Category: Foreign News

Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 5 stressed efforts to maintain strategic resolve in enhancing the building of an ecological civilization and to protect the country’s beautiful scenery in the northern border areas.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when attending a panel discussion with his fellow deputies from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature.

The president called for intensified protection of the ecological system, urging people to fight resolutely against pollution.

The Party’s theory on an ecological civilization has been constantly enriched and improved since the 18th CPC National Congress in late 2012, Xi said.

All localities and departments should earnestly implement the Party’s arrangement and requirements for building an ecological civilization, pushing it to a new level, Xi said.

Building Inner Mongolia into an important shield for ecological security in northern China is a strategic position set with full consideration of the country’s overall development and a major responsibility the region must shoulder, Xi said.

Fundamentally speaking, environmental protection and economic development are closely integrated and complemented each other, Xi said.

In the Chinese economy’s transition from the phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development, pollution control and environmental governance are two major tasks that must be accomplished, he added.

The country should explore a new path of high-quality development that prioritizes ecology and highlights green development, Xi said.

With its diversified natural forms including forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers, lakes and deserts, Inner Mongolia features a comprehensive ecological system formed over a long period of time. Integrated measures should be taken in ecological protection and rehabilitation in the region, he said.

Xi underlined a resolute and effective fight to prevent and control pollution, saying prominent environmental issues the people are strongly concerned about must be addressed properly.

Source: People’s Daily App

Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 7 called for perseverance in the fight against poverty as there are only two years left for the country to meet its goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2020.

“There should be no retreat until a complete victory is won,” said Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

He made the remarks when deliberating with deputies from Gansu Province at the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature.

Decisive progress has been achieved in the country’s tough fight against poverty over the past years, marking a new chapter in the poverty reduction history of mankind, said Xi, stressing that the goal to eradicate extreme poverty must be achieved on time.

He warned that the tasks ahead remain arduous and hard as those still in poverty are the worst stricken.

Explaining the criteria of lifting people out of poverty, Xi said they should no longer need to worry about food and clothing while enjoying access to compulsory education, basic medical care and safe housing.

The practices of formalities for formalities’ sake and bureaucratism hamper the effective advancement of poverty reduction, he said, stressing a firm hand in rectifying malpractices in poverty relief.

Xi asked Party committees and governments at all levels to shoulder their responsibilities in the critical battle against poverty.

He ordered efforts to redress undesirable conduct of officials in a timely manner, as well as special campaigns to target corruption and bad conduct in poverty reduction.

Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng — members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee — on March 7 also separately joined deliberation with NPC deputies.

Premier Li Keqiang spoke of the need to replace old growth drivers with new ones and improve people’s wellbeing to advance high-quality development.

NPC Standing Committee Chairman Li Zhanshu called for efforts to adhere to green, high-quality development and link poverty alleviation with rural vitalization strategy.

Wang Yang, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, urged high-quality poverty alleviation work to make sure that nobody is left behind in the course of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
Wang Huning, a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, said he expects Shanghai to continue to lead the reform and opening-up and to elevate the coordinated development of the Yangtze River Delta to a higher level.

Zhao Leji, secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, spoke of the need for Tianjin to take advantage of the period of strategic opportunity, enhance the capacity of innovation, and focus on developing real economy.

Vice Premier Han Zheng stressed the full implementation of the national strategy of the coordinated development of the Yangtze River Delta.

Source：People’s Daily APP

By Xu Keyue

Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region created 667,000 jobs in ecological protection as of 2018, which has not only protected the plateau’s ecology but also helped farmers and herders combat poverty.

Tibetan regional authorities had set up a special working team for poverty alleviation and ecological protection, an official from the Tibet regional environmental protection bureau told the Global Times on March 7.

The team hires local people as rangers to tour, clean or plant trees, which helped alleviate farmers’ and herdsmen’s employment, he said.

Puciren, 31, a forest ranger in Lhasa, capital of Tibet, whose job is to check around local forests every day and organize villagers to plant trees in spring, said, “To protect the forest is to protect our hometown.”

Compensation to these rangers rose to 3,500 yuan per person per year in 2018, according to Xinhua News Agency.

In 2018, the Tibet regional government invested 10.7 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) to protect the local ecological environment and to create jobs, Luo Jie, head of the Tibet regional ecological environment department, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

A total of 74,100 hectares in the region had been planted with new trees in 2018 with the local forest coverage rate in the Tibet region increasing to 12.14 percent, Luo said.

