China opened an industrial park dedicated to developing the digital yuan ecosystem on Oct. 11, according to Chinese press reports. This is the first such park dedicated to the central bank digital currency (CBDC), which is also referred to as the e-CNY.
The industrial park is located in the Luohu district of Shenzhen adjacent to Hong Kong. It is opening with nine residents. According to reports, the district government has announced ten “initiatives to boost the development” of the digital yuan ecosystem that involve payment solutions, smart contracts, hard wallets and digital yuan promotion.
Incentives are being offered to residents that include up to three years’ free rent. Commercial banks can receive up to 20 million yuan ($2.7 million) for settling there, startups are eligible for up to 50 million yuan ($6.9 million). Total government support is set at 100 million yuan ($13.7 million). Loans at advantageous rates are also being offered.
Among the first residents of the park were Hengbao, Wuhan Tianyu Information and Lakala Payment. Hengbao and Tianyu produce payment cards, among other things. Lakala is a payments processor and Visa partner.
The Shenzhen Digital RMB Industrial Park officially launched operations on Wednesday, according to a press briefing held in the southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen https://t.co/Pi3Z6bjUvppic.twitter.com/SehYDnhoUu
Wuhan Tianyu Information executive deputy director Zeng Zhaoxiang told China Daily:
“We hope to achieve synergistic effects in the industrial chain and jointly promote the development of the park.”
China has taken many measures to promote the usage of the digital yuan, which is officially in the pilot stage. Twenty-six cities are participating in the pilot, and the CBDC is accepted by 5.6 million merchants – a number that is likely to grow steadily thanks to government encouragement and technological development.
The digital yuan app recently added an option for tourists to use Visa and Mastercard to add to their wallets. Nonetheless, with 261 million digital yuan wallets created as of 2022, adoption is considered sluggish.
The Archbishop of York has told Sky News the UK should resist Reform’s “kneejerk” plan for the mass deportation of migrants, telling Nigel Farage he is not offering any “long-term solution”.
Stephen Cottrell said in an interview with Trevor Phillips he has “every sympathy” with people who are concerned about asylum seekers coming to the country illegally.
But he criticised the plan announced by Reform on Tuesday to deport 600,000 people, which would be enabled by striking deals with the Taliban and Iran, saying it will not “solve the problem”.
Mr Cottrell is currently acting head of the Church of England while a new Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen.
Image: Pic: Jacob King/PA Wire
Image: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell in 2020.
File pic: PA
Phillips asked him: “What’s your response to the people who are saying the policy should be ‘you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and you get deported straight away. No ifs, no buts’?”
Mr Cottrell said he would tell them “you haven’t solved the problem”, adding: “You’ve just put it somewhere else and you’ve done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.
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“And so if you think that’s the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I have every sympathy with those who find this difficult, every sympathy – as I do with those living in poverty.
“But… we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk ‘send them home’.”
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What do public make of Reform’s plans?
Image: Nigel Farage at the launch of Reform UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers. Pic: PA
Asked if that was his message to the Reform leader, he said: “Well, it is. I mean, Mr Farage is saying the things he’s saying, but he is not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world, which lead to this. And, I see no other way.”
Mr Farage, the MP for Clacton, was asked at a news conference this week what he would say if Christian leaders opposed his plan.
“Whoever the Christian leaders are at any given point in time, I think over the last decades, quite a few of them have been rather out of touch, perhaps with their own flock,” he said.
“We believe that what we’re offering is right and proper, and we believe for a political party that was founded around the slogan of family, community, country that we are doing right by all of those things, with these plans we put forward today.”
Sky News has approached Mr Farage for comment.
Farage won’t be greeting this as good news of the gospel – nor will govt ministers
When Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell told journalists that “We don’t do God”, many took it as a statement of ideology.
In fact it was the caution of a canny operator who knows that the most dangerous opponent in politics is a religious leader licensed to challenge your very morality.
Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, currently the effective head of the worldwide Anglican communion, could not have been clearer in his denunciation of what he calls the Reform party’s “isolationist, short term, kneejerk ‘send them home'” approach to asylum and immigration.
I sense that having ruled himself out of the race for next Archbishop of Canterbury, Reverend Cottrell feels free to preach a liberal doctrine.
Unusually, in our interview he pinpoints a political leader as, in effect, failing to demonstrate Christian charity.
Nigel Farage, who describes himself as a practising Christian, won’t be greeting this as the good news of the gospel.
But government ministers will also be feeling nervous.
Battered for allowing record numbers of cross- Channel migrants, and facing legal battles on asylum hotels that may go all the way to the Supreme Court, Labour has tried to head off the Reform challenge with tougher language on border control.
The last thing the prime minister needs right now is to make an enemy of the Almighty – or at least of his representatives on Earth.