Chinese consumers’ demand for imported food has been growing steadily as the standard of living in China improves, according to the General Administration of Customs. China’s total food imports amounted to USD58.28 billion last year, up 25% year-on-year, while the annual average growth rate over the previous five years was 5.7%. The European Union remained China’s largest supplier of food, followed by the United States, New Zealand, Indonesia and Canada. Meat, oil, dairy and seafood were among the most popular imports.

Chen Weinian, Purchasing Director at Shanghai’s City Shop, said that foreign food used to be consumed mainly by expatriates but is now being increasing favored by locals. A separate report from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) showed that the country’s Engel’s coefficient dropped to 29.3% in 2017, below the benchmark of 30% for the first time and falling into the range of countries with a wealthy lifestyle. Engel’s coefficient is measuring the share of income spent on food and reflects a nation’s standard of living. The lower the number, the higher the living standard. Although the proportion of income spent on food fell, Chinese people have become increasingly picky about their food and want more diversity and exotic tastes.

Over the past few years, China has been increasing its fruit imports from Latin America. The country’s avocado imports from Mexico, Chile, and Peru in 2017 alone reached 33,000 tons. China has identified 22 cities, including Beijing, Nanjing, and Wuhan, as sites for comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones. The growth of imports and exports in these pilot zones has been more than 100% in the past two years.

As a crucial part of food importation, Chinese Customs have been striving to accelerate transportation and strengthen monitoring. “We have opened ‘green channels’ for imported food and simplified the import procedures for food products to limit the process from arrival to release to just one hour,” said Zhang Xin, Vice Director of Zhengzhou Customs in Henan. The average time for an imported product to go through customs has been almost halved to 6.69 hours. At the same time food safety measures have been strengthened. In 2017, a total of 54,000 tons of substandard imported food products from 94 countries and regions were seized by China’s customs, the Shanghai Daily reports.

Chinese and U.S. envoys presented radically differing visions of Beijing’s economic model at a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva, a choice between “the world’s most protectionist economy” and a growth story that has benefited all countries. U.S. Ambassador Dennis Shea presented a paper entitled “China’s trade-disruptive economic model”. “Despite China’s repeated portrayal of itself as a staunch defender of free trade and the global trading system, China is in fact the most protectionist, mercantilist economy in the world,” Shea said. Washington says China cheats by having an economy run by the state, Beijing says it plays by the rules agreed when it joined the WTO in 2001.

Shea said the harm done by China’s state-led approach to trade and investment “can no longer be tolerated”, and it was not enough to assert that it was following WTO rules. State-owned enterprises play an outsized role in China, with control exercised by the government and Communist Party, which appoint top executives and hold the keys to crucial inputs such as land and capital, Shea said. He added that the law was an instrument of the state, and courts were structured to respond to the Communist Party’s direction.

China’s Ambassador Zhang Xiangchen said Shea’s remarks “made the air smell like gunpowder” and his report was “half-cooked”, with no evidence to support its assertion that the Chinese state “controls” enterprises. He said that WTO judges had rejected the argument that Chinese enterprises controlled by the government were “public bodies” subject to WTO subsidy rules. Beijing’s industrial policies were for “guidance” and state-owned enterprises were autonomous market entities responsible for their own profits or losses, he said. Overcapacity in some industries was due not to the state but to contraction of global demand following the financial crisis, he added. The U.S. paper had misleadingly edited China’s official policy, cutting out references to the “decisive role” of the market in allocating resources, Ambassador Zhang said, according to the South China Morning Post.

Volvo Car plans to introduce more models into China. Chen Lizhe, Sales Manager of Volvo Car Greater China, said the company, owned by Chinese billionaire Li Shufu, will launch an imported all-new XC40 compact SUV in the Chinese market later this year. He added local production of the model will start in China from 2019. The carmaker will also offer the locally-made all-new S60 mid-sized sedan, the imported all-new V60 crossover, and the imported refreshed XC90 large SUV in 2019. Chen said the latest offerings will help Volvo expand its China sales to 200,000 cars in 2020 from 114,000 units last year. Globally, the company aims to sell 800,000 vehicles in 2020.