The region has vowed to lift 150,000 people out of poverty and eradicate absolute poverty this year.

A white paper “Ecological Progress on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau” released in 2018 by the State Council said that “China has initiated a series of ecological compensation mechanisms, including transfer payments to key ecological function zones, forest ecological benefit compensation, grassland ecological protection subsidy and rewards, and wetland ecological benefit compensation.”

Source: Global Times/People’s Daily

By Wang Cong

Contrary to some of the more gruesome headlines, Chen Liang’s small company, which specializes in magnetic materials, is doing rather well. Orders are still coming in and profits swelling, he said.

But when it comes to the future, there’s a problem, says Chen, general manager of Dongguan Jinconn New Material Holdings Company in South China’s Guangdong Province.

The company is coming under heavy pressure from foreign competitors and needs funding to upgrade and expand. “We’re doing OK now, but to survive, we need to change. We need better products and that means better technologies, better equipment and more skilled workers,” Chen told the Global Times on March 7. “But that costs a lot of money.”

Companies like Chen’s are at the center of the Chinese government’s master plan unveiled during the two sessions to rekindle growth in the world’s second largest economy.

Massive cuts to fees and taxes on smaller private companies were the most discussed and applauded measures at the two sessions among a series of actions aimed at creating a better business environment.

In this year’s Government Work Report, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China will reduce taxes and fees levied on companies by nearly 2 trillion yuan ($298.24 billion), as part of government efforts to boost vitality.

Extra cash

Value-added tax reforms have helped his company in recent years, Chen noted, but taxes and expenses still eat up an unhealthy chunk of profits.

” We are looking for reasonable support within the existing policies, such as loans to companies,” he told the Global Times.

The effects of the newly announced cuts are hard to estimate, Chen said, but “extra cash is always good, right?”

Apart from direct tax cuts, the Government Work Report also stated that China would increase loans from state-owned commercial banks to smaller firms by at least 30 percent.

If all works out, Chen said, his company’s plan to expand and upgrade may happen.

If tax cuts are just extra petty cash for Chen, for the owner of a packaging firm of about 30 employees in Dongguan, South China’s Guangdong Province, they mean more.

Shen, who preferred not to be fully named, said his company could pay 50,000 yuan less this year compared to the 500,000 yuan last year. “And that’s quite helpful,” he told the Global Times.

Shen’s company, too, is in dire need of cash to support its transition from human labor with rising costs toward machines.

GDP boost

Shen and Chen’s companies are among thousands across the country struggling amid deep changes in the economy and the country is counting on their revitalization to lift the economy.

“As long as market entities are energized, we can boost the internal forces driving development and withstand the downward pressure on the economy,” Li said in the Government Work Report.

Private companies play such a critical role in the country’s economic growth that the Chinese language buzz phrase “five, six, seven, eight, nine”has become a popular phrase at the two sessions.

The numbers refer to the country’s private sector’s over 50 percent contribution to tax revenues, over 60 percent to GDP, over 70 percent to technological innovation, over 80 percent to urban employment and accounting for over 90 percent of total companies in China.

“If we can get the private sector running again, then that’s all we need to stabilize growth and jobs,” Jiang Zhen, a fiscal policy expert at the National Academy of Economic Strategy in Beijing, told the Global Times.

“Tax cuts mean more cash for companies to invest and hire more people.”

Cao Heping, a professor of economics at Peking University, said Thursday that assuming companies reinvest all the 2 trillion yuan in tax and fee cuts and all the other factors from price to demand remain unchanged, the measures could add between 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points to economic growth.

“That would be a huge help,” he said.

Source: Global Times/People’s Daily

Preferential policies bring more employment opportunities to female residents in Xinjiang

By Liu Xin
Editor’s Notes:

Global Times reporter Liu Xin recently paid a visit to Aksu Prefecture in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and talked to local residents. Many women shared impressive stories of starting their own businesses or working with their family members to get out of poverty. With the global community marking International Women’s Day on Friday, we published some of their stories to celebrate not only these beautiful and diligent women from Xinjiang and other regions in China, but also from the whole world.

Gulikzi Yasen, 24, is from Qiaogetiereke village, Shaya county in Aksu Prefecture, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. She opened her beauty salon in February 2018.

Due to the lack of land, Gulikzi and her mother used to live in poverty and survived on subsidies from the local government. With the help of the local women’s association, Gulikzi applied to rent a shop built by the county government and took out a loan to buy equipment for the salon.

