XI: LEVERAGE HUGE DOMESTIC MARKET

President Xi Jinping called on Tuesday for greater strides in reform and opening-up, including in science and technology, while fully leveraging the strength of the nation's huge domestic market in the face of rising protectionism, a sluggish global economy and a weakening international market.

In a key speech delivered at a symposium with corporate leaders in Beijing, Xi underlined the importance of making every effort to protect market players and stimulate their vitality as the COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard the domestic and global economy.

Economic globalization remains the historical trend, with division of labor and win-win cooperation among countries being the long-term tendency, and the country must pick the right side of history, said Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

China must focus its strength on its own affairs and work toward a new model of development in which the domestic economic network takes the primary role with the domestic and international economic networks complementing each other, he said.

Xi ruled out the possibility that China would close its doors during the process, saying that the country will instead fully unleash the potential of its domestic demand, enable better connectivity between the domestic and international markets and better employ the two markets and resources to attain more vigorous and sustainable development.

The country must give priority to innovation in science and technology, accelerate research of key technologies and establish new advantages in future development, he added.

During the symposium, Xi heard opinions from top executives from seven businesses, including Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co, Sinochem Group, Microsoft and Panasonic Corp.

He noted that China's epidemic containment has secured major strategic outcomes and its economic growth is stabilizing with positive momentum.

The country has led the global community in containing the pandemic and restoring economic recovery.

"The situation is better than expected, and we must shore up confidence, face difficulties head on and try to recover the losses from the pandemic," he said.

China has become the world's first major economy that has shown robust recovery from the impact of the pandemic, with its GDP expanding 3.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, reversing a 6.8 percent decline in the first quarter.

Xi expressed his appreciation for the contributions to the country's epidemic containment and socioeconomic growth from businesses of various forms of ownership, including private and foreign businesses.

With many market players facing unprecedented pressure, Xi urged better implementation of aid packages for businesses, with steps to enforce a more proactive fiscal policy and more prudent and flexible monetary policy to ensure macro policies are more targeted and effective.

China will continue with measures to cut taxes, fees, rents and interest rates and ensure its various aid measures can be channeled directly to the grassroots and benefit market players, he said.

He pledged stronger financial support to market players, with efforts to develop inclusive finance and support exporters to sell readily marketable products to the domestic market.

BEIJING WILL REACT IF WASHINGTON REQUEST TO CLOSE HOUSTON CONSULATE NOT REVOKED

Beijing will take just and necessary reactions if Washington does not immediately revoke its wrong decision of asking China to close its consulate in Houston, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday, calling the US move a unilateral political provocation against China.

PROGRESS IN VACCINES FOR CORONAVIRUS 'PROMISING'

The phase-two clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine candidate created by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Chinese biotech company CanSino Biologics has found that it is safe and can induce an immune response, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday.

Also, on Monday, The Lancet published the results of phase-one and phase-two clinical trials of a similar adenovirus vectored vaccine developed by scientists at Oxford University and biotech company AstraZeneca. That vaccine also demonstrated success in safety and potency against COVID-19.

Experts have called these results "promising". However, pressing questions remain, such as the longevity of its protection, the appropriate dosage to trigger a strong immune response and whether there are host-specific differences such as age, sex or ethnicity. These questions will be probed in larger scale phase-three trials.

An adenovirus vectored vaccine works by using a weakened common cold virus to introduce genetic material from the novel coronavirus into the human body. The idea is to train the body to produce antibodies that recognize the coronavirus spike protein and fight it off.

In the phase-two trial of the Chinese vaccine, 508 people took part, 253 of them receiving a high dose of the vaccine, 129 a low dose and 126 a placebo.

Ninety-five percent of participants in the high dose group and 91 percent in the low dose group had either T-cell or antibody immune responses 28 days after receiving the vaccine. T-cells can directly target and kill invading pathogens, making them a key part of the human immune response.

The authors emphasized, however, that no participants were exposed to the novel coronavirus after vaccination, so it is still too early to say whether the vaccine candidate can effectively protect against COVID-19 infection.

As for adverse reactions, fever, fatigue and injection-site pain were some of the noted side effects of the Chinese vaccine, though most of these reactions were mild or moderate.

Another caveat was that with the vector for the vaccine being a common cold virus, people may have preexisting immunity that kills the viral carrier before the vaccine can take effect, which could partially hamper the immune responses. Compared with younger people, older participants generally had significantly lower immune responses, the study found.

Chen Wei, who spearheaded work on the vaccine, said in a news release that elderly people might possibly require an additional dose to induce a stronger immune response, but further research would be needed to evaluate that approach.

