“Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Thursday that tensions in the strategically vital waterway have lessened and countries from outside the region should support efforts toward stability,” the AP reports.
Kang was speaking in response to Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson’s assertion that the U. S. should send a “clear signal” to China about halting its military buildup on South China Sea islands.
The New York Times worries that Tillerson’s remarks could “foreshadow” a foreign policy crisis with China:
The Secretary of State nominee explained his focus on the South China Sea, as related by Reuters :
“They’re taking territory or control, or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China’s,” he added, stressing that China’s island-building and declaration of an air defense zone in contested waters are “illegal actions.”
If Tillerson is serious about denying China access to the islands, it certainly would be a dramatic change from the Obama policy of “challenging” China’s “excessive maritime claims” without doing anything to actually slow them down.
The Times reports Tillerson’s remarks generated “reactions including confusion, disbelief, and warlike threats from analysts in China,” quoting one such analyst boasting that China now has greater war-fighting capability than the United States, and would be ready for any “troubles” sent its way.
Just about every Western media report on Tillerson’s statement focuses on the ominous ambiguity of what he meant by denying China “access” to South China Sea islands – many of which, as Reuters points out, are “equipped with military-length airstrips and fortified with weapons.”
“This is the sort of off-the-cuff remark akin to a tweet that pours fuel on the fire and maybe makes things worse. Short of going to war with China, there is nothing the Americans can do,” senior analyst Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told Bloomberg News.
However, Bloomberg notes that for all the concern about an enraged Chinese response, and a bit of snarling from analysts like those cited and alluded to by the New York Times, the actual official response from Beijing has been “relatively measured” so far – consisting mostly of officials like the Foreign Ministry’s Lu Kang saying they aren’t quite certain what Tillerson meant.

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BEIJING, Jan. 13 (UPI) — A Chinese oil company said Friday it started production at an oil field off the northern coast of China that has 57 planned production wells.
China National Offshore Oil Corp. announced Friday its Penglai 19-9 project in the shallow waters of Bohai Bay started production .
« There are 57 planned producing wells in total with two wells currently producing approximately 750 barrels of crude oil per day, » the company said. « The adjustment project is expected to reach its overall development program designed peak production of approximately 13,000 barrels of crude oil per day in 2019.  »
Nearly a year-to-date, CNOOC, the country’s largest producer, lowered its production forecast in part because of emerging pressures from lower crude oil prices. A downturn in the Chinese economy in early 2016 contributed to weak demand against increased output from countries like the United States to push oil prices below $30 per barrel.
CNOOC set a 2016 spending target at around $9 billion, down 11 percent from the previous year. By the third quarter, the company said it was still under pressure and slashed spending by 20 percent year-on-year.
Third quarter net production was 117.7 million barrels of oil equivalent, down 7.7 percent from last year. Through the first part of 2016, the company said it made only one new discovery offshore.
According to economists with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the amount of crude oil held in storage in China increased slightly last year as the country diverted more oil into its strategic reserves. Oil demand growth, OPEC said, was « solid-to-steady » for one of the world’s leading economies
A review of national data from S&P Global Platts, meanwhile, found China became a net exporter of oil products for the first time in October, with net output coming in at around 4,000 barrels per day.

