Chinese language learning becomes more popular worldwide By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-10 14:00 China will push for more international organizations and conferences to include Chinese as an official language or working language, giving its increasingly important role in international communication and the country's rising influence around the world, the Ministry of Education said. The Chinese language was adopted as one of the official languages of the United Nations World Tourism Organization in January, the ministry said. In response to a proposal made this year by a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference about the challenges and risks facing international Chinese language education, the ministry said great achievements have been made in Chinese language education globally. Over 1,500 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms have been established in 159 countries, and their courses have been taken by more than 13 million Chinese-language learners, the ministry said. Moreover, more than 180 countries have conducted Chinese-language teaching programs and 75 countries have incorporated the language into their national education system by issuing laws and regulations, it said. More than 4,000 foreign universities have established Chinese-language departments, majors and courses, and more than 75,000 primary and secondary schools and training institutions worldwide have opened Chinese language courses, the ministry said. There are over 25 million foreigners currently learning the language and accumulatively almost 200 million foreigners have learned the language, it said. With China's growing economic power and global influence, people all over the world are more eager to learn the language and know about the country, which has provided a historic opportunity for the sustainable development of international Chinese language education, the ministry said. However, the sector still faces many challenges including a lack of comprehensive standards, teachers and teaching materials, the COVID-19 pandemic and the politicization of Chinese learning by a small number of countries. The ministry will continue to revise the standards of Chinese-language teachers, teaching materials, exams and evaluation. It will also push for more private, localized and professional development of Confucius Institutes. Kendall Kracke, the global champion of the 20th Chinese Bridge Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students, said she began to learn the language when she was 18 years old. The 24-year-old from the United States said that although the journey of learning the language has not always been smooth, she has never considered giving up due to her love for China. As a PhD candidate in Chinese language education in Portland State University, Oregon, she also teaches Chinese at a local secondary school. Kracke said that she wants to continue to be a Chinese teacher and let...

Writer's reputation lasts long in people's memory By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-09 14:00 In the days before he died in October 1936, Lu Xun, regarded by many as the father of modern Chinese literature, continued to work despite being seriously ill. Many of his works are published in many languages. But unlike his work during the previous two decades, when he mainly wrote to raise awareness of the need for a better China, in one of his last pieces, This is Also Life, he recorded his feelings after recovering from a dangerous illness. "The lamplight in the street shines through the window, dimly illuminating the room. I take a glance around, the familiar walls, their edges, the familiar stacks of books, the unbound picture album, the night going on outside, the world far away, and millions of people. I can relate to them all." Many Chinese still love to quote the last part of that passage. Lu's essays and short stories are selected for textbooks, but primary and middle school students, many of whom are unable to understand the essential ideas of his work, are often required to recite entire passages written about a century ago in a style they find challenging. However, 140 years after his birth, Lu's name often features on social media platforms, as people love quoting him-falsely in numerous cases. As a result, the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing created a search engine to help readers verify Lu's quotes, which have become a hot topic on Sina Weibo. Photographs of the writer and quotes falsely attributed to him have been used as humorous stickers on WeChat. On the Taobao shopping platform, an image of Lu in the television series The Age of Awakening, which aired in February, has been so popular that 16 pages of related cultural creative products are available including badges, keyrings, bookmarks, cutouts, stickers and T-shirts. Born on Sept 25, 1881, Lu resonates with young people in different ways. In late February last year, Wu Yifan, who at the time was a 21-year-old finance student at Peking University, posted a video of a rap song he wrote based on 16 prose poems from Lu's Wild Grass collection. The song soon became a hit on the Bilibili short-video platform. Wu spent Spring Festival last year in his hometown of Shihezi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. He became bored with being cooped up indoors, so he started rereading Wild Grass, which he had read many times since leaving middle school. "I had previously reread my favorite passages, paying a lot of attention to the language and writing style. However, last year, after reading the entire collection, I noticed the general tone was anguished. I could sense Lu's disappointment and despair, which I hadn't felt so profoundly before," said Wu, now a graduate student at Fudan University in Shanghai. When Lu wrote the poems in Wild Grass from December 1924 to January 1926, he was living in Beijing, which was ruled by the Northern Warlords (1912-27). The future for China at ...

