by Suelin Low Chew Tung
Our second month in China, as guests of the China International Press Communication Centre (CIPCC), was packed, but in between, there was Easter break and an extended Chinese Labour Day holiday.
After we flew back to Beijing from a 6-day visit to Hunan Province, we had a day off on Wednesday, 5 April, for Qingming or Tomb-Sweeping Day. This public holiday is when families clean graves and lay flowers and food, and burn incense. The equivalent in Grenada would be grave cleaning and repainting ahead of All Saints and All Souls and eating asham around that time. I lit joss (incense) sticks for my grandfather, who was born in Guangdong province in China and died in 1983 in Trinidad, but alas, I had no asham.
The schedule picked up from the next day. We attended several 2-hour lectures by professors from Renmin University of China (School of International Studies; College of Agriculture and Rural Development, and School of Applied Economics); the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University; Communication University of China; and the Department of Global Health, Peking University School of Public Health. Topics covered were:
- China’s Dual Circulation model: moving from a closed economy (domestic circulation) to becoming a leading global economic player (international circulation)
- China’s path to modernisation from a media perspective
- China’s poverty alleviation strategy to bring all the poor out of absolute poverty in 2013
- Constructive Journalism for Global Development Communication
- Getting Chinese modernisation right: where the goal is for China to become a great modern socialist society by 2049
- Global Health Systems and governance
The lecturers were comprehensive and generated questions, comments and conversations afterwards. For me, the lectures on the Dual Circulation model, poverty alleviation strategy, and Getting Chinese modernisation right, were particularly illuminating.
Our April site visit schedule covered sports, technology, politics, and medicine. We visited Beijing Olympic venues (National Speed Skating Oval, National Aquatics Centre), the restoration of cultural relics at the Zhongguancun International Capital Cluster Area, and the 751D Park Beijing Fashion Design Plaza. We toured the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the People’s Daily news media, the 29th China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition and the Dongzhimen Hospital of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.
In one day, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, we toured the National Base for International Cultural Trade and the China–Germany Plaza, and visited the Niulanshan Distillery Culture Centre and the Beijing International Flower Port.
We also visited Yangpu District, an old industrial district that has embraced a forward-thinking model to improve street quality and community harmony. As with all our site visits, we wear comfortable shoes. There is a lot of walking.
We participated in a salon on China–Caribbean relations hosted by Cai Wei, Director-General of the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and came away with a positive sense of China’s support in agriculture, trade and cultural exchange. Ahead of a much-anticipated visit in May, the four Centres (Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean) were introduced to an extensive historical background of the Forbidden City.
To top off our second month, the highlight was our 4-day trip to Shanghai to cover the Lanting Forum, the first held outside Beijing, under the theme “Chinese Modernisation and the World.” President Xi’s 3 major global initiatives on Civilisation, Development and Security, plus the Belt and Road Initiative, were discussed as critical to China’s development and promoted as a gift toward global development, peace and stability.
As the weather warms, May’s schedule promises to be just as packed.
Suelin is visiting Beijing, hosted by China International Press Communication Centre (CIPCC), to report on China with a Grenadian view.
Give us the names of the rest of the people you include in your group of fake journalists.
Sue Lin is a PROPAGANDA AGENT for the CHINESE. She would be much happier being there. She doesn’t present any kind of Grenadian perspective. She is being paid and sponsored by the Chinese. She prints what she is paid to print by her sponsors. If she opened her eyes and mouth and wrote about the lack of Human Rights in China she would end up in jail. Tired of seeing you just blindly print her pro chinese babble.
Kick the Chinese out.
It’s time to kick the Chinese out before it’s too late.
De Con needs to be mindful that the majority of Grenada’s diaspora lives in the US where China has a bad reputation. What will De Con do when they rise up against his bowing down to China? Dealing with China is shortsighted and scary. No wonder St. George’s University is no long attracting Americans. People are afraid and all of this is De Con’s fault.
Really?? Who began the vile connection to China and their FINANCIAL COLONIALIZATION?? KEITH MITCHELL. WHO sold off LEVERA LAKE, a oriented RAMSAR wetland and the rest of the area where the LEATHERBACK TURTLES nest?? KEITH MITCHELL. Your Dictator of the NNP government for 25 years sold Grenada to the Chinese.