CLOSURE OF US CONSULATE NECESSARY ACT

Ministry urges Washington to correct its mistakes, get relations back on track.

The closure and takeover of the United States' consulate in Chengdu is China's legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable US act of shutting down and breaking into the Chinese consulate general in Houston, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday.

As required by China, the US consulate in Chengdu was closed on Monday morning and Chinese authorities then entered and took over the premises, the ministry said in an online statement.

The act conforms with international law and the basic norms of international relations, Wang said at a daily news briefing.

He said that Washington bears full responsibility for the current situation between China and the US.

"We again urge the US to immediately correct its mistakes and create necessary conditions to bring bilateral relations back to normal," he added.

In an earlier statement, Wang noted that China deplores and firmly opposes the US move to forcibly enter China's consulate in Houston and has lodged solemn representations.

The Chinese consulate in Houston is China's diplomatic and consular premises and State property, he said, adding that according to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the China-US Consular Convention, the US should not infringe upon the premises of the consulate in any way.

Amid worsening China-US relations, lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, accused US authorities of misleading the Canadian court overseeing her extradition hearing, referring to new court filings released on Thursday.

"It is necessary for the Canadian government to explain to the public the defects in the evidence provided by the US. … We hear that the US is obstructing Canada from doing so," Wang said.

Meng's case is a political incident cooked up by the US aiming to suppress Chinese high-tech enterprises including Huawei, he said.

He noted that the longer Meng's case drags on, the greater it will harm China-Canada relations, urging Ottawa to clearly see Washington's political intentions and remove obstacles from its relationship with Beijing.

'CHINA BOOST' DRIVES 5G USAGE

Buoyed by higher-than-expected demand in China, global 5G subscriptions are set to reach 190 million by the end of this year, a new industry report said.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the rollout of 5G networks and slowed down 5G subscription growth in some markets, the fallouts were outweighed by other markets including China where 5G deployment is accelerating, according to the mobility report from Swedish telecom equipment giant Ericsson.

Nearly 89 percent of Chinese consumers who participated in the survey believe that 5G will play a larger role in the future, while 59 percent were willing to invest in 5G-related products and services, the report said.

Compared to the global average, Chinese consumers are more enthusiastic about new technologies. For instance, 79 percent of Chinese consumers said they are eager to embrace autonomous services, such as unmanned vending machines, automatic delivery vehicles and autonomous driving, compared with the global average of 55 percent.

With more time spent online, 80 percent of virtual reality users in China believe that the virtual economy is likely to see bigger potential in the future. The proportion is also higher than the global average of 71 percent, said the report which tracked responses from more than 11,000 consumers around the world.

Ericsson China President Zhao Juntao said Chinese consumers, businesses and government officials are more aware of 5G technologies compared with their counterparts in other countries. They also showed deeper commitment to the superfast wireless technology.

As an important means to revive economic growth, 5G has also been given high priority in China after the COVID-19 outbreak was brought under better control in the nation, Zhao said.

According to the report, as of June, there have been more than 75 5G commercial launches across the world. Initially, 5G networks have mainly been deployed in larger cities, with the most extensive coverage build-out in countries including the United States, China, South Korea and Switzerland.

Chinese telecom carriers are scheduled to start building standalone 5G networks in large scale this year after 3GPP, a global organization supervising the international standards on 5G technologies, finally ratified R16, or released 16 5G standards, earlier this month.

Zhao said: "The finalization of R16 is a milestone for the global telecom industry. It indicates that some technological obstacles in standalone 5G networks have been resolved, which will further accelerate the 5G deployment process."

There are two 5Gs, and that is by design. The architecture which purges the network of all radio and communications components and methods from the past while maintaining compatibility with older devices is called stand-alone 5G networks.

The other is non-stand-alone 5G networks which relies on existing 4G infrastructure to operate some functions.

CHINA TO USHER IN DIGITAL TV ERA

With China's terrestrial digital television network fully in place, wireless analog TV will be a thing of the past by the end of this year in the country, according to the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA).

China will usher in the era of digital TV, marking a major progress in the country's basic public broadcasting services, the NRTA said.

Cable TV and direct-broadcasting satellite services have covered 210 million and 130 million households respectively, and the country boasts more than 5,000 TV stations with over 10,000 digital TV transmitters, according to the NRTA.

The NRTA vowed more efforts to ensure areas with extreme poverty have access to radio and TV signals.

