XI HAILS EXECS' FAITH IN GROWTH, PLEDGES REFORM

China will keep deepening reform and expanding opening-up and provide a better business environment for the investment and business development of Chinese and foreign enterprises, President Xi Jinping said in a letter of reply to representatives of Global CEO Council members.

In the letter dated on Wednesday, Xi assured the global CEOs that China will foster new opportunities and create new prospects for Chinese and foreign enterprises. He said that those CEOs have made the right choice to stay rooted in China.

Saying the interests of all countries are highly integrated in today's world and humanity is a community with a shared future, Xi said win-win cooperation conforms with the trend of the times.

China unswervingly commits itself to pursuing the path of peaceful development, making economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all, and promoting the building of an open world economy, the president noted.

Xi expressed hope that those CEOs will adhere to the principle of win-win cooperation and common development, strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Chinese companies, and contribute to the world economic recovery.

Speaking of China's economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi said the fundamentals of China's long-term sound economic growth remain unchanged and will not change.

China is coordinating efforts in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and socioeconomic development, striving for a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and eradicating poverty, he said.

To this end, Xi said, China will comprehensively implement major policies and measures aimed at ensuring the six priorities of employment, people's livelihoods, development of market entities, food and energy security, stable operation of industrial and supply chains, and smooth functioning at the community level.

It is also making efforts to ensure stability in the six areas of employment, finance, foreign trade, foreign investment, domestic investment and market expectations, he added.

Eighteen CEOs from the Global CEO Council, which groups 39 multinational companies that are global leaders in their respective industries, wrote to Xi recently and offered suggestions on China's economic development and international cooperation in the post-pandemic era.

In their letter to Xi, the CEOs spoke highly of China's efforts to successfully contain the novel coronavirus under Xi's leadership and take the lead in resuming work and production as well as its positive role in supporting the global COVID-19 fight and maintaining global economic stability.

NATIONAL SECURITY LAW FOR HK A MIRROR TO WEST

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued to troll Beijing on Wednesday via Twitter by congratulating Hong Kong's "pan-democrats" for their "successful" illegal primaries.

The Chinese central government has promulgated national security legislation in Hong Kong to prevent, suppress and impose punishment for offenses of "secession, subversion, organization and perpetration of terrorist activities and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security in relation to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region." The bold legislation has prompted the Western anti-China "coalition" to throw a hissy fit.

Perhaps the United Kingdom still considers Hong Kong to be a "treaty port" where Western agents, "press soldiers", missionaries, dubious NGOs and powerful foreign interest groups can roam at will. This Western sense of entitlement has to do with the city's "colonial" past. Hong Kong was the last Western stronghold where the Western imperialists (who had conspired to divide and conquer China) could retreat into after China had liberated Shanghai, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen and Ningbo from foreign occupation.

The concentration of Western intelligence services and propaganda organs in Hong Kong is unparalleled in Asia (relative to population size). The Anglo-American hold on power extends to many public spheres−media, schools, universities, publishers, banking, finance and think tanks. The anti-China "coalition" regularly fabricates fake heroes, saints and martyrs to propagate the Western cause, who shamelessly condone terrorism and separatist movements in the Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet autonomous regions. The "coalition" has also radicalized and recruited some naive Chinese students as "freedom fighters" for the Western crusade.

Some Hong Kong elites who cooperate with their Western masters are love-bombed and showered with attention, with the most prominent anti-China "activists" getting a chance to meet US presidents, travel the world and speak to TV channels.

Under British colonial rule, some Hong Kong residents were brainwashed into believing they were not really Chinese, but "Hongkongnese" or Cantonese, "special" and "better" than ordinary Chinese−a group of chosen people−and therefore they should try to have a separate country of their own. They were also introduced to white supremacy and the notion that, since the white man had colonized the region, Hong Kong residents were "white by association", more privileged than their Chinese mainland compatriots.

The UK government alone issued over 350,000 British passports to local residents before returning Hong Kong's sovereignty to China. Now the incumbent British prime minister wants to top that with 3 million more passports.

TAX AND FEE CUT EFFORTS TO BE STRENGTHENED THIS YEAR: NDRC

China will strengthen tax and fee reduction efforts this year, said the National Development and Reform Commission on Friday.

