Cartoons

According to the Chinese zodiac this isn’t the year of the horse; but if you are a Chinese patriot or antique enthusiast you might take a different view. That’s because a rare bronze horse head has been returned to its home in Beijing, from where it was looted by British and French troops who nabbed it from the Summer Palace 160 years ago.

The sculpture was donated to the Chinese government by Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, making it the seventh in a set of bronze animal heads to be returned. The whereabouts of the other five (a dragon, dog, snake, goat and chicken) remains unknown. Chinese netizens greeted the news with enthusiasm. “Thanks Mr Ho. Hope more bronze heads can come back to their mother’s arms,” wrote one netizen.

Ho paid $8.7 million at auction for the statue in 2007. According to the South China Morning Post the 12 sculptures have become symbols of China’s ‘century of humiliations’ at the hands of colonial powers. Each time a statue returns it triggers rhetoric about the country’s ongoing “national rejuvenation”.

The NBA’s troubles continue in China. The latest kerfuffle for the basketball giant happened during a game streamed live by Tencent Sports, featuring the LA Lakers and the Miami Heat last Saturday. Coverage was suddenly halted by the broadcaster, which said the match did not “correspond to broadcasting standards” without elaborating further.

Media in Taipei speculated that the reason for the halt was that a man in the front row of the crowd was wearing a sweater featuring the Taiwanese flag. This is sensitive for mainland Chinese broadcasters, given that Beijing designates the island as a ‘renegade province’. Later highlights of the game – which was being watched by 25 million people in mainland China until coverage was terminated – tended to support the view that the flag was the reason Tencent pulled the plug. That’s because the highlights only showed the sporting action in the left half of the court, where the man’s sweater was not visible. The highlight reel didn’t follow the play into the right half of the court, however, as that’s where the sweater came into camera shot.

The world is no longer enough to fulfill Chinese ambitions, it seems.

Forty years after the launch of the first special economic zone in Shenzhen, news this week that policymakers are promoting the idea of a special zone in space seemed a little far-fetched. But the reports were actually true, with insiders telling Science and Technology Daily about plans for an ‘Earth-moon’ economic zone that could generate $10 trillion a year.

Scientists linked to the programme said the idea is to make advances in low-cost aerospace transport systems. China aims to master the basic technology behind space flights by 2030, build the systems by 2040, and establish the economic zone sometime around 2050, says Bao Weimin, the head of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s science and technology commission.

The Global Times was suitably impressed with the idea, noting that it would accelerate the development of China’s space projects, including the launch of the Long March-5 carrier rocket, which is expected to send the Chang’e-5 probe to the moon next year. A heavy-lift carrier rocket called Long March-9 is also expected to make its first flight around 2030, the newspaper added, supporting deep space exploration and the construction of a space-based solar power plant.