Category: Main

Escape. Tranquility. Clean air. These desires drive a growing exodus amongst China’s youth, abandoning crowded metropoles for serene country living.

Urban Fatigue Sets In

After decades of rapid urbanization, China’s major cities are bursting at the seams. Layers of concrete and steel crowd the skies. Gridlocked traffic and air pollution choke the streets. Workweeks stretch brutally long.

Stress, noise and contamination overwhelm citizens, especially younger generations. Seeking reprieve, more urban dwellers like 30-something banker Lao Hu opt to construct modern, minimalist homes deep in the countryside.

Spacious living areas, floor-to-ceiling windows, wraparound decks – rural properties allow breathing room and closeness to nature impossible in urban environments.

New Countryside, New Lifestyle

Over 80% of new single-family homes now build in rural areas to meet demand. “Young people today desire meaningfully different lives from past generations,” explains architect Xiong Yongkang.

His firm fields dozens of commissions annually from urban escapees. “They want the tranquility of the countryside with all the conveniences of modern city living.”

Eco-friendly construction, smart home technology, and modish interior design attract cosmopolitan aesthetics to unlikely settings. Solar power and geothermal heat enable low-environmental impact.

Youths disillusioned with cities require “an oasis where nature surrounds the home,” Xiong states. [H2] Why Countryside Over City?

Multiple motivations propel China’s rural shift:

• Pollution: Smog, traffic, noise, and construction make cities inhospitable. Rural areas offer clean air and serenity.
• Stress: Hectic commutes, long work hours, and congestion tax mental health. The countryside promises relaxation.
• Affordability: Despite higher property costs, rural homes remain cheaper than urban equivalents. Mortgages are accessible for middle-class citizens.
• Technology: Remote work enables location flexibility. High-speed broadband reaches farther, facilitating the move.
• Wellness: Nature contact and organic food appeal after city living. Rural settings promise healthier lifestyles.

The Allure Endures

Despite challenges like social isolation or limited amenities, China’s rural resettlement trend persists. The desire for tranquility continues driving urban youths countryside-bound.

Homebuilders oblige demand for modern, eco-friendly rural living. “Urban refugees” may someday outnumber city dwellers as populations decentralize.

For now, China’s concrete jungles witness the continuing exodus chasing cleaner air, open skies and the elusive pastoral idyll.

China’s leading internet company, Baidu, has unveiled its latest artificial intelligence (AI) creation – a conversational chatbot named Ernie Bot.

The bot, released on August 31st, 2023, represents China’s answer to popular Western chatbots like ChatGPT.

However, unlike its foreign counterparts, Ernie Bot comes with some unique limitations imposed by the Chinese government.

The Rise of Conversational AI in China

Ernie Bot’s launch signals a new phase in China’s ambition to lead the world in AI by 2030. The natural language model can converse primarily in Mandarin, but also understands English questions.

Baidu stated that Ernie Bot is now “fully available to the wider public,” following approval from Chinese authorities. Several other Chinese tech giants like Sensetime and Zhipu AI have also launched chatbots after government vetting.

Strict Censorship Around Sensitive Topics

While Ernie Bot can handle casual chit-chat, its responses are carefully filtered around topics deemed inappropriate by the Chinese Communist Party.

During tests, the bot avoided engaging in substantive discussion when asked about:

• The 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and massacre
• Taiwan’s status and autonomy
• The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama

Instead, Ernie Bot redirects users away from prohibited subjects. When pressed on Taiwan’s sovereignty, it repeats the party stance that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

This censorship aligns with China’s strict internet regulations and online speech control. The government maintains authority over technology companies to censor content and surveil users.

AI Ambitions Meet Reality

Ernie Bot represents both the potential and limitations of AI in China. While Baidu and its peers possess formidable technological capabilities, the government curtails unfiltered conversation.

For Chinese tech firms, the pragmatism is simple – obey censorship directives or risk being shut down. However, experts question whether restrictive chatbots can rival uncensored Western versions that allow greater nuance and depth.

Nonetheless, China remains laser-focused on leading the AI race. Chatbots like Ernie Bot are one pillar of its national strategy, even if conditioned conversation and total openness remain mutually exclusive for now.

