China 2004

China People

Yearbook 2004

China. The biggest of all in China during the year was that the population no longer needed UN assistance with food. That’s what WFP (World Food Program) announced in December. Instead, China’s leaders have promised that the country will gradually assume the role of donor country. At the end of the year, China also surprised with a huge contribution to the countries affected by the December 26 tsunami. But everything is far from well. According to another UN agency, FAO, 142 million Chinese are still malnourished, although 300 million Chinese have been lifted from the worst poverty.

According to CountryAAH, the total population in China is 1,439,323,787 people in 2020. China began the year nervously with yet another epidemic alarm. This time it was the bird virus H5N1 that propelled the slaughter of millions of poultry. The UN agency WHO urged China not to ignore the danger, as in SARS and AIDS, but to vigorously fight the epidemic. So did that. In total, this outbreak killed “only” 32 people in Southeast Asia.

China’s two new leaders, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, announced a more socially oriented policy. Former Party and Head of State Jiang Zemin, who left his last post in the military leadership in September, unilaterally invested in economic recovery Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao wants to increase social security. But it is not a matter of democracy, Hong Kong felt: the democracy movement was further undermined when a committee of the People’s Congress passed a law that it is Beijing that decides on Hong Kong’s constitution. In the foreign arena, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao assured that China will never seek world domination but focus on achieving success with peaceful means. In a speech before the People’s Congress in February, Hu Jintao presented a program to dampen the hot economy, relief for the peasant population and work for 100 million rural residents who have traveled to the cities. It would be a “leadership for the good of the people”. According to abbreviationfinder, CH stands for China in text.

China’s GDP growth was 9.1% in 2003; this year, it would invest ※only§ 7% to avoid overheating. China’s poor peasants would benefit. The grain tax was sharply lowered to increase their incomes and to motivate them to grow more wheat and rice, so that China does not have to import. However, towards the end of the year, growth was found to be above 9%, despite an attempt to dampen China’s first interest rate hike in nine years. And China’s trade continued to grow, thanks in large part to the fixed yuan exchange rate, which keeps the currency at a favorable level, to the dismay of the US and the EU. The country is now about to embark on Japan as a trading nation and become a world leader after the United States. With the EU, trade doubled between 1999 and 2003. China is the EU’s second largest trading partner, after the US.

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Taiwan was a theme all year. It started with 24 Taiwanese arrested for spying on China. Two of them accused TV President Chen Shuibian of TV of betraying them. The show was interpreted by observers as an attempt to discredit Chen Shuibian ahead of Taiwan’s March 20 presidential election. Chen Shuibian is re-elected, but barely. At the end of the year, Beijing and Taiwan were in dispute with the Vanuatu kingdom, whose prime minister suddenly abandoned China and acknowledged Taiwan. After several heartbreaking trips, Vanuatu fired his prime minister and held on to Beijing. The United States also reacted to President Chen Shuibian’s daring policy. The United States has promised to defend Taiwan and supply arms to the island, but at the same time supports Beijing’s one-China policy, which Chen Shuibian challenged.

US President George W. Bush tried during the year to get China’s help to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons plans. North Korea agreed on six-party talks in February (with South Korea, Japan, China, USA and Russia). They became unsuccessful. Beijing acted as a mediator rather than a defender of Kim Jong Il’s Stalinist regime. See cellphoneexplorer.com for practical information about China.

In July, China’s Central Military Commission announced plans for slimming and modernizing the armed forces. The People’s Army will cope with a high-tech war, implied against the United States on Taiwan. Weapons of modernization buy China mostly from Russia, an increasingly important ally for the oil supply. There are also other stakeholders: French President Jacques Chirac visited Beijing in October, just before his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin, and vowed to fight to lift the ban on arms sales introduced by the United States and the EU after Beijing’s crushing of democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Zhao Ziyang, the party leader who was deposed because of his opposition to the campaign on Tiananmen Square, passed away on January 17, 85 years old. He had been in house arrest since 1989 France held a military maneuver with China

At the EU summit in The Hague in December, it was half a success for China when it came to the arms embargo against the people’s republic. The EU promised to re-examine it, despite China being severely criticized for continuing human rights violations. Officially, around 5,000 executions are announced each year – unofficially it is believed to be many more. The Falun Gong meditation movement is still being pursued and the practitioners of the method are being beaten to death. Journalists are imprisoned. The US criticized these abuses during the year, but quite moderately.

