China
Home Economics: Free Apartment in Chongqing
A top gripe in China is the inability to find affordable housing. The government is responding with one of the world’s largest subsidized-housing programs. For some in Chongqing, that means a free apartment. Xiang Yuankun is a 26-year-old college graduate with a technical job at the iPad maker Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. In November, he moved into a brand-new, two-bedroom Chongqing apartment that has a living room, kitchen, bathroom and small patio. James T. Areddy/The Wall Street Journal A building of new subsidized apartments in Xiang Yuankun’s Chongqing neighborhood. His out-of-pocket rental charge: zero. Chongqing is at the forefront of a vast experiment in socialized real estate , a policy to make the housing market more economical with subsidized living for new urbanites, including young workers like Mr. Xiang. “There are still a large number of low income people who cannot afford housing. So I think it comes to the government to show its responsibility to provide them this housing,” says Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan . The mayor said in an interview the city’s goal is to subsidize up to 40% of local housing stock. It’s a goal with a hefty price tag, one Chongqing says is worth it and is affordable. Here’s how Mr. Xiang snagged a free apartment, which he describes as a “privilege.” Last February, he was working at a Hon Hai factory in Chongqing and residing in a company dormitory when he noticed “a lot of publicity” about opportunities to live in cheap apartments located a short bus ride away. Mr. Xiang applied online and within hours was entered into a lottery where the prize was a cheap rental apartment. Several of Mr. Xiang’s neighbors and residents of other subsidized apartment buildings in Chongqing told similar stories about how they won spots. To prove his eligibility under the rules, Mr. Xiang uploaded personal information to a government website: proof of a college degree, an employment contract, income below 2,000 yuan per month, about $315, and a current residence outside the downtown under 13 square meters, about the size of a parking space. On March 2, the lottery was broadcast on TV. Mr. Xiang missed the program but soon found out he had won by logging onto his computer. “It’s bigger than my dormitory,” Mr. Xiang said when China Real Time caught up to him weeks after he moved into the apartment in early November. He had just taken delivery of a refrigerator and a small spin-dry machine for washing clothes. “The sofa, air conditioner, everything you buy yourself,” he said, while collapsing the cardboard that boxed the items. There was no room to install the appliances in the narrow kitchen, which has a two-burner stove, a sink and a bit of counter-top. The drier was sitting on the small outside terrace, 26 floors above a roadway and more apartment buildings. The refrigerator fit best in the living-dining room, opposite a purple sofa and a cramped glass table with four orange chairs. In addition to his bed, Mr. Xiang’s own room had an upright wardrobe for clothes. His laptop was perched on a chair. He opened the door to the bedroom his roommate, a colleague, will take. “It’s a little bit small for two people,” he said, referring to the whole place. The bathroom is tight, with a shower that drains into the squat toilet. Residents who want warm showers can buy electric heaters peddled from the trunks of cars outside the complex’s front gate. Rosealea Yao, principal analyst at Beijing’s GaveKal Dragonomics, concluded in a recent study of Chongqing’s subsidized housing sector that the small size of some apartments suggests they will especially appeal to business owners as incentives to put factories nearby, since workers can live economically. “The design of rental housing also makes them more like dormitories for individual workers than permanent housing for urban families,” Ms. Yao wrote. Size isn’t the only compromise with Mr. Xiang’s new place. His neighborhood, though expanding massively with more than 55 buildings topping 30 floors, was carved out of farm fields and still has only rudimentary residential infrastructure. The food market is little more than a covered lane. While not far from his factory, the neighborhood is set more than 40 kilometers from Chongqing’s congested downtown. It is a new zone for universities and high-tech companies that is well over an hour’s drive from the city center on a highway that passes through two tunnels and that crosses a large bridge. The subway won’t link to the area until 2013. Now, the free part. The 58-square-meter apartment itself rents for about 535 yuan monthly, or $85. Mr. Xiang is splitting that with his Hon Hai colleague. And Mr. Xiang says his own employment package includes up to 400 yuan per month in rental reimbursement. That works out to zero rental cost. Mr. Xiang says his girlfriend and parents are pleased. He has an option to buy the apartment after five years. “Frankly,” Mr. Xiang says, ”what choice does a normal worker like me have?” –James T. Areddy; follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy
A top gripe in China is the inability to find affordable housing. The government is responding with one of the world’s largest subsidized-housing programs. For some in Chongqing, that means a free apartment.
