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Improving foreign reserve management

China has the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, about $3.12 trillion, according to official data. According to the US Department of Treasury statistics, however, by the end of June 2019, Japan held $1.12 trillion in US government bonds, more than China's $1.11 trillion, which means it has again become the largest holder of US government bonds. And given the Sino-US trade war, speculation is rife whether China will further reduce its US government bond reserves, perhaps on a large scale.

In the future, how an AI utopia would work

It is more than 500 years since Sir Thomas More found inspiration for the "Kingdom of Utopia" while taking a stroll on the streets of Antwerp, Belgium. So, when I traveled there from Dubai in May to speak about artificial intelligence (AI), I couldn't help but draw parallels to Raphael Hythloday, the character in Utopia who regales sixteenth-century Britons with tales of a better world.

US must look inward to solve fentanyl problem

Editor's Note: Despite its past appreciation of China's efforts in helping it contain the drug overdose problem, the US has blamed China for the proliferation and misuse of fentanyl. Why is the US blaming China for its domestic problem? And why hasn't the US administration's fight against fentanyl achieved desirable results? Two experts share their views on the issue with China Daily's Liu Jianna. Excerpts follow:

Marathon runner deserves respect, not mockery

A MAN WHO WAS RUNNING LAST IN A MARATHON RECENTLY held in Baotou, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was "persuaded" by race volunteers to give up and someone even posted the video online showing people mocking him. Southern Metropolis Daily comments:

Save rare plants from the table, please!

ON WEDNESDAY, an online food livestreamer named Outdoor Eater posted a video clip online, in which he pulled a snow lotus out of the ground in Tibet and boiled it with his noodles. The damage done to the local environment is more than he could imagine. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

Some HK media beyond the pale

When the US leader announced he was raising tariffs on the goods imported from China by an extra 5 percent, Apple Daily, a newspaper based in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, declared it was "More good news".

Washington will never be allowed to control China's fate

How dare it? That was the message from the United States leader, who, announcing extra tariffs on $550 billion worth of Chinese imports, declared that China "should not" have put tariffs on a further $75 billion of US products.

One voice needed over Amazon fires

French President Emmanuel Macron has called the raging fires in the Amazon rainforest "an international crisis" and threatened to pull out of a planned trade deal with Brazil and its regional partners should the latter fail to respond properly. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sees a need for international action "to extinguish the fires and to protect habitat and biodiversity". And even the leader of the United States, a famous disbeliever in climate change, has offered to help deal with them.

Fentanyl abuse in US entirely its own responsibility

Editor's note: Abuse of Fentanyl is a major problem in the United States, but rather than facing up to the real causes some politicians in the country are trying to push the responsibility onto China. Zhong Sheng, a columnist for People's Daily, comments:

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US threat to WTO won't get it anywhere

The US leader signed a memorandum on July 26, directing the Office of the United States Trade Representative to stop treating "advanced economies" such as China as developing countries according to the World Trade Organization's rules, and urging the WTO to change its definition for developing country within 90 days. But since major reforms to the WTO require consensus (in effect unanimity) among all members, the world trade body cannot change the definition, even if it wants to.