MEASURES COUNTER IMPACT OF PANDEMIC

The State Council has adopted a package of measures to facilitate investment and widen market access to improve the business environment and help counter the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key policies include the removal of unreasonable market access barriers in the construction, education, healthcare and sports sectors, improving the efficiency of customs clearance and encouraging the growth of new business models.

The 20 measures, unveiled in a guideline released by the General Office of the State Council on July 21, are the central government's latest effort to slash corporate burdens and energize market players after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the economy to contract by 1.6 percent in the first half of the year.

The office pledged to continue with prudent and accommodating oversight of new business models, including measures to phase out unreasonable administrative policies.

To better facilitate investment, the government highlighted the need to cut licensing red tape to expedite the approval of projects, including those in the construction sector, and to enable easier production and sale of industrial products, including automobiles and secondhand vehicles.

Sellers of secondhand vehicles will receive a boost as the authorities are set to abolish restrictions on the location of registration and simplify registration procedures for purchasers.

China added about 20,000 new businesses a day in the first half of the year despite the impact of the pandemic, Yang Hongcan, head of the State Administration of Market Regulation's Business Registration Bureau, told a news briefing on Wednesday.

Yang said one-stop online services for starting a business will be offered across the country by the end of this year, and the approval period will be shortened to a maximum of four days.

The application of electronic business certificates and seals will be further promoted, and restrictions on the business venues of smaller businesses and self-employed individuals will be reduced, he said.

The guideline includes specific measures to scale up aid for exporters and importers, many of whom are reeling from the downturn in international trade caused by the pandemic, with the country's foreign trade down by 3.2 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year.

The government will expand one-stop services in international trade to logistics at ports and trading services and reduce barriers to investment by foreign trading businesses and their operations.

RV SALES BOOM IN CHINA AS SAFE TRAVEL ALTERNATIVE

Sales and rentals of recreational vehicles witnessed a boom in China during the post-pandemic period, as consumers look for a safer travel alternative.

According to Qichacha, a major enterprise credit investigation agency in China, there were 1,274 newly-established RV companies nationwide in the first half of this year, up 17 percent from a year earlier. The number hit 849 from March to June, with an increase of 36.3 percent year-on-year.

RAILWAY FREIGHT VOLUME REFLECTS CHINA'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY

The railway freight volume reflects China's economic recovery with a number of indicators setting new records, Sina Finance reported on Tuesday.

Despite challenges and great pressure, China's railway freight has continued to inject strong momentum into the country's epidemic prevention and control as well as economic and social development.

In the first half of this year, the country's railways loaded 152,600 vehicles per day, up 3.4 percent over the same period last year.

The number of loaded and unloaded vehicles in one single day respectively reached 170,867 and 183,971, both setting new historical records.

The cargo delivery volume, which is known as a barometer of macroeconomic operations, cumulatively moved a total of 1.69 billion tons, an increase of 3.6 percent year-on-year.

The average daily cargo delivery volume in June exceeded 10 million tons, setting a new high record for the monthly average of daily cargo delivery volume this year.

The steady recovery in railway freight volume is related to the resumption of work and production of enterprises. Rail freight is an important barometer of the economy, and the increase in volume indicates that China's economy is picking up, said Zhang Xiaodong, vice-president of the China Society of Logistics.

BANNING CHINESE APPS BAD FOR INDIA'S TRADE

The Indian government on Friday banned 47 more Chinese apps, after 59 China-based apps were banned in late June. The Indian media reported that the 47 banned Chinese apps were "operating as clones" of the earlier banned apps and the list will be released soon.

The latest move may further intensify tensions between China and India, as bilateral relations are already frayed after the border clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15.

While the two countries were busy discussing military de-escalation along the border since late June, the Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, WeChat and UC Browser, removed Chinese companies from India's highway projects and related joint ventures, stopped the import of Chinese electrical equipment, and tightened inspection on all imports from China.

Yet on June 19, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an all-party meeting that "neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our posts captured", proving that Indian troops had crossed the Line of Actual Control leading to the border clash. So, there is no reason for the Indian government to take the anti-China measures that have harmed not only bilateral relations but also the interests of the people in both countries.

China has been exporting power generation and transmission equipment to India for years. In fact, Indian Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh said at a meeting with energy officials early this month: "China accounted for 210 billion rupees ($2.8 billion) of the total 710 billion rupees of equipment for non-renewable power projects imported in the year ended March 2019."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti