A discussion about the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai being shortened to two and a half hours thanks to a new high-speed bullet train went viral on Chinese social media recently. Experts said the train is technically feasible, but the economic and safety aspects need further consideration before it is put into commercial service.

A high-speed CR450 electric multiple unit (EMU) train with an experimental speed of 450 kilometers per hour will reportedly be deployed on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway (HSR) in 2025 and may cut the travel time between the two cities to two and a half hours from over four hours, according to the South China Morning Post.

The news soon topped the trending list on Sina Weibo.

Some netizens said they are looking forward to the new bullet train, while some raised questions about the travel time.

The operation cost of HSR, including energy cost, abrasion of railway as well as the ticket price, will be increased if the speed of the bullet train is raised to 450 kilometers per hour, Zhao Jian, a professor from Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times on Monday, emphasizing that the most critical issue is safety.

According to a report by the Science and Technology Daily, China State Railway Group Co (China Railway) announced in January 2021 that it would initiate a scientific research campaign for the CR450 EMU train, in order to foster a Fuxing bullet train product with high safety levels, environmental friendliness and intelligent functions adapted to the 5G era.

In June 2023, China Railway conducted a trial operation of a CR450 EMU train on the Fuqing to Quanzhou section of the Fuzhou-Xiamen HSR in East China's Fujian Province. The CR450 EMU train completed bridge and tunnel speed tests at 453 kilometers per hour and 420 kilometers per hour, respectively.

"The CR450 EMU train has been technically proven via multiple tests but it is necessary to further ensure the safety and reduce the operation cost before it enters commercial service, in order to match the transport demand along the route," said Zhao.

The Chinese-developed ARJ21 and C919 aircraft, which made their debuts at the Singapore Airshow, have started their demonstration flights in five countries, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia, the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) said on Tuesday.

Experts said the demonstration flights have a significant meaning for Chinese passenger aircraft going abroad, as the flights can get international customers and the public to take a closer look at Chinese commercial aircraft.

The demonstration flights, which will be carried out over two weeks, aim to verify the planes' adaptability for airports, suitability of ground service equipment, applicability of special flight procedures and economy of route payloads, laying a foundation to explore Southeast Asian markets, COMAC said.

The first demonstration flight of the ARJ21 started at the Van Don International Airport in Vietnam on Tuesday afternoon.

Made-in-China products would be thought of as low-end industrial products in the past, and it's not easy to establish a better brand image. But such demonstration flights will improve the world's impression of Chinese aircraft and help establish the brand image of the entire Chinese industry, including aviation, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The C919 is the first trunk-line jet aircraft developed by China in accordance with international airworthiness standards, and it has independent intellectual property rights.

China's civil aviation regulator said at its annual meeting in January that it aims to promote the operation of the domestically manufactured C919 in more countries, as part of new moves to further lift air travel.

COMAC said it has established a Southeast Asian representative office and a regional warehouse for aviation materials in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province. The company is planning to establish nearby training bases based on customers' own maintenance, repair and operations.

As for why Southeast Asian countries were chosen for demonstration flights, Wang said that the Southeast Asian market is more compatible with the ARJ21 and C919 aircraft than other regions due to the distribution of archipelago and peninsula regions, which are more suited for the two jets.

Qi Qi, an independent market watcher, said that demonstration flights will help win more customers. The ARJ21 is now in service in Southeast Asian countries.

The ARJ21, which can carry 78-97 passengers with a range of 2,225-3,700 kilometers, performs well during take-off and landing in high-temperature and high-altitude settings.

So far, a total of 127 of this aircraft have been delivered since it entered commercial operation in June of 2016, transporting more than 11 million passengers, COMAC said. Two ARJ21 aircraft operated by Indonesia's Transnusa Airlines have been running on four routes from Jakarta to five cities, carrying more than 100,000 passengers.
The C919 completed its first commercial flight on May 28, 2023. COMAC has delivered four aircraft to its China Eastern Airlines. The planes are in service on the Shanghai-Beijing and Shanghai-Chengdu routes, and they have carried more than 130,000 passengers.

