In today's interconnected world where the destinies of countries are closely linked, the coexistence and mutual exchange of different civilizations are important drivers for advancing human civilization and promoting global peace.
The Golden Panda Initiative from artists of different ethnicities and languages was also released at the forum to make the world a better place. Embrace the mission of promoting a harmonious and mutually beneficial civilization in this era; collaboratively create artistic monuments that reflect shared values; act as friendly ambassadors of cultural exchange and mutual learning; continuously unleash the youthful energy of cultural heritage and innovation.
A cluster of honeysuckle, a way to wealth. Honeysuckle flowers can be used for medicine, tea, and ornamental arrangements, with good market value. The honeysuckle planting farmers' professional cooperative has been established in Zhujia Village, Chenggang Subdistrict, Laizhou, Shandong Province, which is now leading more than 6,000 villagers across over 10 villages to cultivate honeysuckle, covering a total of more than 2,200 acres of planting area. Cultivation of honeysuckle not only provides residents with employment opportunities, but also broadens the channels of prosperity for rural revitalization. In order to improve the added value of honeysuckle and improve the planting industry chain of honeysuckle, the cooperative has built a deep processing workshop of honeysuckle, extended the rough processing of honeysuckle into an electrified processing project, and added electrified equipment of water-removing, kneading, fermentation, and raising incense and drying. This year, the State Grid Laizhou Power Supply Company invested in a new 400 kVA transformer capacity into the cooperative to meet the electricity demand of the cooperative's production and processing. At the same time, the company organized teams to carry out regular inspection of electrical equipment, constantly improve the quality of power supply service, and help the industrialization and large-scale development of honeysuckle.
China's central bank said that it would step up policy adjustments and implement monetary policy to expand domestic demand and restore confidence at a quarterly meeting, according to a statement on its official website on Wednesday.
During the meeting, the bank emphasized the need to intensify the implementation of existing monetary policies, enhance counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, and focus on boosting domestic demand and restoring confidence.
Regarding exchange rates, it stressed the importance of correcting deviations, stabilizing expectations, and firmly addressing unilateral and pro-cyclical behaviors to guard against the risk of exchange rate over-adjustment.
In light of the current domestic and international economic situation, the meeting noted that "the current external environment has become more complex and challenging," with inflation remaining high and developed countries expected to maintain elevated interest rates. Additionally, it acknowledged that "the domestic economy continues to recover and improve with strengthened momentum, but still faces challenges such as insufficient demand."
This statement also highlights the central bank's commitment to proactively managing monetary policy to support economic stability and address external and internal economic challenges.
The central bank also pledged to promote the healthy and stable development of the property market.
A number of support measures have already kicked in to stabilize the economic recovery of the world's second-largest economy. Profits across China's industrial enterprises above designated size in August increased by 17.2 percent year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. Overall, profits were down 6.7 percent in July.
The rebound was in line with the momentum of China's industrial output data in August, grew 4.5 percent from a year earlier, accelerating from the 3.7 percent pace seen in July. Retail sales, a gauge of consumption, also grew at a faster 4.6 percent pace in August aided by the summer travel season, and was the quickest growth since May.
Analysts expected the recovery will further accelerated with the upcoming eight-day Golden Week holidays.
The Yuanzhuang Town of Wenshang County is located in the Yellow River alluvial plain in Jining, East China's Shandong Province, with fertile soil and excellent water quality. In recent years, the local government has relied on resource advantages to develop a local seed production industry, focusing every effort to create a "seed industry town," accelerating the process of agricultural industrialization, and building a new development system of "production, processing, marketing, and tourism" of the flower industry, which has driven local employment and increasing income.
The Shandong Huiyuan Flower Seed Industry Breeding Base has built a high-standard multi-span greenhouse of 48,000 square meters, which can cultivate various types of flower seedlings and over 8 million finished products annually.
