Archive for ‘dedicated’

28/05/2020

China’s Civil Code adopted at national legislature

BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) — Chinese lawmakers Thursday voted to adopt the country’s long-expected Civil Code at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress, the top legislature.

The Civil Code will take effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

In addition to general provisions and supplementary provisions, the Civil Code, the world’s latest modern-day civil law, has six parts on real rights, contracts, personality rights, marriage and family, succession, and tort liabilities.

The personal rights, property rights and other lawful rights and interests of the parties to civil legal relations shall be protected by law and shall not be infringed upon by any organization or individual, reads the Civil Code in its opening chapter.

Lawmakers say the codification is not about formulating a new civil law but rather systematically incorporating existing civil laws and regulations, modifying and improving them to adapt to new situations while maintaining their consistency.

A major innovation of China’s Civil Code, jurists say, is embodied in the personality rights part. While some countries have related law provisions, few have a specific law book in civil code dedicated to protecting personality rights.

The personality rights part covers stipulations on a civil subject’s rights to his or her life, body, health, name, portrait, reputation and privacy, among others.

The personality rights part shows that China has reached a new height in protecting the dignity of people, said Chen Jingying, a national lawmaker and vice president of East China University of Political Science and Law.

The Civil Code is a milestone in developing the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, and will greatly boost the modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance, said Wang Yi, dean of the law school at Renmin University of China.

Source: Xinhua

02/05/2020

Xi Focus: Xi endorses workers driving China’s new growth

People work at a construction site of a utility tunnel in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, April 30, 2020. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) — China is getting the world’s largest workforce back to work as the nationwide battle against COVID-19 has secured major strategic achievements.

The unprecedented fight has nurtured new trends in the workplace. For example, more attention is being paid to public health and e-commerce to boost consumption and emerging sectors brought by new applications based on the country’s rapid new infrastructure development of 5G networks and data centers.

In this aerial photo taken on April 29, 2020, representatives of frontline health workers fighting COVID-19 attend a bell-ringing ceremony at the Yellow Crane Tower, or Huanghelou, a landmark in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)

ANGELS OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Ye Man, head nurse of gastrointestinal department of Hubei General Hospital East District, one of the five remaining COVID-19 designated hospitals in Wuhan, is taking her first weeklong vacation since January.

The 34-year-old mother of two started to take a week off on Monday, one day after her hospital cleared all remaining confirmed COVID-19 patients. The  nine ICU wards in her hospital had been kept occupied over the past several months.

Friday marked International Workers’ Day, and the start of China’s five-day public holiday. Ye said she planned to visit urban parks with her family during the holiday.

At her busiest point, she and her colleagues took care of a ward filled with 40 COVID-19 patients.

“It was a really tough time,” she recalled. She had to wear a protective gown and a mask for nine hours a day and be separated from her family to avoid possible cross-infections.

Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province and once hard hit by COVID-19, cleared all confirmed cases in hospitals on April 26. Over 42,000 medical workers mobilized nationwide to aid Hubei have contributed to achieving a decisive outcome in the fight to defend Hubei and Wuhan.

In an inspection tour to Wuhan on March 10, President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, lauded medical workers as “the most beautiful angels” and “messengers of light and hope.”

To reward brave and dedicated medics, major tourist sites in Hubei are offering free entry to medical staff over the following two years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, learns about development of the black fungus industry in Jinmi Village of Xiaoling Township in Zhashui County, Shangluo City, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, April 20, 2020. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

LIVESTREAMING ANCHORS

“We have a new batch of supplies today. Those who did not get the goods should hurry to buy now,” said Li Xuying, a livestreaming anchorwoman selling agaric mushrooms in Zhashui, a small county deep in the Qinling Mountains in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

Li has been prepared for a boom of online shopping in the holiday, because online buyers rushed to her livestreaming website to place orders, after Xi inspected the county and chatted with her in the village of Jinmi during a recent tour to Shaanxi.

“I used to sell goods worth about 50,000 yuan (7,070 U.S. dollars) on average after a six-hour livestreaming session. Now the sales are 10 times that,” she said.

Li was one of the 10 sales staff sent by the local agricultural e-commerce firm to Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao’s headquarters for livestreaming training. She said livestreaming is effective in bridging buyers and farmers, through which viewers can watch planting and harvesting online.

With the number of netizens in China reaching 904 million in March, e-commerce has been one of the popular means of promoting the sale of farm produce and helping farmers shake off poverty. Despite the impact of COVID-19, the country is determined to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of this year.

Workers work at the construction site of a 5G base station at Chongqing Hi-tech Zone in Chongqing, southwest China, April 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Quanchao)

HI-TECH WORKERS IN “NEW INFRASTRUCTURE” BUILDING

As an elasticity calculation engineer of Alibaba Cloud, Zhao Kun and his colleagues always stay on alert for high data flow, for example, brought by the anticipated online shopping spike during the holiday.

“The profession, which may sound obscure, is actually closely connected to everyone’s life, as cloud computing is the infrastructure supporting high-tech applications of artificial intelligence and blockchain,” said Zhao.

The Chinese leadership has underscored expediting “new infrastructure” development to boost industrial and consumption upgrading and catalyze new growth drivers.

Seizing the opportunities of industrial digitization and digital industrialization, China needs to expedite the construction of “new infrastructure” projects such as 5G networks and data centers, and deploy strategic emerging sectors and industries of the future including the digital economy, life health services and new materials, President Xi has said.

