Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists in eastern Anhui province has notched up a series of research firsts
There are plans to build a separate facility that could start generating commercially viable fusion power by 2050, official says
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) device – or “artificial sun” – in Hefei, Anhui province. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of Sciences
A groundbreaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing’s determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully functioning plant by 2050.
Sometimes called an “artificial sun” for the sheer heat and power it produces, the doughnut-shaped Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) that juts out on a spit of land into a lake in eastern Anhui province, has notched up a succession of research firsts.
In 2017 it became the world’s first such facility to sustain certain conditions necessary for nuclear fusion for
of 100 million degrees Celsius (212 million Fahrenheit) – six times as hot as the sun’s core.
Such mind-boggling temperatures are crucial to achieving fusion reactions, which promise an inexhaustible energy source.
EAST’s main reactor stands within a concrete structure, with pipes and cables spread outward like spokes connecting to a jumble of censors and other equipment encircling the core. A red Chinese flag stands on top of the reactor.
A vacuum vessel inside the fusion reactor, which has achieved a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius – six times as hot as the sun’s core. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of Sciences
“We are hoping to expand international cooperation through this device [EAST] and make Chinese contributions to mankind’s future use of nuclear fusion,” said Song Yuntao, a top official involved in the project, on a recent tour of the facility.
China is also aiming to build a separate fusion reactor that could begin generating commercially viable fusion power by mid-century, he added.
Some 6 billion yuan (US$891.5 million) has been promised for the ambitious project.
EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion power.
Funded and run by the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the multibillion-dollar project’s centrepiece will be a giant cylindrical fusion device, called a tokamak.
Now under construction in Provence in southern France, it will incorporate parts developed at the EAST and other sites, and draw on their research findings.
China is “hoping to expand international cooperation” through EAST. Photo: Reuters
Fusion is considered the Holy Grail of energy and is what powers our sun.
It merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy – the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments.
Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material.
But achieving fusion is both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive – the total cost of ITER is estimated at €20 billion (US$22.3 billion).
Wu Songtao, a top Chinese engineer with ITER, conceded that China’s technical capabilities on fusion still lag behind more developed countries, and that US and
Japanese tokamaks have achieved more valuable overall results.
But the Anhui test reactor underlines China’s fast-improving scientific advancement and its commitment to achieve yet more.
China’s capabilities “have developed rapidly in the past 20 years, especially after catching the ITER express train”, Wu said.
In an interview with state-run Xinhua news agency in 2017, ITER’s director general Bernard Bigot lauded China’s government as “highly motivated” on fusion.
“Fusion is not something that one country can accomplish alone,” Song said.
“As with ITER, people all over the world need to work together on this.”
Image copyrightNETFLIXImage caption The Wandering Earth debuts on Netflix on 30 April
The Wandering Earth has been billed as a breakthrough for Chinese sci-fi.
The film tells the story of our planet, doomed by the expanding Sun, being moved across space to a safer place. The Chinese heroes have to save the mission – and humanity – when Earth gets caught in Jupiter’s gravitational pull.
Based on Hugo Award winner Liu Cixin’s short story of the same name, Wandering Earth has already grossed $600m (£464m) at the Chinese box office and was called China’s “giant leap into science fiction” by the Financial Times. It’s been bought by Netflix and will debut there on 30 April.
But while this may be the first time many in the West have heard of “kehuan” – Chinese science fiction – Chinese cinema has a long sci-fi history, which has given support to scientific endeavour, offered escapism from harsh times and inspired generations of film-goers.
So for Western audiences eager to plot the rise of the Chinese sci-fi movie, here are five films I think are worth renewed attention.
Dislocation
Huang Jianxin, 1986
For most in the Western world, their first encounter with Chinese cinema came from directors like Wu Tianming (The Old Well, The King of Masks) and Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern).
Image copyrightNANHAI FILMSImage caption Dislocation explores themes of work and artificial intelligence in a surreal dreamscape
They were largely preoccupied with themes like the loss of youth, tradition versus change, and creating the rural aesthetic most people associated with Chinese film.