At the just-closed Singapore Airshow, China's Tibet Airlines and COMAC signed a deal for 50 aircraft suitable for high-altitude plateaus (40 C919 and 10 ARJ21 planes), making Tibet Airlines the launch customer.

Wang said that the operational capacity and efficiency of the aircraft are more important than the number of orders delivered.

Ensuring production capacity and operational efficiency are more important than anything else for COMAC at present, for these aspects will be the most powerful evidence to promote Chinese aircraft in the international market, Wang said.

COMAC has forecast that the global passenger aircraft fleet will increase from 24,264 now to 51,701 in 20 years. The Asia-Pacific fleet will increase from 3,314 to 9,701.

Several autonomous driving companies in China has been permitted to carry out more manned demonstration activities on city motorways, latest development of Chinese autonomous driving firms supported by government policies. 

Chinese autonomous driving company Pony.ai said recently that the roads between the Beijing Daxing International Airport and Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, with a length of more than 40 kilometer of highways, could allow L4 driving, which means a vehicle could operate itself without the active intervention of a human driver.

The route contains urban roads and highway scenarios, including about 40 kilometers of expressways.

Pony.ai has launched the airport pick-up and drop-off function on the taxi-hailing app. 

Market watchers said that urban travel at airports and high-speed rail stations are an important part of the commercialization of autonomous driving, which means more mature iterations of technical capabilities, as well as exploration of revenue models. 

Earlier in November of 2023, a circular released by four ministries, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Transport, said that China will pilot market access for intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) and allow them to run on public roads.

Cities will choose some ICV models equipped with automated driving functions, capable of being mass-produced, to grant them market access and test the selected vehicles on designated city roads.

In a work report delivered by Beijing municipal government in 2024, the capital city said it will launch the construction of a high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone and promote the orderly opening of key application scenarios such as airports, train stations, and urban road cleaning.

In addition, more Chinese local governments have launched plans on smart driving. Sichuan Province vows to cultivate new energy and intelligent connected vehicles as a strategic emerging industry in 2024. 

On Thursday, Haomo.AI, an autonomous driving technology start-up backed by Great Wall Motor said that it received more than 100 million yuan in financing, and the funds raised will mainly be used for the research and development of AI autonomous driving technologies such as Haimou large models.

As of February 2024, HPilot, Haimou's passenger car intelligent driving product, is equipped with more than 20 vehicles, and the user-assisted driving mileage has exceeded 120 million kilometers.

Gu Weihao, CEO of Haomo.AI said that the company will continue to increase investment in technology research and development of large models, large computing power, and big data, and also explore the application of autonomous driving in multiple scenarios.

China State Shipbuilding Corp has obtained an order to sell its ammonia powered container ships to Belgian ship owner CMB.Tech, according to the China Ship News on Monday.

The deal marks another important breakthrough for the global shipping industry in the field of powering ships with clean energy sources, and is a milestone in leading global shipbuilders in charting a new course on clean development that is green, sustainable and environmentally friendly, according to the report.

The 1,400-TEU Container Ship, independently designed by Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute(SDARI), part of shipbuilding giant China State Shipbuilding Corp(CSSC), is expected to be delivered by mid-2026, and it is set to become the first ammonia powered container ship in the world.

The vessel, the first of its kind in the world, is built to serve routes between Norway and Germany. It will run on clean ammonia, demonstrating clean ammonia's potential to decarbonize the maritime industry.

The total length and width of the ship is approximately 150 meters and 27 meters respectively, with the loading capacity of about 1,400 20-foot standard containers. Notably, it can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 10,000 tons per year.

In a bid to promote the country's carbon peaking and carbon neutrality strategies, the SDARI has actively contributed Chinese developed solutions to the world in promoting sustainable development of shipbuilding industry, according to the Shanghai-based institute.

Built at Qingdao Yangfan Shipbuilding Corp in East China's Shandong Province, the ship, characterized by multiple innovative designs, large cargo-carrying capacity and high comprehensive performance, is expected to offer the industry a new choice of green, efficient and reliable vessels with the aim of tackling global climate change and protecting the environment.

