WE WILL SECURE VICTORY,' XI SAYS

President Xi Jinping vowed on Thursday to build China by the end of this year into a moderately prosperous society that is universally acclaimed by the people and stands the test of history.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remark in his address to a gathering in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in celebration of Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, which falls on Saturday.

"In the new year, we will secure victory in completing the building of a moderately prosperous society and win the battle against absolute poverty to realize the first Centenary Goal," Xi said.

Noting that the millennia-old dream of the Chinese nation to become well-off overall will become reality, Xi called it a significant landmark in the course of the country's realization of the great national rejuvenation.

The Chinese president extended his festival greetings and best wishes to the people of all ethnic groups throughout the country, to compatriots in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan as well as to overseas Chinese around the world.

He reviewed the achievements China made in the past year despite many internal and external challenges, saying the country kept advancing reform and opening-up for high-quality economic growth, and its economic operation remained within a reasonable range.

Great headway was made in three tough battles — poverty reduction, effective prevention and control of financial risks, and environmental protection — news of scientific and technological innovations kept pouring in, people's livelihoods improved, national defense and military reforms advanced steadily and the country's overall diplomacy bore fruit, Xi said.

The grand celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China has greatly cheered the national spirit and built a strong power of national unity, he added.

Looking forward, Xi said, China has worked out a strategic blueprint to realize socialist modernization step by step after it has completed the task of building a moderately prosperous society, and from there to build China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful modernized socialist country by the middle of this century.

WHO: CORONAVIRUS NOT YET GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY

Top officials from the World Health Organization, or WHO, said on Thursday that the new coronavirus that has affected hundreds of people globally is not yet a global health emergency.

The briefing came after the WHO Emergency Committee spent a second day discussing the topic, but the committee concluded that it is still too early to declare a public health emergency of international concern, given the restrictive and binary nature of the outbreak.

As it had been on Wednesday, the committee remained divided over the decision to determine the status of the outbreak.

"I am not declaring a public health emergency of international concern today," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"Make no mistake.  This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency. WHO's risk assessment is that the outbreak is a very high risk in China, and a high risk regionally and globally."

The WHO said it would continue to review and support efforts to investigate the animal source of the new coronavirus outbreak, the extent of person-to-person transmission, and the screening efforts in other provinces of China.

According to the committee, the new virus, which is now named 2019-nCoV, can cause severe disease, and can kill, although for most people, it causes milder symptoms.  It is understood that among those infected, one-quarter of patients have experienced severe disease.  Most of those who have died had underlying health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes or cardiovascular disease that had weakened their immune systems.

There is human-to-human transmission in China, but for now it appears limited to family groups and health workers caring for infected patients, WHO officials said. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China, but that might happen.

As of yet, there is little information regarding the original source of this virus, its clinical features, its severity and how easily it spreads.

For the moment, the WHO does not recommend any broader restrictions on travel or trade but advises exit screening at airports as part of a comprehensive set of containment measures.

WUHAN SEALED TO CONTAIN VIRUS; ISOLATED CASES SEEN ELSEWHERE

Central China's most populous city has been sealed, with some exceptions, in an emergency move to control a new virus that has caused 17 deaths amid increasing worries of a wider outbreak.

The government of Wuhan announced on Thursday morning that as of 10 am it was indefinitely suspending the city's public transport system, including buses, subway and ferry, and that air and rail passengers would not be allowed to disembark in the city.

Authorities advised city residents, which number more than 11 million, not to leave the city unless necessary.

On Thursday, hundreds of flights to and from Wuhan, Hubei province, were canceled, and some highway exits in the city were also closed.

Several other cities in Hubei province, including Huanggang, Ezhou and Chibi, also took similar measures on Thursday to isolate themselves to prevent spread of the disease.

Also on Thursday, the Ministry of Transport suspended all long-distance bus and ferry travel to Wuhan, a major port on the Yangtze River, and banned commercial cars, trucks and ships from leaving the city with passengers.

The Hubei provincial government urged on Thursday that people suspected of infection be treated in single hospital rooms and only be put in hospital rooms with others when their infection was confirmed.

Wuhan has designated seven hospitals for treating patients who have fevers higher than 37.3 C. These seven hospitals are not treating patients with other illnesses in their wards.

A temporary, 25,000-square-meter hospital is being built in the city's Caidian district, according to local media reports.

On Wednesday, the Wuhan city government released a notice requiring residents to wear face masks in public places, as required by China's laws on infectious disease control and prevention and emergency response.