But China in the 1980s was a scene of rapid modernisation, urbanisation and Westernisation, and films started responding to the impact of this massive change.
In Dislocation, a scientist creates an android version of himself to attend the endless meetings that rob him of his time, in a black comedy of mechanisation and bureaucracy.
Huang’s take on the debate on artificial intelligence is superbly delivered against a surreal Kafka-esque dreamscape, with stark lighting and suspenseful music, making this film a delight to watch.
Hopefully the new interest in kehuan will see it gain an official release in the West.
Warrior Revived
Li Guomin, 1995
A grown-up style of kehuan emerged in the 1990s, reflecting the themes of identity versus technological advancement which were also occupying Western sci-fi at the time.
Image copyrightSHANGHAI FILM STUDIOSImage caption The low budget appearance of Warrior Revived never gets in the way of its creative energy
In Warrior Revived, police officer Song Da Wei dies a gruesome death on duty and ends up in a decade-long coma. He’s brought back to life by a “miracle cure” from a biologist who has found a way to repair defective DNA.
The genetically enhanced Song finds himself uncomfortable with the cyberised world around him, and excluded by his old comrades. Meanwhile, the heavily maimed villain he gave his life to destroy is plotting to steal the gene formula and wreak his revenge.
Like a lot of great cyberpunk movies before the age of CGI, this early mainland kehuan impresses with its high kitsch, low-budget, imaginative approach.
The villain’s lair is filled with neon tubes, hand-crafted lab controls and walls covered with plastic bowls in the best traditions of the Tardis.
What it lacks in sleekness it more than makes up with innovative costume designs and soundtrack, diligent camera work and the sheer energy from the cast.
Wonder Boy
Song Chong, 1988
The 1980s brought a slew of Hollywood sci-fi films made for children, but which appealed equally to adults – like Explorers, Flight of The Navigator, and D.A.R.Y.L. – and filmmakers in China were taking a similar route.
Image copyrightCHILDREN’S FILM STUDIOImage caption Wonder Boy remains popular and is still occasionally played out on national TV
Produced by the Children’s Film Studios and hailed as the nation’s first children’s fantasy film, Wonder Boy tells the story of a child born with the ability to generate electricity.
Bei Bei is bullied by neighbours and kept in isolation by parents who want to protect him, but is still a caring and mischievous little boy, who uses his powers to help others and have fun in equal measure.
When Bei Bei is taken away to be experimented on – by a non-governmental, possibly foreign group – a handful of the close friends he has made come to his rescue.
Well-loved for its humour and accessibility, Wonder Boy is remembered in China as a great classic, and still enjoyed by children today when it is repeated on both national television and streaming services.
Reset
Hong-Seung Yoon, 2017
Produced by Jackie Chan and winner of the 2017 Grand Remi for Best Feature and Best Actress, Reset is a time travel thriller, which addresses a Chinese preoccupation with personal roles in a culture that so totally promotes the good of society.
Xia Tian (Yang Mi) is a senior researcher of wormhole technology and a single mother. When her young son is kidnapped, she is forced to hand over her research, but when the villain murders her child anyway she is forced to test her own discoveries into time travel in order to save his life, and maybe undo her own betrayal of the programme.
Image copyrightBEIJING YAOYING MOVIE DISTRIBUTION CO LTDImage caption Reset explores the identity struggle facing many modern Chinese womenThe film is an exploration of the plight of a New Chinese Woman, who walks the line between the roles of highly skilled professional and loving mother. The psychological exploration is fantastic. With several versions of Xia being generated by her repeated time travel, the face-off between our heroine and these alternate selves, including a darker, damaged one, creates an amazing tension which is missing from so many Western takes on this classic trope.
A female-led space kehuan story that also deals with single parenthood couldn’t be more relevant in a society that is simultaneously beginning a golden space age, and struggling with attitudes to women’s emancipation.
