Digest

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived on Sept 17 in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, starting his three-day visit to the South Asian neighbor.

It is Xi's first trip to India since he took office in March 2013, and also the first state visit in eight years by a Chinese president to the country.

At the airport, Xi was presented with flowers by each minister of Gujarat and greeted by Indian youths performing local traditional dance.

Thousands of citizens stood along the streets in Ahmedabad to extend their welcome with warm applause when the convoy of the Chinese delegation was en route from the airport to the hotel Xi stays in.

In a written speech delivered at the airport, Xi extended the Chinese people's sincere greetings and good wishes to the Indian people.

China and India, as neighbors, have kept friendly exchanges for thousands of years, Xi said.

FTA tops agenda during Xi's visit to Sri Lanka

China and Sri Lanka have announced the start of negotiations on a free-trade agreement, a deal that observers said will inspire greater engagement from other South Asia nations in Beijing's proposed Maritime Silk Road project.

The announcement came after President Xi Xinping met with Sri Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo on Sept 16, the first visit to the country by a Chinese head of state in 28 years.

New infrastructure for the Maldives

A range of key joint infrastructure projects have been revealed by China for the Maldives, including the building of a landmark bridge, and the upgrading of its main airport.

Visiting the island country during Sept 14-16, President Xi Jinping said China will examine the viability of building a bridge linking the capital Male to the nearby island of Hulhule. A preliminary contract agreement expanding and upgrading the airport was also signed.

FDI dips for second straight month

Foreign direct investment into China dropped 14 percent in value to $7.2 billion last month from a year earlier, after a 17 percent drop in July - the first consecutive double-digit declines since 2009.

But the Ministry of Commerce denied the falls were the result of the government's ongoing antimonopoly measures, which some overseas commentators have suggested is targeting foreign companies more than domestic.

In the first eight months of 2014, China's FDI fell by 1.8 percent from a year ago to $78.3 billion.

Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang attributed the drop to the weak global economy, fluctuation of the yuan and soaring costs, which made investing in China's low-end manufacturing unattractive.

Last year, average manufacturing costs in China were just 30 percent lower than in the US, Shen added. As a consequence, FDI in Chinese manufacturing in the first eight months slumped by 15.7 percent compared with a year earlier, and its share in total inbound investment retreated to 35 percent.

By comparison, FDI in service industries grew by 8.9 percent in the same period, accounting for 55 percent of FDI.

62 sites chosen to pilot new urban plan

The government has earmarked 62 sites as experimental areas for new-style urbanization, within a grand strategy that Premier Li Keqiang said will greatly stimulate China's economy.

The areas range from provincial and city levels to county and town levels, although the focus will be on medium-sized and small cities and small towns, Li said during a seminar in Beijing organized by the central government.

"This new-style urbanization is a big strategy for modernization and will improve the lives of several hundred million people - it is our biggest structural adjustment," Li said.

In March, within the Report on the Work of the Government, he said the country should grant urban residency to 100 million people who have moved to cities from rural areas, renovate slum areas that are home to about 100 million more, and guide around the same number of rural residents in central and western areas of the country to urbanize in nearby cities.

Flammable ice seen as future energy source

China is set to begin exploration of 'flammable ice', or gas hydrate, an unconventional untapped energy source found in permafrost and ocean sediment, around 2030 as it tries to diversify its energy mix with unconventional sources.

Gas hydrate is a solid compound in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice.

Li Jinfa, deputy director of China Geological Survey, said that with consistent efforts in gas hydrate research and related policies, China will keep pace with advanced countries in turning the resource into energy.

China has been the largest global energy consumer since 2010, prompting the authorities to increase research and exploration of unconventional energy sources such as shale gas.

Gas hydrate deposits in China are estimated by CGC to be 110 billion metric tons in oil equivalent, while China consumed 2.6 billion tons in oil equivalent last year.

Li said he believed the energy source will gradually change China's energy structure.

To realize commercial production, China is speeding up research and development into flammable ice exploration technology, and production testing in the South China Sea is expected to begin in 2017, Li said.

Improved quality key to growth: Li

Premier Li Keqiang told a conference recently that the promotion of quality Chinese products has become paramount to help offset the side effects of decelerating economic growth.

Speaking at the China Quality Conference, Li said the economy has to rely more on the improvement of quality, instead of speed, as the country is losing its traditional advantages to support economic growth.

His call followed a National Bureau of Statistics report that said the country's value-added industrial output - a major indicator of the condition of China's economy - expanded by 6.9 percent year-on-year in August, the slowest pace in six years.

Foreign teachers face tighter requirements

Foreigners planning to work as teachers across China may be expected to have higher educational qualifications and greater experience, after new regulations were released in Beijing that demand all new teachers have at least five years' teaching under their belt to find a job there.

Language teachers will also be required to have teacher qualifications or other international language teaching qualification certificates, such as TEFL and TESL.

China has more than 50,000 training centers for about 300 million English learners, according to a Ministry of Education report in 2013.

But many education experts and officials have voiced concern about inadequate supervision of foreign teachers of English.

Space-age technology to deal with disasters

China has called on other nations to work more closely on using their space technology to better monitor and react to natural disasters.

Speaking at the three-day UN International Conference on Space-Based Technologies for Disaster Management, Pang Chenmin, director of the National Disaster Reduction Center, urged the international space community to set up a system to give nations prone to disasters universal access to space-based technologies.

The Beijing conference, the fourth to be held since 2011, was organized by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs and was attended by government officials and experts from 34 nations, 14 international and regional organizations and 13 research institutes.

China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 09/19/2014 page2)