China
Teapot drama targeting British Museum sparks nationalist fervor in China
Chinese state media and netizens have piled onto social media in recent days to sing the praises of a homegrown web drama about a jade teapot that escapes from the British Museum and tries to get home to China.
The three-part drama, “Escape from the British Museum,” shows the green-clad “teapot” personified as a young woman accost a Chinese man in the street, asking for help.
“I’ve been wandering around out here for ages, cousin,” she tells him. “I’m lost, and can’t find my way home.”
The nationalistic drama has proved a hit with the online army of nationalist “little pinks,” and was released around the same time as a Global Times editorial calling for the return of Chinese artifacts from the scandal-hit British Museum, which fired a staff member last month after some of its collection was found for sale on eBay.
Never mind that the explanatory text about the teapot referenced in the film states it was actually made in 2011 by Suzhou master jade carver Yu Ting, who sent it to be displayed in the museum.
“While the British Museum proudly displays over 23,000 Chinese artifacts, most of which were obtained through improper channels, even dirty and sinful means, questions loom over their acquisition history and the larger issue of repatriation,” Global Times said in an infographic on Sept. 4.
‘Bloody, ugly and shameful’
Earlier, the paper published an editorial calling the museum “the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods.”
“The UK, which has a bloody, ugly, and shameful colonial history, has always had a strong sense of moral superiority over others,” it said. “We really do not know where their sense of moral superiority comes from.”
In the web drama, the young man takes the eccentric teapot woman home to his elegant apartment, sleeping on the sofa and taking her on a whistle-stop tour of U.K. tourist spots including the white cliffs of Dover, before eventually telling her “Come on, we’re going back to China.”
The couple then take in a military parade complete with goose-stepping soldiers on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“Thank you, Yong An,” she tells the young man, whose character takes his name from a ceramic pillow emblazoned with the words “eternal peace for family and country” on display in the British Museum. “This has been the happiest and brightest time in my tiny world.”
‘No. 1 robber’
The young producers, who also act in the film, told ruling Chinese Communist Party newspaper, The People’s Daily, in an audio interview posted to Weibo on Sept. 8 that they decided to release the show early after seeing the news last month that the British Museum had sacked a member of staff and reported around 2,000 cultural relics missing to Scotland Yard.
“This is about the emotions we felt after a visit to the British Museum,” one co-actor and producer who gave only the pseudonym Xiatian Meimei told the paper.
“While we were filming at the British Museum, we ran into a lot of foreigners [sic] who didn’t understand much about our cultural artifacts,” director Zhang Jiajun, a Douyin blogger and film school graduate said. “They are Chinese treasures that carry a lot of Chinese culture.”
“When they are overseas, people don’t really understand them, because they lack the cultural genes to do so,” he said, using a buzzword that has become popular under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “We hope people will pay more attention to the issue of cultural artifacts overseas.”
The drama drew a large number of nationalistic comments, with one comment saying “I’m going to cry myself to death,” and another saying: “We must take back what belongs to China.”
“The British Museum is the world’s No. 1 robber,” said another.
Returning relics?
Another article in the Global Times called on Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary James Cleverly, who was visiting China at the time, to change the law preventing the return of artifacts in the museum.
The British Museum was established by an Act of Parliament in 1753 and is currently governed by the British Museum Act 1963.
It has so far refused to return the Elgin Marbles from the temple of Athena to Greece, ceremonial items and other artifacts taken during 19th century military action to Ethiopia, the 900 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria or gold items belonging to the Asante people of Ghana, according to the BBC.
U.K.-based commentator Chen Liangshi said much of the anger over Chinese artifacts ignores the mass destruction of cultural items during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and that many of the items now in overseas museums could have been destroyed if they had stayed in China.
He added that many of the artifacts in the British museum were bought rather than looted, or donated by collectors after changing hands several times.
U.K.-based Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung agreed, also citing the widespread destruction of the Cultural Revolution and the whipping up of nationalistic sentiment online.
