CHINA'S HIGH-SPEED RAIL LINKS WINTER OLYMPICS CITIES

The high-speed railway line connecting Beijing and Zhangjiakou, the co-host city of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, went into operation Monday, the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. said.

With 5G signals, wireless charging and intelligent lighting, the smart train G8811 departed from Beijing North Railway Station at around 8:30 am to Zhangjiakou in North China's Hebei province.

The railway is 174 km long, with 10 stations along the line.

With a maximum design speed of 350 kph, it will reduce the travel time between Beijing and Zhangjiakou from over three hours to 47 minutes, facilitating inter-city traffic and crucial for the co-host of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Chongli railway, a branch line of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway, also went into service Monday. It is 53 km long, with a maximum design speed of 250 kph.

Yang Yang, a Winter Olympic champion and chairwoman of the Athletes' Commission of Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, was among passengers on the high-speed train G8811.

Yang said Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway is important to the preparation of the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. "It can improve the efficiency of our work, promote China's winter sports, and boost the ice and snow economy."

Construction of the high-speed railway lasted around four years. The railway underwent test runs earlier this month.

The length of China's railroad lines in service has exceeded 139,000 km, including 35,000 km of high-speed rail, ranking first in the world.

TOP LEGISLATURE CONDEMNS FATAL STABBING OF DOCTOR AT HOSPITAL

China's top legislature and health commission have condemned the fatal stabbing of a doctor at a Beijing hospital by a patient's relative last week.

"Instead of a simple medical dispute, the stabbing was a serious offense. Any harm to medical staff cannot be tolerated," Zhao Ning, head of the National Health Commissions' law and regulation division, said onSaturday.

She made the remark at a news conference after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislative body, voted to pass the country's first fundamental and comprehensive law on basic medical and healthcare on Saturday.

Yuan Jie, an official from the NPC Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission, highlighted the protection for medical staff in the law during the news conference, adding that assaults on medical workers must be condemned by moral standards and punished by the law.

In a bid to deter illegal acts targeting medical staff and institutions, the law stipulates that the personal safety and dignity of medical workers must not be infringed upon and that their legitimate rights are protected by law.

On Tuesday, Yang Wen, who was working in the emergency department at Civil Aviation General Hospital in Beijing, was stabbed by Sun Wenbin, a patient's relative. She died early the next day from serious neck injuries.

The city's prosecutors approved the arrest of Sun, 55, on a charge of intentional homicide on Friday.

Calling for all walks of life to care about and respect medical workers, keep the medical environment in order and establish better relationships between hospitals and patients, the law also bans any organization or individual from threatening or harming the personal safety or dignity of medical staff.

It clarifies that those disturbing the medical environment, threatening or harming medical workers' personal safety and dignity, or illegally obtaining, using or disclosing people's private healthcare information, will be given administrative punishments, such as detentions or fines.

The attack on the doctor sparked concern among political advisers and the Chinese Medical Doctor Association.

REVISED LAW TO DEEPEN CAPITAL MARKET REFORM

China has laid the cornerstone to build a capital market that is more capable of serving the real economy via revisions to the Securities Law, with breakthroughs in deepening market-oriented reforms and intensifying a crackdown on illegal market behavior, experts said.

The revision made systemic amendments to gradually implement the registration-based new share sales system across the whole A-share market, and will take effect on March 1, according to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.

The committee voted to adopt the revised law on Saturday, after the fourth review of the draft revision during a six-day session.

"The revised law made it clear that the registration-based system will entirely replace the approval-based system, and not merely in one or two pilot submarkets," said Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at Wuhan University of Science and Technology.

"This should be the biggest breakthrough of the revised law, and it is a significant milestone in China's capital market reforms," Dong said.

The revision abolishes the system of requiring a committee review of public offerings — in which the securities regulator reviewed public offering applications — and instead authorized stock exchanges to review the applications. The securities regulator will instead be responsible for registration of securities.

It also made information disclosure requirements stricter and streamlined requirements for issuing securities.

Implementing the registration-based system is of great importance because it will drive a slew of market-oriented reforms that are intended to elevate the efficiency of resource allocation, boost the quality of listed firms and remove bottlenecks weighing on market performance over the long run, Dong said.

The revision authorized the State Council, China's Cabinet, to decide the scope and steps of registration-based reform, allowing phase-in reforms and a smooth transition.

"The China Securities Regulatory Commission will fully consider the actual situation of the market, and, especially, coordinate securities issuances, securities registrations and the market capacity to absorb the reforms," said Cheng Hehong, director of the Department of Legal Affairs of the CSRC, the top securities regulator.

The commission is now ramping up efforts to advance registration-based reform on the ChiNext, Shenzhen's innovative enterprise-heavy board, Cheng said on Saturday.

This followed the debut of the sci-tech innovation board, or the STAR Market, in Shanghai this July, about nine months after President Xi Jinping announced that China would launch the board as the test for the registration-based system.

Hong Rong, founder of Shanghai-based investor platform Hongda Education, said it is critical to ensure a phase-in of the registration reform to avoid any bumps in raising funds that could put heavy pressure on market liquidity.

Another major breakthrough in revised law is the stringent crackdown on illegal market behavior, stipulating not only the confiscation of illegal proceeds but harsher administrative punishments.

WESTERN DATA ON UYGURS HAS SERIOUS FLAWS

Claims that the Chinese government is "detaining millions of Uygurs" in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region are being increasingly repeated in the reporting of Western media, but little scrutiny is ever applied, an investigative journalism organization said recently.

On Dec 21, The Grayzone published on its website, thegrayzone.com, a detailed review of media claims that China has detained millions of Uygurs in Xinjiang. That claim goes unquestioned in the West, yet a closer look at the figure and how it was obtained reveals a serious flaw in the data gathering, it said.