Astronaut in orbit conducts a historic spacewalk By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-08 11:00 Senior Colonel Wang Yaping, 41, became China's first female spacewalker on Sunday evening when she took part in the Shenzhou XIII mission's first extravehicular activity with mission commander Major General Zhai Zhigang. The extravehicular operation began at 6:51 pm when Zhai opened a hatch. By 8:28 pm, Zhai and Wang had exited the Tiangong space station, the China Manned Space Agency said in a statement. By midnight, they had mounted new components on the station's robotic arm and utilized it to practice extravehicular maneuvers and rescue operations, the agency said, noting that Senior Colonel Ye Guangfu had remained inside the station to monitor and support the spacewalk, which was scheduled to last six hours. The spacewalk was expected to further verify the robotic arm's capabilities and its compatibility with the needs of astronauts, examine the safety and performance of support devices in an extravehicular task and test the functions of a new type of extravehicular suit, the agency said. It reported the Shenzhou XIII crew will carry out one to two more spacewalks in the coming months. A native of Shandong province and mother of a 5-year-old girl, Wang joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in August 1997 and served as a deputy squadron commander before joining the second group of astronauts at the PLA Astronaut Division in May 2010. In March 2012, she was part of the backup crew for the Shenzhou IX mission, and in June 2013, she took part in the Shenzhou X mission, which lasted nearly 15 days. She is the second Chinese woman to have flown in space. During the Shenzhou X flight, Wang gave China's first space-based lecture inside the Tiangong I experimental module to more than 60 million Chinese students at about 80,000 schools across the country. She was selected for Shenzhou XIII in December 2019 and was also a member of the backup crew for the Shenzhou XII mission. Zhai, 55, was the first Chinese astronaut to conduct a spacewalk — he floated out of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft for about 15 minutes during its three-day mission in September 2008. That short adventure made China the third nation in the world, following the former Soviet Union and the United States, capable of independently conducting a spacewalk. The Shenzhou XIII mission was launched on Oct 16 by a Long March 2F carrier rocket that blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China's Gobi Desert, with the crew soon entering the Tiangong space station, whose name means Heavenly Palace. They are scheduled to spend six months working in the station, making it China's longest space mission. Before the spacewalk, they had moved living and work materials from the Tianzhou 2 and 3 cargo spaceships to the station's core module, named Tianhe, or Harmony of Heavens, tested their extravehicular suits, and conducted training on robotic arm co...

Fair for more sustainable trade By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-05 14:00 State-of-the-art technologies and solutions will be displayed during the fourth China International Import Expo in Shanghai. This prompted leaders of multinational companies to hail China as a touchstone for digitalization breakthroughs and an open platform for global technological advances. For example, Joe Bao, president of Microsoft China, said, "Microsoft Corp is really looking forward to showcase our new and innovative technology solutions and applications at the CIIE, which also paved the way for what we have planned for the market for the future." The US tech conglomerate has been participating in the mega event for four consecutive years. It showcases its leading digital solutions in intelligent manufacturing, retail and healthcare this time. "Investing in innovations is what Microsoft has been committed to in the Chinese market, so as to promote joint digital advances with our partners and helping bring China's homegrown innovations to the world," Bao said. The Tuttlingen, Germany-based Karl Storz Co, a prominent medical instrument and device manufacturer and supplier, also brought its best-known tech products and solutions to the expo. According to Mei Yang Mille, the managing director of Karl Storz Endoscopy (Shanghai) Ltd, the company's OR1 innovative integrated solutions for operating rooms provides expandable systems that can be localized and customized to the needs of Chinese customers. "The expo promotes international procurement and multilateral cooperation, with concrete policy support and framework setup. With the expo, we will demonstrate our high-quality innovative products and operation room solutions, and commitment to a worldwide audience," she said. China has become a leader in the digital economy, attracting companies from both home and abroad to invest and develop. The market size of the country's digital economy surged 9.6 percent year-on-year last year, the fastest worldwide, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a Beijing-based government think tank. For Kentaro Fujiwara, CEO of Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido China, thanks to the rapid growth of the Chinese market, China quickly became Shiseido's largest overseas market. Now, the company actually exports some of its best technologies and solutions from China to other economies. "New technologies and products will continue to emerge from or be introduced to the Chinese market, as each emerging technology or product has an extremely large target consumer base here in China. Consumers here are willing to try something new," Fujiwara said. He also said Shiseido's second skin and 3D internal skin elasticity imaging technologies will make their international debut at the CIIE. The company's new beauty brand will also be unveiled at the grand event. Nearly 3,000 exhibitors from 127 countries and regions showcase their latest technolog...