Volvo is one of several second-tier premium car producers in China, which also include Cadillac, Lexus and Jaguar Land Rover. They lag far behind Germany’s three premium car giants, BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, each of which sold around 600,000 cars in China last year. Volvo’s Senior Vice President Yuan Xiaolin told China Daily: “Chairman Li Shufu expects we can sell 500,000 cars a year in China in the future, grabbing 2% of the country’s entire passenger vehicle market.” But Yuan, also President & CEO of Volvo’s Asia-Pacific operations, didn’t reveal a timetable for the longer term target. “Our biggest challenge at present is how to enable Chinese customers to think of and experience our products when they want to buy a luxury car. Our brand and product awareness is still limited among potential buyers in our biggest single market,” Yuan said. Volvo sold 18.4% more cars in China in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2017, totaling 61,480 units, which is faster than the average growth rate of 15% in the premium car market.

According to Chen, Volvo aims to deliver a total of more than 130,000 cars in China this year. He said the all-new XC40, to be exported to China this year and locally-made in 2019, will target “stylish and self-confident young urbanites”. The compact SUV, which recently gained a five-star rating in Europe-NCAP crash tests, will go head-to-head with the Audi Q3, Jaguar E-pace and the Cadillac XT4 in the rapidly expanding segment. “The all-new XC40 will give Volvo a much younger brand image and help boost sales of our other products in China,” Chen said. Volvo now has 10 models and variants available in China. The company has three vehicle plants and an engine factory in China, the China Daily reports. Volvo now has a total of 234 dealerships in 143 Chinese cities.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) granted licenses to 15 companies to run virtual telecom network services. A virtual network operator is a provider of management services and a reseller of network services from other telecommunications suppliers, that does not own the telecommunication infrastructure. The move signals that virtual telecom services are officially recognized after five years of pilot operations. Such initiatives allow companies to offer telecom services by piggybacking on the infrastructure of China’s big three state-owned telecom carriers: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

It is part of a broader push by China to inject new vitality into the multibillion-dollar telecom industry by attracting private capital and promoting cross-industry partnerships. Alibaba Group, Xiaomi and JD are among the 15 companies that received licenses. They are the first batch of players that have inked cooperation agreements with China Unicom. As of December 2017, China had more than 60 million virtual network service subscribers, accounting for 4.1% of the country’s total number of mobile users. As of 2017, 42 companies were running trial virtual network services. The industry has already attracted direct private investment worth CNY3.2 billion, and has helped to create nearly 60,000 jobs. Chinese internet companies aim to enter the virtual telecom sector to attract new users.

China has been ratcheting up efforts to revamp the telecom sector, which has long been dominated by state-owned players. Last year, China Unicom pressed ahead with its CNY78 billion mixed-ownership reform by attracting Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and other companies as investors, the China Daily reports.

Meanwhile, China’s three major telecommunications network operators are also joining forces to increase the use of blockchain as part of the Trusted Blockchain initiative of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). “In the next three to five years, we can expect to see more than 60% of telecoms services use blockchain technology,” said former Huawei engineer Allen Li, the co-founder of Hong Kong-based blockchain start-up QLC Chain. Blockchain helps telcos lower operational costs, including for user identification, billing and content delivery while also improving network security.

Chinese President Xi Jinping conducted an 11-day tour of five Arab and African countries and attended the BRICS Summit in South Africa. China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to set up a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, enhancing cooperation in all fields to higher levels, including politics, economy, oil, gas and security. The UAE is also “keen to deepen cooperation” with China’s “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure plan. The two countries agreed to build a new trade zone in Dubai. A strategic cooperation framework between state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and China National Petroleum Co (CNPC) was among the deals signed.

The Chinese President also visited Senegal and Ruanda. Xi and Senegalese President Macky Sall oversaw the signing of agreements on belt and road projects. As China’s first President to visit Rwanda, Xi called on more Chinese companies to invest in Central and East Africa. The two nations signed 15 deals, including USD126 million in loans for two road projects. In South Africa, Xi promised to increase China’s imports and pledged a USD2.5 billion loan from the China Development Bank to the troubled state-owned power company Eskom. In total, Xi agreed to USD14.7 billion in South African investments. During his state visits to Senegal, Ruanda and South Africa, President Xi and his African hosts saw the signing of some 40 cooperation documents.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the 10th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg that there would be “no winner” in any global trade war, in a direct warning to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened to slap levies on all Chinese imports. “A trade war should be rejected because there will be no winner,” Xi said. “Unilateralism and protectionism are mounting, dealing a severe blow to multilateralism and the multilateral trading regime,” he added. “We are facing a choice between cooperation and confrontation, between opening up and closed-door policy and between mutual benefit and a beggar-thy-neighbor approach. The international community has again reached a new crossroads.”

President Xi concluded his trip in Mauritius.