XI INSPECTS NORTHWEST CHINA'S NINGXIA

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on Monday inspected Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

On Monday afternoon, Xi visited a village, a section of the Yellow River, and a residential community in the city of Wuzhong to learn about efforts to advance poverty alleviation, strengthen ecological protection of the Yellow River, and promote ethnic unity.

The village of Hongde, which Xi visited, has a population of 7,013. It shook off poverty in 2019 through the development of farming and husbandry while providing training to locals to help them secure skilled jobs outside the village. A cardboard packaging workshop was also set up in the village to offer stable local jobs.

Monday marked the fourth time Xi visited the Yellow River in less than a year. The 5,464-kilometer-long river is considered the cradle of the Chinese nation.

The Jinhuayuan community Xi visited is a national model community of ethnic unity. About 45 percent of its 13,850 residents are ethnic minorities.

5G IN SE ASIA WILL BRING OPPORTUNITY TO CHINESE TELECOM BUSINESSES

Southeast Asia is a developing 5G market, which is moving relatively slowly without strong demand, but the market is diversified, said news outlet Yicai, citing senior analyst Yang Guang at market research company Strategy Analytics.

Singapore will launch two standalone 5G networks next January, and will build a 5G network that can cover a half of the country by the end of 2022, as well as the entire country by the end of 2025, the country's Infocomm Media Development Authority announced on April 29.

Currently, the project has been bid on by an associated company formed by Singtel, StarHub and M1, other mobile network operators that will purchase the right to use the 5G network, the authority said.

To improve the situation of low network speed and high network delay, the Philippines' investment on networks has started to accelerate.

Last year on June 20, the Philippines' telecom giant Globe Telecom launched the country's first 5G commercial network service, and Huawei provided the core equipment. In January, Huawei completed its 5G testing in the Philippines.

In March, Advanced Info Service started to provide 5G service in Thailand and advertises its service in Bangkok's main transport stations and streets.

Based on the strong logistics chain, cross-border e-commerce plays an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic that restricts people from going out the door to bring negative influence on businesses.

This year, the number of vendor and products sales in the top 3 e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia will see a triple increase from last year, which will push up the demand to improve the digital infrastructure in the region, said Yicai, citing a Thai official.

Vietnam plans to develop its own 5G communication equipment. Currently, the country's largest telecom provider Viettel, business giant Vingroup and IT company FPT have announced their 5G research and production roadmaps.

However, 5G development in the region is still slow, Yicai said. The technology issue is a threshold to these countries.

Some countries, including China, are using the 3.5 frequency band to set the 5G network, but the frequency band is mainly used for satellite communications in Southeast Asian countries, and it is difficult to make room for 5G in a short time, Yang said.

3G remains the main mobile communication in Southeast Asia and Oceania excluding India, and the proportion of those using the technology was 44 percent in 2019, said Yicai, citing an industry insider.

Although India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam conducted 5G trials last year, the frequency spectrum allocation restriction will delay the schedule of large-scale 5G deployments in Southeast Asia and India.

China and European counties are the principal markets for Chinese mobile communication manufacturers.

DPRK TO CUT OFF ALL COMMUNICATION LINES WITH ROK: KCNA REPORT

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will cut off all inter-Korean communication lines at noon Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Tuesday morning.

The relevant field of DPRK side will "completely cut off and shut down the liaison line between the authorities of the north and the south, which has been maintained through the north-south joint liaison office" starting from 12:00 (0300 GMT) on June 9, the report said.

Other communications will also be cut off, which includes the East and West Seas communication lines between the military of the North and the South, the inter-Korean trial communication line and the hotline between the office building of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and South Korean presidential office Chongwadae, according to the KCNA.

The development is apparent follow-up action of DPRK after its top officials have recently threatened to shut down the inter-Korean liaison office or even withdraw from the military cooperation agreement signed in 2018 in protest at anti-DPRK propaganda leaflets that defectors from the North fly across the border.

On Thursday, Kim Yo-jong, sister of top DPRK leader Kim Jong-un, issued a statement threatening to close the liaison office or even completely dismantle a now-shuttered joint industrial park in the North's border city of Kaesong unless Seoul stops defector groups from sending leaflets into the North.

"The South Korean authorities connived with the hostile acts against the DPRK by the riff-raff, while trying to dodge heavy responsibility with nasty excuses. This has driven the inter-Korean relations into a catastrophe," the KCNA said.

It went on to say that "the disgusting riff-raff have committed hostile acts against the DPRK by taking advantage of the South Korean authorities' irresponsible stance and with their connivance."

"We have reached a conclusion that there is no need to sit face to face with the South Korean authorities and there is no issue to discuss with them, as they have only aroused our dismay," it added.

SUZHOU TOPS RANKING AMONG SECOND-TIER CITIES FOR TECH FIRMS

Suzhou boasted the largest number of national-level high-tech companies among second-tier cities in China last year, according to a Yicai.com report released on Monday.

High-tech companies have been proliferating in 35 major cities besides Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Data shows 11 of the 35 cities are home to more than 3,000 high-tech companies each, including Suzhou, Dongguan, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Foshan, Nanjing and Wuhan.

Suzhou, with 7,052 national-level high-tech companies, realized a production output of 1.8 trillion yuan ($254.53 billion) from manufacturing industries and emerging industries last year, accounting for 53.6 percent of its total yield of enterprises above designated size. Industries like new generation information technology, biological medicine, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence accounted for 21.8 percent of the city's total industrial output of enterprises above designated size in 2019.

Ding Changfa, deputy professor at Economics Department of Xiamen University, said as Suzhou neighbors Shanghai, the city benefits from significant spillover effects. Shanghai's strong science and education resources and modern service industries are fueling the transformation and upgrade and development of high-tech industries in southern Jiangsu province, where Suzhou is located.

Guangdong's Dongguan, a city of 6,228 national-level high-tech companies which ranked second, also benefits via spillover from a first-tier city: Shenzhen. In recent years, electronic information industries have been relocated to Dongguan from Shenzhen. The most prominent example is tech giant Huawei, which relocated part of its businesses to Songshan Lake of Dongguan.

Notably, four of the top 5 second-tier cities are adjacent to first-tier cities. The four specialize in manufacturing as their neighbors focus on modern services, forming a seamless "farm-out" relationship.

In addition, first-tier cities have been divesting non-essential functions and relocating manufacturing industries to neighboring areas, making neighboring cities specializing in manufacture the obvious choice.

HUAWEI FIGHTS BACK WITH UK MEDIA BLITZ

In an open letter to the British public, published as a full-page advertisement in several national newspapers on Monday, the company said it is "as committed as ever" to provide "the best equipment" to the United Kingdom's 5G mobile and full-fiber broadband providers.

Earlier in the year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson provoked a strong response from United States President Donald Trump's administration, when he announced that the Chinese tech company would be permitted a limited role supplying telecom networks with 5G equipment.

In January, UK ministers announced that Huawei's market share would be capped at 35 percent, and it would be excluded from sensitive locations, as well as the so-called core of the network, which is likened to the brains of the system.

But the UK could now be drawing up plans that would see the use of Huawei gear completely phased out by 2023, according to a Daily Telegraph report on Saturday that cited industry and political sources.

The report also said London-headquartered bank HSBC's Chairman Mark Tucker warned Britain against a ban on networking equipment made by Huawei. Tucker reportedly made the statement to Johnson's advisers.

Zhang, the head of Huawei's UK operations, told the BBC that he hoped the UK would take an "evidence and fact-based approach" and warned of huge economic impact if greater connectivity was delayed by the company's exclusion, potentially running into the tens of billions of pounds of lost productivity benefits.

"We need to work closely to address the issue, but we need to take action to accelerate the broadband deployment," he said. "We don't have time to delay this."

The escalating trade war between the US and China has seen Trump lobbying allies to completely bar Huawei from 5G networks, citing "security concerns", which the company has consistently denied.

The UK had looked set to ignore these pleas with its initial move in January.

Huawei's first significant global breakthrough came in the UK in 2005, when it signed a deal to upgrade BT's copper broadband service, five years after having entered the market.

The company recently announced the launch of a new consulting brand, which aims to help telecoms players adapt to new technologies such as 5G.

TROOP MOVEMENTS HALTED AT INDIA-CHINA STANDOFF POINTS BUT DEFENCES ARE UP DEEP INSIDE

There hasn’t been any activity at the four standoff points along the Line of Actual Control after Indian and Chinese military commanders held a 7-hour-long ice-breaking meeting over the weekend, people familiar with the developments told Hindustan Times on Monday.

India, which was the first to speak about the meeting at the Moldo-Chushul border meeting point some 14,000 feet above sea level, had underlined on Sunday that the two sides had agreed to peacefully resolve the situation. On Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry statement about the discussions over the weekend made the same point.

To be sure, the two sides are not anywhere close to a resolution of the standoff at three points in the Galwan valley and the fourth, near Pangong Lake.

Saturday’s meeting between Lt Gen Harinder Singh, commander of Leh-based 14 Corps, and a Chinese delegation headed by Maj Gen Liu Lin, commander of the South Xinjiang military region, agreed to keep talking at the brigade and battalion commander level.

The Indian assessment is that the shortest time frame that one could look at for a resolution is next month, if not later. That would be comparable to the time taken to end the Doklam standoff that lasted 73 days and ended only after conversations at the highest level.

But the good thing, people familiar with the development told HT, is that there has been very little activity at the standoff sites over the past day or two.

The Indian side, however, has taken note of a defensive military buildup by the People’s Liberation Army in places such as Kashgar, the headquarters of the PLA’s Xinjiang military district some 480 km from the standoff points along the LAC.

An Indian official said the buildup at the district headquarters had happened over the last few weeks and days, around the time that China had been talking about dialogue to resolve the standoff that started from a May 5 clash between soldiers at one location in eastern Ladakh.

According to senior indian officials, India had responded and mobilised its troops also.

“Our buildup matches the Chinese deployment, if not more, in terms of troops, support elements, force multipliers and aerial support,” a senior official said.

Chinese troops did have an advantage in the initial days of the standoff when its soldiers took the first steps to adopt an aggressive stance at Pangong lake and Galwan valley. But the Indian deployment was beefed up rapidly after additional troops underwent the seven days of acclimatization required to enable them to operate at 16,000 feet height.

One official said the Chinese forces had been putting pressure on the Chip Chap river-Karakoram-Trig heights-Galwan-Depsang bulge axis after the Indian Air Force revived the Daulat Beg Oldie airfield by landing an AN-32 transport aircraft in May 2008. After a standoff with Chinese troops in April 2013, the Indian Air Force had landed the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules four-engine military transport aircraft as well.

FLIGHTS RESUME BETWEEN WUHAN, BEIJING

Commercial flights between Beijing and Wuhan, Hubei province, were set to resume after Beijing lowered its public health emergency status from the second-highest level to third level on Saturday.

Wuhan's transportation authority said China Southern Airlines would operate a daily round-trip flight starting on Tuesday.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 4 pm in Wuhan and arrive at Beijing at 6:05 pm. It was to return to Wuhan an hour later.

Starting on Saturday, people who return to Beijing from Hubei no longer require 14 days of quarantine.

SCORCHING WEATHER EXPECTED TO LINGER

High temperatures have led to droughts in most parts of China over the past few days and are forecast to continue, according to the China Meteorological Administration and its local meteorological services.

A high near 40 C hit the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Monday, and temperatures reached around 39 C in the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jilin, Liaoning and in Beijing municipality, according to the administration.

The administration forecast over the weekend that in June, high temperatures will scorch most parts of China for longer than the same period during normal years.

According to the weather service in Inner Mongolia, droughts are expanding in the area. Since May, rainfall in the central and western parts of the region has declined.

By Sunday, droughts had expanded across 44 million hectares, more than 40 percent of the region's land area, with the most severe condition in grazing areas and moderate conditions in agricultural areas, the region's weather service said.

The Henan climate center issued an orange alert for drought on Saturday, the second highest level, saying that droughts have covered 60 percent of the province's land area.

On Sunday, the weather service with Anhui province said that for 20 days there had been no sufficient precipitation there. In its cities of Fuyang and Lu'an, drought conditions have reached the severe level, the highest ranking.

Chen Lijuan, a chief forecaster with the administration, said that less rain and higher temperatures resulted in droughts in these areas.

She said that for the past three months, temperatures were about 2 C higher on average and precipitation was 20 to 80 percent below normal.

"That is because Northeast China and most regions of the Yellow and Huaihe rivers are mainly affected by northerly winds that lead to less water vapor transported there, thus less rain," she said.

The administration urged residents to pay attention to hot weather warnings and take precautions to stay away from disasters caused by heat.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Your life is not yours if you always care what others think. – Unknown