By Christine Chou, The China Post

Yulin, China -- Many municipalities in China are facing the double struggle of curbing coal output and filling the economic void left by closed mines.

But a coal-rich city in the country's northwest is diversifying in attempt to revive its economy — turning to tourism, agriculture and alternative energy.

Located on the northern tip of Shaanxi province, Yulin has become a poster child for the country's attempts to move away from an economic reliance on mineral resources.

The city has been lauded by the national media as a consummate example of economic transformation.

Deputy Mayor Zhang Haifeng said Yulin was aiming to become "one of the most important cities along the Silk Road."

Zhang was referring to the ancient Silk Road trade route, consisting of a string of cities across Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The route is enjoying a contemporary revival with backing from China's central government.

The new "Silk Road Economic Belt," along with the "Maritime Silk Road" sea route, forms the "One Belt, One Road" initiative started by the China's central government in 2013.

The ambitious plan seeks to adapt the links of the historical Silk Road, and solve the country's domestic overcapacity by improving trade connections with Eurasia.

The history of Yulin comes to the fore when one takes a walk down the streets in the city's downtown, where local snack vendors dot alleys crammed with centuries-old buildings.

A traditional bakery sells hard, dry bread that requires incredible effort to bite into. Our local guide said this durable food had been popular with merchants passing through the city had, as it could last for weeks during the long, dusty journey ahead.

Chinese Kuwait

The discovery of large-scale mineral deposits in the 1980s dramatically changed the face of Yulin.

Zhang said Yulin was known as the "Kuwait of China" given its abundance of gas and coal fields.

The deputy mayor said the city had been "a key area in Shaanxi since ancient times because of its strategic position."

He added that Yulin continued to be an "important city in the nation's 'One Belt, One Road' initiative."

During the city's 11th International Coal and Energy Expo in September, a record-breaking 101 domestic and overseas deals were made with a combined value of 119.7 billion yuan — the highest in history, according to the government.

Local officials seem confident the city will cash in on its cultural capital. With help from the new opportunities provided by central government initiatives, they hope to expand the city into an international hub for the energy and chemical industries.

Turning to Tourism

Yulin's municipal government highlighted tourism and the cultural industries as key development areas.

"We will speed up progress in building up key tourist attractions, improve services offered to foreign visitors and create a unique tourism brand for Yulin," said Zhang.

Head of the tourism bureau Cui Yuan expressed confidence that Yulin's cultural heritage would attract tourists.

As part of these tourism efforts, Yulin was planning to renovate and upgrade its airport and offer flights to more destinations, Cui said.

Biennials in country’s Muslim-majority regions coincide with cultural exchange with Qatar

by LISA MOVIUS

China is increasingly engaging with countries with mainly Muslim populations through cultural exchanges as its government champions the creation of a new, economic “Silk Road”. Two biennials opened this autumn in the country’s far-flung western regions, which are the respective homelands of China’s two largest Muslim minorities, the Turkic Uyghurs and the more assimilated Hui. Meanwhile, the 11th Shanghai Biennale, which is due to open on 11 November (until 12 March 2017), features an unprecedented number of international artists from Muslim countries, even though China’s own Muslim minorities remain marginalised.

The third Xinjiang International Art Biennale was organised by the ministry of culture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Urumqi (8-31 October). Featuring folk and popular art, which reflect official preferences, it contrasts starkly with the global contemporary approach of the first Yinchuan Biennale (until 18 December) at the new, private MoCA Yinchuan, in the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Urumqi and Yinchuan are stops on China’s ancient Silk Road, the overland trade route that led to the mostly Muslim countries to China’s west. Their biennials coincide with an increase in China’s cultural engagement with neighbouring countries and the Middle East. For example, Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art is currently showing Treasures of China (until 7 January), including terracotta warriors from Xi’an—the start of the Silk Road—as part of the official Qatar-China Year.

The cultural exchange with Qatar is part of China’s massive One Belt, One Road Initiative, championed by president Xi Jinping as a way to counteract slowing domestic growth. The Chinese government aims to develop new markets to China’s west and south.

Official cultural exchanges under One Belt, One Road’s auspices now abound, such as a thematic section of the 18th China Shanghai International Arts Festival (until November 15), featuring projects from Qatar and Egypt. Unofficially, such events may encourage institutions in coastal China to show more work by contemporary artists from Muslim-majority countries. However, there are no indicators that state scrutiny of unofficial shows will relax. Other Gallery Shanghai’s March 2011 group exhibition The Third Eye, which featured works by nine Iranian artists, was closed after the Iranian consulate complained to the Chinese authorities about its content.

Religious and political taboos

In the past two decades artists from across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa have rarely been shown in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, partly because politics and religion, major themes in contemporary art from these regions, are major taboos in China. Meanwhile, negative stereotypes of the Hui, Uyghurs and foreign Muslims remain common among Han Chinese. “It is impossible to attract publicity and visitors without famous artists’ works in a show. Chinese art museums are still early in their evolution, and well-known Islamic artists are very few,” says MoCA Yinchuan director Liu Wenjin. “I will not use Islamic identity to promote artists­—their background is incidental to whether their art can move the audience.” She blames Chinese audiences’ hesitancy towards art from the Islamic world on sensationalist media reports.

While Chinese institutions and collectors are often uninterested in, or wary of, contemporary art from countries with mainly Muslim populations, the Shanghai Biennale will feature work by artists including Beiruit-based, Iraqi-American Rheim Alkadhi and Indonesia’s Agan Harahap. The show, which is organised by Raqs Media Collective, founded by three New Delhi-based artists, stresses “south-south co-operation”.