CanSino, the developer of the vaccine, is in talks on launching phase-three trials in several foreign countries, Qiu Dongxu, executive director and co-founder of CanSino, said at a conference in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, on Saturday.

An accompanying editorial in The Lancet on the two latest vaccine studies called the results of the trials from China and the United Kingdom "broadly similar and promising".

TRADE WINDS BLOWING FAVORABLY FOR CHINA

Global capital, talent, services and manufacturing businesses will continue to move eastward, especially to China, in the post-COVID-19 era, though the world will still have to deal with uncertainties such as protectionism and unilateralism, experts said on Tuesday.

They made the remarks as China saw its foreign trade and ability to attract foreign direct investment rebound during the second quarter of this year, indicating the country's early economic recovery, complete industrial chain, consumption potential and fast-growing digital economy have helped put its business growth on a firmer footing despite the global COVID-19 pandemic.

China is the world's largest consumer market, with 400 million middle-income people and a large number of rural residents with strong purchasing power, who are increasingly pursuing better life and services, said Wei Jianguo, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

He said this explains why multinationals have not withdrawn from the country. Instead, many of them, including BASF, BMW, Nestle and Coca-Cola, have increased investment in China as they believe that investing closest to the major consumer base is the cheapest and most efficient way to compete with other established rivals in this market.

Thanks to global investors' rising confidence, China saw FDI rise 8.4 percent on a yearly basis in the second quarter of the year. In June, FDI inflows expanded 7.1 percent year-on-year to 117 billion yuan ($16.73 billion), the Ministry of Commerce said.

Apart from the involved countries' efforts to seal the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership within this year, Wei said the European Union is capable of coping with the pressure created by the United States and signing a high-level bilateral investment agreement with China before the end of this year. It will bring abundant benefit to both sides and the global economy, he said.

"This is an important step in integrating our regional supply chain for TBHP, which is currently imported," said Johan Landfors, president of technology solutions at Nouryon. "Demand for TBHP and TBA continues to rise in Asia, and our new facility will ensure that we can meet that demand for years to come."

He said the new facility represents a significant investment for the firm to build its presence in fast-growing markets. It also underlines its focus on working with local partners.

NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS' GROUP RESIGNATIONS UNDER PROBE

The State Council, China's Cabinet, has sent an investigative team with other government agencies to look into the recent resignation of over 90 nuclear security scientists at an institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the academy said on Tuesday.

The team consists of officials from the State Council's general office, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the CAS and other departments. It will head to Hefei, Anhui province, to thoroughly investigate the situation, the academy said.

The recent resignation of over 90 nuclear security scientists at the academy's Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology has ignited public speculation on institutional bureaucracy, employee poaching and inadequate financial support for young scientific talent.

The institute recently told China Daily that the resignation was due to personal reasons and was completely voluntary. Most of them have gone to work at private firms that are investing in products related to nuclear safety technologies, it said, adding that previous media reports have blown the issue out of proportion and that the findings of the investigation would be published in due time.

CAS said in a statement on Monday that it was aware of the group resignation, and a separate investigation team led by the academy's secretary general Wang Keqiang had arrived in Hefei on Monday. INEST is under the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Given the strategic importance and sensitivity of the institute, the investigation quickly became the most searched item on Chinese search engine Baidu on Monday. On Tuesday, Sina Weibo, China's micro-blogging platform, recorded over 180 million reads for the hashtag on the topic.

INEST was established in September 2011 as a research facility dedicated to advanced nuclear energy and safety technology, according to its website. It also acts as an independent nuclear safety assessment agency with goals of promoting the safe and sustainable development of nuclear science and technology.

INTERNET DATA SERVICES CONTINUE GROWTH PATH

China's internet data services, including data center and cloud computing businesses, realized 11.62 billion yuan ($1.67 billion) in revenue in 2019, an increase of 25.6 percent from a year earlier, People's Daily reported on Wednesday, citing a report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

The figure came from internet data services showing new infrastructure construction is on a fast track, and big data has become a new driving force in China's high-quality economic development, People's Daily said.

On July 3, Tencent's cloud computing data center started running in Qingyuan, Guangdong province with more than 1 million servers to carry out digital technologies including cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and the Internet of Things.

The digital economy brings changes in production factors, as data is becoming a new production factor and computing power is becoming a new productive force, said Tong Fuyao, senior vice-president of Lenovo.

China has 74,000 data centers in 2019, accounting for 23 percent of the global total. As telecommuting and remote work were popularized this year, the revenue of internet data service is expected to keep growing.

Various industries are embracing digital transformation, as shown by solving crop problems via app to improve agricultural production efficiency and inspecting product quality with smart equipment.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success. - Mark Cuban