10 on China’s content-reviewing website
Douban. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018
Cannes Film Festival.
But the ilm was harshly lampooned on social media by Hu Xijin,
outspoken editor-in-chief of State-run tabloid the Global Times, who
compared it to “stinky tofu” and called it “depressing” and “full of
negative energy.”
“Negative energy can attract audiences in a way like how opi-
um gets people hooked. But I still hope ilmmakers in China can
learn from Hollywood and Bollywood to produce more ilms with
normal views about what’s good and what’s evil,” Hu wrote on China’s
Twitter-like Weibo on September.
Jia responded to the harsh criticism in a lengthy Weibo post full of
wit and irony, which has been shared more than 68,000 times, receiv-
ing 128,000 likes and 30,000 comments.
“I believe energy is built on the basis of telling the truth as much
as possible. he truth is the most powerful source of positive energy.
Turning a blind eye to what’s really going on would block access to
facts and generate more negative energy,” Jia wrote.
“Your job is to report ‘a complex China’ and I am interested in tell-
ing stories about ‘complex characters.’ […] Regarding ‘normal views
about what’s good and what’s evil’ – what I don’t really understand is:
who should be the judge of what is normal and what is not?”
Jia’s response immediately triggered a vigorous debate online
on art and truth, with most netizens applauding his frankness and
joking about Hu’s narrow-mindedness. he most liked comment said
“Director Jia is not fake [‘Jia’ is a homophone for ‘fake’ in Chinese],
editor Hu is real nonsense [“Hu” is a homophone for ‘nonsense’]”.
The poster for Ash is Purest White
“Telling the truth shows the greatest empathy. Presenting a false sense
of peace and prosperity is the saddest thing to do,” another user wrote
on Weibo.
Jia expressed his concerns over the current “moralistic tendencies”
of the contemporary cultural environment during the interview with
our reporter.
“Chinese people in the 1980s had already transcended moralism
with regard to literary and art criticism,” the director pointed out,
stressing that audiences in the past were more open and liberal in deal-
ing with the relationship between art and morality.
“Nowadays, audiences often adopt a moralistic perspective to
evaluate a ilm, criticising some for ‘delivering wrong moral values’
or mercilessly attacking some works for touching on extramarital af-
fairs,” Jia said.
“But it is the vulnerability in human nature, the variety, subtlety
and complexity of human emotions and also relationship dilemmas
that art explores. hat’s why we have so many literary works and ilms
centering on LGBT [issues], extramarital afairs or even incest – those
are areas of human emotion that we need to understand. It’s artistic
degradation if we take the moralists’ stance and treat all these topics as
taboo,” Jia told ChinaReport.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

55
VISUAL REPORT

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

56

Ryo’s friends gather at a birthday party for
his son Wasora, where they enjoy home-
made cake, pizza and an impromptu
concert by a bonire
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
transcendental
In yunnan
Kamijo Ryotaro, a 30-year-old man from Japan, has lived in Dali in southwest
China’s Yunnan Province for the past seven years. Known by the nickname
Ryo, or ‘Mr six’, he is notable for living in a self-suicient manner that has
earned comparisons to the great American naturalist and writer Henry David
Thoreau.
Ryo sees his decision as an escape from the salary-man (white-collar
worker) lifestyle in modern Japan. Ryo’s father works for a successful
underwear brand and his mother is an English teacher at a training school.
Reluctant to follow his parents’ path, Ryo left Japan to see the world as
soon as he turned 18. Before settling in Dali at the age of 22, he travelled
as a wandering musician with a guitar and a self-made didgeridoo, a wind
instrument invented by Indigenous Australians. At a massage workshop
in Thailand he met his future wife Aya, a Japanese woman from nagoya,
who he describes as “very pretty, a bit boyish and exceptionally open.” The
two quickly fell in love but were forced to separate for half a year before Aya
eventually reunited with Ryo in Dali.
There, the couple has lived a simple, minimalist but creative life, eating food
they grow, making their own daily necessities and creating music with a
group of local and foreign musicians.
Ryo insists on using organic methods to grow his crops. The young farmer
never applies fertilizer or pesticide and seldom weeds. He believes it is good
to eat whatever grows naturally out of the soil, and does not mind if crops
and vegetables have been gnawed on by insects. He also has other ways of
maintaining a self-suicient lifestyle – performing in bars, running a snack
stand, doing massage and raising chickens. The couple has three children,
who were all delivered at home.
Ryo’s lifestyle has attracted like-minded people from China, the UK, France
and Argentina. su Ya, a former journalist, joined the small community two
years ago and recorded the simple but happy life of Ryo in the book Life of Mr.
Six. On the cover, Ryo writes, “I want to share my happiness with everyone,
no matter how small it is. If I can live a happy life, perhaps I will make others
happy as well.”
57
VISUAL REPORT Ryo harvests rice
with his son Wasora
and daughter Yuma