The amount of taxes and fees cut has currently exceeded 1 trillion yuan, said the top economic planner.

All indicators of the country's major provinces for economic development are further picking up, which provides conditions and foundations for China's economy to maintain its trend to stabilize and recover.

About 7.39 million enterprises were newly registered in 2019, up 10.3 percent year-on-year, and about 20,200 enterprises were newly established each day on average throughout the year, said Yuan Da, spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission.

CHINA SLAMS US OVER CURB ON TECH VISAS

Beijing slammed Washington on Thursday for attacking Chinese telecommunications equipment provider Huawei and deciding to impose visa restrictions on certain employees of Huawei and other Chinese tech companies.

"As an outstanding private company, Huawei's only fault is that it's Chinese," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news conference.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the visa restrictions on Wednesday, has talked repeatedly over the past month about "clean" companies and countries that exclude Huawei from their 5G networks.

Instead of anything to do with "cleanliness", what the United States has done is a "dirty trick" and "dirty play", Hua said on Thursday.

Huawei has offered services to more than 170 countries, none of which has provided any evidence that its products posed a security threat or had back doors that allow interference, Hua said.

Huawei established a cybersecurity evaluation center in the United Kingdom for the UK to assess its products. The company also said it is willing to sign backdoor-free contracts with all countries.

"Can any US company do as Huawei did?" Hua asked, adding that the US "has long been carrying out indiscriminate and illegal surveillance on governments, companies and individuals in other countries, including its allies".

The US has been defaming and attacking Huawei out of a strong ideological bias and is rallying its allies in its attempt to besiege the company, she said.

Responding to Pompeo's attack on human rights conditions in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and his claims that Huawei provides "material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses", Hua said such accusations constitute "the biggest lie of the century". As many as 56 ethnic groups live in harmony in China, where 850 million people have been lifted out of poverty, she said.

China also became the second-largest economy without resorting to warfare, colonialism or slavery, contributing more than 30 percent of global economic growth for over a decade, she said.

In contrast, the US, which "suffers racial discrimination everywhere", decimated its Native American population and has waged "groundless wars" in countries such as Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the UK lost its independence in making its own decisions when it chose to ban Huawei from its 5G network, Hua said, adding that the decision will cost the UK more than it will gain.

Huawei has created tens of thousands of jobs in the UK over two decades and contributed to the country's telecommunications infrastructure, she said, adding that London should listen carefully to reasonable voices and make a choice that complies with its long-term and fundamental interests.

WECHAT APP THRUST INTO US-CHINA TECH FRAY

WeChat, an essential tool used by overseas Chinese to stay in touch with friends and families, has become the latest tech component caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration's increased scrutiny of Chinese technologies over alleged national security breaches.

"Whether the Trump administration will go ahead with such a ban, I cannot say, but I consider the proposed policy to be misguided at best. WeChat is a social media platform that is primarily used by Chinese nationals, but also by many people abroad who have friends and colleagues from China," said Eric Heikkila, an urban development and public policy specialist at the University of Southern California.

"This is a time that we should be fostering stronger interpersonal ties between regular people in both countries. The damage caused by disrupting such genuine grassroots ties almost certainly outweighs the purported security risks," he added.

Shortly after the US announced it's considering clamping down on the Chinese app TikTok, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News on July 12 that the Trump administration would not rule out the possibility of banning TikTok and WeChat in the country to protect American citizens' data privacy.

"TikTok and WeChat are the biggest forms of censorship on the Chinese mainland, and so expect strong action on that," Navarro said.

A Trump administration official said Wednesday that Chinese social media applications are being reviewed for potential national security exposure. An action on the issue could come in weeks, the White House official added.

However, the administration has yet to lay out specific plans to implement such a ban. It is also unclear to what extent the restrictions would apply to users of the app.

Tencent Holdings Ltd, the Chinese technology behemoth that owns the messaging application, has yet to comment on the matter.

ROCKET TO LIFT MARS PROBE MOVED TO LAUNCH PAD

The Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket to lift China's Tianwen 1 Mars probe was moved to its launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province on Friday morning, according to the China National Space Administration.

The administration said in a statement that the rocket was moved out of its testing complex at around 8 am and spent nearly two hours on the tracks toward the launch pad.

It will blast off in due course between late July and early August to transport Tianwen 1, or Quest for Heavenly Truth 1, to an Earth-Mars transfer trajectory, the statement noted.

Next, engineers will conduct final examinations and then pump in the propellants before the launch, it added.

The Long March 5, the biggest and most technologically sophisticated rocket in China, was transported by ships to Hainan in May and was assembled and tested at the Wenchang center, the only coastal launch facility in the country.

Tianwen 1, the nation's first independent Mars exploration program, was approved by the government in January 2016 and is intended to orbit the red planet and land a rover on the Martian surface for scientific operations.

The farthest distance between the Earth and Mars is about 400 million kilometers while the nearest is 55 million km, so a probe will travel about seven months before it reaches the Martian atmosphere.

The Chinese probe consists of three parts – the orbiter, the lander and the rover – and they will separate in Mars' orbit. The orbiter will stay in the orbit for scientific operations and signal relay while the lander-rover combination will make an autonomous descent and landing.

The rover, which is expected to become the world's seventh of its kind and the first from Asia, has six wheels and four solar panels and carries six scientific instruments. It is more than 200 kilograms in weight and will work about three months on the planet, designers said.

XINJIANG REPORTS 5 NEW LOCAL COVID-19 CASES

Xinjiang reported five new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections on Friday, all in its regional capital of Urumqi, local health authorities said.

The five cases were confirmed between early Thursday and Friday noon, bringing the total number of recent infections to six.

Eight asymptomatic cases were also reported on Friday, pushing the total number of such cases up to 11, all in Urumqi.

At present, 135 people are under medical observation, according to the regional health authorities of Xinjiang.

MORE FROZEN SHRIMP PRODUCTS TEST POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS

More samples of frozen shrimp imported from Ecuador have tested positive for the novel coronavirus this week as local authorities are stepping up precautions against the potential risk posed by the virus traveling through frozen food.

The Ecuadorian government has held at least four rounds of talks with the Chinese government regarding traces of the virus found in its shipments to China and has promised to implement necessary measures to ensure the safety of exported products, the embassy of Ecuador in China said on its Weibo account on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the Health Commission of Yunnan province said three of the 2,750 samples related to frozen shrimp shipments from Ecuador tested positive for the virus. Tests on frozen shrimp and people who came in contact with them were negative.

On Wednesday, the virus control leading group in Chongqing municipality's Shapingba district said it detected the virus in the outer packaging of Ecuadorian frozen shrimp in a warehouse. The number of samples that tested positive were not specified.

The new findings were revealed as local governments nationwide are intensifying screening and testing of frozen products due to detection of the virus by customs officials in Dalian, Liaoning province, and Xiamen, Fujian province, earlier this month.

The General Administration of Customs said on July 10 that six samples recently taken from the interior of containers and outer packaging of frozen shrimp from Ecuador tested positive for the virus on July 3.

Imports from the three Ecuadorian plants involved were immediately suspended, and all of their products were returned or destroyed, it said.

According to a statement posted by the embassy of Ecuador in China on its Weibo account, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Luis Gallegos said several meetings had been held between Ecuador and China, including one between the director of China's top customs authority and the Ecuadorian minister for production, foreign trade, investment and fisheries on Tuesday.

He said Ecuador has been actively seeking solutions to problematic shipments to China and promised to "perform necessary procedures" to guarantee the safety of its exports to the international market.

Speculations on the ability of the virus to spread through frozen food flared up in China when the recent outbreak in Beijing was reportedly tied to frozen products sold at a major wholesale market. The source of the outbreak is still under investigation.

There is currently no sufficient evidence to support the transmission of the virus through food, and no confirmed cases worldwide have proved to be infected by eating, experts have said.

However, cold food products, including seafood, and their packaging are likely to be contaminated and become a vector for the virus, and then spread to humans, Li Fengqin, head of the microbiology laboratory at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said in late June.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the virus can survive for several months in cool or freezing temperatures.

By latching onto the surface of frozen foods or their packages, the virus can live up to two to three months, he said.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm. In the real world all rests on perseverance. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe