Chinese scholars from the World Civilization Research Association claim that some European languages, including English, are dialects derived from Mandarin.
The group is formed by scholars from a number of Chinese academic institutions.
The claim, which is said to be backed by over 20 years of research, was presented at the first China International Frontier Education Summit in Beijing, China last July, as reported by Sina Online on Aug. 26 via Vice yesterday, Sept 9.
Zhai Guiyun, vice president and secretary-general of the group, told Sina Online via Taiwan News last Aug. 31, that some English words derive from Mandarin.
He pointed out that “yellow” resembled “yeluo, ” the Mandarin word for “leaf falling, ” while “heart” resembled “hede, ” the Mandarin word for “core.”
“Of course, the pronunciation will be a little different, which is caused by the variations in pronunciation over hundreds or even thousands of years in different regions, ” Zhai told Sina Online via Vice. “Think about how significant the differences are in our regional dialects... so it can be said that English is like a ‘dialect’ in our country.”
Zhai concluded that the examples he presented “proved” English is a Mandarin dialect.
Along with this claim, he also stated that other European-based languages such as French, German and Russian also went through a similar process of sinicization, where non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture.
Another member of the association, Zhu Xuanshi added that Europe had no history before the 15th century.
This lack of history supposedly led the Europeans to feel “ashamed, ” and in turn, had “fabricated” stories of the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations. According to the report by Taiwan News, he stated that the said civilizations were all based on Chinese history.
In an attempt to “restore the truth of world history, ” the association has set up branches in Canada, Madagascar, South Korea, Thailand, United States and United Kingdom. The group’s founder, Du Gangjian said, “Do not let fake, Western-centered history hinder the great Sino-Renaissance.”
However, the claims did not convince many Chinese citizens. Users of the social media platform Weibo called the members of the association “Wolf Warrior Scholars, ” a reference to a patriotic Chinese movie.
“Thanks, ” one user was quoted as saying. “We can no longer laugh at the Koreans who claimed Confucius and Genghis Khan are Korean.” – Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network
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Chief Executive of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
(HKSAR) Carrie Lam speaks during a media session in Hong Kong, south
China, Sept 5, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
Economist: Island needs closer ties with China to improve
"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," said economist Lau Pui-King. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."
"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.
HONG KONG - Kwong loves the pure adrenaline rush he gets when he takes his motorcycle out on the weekends to light up his lackluster life.
The 35-year-old lives with his parents in an old and cramped apartment in the New Territories of Hong Kong. He has a girlfriend but is hesitant to get married and start a family.
"The rent is so high, and there is no way I can afford an apartment," said Kwong, who earns 15,000 HK dollars ($1,950) a month. Renting a 30-square meter one-bedroom apartment would cost him about two-thirds of his salary.
"Future? I don't think much about it, just passing each day as it is," he said.
Kwong's words reflect the grievances among many people in Hong Kong, particularly the young. Many vented their discontent in prolonged streets protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June.
The demonstrations, which started over two planned amendments to Hong Kong's ordinances concerning fugitive offenders, widened and turned violent over the past months.
"After more than two months of social unrest, it is obvious to many that discontentment extends far beyond the bill," said Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), referring to the now-withdrawn amendments.
To Lam, the discontent covers political, economic and social issues, including the often-mentioned problems relating to housing and land supply, income distribution, social justice and mobility and opportunities, for the public to be fully engaged in the HKSAR government's decision-making.
"We can discuss all these issues in our new dialogue platform," she said.
HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam visits a transitional housing project of the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society Kowloon in Hong Kong, south China, Aug 9, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
UNAFFORDABLE HOUSES
For nine straight years, housing in Hong Kong has been ranked as the least affordable in the world. Homes in the city got further out of reach for most residents, according to Demographia, an urban planning policy consultancy. The city's median property price climbed to 7.16 million HK dollars in 2019, or 20.9 times the median household income in 2018, up from 19.4 times from a year earlier.
In the latest case of house transaction, an apartment of 353 square feet (about 33 square meters) at Mong Kok in central Kowloon was sold at 5.2 million HK dollars in September, according to the registered data from Centaline Property Agency Limited.
For those fortunate enough to have bought an apartment, many have to spend a large part of their monthly income on a mortgage. For those who have not bought any property yet, it is common to spend more than 10,000 HK dollars in rent, while saving every penny up for a multi-million HK dollar down payment.