Ryo runs a snack stand at the food market, selling ramen

noodles and other home-made food. Behind him is Mr.
Sakai, a traveller from Fukushima who helps Ryo prepare
tables for customers

Aya and Yuma harvest rice. Aya is the

youngest child of a family in Nagoya, Japan.
She has yearned for an independent life
since she was young, and prefers to travel
alone

Ryo performs on the didgeridoo at a local

bar opened by one of his friends. Everywhere
he goes, he befriends music lovers he meets
on the road. Music breaks down the barriers
of language, culture and borders and brings
people closer to each other

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

58
 Ryo uses laxseeds to feed his chickens. He
takes delight in watching when the chicks
hatch, a special moment at the start of a
new life

In autumn 2015, Ryo stands

with his son Wasora after a
rice harvest

Ryo’s friend John sings a birthday song

to Wasora. Ryo’s little family in Dali has
attracted like-minded friends from different
corners of the world

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

59
OuTsiDein
Perspectives from within china
Lijiang
taking the tiger by the tail
Gateway to the Himalayas, Lijiang is an ancient city full of culture from the local ethnic communities,
as well as a perfect jumping-of point for hiking in the upper reaches of the mighty Yangtze River
By Francesca Triggs
I
n the northwest of Yunnan, a province
which stretches from the mountains of
the Himalaya to the jungles of South-
east Asia, lies the ancient town of Lijiang,
framed by the snowy peaks of the Jade
Dragon Snow Mountain. Previously a transit
point on the Ancient Tea Horse Road – think
the Silk Road, but for tea – Lijiang is known
not only for its breathtaking natural scenery,
but also as a site of cultural communication
between several ethnic groups, including the
Naxi, Tibetan and Bai communities. Such is
the beauty of the old town that it earned a
place on the list of UNESCO World Heri-
tage sites, drawing tourists from afar to wan-
der its cobbled streets. Sixty kilometres north
of the town, on the east of the Qinghai-Tibet
Plateau, is the spectacular Tiger Leaping
Gorge, one of the deepest river canyons in
the world. It is also considered one of China’s
most stunning hikes, providing both breath-
taking views, natural unpaved hiking trails
and an insight into the lives of the local Naxi
communities who live there.
Even though we only had two full days in
the area, we saw a great deal, and left again en-
chanted. We arrived in Lijiang on the bumpy
overnight train from the provincial capital
60
Kunming. On board we shared a compart-
ment with two bemused brothers from the
town of Shangri-La (also known as Zhongdi-
an) who ofered us sunlower seeds, cigarettes
and liquor. I think we made quite an impres-
sion on them – before disembarking they
informed us that they would like to send their
sons to the UK to ind wives. At 5:30am we
pulled into Lijiang, greeted by light rain – the
cooler weather here was extremely welcome
after the heat of Kunming.
We began the day wandering the old
town’s maze of cobbled streets, lined with
old-style teahouses, and smart shops sell-
ing the local speciality rose cakes and yak
meat. Following a devastating earthquake
in February 1996, substantial eforts were
made to renovate the town in keeping with
the original layout, restoring the original
architecture as far as possible in order to
preserve “historical authenticity.” One of the
town’s most impressive features is the system
of waterways which branches out across the
town and down its maze of narrow alleyways.
hese are fed by the waters of Black Dragon
Pool to the north of the town, which in turn
low from the springs of Jade Dragon Snow
Mountain. One could happily spend hours
in Black Dragon Pool Park, wandering along
the crystal-clear streams, watching the bright
green water weeds dancing in the current.
Expansive ponds relect the distant moun-
tain’s jagged silhouette, and the vibrant
colours of the Qing and Ming dynasty
pagodas lining their banks. he result is a
natural watercolour painting across the sur-
face, a still image interrupted only by the
occasional ripple of a swooping bird, or of the
surfacing of the brightly coloured goldish
inhabiting its depths.
In contrast with this vision of tranquil-
ity, come evening, the streets of Lijiang were
absolutely buzzing with people, noises and
smells, and near the main square, large rowdy
bars seduce passers-by with scantily clad table
top dancers and large quantities of beer.
he next morning, we caught an ear-
ly bus into the mountains for the Tiger
Leaping Gorge hike, which many people take
two days to do. We opted to disembark at
Qiaotou where we paid a local shop owner 80
yuan to drive us most of the way up towards
the Naxi Guesthouse – this initial section
is all road and no views, so can be skipped.
Alternatively, the bus can drop you at another
spot for a shorter loop walk, but this misses a
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Practicalities
The bus to TLG
leaves Lijiang around
8:30am, although
some guesthouses can
arrange transport earlier.
For those who choose
to take a longer trip,
staying overnight at the
Naxi Guesthouse and
then setting off early
in the morning, there
is a bus that leaves
around 3pm from Tina’s
Guesthouse back to
Lijiang.
Tickets to enter the park
cost 65 yuan (US$9.5) –
half price for students.
Lijiang can be reached
by air – the airport is to
the south of the city – or
Courtesy of Francesca Triggs

