A Photo/Video Essay: Driving National Road G214 North to Deqin County in Tibetan Yunnan
My journey through some of northern Yunnan’s most remote regions continues. Today, we’re heading north on the G214 National Highway from Shangri-la to Deqin County.
2026 Chinese Government Scholarships Ready for Applications
The Chinese embassy has issued the announcement of scholarship applications for students interested in study in China beginning in 2026. The ABCF and the Barbados-China Returned Students Association now have a resource group of current and past students who are able to assist you with the application process, and with all aspects of preparation for study in China. If you are considering study in China, we would be happy to hear from you, by email or by WhatsApp at 1 246 288 1356. You may also reach us via the Contact page on our website. The Chinese embassy’s announcement follows.
2026 Chinese Government Scholarships Ready for Applications
2025-10-22 02:33
The year of 2026 Government scholarship from the People's Republic of China to Barbadian citizens for pursuing either an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in China are ready for application.
·The scholarship covers tuition, accommodation, stipend and comprehensive medical insurance. The international airfare shall be covered by the students themselves. Further information can be obtained from http://www.campuschina.org.
·The requirements for applications can be found in Appendix A: Chinese Government Scholarship Applications.
·All applicants are advised to apply for the scholarships through the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training of Barbados, and log on to the Chinese Government Scholarship Information System to complete the relevant online application procedures before January 31, 2026. (see Appendix B)
·All application documents generated by the system, as well as the candidate's medical results should be provided with two (2) extra copies to the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training of Barbados. The original copy of the Foreigner Physical Examination Form (see Appendix C) should be kept by the candidates.
Appendix:
…Finally, the reason why I argue that Beijing is ahead on points, rather than declaring winners and losers, is because this deal is a pause, for however long it lasts; it’s not the emergence of a new G2 order, as Trump said in his social media posts. I don’t think anyone who is thinking seriously about the world order is buying that argument even in China. That said, for Beijing, it was a rather big win that the US president sent the world the message that China is a peer power. This is the acknowledgement that China has long craved.
Unpacking Wang Yi's Speech on Global Governance at Lanting Forum
Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered an important speech at the 23rd Lanting Forum in Beijing (Official English version). The speech, while taking several shots at the US and reiterating some routine Chinese talking points, outlines key aspects of Chinese policy thinking about the international order. Let me share some thoughts before we get to the speech:
Transcript: Zhou Yongmei on why “good governance” may not be a prerequisite for development
Zhou Yongmei is Professor of Practice in Institutional Development at the Institute of South–South Cooperation and Development (ISSCAD) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University, a role she has held since 2020. She received her PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999, specialising in new institutional and development economics. From 1999 to 2020, she worked at the World Bank, advising leaders in Africa and South Asia, managing the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, and co-directing the 2017 World Development Report. Based in Jakarta from 2017 to 2020, she led the Bank’s largest country programme on economics, finance and institutions, overseeing US$1 billion in projects and US$12 million in technical assistance across fiscal policy, public financial management, local governance, financial inclusion and digital development.
Speaking at the Global South Network meeting in Jakarta on 10–12 June, Zhou argues, on cross-country evidence, that tight control of corruption appears close to necessary for graduating to high-income status, though not for the step from low to middle income. She calls for a shift from checklist virtue—treating “good governance” as a box-ticking imperative—to measurable capacities….
…I want to conclude by saying that hopefully, with the GSM support, we can change the narrative from the good governance agenda to an agenda of incrementally improved institutions.
And I had proposed in the WDR2017 focusing on three institutional functions, which are for building credible commitment, building coordination capacity, and building capacity to generate voluntary cooperation from all stakeholders. And these three Cs, to us, are functional improvements that we can measure in particular policy arenas over time.
Refuting Wen Tiejun - by Yifan YAN and Yuxuan JIA
Wen Tiejun, economist and professor emeritus at Renmin University of China, is one of China’s best-known public intellectuals on rural affairs. Fluent and combative, this left-leaning thinker warns that, in a global economy wired by capital, technology and data, peripheral places—China’s countryside included—can be hollowed out by the city’s gravitational pull and by footloose capital flow. He urges ecological farming rooted in smallholders, farmer co-ops, and a revival of rural civic life.
Wen’s views strike a chord with Chinese audiences weary of land grabs, speculative booms, and environmental damage, but they have also drawn considerable criticism for romanticism and weak arithmetic. Qin Qingwu, a retired commentator and former director of the Rural Development Research Institute at the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences, argues that Wen underplays hard constraints such as limited smallholder yields, ageing demographics, and the high coordination costs of co-ops. In Qin’s view, self-reliance” without market discipline drifts into inefficiency. He also stresses that capital is not inherently predatory: with clear rules and benefit-sharing, villages and firms can both gain.