“They went after the United States, then they went after Japan,” he said. “Now they’re done with Japan, they’re going after the U.K.“
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused China of meddling in Britain’s democracy as he faces a government split at home over whether to formally designate China a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, a brief survey of publicly available information by Radio Free Asia found that more than 100 Chinese cultural artifacts came from the donated collection of Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloan, while thousands more were donated from the collection of antiquarian Sir Augustus W. Franks.
Many more were sold by Chinese aristocrats, officials and scholars for cash around the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.
Against the flow
Not all Chinese media played along with the nationalistic angle.
The Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekend published an article titled: “Is it really a good idea…
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China
China’s November 2024 Economy: Navigating Mixed Signals and Ongoing Challenges
In November 2024, China’s economy exhibited mixed results: industrial production rose by 5.4%, while retail sales grew only 3%, below forecasts. Fixed asset investment also faltered. Policymakers are anticipated to introduce measures to stimulate domestic demand and combat deflation.
China’s economy showed mixed performance in November 2024, with industrial production and exports showing resilience, while retail sales and fixed asset investment underperformed, amid ongoing challenges in the property sector. Policymakers are expected to implement targeted fiscal and monetary measures to boost domestic demand and address deflationary pressures.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has released China’s economy data for November 2024, revealing a mixed performance across key indicators. Retail sales grew by 3 percent year-on-year, a significant slowdown from October’s 4.8 percent growth and well below the 4.6 percent forecast. Industrial production, however, showed resilience, rising by 5.4 percent and exceeding expectations of 5.3 percent growth.
The property sector continued to drag on the broader economy, with real estate investment contracting by 10.4 percent for the January-to-November period, further highlighting the challenges in stabilizing the sector. Fixed asset investment also fell short of expectations, growing by 3.3 percent year-to-date, down from 3.4 percent in October.
In November, China’s industrial value added (IVA) grew by 5.4 percent year-on-year (YoY), slightly accelerating from the 5.3 percent recorded in October. This modest improvement reflects continued recovery in key industries, supported by recent stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing the economy.
The manufacturing sector led the growth, expanding by 6.0 percent YoY, while the power, heat, gas, and water production and supply sector grew by 1.6 percent. The mining industry posted a 4.2 percent YoY increase. Notably, advanced industries outpaced overall growth, with equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing rising by 7.6 percent and 7.8 percent YoY, respectively, underscoring the resilience of China’s innovation-driven sectors.
Key product categories showed robust output gains in November:
From January to November, IVA increased by 5.8 percent YoY, maintaining steady growth over the year despite headwinds from a slowing property market and external uncertainties.
| 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. |
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China
Ukraine war: 10% of Chinese people are willing to boycott Russian goods over invasion – new study
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, some Chinese citizens express dissent through potential boycotts of Russian goods, reflecting a complex relationship despite government support for Russia.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Chinese government has been criticised for its refusal to condemn the war. In 2024, the economic and diplomatic relationship between the two nations appears stronger than ever.
Because of strict censorship and repression imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it is difficult to know the extent to which the general public shares their government’s support of Putin’s regime. But a newly published study I carried out with colleagues found that more than 10% of Chinese people surveyed were willing to boycott Russian goods over the war in Ukraine.
This is a surprisingly large figure, especially since existing surveys indicate that Chinese people hold a broadly positive view of their neighbour. We used a representative sample of 3,029 Chinese citizens for this research, to dig into public attitudes to Russia. The survey was done in 2022 after the Ukraine invasion.
We were aware that due to widespread censorship, our participants might not be willing to give honest answers to questions about Russia’s actions in Ukraine. They might also not feel safe to do that in a regime where disagreement with the CCP’s position is often met with harsh punishment. This is why we asked them to tell us if they would be willing to boycott Russian products currently sold in China.
We felt this question was a good indicator of how much the participants disapproved of Russian foreign policy in Ukraine. More importantly, we were also curious to find out whether Chinese citizens would be willing to take direct political action to punish Russia economically for its aggressive behaviour.
In our study, we split respondents into the three different ideological groups in China: “liberals”, who support the free market and oppose authoritarianism; “the new left”, who sympathise with the policies pursued in China under Mao Zedong; and “neo-authoritarians”, who believe the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is an extension of the rivalry between authoritarian China and the liberal United States. These groups were based on the main political beliefs in China.