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Andy Wong / AP
In this Dec. 12, 2016, photo, a man walks out from a main screening hall of the Digital Cinema in Zhuolu county in north China’s Hebei province. The brightly decorated 3-D cinema in this town outside Beijing is showing the latest Chinese and Hollywood films, to row after row of empty red seats. So few people come to watch films here that the theater manager rents out the halls to travelling sales companies or music teachers.
Associated Press
Friday, Jan. 13, 2017 | 1:02 a.m.
ZHUOLU TOWN, China — The brightly-decorated 3-D cinema in this town outside Beijing is showing the latest Chinese and Hollywood films, to row after row of empty red seats. So few people come to watch films here that the theater manager rents out the halls to travelling sales companies or music teachers.
China has overtaken the U. S. in terms of the number of its cinema screens, becoming the world’s biggest movie market by that measure. But away from the bigger cities you wouldn’t know it.
In this theater in a county seat near Beijing, the ticket-seller sitting behind the counter with nothing to do and a ticket-collector lying down watching films on his phone are signs something’s amiss with China’s non-stop building of cinemas.
Industry analysts foresee only more and more screens. But Zhuolu’s residents are typical of Chinese who are not in the habit of movie-going, preferring to watch films online for free.
« We don’t have many customers — only a couple on weekdays and a few dozen during the weekends, » said Wang Xudong, the manager of Zhuolu County Digital Cinema, which has three screens and 400 seats for a county of 350,000 people.
« Sometimes we rent the halls out for meetings to earn some money and then we can only break even, » said Wang, who also provides drum kits for cinema hall lessons for amateur musicians. Companies sometimes rent the halls for promotions of products such as health supplements and water dispensers.
China had fewer than 20,000 cinema screens in 2013, but it has now surpassed the U. S., which had 40,759 indoor and drive-in screens as of July, according to the Washington, D. C.-based National Association of Theatre Owners. As of Dec. 20, China had 40,917 screens, according to the national film bureau.
As the most populous country, at 1.4 billion, China’s cinema market still has plenty of room to grow as theater chains expand into smaller cities and rural areas.
Box office takings are still much smaller in China, at more than $6.5 billion in 2015, compared to $11 billion in North America, including cinema advertising revenue.
There are just 23 screens per million Chinese, compared to 125 per million in the U. S., according to IHS Markit, a London-based market researcher.
Analyst David Hancock estimates China’s screen density ratio will grow to about 57 screens per million over the next five to 10 years.
« The country is still under-screened, and there seems to be little reason to stop building screens where there are none, » Hancock said.
China’s countryside had around 3,000 cinemas in 2016, out of 7,000 in the whole country, said Fu Yalong, research director at leading entertainment consultancy EntGroup.
« It takes time to foster the habit among people of going to the cinema, » he said. « This is still a market with potential for development.  »
Beijing, with 22 million people, added more than 100 cinemas in 2016, up from about 70 in 2015.
The cinema in Zhuolu, an apple and grape-growing area 160 kilometers (100 miles) away, opened in 2014. It’s surrounded by shops, banks and restaurants operating underneath apartment blocks.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a couple bought two 35-yuan ($5) tickets to watch the Hollywood film « Hacksaw Ridge » and had the whole theater to themselves. That’s equivalent to about the cheapest cinema ticket for sale in Beijing.
Growth in China’s box office takings has begun to slow after years of record-breaking expansion, increasing by just 3.7 percent in 2016 compared with an annual jump of 48.7 percent in 2015. That has pushed back forecasts of when China’s box office sales will overtake North America’s to 2019, from as early as this year.
Limited purchasing power and competition from online viewing are taking a toll. So is the generally mediocre selection of films, like the widely panned 2016 staple « League of Gods, » a fantasy epic starring Jet Li and Fan Bingbing that is based on a 16th-century Chinese novel. Ticket prices have risen after several online ticket platforms stopped giving discounts.
For decades after the Communist Party took power in 1949, state-owned cinemas showed propaganda films starring peasants and soldiers. Even after economic reforms began in the 1980s-90s, cinemas charged as little as 2 mao (3 cents) for showings of both foreign and domestic films.
As China’s economy became more market-oriented, state-operated theaters in places like Zhuolu closed and people lost the cinema-going habit. Companies like real estate conglomerate Wanda Group, which owns the American AMC movie theater company, have led a private cinema chain revolution in large cities.
The new cinema in Zhuolu opened its doors two years ago, more than a decade after the old state-run one was torn down.
Once an avid movie-goer, 66-year-old farmer Zhao Youling has never visited the new cinema just 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) away from his village.
« It isn’t that the ticket is too expensive, it is that I am too poor, » Zhao said.
« I always stay at home and watch TV because it is free, » Zhao said. « I was a movie fan 30 years ago and as far as I can remember I could afford to watch a film almost every week and I loved to watch films featuring the lives of farmers or stories in the countryside.  »
Scant as they are, the Zhuolu cinema’s audiences have been growing, says Wang, who contracts the space from the county government’s cultural bureau and keeps it open daily, from 8:30 to midnight.
« We have to offer screenings and be ready because we don’t know when there will be an audience, » he said. « We have to be open all day — we can’t let people see a locked door. « 

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Beijing — If you think your family reunions are crazy big, think again.
On Friday, 13 January, hundreds of thousands of Chinese travellers are packing airports, train and bus stations as they head home for Lunar New Year celebrations.
Officials say they expect that Chinese travellers will make almost 3 billion trips during the holiday travel rush that starts on 13 January and runs through 21 February 2017.
Each year, it represents the world’s largest seasonal migration of people as families reunite for China’s most important traditional holiday. Also known as Spring Festival, it falls on 28 January this year.
This year – the Year of the Rooster – Chinese authorities expect holidaymakers to make 2.5 billion trips by land, 356 million by rail, 58 million by plane and 43 million by sea over this 40-day period.
In the seven days of the Lunar New Year, Chinese are expected to spend more than R1.4 billion (from $100 billion) on eating and shopping and buy railway tickets online at a rate of more than 1 000 per second.
SEE: The Chinese are coming: What SA can expect from this tourism boo m
Travellers lugging large bags were rushing into the Beijing Railway Station on Friday morning to catch trains home.
Su Wenqi, a college student in Beijing returning to the northeastern city of Harbin, was looking forward to reuniting with family saying that: « After a busy year, I really miss them.  »
This is what the ‘Chinese Migration’ looks like:
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