Courtesy of Francesca Triggs

train from Kunming,
which takes around 8-9
hours. There are frequent
bus connections from
Dali, Shangri-La and
Kunming.

Lijiang, Yunnan A traditional street in Lijiang

lot of the most beautiful scenery.
Unlike China’s other more touristy moun-
tain hikes, there were no other travellers in
sight here. It was also wonderfully quiet, bar
of course the odd dynamite explosion in the
distance – a large infrastructure project is cur-
rently underway to build a tunnel through
the mountain. After the Naxi Guesthouse,
the trail is marked intermittently with red
spray-painted arrows and blue signs. he irst
couple of hours of the trek were the tough-
est, constituting a seemingly never-ending
series of stone steps winding up the moun-
tain under a merciless sun. Before long one
reaches the dreaded “28 bends,” marked by
a warning sign scrawled in white paint across
the wall of a stone hut. Within this hut lurks
a lady issuing warnings to travellers that she is
their last chance of procuring drinking water
– this is a lie. Drinking water is available for
purchase at the top of the 28 bends, as well as
at homestay houses along the walk.
he bends were indeed tough, though,
and lasted about another hour, but we were
rewarded at the top by the most spectacular
view of the gorge. As we stood on the rocks
overlooking the steep ravine, the Jinsha
River (literally “Golden sands” the name
given to the upper reaches of the Yangtze
River) roared furiously below us, a thunder-
ous sound which echoed around the stun-
ning rock faces, their hues of black, grey and
white shining in the midday sun. For an even
more impressive view one can pay a mod-
est 10 yuan fee (US$1.4) to gain access to a
path leading down to an exposed clif edge,
guarded by another lady in a cardboard hut
(she waives this if you buy something from
her stall).
After trying, and failing, to capture the
beauty of the scenery with hundreds of
photos, we headed downhill through a for-
est, stopping for a very scenic lunch on the
roof of the Tea Horse Guesthouse. he next
stage brought with it ever more spectacular
Tolkienesque scenery, ferns brushing our legs
as we walked under black overhanging clifs,
dodging roaming herds of cows and goats. As
we approached Halfway Inn (which, mislead-
ingly, is not halfway but close to the end of
the hike), the temperature began to drop and
suddenly dark clouds were blowing across
the gorge. We hurried along the narrow clif
edge, scrambling over rocky landslide debris
and over waterfalls, keen to make it to the
end of the trail before the storm hit. Even in
good conditions the narrow path is not safe,
dropping of sharply down the gorge. One
stumble and you could be on your way down
to the river.
he hike ends with a steep half-hour
scramble down the mountainside to Tina’s
Guesthouse. Although this marks the end of
the longer hike, those who plan to spend the
night here may choose to continue on down
to explore the river. However, we were keen
to make it back to Lijiang that night. As eve-
ning set in, too late to intercept the last bus
from Shangri-la back to Lijiang and with no
taxis available, the landlady talked her grudg-
ing husband into driving us back for a total
of 450 yuan (US$65). We climbed into his
car as the sky darkened, setting of down the
winding road with stunning views of the
gorge just as streaks of lighting lit up the sky
ahead, thunder roared in the distance, and a
heavy rain began to fall.