Xiang Yuankun is a 26-year-old college graduate with a technical job at the iPad maker Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. In November, he moved into a brand-new, two-bedroom Chongqing apartment that has a living room, kitchen, bathroom and small patio.
- James T. Areddy/The Wall Street Journal
- A building of new subsidized apartments in Xiang Yuankun’s Chongqing neighborhood.
His out-of-pocket rental charge: zero.
Chongqing is at the forefront of a vast experiment in socialized real estate, a policy to make the housing market more economical with subsidized living for new urbanites, including young workers like Mr. Xiang.
“There are still a large number of low income people who cannot afford housing. So I think it comes to the government to show its responsibility to provide them this housing,” says Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan. The mayor said in an interview the city’s goal is to subsidize up to 40% of local housing stock. It’s a goal with a hefty price tag, one Chongqing says is worth it and is affordable.
Here’s how Mr. Xiang snagged a free apartment, which he describes as a “privilege.”
Last February, he was working at a Hon Hai factory in Chongqing and residing in a company dormitory when he noticed “a lot of publicity” about opportunities to live in cheap apartments located a short bus ride away.
Mr. Xiang applied online and within hours was entered into a lottery where the prize was a cheap rental apartment. Several of Mr. Xiang’s neighbors and residents of other subsidized apartment buildings in Chongqing told similar stories about how they won spots.
To prove his eligibility under the rules, Mr. Xiang uploaded personal information to a government website: proof of a college degree, an employment contract, income below 2,000 yuan per month, about $315, and a current residence outside the downtown under 13 square meters, about the size of a parking space.
On March 2, the lottery was broadcast on TV. Mr. Xiang missed the program but soon found out he had won by logging onto his computer.
“It’s bigger than my dormitory,” Mr. Xiang said when China Real Time caught up to him weeks after he moved into the apartment in early November. He had just taken delivery of a refrigerator and a small spin-dry machine for washing clothes. “The sofa, air conditioner, everything you buy yourself,” he said, while collapsing the cardboard that boxed the items.
There was no room to install the appliances in the narrow kitchen, which has a two-burner stove, a sink and a bit of counter-top.
The drier was sitting on the small outside terrace, 26 floors above a roadway and more apartment buildings. The refrigerator fit best in the living-dining room, opposite a purple sofa and a cramped glass table with four orange chairs.
In addition to his bed, Mr. Xiang’s own room had an upright wardrobe for clothes. His laptop was perched on a chair. He opened the door to the bedroom his roommate, a colleague, will take. “It’s a little bit small for two people,” he said, referring to the whole place.
The bathroom is tight, with a shower that drains into the squat toilet. Residents who want warm showers can buy electric heaters peddled from the trunks of cars outside the complex’s front gate.
Rosealea Yao, principal analyst at Beijing’s GaveKal Dragonomics, concluded in a recent study of Chongqing’s subsidized housing sector that the small size of some apartments suggests they will especially appeal to business owners as incentives to put factories nearby, since workers can live economically. “The design of rental housing also makes them more like dormitories for individual workers than permanent housing for urban families,” Ms. Yao wrote.
Size isn’t the only compromise with Mr. Xiang’s new place. His neighborhood, though expanding massively with more than 55 buildings topping 30 floors, was carved out of farm fields and still has only rudimentary residential infrastructure. The food market is little more than a covered lane.