During the epidemic, Zhao and his colleagues expanded more than 100,000 cloud servers to ensure the stable operation of “cloud classrooms” and “cloud offices” for millions of people working and studying from home.

In the “new infrastructure” building, people like Zhao contribute to constructing the virtual infrastructure of an ecosystem, which enables e-commerce, e-payment, online teaching and the digital transformation of manufacturing and supply chain management.

In early April, China released a plan on promoting the transformation of enterprises toward digitalization and intelligence by further expanding the application of cloud and data technologies, to nurture new business models of the digital economy.

Source: Xinhua

29/04/2020

Spotlight: China leads global green development with concrete actions

BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) — China has achieved much progress in environmental protection and taken the lead in green development in recent years.

The efforts have exemplified Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal of “working together for a green and better future for all” made a year ago in his speech at the opening ceremony of the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019 Beijing.

In the keynote speech, Xi proposed a five-point initiative on promoting green development, namely pursuing harmony between man and nature, pursuing the prosperity based on green development, fostering a passion for nature-caring lifestyle, pursuing a scientific spirit in ecological governance, and joining hands to tackle environmental challenges.

China’s hard work on environment protection has paid off.

The ecological environment has improved significantly. People are enjoying more days of blue sky, cleaner water, and fertile land.

China has achieved the goal of zero growth of desertified land by 2030 set by the United Nations ahead of time. Besides, forest stock volume increased by 4.56 billion cubic meters compared with that of 2005.

Carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2018 fell by 45.8 percent compared with that of 2005, exceeding the target set for the year.

After more than 30 years of hard work, the seventh largest desert in China, the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, once known as the “sea of death” difficult for birds to fly across, has turned into a green valley.

In January 2020, in a letter in reply to the student representatives of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, the Chinese president mentioned his thoughts about ecological civilization in his youth.

“Over four decades ago, I lived and worked for many years in a small village on the Loess Plateau in western China. Back then, the ecology and environment there was seriously damaged due to over-development and the local people were trapped in poverty as a result,” Xi wrote.

“This experience taught me that man and nature are a community of life and that the damage done to nature will ultimately hurt mankind,” said Xi.

China’s progress and achievements are recognized worldwide.

The ecological civilization and green development advocated by China are actually an endeavor to find a way to balance economic development and environmental protection, said John Cobb, Jr., the founding president of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Noting that the endeavor is a remarkable exploration, he expressed his hope that it will succeed.

China is on the right path in dealing with global climate change and achieving sustainable development, said Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum.

In addition to making efforts at home, China has also rolled out a series of measures to support the global combat against climate change.

In September 2015, ahead of the Paris climate change conference, Xi pledged a 20-billion-yuan (3-billion-U.S. dollars) China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund, which was dedicated to help other developing countries combat climate change.

China has also been fulfilling the obligations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, and achieved the goal of its intended nationally determined contributions submitted to the secretariat of the Climate Change Convention as scheduled.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his appreciation for China’s important contributions to addressing the climate change and building a green “Belt and Road,” and said he expects China to continue to play a leading role in addressing the climate change and other issues.

“Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” a concept put forward by Xi in 2005 when he visited Yucun Village in southeast China’s Zhejiang Province as the party chief of the province, has become the motto of the Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

In March 2020, when Xi returned to Yucun, he said that economic development should not be achieved at the expense of the ecological environment. To protect the ecological environment is to develop the productive forces, he said.

The history of civilizations shows that the rise or fall of a civilization is closely tied to its relationship with nature, Xi said at the International Horticultural Exhibition last year.

Only by joining hands can the humankind advance a global ecological civilization and march towards the bright future of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Source: Xinhua

16/10/2019

China’s former ambassador to India joins team dedicated to fight against climate change

  • Luo Zhaohui, who was credited with helping to resolve 2017 Doklam stand-off peacefully, joins group set up to tackle global warming
Luo Zhaohui previously served as China’s ambassador to India. Photo: Handout
Luo Zhaohui previously served as China’s ambassador to India. Photo: Handout

China’s former ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui has joined a national team in charge of fighting climate change, the Chinese government website has announced.

The team, led by Premier Li Keqiang, will be responsible for coming up with proposals to tackle the problem, develop proposals for energy conservation and analyse the impact of climate change on socio-economic development.

China is currently the world’s largest polluter, accounting for a quarter of the world’s total emissions, making it crucial in the effort to curb global warming.

The US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017 also makes China the largest single economy committed to the efforts to limit emissions.

As well as taking up the position on the National Leading Group Dealing with Climate Change, Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction, Luo was also promoted to the position of deputy foreign minister in late May.

In this post, Luo is in charge of Beijing’s relations with its Asian neighbours, replacing Kong Xuanyou, who was named China’s new ambassador to Japan.

Luo was credited by diplomatic observers as having helped bring relations with India back on track after the 2017 Doklam stand-off, one of the worst border disputes in decades between the two sides.

In July 2017, Luo told media in New Delhi that the Chinese people were deeply angry over the “occupation” by Indian troops of its sovereign territory but helped to resolve the situation through diplomatic means, paving the way for an informal summit between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Wuhan last year.

Luo, 57, has also served in diplomatic missions in Singapore and the US and was head of the foreign ministry’s department for Asian affairs.

He previously served as ambassador to Pakistan and Canada before being posted to the embassy in New Delhi in India in 2016.

Source: SCMP

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