Prior to the start of the trade mission, the China Daily commented that “Belgium was looking for closer economic ties with China given the upcoming largest-ever business mission which will visit the country as Europe and China make headway in trade relations. This would include a possible investment agreement, bucking the headwinds posed by global trade uncertainties.” “Belgium really needs China to work together to promote multilateral free trade globally. For Belgium, China is a solution to assisting many economic and social problems,” said Marc Vinck, Belgian Ambassador to China. The European bilateral investment treaty has made some progress and is expected to be concluded by next year, he noted. “For European companies, the treaty will help create a better investment climate. It will also drive a more balanced economic relationship between China and Europe,” Ambassador Vinck said. “More than 60 business and official agreements are expected to be signed, with sectors including life sciences, food and beverage, luxury, lifestyle, as well as cleantech being a major focus,” said Fabienne L’Hoost, Director General of the Belgian Foreign Trade Agency.

Belgium is China’s sixth-largest trading partner in the European Union. By the end of last year, the bilateral trade volume hit USD26 billion and Belgian businesses had invested USD2 billion in China’s chemical, pharmaceutical and electronic equipment sectors. Chinese businesses’ investment in Belgium totaled USD660 million over the same period. Last month, a train bound for Liege, Belgium, made its first journey from China’s commodities hub of Yiwu. The route was under the auspices of the electronic World Trade Platform, an initiative proposed by Alibaba in 2016 to facilitate cross-border trade among SMEs through the assistance of payments and logistical technologies. “As small- and medium-sized businesses are one of the major driving forces of the Chinese economy, we also see a similar strong willingness of Belgian SMEs in linking with China,” Ambassador Vinck added, according to the China Daily.

Robert Lighthizer (left) and Liu He talked on the phone last week

A “phase one ”trade agreement between the U.S. and China remains elusive. President Donald Trump has not yet agreed to remove any tariffs as part of a deal, and the size of China’s commitment to purchase U.S. farm products has not been fixed, said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in an interview on Fox Business Network. Top U.S. and Chinese negotiators had a “constructive” phone conversation last week, and agreed to “maintain close communication”, but remained split on key issues. Both Ross and White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow remained optimistic, saying the two sides were “getting close” to a deal. Kudlow added that a partial trade agreement could be signed at the ministerial level, not by the two nations’ presidents, but that no place and date for the signing had been agreed.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence that China buy USD50 billion worth of American agricultural goods may help drum up electoral support across the Farm Belt, but is “not really possible” in practice, industry insiders have said. The figure has been repeatedly cited by Trump and his supporters as a condition of a trade deal. But China has never confirmed the figure and has pushed back on committing to any fixed number, stating repeatedly that it would only buy in accordance with market conditions. Agricultural analysts have said that even if China agreed to such a massive purchase, it would be extremely difficult to make it work in reality. China imported USD137 billion in agricultural goods in 2018, but it has never bought more than the USD25.9 billion from the United States in 2012. That figure shrank to USD9.2 billion last year, as tariffs weighed heavily on the bilateral farm trade.

“With the African swine fever, there’s just not much demand for the stuff that the U.S. has to offer in terms of corn or soybeans to feed pigs – because we just do not have any pigs. We’ve lost half of them!” said Darin Friedrichs, Senior Asia Commodity Analyst at trading house INTL FCStone in Shanghai. The crisis has driven down soybean prices from USD13 per bushel two years ago to just USD9 today. “So even if they bought the same amount they did before the trade war, it’s just not going to make the same dollar value,” Friedrichs added, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

China removed a ban on U.S. poultry products, keen to arrest the exponential rise in prices of chicken, the pork alternative of choice in many Chinese households. American agricultural negotiators are also keen to reopen China’s giant consumer market to American beef, pork and other meat products, many of which have been banned due to the use of hormones. According to The New York Times, Washington is to extend temporary licenses for American users of Huawei equipment for the third time, as the previous 90-day extension expires on November 19. The newspaper also suggests that the Trump administration is considering “product-specific” licenses that would allow some companies to keep supplying Huawei.

At the 11th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, Brazil, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated the need to uphold multilateralism in a globalized world, and added that international affairs should be addressed through extensive consultations rather than decided by one or a few countries. Xi said that no country is born to be dominant and no model is destined to be superior. The era of globalization should not see some people fighting against others, but should instead see all bringing benefits to all, the China Daily reports.

The future of the world depends on how the top two economies work out solutions and prevent their conflict from escalating into a permanent one, said former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. “I am confident that the leaders on both sides will come to realize that the future of the world depends on their capacity to analyze the challenges together, to work out solutions, and to manage the inevitable difficulties,” the 96-year-old said at an annual gala dinner of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR) in New York. “There may not be a complete agreement. What is imperative is that both countries understand that a permanent conflict between them cannot be won,” Kissinger said. “There will be a catastrophic outcome if it leads to permanent conflict,” he added.

