China: Daily Scan, November 29, 2021

Chinese premier calls for enhanced coordination with UN: Xinhuanet
November 26, 2021

China stands ready to strengthen coordination with the United Nations to implement the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, strengthen South-South cooperation, and promote more balanced, coordinated and inclusive global development, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said here Friday. Li made the remarks during a meeting via video link with Abdulla Shahid, president of the 76th session of the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA). Click here to read…

China strengthens lending support for private enterprises: Xinhuanet
November 28, 2021

China has increased lending support for the private sector, with new loans to private enterprises reaching 5 trillion yuan (about 782 billion U.S. dollars) in the first 10 months of 2021, according to China’s top banking and insurance regulator.The amount accounted for 53.5 percent of the total new corporate loans in the 10 months, 1.8 percentage points higher than the level at the beginning of this year, data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) showed. Click here to read…

Xiaomi to set up automobile plant in Beijing: Xinhunaet
November 27, 2021

Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi Corp plans to build an automobile manufacturing plant in Beijing with an annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles. The announcement was made at a contract signing ceremony on Saturday between the company and the management committee of the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. Click here to read…

Xi stresses strengthening military talent cultivation: People’s Daily
November 29, 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed thorough military talent cultivation to support and lead progress in strengthening the armed forces. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee (CPC) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), made the remarks when speaking at a CMC conference on military talent-related work from Friday to Sunday. Click here to read…

Tencent’s payment platform fined for breaking foreign exchange rules: Global Times
November 28, 2021

Chinese tech giant Tencent’s online payment platform Tenpay was fined 2.78 million yuan ($434,792) by the local branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province, where Tencent is headquartered. Click here to read…

Huawei reveals work of top talent from ‘Geniuses’ program for first time: Global Times

November 28, 2021

Chinese tech giant Huawei revealed for the first time the “mysterious” work of its young prodigy Zhong Zhao, a young employee with an annual salary of 2.01 million yuan ($314,435), whose technology has been applied to tens of millions of Huawei smart phones, according to an article released on Huawei’s online community Xinsheng in November. Click here to read…

Lambda, Mu … Omicron? Why the WHO skipped ‘Nu’ and ‘Xi’ to name latest coronavirus variant: : South China Morning Post
November 29, 2021

Going by the Greek alphabet, the next names should have been “Nu” and “Xi” but the WHO skipped them and went on to call the latest coronavirus variant “Omicron”. But why? Was it to avoid similarities with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name? Before the World Health Organization named Omicron as a variant “of concern” on Friday, the last identified variant was the Mu variant, named after the 12th out of 24 letters in the Greek alphabet.
Nu and Xi, the 13th and 14th letters, were next in line. Click here to read…

Which Chinese military units are expanding while others are shedding troops? : South China Morning Post
November 29, 2021

China has expanded its combat forces to adapt to changing risks – despite a years-long push to streamline the People’s Liberation Army, according a Communist Party publication.
In a book of commentaries published in mid-November by party mouthpiece People’s Daily, military commentator Zhong Xin said the PLA had been “optimising” its personnel structure by deploying more troops to combat roles while cutting 300,000 positions.
The book focuses on President Xi Jinping’s reforms over the last decade and in it Zhong said the military now had about 2 million personnel, down from a peak of more than 6 million in the midst of the Korean war in the 1950s. When Xi, who also heads the Central Military Commission, introduced a military modernisation plan in 2015, that number had already decreased to 2.3 million as a result of a series of overhauls. Click here to read…

Record 2.1m Chinese sit civil service exam as economy slows, youth jobless rate climbs: South China Morning Post
November 28, 2021

A record number of Chinese are sitting the national civil service examination this year, in hopes of landing a secure government job amid slowing growth and high youth unemployment. More than 2.12 million applicants registered for Sunday’s exam, known as guokao in Mandarin, according to the state-owned China News Service. That is 35 per cent higher than last year’s 1.57 million, and the first time the number has crossed 2 million.
That also gives applicants just a 1-in-68 chance of success, even though 31,200 government jobs are open at 75 central government agencies and 23 attached institutions. Successful candidates will take up their positions early next year. Click here to read…

Taiwan scrambles to see off Chinese air force as Xi meets top brass: Reuters
November 28, 2021

Taiwan’s air force scrambled again on Sunday to warn away 27 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, Taiwan’s defence ministry said, the latest increase in tensions across the Taiwan Strait as China’s president met his top generals. Chinese-claimed Taiwan has complained for a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwestern part of its air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands. Click here to read…