While not far from his factory, the neighborhood is set more than 40 kilometers from Chongqing’s congested downtown. It is a new zone for universities and high-tech companies that is well over an hour’s drive from the city center on a highway that passes through two tunnels and that crosses a large bridge. The subway won’t link to the area until 2013.
Now, the free part.
The 58-square-meter apartment itself rents for about 535 yuan monthly, or $85. Mr. Xiang is splitting that with his Hon Hai colleague.
And Mr. Xiang says his own employment package includes up to 400 yuan per month in rental reimbursement.
That works out to zero rental cost.
Mr. Xiang says his girlfriend and parents are pleased. He has an option to buy the apartment after five years.
“Frankly,” Mr. Xiang says, ”what choice does a normal worker like me have?”
–James T. Areddy; follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy
Reforms started in the late 1970s with the phasing out of collectivized agriculture, and expanded to include the gradual liberalization of prices, fiscal decentralization, increased autonomy for state enterprises, the foundation of a diversified banking system, the development of stock markets, the rapid growth of the non-state sector, and the opening to foreign trade and investment.
The Chinese government seeks to add energy production capacity from sources other than coal and oil, and is focusing on nuclear and other alternative energy development.
The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy after the United States by both nominal GDP ($5 trillion in 2009) and by purchasing power parity ($8.77 trillion in 2009).
Available energy is insufficient to run at fully installed industrial capacity, and the transport system is inadequate to move sufficient quantities of such critical items as coal.
The two sectors have differed in many respects.
The technological level and quality standards of its industry as a whole are still fairly low, notwithstanding a marked change since 2000, spurred in part by foreign investment.
By the early 1990s these subsidies began to be eliminated, in large part due to China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which carried with it requirements for further economic liberalization and deregulation.
Globally, foreign investment decreased by almost 40 percent last year amid the financial downturn and is expected to show only marginal growth this year.
From January to June, the ODI in financial sectors was up by 44 percent to $17.9 billion, and in July alone, the ODI recorded $8.91 billion, the highest this year.
China is expected to have 200 million cars on the road by 2020, increasing pressure on energy security and the environment, government officials said yesterday.
Although China is still a developing country with a relatively low per capita income, it has experienced tremendous economic growth since the late 1970s.
Agriculture is by far the leading occupation, involving over 50% of the population, although extensive rough, high terrain and large arid areas – especially in the west and north – limit cultivation to only about 10% of the land surface.
In terms of cash crops, China ranks first in cotton and tobacco and is an important producer of oilseeds, silk, tea, ramie, jute, hemp, sugarcane, and sugar beets.
Livestock raising on a large scale is confined to the border regions and provinces in the north and west; it is mainly of the nomadic pastoral type.
Coal is the most abundant mineral (China ranks first in coal production); high-quality, easily mined coal is found throughout the country, but especially in the north and northeast.
China is among the world’s four top producers of antimony, magnesium, tin, tungsten, and zinc, and ranks second (after the United States) in the production of salt, sixth in gold, and eighth in lead ore.
Coal is the single most important energy source in China; coal-fired thermal electric generators provide over 70% of the country’s electric power.
After the 1960s, the emphasis was on regional self-sufficiency, and many factories sprang up in rural areas.
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Home Economics: Free Apartment in Chongqing
Business
China Limits Apple Operations as BYD Manufacturing Moves to India and Southeast Asia Amid Trade Frictions | International Business News – The Times of India
China is restricting the export of high-tech manufacturing equipment and personnel to India and Southeast Asia, aiming to maintain domestic production amid potential US tariffs, impacting companies like Foxconn and BYD.
China Curbs on High-Tech Manufacturing
China is intensifying restrictions on the movement of employees and specialized equipment essential for high-tech manufacturing in India and Southeast Asia. This measure aims to prevent companies from relocating production due to potential tariffs under the incoming US administration. Beijing has urged local governments to restrict technology transfers and export of manufacturing tools as part of this strategy.