We found that liberals were most likely to say they were willing to boycott Russian products. Liberals believe that China should work with, rather than against, western democracies. They also place a high value on human rights and democratic freedoms. Because of their beliefs, they are likely to think that Russia’s actions against Ukraine were unprovoked, aggressive and disproportional.
Chinese and Russian economic and diplomatic relations seem closer than ever in 2024.
American Photo Archive/Alamy
The new left and neo-authoritarians we surveyed were more supportive of Russian products. The new left see Russia as a close ally and believe that Nato’s expansion in eastern Europe was a form of aggression. Neo-authoritarians, on the other hand, believe that supporting Russia, an allied autocracy, is in China’s best interest.
Boycotting Russian goods
Asking Chinese participants if they are willing to boycott Russian products might seem like a simple matter of consumer preferences. However, our study reveals a great deal about the way in which regular citizens can express controversial political beliefs in a repressive authoritarian regime.
Boycotting products of certain companies has long been studied in the west as a form of unconventional political action that helps people express their beliefs. However, in the west, boycotting certain products is simply one of many ways people are able to take political action. In a country such as China, boycotting a Russian product might often be the only safe way to express disagreement with the country’s actions.
This is because citizens do not have to tell others they chose not to buy a product, and their actions are unlikely to attract the attention of the authorities.
Since Russian goods are readily available to Chinese consumers and China is encouraging more Russian exports to reach its market, the Russian economy could be significantly affected by an organised boycott campaign in China. The considerable level of support for a boycott expressed by some of our participants, as well as previous acts of solidarity with Ukraine in China, suggest that such a campaign could already be taking place in the country.
This could harm Russia because it regularly exports a number of different products such as meat, chocolate, tea and wine to China. These goods made up 5.1% of China’s total imports in 2023 – and this figure is likely to increase if Russia becomes more isolated from the west, and therefore more dependent on China for its trade.
While 5.1% of the Chinese market might seem like a low figure, China is home to over 1.4 billion people. In this context, even a small boycott could result in a serious loss to Russian companies.
Our research shows that Chinese citizens don’t always support the official position of the communist party. It also shows that many people there will express even the most unpopular political opinions – if they can find a safe way to do it.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
China
Australia Can Enhance China’s Credibility in the CPTPP
In early 2024, China sought to join the CPTPP, potentially offering modest economic benefits to Australia. Key reforms include limiting state-owned enterprise subsidies, enhancing data flows, and banning forced labor.
China’s Interest in the CPTPP
In early 2024, China expressed a keen interest in joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade agreement involving eleven Pacific Rim economies and the United Kingdom. This move is anticipated to yield modest economic benefits for Australia. However, it also opens the door for vital reforms in areas such as the control of subsidies for state-owned enterprises, allowing free cross-border data flows, and prohibiting forced labor practices.
Economic Implications for Australia
A May 2024 report from the Australian Productivity Commission indicated that China’s accession to the CPTPP might raise Australia’s GDP by only 0.01%. This modest gain isn’t surprising, given Australia’s existing preferential trade arrangement with China through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Nonetheless, the CPTPP encompasses more than just tariff reductions, focusing on broader trade principles and standards.
Reform Commitments Required from China
For China to become a CPTPP member, it must demonstrate adherence to high-standard rules initially developed with the country in mind. This commitment will help alleviate concerns among member nations like Japan and Canada, particularly regarding China’s economic practices and geopolitical tensions, such as those with Taiwan. Membership would necessitate reforms, including limiting SOE subsidies, enabling freer data flows, and banning forced labor, with significant penalties for non-compliance.
Source : Australia can encourage China’s credibility in the CPTPP
- China’s November 2024 Economy: Navigating Mixed Signals and Ongoing Challenges
- Ukraine war: 10% of Chinese people are willing to boycott Russian goods over invasion – new study
- Australia Can Enhance China’s Credibility in the CPTPP
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- China Dismantles Prominent Uyghur Business Landmark in Xinjiang – Shia Waves
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