The State Grid Jining Power Supply Company is committed to improving the reliability of the power grid and serving the development of the agricultural industry, focusing on the local government's goal of building a "seed industry town." The breeding base of the flower seed industry has set high standards for greenhouse temperature and humidity. State Grid Jining Power Supply Company has invested in the construction of a rural electrification demonstration project for benefiting farmers and helping local communities. The greenhouse has been intelligently renovated by installing the equipment for collecting and intelligent processing of voltage, current, carbon dioxide concentration, soil temperature and humidity, EC value, air temperature and humidity, and light intensity information, to obtain electrical and environmental data inside the greenhouse. This cutting-edge equipment builds up the automatic monitoring of agricultural ecological information and automatic control of facilities, which provides scientific basis and effective means for intelligent management, and strong power guarantee for the development of the area's flower industry.
A total of 754 million domestic passenger trips were made in China in the first seven days of the 8-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, a year-on-year increase of 78.9%. Holiday tourism generated 668.1 billion yuan ($92.80 billion), up 132.6% year-on-year, official data showed on Friday.
The second phase of a high-definition deep-space active observation facility, China Fuyan, which is dubbed as the world's most far-reaching radar system, kicked off in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the Global Times learned from the project lead Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) on Tuesday.
The second phase of the project, codenamed China Fuyan [faceted eye], will involve building 25 radars with a 30-meter aperture, so as to realize the detection and imaging of asteroids over 10 million kilometers away, which will provide strong support for China's near-Earth asteroid impact defense and planetary science research.
Construction of phase II, which will cover an area of over 300 mu (20 hectares), is expected to be completed by 2025. It will be a new research and development phase for the project, Long Teng, president of BIT and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in a statement sent to the Global Times.
China Fuyan will consist of distributed radars with more than 20 antennas, and each antenna will have a diameter of 25 to 30 meters. It is expected to become the world's most far-reaching radar system capable of carrying out high-definition observation of asteroids within 150 million kilometers.
Long said that because the system has multiple antennas, like the faceted eyes of an insect, it was given the vivid name of China Fuyan.
Through high-resolution observation of asteroids, spacecraft, the moon, Earth-like planets and Jupiter Galileo satellites and other deep-space targets, China Fuyan will meet the need for the defense of near-Earth asteroids and situational awareness of space. It will provide key support for the study of habitability of the Earth, planet formation and other frontier scientific research.
The project has three stages of construction. The first stage was completed in December 2022 in Chongqing, consisting of four radars with a 16-meter aperture. It successfully captured the country's first ground-based three-dimensional radar image of lunar craters.
After the completion of the second phase, the third phase of the project will expand the number of radar units to over 100, the Global Times learned.
Unlike the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope nicknamed Tianyan, which is designed to collect passive observations of radio signals from space, Fuyan will be actively shooting radio signals to celestial bodies in order to obtain new observations, experts noted.
This will be very helpful for China's lunar exploration, as it is capable of monitoring Chinese spacecraft' journey to the moon, they said.
After 276 days in orbit, China's reusable experimental spacecraft landed at its planned site at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China's Gansu Province on Monday, and Chinese space watchers said it was a milestone in China's efforts to develop a fully reusable space transportation system.
The success is an important breakthrough in China's research on reusable spacecraft technologies, which will provide more convenient and affordable round trips for the peaceful use of space, the Xinhua News Agency said on Monday.
China launched a reusable experimental spacecraft using its Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on August 5, 2022, to test reusable technologies and in-orbit service technologies to support the peaceful use of space, Xinhua previously reported.
China tested the reusable experimental spacecraft in September 2020, and the spacecraft returned to the planned landing site after two days in orbit. The spacecraft was also launched with a Long March-2F carrier rocket.
Chinese authorities have disclosed few details about the craft's technology. So far, no images of the spacecraft or footage of its launch or landing have been disclosed.
Many space lovers compared it to the US Air Force's X-37B, an autonomous Boeing space plane that can remain in orbit for long periods before returning to Earth on its own, saying that the technology used in the experiment is "too advanced to show" on social media.
The reusable spacecraft's technology has evidently matured, considering how much longer it can stay in orbit, Chinese space watchers noted on Sunday.
Song Zhongping, a space expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Monday that the reusability of such spacecraft would drastically reduce costs. More importantly, the longer orbiting time means that the spacecraft can perform more complicated missions such as changing trajectory in near-Earth orbit and sending various payloads into orbit.