By Tony Boyd / Source Financial Review

One way of explaining the amazing surge in commodity prices in the wake of Donald Trump becoming US President-Elect is that there is going to be an infrastructure investment surge on both sides of the Pacific.

The idea is that Trump's commitment to rebuilding America's infrastructure will coincide with an increase in China's policy of investing in infrastructure from China to the Middle East.

Ironically, this confluence of commodity-friendly investment, which would benefit Australia's terms of trade, would be triggered by Trump's isolationist and protectionist trade policies.

"A more domestically-focused US will probably make more room for China to expand its geopolitical and economic interests through initiatives like "One-Belt-One-Road", according to Steven Sun, head of China Equity Strategy at HSBC.

One-Belt-One-Road is a regional infrastructure investment plan involving the investment of billions of dollars in infrastructure in 60 countries.

Other economists agree that a logical Chinese response to the imposition of tariffs on Chinese exports to the US would be to turn inward and step up its stimulatory domestic policies.

"The trade tensions will also put more pressure on domestic macro policy, introducing an easing bias on the fiscal policy," according to economist Haibin Zhu at JPMorgan in Hong Kong.

Commodity prices were on a roll before the Trump wildcard was thrown down this week. That surge in the price of base metals as well as iron ore and coal was attributed to China's fiscal stimulus over the past nine months and its decision to wind back the production of coal.

Following Trump's election, key commodities took off. Copper, which is a bellwether of global industrial production, rose 3.4 per cent on the London Metals Exchange, taking its gains over the past two weeks to 17 per cent.

A participant at the recent LME Week event in London said the bullish mood towards copper was far greater than in previous years. The metal is now trading at a 15-month high despite evidence this week that Chinese imports in October were the lowest since February 2015.

Coking coal prices rose 4 per cent on Wednesday night to a five-year high of $US295 a tonne.

The other commodity sprinting ahead this week is iron ore. It rose 3.9 per cent after Trump's election victory and has now gained 21 per cent in two weeks.

That helps explain the significant increase in the share prices of irone ore stocks, including Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group.

There is a common theme evident with these stocks. When analysts plug in the spot prices for iron ore into their models for these companies there is a material upside risk to their earnings forecasts.

Investors have been reluctant to rely on the high spot prices because of caution about what might happen in China. But the optimists have pointed out that China's President, Xi Jinping, has many incentives to continue his stimulatory policies to maintain growth in the Chinese economy ahead of his reappointment by the Chinese Communist Party early next year.

Xi has as much incentive as every Western leader to ensure that the social harmony, which has been a feature of the country's extraordinary growth over the past decade, is maintained. He does not want a populist, extremist upheaval upsetting his plans to appoint a range of chosen colleagues to important party positions next year.

Trump's election holds out the prospect of the world's largest economy competing with China for the mantle as global infrastructure investment leader.

It is telling that the equity futures markets in the US were down substantially when Trump rose to give his victory speech. The sentiment changed and the futures prices reversed dramatically from negative to positive as soon as Trump mentioned infrastructure.

As with most things that Trump has said, his victory speech was light on detail. But the message was clear that America is going to need a lot of concrete and steel.

"We are going to fix our inner cities, and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump said. "We are going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become ... second to none and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."

One of Trump's campaign pledges was to work with lawmakers to introduce legislation to "spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment" over the course of a decade, according to FTI Consulting.

Trump claims the infrastructure bill would be "revenue neutral" and leverage "public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives"

This law is meant to go through in his first 100 days.

By Tony Boyd / Source Financial Review

MINSK, 10 November (BelTA) – Belarusian Economy Minister Vladimir Zinovsky invited Latvian businesses to become residents of the Chinese-Belarusian industrial park Great Stone as he met with a Latvian delegation led by Economy Minister Arvils Aseradens on 10 November, BelTA has learned. “Belarus is a good investment platform. We are building an industrial park in cooperation with China, and we invite all European companies, not only those of Belarus and China, to join the project. We would like to see Latvian companies in the park. Its residents are given good preferences,” Vladimir Zinovsky noted. He stressed that businesses can enjoy preferences not only in the industrial park Great Stone, but also in a number of free economic zones in Belarus. Vladimir Zinovsky said that the trade between Belarus and Latvia has declined recently. However, the minister expressed confidence that the countries have not yet exhausted their potential and will manage to improve the situation. “We are ready for open and constructive work.

Now it is important to catch up and switch to new forms of cooperation and projects with good economic returns,” the minister emphasized. He noted that Belarus seeks to develop fruitful and effective relations with Latvia and to strengthen the mutually beneficial economic cooperation. In this context, Vladimir Zinovsky said with satisfaction that Belarus' cargoes traditionally account for a considerable share of the total volume of Latvia's rail transportation. Belarus' and Latvia's participation in the large-scale Chinese projects Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-century Maritime Silk Road will enhance the countries' appeal and intensify their cooperation in logistics.

Arvils Aseradens said that the relations between Belarus and Latvia are fruitful. He said that Latvia is eager to develop close economic cooperation. “There is great potential with respect to the Belarusian economy. I think we can expect the mutual trade to double,” he noted. Besides, the minister said that Latvia would like to cooperate with Belarus within China's One Belt, One Road project. Arvils Aseradens emphasized the importance of the Days of Latvia which are currently underway in Belarus. “It is very good that Belarusians will have a chance to learn about the life in their neighboring country,” Arvils Aseradens said.

Source Belarus News