Impact on Foxconn and Apple’s Strategy
Foxconn, Apple’s primary assembly partner, is facing challenges in sending staff and receiving equipment in India, which could impact production. Despite these hurdles, current manufacturing operations remain unaffected. The Chinese government insists it treats all nations equally while reinforcing its domestic production to mitigate job losses and retain foreign investments.
Broader Implications for India
Additionally, these restrictions affect electric vehicle and solar panel manufacturers in India, notably BYD and Waaree Energies. Although the measures are not explicitly targeting India, they complicate the business landscape. As foreign companies seek alternatives to China, these developments are likely to reshape manufacturing strategies amidst ongoing geopolitical tensions.
China
China’s GDP Grows 5% in 2024: Key Insights and Main Factors
In 2024, China’s GDP grew by 5.0%, meeting its annual target. The fourth quarter saw a 5.4% increase, driven by exports and stimulus measures. The secondary industry grew 5.3%, while the tertiary increased by 5.0%, totaling RMB 134.91 trillion.
China’s GDP grew by 5.0 percent in in 2024, meeting the government’s annual economic target set at the beginning of the year. Fourth-quarter GDP exceeded expectations, rising by 5.4 percent, driven by exports and a flurry of stimulus measures. This article provides a brief overview of the key statistics and the main drivers behind this growth.
According to official data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on January 17, 2025, China’s GDP reached RMB 134.91 trillion (US$18.80 trillion) in 2024, reflecting a 5.0 percent year-on-year growth at constant prices. During the 2024 Two Sessions, the government set the 2024 GDP growth target of “around 5 percent”.
By sector, the secondary industry expanded by 5.3 percent year-on-year to RMB 49.21 trillion (US$6.85 trillion), the fastest among the three sectors, while the tertiary industry grew by 5.0 percent, reaching RMB 76.56 trillion (US$10.63 trillion) and the primary industry contributed RMB 9.14 trillion (US$1.31 trillion), growing 3.5 percent.
A more detailed analysis of China’s economic performance in 2024 will be provided later.
(1USD = 7.1785 RMB)
| This article was first published by China Briefing , which is produced by Dezan Shira & Associates. The firm assists foreign investors throughout Asia from offices across the world, including in in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and India . Readers may write to info@dezshira.com for more support. |
Read the rest of the original article.
China
Can science be both open and secure? Nations grapple with tightening research security as China’s dominance grows
The U.S.-China science agreement renewal narrows collaboration scopes amid security concerns, highlighting tensions. Nations fear espionage, hindering vital international partnerships essential for scientific progress. Openness risks declining.
Amid heightened tensions between the United States and China, the two countries signed a bilateral science and technology agreement on Dec. 13, 2024. The event was billed as a “renewal” of a 45-year-old pact to encourage cooperation, but that may be misleading.
The revised agreement drastically narrows the scope of the original agreement, limits the topics allowed to be jointly studied, closes opportunities for collaboration and inserts a new dispute resolution mechanism.
This shift is in line with growing global concern about research security. Governments are worried about international rivals gaining military or trade advantages or security secrets via cross-border scientific collaborations.
The European Union, Canada, Japan and the United States unveiled sweeping new measures within months of each other to protect sensitive research from foreign interference. But there’s a catch: Too much security could strangle the international collaboration that drives scientific progress.
As a policy analyst and public affairs professor, I research international collaboration in science and technology and its implications for public and foreign policy. I have tracked the increasingly close relationship in science and technology between the U.S. and China. The relationship evolved from one of knowledge transfer to genuine collaboration and competition.
Now, as security provisions change this formerly open relationship, a crucial question emerges: Can nations tighten research security without undermining the very openness that makes science work?
Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping and American President Jimmy Carter sign the original agreement on cooperation in science and technology in 1979.