“After repaying the loans, the yearly rent of 2,000 yuan, the salary for another barber in my shop, I can earn more than 1,000 yuan a month. My family is no longer poor,” Gulikzi said with a smile on her face.

Gulikzi said that brides in the village come to her salon to get their hair and make-up done for their weddings. “The cost for a bride’s makeup and hair is between 300 yuan and 400 yuan. I’m very good at dyeing hair!” she said.
Ayixianguli Niyazi in Hailou town, Shaya county is 38 years old and a mother of two.

Her family used to live in poverty, since the only income was from her husband’s unstable job as a mason. She sometimes sewed clothes for people to make some extra money, but this was not enough for the life she wanted to give her children.

She began to work for a local clothes workshop in February 2018. The flexible working hours gave Ayixianguli the time to take care of her children before and after school and also brought her a monthly salary of over 1,000 yuan.

“Frugality used to be the key word for me in running the house, since every penny had to be used properly to save money. My husband and I also had arguments over money,” she said.

“But with the increase in the family’s earnings, I can buy more and better food for my children. There’s no more arguing about money in the house,” Ayixianguli remarked. “It’s really good for us women to earn money.” 
Twenty-year-old Ayixiemu Younusi is thrilled about her upcoming trip to Beijing in March. Living in her hometown of Shaya county for almost all her life, the farthest place she had ever gone was downtown Aksu. 

The clothing factory Ayixiemu works at has chosen her and one of her colleagues as representatives to go to Beijing. This free trip is a reward for their good work performances.

“I never thought I’d be so lucky! I want to see the flag-raising ceremony at Tian’anmen Square and visit the Palace Museum,” Ayixiemu said.

Talking about her future plans, Ayixiemu said that she wants to learn more skills from her colleagues in the factory to boost her salary. 
Amanguli Wufuer works in a clothing factory in Shaya county with 30 other women from a nearby village. They are trying to complete an order to make 10,000 woolen coats worth 1 million yuan. 

“The profits from this order could reach 200,000 yuan, and we’ll complete it within four months,” Amanguli said.

Amanguli owns a clothes shop and likes to design clothes herself. The local government in Shaya invited her to jointly run the clothes factory at the beginning of this year. She and three other women, who each specialize in designing, sewing and marketing, run the factory’s business.

“I used to see many women in villages cover their face and dress conservatively under the influence of extremism, although many of them told me that deep in their hearts, they love fashionable clothes,” Amanguli said.

But now women in Shaya are dressing however they like, following efforts in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to eradicate extremism.

“Whether they are from urban or rural areas, the women I’ve met are dressing fashionably. With less influence from extremism, more women are choosing to wear what they like. I’m so happy to see this.” Amanguli said. That’s why she is optimistic about the future of the factory.
Ajiranmu Aimaiti has a bakery workshop named after her in Tuowanke Maigaiti village in Wushi county in Aksu, which makes her very happy.

The village has offered different vocational skills for villagers who wanted to start their own business since 2017 and rented out training workshops at low prices to villagers with outstanding performances.

Driven by the desire to open a bakery by herself, Ajiranmu completed the training and now has 12 apprentices learning how to make various types of bread in the workshop.

“I can teach them how to bake as well as run my business. My income from selling cold noodles was about 1,500 yuan a month and now the earning of selling bread has increased to 5,000 yuan,” Ajiranmu said.

“I want to work hard to earn more money and offer a better education to my children,” she said.

Source: Global Times/People’s Daily

***Amid governmental support to protect the ancient art

“From 300 to 3,000 (roughly), the rise in the number of Thangka painters in Tibet shows that religious art is thriving and a perfect example of the government’s support to Tibet culture,” Norbu Sitar, dean of the Tibet Thangka Painting Academy in Lhasa, said.

A national-level cultural inheritor of Thangka and a Chinese Crafts and Artisan Master, China’s top honor title issued by State Council to craft artists, he came to Beijing with a mission.

As a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), he attended the two sessions to promote the “status” of Thangka.

Thangka paintings, or scroll paintings on cotton or silk, was originated more than 1,300 years ago. They were traditionally kept unframed and rolled up when not on display. The themes of Thangka are mostly about Buddhism, legendary and folk tales, and historical stories.

“With central and regional government support, the number of Thangka painters have been increasing in recent years and their skills have also improved.” Norbu Sitar said.

One of his works has been preserved in the Potala Palace, a World Heritage site in Lhasa, and his academy is receiving huge government funding.

“Thangka is not only thriving in China, but also drawing the attention of collectors in the US, the UK and Denmark,” he said, adding that to prevent it from over-commercialization, Thangka inheritors are thinking of a national standard for the industry.