Great potential for China and Hungary to extend cooperation By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-04 14:00 China's extraordinary efforts to improve its biodiversity have been noticed in Hungary, and there is great potential for both countries to work together on the cause of sustainability, the Hungarian ambassador to China said. Mate Pesti said that China, as one of the world's mega-biodiverse countries, has over the years used targeted legislation and action plans to make progress in biodiversity protection. "The carefully orchestrated measures resulted in the creation of thousands of protected areas, botanical gardens and arboreta, zoos, long- and medium-term banks, marine reserves, which now conserve tens of thousands of species, and through its rigorous reforestation efforts, forest cover now accounts for more than 20 percent of its total land area," the ambassador said. Pesti also cited China's role in hosting the first part of the UN Biodiversity Conference, also known as COP 15, which wrapped up in Kunming last month. The ambassador said the world can now look forward to the Planet Budapest 2021 Sustainability Expo and Summit, the largest international event of its kind to be held in Central Europe. It opens on Nov 29 in the Hungarian capital. He said that Hungary played a role in establishing the world's first five-sided biosphere, the Mura-Drava-Danube Transboundary Biosphere Reserve. The opening of the UNESCO-backed project marks a milestone in efforts to conserve Central Europe's largest river system and its wildlife. "By the shared vision and rigorous conservation efforts of our countries, there is plenty of room for international cooperation in the fields of biodiversity know-how and peer-to-peer exchanges," he said. He said Hungary's climate and ecological protection plan puts a major emphasis on sustainability. It includes the electrification of transport, a ban on single-use plastic products, large renewable energy plants, the elimination of illegal waste dumping, and the issuance of government-backed green bonds along with increased reforestation. "These steps, along with the general vision and efforts of the government for the digitalization of the economy and society, make sure that Hungary will deal with the adverse effects of human activity, promote our goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, and walk the path of sustainability in the post-2020 world," he said. He said that even under optimistic forecasts, human population and consumption are going to grow dramatically in the coming decades. But there has been a growing understanding that human activity in its current state is unsustainable, and immediate steps are needed to ensure the well-being of the planet and secure the future of humanity, the ambassador said. The Budapest sustainability expo and summit was conceived with these ideas in mind, with the objective of offering innovative solutions to the challenges of sustainability, Pesti said. He...

Saudi Arabia's green initiative receives plaudits By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-03 14:00 Climate advocates and observers have welcomed a multibillion-dollar plan by Saudi Arabia to struggle with climate change in the Middle East, but emphasize that its success rests with meaningful cooperation from other countries. In late October, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the Middle East Green Initiative, aiming to secure about $10.4 billion for an investment fund and clean energy project to reduce regional carbon emissions, and said that Saudi Arabia would contribute 15 percent of the funds. The crown prince pledged that the country would reach net zero emissions by 2060 by investing more than $186 billion into the green economy over that time, an amount equivalent to about one or two years' worth of its current oil revenues. He also said his country would set up the required infrastructure, which includes establishing a regional carbon capture and storage center, an early storm warning center and a regional cloud-seeding program. United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed praised the initiative as "a valuable commitment and strategic vision", to transition regional economies away from unsustainable development to a model "fit for the challenges of the 21st century". Nadim Farajalla, director of the Climate Change and Environment Program at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, said that while greater cooperation among countries in the region is needed, he "would not lump the Middle East all together in one category" as the influence of climate change varies from one area to another. Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director at EcoPeace Middle East, a regional environmental organization headquartered in Jordan, said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have the potential to be major producers and exporters of renewable energy. Because of the vast desert areas and incredible exposure to sunlight in the region, "Saudi Arabia, Jordan, (and) the Gulf, actually have the potential to be major producers and exporters of renewable energy", said Bromberg, who is attending the UN climate conference in Glasgow. Solar, wind and green hydrogen energy can replace the region's future income losses from scaling back on fossil fuels "and help save not only the Middle East but the planet", he expressed. Ilan Zalayat, a Middle East analyst and doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, said it is difficult to estimate Saudi Arabia's capacity to financially achieve the goals announced in the green projects in the long run. "However, pioneering green energy projects do not have to burden the Saudi economy, but instead, could attract foreign investors to the kingdom in non-petroleum sectors, a pillar of Prince Mohammed's 2030 Vision to end the kingdom's dependency on oil,"...