The Future of AI Chatbots

• China will likely make conversational AI like Ernie Bot ubiquitous through integration with popular apps and widespread adoption.
• Chinese tech companies will continue releasing new chatbots, competing for market share locally while aiming to expand globally.
• Government oversight and censorship of chatbots will persist, limiting the scope of their autonomous learning and conversational abilities.
• There are concerns that chatbots like Ernie Bot normalize government censorship and surveillance for Chinese citizens.
• With China’s headstart in many AI spheres, it may set the standard for chatbots and other AI – for better or worse. This could see restrictive practices adopted in other countries.

The launch of Ernie Bot and China’s proliferation of conversational AI merits continued observation. Its future development and adoption will have far-reaching impacts on technology, censorship, and the AI landscape worldwide.

Aware of the environmental and societal risks posed by global warming, the Asian country, the largest investor in new energies, intends to be one of the world leaders on the climate issue.

China, which is committed to peaking its carbon emissions (by 2030) and then becoming “carbon neutral” (by 2060), is expected to be a major player at the UN climate summit in Glasgow in November (COP26).

In concrete terms, the new Chinese carbon market launched on Friday will force thousands of companies in the country to reduce their polluting emissions, or risk suffering economic losses. But how does this system work?

Ambitions lowered

For the first time, it sets pollution caps for companies. If they are unable to meet these quotas, they must buy “rights to pollute” from other companies with a smaller carbon footprint.

Questions remain, however, about the scale (smaller than the original plan) and effectiveness of the system (with a low price assigned to pollution).

China has been talking about the idea of a carbon market for a decade. But progress has been steadily hampered by the coal industry and by government policies that favor rapid growth at the expense of the environment.

The system will initially cover 2,162 Chinese power producers, Huang Runqiu, China’s environment minister, announced Friday.

Rising power

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), these companies generate about one-seventh of the world’s carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The American bank Citigroup estimates that 800 million dollars worth of “pollution permits” will be bought this year in China, and 25 billion by 2030.

The Chinese carbon market is then expected to be about one-third the size of the European Union (EU) carbon market – currently the largest.

According to the New China News Agency, however, China’s new emissions trading scheme is already “the largest in the world” in terms of the amount of emissions covered.

Originally, however, Beijing’s scheme was intended to be much broader in scope, covering seven sectors, including aviation and petrochemicals.

Ten times cheaper than in Europe

But the government has “scaled back its ambitions”, as economic growth is seen as a priority in the context of the post-Covid recovery, notes Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Clean Air and Energy Research Centre (CREA).

Another concern for environmentalists is the low price of pollution. The first trade on Friday morning was 52.7 yuan ($8) per ton of carbon.

And the average price is only expected to be around $4.60 this year in China, well below the $49.40 in the EU, according to a recent note from Chinese bank Citic Securities.

According to the British organization TransitionZero, the distribution of free pollution permits and the imposition of modest fines for non-compliance will keep prices low.

In short, while China’s environmental policy now appears to be aligned with its climate goals, “there is still a long way to go,” says Zhang Jianyu of the U.S.-based environmental group Environmental Defense Fund.

But Beijing has stressed that the carbon market is still in its infancy.

The risk of job losses

The program will be extended to cement producers and aluminum manufacturers as early as next year, said Zhang Xiliang, designer of the new system.

“The goal is to cover up to 10,000 emitting companies, responsible for about 5 billion tons of additional carbon emissions per year,” he said.

Other factors that could slow progress include a lack of technical know-how and pressure from powerful coal and steel lobbies.

Provinces that rely on coal and high-carbon industries for growth have been dragging their feet, notes Huw Slater of the China Carbon Forum (CCF).

“(Local) policymakers fear that if they cut pollution too quickly, it could lead to job losses and therefore social instability,” according to Slater.

Gone are the days when China was content to manufacture low-end products: it now threatens the world’s tech giants.

Hate waiting in line at the supermarket? Be patient! One day, you’ll just have to nod your head as you walk past a payment terminal with your shopping cart and that’ll be it. After scanning your face and verifying that it matches the photo on your ID card, the device will automatically debit your account. This service is not yet available in France, but it is already being tested in a handful of hypermarkets. In Japan? In South Korea? In Silicon Valley? No, in Mao’s country! Researchers from the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba have designed it. Everything is not yet perfected: for the moment, a double verification (you have to enter your phone number to confirm your identity) is required by the state, which slows down the process. But customers are reportedly very appreciative of this new service.

