China-CEEC Summit - WHO Probe - Party Veterans' Endorsement
Below are the stories that I found noteworthy from the People’s Daily’s February 10, 2021, edition.
Page 1: The lead story on the page is about the China-CEEC summit. The story largely revolves around Xi’s speech. The official English transcript is available from Xinhua. He began by talking about certain principles that the 17+1 mechanism has evolved over the past 9 years. Two of the four that I’d like to highlight are:
Cooperation “based on mutual respect and has no political strings attached. All countries involved, regardless of their size, are equal partners in a cooperation mechanism featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.”
Focus on “real results,” i.e., expanding trade, tourism, freight, etc.
Going forward, what Xi wants to focus on are:
COVID-19: He committed to China providing “vaccines to countries in need to the best of its capability.” He mentioned Serbia and Hungary as two countries that are receiving Chinese-made vaccines.
Connectivity: In this context, he spoke about BRI, the Budapest-Belgrade Railway, and development of the China-Europe Railway Express. In addition, he talked about deeper customs cooperation to ensure trade security and faster clearance.
Trade & More: China, he said, “intends to import, in the coming five years, more than 170 billion US dollars of goods from CEE countries.” That’s very ambitious, since the total trade volume between the two sides was at $103.45 billion in 2020. Xi wants to focus on “demonstration zones and industrial parks for China-CEEC business cooperation in Chinese cities like Ningbo and Cangzhou.” He wants agricultural trade to go up by 50% over the next 5 years. In addition, he spoke about “a new round of Education Policy Dialogue and Higher Education Institutes Consortium meetings” to be held this year, and committed to supporting the establishment of a university in Hungary by Fudan University.
Green Development & Science-tech: The interesting bit in this for me was the proposal to set up a China-CEEC STI Research Center and hold a China-CEEC Forum for Young S&T Talents. China will also publish the China-CEEC STI Scorecard 2020. All of this aims to expand cooperation on the digital economy, e-commerce and the health sector. He added “China supports setting up a China-CEEC dialogue mechanism on e-commerce cooperation and a China-CEEC alliance in the public health industry.”
The final noteworthy bit in all this for me was that we didn’t hear anything about politicising the pandemic, creating exclusive clubs or protectionism and unilateralism, etc. On expanding imports, do check out this by Politico’s Stuart Lau: “It was a smart stratagem from Xi to appeal to the farm sector as it is a glaring political sore point where poorer rural economies in Eastern Europe feel hard done by and complain that they are undermined by the highly protectionist farming powerhouses of Western Europe.”
But Lau argues that China’s strategy in the region is falling flat. In terms of who attended, Lau reports that: “All six countries that snubbed China on Tuesday were from the 2004 intake of Eastern European NATO members. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia joined the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — in not sending their presidents or prime ministers to join what China had hoped to be a ‘Xi plus 17 leaders’ summit. For the Baltic states in particular, NATO's role as a guarantor of security against Russia outstrips other concerns.”
Anyway, another report on the front page of PD has Foreign Minister Wang Yi talking about the summit’s outcomes. He said:
“Leaders of all parties at the meeting agreed that under the new situation, the common interests and needs of China and Central and Eastern European countries continue to expand, and the continuous promotion of China-CEEC cooperation is an inevitable choice in the long-term interests of both parties.”
“The leaders of the participating parties believe that mutual benefit and win-win cooperation are the key to the success of bilateral cooperation. They should continue to persist and carry forward in the future, and play a greater role in promoting cross-regional cooperation and promoting regional development.”
Some 88 cooperation documents, including commercial deals, were agreed upon between all the parties. Here’s a full list of these on Page 2.
He talked about all parties coming to an understanding of “four major cooperation priorities,” i.e., dealing with the pandemic, pragmatic cooperation, interconnection and green innovation. This is basically the four points that Xi’s speech mentioned. Wang added that based on this, the 2021 China-CEEC Cooperation Beijing Activity Plan was passed. The plan is available on Page 2.
Finally this for the folks at home audience: “The international community pays great attention to China’s speeding up of building a new development pattern in which domestic and international cycles are the mainstay and the domestic and international dual cycles promote each other. President Xi Jinping explained to the participants the connotation of the new development pattern and the opportunities it brings to the world, and emphasized that the construction of the new development pattern will open up a broader space for China-CEEC cooperation.”
Third, a piece about Xi sending New Year greetings to former leaders and senior Party members. There’s a full list of people starting with Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, Zhu Rongji and so on. But here’s what’s noteworthy:
“The veteran comrades expressed their gratitude and spoke highly of the fact that the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core united in an extraordinary year to lead the whole party, the whole army and the people of all ethnic groups in the country to deliver answers that are satisfactory to the people, world-renowned, and can be recorded in history. The old comrades hope that the whole Party, the whole army and the whole nation unite more closely around the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, take Xi Jinping's thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era as the guidance…”
Page 3: New data from the People’s Bank of China show that total social financing in January increased by 5.17 trillion yuan, which is 120.7 billion yuan more than the same period last year. Among this, RMB loans increased by 3.82 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 325.8 billion yuan. As of the end of January, the stock of social financing was 289.74 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%. Among this, the balance of RMB loans issued was 175.41 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.1%.
Page 4: Today’s centenary propaganda column focuses on Chinese diplomacy. The piece talks about the “Geneva Conference to discuss the Korean and Indochina issues.” It says that China’s “great victory of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea” had established it as a “major power.” It says that US “obstruction” resulted in the failure to reach a consensus on the issue of North Korea. But on the matter of Indochina, “the Chinese delegation actively mediated and proposed solutions,” which led to peace being restored. The piece talks about China’s success at the conference in establishing diplomatic contact and displaying flexibility in its approach to the West.
The other meeting covered is the Asian-African Conference in Bandung. This is truly amusing revisionism. But here’s how PD talks about China’s diplomacy then: “Driven by China, the conference finally formed the ten principles of the Bandung Conference.”
Moving on, all subsequent pages, except the last one, are dedicated to an announcement commending “individuals and collectives who have made outstanding contributions in winning the battle against poverty in the name of the Party Central Committee and the State Council.”
Page 20: This page has two international stories. First, the WHO team that’s been in China to study the origin of COVID-19 held a presser. PD’s coverage of this is basically the same as this Xinhua report. It highlights the key findings of the joint study. It doesn’t beat the drum, which is smart, about the joint study report between the WHO and China saying that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely” but it does mention it. The focus is on where the team went, what they inspected and the findings of the study.
Key findings:
a coronavirus with high similarity to the novel coronavirus in gene sequences occurs in bats and pangolins. But the similarity is still not enough to make it a direct ancestor of the novel coronavirus.
The virus was found in environmental tests at the Huanan seafood market after its closure, especially in its aquatic product stalls. The coronavirus at the market might have been introduced through channels such as infected people, contaminated cold chain products, and animal products, but it is still uncertain. This bit about cold chain products is something that Beijing’s been talking about for some time. So now it has the WHO’s tentative seal too.
It says the COVID-19 spread among people on a certain scale in Wuhan, with most cases occurring in the second half of the month...as there were novel coronavirus cases in the market, there were also such cases in other areas of Wuhan at the same time.
Do note this quote by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, in this NYT piece: “This is the most authoritative support that China has received in terms of its official narrative...One visit is not enough time to do a thorough investigation. They’re doing all the work within the parameters set by the Chinese government.”