Monopoly without market, subsidies without subscribers: Guo Quanzhong on state media
Listen to Guo Quanzhong, Professor at the School of Journalism & Communication, Minzu University of China and formerly Board Secretary and Director of the Investment Advisory Department at China Press and Publishing Media Group, and Deputy Director of the Strategic Operations Department at Nanfang Media Group in Guangdong Province.
Guo has launched a brisk WeChat series skewering the transformation of China’s mainstream outlets—state-owned newspapers and broadcasters under various tiers of government—which, for all their privileges in licences and fiscal subsidies, command scant loyalty. Meanwhile, platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin have become the country’s most popular and lucrative purveyors of information.
…Audiences have migrated to platforms; the platforms, not news outlets, own the users’ loyalty. Advertising, in turn, follows distribution rather than reportage….
He also punctures a cherished newsroom conceit: content is a necessity, but news is not. News is a narrow, perishable slice of content, whereas entertainment, knowledge, and services are what he believes win wallets. Add overstaffed newsrooms, thin reporting, and low technical capacity, and the mainstream media’s business model collapses.
After the Illusory Carnival - by Zichen Wang and Yuxuan JIA
…China’s social sciences occupy a peculiar position—highly institutionalized, closely watched, and yet full of genuine curiosity about the country’s transformation. Many leading scholars have studied and taught abroad, absorbed international methods, and later found those same methods oddly inadequate for explaining their own society. Others work entirely within domestic systems, balancing intellectual pursuit with institutional expectation. The result is a dense mix of conviction, adaptation, and self-censorship, where professional and political incentives constantly overlap.
Figures such as Yao Yang, Zheng Yongnian, and Tang Shiping have at different times voiced dissatisfaction with what they see as the limitations of their disciplines: that Chinese economics and political science rely too heavily on Western frameworks, that local realities are often shoehorned into foreign models, that academic prestige sometimes outweighs substantive understanding. Whether these reflections consciously echo the leadership’s vocabulary of “independence” and “self-confidence” is hard to say. For some, the resonance is incidental; for others, it may be strategic. But in many cases the criticism itself—of excessive imitation, of weak empirical grounding, of detachment from social practice—predates the political slogans now attached to it.
At the same time, not every voice in the conversation carries equal weight. Alongside those offering thoughtful, evidence-based critique are others who treat the same themes as little more than an opportunity to demonstrate political sensitivity. The line between sincere engagement and formulaic compliance remains thin. Yet it would be a mistake to assume there is no thinking taking place at all. For many Chinese scholars, these debates are also a search for professional purpose: how to make their disciplines relevant to a society still changing faster than its theories can explain.
Tang’s essay:
…Western mainstream economics has contributed little to the world at large, offering scant usable knowledge for developing countries, even though their development is one of the most urgent tasks facing the world….
At this point, some Chinese (mainstream) economists may object: over the past decades of reform and opening up, certain Chinese economists have offered many important policy recommendations—doesn’t that constitute the most significant contribution of Chinese (mainstream) economics? This, of course, should be acknowledged: some Chinese economists have indeed provided important policy advice. But they are, after all, few….
…I strongly contend that Chinese economics must move beyond mere Anglicization to genuine internationalization and a truly global outlook. To that end, Chinese economics must at least do the following three things.
First, recalibrate the discipline’s key performance indicators (KPIs): publishing in the so-called Top Five journals of mainstream economics cannot be treated as a lifetime achievement….In the end, the only meaningful yardstick is how much genuinely useful knowledge you contribute to the world.
… it requires economists to “open their eyes to the world,” not just to the West, but even more to the non-Western world. Chinese economics must cultivate a perspective and vision that reach beyond China and beyond the West.
Third, Chinese economics needs to found journals that are genuinely international….
Tough job market, wider age thresholds create China's largest candidate cohort for public sector positions, treasured for their stability’
This weekly newsletter is put together by DeLisle Worrell, President of the ABCF. Visit us at Association for Barbados China Friendship | (abcf-bb.com).
Thanks to everyone who sent contributions for this week’s Update. Please send items of interest to me via the contact page at ABCF-BB.com or to info@DeLisleWorrell.com
The ABCF mission is to build a deeper understanding between the Chinese people and Barbadians and Caribbean people from all walks of life. The association’s focus is on personal experiences, people-to-people contact, cultural exchanges and exchanges of ideas, and the facilitation of travel, business and study. From the outset we aim to learn from and build on the experiences of the Caribbean and China, and to develop mutual understandings and support that will be to the benefit of both sides.