From 2004 to 2018, the property price increased by 4.4 fold, while income stagnated, statistics show. From 2008 to 2017, average real wage growth in Hong Kong was merely 0.1 percent, according to a global wage report by the International Labor Organization. Homeownership dropped from 53 percent to 48.9 percent from 2003 to 2018.
Efforts of the HKSAR government to increase land supply to stem home prices from soaring also went futile amid endless quarrels. Of Hong Kong's total 1,100 square kilometers of land area, only 24.3 percent has been developed, with land for residential use accounting for a mere 6.9 percent, according to data from the HKSAR government.
Social worker Jack Wong, 29, lives in an apartment bought by his parents. "I'm lucky. Most of my friends still have to share apartments with their parents. My cousin has been married for seven years, but he is still saving for his down payment, so he has to live at his parents' house," he said.
"The older generation changed from having nothing to having something. We, the younger generation, thought we had something, but it turns out we have nothing," he said.
MIDDLE CLASS' ANXIETY
While young people complain about having few opportunities for upward mobility, Hong Kong's middle class, which should have long been stalwarts of the society, are under great economic pressure and in fear of falling behind.
It is not easy to be middle class in Hong Kong, one of the world's most expensive cities. To join the rank, a household needs to earn at least 55,000 HK dollars, or $7,000, a month, according to Paul Yip Siu-fai, a senior lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. About 10 percent of the households in the city are up to the rank.
Earning that much can be counted as rich in many parts of the world. But in Hong Kong, the money is still tight if you have a child to raise and elderly to support.
Housing is the biggest burden for the average middle-class resident. The cost of having a child is another headache in Hong Kong, where pricey extra-curricular activities and private tutoring are considered necessary to win in the fierce competition.
Fears of descending to the low-income group are real for the middle class. Many think they belong to the middle class only in education and cultural identity, but their living conditions are not much better than the impoverished, said Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, former secretary for transport and housing of the HKSAR government.
Civil servants and teachers, who earn much more than the average income, are traditionally considered middle class. But Cheung found out in a survey that many of them could not afford to have their own apartment, with some even living in the narrow rooms of partitioned apartments.
"We don't belong to the low-income group, but we could just rent an apartment now," said Lee, a teacher at a secondary school in Hong Kong.
Lee and her husband earned nearly 1.3 million HK dollars a year, but a 50-square meter apartment is the best they could rent now for a five-member family. She preferred not to give her full name as she feels her situation is embarrassing.
"We want to save more money to buy a house near prestigious elementary schools for our kids," Lee said. "If our kids can't go to a good school, it'll be very tough in the future."
A woman walks near the Harbour City in Hong Kong, south China, Aug 27, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]
CHANGING ECONOMIC STRUCTURE
In the 1970s, nearly half of Hong Kong's labor force were industrial workers when manufacturing thrived in Hong Kong. During the 1980s, Hong Kong's finance, shipping, trade and logistics and service industries started to boom.
Since then, the economic landscape began to change amid subsequent industrial upgrading.
Due to the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry, the wealth gap in Hong Kong widened and the class division worsened. Despite the prosperity of finance, trade and tourism in recent years, more than 1.37 million people are living below the poverty line in Hong Kong, home to more than 7 million.
Working career options are now limited, leaving little hope for the youngsters to move up the social ranks.
As a result, Hong Kong's social class has largely been solidified in the 21st century, with the richest people dominated by property developers and their families.
The Gini coefficient, which measures the inequality of income distribution, reached a new high of 0.539 in 2016, far above the warning level of 0.4, according to data by the HKSAR government's Census and Statistics Department. The greater the number toward one, the more inequal in income distribution.
Though the HKSAR government tried to narrow the wealth gap, many people in Hong Kong said they are not sharing the fruits of economic prosperity, the young and those low-income groups in particular.
STAGNATING POLITICAL BARRIERS
What makes the deep-seated problems in Hong Kong such a hard nut to crack? The reason is complicated, according to observers, partly due to the containment in the current political structure that leads to governance difficulty, partly due to a doctrinaire implementation of the principle of "small government, big market," or laisser faire, and most importantly due to the opposition's "say no for none's sake" that stirs political confrontation and sends Hong Kong into a dilemma of discussions without decisions, or making decisions without execution.
Over the past 22 years, the successive HKSAR governments have tried many times to tackle these problems by rolling out affordable housing programs and narrowing the rich-poor gap.
