Archive for ‘promoting’

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

14/12/2019

Clashes erupt in Delhi over citizenship law; Japan PM cancels visit

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Violent clashes erupted in Delhi between police and hundreds of university students on Friday over the enactment of a new citizenship law that critics say undermines India’s secular foundations.

The unrest has already led Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to cancel a planned visit to India from Sunday.

The new law offers a way to Indian citizenship for six minority religious groups from neighbouring Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan including Hindus and Christians, but not Muslims.

Police fired tear gas and used baton charges to disperse scores of students demonstrating at Jamia Millia Islamia university in the heart of Delhi over the law.

Protesters attacked cars in the capital, and several people were injured and taken to hospital.

Zakir Riyaz, a PhD student in social work, said the new law made a mockery of India’s religious openness.

“It goes against the whole idea of a secular India,” he said, speaking by phone from the Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi where 15 of his fellow students were admitted after being injured in a police baton charge.

Police barricades were knocked down and streets were strewn with shoes and broken bricks. An official at the university dispensary said that more than 100 students had been brought in with injuries but all had been discharged.

Parvez Hashmi, a local politician who went to the protest site to speak to police, said about 50 students had been detained.

Students said it was meant to be a peaceful protest, with them trying to go from Jamia University to Parliament Street to show their opposition to the legislation. But police pushed them back, leading to clashes.

Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government say it is promoting a Hindu-first agenda for India and that the citizenship law excluding Muslims showed a deep-seated bias against India’s 170 million Muslims.

Imran Chowdhury, a researcher, said “either give citizenship to refugees of all religions or none at all. The constitution is being tampered with in the name of religion.”

Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party denies any religious bias but says it is opposed to the appeasement of one community. It says the new law is meant to help minority groups facing persecution in the three nearby Muslim countries.

ABE CANCELS

The United Nations human rights office voiced concern that the new law is “fundamentally discriminatory in nature”, and called for it to be reviewed.

Two people were killed in India’s Assam state on Thursday when police opened fire on mobs torching buildings and attacking railway stations in protest at the new citizenship rules signed into law on Thursday.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cancelled a trip to Assam for a summit with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that had been due to begin on Sunday.

Japan has stepped up infrastructure development work in Assam in recent years, which the two sides were expected to highlight during the summit. Abe had also planned to visit a memorial in the nearby state of Manipur where Japanese soldiers were killed in World War Two.

“With reference to the proposed visit of Japanese PM Abe Shinzo to India, both sides have decided to defer the visit to a mutually convenient date in the near future,” Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said both countries would decide on the appropriate timing for the visit although nothing has been decided yet.

A movement against immigrants from Bangladesh has raged in Assam for decades. Protesters there say granting Indian nationality to more people will further strain the state’s resources and lead to the marginalisation of indigenous communities.

Source: Reuters

25/10/2019

Xi stresses role of traditional Chinese medicine for “Healthy China”

BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping has underlined the important role of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in building “Healthy China.”

The country should carry on fine elements in TCM and innovate them, Xi said in a recent instruction, stressing that traditional medicine is a treasure of Chinese civilization embodying the wisdom of the nation and its people.

Xi’s instruction was delivered at a national conference of TCM held Friday in Beijing.

Xi said that equal importance should be placed on traditional Chinese and Western medicines and efforts be made to enable them to supplement each other and prosper together.

He also underlined the efforts to promote TCM internationally and fully develop its unique strength in preventing and treating diseases.

In an instruction also delivered at the conference, Premier Li Keqiang called TCM a great creation of the Chinese nation.

Li stressed promoting talent training, scientific and technological innovation, and research and development of medicines.

He required efforts to promote preservation, innovation and high-quality development of TCM so that it will contribute to the improvement of people’s health and wellbeing.

Addressing the event, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan pledged to thoroughly implement the leaders’ instructions.

People who made outstanding contribution to TCM development were awarded at the conference.

Source: Xinhua

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