“Amid the pandemic, we must be well-prepared to prevent what should be a one-time temporary shift in unemployment from becoming normalized, structural unemployment.”
Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in its 2020 Green Book of Population and Labor issued on January 7, 2021
“While Joe Biden intends to replace the unilateralism of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy with multilateralism, that doesn’t mean the Sino-US relationship will improve. Actually, Biden has the same China goals as Trump: prevent China from gaining on the US. Also, Biden may use more sophisticated measures than Trump, which could pose even greater challenges for China.”
Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of International Relations, Tsinghua University, in an interview with financial portal Caixin
“I used to worry that Chinese universities wouldn’t be confident enough and instead simply follow their US counterparts. But now I worry that Chinese universities are too confident and see themselves as the best in the world while refusing to learn from others.”
Chen Pingyuan, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Peking University, on the future of Chinese universities amid worsening Sino-US relations, at the seventh annual China Education 30 Forum held in Beijing from December 12-13, 2020
“The predicament Western civilization is in should never be a reason for some short-sighted [Chinese] compatriots to be arrogant. Similarly, the US’s predicament does not mean those compatriots should regard China as an invincible, war-worshipping country like the ancient Qin Empire [221-207BC].”
Xiao Gongqin, a history professor at Shanghai Normal University, on his public WeChat account
“The current economic recovery basically relies on investment, especially in infrastructure and real estate. This means perennial problems such as unprofitable zombie enterprises and mounting credit risks at banks are not going away with the economic recovery.”
Financial commentator Xu Jin on financial portal Caixin’s blog, where she suggested that China is likely to see a decline in investment returns and in middle-class incomes due to the economic slowdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic
“In the next 10 to 20 years, AI applications will go deeper in areas close to humans, such as medical care, justice and fintech. However, being unaccountable, unstable, unfair and untraceable, today’s AI can make mistakes that could put human lives and property at risk, causing people to lose confidence in AI.”
Cui Peng, an associate professor of computer science at Tsinghua University, at a recent online forum about future technologies
“The international community should take a win-win attitude and abandon zero-sum thinking when it comes to vaccine cooperation. We should oppose profiteering, cornering or monopolizing the market and especially nationalism in vaccine distribution.”
Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a press conference on December 28, 2020 pledging that China will make Covid-19 vaccines available to the world at a fair price
“Just as banks get ‘too big to fail,’ so can giant digital platforms. How we go about supervising these platforms will pose a tremendous challenge to the world.”
Zhu Guangyao, former deputy minister of China’s Ministry of Finance, urging targeted government research into taxation of digital platforms, especially large ones that own technologies and big data and have high consumption volume, at the 2020 Internet Finance Forum held in Beijing on December 15, 2020
“In 2020, there was a pandemic more widespread than the coronavirus: the ‘truth virus’, or taking your own viewpoints as the truth. We may not be able to dismantle the ‘wall of leftism,’ but we have to cure this ‘truth virus,’ otherwise we’ll all get infected sooner or later.”
Independent commentator Xisa iluo on his public WeChat account “