CHINAREPORT I November 2018

61
essay
Hooked on Beijing
By Ceinwen Michael
I’ve been relecting a lot recently on why
I’m still in Beijing, on why it has me hooked.
I irst came here in 2001 and instantly fell in
love with the place. here was something ar-
resting about it – the people, the pace, the old
versus new, the neighbourhoods that felt like
villages within a megacity. Back then there
were only two subway lines, and now in 2018
there are 22. he city has grown massively
but still the same factors are present that keep
drawing me back. I’ll call these my 5Cs, and
here they are in no particular order.
Cuisine. Beijing is a foodies’ paradise.
When I was travelling around South Amer-
ica recently I realised I’d become a food snob.
Beijing had made me a food snob. Here, I
have access to the most incredible cuisine.
Firstly, all the cuisines of this vast country are
represented. here are fantastic restaurants
for all the classics such as Sichuan, Yunnan,
Xinjiang and Shaanxi in most neighbour-
hoods and for the more obscure, lesser
known provinces I can seek out the provin-
cial government restaurants. Old classics
like Dadong for Peking Duck sit alongside
pioneering new restaurants such as Haidilao
for hotpot. Korean and Japanese cuisines are
well represented and there’s amazing Western
food that’s on a par with other global cities. I
can dine somewhere upmarket for a fraction
of the price of home. hen there’s the food
ordering app Dazhong Dianping. When I
visit cities outside China I struggle to ind
an app that’s the equivalent – essentially a
foodie bible. hanks to this app I’ve illed up
on good food in many unfamiliar neighbour-
hoods of the city.
Cityscape. he city’s traditional alleys
(hutong), highways, modern architecture,
ancient temples, parks – I love this city. One
of the irst places I visited when I returned
recently was Jingshan Park, to the north of
the Forbidden City. he expansive views
out to the mountains in the north and west
then east to the CBD encompass some of my
favourite spots. You can spy some of the city’s
modern architectural gems like the Birds
62
Back home in Europe the pace
of change is so snail-like that you
barely notice it happening. Not
so in Beijing. The rapid pace of
development keeps you on your
toes
Illustration by Liu Xiaochao
Nest Olympic Stadium or the CCTV build-
ing, to my favourite ancient icons such as the
Forbidden City, Drum and Bell Towers and
the Confucius and Lama temples. his is one
of the world’s great cities and it’s undeniably
stunning.
Change. Back home in Europe the pace of
change is so snail-like that you barely notice
it happening. Not so in Beijing. he rapid
pace of development keeps you on your toes.
It’s exciting and lends a certain energy to the
city. I’m not saying all change is positive, but
a large amount of it is and I love exploring
new places that have opened or become more
accessible due to developments in transport.
Comfort. he fact is, I feel safer in Beijing
than I do in many other cities worldwide.
he risk of petty theft and crime is low and
I feel safe walking home at night, or having
my phone out in my hand while walking
down the street. he vast and reliable subway
system makes much of the city conveniently
accessible. It’s also still a bike friendly city de-
spite all the cars on the road, and new cycle-
only routes are currently under construction
as is the new airport. he bike sharing scheme
makes life easy, as does the convenience of
new phenomena such as online shopping
and express delivery and apps like WeChat,
through which you can seemingly organise
your whole life.
Community. Beijingers are a friendly
bunch. During a rainstorm recently I was
getting soaked on my way home when a
lady kindly lent me an extra umbrella she
was carrying, then walked out of her way to
take me to my door. I’ve lost count of how
many interesting conversations on a wealth
of topics that I’ve had with taxi and Didi
(China’s Uber) drivers over the years. And I
love how communal the city feels; life seems
to be carried on for the most part outdoors.
At dawn and dusk people are out in the parks
exercising, while the streets, markets, malls
and restaurants seem to be bustling almost
24/7. hen there’s the people. On a personal
level I have formed some of the strongest
friendships with people from Beijing, be they
Chinese or foreign. I have made friends from
many diferent provinces in China and from
many diferent countries around the world,
more than I ever did while living in London.
I disagree with people when they say Beijing
is not cosmopolitan.
Of course, my beloved city of Beijing does
have its shortcomings. Pollution is still very
much present; there are too many cars for my
liking; the music and arts scene is lamentably
small for a city of this size; increasing rents
are forcing more and more local restaurants
and shops to close. But the essence of the
city has remained unchanged. hat’s what I
love about Beijing, and that’s what keeps me