Lhapa, also a CPPCC member from the Jokhang Monastery Temple, recently told news site tibet.cn that the temple has established a Buddha and Thangka database and has included more than 6,000 Buddha statues and 600 Thangka paintings into the database.

In response to accusations from overseas media that many Tibetans blame China for wanting to dilute their culture and that Tibet is the victim of “cultural genocide,” Norbu Sitar laughed.

“The number and skills say everything,” he said.

Source: Global Times

By Yang Xun from People’s Daily

Cutting-edge core technology should not be imported, but developed domestically, Shi Yigong, a well-known scientist and president of Westlake University, told reporters at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 3.

The aim of the China’s first new type of private research university is to become a world-class institute, said Shi, who is one of the initiators of Westlake University and a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), before the opening of the second session of the country’s top political advisory body.

Located in Yunqi town in the scenic West Lake area of Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province, the research-oriented university is the first Chinese university held by social force and supported by the country. It has received much attention since its establishment.

Shi, a structural biologist, is an icon and spokesperson of Westlake University. In 2015, he and other education personnel submitted a proposal for piloting a new private research-oriented university to state leaders.

Shi envisioned an ideal university that could attract a large number of top scientists in the world to engage in cutting-edge research, deliver the most meaningful scientific achievements and cultivate the best young students in the next five or ten years.

Such university is expected to make significant contributions to the world’s civilization and human progress by exploring the frontiers of science and technology, Shi added.

In September 2017, the first group of 19 doctoral students were enrolled at the university, who stood out from more than 400 applicants and passed strict interviews of the university’s professors. Shi told them that the university aims to cultivate top-notch innovative talents with social responsibility.

In August 2018, the university admitted 120 doctoral candidates. About 5,000 full-time students are expected to be enrolled by 2026, according to the university’s planning. Shi hopes that all teachers and students at the university will join the long journey towards their shared dream.

Westlake University will be a small but versatile research-oriented university, starting at a high level – nurturing doctoral degree students. It is committed to higher education and academic research and cultivating top-notch innovative talents.

Talents hold the key to innovation. China has made great progress in science and technology, but still needs to seek more original breakthroughs in the basic research field. Westlake University needs to cultivate more outstanding scientific and technological talents with great sense of social responsibility, Shi said.

Chinese small agricultural households, the biggest part of the country’s agricultural population, are joining a national drive to pursue modernized agriculture, with the help of new technologies and better commercial services.

The change comes as the accelerated pace of urbanization has resulted in a shift in the distribution of the urban and rural population. China now has 564 million people living in the countryside.

Before China attains its goal to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the toughest task it needs to conquer is rural issue, which constitutes the shortest board blocking the way, said Chen Xiwen, chairperson of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) of China.

China’s agricultural sector is still dominated by the model of farming by small agricultural households. According to the third national agricultural census, smallholders took up more than 98 percent of the entities engaging in agriculture-related work, and they cultivated 70 percent of the arable land nationwide.

In order to bring these  farmers onto the track of modernized agriculture, some rural areas have adopted new technologies to improve production efficiency. Drones, for instance, have been employed to give a helpful hand.

Farmers in Weinan, a city in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, are now assisted by drones to remove weeds, sow seeds and splash pesticides, after they place an order for the service via their mobile phones. The Internet Plus model and the drones have accelerated the process of agricultural modernization there.

Commercial services were also optimized to speed up the modernization pace. Jinxi county in east China’s Jiangxi province, in recent years, devoted great energy to poverty alleviation through e-commerce.

So far, the county has established 10 large e-commerce trading centers, 112 e-commerce service centers, 64 agricultural service stations and 17 express delivery centers at county- and village-level to help with the sales of agricultural products.

By linking the businesses, agricultural cooperatives and farmers together, the commercial services addressed their headaches in marketing channel and led local residents to prosperity.

China’s basic rural operation system is household-based, Chen said, adding that the country’s national conditions and rural development status have decided that large-scale agricultural operations are not necessarily the best mode.

Given the backdrop, China, when making policies, has been improving supporting policies for household farmers, bettering services for them and guiding them towards modern agriculture, while encouraging moderate operations in various forms, added the NPC deputy.

In the future, the country will place priority on the cultivation of family ranches and cooperatives as two new types of agribusiness, he said, suggesting effective implementation of the policies to involve small agricultural households into modernized agriculture system.

