Category: Business and Economy

By Gong Shijian, People’s Daily

When China is all out to combat the novel coronavirus epidemic, its freight trains are also busy running on tracks to transport commodities between Chinese and European cities.

By Feb. 21, the China-Europe Chang’an freight trains running between the western Chinese city of Xi’an and European cities had made a total of 297 trips this year, transporting 146,000 tons of commodities, up 1.89 and 1.8 times year on year, respectively.

A green channel has been opened in Xi’an to ensure rapid yet strict checking and loading of commodities before they go through customs formalities, as well as comprehensive disinfection of freight vehicles.

For instance, 5 minutes after the arrival of 7 container trucks from east China’s Shandong province carrying light industrial products at 9:40 am, they went through the first round of epidemic inspection at a designated area near a toll gate, including disinfection, temperature measurement for the drivers, and information registration and verification. Besides, the doors of the truck cabins were all sealed so that the drivers won’t have to go through further checks.

The second round of inspection started two minutes later when the trucks drove into Gangwu Avenue, a road leading to the Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park. At 10:20 am, these trucks were guided by a government vehicle to the Xi’an Railway Container Center Station, where they received the last round of disinfection and information verification, and unloaded the commodities.

Later, the commodities were loaded to a China-Europe freight train after customs clearance and shipped to Prague, Czech on the afternoon that day.

This process ensures that vehicles leave immediately after unloading and drivers stay in the cabins to avoid human contact. It is a rapid green channel, and also a safety channel of closed monitoring, said Jiao Jianfeng, deputy director of the port bureau under the administrative committee of the Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park.

The Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park has rolled out multiple measures together with the customs and railway departments to ensure smooth operation of the China-Europe freight trains while taking all-out efforts to control and prevent the epidemic.

It established a green passage, and promoted highway-railway joint transportation and railway-freight railway joint transportation channels to give full play to the role of the service during the special period.

“In order to ensure smooth operation of the freight trains, we informed our domestic and foreign customers that we have offered gate passes for regular logistics vehicles, and the container trucks from outside the city can also go through all inspection formalities rapidly,” said Yuan Xiaojun, general manager of Xi’an Free Trade Port Construction and Operation Co., Ltd.

So far, the administrative committee of Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park has issued 183 gate passes for regular logistics vehicles serving the China-Europe freight trains, according to Su Guofeng, deputy director of the committee.

This has guaranteed fast and safe passage of container trucks while ensuring the maximum safety, and reduced the costs of drayage, lifting and storage, Su introduced, disclosing that about 800 yuan ($114) can be saved for each container this way.

By Feb 21, more than 800 trucks had passed safely through the green channel, with a daily peak of 70, Su added.

The efficient and stable operation of the China-Europe Chang’an freight trains has boosted confidence of related companies. The Sweden-based packaging giant Tetra Pak is one of them, who recently decided to shift from maritime transportation to railway transportation.

On Feb. 14, the first batch of 50 containers of Tetra Pak wrapping paper arrived at the German port of Mukran, where they boarded a China-Europe Chang’an freight train for Xi’an. The wrapping paper, whose final destinations are east China’s Jiangsu province and Beijing, will serve as strong support for the Swedish company’s global production.

“While fighting against the epidemic, we’ll further optimize the transportation process and improve the operational efficiency of the China-Europe Chang’an freight rail service, so as to make it high-quality, market-oriented and sustainable, said Sun Yimin, who’s is in charge of the Party working committee office and management committee office of Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park. It reflects Xi’an’s responsibility and vision as a logistics center, Sun added.

By Du Qiongfang

For farmers, whose businesses are traditionally highly dependent on venues such as wholesale markets and shops with the hustling flow of customers, the ongoing closure of such gathering venues to reduce the risk of human-to-human transmission means their work resumption is not easy, thus affecting their income, which will further dampen the local poverty alleviation goals.

Farmers across the nation have spared no effort to overcome these unavoidable challenges, and livestreaming sales have emerged as one of their unique business models.

