This is the edition of the newsletter China, Land of the Middle. Do you want to receive it every Friday in your email? Sign up below.
Follow the content about China on blog is on folha.com/china.
China wants to put an end to what the government calls “celebrity culture”. For this, it prepares a legal framework to boycott “artists who broke the law or transgressed social morality”.
The Office of the Central Committee on Cyberspace Affairs announced in a circular that it will ban “irrational acts of idolatry” on the Internet.
-
The text is full of adjectives and criticizes the “abnormal aesthetics” of celebrities, “responsible for deteriorating dominant values” in Chinese society;
​ -
Regulators have promised to create a list of celebrities involved in “vulgar scandals and a history of unethical behavior”.
K-Pop singer Kris Wu, arrested on rape charges, actor Zhang Zhehan, who fell from grace after visiting a shrine in Japan dedicated to war criminals, and Zheng Shuang, who disappeared from search engines after being fined for tax fraud , would be in the crosshairs of the authorities.
“Unproven stories about artists or irrational acts of idolatry, among other content, will be banned on the internet,” the official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday (23). Celebrities are also prohibited from “showing off wealth or extravagant pleasures” on social media.
Why it matters: The celebrity frenzy never pleased the government, but the matter became more pressing when Kris Wu was arrested and fans organized on social media to get him out of prison. The new policies, however, go far beyond a government response to teenage internet fans.
-
The government wants to end the culture of excess and ostentation. The promotion of the concept of “common prosperity” has led the official press and companies to disseminate content that promotes the common good rather than the success of a few.
-
Sexist speeches gained traction in China. Officials openly complained about “fragile” and “feminine” famous men. These are the cases that the Bureau of Cyberspace Affairs classifies as models of “abnormal aesthetics”.
what also matters
The China Office for Taiwan Affairs condemned the US invitation to the island to the so-called “Summit for Democracy” organized by Joe Biden. The meeting was announced by the US president in February.
-
Over several centuries Taiwan was occupied by different foreign forces. When freed from the Japanese invasion and returned to Beijing, it became a refuge for Chinese nationalists who escaped Communist victory in the civil war in 1949.
-
Beijing considers the region a “rebel province” and demands that allies adhere to the “one China” principle, which implies ending state-level relations with the island’s government.
Office spokesman Zhu Fenglian said the invitation indicated a “clear and consistent posture” of disregard for the principle of a China by the US government and demanded an end to any official US contact with the Taiwanese.
Recently, Xi Jinping also declared that the Chinese will not give up the territory and repeated that Beijing does not disregard the use of force to retake the island if necessary. The Pentagon responded to the threats by saying it was able to defend Taiwan militarily.
Tencent, owner of the WeChat messenger and the game “League of Legends”, will be required to submit new applications and updates for government inspection. The announcement is yet another chapter in China’s crusade against tech companies that have grown too big without regulation.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not explain the reasons for the measure and said the restrictions are temporary. Local news reported that the company violated data protection and storage rules.
Tencent has not commented on the restrictions, although it has released a statement saying that all apps remain available for download and that users will not be affected by the restrictions.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics released the full results of the population census carried out earlier this year. They show that the country’s birth rate in 2020 has dropped to its lowest level in more than 40 years.
For the first time since 1948, the rate of new births per thousand population was in single digits, 8.52. The result confirms fears about the difficulty for the country to replenish its working population, which poses a risk to Chinese economic growth in the long term.
This year, the country has increased the number of children each couple can have to three. Until 2016, the one-child policy was in force, which led to thousands of women being forced to terminate pregnancies.
keep an eye
Speaking at a seminar aimed at Chinese officials involved in the Belt and Route Initiative, Chinese leader Xi Jinping highlighted the need to fight “cross-border corruption” by educating Chinese businesses and citizens “to follow laws and respect customs and local habits”. Xi admitted that connectivity between land and sea trade routes in the countries involved in the initiative is a difficult task and external factors such as the pandemic and industrial competition made the task “ferocious”.
Why it matters: the Belt and Route Initiative is in the crosshairs of the US State Department, which has been working to weaken its reach and influence. With the speech, Xi tries to gain points with the international public opinion.
Having mechanisms to diversify and transport goods has never been so important for China, especially now that the world is starting to open up and the country remains firm in border control to mitigate Covid.
to go deep
- Observa China promotes this Saturday (27) another online event of its series of lectures in English. The guest this time is Professor Jiang Shixue, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Shanghai University and senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He will talk about how to promote relations between China and Latin American countries. (free, in English)
​ - SCMP produced a long report on curious stories involving Macau, one of the two special administrative regions in China and for centuries a concession to the Portuguese. The material is a beautiful timeline of events ranging from coastal piracy to anecdotal cases involving the period in which Portugal managed the region. (porous paywall, in English)
​ - “China: The Socialism of the 21st Century” by Elias Jabbour and Alberto Gabriele, published by Boitempo publishing house, is launched. The book tries to explain what is the so called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” undertaken by the Asian giant since the beginning of the reform and opening up policies in 1978. (BRL 67.90, in Portuguese)
.
