Trade growth in H2 to fuel economy

Commerce official downplays softer demand, swears by nation's positives.

Despite softer overseas demand, China's foreign trade is expected to grow during the second half of the year and help fuel the upward momentum of the Chinese economy, a senior commerce official said on Tuesday.

Wang Shouwen, vice-commerce minister and China international trade representative at the Ministry of Commerce, made the remarks at a news conference in Beijing.

"A slowdown in external demand is the most significant uncertainty facing China's foreign trade," he said. As major developed economies are staggering and global trade growth has weakened, new orders for both Chinese enterprises and their counterparts in other countries are declining, he said.

However, China's foreign trade sector is expected to grow steadily on the back of pragmatic facilitating measures at both central and local levels, sound fundamentals of the sector, and increasing competitiveness of Chinese products in high-value and high-tech industries, he said.

Free trade agreements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will also help promote the development of China's foreign trade, he said.

In August, China's exports to other RCEP member countries surged 23 percent year-on-year, which was 11.2 percentage points higher than the overall export growth rate.

Official data showed China's trade surged 10.1 percent year-on-year to 27.3 trillion yuan ($3.81 trillion) during the first eight months of this year, despite complexities and challenges.

Yet, the annual growth pace in August was 8.6 percent, down nearly 8 percentage points from that in July.

Following a series of policy measures rolled out to stabilize foreign trade growth, the MOC unveiled a new circular on Tuesday, detailing specific moves to help enterprises smoothen all links of export and import activities.

In particular, the circular asked local governments to strengthen support for foreign trade enterprises in COVID prevention and control, energy consumption, labor recruitment and logistics, and also "make every possible effort when necessary to help enterprises fulfill their contracts".

The circular also urged the authorities concerned to further the development of innovative foreign trade development platforms, tap the potential of cross-border e-commerce to stabilize foreign trade and facilitate foreign trade through measures like improvements to ports and domestic logistics efficiency and elimination of unnecessary fees.

Experts and business leaders said they expect the supportive measures will further unleash growth potential of foreign trade.

Gao Lingyun, director of the international investment division at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that since fundamentals in China remain unchanged, the situation now will continue to support sound long-term economic development.

As policy measures already in place gradually unleash their power to smooth foreign trade logistics and accelerate work and business resumption after COVID disruptions, China's foreign trade will further stabilize, creating an uptick in growth.

Feng Guan, deputy director of the OIG Institute, a research facility of Optima Integration Group, said he believes that as the positive impact of policy measures facilitating foreign trade growth becomes more visible, import and export activities will become more efficient. This will help actualize the potential of both foreign and domestic demand, resulting in better development of foreign trade in China.

Media Source: China Daily

High-profile bridge completed in Guizhou

Construction was completed on a high-profile bridge in Guizhou on Monday, which when open will reduce travel time in the province and promote local economic development.

The Ganxi Grand Bridge, spanning 1,220 meters, is a key project of an expressway in Guiding county of Guizhou.

The bridge, which spans a reservoir in Ganxi forest park, means that vehicles will no longer need to travel along a winding mountainous road to get from one side to the other. Travel time between Xinba township to Guiding county will be reduced to 15 minutes from the current hour.

The construction team spent more than three years tackling the technical challenges of building the bridge in the mountainous region.

Landlocked and mountainous Guizhou has developed rapidly in terms of its expressway infrastructure in the past decade. By the end of last year, the total length of the expressway network in the province exceeded more than 8,000 kilometers. Expressway mileage tripled from 2,630 km in 2012 to 8,010 km in 2021, and now ranks fifth in the country. Nearly half of the world's 100 highest bridges are located in the province, according to the provincial government.

Construction was completed on another high-profile bridge in Guizhou — the Wujiang Grand Bridge — last month.

Its total length is 1,834 meters, with 504 meters spanning the water.

Because of its mountainous location, huge span and small construction space, the bridge, made of concrete-filled steel tubing, presented many challenges during construction.

Poor transportation infrastructure has impeded the development of the inland province for years, as Guizhou is the only province in the country without plains.

The past decade has witnessed a "big leap" in the development of infrastructure in the province, Shen Yiqin, Party secretary of Guizhou, said at a news conference in provincial capital Guiyang in August.

"The influence that comes with the development of transportation infrastructure in Guizhou is enduring and profound," said Li Bingjun, governor of Guizhou.

Media Source: China Daily 

90 percent of Chinese respondents say they have no worries about going out in nights: poll

A poll showed 90 percent of people have no worries about going out during night, China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on Wednesday, highlighting positive results was achieved by the 100-day campaign which was launched in the wake of the brutal attack at a restaurant in the city of Tangshan in North China's Hebei Province.