For example, to make houses more affordable, Tung Chee-hwa, the first HKSAR chief executive, proposed in 1997 to build at least 85,000 flats every year in the public and private sectors, raise the homeownership rate to 70 percent in 10 years and reduce the average waiting time for public rental housing to three years.
Such plans, however, went aborted as home prices plunged in Hong Kong amid the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
"Since Hong Kong's return, many economic and livelihood issues would not be as politicized as they are now, should the HKSAR government have introduced more policies and better social security arrangements to address those problems," said Tian Feilong, a law expert of the "one country, two systems" center with the Beijing-based Beihang University.
To carry out major policies or push forward major bills, the HKSAR government needs to garner the support of two-thirds majority at the Legislative Council (LegCo).
The HKSAR government's previous motions, be it economic policies or fiscal appropriations, were impeded by the opposition time and again at the LegCo, regardless of the interests of the majority of Hong Kong residents and the long-term development of the society.
The HKSAR government sought in 2012 to establish the Innovation and Technology Bureau to ride the global wave of innovative startups, diversify its economic structure and bring more opportunities for young people. Such efforts, however, were obstructed by the opposition at the LegCo in defiance of repeated calls by the public. After three years, the proposal to create the bureau was finally passed by the LegCo.
In another case, a Hong Kong resident, incited by the opposition, appealed in 2010 for a judicial review of the construction plan of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Though the HKSAR government won the lawsuit after more than a year of court proceedings, 6.5 billion HK dollars of taxpayers' money had been wasted in the increased construction costs of the bridge's Hong Kong section due to the delay.
As time passed, problems remained unsolved, so did public discontent.
Repeated political bickering stalled Hong Kong's social progress amid the sparring, and the opposition created a false target and blamed the Chinese mainland for those deep-seated problems.
Lau Pui-King, an economist in Hong Kong, snubbed the opposition's resistance of or even antagonism to the Chinese mainland, saying such thinking of secluding Hong Kong from the entire country could end nowhere but push the city down an abyss.
"Seclusion brings no development opportunity for Hong Kong," Lau said. "Some youngsters don't understand that Hong Kong would be even worse if it is secluded from the Chinese mainland."
"To come out of the current economic difficulty, Hong Kong needs to be linked with the Chinese mainland much closer and more effectively," she said.
If you ask Hong Kong residents who have been working in
business since the city returned to China in 1997, they can tell
countless stories of how the city and the mainland helped each other
over the years.
Live: The launch of CGTN's special program
2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. 70 years ago, China was a country that had fought its way through several wars. Now it is the second biggest economy in the world. To show our audiences an in-depth look at China 70 years on, CGTN is bringing you a special program called "New China." As our crew prepares to kick off the 12-day journey to southwest, southeast, and northeast China in three mobile studios, join us for the launch event.
China's fast development 中国的高速发展"
https://youtu.be/viRjnVMARKA
Celebrating Chinese mid-autumn festival from across China 全国各地共度中秋
The first joint rehearsal for the upcoming National Day
celebrations ended early Sunday morning in Beijing, about three weeks
ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic
of China (PRC), which falls on Oct. 1.
Ask anyone among the older generations in Hong Kong about
the economic relationship between the Chinese mainland and the special
administrative region (SAR), they will keenly share countless stories of
mutual support uplifting each other over the years through hardships.
Xinjiang, as a core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt,
is enjoying the best period of prosperity and development in its history
under the Belt and Road Initiative, which is undoubtedly the biggest
achievement in the region's fight against terrorism as well as the best
answer to the protection of human rights in China, a senior Chinese
official said.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee—one of the world’s most
respected experts on AI and China—reveals that China has suddenly caught
up to the US at an astonishingly rapid and unexpected pace.
In AI Superpowers,
Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented
developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than
many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to
heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the
great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.
Most experts already say that AI will have a devastating impact on
blue-collar jobs. But Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will
have a strong impact on white-collar jobs as well. Is universal basic
income the solution? In Lee’s opinion, probably not. But he provides a
clear description of which jobs will be affected and how soon, which
jobs can be enhanced with AI, and most importantly, how we can provide
solutions to some of the most profound changes in human history that are
coming soon.
Kai-Fu Lee Discusses 'AI Superpowers' in San Francisco
https://youtu.be/XIs6LB3b2Yo
SINGAPORE (Sept 4): The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is chilling global collaboration that has long driven breakthroughs in technology and science. The tiny island nation of Singapore is trying to carve out an independent role in the clash and demonstrate the advantages of cooperation in fields like artificial intelligence.
