PRESIDENT, EU LEADERS TO MEET VIA VIDEO LINK

President Xi Jinping will meet via video link on Monday with European Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the rotating chair of the regional bloc, the Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday.

The meeting comes amid intensive diplomatic engagement between China and the EU countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic recession due to the impact of the outbreak.

Xi had a video talk with the first two EU leaders in June, when they and Premier Li Keqiang co-chaired the 22nd China-EU leaders' meeting via video link. That was the first talk between Xi and the two new EU leaders, who assumed their posts in December. He also had several telephone talks with Merkel after the COVID-19 outbreak this year.

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded his five-nation European tour on Sept 1, which took him to Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France and Germany.

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, also visited Spain and Greece last week.

Analysts said the upcoming meeting is significant not only for the China-EU relationship, but will also help boost international confidence in post-pandemic recovery amid mounting tensions between China and the United States.

In a speech delivered at the French Institute of International Relations on Aug 30, Wang said despite the difference in social systems, China and the EU are meant to be comprehensive strategic partners, not systemic rivals.

He called for building a partnership between China and the EU in investment, green and digital economies, multilateral affairs and countering the pandemic.

China and the EU both advocate multilateralism and are committed to safeguarding the United Nations-centered international system, the international order underpinned by international law, and the World Trade Organization-centered multilateral trading system, officials said.

During the 8th China-EU High-Level Trade and Economic Dialogue held via video link at the end of July, both sides recognized major progress made in their negotiations on a bilateral Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. They committed to concluding the negotiations and reaching a high-level agreement within the year.

XI URGES TEACHERS TO ENHANCE EXPERTISE

President asks educators to make greater contributions to nurturing next generation

President Xi Jinping encouraged China's teachers on Wednesday to proactively explore new educational methods for the new era and bolster their professional expertise.

In his greetings to teachers nationwide ahead of Teachers' Day, which falls on Thursday, Xi commended the country's educators for making important contributions to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the face of the pandemic, teachers across the nation braved difficulties, fought on the front line of epidemic containment, gave lessons online and safeguarded the physical and mental health of hundreds of millions of students, he said.

In doing so, they dedicated themselves to the largest scale of online teaching in the world, he added.

With 2020 being the final year of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieving the goal of poverty alleviation, Xi praised teachers for their work to help stop poverty from being passed on to the next generation.

Teachers display great professional ethics and a sense of responsibility as they inspire children from rural areas, he said.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, expressed his hope that teachers can bear in mind their original aspiration−the fostering of virtue through education−as well as their mission to cultivate talent for the Party and the State and make greater contributions to nurturing the next generation of builders of socialism.

He urged authorities at various levels to care more about teachers in order to make teaching the most esteemed and admired profession, and to enable the whole of society to respect teachers and give priority to education.

It is also important to coordinate normalized epidemic containment measures with teaching activities to ensure the across-the-board reopening of schools in a safe manner, he said.

US HYPING 'CHINA THREAT' THEORY TO MAINTAIN ITS GLOBAL HEGEMONY

The US Defense Department's 2020 China Military Power Report is exaggerated to say the least, aimed as it is at adding steam to the United States' claim of "China being a hazard to security". Compared with the 2019 report, the over-200-page China Military Power Report for 2020 has a new chapter−on the People's Liberation Army's growing global presence.

The new chapter is, to put it simply, an addition to Washington's old trick of hyping the "China threat" theory to mislead the international community about the modernization of China's military by claiming it can harm the interests of other countries while ignoring, among other things, the PLA's increasing contributions to UN peacekeeping missions and escorting of cargo vessels on the high seas.

The report says: "China has already achieved parity with−or even exceeded−the United States in several military modernization areas, including shipbuilding, land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems." But when talking about the two militaries' power, the Department of Defense's report blurs facts by counting numbers instead of analyzing their comparative strengths, in order to promote its anti-China propaganda.

Using shipbuilding as an example, the report says, "China has the world's largest navy with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships" while "the US Navy has approximately 293 ships as of early 2020", by conveniently omitting the fact that the US has the highest number of carrier strike groups and most advanced warships and submarines in the world.