Broken sales chain amid epidemic

Traditionally, most agricultural products in China were sold through wholesalers. The products harvested by farmers and rural cooperatives would be collected by the wholesalers, before entering peddlers’ and wholesale markets. Thereafter, it will be channeled to the wet markets and supermarkets, and finally, land on consumers’ baskets. However, following the transportation and road blockades, such a long sales chain stands snapped.

The family of Wang Linfen from Chengmai county in South China’s Hainan Province has been growing sweet potatoes for generations. Most of the farmers in her town make a living by growing the vegetable.

In the past, the typical vegetable with good taste and rich in nutrition always generated sufficient sales. Speaking to the Global Times Wang said, the offline sales volume of the vegetables harvested in December could reach 200 tons per day during the past Spring Festivals. However, only a bit more than 300 kilograms were the best sales on a single day this year due to the closure of the wholesale market, the most important part of the traditional circulation.

According to Wang, her family owns a piece of land with an area of over 40 mu (2.67 hectares). Each mu can usually harvest about 2,000 kilograms of sweet potatoes. About 75 percent of sweet potatoes grown by her family in the past were collected by wholesalers from across the country, and the rest 25 percent were sold online.

“Wholesalers have various sales channels that can help sale in big batches, so most of our sales rely on the wholesale markets, as the sales generated online targeting individual customers cannot match,” Wang said.

But so far this year, almost all her income came from online sales. Wang opened her online shops at e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Taobao three years ago. Since the offline sales channels faced obstacles, she put more effort into online sales and started live streaming relentlessly.

At present, she spends at least two or three hours daily to promote her sweet potatoes through livestream every afternoon. During a livestreaming session held between February 10 and 12, she sold about 8.6 tons of sweet potatoes.

“Compared with simply selling products through online shops, the effect of livestreaming is better, since the customers can see the products with their eyes,” said Wang noting as online sales and live streaming is the current trend, she wants to put greater focus on this aspect even after the epidemic ends.

Brand awareness promoted through livestreaming

While some farmers are striving to recover their economic losses through livestreaming, others discovered new opportunities through this alternative revenue model.

“Compared with wholesale markets, promoting the sales of fruits through livestreaming allows the customers to see the real condition of the place of production, the quality of the products, and interact with the farmers directly, which further expand influence and promote brand awareness of the local pineapples,” Weng Zhiquan, an e-commerce practitioner involved in the trade, bid data and industry of pineapples from Xuwen county in Zhanjiang, South China’s Guangdong Province, told the Global Times.

Xuwen is one of the nation’s largest pineapple production zones. According to Weng, around 48,000 farmers in his county cultivate about 350,000 mu areas for pineapples with annual production reaching 600,000 tons.

“Hit by the epidemic, the pricing of pineapples was negatively affected a while ago, even though the quality of the pineapples harvested this year is pretty good because of the good weather,” Weng said. “But following the use of e-commerce platforms, the pricing of the pineapples is picking up.”

According to Weng, although local farmers have been selling their products through e-commerce platforms for years, online sales have been growing particularly fast this year due to the epidemic. At present, the online sales volume exceeded the revenue garnered offline.

Source：Global Times

By Chen Qingqing

World Health Organization (WHO) experts hailed China’s efforts and achievements in the country’s fight against the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia, as China stands in the frontline to protect the world from it.

The organization also urged other countries and regions to learn from China’s lessons, the most important of which is the speed of the action.

“The world needs the experience and expertise of China, as the country is the most experienced in the world, which has turned around a serious outbreak,” Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward, who heads the WHO mission team to China, said on Monday at a technical briefing upon the completion of the WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19, adding that the only success the world had in tackling COVID-19 is in China, where old approaches like suspension of travel and quarantine were used.

“There’s no question that China’s bold approach has changed the course of the rapid escalation of this epidemic. These significant measures could only be adopted with tremendous collective will, not only in the community but also [among] top officials, which is also rare to see,” Aylward said.