The city has appealed to the central government for 40 million face masks and 5 million protective gowns to meet its demand.

All 17 deaths, as of late Wednesday night, on the Chinese mainland from the new coronavirus, 2019-ncov, were in Hubei province, the National Health Commission said on Thursday. Wuhan is the provincial capital.

The number of confirmed cases on the mainland rose to 571, affecting 25 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. Ninety-five of these patients were in critical condition. As of late Wednesday night, 393 suspected cases were also reported, the commission said.

Outside the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan each had one confirmed case.

Thailand had three confirmed cases, and the United States, Japan and South Korea reported one confirmed case each, the commission said.

On Wednesday night, the World Health Organization said it needed more evidence to decide whether the novel coronavirus is a "public health emergency of international concern" following a WHO emergency committee discussion. The committee agreed to reconvene Thursday.

"The decision about whether or not to declare a public health emergency of international concern is one I take extremely seriously, and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

"Our team in China is working with local experts and officials to investigate the outbreak," he said.

DAVOS SPEAKERS FEAR POSSIBILITY OF A CHINA-US ECONOMIC DECOUPLING

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned on Wednesday that a possible decoupling of the Chinese and United States economies could have severe consequences.

In a speech at the 50th World Economic Forum in the ski town of Davos, Switzerland, Lee said that the US, China and globalization are three major external factors that have driven the economic prosperity of Singapore, but they are all changing now.

"So we would like to continue to work with America, we would like to continue to work with China," he said, adding that from time to time, Singapore will find itself being pressed to choose sides.

In his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 31,Lee conveyed that Singapore and other countries in the region do not want to be forced to choose between China and the US.

That statement came after the US pressed its security allies and partners to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei from their 5G networks. Singapore has so far not excluded any vendors from building its 5G network, but said any systems must meet security requirements.

Lee said on Wednesday that the prospect of "bifurcation in technology, whether in 5G or the whole supply chain" would lead to a series of reactions of distrust that would force nations to set up their own separate supply chains.

"It will take a long time for that process to come, to run its course, but it is a very expensive process, which is going to hurt us," he said.

Lee said he worries that the mutual suspicions and doubt between China and the US will only create more friction and problems, and that the consequences of a decoupling scenario would be very bad.

It is a serious issue, he said, how an incumbent superpower like the United States accommodates a rising new power, China.

"How do both sides make adjustments in order to accommodate each other and head off what Graham Allison calls the Thucydides trap?" he asked.

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor of economics, said some of the decoupling will happen, and it's going to be painful.

"I think it has been a symbiotic relationship. Both sides benefit from each other. It's a very deep relationship. And I don't even know how to think about decoupling in the situation," said Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

Kishore Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow at National University of Singapore's Asia Research Institute, said the decoupling would be a disaster for the world.

"That is why I think the whole world would like to encourage the US not to proceed with this," he said.

VIRUS-HIT CITY TEMPORARILY SHUTS DOWN LOCAL TRANSPORTATION

The local government of Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus, announced that all public transportation in the city — local buses, long-distanced buses, subway and ferry — will be temporarily closed starting at 10am on Thursday.

All flights and trains scheduled to depart from Wuhan also will be temporarily canceled to reduce the risk of spreading the new virus, the government said.

Residents in Wuhan were suggested not to leave the city if there is no particular reason, according to the announcement.

CHINA TO LAUNCH MARS PROBE IN JULY

China announced that it will launch its first Mars mission probe in July this year, China Youth Daily reported Thursday, adding that this is the first time the country disclosed the launch month of its Mars exploration program.

The Mars probe will be sent by the Long March 5 Y4 carrier rocket, said the newspaper, citing sources from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

The Long March-5 Y4 rocket has recently completed a 100-second test for its high thrust hydrogen-oxygen engine, which is the last engine examination before the final assembly.

According to the CASC, China will send a probe to orbit and land and deploy a rover on Mars.

In 2020, the Long March 5 rocket will carry out several missions, including the Mars probe launch and the lunar sample return.

A total of 24 high thrust hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine tests will be conducted this year for these missions.

CHINESE SHARES PLUMMET ON THURSDAY

Chinese stocks plunged on Thursday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index down 2.75 percent, at 2,976.53 points.

The Shenzhen Component Index closed 3.52 percent lower at 10,681.90 points.

The ChiNext Index, China's NASDAQ-style board of growth enterprises, fell 3.32 percent to close at 1,927.74 points on the last trading day before the Spring Festival holiday.