Dirck Halstead/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
China’s ascent changes the global landscape
China’s rise in scientific publishing marks a dramatic shift in global research. In 1980, Chinese authors produced less than 2% of research articles included in the Web of Science, a curated database of scholarly output. By my count, they claimed 25% of Web of Science articles by 2023, overtaking the United States and ending its 75-year reign at the top, which had begun in 1948 when it surpassed the United Kingdom.
In 1980, China had no patented inventions. By 2022, Chinese companies led in U.S. patents issued to foreign companies, receiving 40,000 patents compared with fewer than 2,000 for U.K. companies. In the many advanced fields of science and technology, China is at the world frontier, if not in the lead.
Since 2013, China has been the top collaborator in science with the United States. Thousands of Chinese students and scholars have conducted joint research with U.S. counterparts.
Most American policymakers who championed the signing of the 1979 bilateral agreement thought science would liberalize China. Instead, China has used technology to shore up autocratic controls and to build a strong military with an eye toward regional power and global influence.
Leadership in science and technology wins wars and builds successful economies. China’s growing strength, backed by a state-controlled government, is shifting global power. Unlike open societies where research is public and shared, China often keeps its researchers’ work secret while also taking Western technology through hacking, forced technology transfers and industrial espionage. These practices are why many governments are now implementing strict security measures.
Nations respond
The FBI claims China has stolen sensitive technologies and research data to build up its defense capabilities. The China Initiative under the Trump administration sought to root out thieves and spies. The Biden administration did not let up the pressure. The 2022 Chips and Science Act requires the National Science Foundation to establish SECURE – a center to aid universities and small businesses in helping the research community make security-informed decisions. I am working with SECURE to evaluate the effectiveness of its mission.
Other advanced nations are on alert, too. The European Union is advising member states to boost security measures. Japan joined the United States in unveiling sweeping new measures to protect sensitive research from foreign interference and exploitation. European nations increasingly talk about technological sovereignty as a way to protect against exploitation by China. Similarly, Asian nations are wary of China’s intentions when it seeks to cooperate.
Australia has been especially vocal about the threat posed by China’s rise, but others, too, have issued warnings. The Netherlands issued a policy for secure international collaboration. Sweden raised the alarm after a study showed how spies had exploited its universities.
Canada has created the Research Security Centre for public safety and, like the U.S., has established regionally dispersed advisers to provide direct support to universities and researchers. Canada now requires mandatory risk assessment for research partnerships involving sensitive technologies. Similar approaches are underway in Australia and the U.K.
Germany’s 2023 provisions establish compliance units and ethics committees to oversee security-relevant research. They are tasked with advising researchers, mediating disputes and evaluating the ethical and security implications of research projects. The committees emphasize implementing safeguards, controlling access to sensitive data and assessing potential misuse.
Japan’s 2021 policy requires researchers to disclose and regularly update information regarding their affiliations, funding sources – both domestic and international – and potential conflicts of interest. A cross-ministerial R&D management system is unrolling seminars and briefings to educate researchers and institutions on emerging risks and best practices for maintaining research security.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development keeps a running database with more than 206 research security policy statements issued since 2022.
Emmanuelle Charpentier, left, from France, and Jennifer Doudna, from the U.S., shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for their joint research.
Miguel RiopaI/AFP via Getty Images
Openness waning
Emphasis on security can strangle the international collaboration that drives scientific progress. As much as 25% of all U.S. scientific articles result from international collaboration. Evidence shows that international engagement and openness produce higher-impact research. The most elite scientists work across national borders.
Even more critically, science depends on the free flow of ideas and talent across borders. After the Cold War, scientific advancement accelerated as borders opened. While national research output remained flat in recent years, international collaborations showed significant growth, revealing science’s increasingly global nature.
The challenge for research institutions will be implementing these new requirements without creating a climate of suspicion or isolation. Retrenchment to national borders could slow progress. Some degree of risk is inherent in scientific openness, but we may be coming to the end of a global, collaborative era in science.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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