Judging from the rocket used in the launch, the Long March-2F carrier rocket - which is one of China's most advanced and reliable rockets for manned space flights - the reusable spacecraft may be used in future manned missions, said another space observer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Given the payload launching capability of the Long March-2F, the spacecraft could weigh around 8 tons, which is very similar to the launch mass for the X-37B at around 5 tons, so that speculation about their similarity is not groundless, the observer said.
The latest test of the reusable spacecraft was the longest, most complicated, and most challenging so far. The record of 276 days in orbit even beat the first mission of the US' X-37B in 2010, which remained in orbit for 224 days, Huang Zhicheng, a space industry expert, told the Global Times on Monday.
At the China Space Conference opening event to mark the April 24 Space of China this year in Hefei, East China's Anhui Province, Wang Wei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the research and development department of the state-owned aerospace giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, listed the 10 major scientific and technology problems for the 2023 space development.
Among them is the health monitoring of the power system for the reusable vehicle and an assessment of its service life.
Huang said that one of the many advantages of the reusable spacecraft is that it can land horizontally, which is more comfortable and safer for the crew. Once it's mature, such technology could be applied to suborbital or space tourism, and even super fast point-to-point transportation for people or cargo on Earth.
The US often hypes and smears China's technology breakthroughs as militarization because it sees all breakthroughs by non-Western countries as a threat. This is meant to maintain a technology monopoly, which is unfair to other countries and serves US hegemony, Chinese experts said.
The high-altitude pressurized liable building independently developed and built by China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co. Ltd, China's first "zero-altitude astronomical observation station," held a handover ceremony in the Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and was officially delivered for demonstration application, authorities confirmed recently.
"Zero-altitude building" refers to the use of pressurization and other technologies to adjust the indoor key human settlement environment indicators to the low altitude level in the plain area, so that the human body feels more comfortable. When used, the altitude inside the building can be set according to the needs of personnel and reduce the impact of altitude sickness.
The observatory is located near Muztagh Ata, the third highest peak of the West Kunlun Mountains in Akto county. It sits at an altitude of 4,526 meters, with a total construction area of approximately 150 square meters, capable of supporting scientific research, residential, and office functions.
The observation station is a scientific research pressurized building specially designed for plateau astronomical work in response to the needs of its cooperative organization, Beijing Normal University. It can increase the overall atmospheric pressure inside the building to one standard atmospheric pressure while solving the problems of low pressure and oxygen deficiency in the plateau.
The facility provides a comfortable and healthy environment for astronomers to work and live in high-altitude areas, lowering the risk of physiological damage caused by the plateau's extreme environment.
It is expected to support a new phase of rapid development in China's astronomical scientific research work, according to media reports.
China saw a fourfold surge of monkeypox cases in July compared to the previous month, but experts reached by the Global Times noted on Friday noted that China's home-developed vaccine will soon enter the clinical trial stage.
They also said that although in most cases people heal on their own, newborns, children, pregnant women and people with immunodeficiency may have a higher risk of developing severe or even fatal conditions.
Due to the mild symptoms caused by the monkeypox virus and the lack of large-scale global outbreaks, research into monkeypox vaccines has been relatively limited worldwide, the experts explained.
Meanwhile, as monkeypox and smallpox viruses have extensive serological cross-reactivity, the existing vaccines used for monkeypox prevention are all smallpox vaccines.
Retrospective studies conducted by the World Health Organization have shown that smallpox vaccine administration has an efficacy of 85 percent in preventing monkeypox. Currently, there are three smallpox vaccines approved for monkeypox prevention in Europe, the US, and Japan, Su Jinfeng, a senior biomedical engineer, told the Global Times.
Su called for accelerated development of new vaccines to protect those at greater risk and to prevent potential outbreaks. However, the expert admitted that the development of vaccines faces several challenges due to the limited number of monkeypox cases in the country and the dispersed population, which makes it difficult to conduct large-scale clinical trials to assess a vaccine's efficacy.
"Currently, the US, Japan and European countries have considered this type of vaccine as a reserve drug. China should also accelerate the development of a new smallpox/monkeypox vaccine, not only to prevent the spread of monkeypox outbreaks but also to protect national security and public health from threats of smallpox virus being used as a bioweapon," a vaccine expert who preferred not to be named told the Global Times.