hooked.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
Breaking the Mould
By Amy Snelling
here’s a question that all property agents
ask during the dreaded lat-hunting process:
“Do you mind living on the ground loor?”
Honestly, it’s a question that I’d never really
questioned, assuming that I just knew the
reason why it’s asked. Security, obviously. But
as a fairly paranoid person with a penchant
for horror ilms and a vivid imagination, I’ve
generally leaned towards the “Yes, I mind”
demographic.
Anyway, summer rolls around. Desperate
to bring the sweaty slog of lat-hunting to
an end, and preferring a terrace over peace
of mind, I push aside terrifying visions of the
cat intentionally unlocking the front window
and sliding it open – leaving us a prime target
for burglars in search of a few pairs of worn
Feiyue sneakers and a rusty bench press – and
sign an 18-month contract for a ground-loor
lat. “You’re sure you’re OK with the ground
loor?” the agent presses. “We’re sure.” It’s a
perfect little one bedroom place. It’s got a ter-
race with a pomegranate tree and a string of
fairy lights. he kitchen gets loads of natural
light. he rent is incredibly reasonable. It’s
perfect. Too perfect...
Prompted by the agent’s “You’re sure?” we
ask if the area is known for issues with break-
ins then. “No, deinitely not. And there’s a
double lock on the door and the neighbours
are very vigilant.” He’s not kidding, it’s like
living in Fort Knox. But, after a few probing
questions, he doesn’t at any point mention
that there’s something much more terrifying
that ground loor lats are notorious for, espe-
cially in oppressively humid Shanghai: damp
– and its partner in crime – mould.
Now while this might be obvious or
known to a lot of people, not everyone is up
to speed with this chapter of Flat Hunting
101. Take me, for example, I’ve somehow
remained completely, blissfully ignorant of
damp crises – at least, in any serious way. Pair
that ignorance with a few other question-
able moves, say, picking a lat with no win-
dows at the back of a built-in wardrobe set
between an external wall and a bathroom…
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
The realisation that some
malignant force is brewing
comes late one night when I
accidentally knock a pair of
once-black shoes off the rack
to ind them a new shade of
dusty green
Illustration by Liu Xiaochao
It’s got all the trappings of a mould wonder-
land.
Picture this: it’s Shanghai, it’s summer,
temperatures are soaring and humidity is
high. My partner and I are broke after mov-
ing so using AC or the newly inherited de-
humidiier (should’ve been a sign) are a lux-
ury only allowed when we’re on the verge of
melting. And, somewhere, in the fusty corner
of a dark wardrobe a few mould spores are
quietly scheming. With military-like preci-
sion, they plan a full-on closet domination,
before advancing with a sneak attack on the
suitcases safeguarding the winter clothes,
swarming the shoes and storming onto the
unsuspecting furnishings in the living room.
he realisation that some malignant force
is brewing comes late one night when I acci-
dentally knock a pair of once-black shoes of
the rack to ind them a new shade of dusty
green. Horriied, but not yet aware, I care-
lessly toss the ofending item in the rubbish
and put the degradation down to age. he
lat is obviously sticky, but it’s summer, it’s
Shanghai, everywhere is sticky.
he next sign that something’s really up is
when I pull an also once-black coat out of
the closet to ind it that same shade of mould
green. I drop it of at the dry cleaners, and
seeing no more obvious signs of a bigger
problem, I brush the issue aside once more.
It’s the next day. he day when I unwit-
tingly go out wearing a top adorned with a
mould emblem and it dawns on me: we’re
under attack. Upon closer inspection of the
lat, things look bad. hings are bad. Sud-
denly, I can see it everywhere: fuzzy hues
of green where colours had once been. he
damp smell just… wafting. Actual health
risks aside, the destruction is incredible:
boots, coats, backpacks, blankets, the cover
of a Chinese textbook (probably should be
using that more regularly) – even the cat’s got
a fungal infection on his ears.
Confused as to why the landlord didn’t
give us a friendly heads up about the lat’s
damp problem, and unassured by his reassur-
ance that “it’ll only be this bad in summer,”
we launch our counterattack. Armed with
all manner of dehumidifying tools, bleach,
white vinegar, washing detergent and a roll
of rubbish bags, we wash, chuck and scrub.
Working our way through the carnage, one
thing keeps going through my mind: why
my Christmas jumper? Yes, my wardrobe
needs a sort out, but not like this.
After three nights, a bank-breaking laun-
dry bill and sacks of belongings that couldn’t
be saved, I think, let this be a warning: break
the mould before it breaks all your things.
And never assume you know the answer to a
question you don’t.