The review found the data cited in Western media is based on two highly dubious "studies" from a US-backed organization and a farright researcher "led by God against Beijing".

According to The Grayzone report, the "millions detained" claim was first popularized by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, or CHRD, an organization backed by the US government. It formed this estimate based on interviews with a mere eight people.

In a 2018 report submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, CHRD estimated that "roughly one million... ethnic Uyghurs have been sent to 're-education' detention camps and roughly two million have been forced to attend 'reeducation' programs in Xinjiang".

The CHRD report says those figures are "based on interviews and limited data". From interviews with eight Uygurs from eight Xinjiang villages, the study calculated the population in the "re-education camps" based on the interviewees' villages.

It estimated that "at least 10 percent of villagers are being detained in 're-education detention camps', and 20 percent are being forced to attend day/evening 're-education camps' in the villages or townships".

According to The Grayzone, CHRD applied these estimated figures to all of Xinjiang to arrive at the claim submitted to the UN that 1 million ethnic Uygurs have been detained in "re-education detention camps".

Since the report was released, the US government and many Western major media outlets cited it as an open source reporting to denounce China as a "violator of human rights", ignoring the flaws in the data. In addition, it was misrepresented in Western media as a UN-authored report.

A spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed in a statement to The Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese "camps" was not made by the UN, thegrayzone.com reported in August, 2018.

The second study came from Adrian Zenz, a far-right researcher of China studies who reached the figure of "over 1 million" based on a single report from Istiqlal TV, a Uygur-separatist media organization in Turkey, according to The Grayzone.

The Chinese government has said on many occasions that the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang were established in accordance with the law for combating terrorism and extremism.

"Those who have participated in the courses on the standard Chinese language, laws and vocational skills−as well as the deradicalization programs−have all graduated. They've found jobs, and their quality of life has been improved," said Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, at a news conference earlier this month.

The establishment of the centers is part of the region's measures to root out terrorism and extremism. "Measures against terrorist attacks and extremists taken in Xinjiang are no different from those in many other countries, including the US," the chairman said.

MINISTER LAYS OUT 2020 GROWTH PRIORITIES

China will continue to beef up the domestic market, boost high-level opening-up and ensure high-quality development of trade and investment in 2020, the commerce minister said on Sunday.

Speaking at the ministry's year-end meeting, Commerce Minister Zhong Shan laid out key priorities for further development in the coming year.

He said the country will rev up efforts to "build a strong domestic market, open up to the outside world at a higher level, promote high-quality development of commerce and build the economy into an economic and trade powerhouse".

He said these moves will help contribute to the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects — a target China aims to meet in 2020.

The year 2019 has been full of risks and challenges at home and abroad, but main indicators for the nation's commerce have shown steady and sound development, Zhong said.

In the first 11 months, retail sales of consumer goods totaled 37.3 trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion), up 8 percent year-on-year, the ministry reported.

Consumption, which contributed more than 60 percent of economic growth in the first three quarters, is expected to remain the "primary driver" of such growth, Zhong said at the meeting.

Foreign trade totaled 28.5 trillion yuan between January and November, up 2.4 percent year-on-year, the ministry reported.

China plans to establish an evaluation system for high-quality trade development including indicators, policies, statistics and performance by 2022, aiming for significant improvement in trade structure and efficiency, according to a guideline released in November.

The guideline was unveiled to promote high-quality development of trade with a key focus on forging stable and better-structured trade development.

Wei Jianguo, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said, "In the future, the country is expected to carry out more measures to optimize trade structures, foster new businesses, build a better trade environment and continuously deepen reform and opening-up."

He said the foreign investment law, taking effect on Wednesday, will bring about several changes. For instance, in the upcoming year, foreign investment is expected to flow not only to big-ticket projects but also to small and medium-sized ones, Wei said.

More than 1,000 medium-sized projects — those worth more than $1 billion — are expected to attract foreign capital in the next year, Wei said.

Foreign direct investment this year has steadily increased. In the first 11 months of this year, FDI reached 845.9 billion yuan, up 6 percent year-on-year, according to the ministry.

"The country's business environment is expected to ensure relatively stable foreign direct investment," said Li Yumei, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Uncertainties have hampered the flow of foreign capital into China's high-tech industries, but the impact is still relatively small, Li said.

The country needs to come up with more effective measures to cushion potential impacts, she said.

CHINESE ALZHEIMER'S DRUG HITS THE MARKET

A Chinese drug that is the world's first innovative therapy for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease in 17 years became available domestically on Sunday.

Extracted from brown algae, GV-971 can treat mild to moderate forms of the disease and improve cognition, China's National Medical Products Administration said. It announced approval of the drug on Nov 2.

The drug provides new choices to patients with Alzheimer's, and continued research will be conducted on its long-term effects and safety, the administration said.

Alzheimer's disease, which mostly affects elderly people, is an incurable, irreversible and progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory, thinking ability and the capability to carry out simple tasks.

There are at least 50 million Alzheimer's patients worldwide, including more than 10 million in China. The numbers are expected to increase to 150 million worldwide and 40 million in China by 2050, which will impose great burdens on society.

Zhang Xiaodong, vice-president of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, said the drug is the only Alzheimer's medicine out of a number of drugs developed by pharmaceutical companies around the globe to have survived clinical trials over the past two decades, despite the investment of hundreds of billions of US dollars.

"Worldwide, progress in the research and development of drugs for the disease has been very slow, and the needs of patients are increasingly urgent," he said.

Lyu Songtao, chairman of Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, one of the drug's developers, said the drug will cost about 40,000 yuan ($5,700) for a patient a year.

"We will try to include it in the basic medical insurance program so it will be reimbursable, so the drug will be affordable to most patients," he said.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, and Ocean University of China joined in the research and development of the drug.