Archive for ‘helping’

02/05/2020

Number of China-Europe freight trains hits monthly record

BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) — The number of China-Europe freight trains hit a record monthly high of 979 in April, up 46 percent year on year, the China State Railway Group said Saturday.

A total of 88,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of cargo were transported by the trains, up 50 percent from a year earlier.

From January to April, a total of 2,920 China-Europe freight trains transported cargo of 262,000 TEUs, up 24 percent and 27 percent from a year earlier, respectively.

The number of departing trains rose 36 percent year on year to 1,638 during the first four months, while the number of returning trains climbed 11 percent to 1,282.

China-Europe cargo train services have become an important logistics channel to ensure smooth trade as air, sea and road transportation have been severely affected by the novel coronavirus epidemic, the company said.

The freight trains have also been playing a crucial role in helping with the fight against the pandemic in Europe as massive quantities of medical supplies were sent by them.

From March 21 to the end of April, anti-epidemic supplies totaling 660,000 items and weighing 3,142 tonnes were sent by the freight trains to European countries such as Italy, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic.

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

21/04/2020

Xi Focus-Quotable Quotes: Xi Jinping on poverty alleviation

BEIJING, April 21 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to poverty alleviation. He has addressed the issue on many occasions. The following are some highlights of his quotes.

— It is an essential requirement of socialism to eradicate poverty, improve people’s living standards and achieve common prosperity among the people.

— No single poor area or individual shall be left behind.

— Genuinely poor people are to genuinely shake off poverty. Poverty must be truly eliminated.

— The measurement for moderate prosperity lies in rural areas.

— Cadres play a key role in helping people shake off poverty.

— Eradicating poverty is a common mission of human beings.

— It will be the first time in the millennia-old history of the Chinese nation that absolute poverty is comprehensively eliminated.

— Being lifted out of poverty is not an end in itself but the starting point of a new life and a new pursuit.

Source: Xinhua

01/11/2019

Vladimir Putin says Russia is helping China build a missile early warning system

  • Kremlin says project highlights the growing closeness between the two countries
  • Military observers argue cooperation between the two sides helps provide counterbalance to American military might
Vladimir Putin disclosed the project at a forum in Sochi. Photo: Sputnik/AFP
Vladimir Putin disclosed the project at a forum in Sochi. Photo: Sputnik/AFP

Russia is helping China to build an early warning system to counter missile attacks, Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

Speaking at an international affairs conference in the resort town of Sochi, he said Moscow was helping China increase its missile defence capability, Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik reported.

“This is a very serious endeavour that will fundamentally and radically increase the defence capability of the People’s Republic of China because only the United States and Russia have such a system at present,” the Russian leader said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to say when the system would be operational, but told reporters on a conference call that the move highlighted Russia’s close ties with China.

“Russia has special relations with China of advanced partnership … including the most sensitive [areas] linked to military-technical cooperation and security and defence capabilities,” Peskov said.

Macau-based military observer Antony Wong Dong said Putin’s remarks indicated that military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow may have evolved from the previous “model alliance” to a “real alliance” with the US as their common target.

“Such changes will likely further fuel the strategic arms race, which is already evident from the missile tests [that we have witnessed] and the recent military parade,” said Wong in a reference to the grand parade held in Beijing on Tuesday when China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes China’s defence minister Wei Fenghe (right) to a base in Orenburg at the start of a joint exercise. Photo: Handout
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes China’s defence minister Wei Fenghe (right) to a base in Orenburg at the start of a joint exercise. Photo: Handout

Hong Kong-based military analyst Song Zhongping said the system would help Beijing and Moscow set up a joint early ballistic missile network to counter “American global hegemony”.

“If the US wants to attack China [with its ICBMs], their missiles are likely to be launched from the Arctic, and that will be covered by Russia’s early warning system, and that means Moscow will have the capability to alert Beijing,” said Song who added that the Chinese military could provide reciprocal help to Russia.

Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming said Putin’s remarks served as a veiled warning to US President Donald Trump who has taken the unilateral step of withdrawing from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a cold war-era pact signed between the US and Russia in 1987.

“Joint cooperation will help both Russia and China to save costs because early warning ballistic missile systems are very expensive,” Zhou said,

However, he said Moscow was unlikely to share its most advanced technologies with China.

“For example, Russia’s missile defence system just covers Moscow and St Petersburg, so China’s network will properly just cover Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei province, the Yangtze River Delta area, the Greater Bay Area in South China, as well as a number of key cities in the centre.”

Putin also told the forum that the two countries would continue to work together on space exploration.

Last month, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation announced that Moscow and Beijing have developed a plan for cooperation between military departments for next year and 2021.

Last month 1,600 members of the Chinese military arrived at a Russian training base in the Orenburg oblast for a large-scale joint training exercise.

Source: SCMP

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