If you stopped at the episode where the Middle Kingdom was a simple screwdriver nation flooding the planet with plastic gadgets and endlessly duplicating inventions from Western research labs, you are going to be surprised. Because Alibaba is far from the only Chinese firm to make sparks fly with its scientists. Thousands of other local companies have embarked on a mad dash for technology. And, as always in this unusual country, they are thinking big. Drones, computers, electric vehicles, robots, smartphone apps, airplanes, satellites… their design offices are ploughing all kinds of terrain. For those who think it would take more to shake our Airbus and Boeing totems: in a few years, China will be able to market its first airplane.

800% increase in R&D spending

One figure is enough to measure the revolution underway in the land of chopsticks: in ten years, R&D spending has increased by 900% and is expected to reach $400 billion by 2022. The world’s major scientific journals are now filled with studies written by Chinese researchers, and the list of inventions and scientific advances made in China is growing. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), China now ranks second in the world for the number of patents filed, just behind the United States, but ahead of Japan. If Xi Jinping’s country continues at this pace, it should take the gold medal from the United States within three years. Before we were looking at Silicon Valley, now we are looking at China: it has gone from being a follower to a leader.

The Chinese are, for example, particularly well placed in the race for artificial intelligence (i.e. all the techniques that allow machines to imitate the cognitive processes of human beings), which, after the steam engine, electricity or computers, will most certainly be the engine of the next industrial revolution. And for good reason! The government has put 13 billion euros on the table since 2017 to boost this sector and has drawn a plan inspired by the American one last year. The result: half of the world’s investments in this technology have been made between Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou! “This summer, at the World AI Conference in Melbourne, a third of the papers were made by Chinese laboratories.” The country even has its own “Silicon Valley” in Zhongguancun, a district of Beijing.

The state has launched the “Made in China 2025” plan.

But how on earth did the world’s most populous nation transform itself so quickly into a tech giant? For one thing, the state is taking an incredibly proactive approach there. “The government clearly wants to take the lead in all these new sectors.” Competing with even more low-cost countries in its position as the world’s factory, the Asian giant has chosen to follow the example of its Japanese and Korean neighbors, who have long since converted to sophisticated industry. The state has a very strong hold on the economic sphere. Once the decision has been made, all it has to do is launch a new five-year plan to completely reorient its economy.

After having put a lot of emphasis on research activities, developed the training of its engineers on a large scale, encouraged the brains that had left abroad to come back to the country and showered companies with money to buy technological nuggets, the authorities accelerated the pace in 2015 with the launch of the “Made in China 2025” plan. The aim: to hasten the automation of factories and develop strategic sectors to wean itself off dependence on foreign technologies.

E-commerce, smartphones… powerful Chinese companies

The second reason for China’s fantastic breakthrough is that the country has an extremely powerful and dynamic industrial fabric with considerable financial capacity. Starting with its web giants, the BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi), the Chinese equivalent of Gafam (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft). Unlike those of the European Union, Chinese leaders have chosen to block some of the American platforms at the border, which has allowed the emergence of local companies, able to invest a lot of money in the technologies of the future thanks to their mountain of cash. Like their American counterparts, these companies are on the lookout in all areas. Alibaba, the Chinese Amazon, is an example: the group’s main activity is still e-commerce, but the company has expanded its field of activity to include payment, “new retail”, logistics, cloud, smart cities and autonomous vehicles.

The Huawei conglomerate is also a perfect example of the incredible dynamism of Chinese companies. Along with ZTE (China), Intel (USA) and Mitsubishi (Japan), it is one of the four companies that filed the most patents last year. Not content with having established itself as the third largest cell phone vendor, this telecoms champion has launched a race for innovation against Samsung and Apple. And not just to make up the numbers! At the time of writing, the young dragon seemed to be on the verge of beating the Korean behemoth by being the first to release foldable smartphones. With the casualness of challengers, the group had the luxury of announcing that it would create the first intelligent assistant capable of empathy.

Chinese people are fond of high-tech

Alongside these giants, the Middle Kingdom is teeming with start-ups, accounting for nearly a third of the world’s unicorns (young companies valued at more than $1 billion). One of them, SenseTime, specialized in artificial intelligence for facial recognition, has just raised nearly 600 million dollars! The growth of these technological nuggets is extremely rapid: according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group, Chinese start-ups need only four years on average to become unicorns, compared to seven in the United States.