Given the large genome and complex structure of the monkeypox virus, as well as limited understanding of protective antigens, the development of a protective antigen-based vaccine is challenging, the expert said. Therefore, a better strategy would be to use attenuated live vaccine technology, building upon the existing smallpox vaccine, to develop a safer vaccine in human cells.
As of April 2023, preclinical research on monkeypox vaccines has been conducted primarily by the US and China, said Su. Previous reports have indicated that a total of 14 clinical studies on monkeypox vaccines have been conducted globally.
Currently, three types of vaccine have been approved for the prevention of monkeypox, from Denmark, the US, and Japan.
Research institutions in China have already started developing monkeypox vaccines, mainly focusing on replication-defective monkeypox attenuated live vaccines and monkeypox mRNA vaccines.
In July, the replication-deficient monkeypox vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation (Sinopharm) has passed the clinical trial application with the National Medical Products Administration, making it the earliest domestically developed monkeypox vaccine to enter the clinical research stage in China.
The Chinese mainland has reported 491 new monkeypox cases across 23 provincial-level regions, the country's Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Wednesday, increasing over fourfold compared to last month.
According to epidemiological reviews, all cases are male with 96.3 percent of them identified as men who had sex with other men, and the risk of transmission through other contact methods is low.
The majority of cases exhibited typical clinical symptoms including fever, rash, and swollen lymph nodes, with no severe or fatal cases.
John Lee Ka-chiu, chief executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), listened to public concerns and suggestions from hundreds of people on Sunday during a district forum for the upcoming policy address in October, which is expected to include some new measures to attract talents and boost tourism.
The two-session forum, held in Aldrich Bay Government Primary School and lasting two hours, was attended by about 120 people from all walks of life. During the forum, community members voiced their opinions on topics including land and housing, transport, innovation and technology, finance, culture and sports, education, youth, poverty alleviation, healthcare and social welfare, according to the website of the HKSAR government.
In the second session, participants were divided into four groups with the goal of engaging in extensive discussions with principal officials on themes that include boosting the economy and people's livelihoods. Lee interacted with those participating in each group in turn.
Lee delivered his first policy address at the Legislative Council in October 2022, rolling out a series of measures in regard to attracting global talents, enhancing the city's competitiveness as an international financial hub, and further integrating into the country's overall development plan.
The CE said the public generally agreed to the governance policy in the 2022 Policy Address, and he hopes to listen to more public views and consolidate the objectives and implementation of different policies, so as to deepen and broaden policies as well as identify priorities.
The 2023 Policy Address is scheduled to be delivered on October 25, and the HKSAR government will conduct more than 30 consultation sessions to listen to views and suggestions of Legislative Council members, representatives of various sectors and members of the public.
Following the uncertainties in the global economy, Hong Kong society now expects the HKSAR government to formulate and implement policies to foster the local economy and business sustainability, some observers said.
Lau Siu-kai, a member of the Chief Executive Policy Unit Expert Group, told the Global Times on Sunday that the HKSAR government should implement the important policies proposed in last year's policy address and deliver tangible results as soon as possible, so as to boost public confidence in the government and Hong Kong. "There's no need to force new policies every year," he said.
"Many of the important policies proposed in last year's policy address have crossed the five-year term. The HKSAR government has been facing the financial pressure and grim external situation, so it should cherish and make good use of resources," Lau said.
"We have too much experience in tolerating the poor standard of civil services. Several departments have not done their roles properly. Patients have to queue up for a year just for a five-minute medical consultation in public hospitals. Somehow the public housing resources are wrongly allocated to those with their assets hidden outside the jurisdiction," Chu Kar-kin, a Hong Kong-based veteran current affairs commentator who has been following the forum, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Also, talents are attracted to the city, but jobs are not secure and careers are not promising. Taxpayers are paying for services or resources they cannot enjoy, Chu said.
"Property prices and rents have rocketed for a decade and is in an adjustment stage. The government should allocate more resources to invest in our future such as education and welfare for the elderly. The government should also foster the cultivation of the technology and creative sector," he said.
During the forum, Lee said that "it is necessary to look at the different needs of the public in their daily lives and understand the living conditions of various community sectors when formulating policies," so as to respond proactively to the people's aspirations, local media The Standard reported.