63
flavour of the month
Keeping Your Staples Stable
By Mina Yan
“I’m from Shanxi. We eat noodles.” So said
an older family friend curtly over dinner one
night as he waved his hand at a large plate of
steaming hot dumplings. It was one of my
irst visits to China and the sentiment puz-
zled me. What did your place of birth have to
do with whether or not you eat dumplings?
Do Italians only eat pizza and pasta? Do the
French only eat croissants? I’m from Califor-
nia – should I be forced to persist purely on a
diet of In-N-Out burgers and sushi?
As it turns out, diferent regions in China
have diferent staple foods that locals hold
dear to their hearts (and bellies), and it’s not
uncommon to see people shun carbs and
starches they are not accustomed to eating.
To understand this, it’s worth thinking
about the idea of “courses” as they appear in
Chinese meals, and where staple foods sit in
the hierarchy. When sitting down to a Chi-
nese banquet it may seem that everything
arrives on the table all at once, but there is
actually order in the chaos. Unlike a multi-
course meal in Western culture, where each
is removed before the next one is presented,
Chinese courses are stackable.
A typical pattern sees the meal start with
real chinese
wei chugui
Emotional cheating
With China’s divorce rate rising in
recent years, chugui – meaning cheating on
one’s partner – is often discussed, with some
exclaiming that loyal, exclusive marriages
are becoming rarer by the day. Wei chugui
(micro-cheating) is the new it-term. It refers
to a form of cheating which is not sexual in
nature, but is a subtle betrayal of the heart.
With “wei” meaning micro, and “chugui”
literally derail, wei chugui is derived from an
old Chinese metaphor that casts cheating on
64
a selection of cold dishes such
as simple salads and cold meats,
followed by a soup, and then a main
course round, which is always hot. he
number of dishes in the main course round
should match the number of guests at the ta-
ble. And then, when the guests reach the end
of this main course, the staple course appears.
he staple course is something starchy in-
tended to ensure guests leave the table feel-
ing full and satisied. Chinese cuisine isn’t
world famous for desserts, but on occasions a
dessert will be served – typically a fruit plat-
ter to aid digestion or something viscous and
bean based (and far less sweet than a Western
analog).
What’s that got to do with my family
friend from Shanxi Province? Diferent starch
dishes are popular in diferent regions. While
northerners love dumplings, in Shandong
Province you’ll most likely be presented with
a big plate of steamed buns (mantou) not un-
like the barbecue pork buns you ind at a dim
sum place – but without the barbecue pork.
If you’re dining in Shanxi, you’ll ind noodles
of every size and shape, while rice dominates
in Southern China.
one’s partner as resembling a train which has
run of its tracks.
No one can say exactly where the term
came from or how it achieved popularity, but
it has prompted many online to contribute to
a growing list of behaviours which constitute
wei chugui. Maybe you posted a selie online
in the hope that a certain person – not your
partner – would see it and “like” it. Perhaps
you posted about your bad day hoping to
elicit a response from that person. You might
As it turns
out, agriculture
plays a large part
in this. China’s rice
is primarily grown in the
south around the Yangtze River. hat means
hearty servings of rice on most dinner tables
there, in both the plain form and fried with
all manner of goodies. Northern China is
known for its rich soil and agriculture, and
lour is plentiful – meaning noodles abound.
Maybe the Shanxi man just wasn’t accus-
tomed to inishing a meal with dumpings,
and was using his regional identity to explain
that. he response could have been about fa-
miliarity and tradition. Chinese millennials
might be eager to try the latest food trend-
ing on social media, but many older Chinese
people have stayed put in their hometowns
for much of their lives. So they stick to what
they know and love. For those of us who
travel to China from afar, everything seems
exotic, and we’re excited by all the new culi-
nary discoveries and lavour proiles. But for
locals, Chinese food might not hold many
surprises. In the end, maybe it’s just a matter
of comfort.
wēi chū guǐ
even spend excessive amounts of time talking
to them on the phone or online.
Some joke that few people worldwide
could be said to be loyal to their partner
based on those criteria. However, some
relationship experts say these behaviours set
of alarm bells. Wei chugui could very well
transform into real chugui if not controlled.
And so the list is considered a good start-
ing point for self-relection by those who are
wondering if their relationship is at risk.
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
CHINAREPORT I November 2018
65
66
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