US supply chain crisis and their remedy By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-02 11:00 At the height of the supply chain crisis in the United States about two weeks ago, according to The Washington Post, 79 container ships were anchored in the sea off the coasts of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting to dock at the already crowded berths of the two ports to unload cargo worth an estimated $8 billion. Meanwhile, big box retailers across the land are seeing their shelves and warehouses being emptied quickly. Towards Christmas season the situation is especially dire. Never before in recent history has the US seen this kind of supply shortage. Some politicians in Washington have been quick to blame foreign trade for the crisis, as if there would not have been any crisis if "corporate America" produced everything at home, from shoes and toys to Christmas tree decorations. These politicians behave as if Americans would have been happily singing their way to Walmart, Dollar Tree, or amazon.com had all those inexpensive and expensive stuffs been made in Mississippi or some other southern US state. Let's set the record straight. Those 79 container ships were not anchored off the ports of Shanghai or Tianjin to load goods－they had been waiting off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach until about two weeks to unload their cargo. The supply chain crisis is purely a US domestic crisis, caused by the breakdown of the US' logistics network, the shortage of about 80,000 truck drivers, and clogged containers at US ports not able to return to Asian countries for reloading. The politicians' anti-trade diatribe will not resolve the US' supply chain crisis. On the contrary, it will only exacerbate it. That the job market has more than 10 million positions vacant attests to the fact that there is not even enough trade at this point. The US economy is simply not tuned for the kind of labor-intensive manufacturing that "corporate America" once off-shored or outsourced. The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly taking a toll on the global supply chains. But while many other countries are still embroiled in chaotic production disruptions and labor shortages, China, the "world's factory", which accounts for more than 20 percent of global manufacturing, is still producing and supplying goods without skipping a heartbeat. Even at the height of the pandemic in February-March 2020, China's supply chains withstood the test thanks to their resilience. Aside from disrupting the supply chains, the pandemic has also accelerated the US economy's structural change in terms of moving toward creating service-oriented jobs in high-tech industries. In a US of those anti-trade politicians, there would have been even a bigger shortage of truck drivers and more vacant positions in the job market, and prices would be shooting through the roof. In these times of economic slowdown, it is all the more significant to stress free trade and cross-border capital investment to squeez...

Commitment to sober and doable climate strategy By Target Language Translation Services | Updated: 2021-11-01 14:00 Imagine that your house is ablaze, and the fire brigade's response is to hold an occasional meeting to discuss progress in extinguishing it before deciding to let it carry on burning. That is how many ordinary people regard the prospects for this week's 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 26, billed as the last, best chance to save the planet. It is a tribute to the efforts of climate campaigners that they have succeeded in pushing the issue to the top of the global agenda with their apocalyptic warnings of what is going to happen in the absence of immediate action. A year of forest fires, record heat waves and devastating floods in various parts of the world has further fostered the fear that doomsday is already here and that the best hope now is to try to limit further damage. The formal goal of this week's Glasgow summit is to receive updated plans from national governments on cutting emissions and to agree on how to implement the terms of the Paris climate accords that were agreed upon six years ago. The ultimate objective is to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, a target that may already be beyond reach. The pre-summit tactic of some participants has been to talk up the existential cost of failure at Glasgow while talking down the prospects of success. Summit host Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, has warned that lack of action on climate change could mean the end of civilization, while also warning that the chances for progress at COP 26 are "touch and go". It is a potentially perilous approach in the face of an often confused public that is desperately looking for rational and unified international responses to a global problem. Queen Elizabeth II, who might seem to be a rather unlikely spokeswoman for the average man or woman in the street, summed up the view of many when she was recorded in a private conversation criticizing those in charge for being "irritating" when "they talk, but they don't do". Perhaps she was reflecting the widespread public desire for implementation of a coherent, science-based plan in which empty rhetoric is translated into action. There has been progress in tackling the climate crisis in recent decades, including a gradual switch to cleaner fuels, even if most agree that it has not been enough. Climate scientists and activists have, at the same time, succeeded in raising public consciousness about the scale of the crisis while pushing the dwindling cohort of so-called climate deniers and climate skeptics to the margins. However, to get their message across, the most vociferous climate campaigners have sometimes presented the crisis in black and white terms that do not always reflect the complexity of the crisis and its resolution. Some of their proposals, such as an immediate shutdown of investment in fossil fuels, might lead to more shor...