The US report highlights three special issues−"China's 2019 defense white paper", "PLA's approach toward informatization and intelligentizaiton", and "emerging military campaign concepts". That the US report focuses on China's military modernization, particularly on "informatization and intelligentizaiton" development and application in future wars, implies that China's military has modernized so fast that it has become a threat to other countries.

CHINA-EUROPE RAIL LINKS BOOST PANDEMIC RECOVERY

Italian trader Nicola Sangiovanni has exported European food and beverages to the bustling metropolis of Chongqing for the past few years.

His business could have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, but he has been able to continue it thanks to rail freight services between China and Europe.

"When COVID-19 spread across the world−with flights halted, borders shut and companies facing the prospect of missing contract deadlines−China-Europe freight trains helped us make up for lost time," he said.

During the outbreak, Sangiovanni has sent 10 container loads of wine every two months from the Italian city of Genoa to Chongqing on freight trains traveling to China via the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

These trains provide "fast, low-cost and convenient transportation", he said.

"The China-Europe rail freight link has helped our business return to normal, and I think it could also help boost trade," he said.

Claudia Vernotti, director of ChinaEU, a business-led association in Brussels, the Belgian capital, said rail freight has become the preferred means of transporting goods between Europe and China during the pandemic.

Global air and sea freight capacity fell in the first seven months of the year due to restrictions imposed at airports, ports and national borders to contain the pandemic, she said.

Reduced cargo flights have resulted in the cost of such services rising two to three times higher than last year's rates, while transit times have lengthened, she added.

China-Europe rail freight services, launched in 2011, are considered a significant part of the Belt and Road Initiative aimed at boosting trade between China and other countries and regions.

Rail freight lines now link more than 60 Chinese cities to over 50 destinations in Europe.

According to China State Railway Group, from March to July, the services from Chinese cities to Europe set a number of records.

In July, China-Europe freight trains made 1,232 journeys, the highest monthly figure ever, and a rise of 68 percent year-on-year.

In the first seven months of this year, 6,354 trips were made by these trains, a year-on-year rise of 41 percent. They transported 574,000 standard cargo containers, a rise of 46 percent compared with the same period last year.

Since March 21, when the first batch of medical supplies to combat COVID-19 was sent by rail from Yiwu, Zhejiang province, to Madrid, the Spanish capital, China-Europe freight trains have contributed greatly to the global fight against the virus.

By the end of July, the trains had transported 4.97 million items of medical supplies weighing a total of about 39,000 metric tons, according to official figures.

US HYPING 'CHINA THREAT' THEORY TO MAINTAIN ITS GLOBAL HEGEMONY

The US Defense Department's 2020 China Military Power Report is exaggerated to say the least, aimed as it is at adding steam to the United States' claim of "China being a hazard to security". Compared with the 2019 report, the over-200-page China Military Power Report for 2020 has a new chapter−on the People's Liberation Army's growing global presence.

The new chapter is, to put it simply, an addition to Washington's old trick of hyping the "China threat" theory to mislead the international community about the modernization of China's military by claiming it can harm the interests of other countries while ignoring, among other things, the PLA's increasing contributions to UN peacekeeping missions and escorting of cargo vessels on the high seas.

The report says: "China has already achieved parity with−or even exceeded−the United States in several military modernization areas, including shipbuilding, land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems." But when talking about the two militaries' power, the Department of Defense's report blurs facts by counting numbers instead of analyzing their comparative strengths, in order to promote its anti-China propaganda.

Using shipbuilding as an example, the report says, "China has the world's largest navy with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships" while "the US Navy has approximately 293 ships as of early 2020", by conveniently omitting the fact that the US has the highest number of carrier strike groups and most advanced warships and submarines in the world.

HIGH-TECH MEDICAL ROBOTS DEBUT AT BEIJING FAIR

Medical robots with cutting-edge technology shined at China International Fair for Trade in Services, including robots specialized in imagology, surgery, acupuncture, rehabilitation and health care, which boosted the development of "smart medical system" to a great extent.

According to the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the market size of service robots in China is expected to exceed 3.5 billion yuan ($512 million) by 2021, and the medical robots will witness broad prospects in the future as aging population grows.