Beijing remained fairly passive during the US election campaign, but the day before the November 2 election, a newspaper published a sharply critical article by China’s foreign policy guru Qian Qichen. He branded the Bush doctrine as equaling violence. However, after the re-election of Bush, the official comments were conciliatory. According to observers, Beijing felt some relief that John Kerry did not become president – then human rights had again become a major issue.

China People

1992 Increasing social exclusion as a result of the reforms

In 1992, GDP grew by 12.8%, which was unprecedented. However, this result had a number of negative side effects that emerged in 1993. Growth that year peaked well at 13.5%, but at the same time inflation in the first 6 months of the year reached 20%. In March 94, Li Peng proposed to slow economic growth to 9% to keep inflation under control. This happened on the basis of protests in the coastal provinces – among other things. Guandong – which has benefited most from the Chinese economic boom.

The social disparities between the new Chinese in the cities and the huge masses of workers and peasants continued to rise, accelerating the emigration of millions of people from country to city. This situation forced the government to show restraint in the closure and privatization of unprofitable state-owned enterprises, which would significantly increase unemployment and thus aggravate the already unstable social situation.

But at the same time, a project aimed at reducing the social costs of economic reform was suspended. It was about introducing some kind of compensation for layoff workers from companies that closed. But the lack of a state social security network – including some form of unemployment benefits – forced the government to hold back on implementing more radical economic reforms.

In 1995, Jiang Semin further consolidated his power and placed himself in a situation as the country’s undisputed leader after Deng’s death. The authorities remained concerned about the social impact of the reforms and therefore retained the important subsidies to state-owned enterprises. Inflation fell to 13% and for the period 1996-2000, annual growth was 8-9%. The rising corruption in society still caused more scandals. The first secretary of the party in Beijing, Chen Xitong, was forced to resign as it became known that senior local leaders were involved in scams with funds for, among other things. the municipal steel mill. In April, the capital’s deputy mayor, Wang Baosen, was charged with scamming $ 37 million in public funds, and he subsequently committed suicide.

As in previous years, trade ties with the United States were strengthened, despite the official political disagreements between the two countries regarding, among other things, China’s military exercises near Taiwan and the country’s nuclear test blasts. In November, Jiang conducted the first visit by a Chinese president to South Korea. This was another approach by China to countries that were distinguished by their anti-communism during the Cold War.

In May 1996, Amnesty International condemned the Chinese authorities’ repression of Buddhist monks in Tibet. Acc. the human rights organization had 80 monks injured when they refused to comply with a ban on displaying photos of the Dalai Lama.

Two student leaders from the riots in 89 were charged with attempts to overthrow the government and sentenced prison sentences to respectively. 3 and 11 years. Another student was granted political asylum in the United States. At the same time, the government continued its psychological warfare against Taiwan with the conduct of extensive military maneuvers in the immediate vicinity of the island.

The economy continued its positive trend with growth of around 10%, while inflation fell to 6%. Industrial returns increased and foreign investment considered the main driver of economic growth increased by 20%. A number of foreign-owned companies in China were allowed to exchange the local currency for dollars themselves.

Deng Xiaoping’s death in February 1997, after prolonged illness, caused some anxiety among foreign investors and diplomats, but senior party officials assured that economic reforms would continue unchanged. The party’s 15th Congress later this year reaffirmed Jiang Semin as the country’s supreme leader, consolidating reform policy – particularly its application to state corporations – and maintaining the political system.

In March 1998, the People’s Congress confirmed the party’s decisions. Semin was re-elected as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. 98% of delegates voted in favor: 2882 for, 36 against and 29 abstentions.

Hu Jintao, who has been named as Semin’s possible successor, was appointed new vice president, while outgoing prime minister Li Peng was appointed head of parliament. The constitution prevented him from obtaining a third term as head of government.

Zhu Rongji who was former Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the economy was elected Prime Minister. The new government consisted predominantly of economic experts tasked with seeking to adapt the state’s 370,000 businesses to the capitalist market. A process that has already cost 20-30 million unemployed. In addition to continuing the reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, Zhu also aimed for a restructuring of the financial system.

The Yangtze basin is China’s most densely populated area, inhabited by 400 million. In 1998, it was exposed to the most severe floods in decades. They cost 4,000 lives and damages for $ 25 billion. US $. The authorities tried to reinforce and modernize dikes and dams to curb the river’s huge bodies of water, but in August 1999 the area had to be put back into emergency mode. More than 2 million were evacuated and another 60 million were affected by the situation. Crops and homes were destroyed throughout the river basin.

In June 1999, the government issued arrest warrants against members of the Falungong meditation group, asking Interpol to issue arrest warrants against the group’s leader Li Hongzhi. He had formed the group in 1992 and had since emigrated to the United States. At the same time, the authorities destroyed more than 1½ million books on the group’s faith. The attack was a consequence of the rising tension between Falungong and the Chinese authorities. The Chinese government considered the group the biggest challenge since the 1989 demonstrations, and in April the group launched a “silent” campaign against the government’s hostility, involving 25,000 of its supporters. had gathered in front of Jiang Zemin’s residence.

In a two-point program, in November 99, China proposed reducing the global deployment of missiles, thus creating a “favorable atmosphere” at the beginning of the new millennium. But at the same time, it even deployed 100 new missiles off its southeast coast to Taiwan. This was done with the purpose of putting pressure on the United States, to get the superpower to restrict the sale of advanced weapons to Taiwan.

In December 1999, for the first time in 442 years, China woke up without foreign presence in the country, while Europeans lost its last colony in Asia when Portugal transferred Macao to China. Like Hong Kong, Macao is now a region of “special administration” with extensive autonomy – at least for the next 50 years.

At the end of 2000, the government announced that 11 people had been sentenced to death – including members of the government and police. These were judgments in the most widespread corruption case the country had experienced. A total of 84 were convicted in the case involving a smuggling ring that, through sexual services and bribery, totaled more than $ 1 billion. The US $ had infiltrated the highest spheres of power. They were all somehow linked to the group Yuanhua – a mafia centered in the port city of Xiamen in the country’s southeast. According to the verdict, one of the convicted officials had received $ 960,000 in bribes. That is a huge sum in all countries, but especially in China, where the annual average income is US $ 750.

With the stated purpose of accelerating the growth of the western part of the country, in March 2001 China implemented significant changes in the legislation on national minorities. Central power was strengthened at the expense of the autonomy of national minorities. While the previous 1984 law spoke of the national autonomy of the minorities and gave them at least some control over local affairs, these rights in the new legislation were subject to the priorities of the central authorities.

During the period 1996-2001 the membership of the Communist Party increased by 7½ million, reaching 64½ million. corresponding to 5% of the country’s population. Among the members is 11.2 million. women, 4 million belong to national minorities and almost half are under 45 years of age. Although the Chinese leadership states that these figures confirm that “youth is strongly attracted to Marxism and revolutionary ideas”, other experts believe that young people are more interested in the contacts they can have in the party, thus strengthening their chances in business.

In June 2001, leaders from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan signed an agreement to fight ethnic and religious militancy, while strengthening trade cooperation. The following month, Jiang Zemin and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new friendship agreement in Moscow. The agreement is valid for 20 years and is intended to counterbalance the rising global hegemony of the United States. Despite the fact that the agreement states that neither country has territorial claims against the counterparty, the agreement triggered troubled comments in Russia about the influence of Chinese emigrants in Russia’s eastern and sparsely populated regions, as well as the Siberian territories China had claimed under the Cold War.

After 15 years of diplomatic work, China was admitted to the WTO in November. The inclusion means reforms of the Chinese state-owned enterprises must occur, which can lead to a dramatic increase in unemployment. Western companies will be allowed to make investments in sensitive areas such as mobile telephony, banking and insurance. The changes in investment law will, of course, lead to greater foreign investment. It will improve China’s competitiveness and it could not help worrying about other major exporting countries in the area such as Japan and the Southeast Asian countries. The accession of China will make the country a key player in the negotiations in the organization, and from the outset it made clear that it wanted to lead the group of least industrialized countries, on the basis that the gap between rich and poor countries must be narrowed, and that can only happen by benefiting all member states globalization.

The first commercial flight route between China and India opened on March 28, 2002. With the first flight from China Oriental Airlines, senior Chinese were welcomed and the opening of the route was welcomed as a sign of improved relations between the two countries. Subsequently, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh traveled by plane to Beijing.

China’s market reforms have dramatically contributed to widening the country-city gap. At the opening of the CCP Congress in March 2003, outgoing Prime Minister Zhu Rongji gave a speech, highlighting the need to reduce this gap. Congress passed top-level replacements, with Hu Jintao replacing Jiang Zemin in the presidential post, and Wen Jiabao replacing Rongji in the post of prime minister. At the same time, the entire government was replaced.

During the period leading up to the US attack on Iraq in March 2003, this threat was counteracted by 3 of its permanent members: France, Russia and China. Beijing strongly discouraged the United States from attacking militarily, and instead recommended peaceful disarmament to the country.

In spring 2003, China was one of the countries most severely affected by the SARS epidemic. In the first few weeks, the Minister of Health claimed to have the situation under control, and no effective steps were taken to bring the epidemic under control. The minister was fired and China first regained confidence from the WHO as the government took effective steps to stop the epidemic. In June, a farmer was publicly executed after being found guilty of infecting 40 people with SARS virus. There was one execution among the 1,060 that took place this year in the country, making it the country in the world with the most executions.

At a closed China-India Summit in June, the two countries decided to increase trade and build a road link between them. At the summit, China recognized India’s sovereignty over Sikkim, and India, in turn, recognized China’s sovereignty over Tibet.

In February, China opened its doors for Hollywood distribution companies for the first time, allowing North American films to be freely marketed and shown in China. The authorities also stated that during 2004 the country’s two largest banks, the Bank of China and the Bank for the Construction of China, will be transformed into joint stock companies. Insurance will also be possible.

In October, China became the third country to send people into orbit in space. That same month, the Beijing City Council announced information that it is now launching preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games in the city.

The volume of China’s exports in 2003 doubled compared to the previous year. GDP had a growth rate that was twice that of the United States. Based on this data, the North American investment bank Goldman Sachs calculated that by 2040, China will be the world’s strongest economy if growth continues unchanged.

In December, more than 250 people died in the city of Chongqing in the south-east of the country by a large explosion of natural gas. The explosion occurred in an area controlled by the China National Petroleum Corporation, which, however, relinquished responsibility for the explosion. Over 60,000 were evacuated from villages around Chongqing.

In April 2004, Beijing declared that in the 2007 elections, Hong Kong will no longer elect its leader directly. Members of the Hong Kong Democracy Campaign stated that they had heard nothing of such a decision and that the Hong Kong leader will continue to be elected by direct elections. China’s government has previously decided that political reforms in Hong Kong should only be implemented gradually.

In September, three years earlier than ex-President Jiang Zemin left his post as commander-in-chief of the Navy. Zemin declared that he left the post for the benefit of the Communist Party, the state as a whole, and the armed forces. He was replaced by President Hu Jintao.

The government announced in January 2005 that over 6,000 workers had died in the country’s coal mines the previous year. China’s coal mines are the world’s most dangerous.

In March 2005, the People’s Congress passed a new law on detachment that analysts saw as a law aimed at Taiwan. Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian had previously threatened to rewrite the constitution of the island republic, remove the word “China” from the constitution text and from his diplomatic missions abroad, and apply for membership in international organizations.

As a result of new Japanese textbooks that undermined the atrocities of the Japanese occupation forces during the occupation of China in the 1930s and 40s, thousands of Chinese marched in the streets of a number of Chinese cities in protest against Japan in March and several weeks. The tension between the two countries was further exacerbated by Japan’s attempts to secure a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and its attempt to gain access to the extraction of raw materials in the East China Sea.

In August 2005, China and Russia conducted the first joint military exercises between two countries. An explosion in a chemical plant in November contaminated the Songhua River in the Jilin region with benzene near the Russian border. The pollution also robbed millions of people of clean drinking water.

Following pressure from Beijing in May 2006, the US released 5 Chinese Muslims imprisoned in the US concentration camp in Guantánamo on suspicion of terrorism. They were sent to Albania as refugees.

The United States, Australia and Japan declared concern over Chinese missile tests in January 2007. During the test, the Chinese fired a rocket from the Shenyang base in northeastern China. The target was a Chinese meteorological satellite orbiting orbiting the earth. The test was seen by international observers as China’s response to the US 15-year Star Wars project, which also aims to launch satellites and intercontinental rockets.

After Kuomintang won the Taiwan elections in March 2008, senior Chinese and Taiwanese officials met for the first time. The contacts initially led to greater trade and Taiwanese investment in China. There was agreement not to address the basic political disagreement on the merger of the two states.

As a prelude to China’s holding of the Summer Olympics in August 2008, the Western world carried out an intensive media offensive against China, accused of human rights suppression. China and the US both practice the death penalty and are the two countries in the world with the most prisoners on death row. In particular, the criticism was directed at China’s suppression of Tibet, where during the spring of 2008 China killed about 60 Tibetans during riots. As many as Israel killed in a single day in Gaza: March 1, 2008.

China was hit in May 2008 by a violent earthquake with epicenter in Sichuan province. The quake had a strength of 7.9 on the Richter scale and cost at least 68,000 people its life.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao gave a lecture at Cambridge University in the UK in February when he faced a shoe attack. German Martin Jahnke overpowered Wen, threw his shoe at him, but hit. The Prime Minister subsequently declared that disgraceful behavior cannot cut into China-UK relations. At the end of the month, the Chinese people were given the opportunity to video chat over the Internet with the Prime Minister ahead of the People’s Congress.

In October, Jiabao made a state visit to North Korea. The first since 1955. The visit was seen as a gesture of solidarity to a country the United States is putting increasing political and military pressure on. In December, the Prime Minister attended the COP-15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen, which ended up unsuccessful due to the incompetence of Danish hosts and the unwillingness of the Western world to pay for 100 years of CO 2 pollution.

Initially, China was only hit to a limited extent by the global economic crisis. However, economic growth in 2009 fell to 8.7%. A level it kept for the following years. China is the United States’ largest lender. In 2011, China owned 26% of US government bonds, accounting for 18% of the superpower’s total public debt. However, the crisis led to China no longer having the same willingness to finance the US debt, which from 2011 created ever more problems for the US economy.

China welcomed the reorientation of Japan’s foreign policy from September 2009, with Japan placing more emphasis on its relations with Asia and reducing its ties with the United States. Japan wanted an Asian common market established by 2020.

In 2010, China hosted the World Exhibition. It took place in the months of May-October and was visited by over 73 million people. people. A preliminary record.

In October 2010, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to prominent democracy activist Liu Xiaobo. The award sparked strong protests from the Chinese side and the West failed to continue criticism of China for its continued imprisonment of Xiaobo. Trade was more important than democracy.

Inspired by the “Arab Spring”, opposition groups in China launched in February 2011 silent protest marches against the government, and in Xinjiang Province, Uighurs initiated more violent protests. The authorities immediately cut down on the protests and on the electronic channels calls for protests were carried through. Several prominent members of the “Jasmin” protest movement were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences at the end of the year. A revision of the Administration of Justice Act in August opened up that the authorities could detain people for up to ½ years without informing their relatives. An audit that has been criticized by critics as the legalized state disappearance of political opponents. In contrast, the new Penal Code prohibited the use of “illegal” evidence in litigation – including confessions or statements made under torture. Nevertheless, the legislation still does not contain a definite ban on torture, which remains widespread.

In March 2011, China voted for Security Council Resolution 1973, which established a no-fly zone over Libya. Instead, the resolution was used as a pretext to militarily support the Libyan rebels ‘attack on the Gadaffi dictatorship, and as a result of the rebels’ attacks on all guest workers in the country – including several thousand Chinese workers on joint projects – Chinese guest workers were evacuated to Chinese ships in the Mediterranean. The West’s takeover of oil sources in Libya caused a severe setback for China, and the country subsequently vetoed the UN Security Council in the western world militarily to attack Syria.

Japan-China relations deteriorated drastically in the latter half of 2012 after the Japanese government decided to nationalize the Senkaku Islands, which in China go by the name of Diaoyu. The islands were conquered by Japan during the first Japanese-Chinese War in 1894-95. The archipelago is located 200 nautical miles southwest of the southernmost Japanese island, Okinawa, 200 nautical miles east of mainland China and 120 nautical miles northeast of Taiwan. Last year, nationalist-oriented Japanese had tried to stir up a political mood facing China, and in order to stave off this development, the islands were nationalized by the Japanese state in September. Instead of lessening the tension, it was further aggravated as the Chinese saw it as an offensive move by the Japanese state, and major violent protests erupted against Japan in a number of Chinese cities. At the same time, Taiwan filed a claim on the small archipelago. In all 3 countries, the conflict was maximally exploited by nationalist currents.