It’s a difficult balancing act. The country, with cordial ties to the two superpowers, is fighting against nationalistic forces on both sides. Artificial intelligence is becoming something of a test case for how independent countries will participate in emerging technologies.
China and the U.S. have dominated AI development, raising concerns that other countries will lose out on its benefits and have no voice in devising regulations. Yet Singapore’s government is investing S$500 million (US$360 million) on AI and other digital technologies through 2020 and has attracted Chinese and American companies to the country with policies that support AI research. Singapore’s Communications and Information Minister S. Iswaran jumped into the debate this year, proposing a framework for the ethical use of AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Singapore has an important role to play,” said Lawrence Loh, an associate professor at NUS Business School. “We will never be able to match the technological prowess of the U.S. and China, but there are certain areas where Singapore can take leadership, like using its position to get people to work together.”
Iswaran will elaborate on Singapore’s vision at Bloomberg’s "Sooner Than You Think" technology conference on Thursday. He will kick off an event that will feature speakers from Microsoft Corp, International Business Machines Corp, Temasek Holdings Pte, China AI pioneer SenseTime Group Ltd, as well as Southeast Asia’s leading tech startups Grab Holdings Inc and Gojek.
Singapore has long positioned itself as neutral ground. It’s already home to the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the Singapore International Commercial Court, forums for international dispute resolution. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his annual policy speech last month that Singapore will maintain its neutral position and not take sides between the U.S. and China.
The affluent city-state of 5.6 million is not leaving anything to chance, when it comes to future-proofing its economy.
It has set up a dedicated inter-agency task force to study all aspects of AI. And in recent weeks, it granted an AI patent to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd within just three months — a record pace that underlines the country’s determination to move full speed ahead.
“Singapore plays a pivotal role as it facilitates our entry into markets of our interest rapidly,” Benjamin Bai, vice president and chief IP counsel of Alibaba-affiliate Ant Financial, said in a statement released by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.
Still, there is skepticism about the country’s prospects. Singapore, like several other countries, is making a genuine push to develop its AI ecosystem, but its effort is tiny compared with the giants, said Kai-Fu Lee, founder of the venture firm Sinovation Ventures.
“Unless Singapore can unify ASEAN and become the undisputed AI leader and supplier in ASEAN countries, its efforts will not lead to a fraction of the U.S. or China,” Lee said in an email.
The government has been stepping up efforts to lure companies working in AI.
Alibaba has opened its first joint research institute outside China in Singapore in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University, while Salesforce.com Inc opened its first AI research centre outside of its research and development hub of Palo Alto, California — adding to a growing list of new research centers including the Singapore Management University’s Centre for AI and Data Governance.
GIC Pte, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, has invested in Canadian AI companies, including Montreal-based Element AI Inc, which has set up an office in the city-state after raising US$102 million in new funding in 2017.
“It’s very hard to see how things will pan out with the trade war,” NUS Business School’s Loh said. “Singapore’s focus should be technology, not geopolitics.”
Rational voices have been calling for China-US
cooperation in AI, an area where they have overlapping interests.
Instead of viewing AI with a zero-sum mind-set, the US should embrace
healthy competition with China for the good of the world.
Intellectual Property and 'Made In China 2025
https://youtu.be/vFA1Bd5e8AU
How does China protect intellectual property rights?
Huawei's story shows that research and development is
crucial to developing new technology. As China takes the fast lane of
technological development, we would like to see more Chinese high-tech
enterprises follow the footsteps of Huawei to create more technology and
tangible results, which will benefit not only China but also the whole
world.
China filed a lawsuit under the WTO dispute settlement
mechanism on the US' 15 percent tariffs on $300 billion Chinese goods,
the first batch of which started on September 1, China's Ministry of
Commerce (MOFCOM) announced on Monday.
China will not proactively escalate the trade war, and will not discriminate against US companies that invest in China due to the trade war. As the trade war is messing up the world, China is bound to be stronger.
https://youtu.be/yjzsDNMEe1U China wants a deal, but won't stand down against new tariffs
https://youtu.be/5ljbYOInolc
Why China Holds a Trade War Edge Over U.S.
https://youtu.be/RL-HqSrdJm4
'We're clearly heading toward a recession,' says strategist
https://youtu.be/ZbknzF8_0os
Trump's Incompetence and Corruption on Display
https://youtu.be/voYuH5eGlkk
