China agrees to a defense hotline with Singapore and pours investments in the Suez Canal

News briefing for May 31, 2023

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Here's what else you need to know about China today:

Top story: With three new astronauts on its space station and a promise to put people on the moon by 2030, China took another step towards advancing its goals of becoming a major space power by 2045. Click through for the whole thing.

China and Singapore agreed to set up a top defense hotline ahead of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this weekend. Chinese Defense Minister Lǐ Shàngfú 李尚福 signed a memorandum of understanding with his Singaporean counterpart Ng Eng Hen today to work toward establishing a secure telephone link "for high-level communications between our defense leaders" to "strengthen mutual understanding and trust." A few days earlier, Beijing had declined the Pentagon's request for a meeting between Li and U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin at the defense conference.

Egypt's Suez Canal is raking in Chinese investments: Its chairperson Walid Gamal El-Din walked away from his trip to Beijing with $3 billion worth of deals spanning a broad range of industries, including energy, textiles, and petrochemicals. Many of the deals are focused on the Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone (SETC), an industrial estate near the city of Suez jointly established by the governments of China and Egypt, to help Chinese companies set up industries under the Belt and Road project.

Xi urged China's national security chiefs to think of "worst-case scenarios" at a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) National Security Commission on Tuesday, as Beijing continues to clamp down on any threats to the country's stability.

Shanghai saw its hottest day in May in over a century this past week, continuing a stretch of unusually hot weather in the country since March. Temperatures in the commercial hub climbed to 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), blowing well past the 35.7 degrees Celsius (96 degrees Fahrenheit) high recorded four times in the past, in 1876, 1903, 1915 and 2018.

Three police officers have been fired and detained in Guizhou province, after being accused of beating up a reporter who had been investigating two local deaths. The journalist, surnamed Li, had been assigned to cover a story for Jimu News, an affiliate of Hubei Daily, about two teachers that drowned while collecting pebbles on a river bank after a hydroelectric power station upstream suddenly released water. Local officials released a public apology following widespread anger over Li's ordeal on social media on Wednesday.

China's Henan province unveiled a 100-day plan to help fresh grads land a job amid a record-high youth unemployment rate. The campaign will be promoted at colleges and universities in the third largest province from May to August, and will promote jobs in public institutions and state-owned enterprises, second degrees, and grassroots or rural employment projects. It will specifically target those from low-income families, those who are physically handicapped, and those in prolonged unemployment.

Chinese government scientists are drilling a borehole 11,100 meters (36,417 feet) deep somewhere in the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang. The operation started this week, and "represents a landmark in China's deep-Earth exploration, providing an unprecedented opportunity to study areas of the planet deep beneath the surface," according to Xinhua News Agency.

State media: The People's Daily's print edition celebrates International Children's Day with a story on a visit by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 to the famous No. 25 Middle School a.k.a. Yuying School in Beijing, while Xinhua News Agency today leads with an ode to the glories of ancient China, and how Communist Party's Central Committee with Xi at its core is "injecting inexhaustible spiritual power into the construction of a strong country and national rejuvenation," and "leads the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese culture."