In November 2012, Xi Jinping was elected chairman of the CCP and chairman of the party’s military commission. On March 14, 2013, the People’s Congress elected him as president. Upon his accession, he stated that the fight against corruption will be given high priority. A few months into his tenure, he published an eight-point guide to fighting corruption. At the same time, “central inspection teams” were set up, which could be sent around the country to bury the local organizations of the party. Over 50 provincial-ministerial party members were removed from their posts in the following months.

At the National Congress meeting on March 15, 2013, Li Keqiang was elected new Prime Minister. He replaced Wen Jiabao, who had been sitting for 2 periods. In his accession speech, Keqiang emphasized a more equitable distribution of income and continued economic reform. His first trip abroad went to India in an effort to resolve border conflicts between the two countries and strengthen economic cooperation. India has continued a strained relationship with China. Keqiang went on to Pakistan, which he called “China’s closest friend and brother”.

In July, a plan worth $ 277 billion was adopted. US $ to be used over 5 years to improve air quality in especially the northern part of the country. In addition, China, which is already the world’s largest producer of renewable energy sources, should invest heavily in the dissemination of renewable energy.

In November 2013, the government announced in-depth economic and social reforms. It announced that in the future the “market forces” will play a “decisive” role in the allocation of resources in the economy. It was seen as an indication that the state will reduce its role in the distribution of capital, restructure state-owned enterprises to allow increased competition, and will allow foreign investment in sectors that were previously heavily government-regulated. At the same time, the government announced that the system of labor-retraining camps would be abolished, that the one-child policy would be relaxed so that each family could have two children in the future and that the security apparatus would be restructured with the formation of a National Security Commission with President Xi as chairman.

In the aftermath of the crisis the West of March 2014 built up in relation to Russia in the form of sanctions, China shook Russia to the rescue. A number of bilateral cooperation agreements were signed and China promised Russia to assist the country financially. For the previous 3 years, the two countries had run cross-country in international bodies such as the UN to curb the West’s and especially the US’s aggression towards especially the Arab world. At the same time, China was aiming to improve relations with South Korea. The price for this was a more critical attitude towards North Korea. China had great economic interest in cooperating with South Korea, and the two countries had a common interest in criticizing Japan’s new militaristic policy. Japan adopted a new militaristic security policy in 2014 and in 2015 decided to build «self-defense forces» for deployment outside Japan’s own borders.

Long-term economic growth of around 10% annually began to decline in 2014, at an estimated 7%. In the middle of the year, therefore, the government announced that it would choose an expansive path. The country’s infrastructure had to be greatly expanded with railways, roads and airports. At the same time, an economic belt was to be developed along the Yangtze River. China was expected to overtake the United States in 2024 as the world’s largest economy.

The government announced in October 2014 that it would implement comprehensive judicial reform. Although the party should continue to be the cornerstone of society, constitution and criminal law should be given a stronger emphasis so that the arbitrariness of trial and sentencing could be avoided. The government admitted that until then the courts had been too heavily influenced by the pressure of corruption and local party organizations. In other words, what President Xi called a “Chinese socialist rule of law” was to be built.

In October 2014, at least 26 Chinese were arrested in Beijing after manifesting sympathy with the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

China was working to improve its relations with South Korea. Both countries had great interests in economic cooperation, and on the same side faced an increasingly aggressive military Japan. The price for the closer relations was a cooler Chinese relationship with North Korea.

President Xi visited Pakistan at the head of a major Chinese delegation in April 2015. The two countries signed energy and trade agreements worth a total of $ 45 billion. US $. Most important was the decision to build the Pakistani-Chinese economic corridor to supply China with gas from Iran through Pakistan, expand the train and highway network in Pakistan, and improve the road network through the Himalayas between the two countries.

The government announced in December 2015 that the one-child policy from January 2016 would be replaced by a two-child policy. The one-child policy had then been in effect for 40 years and had put an end to the population explosion in the country, but now resulted in an increasingly older population, with fewer young people having to support more elderly people. The policy was therefore adjusted.