Before he addressed the media, Aylward sent out condolences, in a highly emotional way, to all the Chinese people who lost their lives and their family members amid the outbreak while expressing a special gratitude to people in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei Province, where the COVID-19 originated, as they have made great contributions to the epidemic control work.

Citing several examples he noticed during this trip to China, the Canadian epidemiologist said he was impressed by the capacity of social mobilization and tremendous collective will of top-down officials and Chinese people in containing the virus, but without proven pharmaceutical measures yet, the disease can be extremely dangerous.

He described those measures such as keeping a social distance, implementing quarantine and city lockdowns as old-fashioned but aggressive as well as ambitious, underscoring a huge sacrifice that Chinese people have made for the happiness of others – not only in China but also in other countries.

“We have to work with what we have. China’s approaches are the only ones that we know work,” he said.

One example, as Aylward mentioned, was although every province suffered from the epidemic, local governors always prioritized mobilization of medical workers and supplies to support Wuhan and Hubei.

He noted that the ongoing slowing spread by weeks thanks to China’s efforts can “buy time to test drugs, work on vaccines,” and the international community needs to use the time China has bought to better effect.

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported 409 new coronavirus infections nationwide, 150 new deaths as of Monday. The total number of infected soared to 77,150, with 2,592 deaths as of Monday.

Outside China, there were 1,769 confirmed cases as of Monday and the death toll reached 17. The disease has spread to 28 countries and regions across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with South Korea, Japan and Italy recording spikes in recent days.

The decline is real, Aylward noted, referring to visible progress that China has made in epidemic control work as the daily new infections have been dropping in recent weeks.

The number of coronavirus cases reported in China a day has dropped from 2,500 when he arrived two weeks ago to 406 on Monday, he noted. “That’s an 80 percent decline and the decline that we are seeing is real,” the expert said.

It has been a month since Wuhan – a city with 11 million people – implemented the city lockdown, while other provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions implemented various measures to control population flow in containing the epidemic at the cost of social and economic growth.

When asked about whether the epidemic in Wuhan is getting close to an inflection point, the WHO expert said as cured numbers rose and new infections continued to drop, it showed a rapid escalation of the outbreak has been contained. However, when daily new infections drop to double digits in the next few weeks, it would be the time to decide whether the epidemic is under control.

Italy is taking similar moves. The WHO official said he has explained to the world that there are benefits from extreme containment measures, which are the tools available to fight the disease.

The mission’s report has 22 recommendations for other countries and China itself, including recommendations for the general public, which, however, can’t work without the collective will of the population contributing to it.

This virus is neither SARS nor influenza and viewing it as one or the other impedes the ability to learn about the virus and adapt the response, the WHO official noted.

According to the major findings of the WHO-China Joint Mission, the deadly coronavirus has not significantly mutated.

“The animal host has not been confirmed – a bat could be the host, but also a pangolin,” Liang Wannian, head of the Chinese expert group at the joint mission, who is also in charge of responding to COVID-19 at the NHC, said at the press briefing.

The joint expert team visited Wuhan over the weekend after completing investigations in Beijing, South China’s Guangdong Province and Southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

The mission aims to learn more about the epidemic features, including the source of transmission, to better understand the Chinese government’s policies and the future response to the epidemic, and to put forward recommendations for relevant scientific research, Liang said.

“The transmission route is respiratory droplets. The fecal-oral route needs to be further studied,” Liang said.

About 80 percent are milder cases and about 13 percent are severe, while 6 percent are critically ill, the WHO-China joint mission technical report showed. About 1 to 5 percent of the close contacts to coronavirus patients were later confirmed to be positive.

Liang said that 3,000 medical staff are estimated to have been infected nationwide and scientists are studying which cases were infections in hospitals and which were in communities.

A large part of medical staff infections took place in Wuhan, which is mainly due to the initial lack of understanding on COVID-19 and the lack of protective supplies, he said.

Epidemiological curves showed China’s measures have helped avoid a larger scale of outbreak that could have involved more than 100,000 people. Those changes didn’t come easy, due to huge decisions of policymakers, like suspending travel and other quarantine measures, Aylward said.

He noted that there’s only one drug right now – Remdesivir – that might be effective. But enrollment in a clinical trial has been slow because other things are being tested, according to the briefing.

Aylward also shared the changes he saw in Wuhan, such as the growing space in Wuhan hospitals in treating patients.

While the virus may continue to spread in China for months, it’s time for the country to restore economic and social order while continuing epidemic control. In some major cities, restrictions should be lifted progressively, the WHO expert suggested.

Source: Global Times

By Xie Weiqun, People’s Daily

Machines at Tesla’s gigafactory in Lingang new area of Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone started humming again on Feb.10, after silence in the previous half a month amid the novel coronavirus epidemic.

Before entering the factory every morning, nearly 2,000 employees of the carmaker who arrive by shuttle buses or private cars must have their body temperatures checked.

The gigafactory which plans to build 500,000 Tesla models each year is a miracle in the automobile industry, as it was built in only some 10 months.

On Jan. 7, the factory delivered its first batch of Model 3 sedans. According to an employee at a Tesla Store in China, customers will have to wait for months before their orders are delivered.

However, the American automotive company had to postpone its date of production resumption which was scheduled at Jan. 31 because of the epidemic, despite its plan of capacity expansion and quicker delivery of products.

Epidemic prevention remains vital while the resumption of work is also urgent. Pledging to help enterprises overcome difficulties, the Lingang area administrative committee has sent its employees to enterprises above designated size to help the latter enhance epidemic prevention and guarantee smooth resumption of work.

Sun Xiaohe is a staff member of the high-tech industry and scientific and technological innovation department of the Lingang new area administrative committee. After being appointed as a coordinator for Tesla on Feb.5, Sun immediately got in touch with the company and worked for epidemic control and risk prevention plans.

“Tesla has taken a slew of measures to prevent and control the epidemic. For instance, it has placed disinfection cabinets every 200 meters and separated employees at factory cafeterias. Besides, it also prohibits the gatherings of three employees and above during off hours,” Sun said.

However, there were still problems that couldn’t be solved by enterprises alone, such as the huge demand for masks and thermometers of the factory when it resumed work. Thanks to the assistance offered by the management committee, 10,000 pieces of masks and two infrared thermometers were allocated to Tesla before it resumed production.

What’s more, Tesla was also facing the severe challenge of guaranteeing accommodation safety for its employees who come from different parts of the country. Most of them live in rented houses, and some with their roommates. Such problem was also bothering other enterprises in the new era, posing risks for personnel management.

To solve it, the management committee unveiled 16 guidelines to control epidemic and support enterprises’ development. Besides, the committee also requisitioned 5 apartment buildings that have not yet been put into use. Over 100 employees who used to share apartments and 500 newly-recruited employees of Tesla have moved into the buildings.

Tesla’s resumption of work was followed by its upstream and downstream enterprises, which has reassured many who had placed orders for Tesla models.

So far, about 800 enterprises in the Lingang new area have gradually restarted production, and 77 out of the 78 enterprises with a value of over 100 million yuan ($14.23 million) have set their engines rolling. The implementation of key investment projects has also been accelerated. On Feb. 13 alone, 12 such projects were inked, with total investment of more than 20 billion yuan.

By Lin Zhibo, Wang Mingfeng, People’s Daily

The last 16 impoverished counties in Tibetan-inhabited areas in southwest China’s Sichuan province have been removed from the country’s list of impoverished counties, the Sichuan Provincial People’s Government announced on Feb.18.