Plans for high-speed maglev lines with trains traveling at 600 kilometers per hour or faster are taking shape between some Chinese cities in a bid to boost regional integration and economic growth. Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, is considering a high-speed maglev line with a top speed of 800 km/h to Chongqing. The train is expected to cut travel time between the two cities to 30 minutes, down from one hour and 13 minutes on the current maximum 350 km/h high-speed service. Wuhan, Hubei province, is also eyeing a maglev train, with China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group, a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corp, to begin construction work next year. A team led by the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) is also conducting a preliminary feasibility study on a high-speed maglev line in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with a designed maximum speed of 600 km/h, He Huawu, Vice President of the Academy, said in July at the 2019 World Transport Convention in Beijing.

Jia Limin, Engineering Professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and head of China’s high-speed rail innovation program, said such speeds were much closer to airplane cruising speeds. Lacking wheels, future maglev trains achieve such speeds by running in a vacuum tube to minimize air resistance. “Maglev is the future of ultrafast trains since it’s fast, safe, reliable and low maintenance,” Jia said. “It can fill the service gap between the high-speed rail network and aviation, which will further boost the flow of talent in neighboring provinces and even nationwide and thus propel regional economic growth and prosperity.” In May, China Railway Rolling Stock Corp Qingdao Sifang unveiled a prototype maglev train with a designed top speed of 600 km/h. The engineering prototype is expected to roll off the production line next year before undergoing comprehensive testing in 2021 in preparation for commercial production.

The existing maglev train service on a 30-km track between downtown Shanghai and Shanghai Pudong International Airport operates at a maximum speed of 430 km/h. Since operating its first maglev railway more than a decade ago, China has concentrated on conventional high-speed rail because maglev was hindered by many critical technologies at that time,” said Sun Zhang, Engineering Professor at Shanghai Tongji University. “But now we have been learning advanced technologies from foreign countries, digesting and absorbing, and eventually developed our own innovations over the past years, finally laying a technological basis for an engineering prototype,” Sun said.

A set of technical standards for maglev railways, released by the National Railway Administration, will be implemented on a trial basis from January 1, based on opinions gathered from government agencies and scientific research institutes, and unifying basic technical requirements, the China Daily reports.

A draft law being mulled in the city’s legislature will enable foreign companies to host trade shows in Shanghai without teaming up with local firms. Currently, overseas companies can hold international trade shows in China only by commissioning or joining a local company. Hua Yuan, Director of the Shanghai Commerce Commission, told legislators that Shanghai hopes to blaze a trail in this regard as the city opens up its exhibition industry and intends to bring more globally renowned exhibitions to the city. The Shanghai Exhibition Industry Regulation, will be the first law in this regard in the city. The law defines exhibitions as business events where products, technologies or services are presented and which offer road shows, B2B meetings and business exchanges.

The draft law also has stipulations to enable fast exhibition applications, ensure public security of large-scale events, provide convenience to foreigners who attend the events, and to secure efficient intellectual property right protection. It asks the government to establish an online portal where companies that intend to hold exhibitions can submit applications to all relevant administrations via the internet. It usually takes half a year for an application to finish all procedures, but the new online service is expected to significantly reduce the trouble for the organizers of the exhibitions. The draft law also stipulates that exhibition organizers can request security and other necessary services from the government for events which are expected to draw more than 50,000 visitors per day.

A total of 1,032 exhibitions were held in Shanghai with the a combined floor space of 18.8 million square meters in 2018, a jump of 61% and 134% respectively from 2010. Shanghai tops all cities in China with 42 exhibitions with a floor space of over 100,000 sq m and is the world’s major exhibition hub with 12 exhibitions listed among the top 100 exhibitions around the world, the Shanghai Daily reports.

iFlytek, based in Anhui province, is showcasing a string of futuristic gadgets, including the CDA portable translator that provides real-time translation in 60 languages, and a robot that has passed the written test of China’s national medical licensing examination. There is also a computer system that assists courts in judging criminal cases and one that automatically scores students’ papers. The Shenzhen-listed artificial intelligence company is leveraging its years of research in AI-enabled voice interaction to empower traditional sectors to boost efficiency. Liu Qingfeng, Chairman of iFlytek, said such efforts will encourage more third-party hardware and software developers to adopt the company’s voice interaction computing platform.

Currently, some 1.6 million developers are using its AI-enabled user interface platform to build products such as robots, smart televisions, smart cars and software applications. Hu Yu, Rotating President of iFlytek, said the company will build an AI learning platform to help cultivate about 100,000 people to accelerate the industrial use of cutting-edge technologies. It also aims to support 1,800 enterprises to better integrate AI into existing products and services. Founded in Hefei, iFlytek has been focusing on voice recognition technologies for over two decades and it is leveraging the experience to help increase efficiency in the education, healthcare, judicial and other sectors. In December 2017, iFlytek was chosen by the Ministry of Science and Technology to build China’s first national laboratory for cognitive intelligence, focussing on helping machines think like humans. In September, iFlytek became the exclusive supplier of automated translation software for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

Li Deyi, Academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), said AI is being increasingly used in consumer electronics, manufacturing, healthcare and other traditional industries. “Nurturing more AI professionals is key to being a world pioneer in cutting-edge technology,” Li said, as reported by the China Daily.