A willing state, giant companies bloated with cash, an incredible fabric of start-ups… And one last player to ensure success: the population. In addition to being numerous (1.4 billion), constituting a gigantic market and being very well trained, the Chinese are indeed particularly fond of new technologies. While we in France are still struggling with contactless payment, they are already converting to mobile payment on a massive scale. To the point where they have practically ousted cash in their country. In China, the population has switched to the most innovative payment methods by skipping the credit card stage. Moreover, it is the young, more inclined to buy new technologies, who have money there, and not the older ones as in the West.

The American plan, approved by the Senate on Tuesday, to counter China in the technological field is not just another chapter in the Sino-American trade conflict. It is a major turning point that could have profound implications for Beijing, explain several experts.

Washington wants to put nearly $250 billion on the table to fund its technology war against China. The Senate overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday, June 8, a vast bill to remain “competitive” in the 21st century, investing heavily in advanced technologies while trying to slow down Beijing’s efforts to catch up or even overtake the United States.

“Do we want the world of tomorrow, shaped by those who will master the technologies of the future, to reflect our democratic vision, or are we going to let an authoritarian model like the one advocated by Xi Jinping [the Chinese president] take over?” said Chuck Summer, the Senate Democratic majority leader. “We are engaged in a competition to win the 21st century and the starting gun has been fired,” added Joe Biden, the US president.

Semi-conductors: a major issue

This very aggressive tone has strongly displeased the Chinese officials, who were quick to express their “deep indignation”. “We resolutely denounce this American vision of China as an enemy,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, interviewed by Reuters.

Beijing also has reasons to be upset by the content of the American plan. Especially by the commitment to release 54 billion dollars to develop the American semiconductor industry. The current shortage of these chips, which impacts a wide range of sectors – from the automotive industry to the manufacture of washing machines, smartphones or even electronic toothbrushes – has amply demonstrated their crucial role in the global trade chain.

But it has also become a major issue in the economic clash between China and the United States. “These semiconductors are essential for the equipment needed to deploy 5G; and control of this technology at the heart of applications such as connected cities, electronic cars or artificial intelligence, is one of the main battlegrounds between Washington and Beijing, “said Mary Reynard, a specialist in the Chinese economy at the University of Dakota.

For the time being, China remains very dependent on American know-how in this field and must, moreover, import these chips from countries allied to Washington, such as Taiwan and South Korea. Beijing has decided in recent years to invest in this sector, but the U.S. announcement “probably means that China will have to spend even more money if it hopes one day to catch up and gain some independence in this regard,” says Zeno Leoni, a specialist in Sino-American relations at King’s College London.

The plan voted by the Senate also includes provisions to counter certain Chinese companies in particular. The text provides for no longer importing drones built by Chinese groups “with a link to the military sector”, and wants to prohibit members of the U.S. administration to download TikTok, the social network created in China that is all the rage among young people.

Provisions that may seem anecdotal, but “it is a clear signal to Beijing that the time of vexatious measures against Chinese companies were not an anomaly of the Trump era,” said Andrew Small, a specialist in Chinese foreign policy at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

The state back as “in the cold war era

Beyond its content, the very existence of the text and its general philosophy pose a threat to China. Chinese authorities “might have hoped that the strong political polarization in the United States would complicate the adoption of any major text, but the large majority that supported this plan demonstrates that on the issue of competition with China, there is a bipartisan consensus,” notes Andrew Small.

This is all the more significant because this bill illustrates a change in the United States’ approach to countering China. “Until now, Washington has adopted a reactionary strategy that consisted of piecemeal sanctions on companies or the introduction of tariffs. With this plan, the United States is moving towards a more proactive approach, where the State is more involved in defining the strategic sectors to be supported – such as quantum computers, artificial intelligence and automation,” summarizes Zeno Leoni.

“We haven’t seen the U.S. government get so involved in defining priority technology sectors since the Cold War,” says Andrew Small. For Mary-Françoise Renard, “on many points, this program resembles an American version of the ‘Made in China 2025’ plan, which in 2015 set out Beijing’s roadmap for becoming the world leader in technology.

