The first day of the year marked further progress in China's efforts to improve its business environment, with a new Anti-Unfair Competition Law taking effect on Monday.
The anti-government demonstrations in Iran entered their sixth day on Tuesday, with growing attention focused on whether the government will be able to resolve the crisis and restore social stability at an early date without resorting to a violent response.
THE GREEN DEVELOPMENT INDEX for local governments aims to encourage operable policies and actions for sustainable development. It is based on evaluations of six primary indicators, namely resource utilization, environmental governance, environmental quality, ecological protection, growth quality and green lifestyles. It emphasizes people's sense of gain. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Tuesday:
IN 2016, a traditional Chinese medicine hospital in Shangzhou district, Shangluo city, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, finished building an outpatient complex. However, two years later, the construction company still owes the laborers wages of about 2 million yuan ($307,976) in total. Legal Daily comments:
A NURSE at a hospital in Wannian county, Jiangxi province, has been logging into a livestreaming platform and interacting with audiences during working hours. Huaxi Metropolis Daily comments:
Strategic ambiguity is a tried and tested diplomatic stance. It translates well into Chinese thinking.
The year 2017 marked the 45th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic relations. But instead of celebrating the occasion, the two sides remained locked in an almost frozen political relationship thanks to a series of standoffs between Tokyo and Beijing, including the detainment of Chinese fishermen by Japanese officials on Sept 7, 2010, and the "nationalization" of Diaoyu Islands by the Japanese government on Sept 10, 2012.
Despite the Belt and Road Initiative projects yielding positive results in several areas, some Western observers still view the initiative with suspicion and liken it to a Chinese version of the Marshall Plan. One such example is an article in the Dec 19 edition of The Washington Post.
As we ushered in 2018, many will no doubt have been reflecting on the year just passed. Such reviews help orientate us for the year ahead, but perhaps more important is identifying our goals for the coming year and how to attain them.
For ROK President Moon Jae-in, the New Year's Day message from his counterpart in the north will probably have come as something of a New Year's gift.