Chen added that the mechanisms connecting household farmers with cooperatives or companies need to be solidified, in a bid to foster a prosperous agricultural industry and make farming a decent career.

Source: People’s Daily

Chinese farmers are using their wisdom and modern strategies to cater for the market, and such supply-side reform is helping them gaining more profits.

Wu Kai, a staff from a fruit company in east China’s Jiangxi province has greatly boosted the company’s navel orange sales thanks to the supply-side reform he carried out.

Wu’s company is based in Chengjiang township, Jiangxi’s Xunwu county, a place having a 30-year history of navel orange planting. Almost every household there plants the fruit.

However, a small-size navel orange produced in Chengjiang was always neglected by the market due to its size, though it’s of high quality, Wu said. His company used to sell most of these fruits it collected from the farmers to secondary wholesale markets and juice factories at very low prices.

A total of 1.5 million kilograms of such small navel oranges were collected by Wu’s company in 2018. However, they were neither sent to the secondary wholesale markets nor the juice factories, but divided at a sorting line of the company. Oranges affected by diseases and pests and those with obvious injuries on the surface area were also kicked out from the fine ones.

This new strategy was a result of Wu’s investigation on consumers’ preferences of the fruits’ taste and appearance, a critical step for him to grasp the demand of the market.

Based on random sweetness measurement, the 1.5 million kilograms of small navel oranges went to different market segments under different brands, through both online and offline channels.

They created outstanding sales performance a couple of months later. Wu’s company took in revenue of 4 million yuan from the 500,000 kilograms sold on online platforms, and 7 million yuan from the rest sold in offline markets.

The total revenue would have stood at only 6 million had the fruits been sold through traditional channels, Wu introduced.

“By learning consumers’ demand and categorizing the orange supplies, Wu has both guaranteed the product quality and created due value,” commented Wang Xiaodong, deputy head of Xunwu county. Wu’s practice was exactly a creative attempt on the supply-side structural reform for navel orange sales, Wang noted.

The Chinese government have always attached high importance on agriculture-related issues as China is a major agrarian country.

China will focus on supply-side structural reform in agriculture and improve the quality and efficiency of its agricultural product supply, according to the country’s central rural work conference convened in Dec. 2015.

In addition, it will also ensure that the supply, variety and quality of agricultural products meet the needs of consumers, and foster effective supply that is well structured and guaranteed.

The success of the small navel oranges is a useful exploration to connect China’s small-scale agricultural production and the massive market.

In many regions of China, production is no longer an issue. However, there is still much to improve in the sales sector. That is why the CPC Central Committee proposed to promote in-depth supply-side structural reform in the agriculture sector.

One of the important tasks of the reform is establishing a modern agricultural industry system which link both the production and market end of industry, so that the farmers can not only grow quality crops, but also gain decent income.

Source: People’s Daily

By Liu Ge from People’s Daily

Several Chinese cities are using drones to monitor traffic, capturing traffic violations such as using mobile phones while driving and illegal parking.

In February 2019, traffic management departments of Nanning, capital of southwestern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region handled 438 cases of illegal parking with the help of drones, according to The Beijing News.

Compared with law enforcement personnel, drones are more economical and efficient and have a stronger deterrent effect on those wishing to escape punishment.

Drones take videos instead of pictures of parking violations as evidence. It is through human analysis that the cases are finally defined. Taking videos as evidence could document scenes and significantly reduce the incidence of subjective misjudgments.

Besides aerial law enforcement, civilian drones have been brought into use in more areas including plant protection in agriculture and forestry, disaster relief, express delivery, and photography.

China’s state-run mail service operator China Post Group Corporation has concluded its first test flight of a drone for delivery services, according to the Beijing branch of the company.

The drone took off from the post office of Zhaitang town, Beijing’s Mentougou district, and arrived at the post station of Malancun village, also in the district. After the parcels were delivered, the drone returned to the post office in Zhaitang town.

The straight-line distance of the whole trip was about 3.9 kilometers, and it took around 8 minutes for the drone to finish a single trip. The delivery route used to be a 10-kilometer-long journey for postal cars, which needed about 20 minutes for a single trip.

Since mountain area accounts for 98.5 percent of the total area of Mentougou, drones are helpful in saving labor and material costs, and reducing the transportation cost and the risks during the delivery services in remote mountainous area.

The post company plans to establish a rescue team of drones to transport medicines and relief supplies in case of emergency.

Drones, which are futuristic and driven by high-tech, are flying into the life of Chinese people, bringing about changes and surprises in common people’s daily life.