The 16 counties include Heishui county, Rangtang county and Aba county in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and Yajiang county, Luhuo county, and Seda county in Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. So far, all the 32 counties in the Tibetan areas in Sichuan have shaken off poverty, including Muli county in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

People of Tibetan ethnic minority group live in two prefectures in Sichuan province, namely, the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and in Muli county, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

By the end of 2013, there were 2,063 poverty-stricken villages and 360,000 impoverished people in Tibetan-inhabited areas in Sichuan, and the incidence of poverty stood at 20.1 percent.

As of the end of 2019, all the 32 poor counties and 2,063 poor villages had shaken off poverty, and the poor population and poverty incidence of the Tibetan areas had been reduced to 2,400 and 0.1 percent, respectively.

In recent years, Sichuan province has intensified efforts to formulate favorable policies and provide strong support and guidance for industrial development and poverty alleviation in Tibetan-inhabited areas, concentrating superior forces for poverty alleviation in impoverished Tibetan-inhabited areas.

In 2013, Sichuan province focused its efforts on the implementation of six projects for improving people’s livelihood, with capital projects targeting poverty-stricken counties in Tibetan areas and favorable policies prioritizing support for such industries as education, health, transportation, and water conservancy.

In 2017, the province issued guidelines on four major tasks for poverty alleviation, including enhancing support for poverty alleviation, accelerating construction of industrial parks, and implementing the project for promoting the role of talents in revitalization of rural areas, further intensifying support and assistance for severely impoverished areas.

Sichuan has accumulatively allocated 10.76 billion yuan (about $1.53 billion) as special government funds for poverty alleviation and integrated around 28.69 billion yuan of government funds concerning agriculture and rural areas to help with the task of alleviating poverty in Tibetan-inhabited areas.

The province pays high attention to improving the lives of Tibetan people. The province has earnestly implemented a strict responsibility system to address school dropout rates and ensure attendance, and created five innovative systems to make sure that all school-age children from poor families receive compulsory education.

The five innovative systems include comparing information of household registration system and student status management system on a regular basis, implementing centralized management for identity cards of students enrolled in compulsory education, and compensating overage students for the school education they have missed.

Besides, the province has promoted expansion and quality improvement of free education by continuously implementing 15-year free education in regions inhabited by ethnic minorities and three-year free vocational education after nine-year free compulsory education in Tibetan-inhabited areas.

It has made efforts to speed up standardization of medical and health institutions throughout the province. So far, health centers in towns and clinics in villages of impoverished counties of Sichuan province have all met relevant standards.

In addition, the individual contributions of Sichuan’s poor population to the basic medical insurance schemes for urban and rural citizens are fully paid by government, while the proportion of medical expenses paid by poor households for medical treatment in their counties has been kept within 5 percent.

Sichuan has also worked with various forces around the country to form concerted efforts to help its Tibetan-inhabited areas overcome poverty.

Under the province’s efforts to give stronger support to targeted poor areas and encourage the eastern region to help in the alleviation of poverty in the western region, 34 counties in 8 cities from Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces have partnered with 32 impoverished counties in Sichuan’s Tibetan-inhabited areas.

The province also communicated with the 5 units of the central government helping lift targeted Tibetan-inhabited areas out of poverty, and helped expand and innovate poverty alleviation ideas for 9 counties in these areas.

Besides, Sichuan enhanced the efforts of the units in the province on poverty alleviation pair work in Tibetan-inhabited areas. It ensured that every impoverished county was assisted by 1 to 3 departments (units) directly under the provincial government, 1-3 institutions of higher education, more than 1 medical institution and 1 to 3 state-owned enterprises and financial institutions.

Twenty-three counties in the relatively developed 6 cities of the province paired with 32 impoverished counties in Tibetan-inhabited areas, and each one of the former would allocate around 0.3 to 0.5 percent of their fiscal revenue to help the latter each year.

It is reported that Sichuan province will enhance its monitoring to prevent the reoccurrence of poverty and improve its dynamic assistance mechanism. Besides, it will also strengthen supporting policies for employment to consolidate its achievements in poverty alleviation.