Super Mechs
Cui Junjie, 2018
Wuxia, or kung fu fantasy, is so intrinsic to Chinese pop culture it was almost inevitable that its tropes would be incorporated into Chinese sci-fi.
Image copyrightSEVEN ENTERTAINMENT PICTURES
Produced exclusively for IQiyi, China’s version of Netflix, Super Mechs is set in 2066 in a world where humanity has begun to experience genetic mutations which leave some people with X-Men style super powers.
Global criminal organisations are threatening the order of society and private entities are stepping up to uphold it by developing highly advanced mechanised power suits.
Hero Xiao Qi is an ordinary office clerk enlisted by the Dragon Clan, who reveal to him his latent mutant ice powers, before arming him with a robotic power suit and sending him on a mission. Little does Xiao Qi know that he will be greeted by another mech-suited warrior with fire-based powers who will fight him to a standstill.
The “warriors with opposite powers” trope is a staple of the wuxia genre, but the film falls deeper down the rabbit hole when this deadly opponent is revealed to be Xiao Qi’s long-lost brother.
Add in ancient warring clans, fast-paced action between the sleek computer-generated mechanical fighters and a cheeky sense of humour from our protagonist, and the high budget Huayi Brothers production appeals to fans of superhero, kung fu and toku/tecuo films alike.
The works of stalwart wuxia authors like Jin Yong are steadily being translated into English, so we will certainly see more from this sub-genre reach our screens.
Acknowledging the rich and varied Chinese science fiction tradition does not at all detract from the pride in the success of Wandering Earth.
With China’s growing middle class and increased youth spending power, Chinese filmmakers are increasingly catering for a booming domestic demand for entertainment, and no longer worry as much about making their films palatable for export.
But with more East-West co-productions in the pipeline, like the animated Next Gen which originated from a Chinese web comic, it is certainly a sensible decision for companies like Netflix to bring films from platforms like IQiyi, to an English speaking audience, and that is going to include kehuan.
Western audiences may not immediately “get” some of these films, or may feel that some elements do not flow to their expectations.
But Wandering Earth and the titles above are the product of China’s culture and worldview. And to some extent, it’s what makes them different that will pique interest, fascinate and entertain.
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – China will help Cambodia if the European Union (EU) withdraws special market access over its rights record, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday as he announced a 600 million yuan ($89 million) Chinese aid package for his military.
Hun Sen, who is on a five-day trip to China to attend a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum in Beijing, held bilateral talks with President Xi Jinping and signed several agreements with Cambodia’s most important ally.
Cambodia benefits from the EU’s “Everything But Arms” trade scheme which allows the world’s least developed countries to export most goods to the EU free of duties.
But Cambodia risks losing the special access to the world’s largest trading bloc over its human rights records.
During a meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, Li pledged to help Cambodia if the EU withdraws the market access, according to a post on Hun Sen’s official Facebook page.
“In this regard … Prime Minister Li Keqiang also confirmed his efforts to help Cambodia,” the post said.
China is Cambodia’s biggest aid donor and investor, pouring in billions of dollars in development aid and loans through the Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster land and sea links with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
Unlike Western countries, China does not question Cambodia’s record on rights.
The EU, which accounts for more than one-third of Cambodia’s exports, including garments, footwear and bicycles, in February began an 18-month process that could lead to the suspension of the special market access.
Among the agreements Hun Sen struck in China was one for Huawei Technologies to help Cambodia develop a system for 5G technology. The Chinese tech giant has ambitions to build the next generation of data networks across the world and boasts 40 commercial 5G contracts worldwide.
China also agreed to import 400,000 tonnes of Cambodian rice, according to Hun Sen’s Facebook page.
“China will continue to support the national defence sector in Cambodia, and in this regard, the Chinese president announced that China will provide 600 million yuan to Cambodia’s defence sector,” the post said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, April 27, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)
BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday met with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who attended the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
China highly commends Italy’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with China on jointly building the Belt and Road, taking the lead among major Western countries, according to Xi.