Beijing is thus faced with a new reality in which the American superpower is somehow copying the Chinese dirigiste model to increase its technological advantage and limit Chinese companies’ access to its innovations. In short, “this means that more than ever, China will have to invest so that the technology it needs is Chinese”.

From a financial point of view, this is not a problem since Beijing’s pockets are deeper than those of any other country. “But it also means that China will have to train more people to conduct the necessary basic research, and this is not easy, because it has some catching up to do and it is not the most attractive sector in terms of remuneration for young researchers,” notes the expert from the University of Dakota.

In the short term, this new U.S. strategy to counter China could penalize Beijing in this technological race. But if the Asian superpower succeeds in adapting to it, “it may be beneficial in the longer term because it is forced to accelerate its process of economic transformation to become technologically independent,” concludes Zeno Leoni.

China has a latent contradiction between its industrial use of cannabis and the maintenance of stringent anti-cannabis laws. The world leader in hemp production, it produces about a third of the world’s hemp and exports significant quantities to the United States. Although it shows a growing economic interest in the plant, its consumption remains a social taboo.

China – Israel partnership to be discussed

Last week, China sent a delegation to Israel. Including agricultural entrepreneurs and researchers, the Chinese delegation is expected to meet with its Israeli counterparts working in the medical cannabis industry. This visit marks the intention to initiate scientific collaboration between the two governmental sectors, according to A. Shmulewitz, CEO of Therapix Biosciences Ltd, who is accompanying the Chinese group. His company, based on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is working on the development of pharmaceutical products composed of cannabinoids.

The delegation will meet the eminent figures in research and industry who are currently working to create new products and discover new therapeutic applications for the plant. Israel is a world leader in cannabis R&D. About 70 Israeli startups are currently developing cannabis-related technologies or products. Moreover, the country’s government has just approved an export law. On the other hand, thanks to its large hemp production, a dynamic business sector, and many scientists, China has the potential to become a super-powerful cannabis power. It could greatly benefit from Israeli expertise in this field.

China’s cannabis industry fast growth

Despite the taboo on cannabis in China, Chinese companies are already positioned to reach foreign markets in Europe and America. In the Xishuangbanna Industrial Eco-Park in Yunnan Province, for example, CannAcubed produces CBD and hemp clothing for export to Europe. The Chinese investors stock market analysis site also announced that it was investing in the XiBiDi laboratory, which is to produce cosmetics and pharmaceutical products based on CBD. Chinese investors have also launched their own website which is responsible for delivering products containing CBD to all countries where it is legal. With the legalization of hemp at the federal level in the United States, the American CBD market promises to explode.

Chinese companies are also looking to develop new pharmaceutical products for patenting. Beijing-based investment firm HIG announced a partnership with the army to create CBD-based products that could treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The demand for such a product is extremely high in the United States, where veterans have been campaigning for several years to obtain cannabis legalization as a medical treatment. HIG has also partnered with Health International Industry Group, a Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical company, to develop new cannabis drugs. “We estimate that the sector will become an industry of 90 billion yuan (15 billion US dollars) for China within five years,” says HIG President Lan Bin.

China maintains stringent drug laws

Despite China’s emerging cannabis industry, its use (even outside the country) and especially its trafficking remain punishable by stringent laws, including life imprisonment and the death penalty. In a 2017 annual report, Amnesty International estimated that China had executed more people than the rest of the world combined, even though the number of executions remains classified as a state secret. China sometimes conducts public theatrical trials where it stages these convictions. In 2018, the public trial of 10 individuals sentenced to death attracted thousands of Chinese people to a stadium. Of the ten convicted, seven were charged with drug trafficking.

Since 2010, at least a dozen foreigners have been executed in China for drug trafficking. The most recent conviction is that of a 37-year-old Canadian, Robert L. Schellenberg, convicted of drug trafficking in a court in the northern city of Dalian. He had appealed against his first sentence (15 years in prison), but in the context of the deterioration of Chinese Canadian diplomatic relations, he was sentenced to death.

The Chinese attitude is, in some respects, reminiscent of Colombia’s contradictions, but in a much more extreme way. The latter has sought to attract the international cannabis industry and has gradually become a production platform. However, it has recently identified the use of small amounts of cannabis. This kind of posture is a sign of a gap between the economic and social vision of marijuana and shows that a form of liberalism does not necessarily accompany the development of the cannabis industry.

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