Editor’s note for June 28, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is the man to meet in Beijing this week: Yesterday he held meetings and took photos with the prime ministers of Barbados, New Zealand, Mongolia, and Vietnam.
They are all “small countries” in the 2010 words of then foreign minister Yáng Jiéchí 杨洁篪, which is perhaps why Xi lined their leaders up like supplicants. The visitors were all more than willing to participate in Xi’s show of power.
As New Zealander and previous contributor to The China Project Alex Smith wrote in advance of Kiwi prime minister Chris Hipkins’ trip: “Not many of us trust Beijing to act responsibly in the world — but we still really want Chinese yuan.”
If you’re planning a trip to China and you’re not a Chinese citizen nor a prime minister, you should be happy to know that both Tencent and Ant Group — the providers of the major mobile phone payment systems in China — say they will allow foreigners to link international credit cards.
As you know if you’ve been in China in the last five years without Alipay or WeChat Wallet, paying for stuff has been a serious inconvenience for international visitors.
Our Word of the Day is the Chinese translation for pro wrestling (shuāijiǎo 摔角).
It is a neologism, because the direct translation for wrestling is actually the homograph 摔跤 shuāijiāo. It’s a small but significant difference, signaling to viewers that the latter is a sport while the former is…something else.
You can read all about that something else in our top story today: click through for the whole thing or scroll down for a summary.
