News in review

Monday____July 31

Cervical cancer vaccine approved for Chinese clinics

The first imported batch of Cervarix, the cervical cancer vaccine, has passed quality inspections and is going to health clinics across the Chinese mainland, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline said.

"There are 100,000 new cases of cervical cancer in China each year, and over 30,000 deaths due to the disease," said Qiao Youlin, a top epidemiologist and member of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

"It is the third most common cancer among women aged 15 to 44," he added. "For this reason, cervical cancer vaccination, together with cervical cancer screening, will significantly reduce the incidence of cervical cancer and precancerous lesions, thus reducing the burden of this disease".

Cervarix was approved by the China Food and Drug Administration in July last year.

The vaccine is registered in 132 countries and regions, and more than 69 million doses have been given globally, according to GSK.

China is building railway station under Great Wall

Chinese workers are building the world's deepest and Asia's largest underground high-speed railway station beneath the Great Wall.

The station under construction at the Badaling section of the wall in Beijing will be three stories high and have 387,500 feet of floor area, including platform, entrance and exit.

The railway tracks will be 335 feet underground.

The station is an important part of a tunnel section of the Beijing - Zhangjiakou high-speed railway line.

Workers had to develop new blasting technology to dig the tunnel carefully because just above it are the Great Wall and the railway line linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou designed and built 100 years ago. (Photo 1)

Tuesday____August 1

Li pushes telecoms to cut fees

Premier Li Keqiang wants China's three major telecom service providers to implement faster internet connectivity and make it more affordable while improving services for small and medium-sized businesses to help boost industrial upgrading and nurture new economic drivers.

"The information communication industry plays a crucial and fundamental role in China's economic transition and industrial upgrading," Li said while visiting China Mobile Communications Corp, China United Network Communications Group Co and China Telecommunications Corp.

The three companies have taken a variety of measures to enhance speed and cut costs. This has improved corporate competence and reduced social costs in general, while telecom service providers also managed to gain larger consumer groups with increased internet flow, Li said.

Li's visit followed an announcement by the providers on July 27 that they will scrap domestic long-distance and roaming charges beginning Sept 1.

A city tries to curb expensive weddings, funerals

A city in Henan province is trying to curb extravagant wedding and funeral ceremonies in rural areas to promote frugality.

It recently issued guidelines proposing that the betrothal gift a groom gives to the bride's family should cost less than $4,465, according to a Henan Business Daily report.

It also seeks to end long motorcades and large amounts of money given to the newlyweds from friends and relatives, as well as limit villagers to no more than 10 tables at wedding banquets and guests on the bride's side to fewer than 20.

For funerals, the city encourages simple banquets, no liquor and cigarettes and advocates playing funeral music at the ceremony instead of the traditional practice of inviting ensembles.

Wednesday____August 2

US trade with China is expected to surpass EU

The United States is expected to overtake the European Union as China's largest trade partner this year, according to a former vice-minister of commerce.

Sino-US trade will continue to boom in the second half of this year, "with China's imports from the US growing faster than its exports", said Wei Jianguo in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

Therefore, the US trade deficit with China will decline, said Wei, who is also vice-president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

Part of the reason why the US will surpass the EU, which was China's No. 1 trading partner for almost the past decade, Wei said, lies in ever-strengthening Sino-US economic and trade ties.

Search engine plans IPO in the US

Sogou Inc, a Chinese search engine operator, said that it plans to go public in the US.

Its parent company Sohu.com said Sogou expected to submit paperwork to the US Securities and Exchange Commission this year for a possible initial public offering. But the company has not disclosed how many American depositary shares would be offered or at what price.

According to Sohu's second-quarter earnings, Sogou's revenue hit $211 million in the second quarter, increasing 30 percent since last year's Q2.

Sogou's business covers search engine, input method, mapping and smart device, and its artificial intelligence technology is also developing.

Alibaba invested $15 million in Sogou in 2010 and in 2013 Tencent invested $448 million. In the Chinese market, the leading search engine operators are Baidu, Sogou and Qihoo 360. (Photo 3)

Thursday____August 3

Club Med unveils new resort line for China

French leisure group Club Med is launching a new line of resorts in China.

The company said the new resort brand is called Club Med Joyview and has been designed especially for the Chinese market. The first two Joyview resorts will be unveiled in the northern coastal resort town of Beidaihe and in Anji county, in Zhejiang province, by the end of this year.

Club Med President Henri Giscard d'Estaing said the Joyview resorts would mainly target middle-class families and business people visiting first-tier cities. As a result, the new resorts will mainly be located in smaller cities within three hours' drive from the main cities.

Bought by Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group for $1 billion in early 2015, Club Med swung back to profit within the first year. The group says there will be 20 Club Med resorts in China by 2020.

More Chinese are going cashless

In a report by Tencent, the Chinese internet service portal, 84 percent of Chinese in a survey said that they were "comfortable" using only mobile phones, no cash.

The report also showed more than 70 percent of the 6,500-plus respondents said that they could live more than a week with only $15 in cash, and 52 percent use cash for only 20 percent of their total monthly spending.

Data from the People's Bank of China showed a total of 157 trillion yuan of payments were made on mobile devices in China last year, more than 200 times that in the US in the same period.

A report by eMarketer said that China's lack of a "credit card culture" has somewhat fueled the popularization of mobile payments, especially in small cities and underdeveloped areas.

Friday____August 4

Left-behind children tracked with high-tech devices

Vulnerable children living in one of China's poorest areas are receiving wearable high-tech devices to help keep them safe.

About 100,000 primary school students in Bijie, Guizhou province, will receive new watch-phones fitted with satellite tracking that can provide real-time information on their whereabouts to parents, guardians, officials and teachers.

All of the children have been left behind in towns and villages by parents who have moved away for work, so the phones will also make it easier for these families to stay in contact, according to a statement from the city government.

The city and counties spent a combined $3.6 million to purchase the devices, which are made by Hubaoxing (Guardian Star). The authorities will also cover a monthly network fee of $2.23 for each child, which entitles them to 200 minutes of calling and 500 megabytes of data.

JD.com opens first unmanned sorting center

JD.com Inc, China's second-biggest e-commerce player, said it has launched the world's first unmanned sorting center.

The whole process, from parcel sorting to loading onto trucks, is fully automated at the center in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, JD said in a statement.

The company said about 9,000 parcels can be sorted every hour. JD said the new plant can handle four times the packages of human-run centers, but it still has some limitations because it can't sort out large-sized home appliance products.

JD has developed unmanned automated guided vehicles for loading and unloading goods. Last year it used drones to deliver online purchases to rural shoppers in Jiangsu province. Robots and driverless cars for deliveries were used during its June 18 shopping festival.

Fan Lili, who lives in Central China's Henan province, tends to draw crowds when she goes out in public due to her hair, which is 6.3 feet long. She is 49 and said that she stopped cutting her hair 25 years ago. Fan said that she has to take a shower for about one and a half hours to wash her hair, and that she lets it dry naturally - which takes about two days.

More than 180 veterans in their 60s climbed a more than 6,500-foot-high mountain on July 31 to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). They climbed Funiu Mountain in Central China's Henan province where they raised the national flag, dined together and held a singing contest. The PLA birthday was on Aug 1.

(China Daily USA 08/04/2017 page12)