US tech company Apple for the first time became the largest smartphone vendor-maker in China by shipment last year, with market share hitting a record 17.3 percent, according to an industry report. Apple's crowning also adds to a number of success stories of US companies that have entered the Chinese market and high-profile visits by US CEOs since last year, which observers said all underscore the huge draw of China's rapidly-growing consumer market.

China's status as one of the world's most appealing foreign investment destinations is set to attract more US firms to scale up investment despite geopolitical noises and uncertainties hanging over bilateral relations, observers said. It also serves as a stern reminder to Washington that cooperation - which brings substantial benefits to companies in both countries - should be the mainstream of bilateral relations, rather than instigating tensions and divisions.

According to a report issued by IDC, Apple's success in the smartphone business was partly driven by its price promotions in the third-market channel. 

Honor, a spin-off of Chinese company Huawei, ranked second with a 16.8 percent market share, according to the IDC report. Honor is followed by Oppo, Vivo and then Xiaomi.

US carmaker Tesla also saw its sales in the Chinese market jump, growing 37.3 percent year-on-year in 2023 to around 600,000 units, snapping up the second spot after BYD with a market share of 7.8 percent, data released by the China Passenger Car Association showed. 

Tesla's sales in the Chinese market account for one third of its global shipments last year.   

 "A majority of US tech and consumer firms last year reported rosy performances in China, a market that carries increasing attraction and importance in their global businesses," Wang Peng, an associate researcher with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Friday. 

Over the past week, Jensen Huang, CEO and president of Nvidia, another US tech company, was also reportedly visiting Chinese mainland. It was Huang's first visit to the Chinese mainland market in several years, highlighting the great importance he put on the market, which industry insiders said is "too big to simply cede to a competitor."

Before him, prominent US business leaders including Bill Gates and Elon Musk also visited China last year.  

"US companies are increasingly placing their bets on one of the world's fastest-growing markets despite Washington's stepped-up tech crackdown against Beijing. It shows the earnest desire of US business to deepen cooperation with China, which is beneficial for their technological innovation and global development. It is also a strong signal to the US government to make strides to bring bilateral relations back to the right track," Wang said.

China's Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao said on Friday that China is willing to make full use of communication and exchange mechanisms with the US. These mechanisms include ministerial talks, twice-yearly meetings at the deputy ministerial level and monthly consultations at the department and bureau level, as well as the export control information exchange mechanism. 

China's economic powerhouses, including Shanghai and South China's Guangdong Province, released their "report cards" for 2023 and their respective goals for GDP growth in 2024 on Tuesday, showcasing significant progress in industrial upgrading and an increase in foreign investment.

Shanghai set a new record in actual foreign investment utilization in 2023, while Guangdong's GDP surpassed 13 trillion yuan ($1.83 trillion), almost reaching the scale of Brazil in 2022. These figures highlight the strength and vitality of the Chinese economic giants, which are expected to lead the revival of the world's second-largest economy in 2024, experts said.

Shanghai's GDP expanded by 5 percent year-on-year in 2023 and the city saw the actual use of foreign capital hit a record high of $24 billion as it remained the top choice for multinational enterprises, Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng announced in the city's government work report on Tuesday.

Shanghai also attracted another 65 regional headquarters of multinationals and 30 more foreign-funded research and development centers in 2023.

New growth drivers and strategic emerging industries developed steadily in Shanghai. The scale of three leading industries - integrated circuits, biopharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence (AI) - reached 1.6 trillion yuan. The cumulative number of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) in Shanghai reached 1.288 million, ranking first among global cities. The number of high-tech enterprises in Shanghai now exceeds 24,000.

The GDP of Guangdong Province grew by 4.8 percent year-on-year to 13.57 trillion yuan in 2023, topping the country for the 35th consecutive year. As a manufacturing heartland and leading foreign trade player in the country, Guangdong accounted for about one-tenth of China's GDP in 2023, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

An economy of that scale brings Guangdong close to that of Brazil in 2022, which stood at $1.92 trillion, according to World Bank data.