LARGEST PRIVATE ROCKET WILL BE LAUNCHED IN '21

China's largest and most powerful private carrier rocket is scheduled to make its maiden flight next year, according to its developer.

The ZQ 2 liquid-propellant, medium-lift rocket is now under development at LandSpace in Beijing, one of the leading private rocket makers in China, and several parts to be used on the rocket have been manufactured and delivered, according to a statement from LandSpace.

By the end of August, two models of engines that will power the rocket had finished several rounds of ignition tests, the company said on Tuesday.

According to the company, the 49.5-meter ZQ 2 will have a diameter of 3.35 meters−the same as those of most of China's Long March-series rockets, and a liftoff weight of 216 metric tons. It will be propelled by LandSpace's TQ-12 methane rocket engine, the first of its kind in China.

Compared with traditional types of rocket engines that can function only once, a methane engine is reusable and more environmentally friendly.

Before LandSpace, only the United States' SpaceX and Blue Origin had begun development and testing of such a machine.

The ZQ 2 will be capable of placing a 4-ton satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit−about 500 kilometers above the Earth−or a 6-ton satellite to a low-Earth orbit with an altitude of 200 km.

The rocket's debut mission will ferry several small satellites or payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit, LandSpace executives have said, noting some domestic and foreign firms have reached out to the company with interest in the vessel.

To fund the ZQ 2 program, LandSpace raised 1.2 billion yuan ($175 million) in its latest round of financing from more than 10 government and private equity funds, achieving the largest-ever fundraising event in China's private space industry.

Within the past 12 months, the company raised a total of 1.8 billion yuan from domestic investors, said Zhang Changwu, founder and CEO of LandSpace.

"We will seize the opportunities offered by the large-scale deployment of satellites and invest more resources to improve our research and development capability on methane-propelled rockets," he said.

Zhang said mass production of the ZQ 2 and its engines will begin in the near future at LandSpace's Huzhou plant in Zhejiang province, the first privately owned carrier rocket factory in China and the largest of its kind in Asia.

The Huzhou facility will be able to produce about 15 ZQ 2 rockets and 200 TQ-12 engines per year starting in 2022, according to Zhang.

PAYLOADS ON CHINA'S RETIRED LUNAR PROBE STILL OPERATING

After more than 2,400 days on the near side of the moon, China's Chang'e 3 lunar mission continues to help scientists unravel the unknown about the Earth's companion in space.

As of Sept. 1, the Chang'e-3 lunar mission has been on the moon for 2,453 Earth days, and some of the scientific payloads carried by the lander are still operating, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

After analyzing the transmitted data, Chinese researchers recently reported finding multilayered young lava flows in the northeast of Mare Imbrium, also called Sea of Rains, where the Chang'e-3 mission made a soft landing in December 2013.

The surface of the Moon features numerous large basins caused by bombardments of asteroids about 3.9 billion years ago. They were filled with dark basalt lava flows from volcanic eruptions. The eruptions produced successive layers of basalt stacked in a vertical sequence, which, scientists believe, harbors the history of the moon.

The lunar penetrating radar on board helps see below the surface.

Researchers from China University of Geosciences, Yangtze University, and Ningbo University of Finance and Economics reported that they ascertained three layers of thin young mare basalts underlying the lunar soil at Chang'e-3's landing site.

In previous studies, the region is thought to be formed by one layer of a thick lava flow.

The researchers calculated the spatial variation and distribution of thickness of each layer and built a 3D stratigraphic model of young mare basalts.

According to the researchers, the young lava flows in the northern Mare Imbrium probably erupted from the same source as that in the southwest.

The research findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

China's Chang'e-3 moon mission delivered the rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, and a stationary lander to the lunar surface on Dec. 14, 2013, marking the first moon landing since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.

It touched down on the northern Mare Imbrium, a region not directly sampled before and far from the U.S. Apollo lunar landing sites.

Yutu traveled a total of 114 meters following a zigzagging route, before coming to a halt due to technical glitches.

The findings based on the data gathered by the mission have been published in leading international scientific journals.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy. - George S. Patton Jr.