The country is ready to work with Italy in advancing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and make the bilateral relations a model of Belt and Road cooperation between China and European countries, Xi said.
Xi called on both sides to firmly grasp the strategic significance of the bilateral ties, step up coordination and collaboration in improving global governance system and safeguarding free trade and multilateralism, and forge a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation.
Conte said the speeches delivered by Xi at the forum helped the international community understand the significant benefits of the BRI for the world.
Italy is firmly committed to participating in the BRI, he said, adding that the initiative is a good opportunity for the world and more countries will join.
Italy welcomes Chinese companies to invest in the country, and will not adopt discriminatory policies against them, Conte said, calling on the two countries to reinforce solidarity and cooperation, and safeguard multilateralism.
Police investigation finds nearly 40 people received the shots since January last year – before the drug was approved by the Chinese regulator
Hainan hospital had rented out its medical cosmetics department to a beauty parlour, which authorities suspect administered the vaccinations
The Gardasil HPV vaccine has been in short supply in China since it was approved by the regulator last year. Photo: Shutterstock
A private hospital on Hainan Island has been closed down after it gave fake HPV vaccines to dozens of patients, including at least one who was pregnant, the local health authority said.
Police found 38 people had been given the fake shots at Boao Yinfeng Healthcare International Hospital, in the city of Boao, since January last year, the Health Commission of Hainan said in a statement on Sunday.
Some of the vaccines were found to have been smuggled in from overseas before the drug was approved in China, while others were illegally made in Jilin province.
The case is the latest in a series of scandals in recent years – including drug makers
and people including children being given fake, faulty or expired vaccines – that have rocked public confidence in the industry.
The hospital began administering the fake HPV shots three months before Merck’s Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, was approved by the Chinese regulator in April last year. There has been a constant shortage of the vaccine since it was approved and a ballot system is used at some hospitals due to the huge demand and limited supply.
All of the Boao patients given fake shots had paid 9,000 yuan (US$1,300) to be immunised except for a hospital employee, who was vaccinated for free, the statement said.
The health commission said the hospital did not have approval to administer HPV vaccines and some of the shots were given before it officially opened in March last year.
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It was also in breach of the hospital management regulation because it had rented out its medical cosmetics department to a beauty parlour from Qingdao, which authorities suspect administered the fake vaccinations.
Its medical institution business licence was revoked and the hospital was fined 8,000 yuan, while authorities have confiscated the illegal proceeds of the fake vaccinations. It was not known whether any arrests had been made in the case, and the investigation was continuing.
The scandal came to light in March when a man posted on the People’s Daily website his complaint to the health authority about his pregnant wife being told by police she was given a fake HPV shot.
Another patient, who identified herself as Wang Xi, wrote on microblog site Weibo last week that she was told the hospital could receive the vaccine before it was officially approved because it was located in a medical tourism pilot zone, giving it preferential access to treatments.
“As a victim, I’m constantly worried – what have they injected into my body?” Wang wrote.
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Thousands of people marched on Hong Kong’s parliament on Sunday to demand the scrapping of proposed extradition rules that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial – a move which some fear puts the city’s core freedoms at risk.
Opponents of the proposal fear further erosion of rights and legal protections in the free-wheeling financial hub – freedoms which were guaranteed under the city’s handover from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Early estimates suggested several thousand people had joined the march along Hong Kong Island from Causeway Bay to the council in the Admiralty business district.
Veteran Hong Kong activist and former legislator Leung Kwok-hung said the government’s move risked removing Hong Kongers’ “freedom from fear”.
“Hong Kong people and visitors passing by Hong Kong will lose their right not to be extradited into mainland China,” he said. “They would need to face an unjust legal system on the mainland.”
Some younger marchers said they were worried about travelling to China after the move, which comes just as the government encourages young people to deepen ties with the mainland and promotes Hong Kong’s links with southern China.
The peaceful marchers chanted demands for Hong Kong’s Executive Carrie Lam to step down, saying she had “betrayed” Hong Kong. Some sported yellow umbrellas – the symbol of the Occupy civil disobedience movement that paralysed parts of Hong Kong for 11 weeks in 2014.
The proposed changes have sparked an unusually broad chorus of concern from international business elites to lawyers and rights’ groups and even some pro-establishment figures.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong who handed the city back to Chinese rule in 1997, on Saturday described the move “as an assault on Hong Kong’s values, stability and security”, government-funded broadcaster RTHK reported.
Chief Executive Lam and other government officials are standing fast by their proposals, saying they are vital to plug long-standing loopholes.
Under the changes, the Hong Kong leader would have the right to order the extradition of wanted offenders to China, Macau and Taiwan as well as other countries not covered by Hong Kong’s existing extradition treaties.
As a safeguard such orders, to be issued case-by-case, could be challenged and appealed through the city’s vaunted legal system.
Government officials have said no-one at risk of the death penalty or torture or facing a political charge could be sent from Hong Kong. Under pressure from local business groups, they earlier exempted nine commercial crimes from the new provisions.
The proposals could be passed into law later in the year, with the city’s pro-democratic camp no longer holding enough seats to block the move.
The government has justified the swift introduction of the changes by saying they are needed so a young Hong Kong man suspected of murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan can be extradited to face charges there.
The government’s assurances are not enough for Lam Wing-kee, a former Hong Kong political bookseller who said in 2016 he was abducted by mainland agents in the city.
Lam left Hong Kong for Taiwan last week, saying he feared being sent back to the mainland under the new laws and his experienced showed he could have no trust in China’s legal system.
A group of 33 followers of Falun Gong, a religious sect banned in China, flew from Taiwan to Hong Kong on Saturday to join the march but were refused entry to Hong Kong, RTHK reported.
Sunday’s march comes amid renewed calls for deeper electoral reforms stalled five years ago after Occupy protests.
Four leaders of the movement were last week sentenced to jail terms ranging from eight to 16 months, part of a group of nine activists found guilty after a near month-long trial.
BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) — The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is growing up and gaining global traction, said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), here on Friday.
In an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), he said that when he attended the first BRF in 2017, the BRI “was still a child growing up and you don’t know what the end of it will be.”
“Now the BRI has become an adult, which means that it has become an important factor in the global economy. It has grown up,” he told Xinhua.
Illustrating his understanding of the BRI in a speech at the ongoing second BRF, the professor said that through the BRI and institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China can demonstrate to the world that “the philosophy and concept of the Belt and Road is more than an important initiative.”
The WEF founder, an advocate of “Globalization 4.0,” said that if people want globalization to continue as a positive force, a higher level of globalization is needed to respond to the needs and realities of a transforming world.
The BRI, he added, can be “a building block and a role model of” an advanced pattern of global cooperation that should be more sustainable, more inclusive and more collaborative.
Over the years, Schwab has articulated on many occasions his views of the BRI. At the 2015 Summer Davos Forum in northeast China’s port city of Dalian, he said he was happy to see that China proposed the BRI.
There was a huge infrastructure demand in Asia and Europe, and it was a good thing for China to play a leading role in building infrastructure in the region, he noted.
Partly thanks to the fact that it met the development needs of many countries, the BRI continued with rapid progress, promoting common development in participating countries and bringing Asia and Europe ever closer.
On May 13, 2017, the 1,000th China-Europe freight train that year departed from China’s eastern city of Yiwu to Europe, fully loaded with commodities like smallware and clothes.
The next day, Schwab reaffirmed his full support for the BRI in an address at the first BRF. Not hiding his enthusiasm about the BRI, he said the initiative “takes a long-term and holistic view, and makes a unique contribution to international cooperation and economic development.”
He pointed out that connectivity, a primary focus of the BRI, “is the new meta-pattern of our era and a key driver of our future economy.”
Citing a Chinese saying that “if you want to get rich, build a road,” he said, “I would update this to say: ‘If you seek prosperity, build connectivity.'”
One month later, in an interview with Xinhua ahead of the 2017 Summer Davos Forum, also held in Dalian, Schwab pointed to the BRI’s paradigm-shifting significance.
“The Belt and Road Initiative has great significance because it is a new approach to reach a new and open cooperation … and everybody can participate in a win-win situation as an equal partner,” he said.
Since Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the initiative six years ago, 126 countries and 29 international organizations have signed BRI cooperation documents with China. The initiative has become the world’s largest platform for international cooperation and the most welcomed global public good.
The BRI “is now growing up into a mature initiative that can have even more impact,” Schwab told Xinhua.
Li Zhanshu (R), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, meets with General Secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party Central Committee and Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit, who is attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, in Beijing, capital of China, April 26, 2019. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)
BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) — Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), on Friday met with Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit, who is attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that China is willing to strengthen high-level contacts between the two countries and push forward the bilateral relations.
Li said that the NPC is willing to enhance exchanges and cooperation with the Lao National Assembly.
Bounnhang, also general secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party Central Committee, said Laos is ready to work closely with China to make new progress in building a community with a shared future for the two countries.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who is here attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, in Beijing, capital of China, April 26, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)
BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, who is here attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.
Li said China is willing to enhance high-level contacts with Vietnam, deepen pragmatic cooperation, and better align the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Vietnam’s “Two Corridors and One Economic Circle” plan.
China is willing to expand bilateral trade and achieve balanced and sustainable development in trade with Vietnam, and welcomes the entry of quality Vietnamese products into the Chinese market, Li said.
China supports Vietnam in assuming its role as the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2020, and is willing to work with Vietnam and other parties to steadily advance the consultations on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, the premier said.
Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Vietnam actively supports the BRI and is willing to build greater synergy of the two countries’ development strategies.
Vietnam is willing to work with China in implementing the high-level consensus and safeguarding the long-term stability in the South China Sea, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, in Beijing, capital of China, April 26, 2019. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)
BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday met with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is attending the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
China firmly upholds multilateralism, the international system with the UN at its core, and the international order based on international law, and promotes the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, Xi said.
The more complex and grim the situation is, the more important it is to manifest the authority and role of the UN, Xi said, adding that China will continue to support the UN.
Noting that the Chinese people not only pursue a good life for themselves, but also work for common interest and harmony of the world, Xi said the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embodies the idea of mutual benefit, and is in line with the UN’s sustainable development concept.
Describing the UN as an important partner in promoting the BRI, Xi said that China is ready to work with the UN to advance the initiative in an all-round way while following the principle of delivering shared benefits through extensive consultation and joint contribution.
Guterres said President Xi’s speech delivered at the forum on Friday morning is very important, as it elaborates the interrelationship between the BRI and global development agenda.
He spoke highly of China’s major measures for further reform and opening up.
China firmly upholds multilateralism, and safeguards equity and justice, as well as the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, the UN chief said, adding that China has played an important role in stabilizing, and brought certainty, confidence and hope to the world.
Calling on countries around the world to seize the opportunities brought about by the BRI cooperation and achieve win-win outcomes, Guterres said history will prove that China’s development is not only an irresistible historical trend, but also a major contribution to human progress.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) device – or “artificial sun” – in Hefei, Anhui province. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of SciencesA groundbreaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing’s determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully functioning plant by 2050.Sometimes called an “artificial sun” for the sheer heat and power it produces, the doughnut-shaped Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) that juts out on a spit of land into a lake in eastern Anhui province, has notched up a succession of research firsts.In 2017 it became the world’s first such facility to sustain certain conditions necessary for nuclear fusion for
A vacuum vessel inside the fusion reactor, which has achieved a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius – six times as hot as the sun’s core. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of Sciences
China is “hoping to expand international cooperation” through EAST. Photo: Reuters
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 