High-tech development has been a driving force for the province, with investment in high-tech manufacturing growing by 22.2 percent year-on-year and that of advanced manufacturing increasing by 18.2 percent. With more than 71,000 large-scale industrial enterprises and more than 75,000 high-tech enterprises, Guangdong leads the nation in both categories. 

East China's Jiangsu Province reported GDP growth of 5.8 percent to 12.82 trillion yuan. East China's Zhejiang Province saw its GDP expand by 6 percent in 2023 with the actual use of foreign capital up by 4.8 percent.

In 2023, the economic powerhouses made significant progress in industrial upgrading, manufacturing and foreign investment, Tian Yun, a veteran economist based in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Notably, the record-high foreign capital usage in Shanghai, a leading metropolis of China's opening-up, indicates the country's overall industrial advantages and unchanging position in the global supply chain remain attractive to foreign investors," Tian said.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, China's foreign capital usage exceeded 1.13 trillion yuan in 2023, with sources from high-tech industries reaching a record high.

"China now is attracting capital from all over the world, not only from the Western world. So we see a lot of, for example, Middle Eastern money moving to China in a big way for diversification and to seize different opportunities," Rani Jarkas, chairman of Swiss financial firm Cedrus Group, told the Global Times in a recent interview.

It is believed that China's attractiveness to overseas capital in 2024 will be even greater than in 2023. If this trend can be sustained, it will thwart the technology decoupling intentions of certain countries, Tian said.

The economic powerhouses also announced their GDP targets for 2024 at 5-5.5 percent, leading experts to believe that the country may set its overall GDP growth target at about 5 percent.

"Economic growth in 2024 is expected to remain at about 5 percent, with a focus on investment growth," Tian said.

Based on the plans of various provinces for 2024, the economically developed provinces are focusing on strategic emerging industries and industries of the future, forming what is known as new productive forces, Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of the digital-real economies integration Forum 50, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

For example, Shanghai has set a GDP growth target at about 5 percent for the year 2024. The city plans to renew efforts to enhance high-end industry clusters such as for NEVs, high-end equipment and advanced materials. It will also launch a pilot program for intelligent connected vehicle access and on-road operation, taking the lead nationally.

Guangdong also set its GDP growth target at 5 percent in 2024, with a focus on developing industries of the future such as 6G, quantum technology, life sciences and humanoid robots. It also aims to become an innovation hub for general AI industries.

Zhejiang set its 2024 growth target at 5.5 percent, pledging to vigorously develop the digital economy and add 5,000 new high-tech companies.

"If these provinces can maintain their growth while ensuring that the added value of economic growth comes mainly from the new productive forces, it means that China's economy will be achieving a structural transformation or upgrade without losing momentum," Hu said.

While the eastern provinces are leading the way and establishing growth momentum on the development of emerging strategic industries, provinces in the central and western regions are expected to take on the transfer of traditional manufacturing industries, Hu noted. 

"During this transfer process, there is immense potential in terms of industrial value-added, consumption and infrastructure development," Hu said.

China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index posted a V-shaped rebound on Wednesday after the securities regulator vowed to strengthen investor protection and oversight of listed companies. Analysts said that Chinese authorities have the confidence and resolve to maintain the healthy and steady development of the country's financial sector, with sufficient policies in their toolkit.

The Shanghai Composite Index closed up 1.8 percent as it regained the psychologically important 2,800-point level, reversing a drop of 0.15 percent in the morning session. The Shenzhen Component Index rose 1 percent to 8,682.19 and the tech-heavy ChiNext index was up 0.51 percent at 1,696.19.

More than 4,000 stocks across the market rose, led by shares related to finance, state-owned enterprises and real estate.

The rally of the A-share market came as multiple government agencies vowed to take measures to prop up the capital market.

On Monday, an executive meeting of the State Council pledged "stronger, more effective measures" to stabilize the market and improve investor confidence.

Wang Jianjun, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), said in a media interview on Wednesday that the commission was taking steps enacted at the key meeting to ensure the healthy and stable development of the capital market.

"We will make more efforts to put investors' interests first. Only by offering sound protection to investors can the capital market have the roots for prosperity. We will embed this idea into the whole process of market system design and regulation enforcement," Wang said.

Zhang Wangjun, another CSRC official, said on Tuesday that more will be done to reform the investment side of the capital market, promote counter-cyclical investment by institutions, and improve the investment channels of social security funds, insurance funds and annuity funds in a bid to foster long-term stable investment forces, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

An official of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council said on Wednesday that the bureau plans to include valuation management in the performance assessments of the leaders of centrally administered state-owned enterprises, in order to make them pay more attention to their stock performance and better reward investors through measures such as stock buybacks and cash dividends.

The authorities' intensive expressions of support for the stock market show that the government has the confidence and resolve to prop up the market and ensure its stable and healthy development in the long run, Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Dong called for decelerating the approval of IPOs and strengthening the regulation of IPO underwriters so as to enhance the quality of listed companies. With a focus on the in-depth reform of the capital market, the authorities should boost the restructuring of the A-share market ecosystem, guided by the implementation of an across-the-board registration-based IPO system, according to Dong.

The A-share market has continued its decreasing trend, which should be reversed by large-scale capital inflows and stepped-up macroeconomic policies, Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund Management Co, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

In 2024, the authorities need to roll out more policies to further strengthen the vitality of the economy. Once the economy further stabilizes, listed companies' profits will increase accordingly, Yang said, calling for patience and confidence in China's stock market.

With the continuous upswing in the country's economic recovery, bearish news will fade away. As a result, the stock market is expected to stabilize and return to normal operations, Dong said.

Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on Wednesday that the central bank will cut the reserve requirement ratio for financial institutions by 0.5 percentage points from February 5, injecting further strong impetus into the market.

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Chinese authorities are seeking to mobilize about 2 trillion yuan ($278 billion), mainly coming from offshore accounts of state-owned enterprises, as part of a stabilization fund to buy shares onshore through the Hong Kong exchange link.

Despite recent volatility in the A-share market, analysts remain confident in its long-term performance.

The Chinese stock market has become one of the most attractive in the world in terms of valuation. The overall valuation of A-shares is about half the level of companies listed in the US market, Zhu Liang, chief investment officer of AllianceBernstein's office in China, said in a note sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.

China is the world's largest trading country and its capital market is a venue that could provide good yields. Investors across the globe are quietly paying attention to the A-share market, Zhu said.

In 2024, listed Chinese companies are expected to achieve growth in earnings per share of about 17 percent, Zhu said.

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD released its brand-new intelligent architecture, Xuanji, on Tuesday, with observers saying it represents the latest effort of Chinese carmakers to gear up for transformation in the global auto intelligence race, which is seen as key factor in the next round of competition in the high-end vehicle market.

China's auto industry hit a new milestone in 2023, with record production and sales. The country is also expected to dethrone Japan as the world's top vehicle exporter.

Xuanji is a whole-vehicle intelligent structure that is composed of a self-developed smart brain, a dual artificial intelligence (AI) large model both inside the vehicle and in the cloud - also the industry's first AI large model application in whole vehicle - as well as four "chains" including sensor, controller, data and mechanical systems. The architecture could eventually be connected to three networks including internet of vehicles, 5G and satellite network.

The structure enables dynamic adjustments to various hashrate modes in accordance with demand, and thus would allow a seamless switch between different modes and accommodation to future algorithm models.

At the press briefing in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province where BYD is headquartered, the company also unveiled an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system that has been jointly developed with Chinese drone-maker DJI. It supports functions such as taking off and landing with a press of a button, as well as intelligent charging.

BYD said at the press briefing that its accumulation at the electric field has laid a solid foundation for its intelligent drive, which is "the second half court battle in the new energy race."

The company also presented a number of what it claims to be revolutionary intelligent driving techniques during a media tour on Tuesday. For example, in terms of smart parking, it only took 25 seconds for BYD's intelligent driving system to complete parking at a designated space, whereas it took a veteran driver a minimum of 30 seconds to finish the same process.

The Global Times also took a ride in a BYD vehicle using the "Navigate on Autopilot" (NOA) function on Tuesday. During a 45-minute ride, the vehicle deployed multiple autonomous functions in its drive in downtown Shenzhen, such as automatic traffic light identification, automatic steering at road junctions, and autonomous overtaking as well as yielding to pedestrians and two-wheeled vehicles.

A number of other Chinese companies including Huawei, Nio, Xpeng, and Li Auto have released NOA systems tailored for city driving since the beginning of 2023. In the first half of 2023, a total of 209,400 vehicles equipped with NOA were delivered, up 108.98 percent year-on-year, data released by Kaiyuan Securities showed.

It is expected that the number will rise by 141.43 percent to 1.69 million units in 2024, said another report by Western Securities.

BYD received a testing license for level 3 (L3) autonomous driving on high-speed roads in Shenzhen in July 2023. The company said it was the first to be granted such a license in China.

As NEV costs are expected to ease this year due to the mass production effect, building advantages in intelligent systems will help Chinese automakers in the high-end international market, industry observers pointed out.

One industry insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Global Times on Tuesday that while China has a manufacturing edge, there's still a gap between Chinese and foreignfirms in certain intelligent techniques such as autonomous driving technologies, partly because of the foreign firms' first-mover advantage that helped their companies to collect a lot of vehicle data.

"The NOA systems developed by Chinese companies still face a bunch of barriers as the road situation in China is sometimes more complicated than in overseas countries. And Chinese companies arescaling up efforts to accelerate the catch-up process," the insider explained.

China's car output exceeded 30.16 million units in 2023, up 11.6 percent year-on-year, and sales exceeded 30.09 million units, up 12 percent, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). Both output and sales set new records, according to the CAAM.

Editor's note: China's economy overcame numerous internal and external challenges last year, achieving 5.2 percent expansion and surpassing the target set at the beginning of the year. In the face of tests such as weak external demand, it wasn't easy for the Chinese economy to reach this level of recovery in the first year after the three-year pandemic. 

However, Western critics who constantly underplay China's hard-won economic achievements are again trumpeting "China economic collapse" narrative. The Global Times (GT) invited Gary Hufbauer(Hufbauer), a non-resident senior fellow at US think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics, to share his perspectives on China's economic performance in 2023 and its economic outlook in 2024.

GT: China's GDP grew 5.2 percent year-on-year in 2023, higher than the target of about 5 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. How do you view the growth rate in 2023, the first year of the post-COVID recovery?

Hufbauer: The 5.2 percent growth figure for China's economy in 2023 is a strong number, given the size of the Chinese economy, its state of development and the weak outlook for global growth. I sharply disagree with critics who say the Chinese economy is stumbling.

GT: How do you view the current economic situation in China? How do you evaluate China's economic prospects in 2024?

Hufbauer: In my view Chinese prospects in 2024 are good. Beijing can certainly manage dislocations in the property market and prevent any sort of financial crisis. Expansionary fiscal and monetary policies can avert the threat of deflation. China's economic challenges are modest compared, for example, with the challenges facing the EU.

GT: China remains an important engine driving world economic growth. The IMF's senior resident representative in China predicted that the Chinese economy will maintain a sound growth in 2024 and continue to account for one-third of global economic growth. How do you view the global significance of the steady and positive development of the Chinese economy?

Hufbauer: The world economy depends on strong Chinese growth, and that looks assured for 2024. If Chinese growth dropped to 2 percent, as expected for the US, and even less for the EU and Japan, the world outlook would be dismal.

GT: Global growth is projected to slow for the third year in a row - from 2.6 percent last year to 2.4 percent in 2024, the World Bank said. In a world battling many uncertainties, how should major economies jointly tackle challenges and promote global growth rather than politicizing economic issues?

Hufbauer: World leaders should welcome globalization and avoid new trade or investment restrictions. Unfortunately that's not happening in Europe, the US, India and several other places. This is an arena where China can lead.

GT: How should the largest economy in the world - the US - further improve its economic cooperation with China - the second-largest - to provide more certainty and positive energy for the global economy?

Hufbauer: The US should stop the search for new national security risks arising from trade and investment with China, and instead search for new areas of mutual economic gain. Many barriers can be reduced with no harm to the national security of the US or China.

GT: China sent only 45 percent of its exports to the developed economies including the EU and the US in November, figures from data provider CEIC showed. The decline in trade between China and Western countries in November reveals that the reality of "de-risking" is concerning, according to the WSJ. What's your perspective on "de-risking"?

Hufbauer: "De-risking" has gone far enough. "China hawks" in the US Congress want to expand "de-risking" until it reaches "de-coupling." This is misguided, and can only result in dividing the world economy into a China bloc and a US bloc. 

A two-bloc world will depress global growth. Moreover, many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa reject the idea that they should show primary allegiance to one bloc or the other.

Including inviting Chinese superstars like Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo to introduce their hometowns, a cutthroat competition has seemingly recently started among several culture and tourism bureaus across the country, which are tactfully transforming "star power" into a new advertising mechanism for provinces and cities to boost local tourism.

The competition is currently white-hot. So far, provinces like Hubei, Shandong, Hebei and Jilin have all found tourist ambassadors like actors Zhu Yilong and Huang Xiaoming. Take Wang Yibo's home province of Henan as an example. Its provincial-level bureau of cultural tourism has been posting around 20 to 30 promotional videos per day on sites like Sina Weibo since January 10. Hebei Province has invited leading actress Zhao Liying as a promoter.

What has made these local tourist organs so "desperate" to show off all of a sudden? The question has a clear answer - the approach of the Spring Festival holiday season in early February, a period that Zhu Jiaming, a tourist market analyst, describes as the "golden annual travel peak."

"Market growth during this time can surge to even three times than usual. It is an opportunity that cannot be missed," Zhu told the Global Times.

If embracing as many visitors as possible is the common goal of tourist destinations, then why turn popular celebrities as a promotional strategy?

The answer to this question is simple - superstars can quickly bring views on social media. For example, on Monday, Xiao Zhan's video to promote his hometown Chongqing became a trending topic earning around 120 million views. The popularity of the video only increased when netizens posted it in fan groups.

"I've shared the link with fans I know in Xi'an and Changsha. We have already formed a tour group to Chongqing and have around eight people on board," Chen Mengxi, a 24-year-old fan in Shanghai, told the Global Times.

Another reason the "celebrity strategy" to boost tourism appears to be powerful is that it can instantly click with the interests of young people, a consumer group that makes up "at least 40 percent of tourism growth," Zhu said. Celebrities like Wang Yibo saying "I'm waiting for you in Luoyang" seems to be a clever psychological maneuver that attempts to establish an intimate connection between visitors and the star.

"I decided to visit Luoyang because I want to see where Yibo grew up," a netizen posted on Sina Weibo.

While we can only see how much this star power has paid off after seeing actual seasonal data, this approach nevertheless is positive as it reveals a celebrity's power to better social growth while also rejuvenating old-fashioned marketing in the current tourism industry. As a famed star, one carries the responsibility to deliver positive social messages. Their supports to society can be reflected from different aspects, and tourism is only one of them.

The contribution of star power to the tourist industry is indeed important, yet what is most essential is whether or not a city or a province is sufficiently prepared to embrace all the visitors brought by a celebrity's fame.

In other words, every tourist destination should pay more attention to improving their tourist resources and facilities and the quality of their services to cater to visitors. The true development of a location's tourism should match the value of the star power that seeks to promote it.

Just like the bygone year of 2023, 2024 is going to see another boom in China's tourist industry. According to data revealed by the China Tourism Academy (Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism), it is expected that the number of domestic tourists and domestic tourism revenue will exceed 6 billion people and 6 trillion yuan respectively in 2024.

"We anticipate that new promotional strategies and patterns will emerge from the huge promising market in 2024," Zhu told the Global Times.