Throughout the period following the collapse of the Western housing speculation in 2008 and the subsequent deep economic crisis, the Chinese economy had maintained high growth rates. This was due to growth in Chinese exports, but also to large state investment in infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, ports and cities. But in 2014-15, growth began to show signs of slowing. Parallel to the uncertainty surrounding the EU economy, the risk of Greece going bankrupt in mid-2015 and structural Chinese economic problems, the Chinese stock market collapsed in June-August. The Chinese equity market played no role in financing projects in the country and was largely driven by speculation by small savers. But the collapse nevertheless revealed underlying problems, and in August, the state bank decided to devalue the Rhythm of Renmimbia over 2 laps – by a total of 3%. The purpose was to strengthen Chinese exports. The Chinese currency already plays an important global role. In December 2015, it was the 5th most widely used currency in international financial transactions and the second most widely used currency in trading. While 14% of Chinese exports were settled in RMB in 2014, this figure in 2015 had risen to 27%.

But the structural problems continued. At the beginning of January 2016, Chinese stocks fell by almost 20% over 10 days, and the collapse of the Chinese stock market triggered similar collapse in the capitalist centers in Europe, Japan and the United States. At the same time, the crisis triggered a significant fall in commodity prices – especially oil, which fell to US $ 30 per share. barrel. The Chinese medicine was a new devaluation of the RMB and the pumping out of state funds. However, the devaluation policy is also putting China under pressure as the country has to pay more for the imported raw materials and get less for its exports. China’s declining economic growth is also affecting large Western companies exporting to China. Especially German.

Kinetic energy production is backward and largely based on coal. This makes the Chinese metropolitan cities some of the most polluted in the world and leads to frequent curfew and transport bans when particle pollution becomes too severe. China has acknowledged the problem and has therefore initiated a huge transformation process towards renewable energy sources. Therefore, during the COP-21 climate summit in Paris in December 2015, China was at the forefront of reducing CO 2 emissions.

In December 2015, the authorities of Guangdong Province intervened against workers and labor activists. Labor conflicts and strikes were on the rise in the province, which was the backdrop of the authorities’ behavior. At least 33 were arrested and 31 were subsequently released. Conflicts and abuse of authority continued into 2016.

In July 2016, the international court issued a ruling rejecting China’s claim of sovereignty over large parts of the South China Sea, stating that China’s claim lacked legal basis. China responded again by declaring that the court lacked legality in the case and that China would not respect the ruling.

In November 2016, the National Congress passed the Cyber ​​Security Act, supposedly to protect Internet users from hacking and theft, but at the same time required Internet companies operating in China to censor content, store users’ data in China and adhere to an identity registration system that violated national and international statements of freedom of expression and privacy.

Authorities continued their censorship of the Internet. Thousands of Web sites were blocked, including foreign sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

In 2016, the government passed the NGO Governing Act, which came into force on January 1, 2017. It entrusted the responsibility for registration and oversight of foreign NGOs to the Ministry of Public Security. The wide framework provided by the authorities increased the risk of intimidation and persecution of human rights activists and other activists in the NGOs.

Economic growth in the country was slightly declining, but was still around 7% annually. One worrying sign, however, was that non-financial borrowing in the country was rising rapidly. Thus, an ever-increasing part of economic activity was loan-financed. It would not be able to continue in the long term.

The election of Donald Trump as US President in November 2016 raised some concern in Beijing, as Trump had stated in advance that China, with its massive trade surplus and undervalued currency, was destroying the US economy. He suggested that he would change this situation quickly. However, a threat that was not brought to life. Trump and Jinping met in the United States in April 2017 and in Beijing in October. There was no doubt that it was the politically different experienced Jinping who “wore his pants” during the meetings between the two heads of state.

In January 2017, Xi Jinping became the first Chinese President to visit and speak at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In his speech, he touched on globalization, global trade cooperation and China’s increasing importance in the world economy. He used the state visit to Switzerland to also visit the WHO, the UN and the IOC.

During the Chinese People’s Congress in October 2017, the CCP’s Central Committee and then the People’s Congress first decided to include Xi’s political philosophy in the party’s laws. He was thus juxtaposed with Mao Zedong and Deng Hsiao Peng.