In past years, the public sense of security among Chinese citizens have remain strong, rising from 87.55 percent in 2012 to the 98.62 percent in 2021. A poll by a third-party agency taken before the 100-day campaign finishes showed 90 percent of people have no worries about going out in night, Qiu Baoli, the director who is responsible for the 100-day campaign in the MPS, told Wednesday's press conference.

Qiu said the public sense of security lies in a stable society where people dwell in peaceful residence and secure environment, more importantly where the public have full sense of security at heart.

With efforts of public security organs across all levels, a total of 640,000 criminal cases, 1.43 million criminal suspects and 7,442 venues containing security risks were busted during the campaign, according to Qiu.

About 97.72 percent of being surveyed are satisfied with the campaign led by the MPS, as the poll conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics showed. It yields good results, not only demonstrating police authority, deterrence on criminals and safeguard the public, Qiu told the press conference.

The campaign was launched since June 25 after the curtain call of special campaign against crimes in the wake of the brutality at a restaurant in the city of Tangshan in Hebei.

In details, during the campaign, special efforts were given on cracking down the illegal violation in summer nights. During the three separate movements, conducted on July 22-24, August 12-14 and September 9-11 at night between 8pm and 2am, by multiple police forces, 162,000 criminal suspects, 674,000 cases of drunk driving were busted. More than 9.7 million police forces and 11.8 million civil forces have been mobilized during the period.

During the campaign, the MPS led 10 supervision teams to 326 cities on how local public security organs deal with cases. Some individual public security organs behave poorly in handling cases, implementing relevant measures, law enforcement and effectiveness.

Though the 100-day campaign targeting on eliminating security problems threat the public has drown to close, the MPS will maintain a tough stance on busting illegal behaviors, Zhang Ming, a spokesperson of the MPS, told the press conference.

Patrols on political centers, bustling commercial districts, schools, parks, and densely-populated areas and crackdowns on illegal behaviors targeting vulnerable groups such as women and children will be intensified, to ensure a stable society, Zhang said.

The case of harassment and brutal beating of four women at a restaurant in Tangshan occurred in the midnight incited heated discussion about public security situation in the country as the case in Tangshan is at odds with the general safety trends.

Latest court ruling announced by the Guangyang district people's court in Langfang in Hebei showed Chen Jizhi, the prime culprit involved, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined 320,000 yuan ($45,215).

The remaining 27 defendants were sentenced to between six months and 11 years in prison in accordance with the law. Among the 27 defendants, 19 were fined between 3,000 yuan and 135,000 yuan, according to the court ruling.

Media Source: Global Times

Earliest gibbon fossil discovered in SW China’s Yunnan, fills evolutionary gap

A small ape fossil discovered in Yuanmou, Southwest China's Yunnan Province has been proved to be the earliest gibbon fossil ever found. The discovery pushes the gibbon fossil record back 7 million to 8 million years and helps Chinese and US scientists fill a long-elusive evolutionary gap in the history of small apes in East Asia.

The specific fossil belongs to a species of small apes called Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan, part of a family of apes including 20 species of living gibbons found throughout tropical and subtropical Asia. There currently exist four to six species in China.

Ji Xueping, a researcher from the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who led the research with Terry Harrison, professor from the Department of Anthropology of the New York University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that fossil remains of hylobatids are very rare, and most specimens are isolated teeth and fragments of jawbones found in caves in South China and Southeast Asia dating back no more than 2 million years.

Ji discovered the key specimen, a facial bone of an infant Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan aged two years or less, during a field investigation. He compared the specimen with the skulls of living gibbons kept at the specimen library at the Kunming Institute of Zoology and identified the specimen as that of a gibbon.

He and other researchers conducted research in 2018 on specimens of gibbon teeth collected in Yuanmou over the previous 30 years, and they obtained for the first time information on the facial features of ancestral groups of gibbons.

Although specimens of Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan are very rare, through careful analysis and comparison, it can be confirmed that Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan was the most likely direct ancestor of the modern-day gibbons in the late Miocene.

By analyzing the teeth specimens of Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan, the researchers estimated that the small ape was similar in size to today's gibbons, with a body weight of approximately 6 kilograms.

Genetic studies indicate that the hylobatids diverged from the lineage leading to the great apes and humans about 17 to 22 million years ago, but there is still a 10-million-year gap to fill with additional discoveries in the evolutionary history of hylobatids, especially the gap between 2 and 6 million years ago, which was a critical period for the transition of ancient primates to modern primates.

The scientists also found that Kapi ramnagarensis - an ape previously believed to be an earlier species of hylobatid, based on a single isolated fossil molar discovered in India - was not a hylobatid but a member of a more primitive group of primates that were not closely related to modern apes.

The research was published in the international journal of anthropology called Journal of Human Evolution. Researchers from several institutes including the Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and New York University participated in the research.

Media Source: Global Times