XI URGES KEY TASKS FOR YUNNAN

President Xi Jinping underlined on Tuesday the need for Yunnan province to win the battle against absolute poverty and to step up efforts in environmental conservation, urging it to advance supply-side structural reforms to achieve high-quality economic growth.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at a meeting in Yunnan's capital Kunming that was attended by officials of the CPC Yunnan Provincial Committee and the provincial government.

Xi concluded a three-day inspection tour in the province on Tuesday ahead of the upcoming Spring Festival.

At the meeting, Xi urged officials to focus their poverty relief efforts on impoverished areas and implement targeted measures to resolutely win the battle against poverty.

He reminded officials that measures should be taken to prevent those who have shaken off poverty from becoming poor again due to inadequate followup policy support.

The president underscored the importance of environmental conservation and asked officials to uphold the concept that clear waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, to make continued efforts to ensure people enjoy blue skies and clean water and soil.

In the new era, China must stick to a new development vision that features innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared aspects for the benefit of all to push for high-quality economic growth, Xi said.

He also called on the province to step up building the modern economy, improve the systems and mechanisms for developing advanced manufacturing and revitalizing the real economy, upgrade traditional manufacturing, accelerate emerging industries, advance infrastructure construction and enhance agricultural production.

Xi also called on the province to expand opening-up for greater development and speed up connectivity projects as well as cultural and people-to-people exchanges with neighboring countries.

Xi also visited a village of the Wa ethnic group in Tengchong city and learned of the poverty reduction efforts in the area.

When visiting an ecological wetland near Dianchi Lake in Kunming, he stressed the importance of environmental protection of the lake and called for continuous efforts to truly turn lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets.

He inspected market supply conditions ahead of Chinese New Year in Kunming, interacted with locals and extended holiday greetings to all Chinese people at home and abroad.

Xi also visited the former site of National Southwest Associated University, a coalition between Beijing-based Peking University and Tsinghua University, and Tianjin's Nankai University during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and learned about the history of the institution.

BATS LIKELY ORIGIN OF NEW CORONAVIRUS, SAYS STUDY

The new coronavirus in the ongoing outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, is likely to have originated from bats, and is genetically more identical to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, than the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, according to a study published online on Tuesday.

However, the new virus is neither SARS nor MERS, but a relative that belongs to a different class called the betacoronavirus, a single-strand RNA virus that can infect wild animals, livestock and humans. The new virus may have originated from bats like SARS, but there might be more intermediate hosts between bats and humans, according to the study.

The paper was published by the journal of Science China Life Sciences by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Guangzhou Medical University.

The researchers also found that the new virus may share a similar transmission mechanism with that of SARS, which is infecting cells of the respiratory tract. However, the paper suggests the infectiousness of the new virus might be lower than SARS and its structure is easier to break apart due to some of its genetic features.

A Beijing expert in the sector who requested anonymity said the paper's model was based on test examples from the early period of the outbreak, and mutations can occur that may lead to different results.

"The purpose of the paper is not to give a definitive answer on what the new virus is, but rather to offer a direction and basic groundwork for the international scientific community to look deeper into the pathogen," he said.

"It is still too early to say how deadly or contagious the new virus is, and we should not let fear and speculations get in the way of our understanding of the situation."

NATION REMAINS KEY DESTINATION FOR INVESTMENT

China will remain a hot spot for global investment in the long term despite souring global economic conditions, a senior commerce official said on Tuesday.

Qian Keming, vice-minister of commerce, said China will accelerate the pace of negotiations for multilateral and bilateral economic deals with its trade partners in Asia, Europe and Latin America to encourage more companies to invest in China.

Thanks to the country's improved industrial chain and structure, as well as its attractive domestic market, foreign direct investment in the Chinese mainland surged 5.8 percent year-on-year to reach 941.5 billion yuan ($136.5 billion) in 2019, according to data the Ministry of Commerce released on Tuesday.

Qian said China's opening-up efforts have received a positive response throughout the world, and will help it to gain more foreign investment in areas including digital technology, modern services, high-end and smart manufacturing.

Over 40,000 new foreign-funded enterprises were established in the country last year, while the number of foreign-funded projects with investment of at least $100 million reached 834, up 15.8 percent on a year-on-year basis, according to the official data.

In the meantime, the global capital flowing into high-tech industries on the Chinese mainland jumped 25.6 percent year-on-year to 266 billion yuan.

Despite the China-US trade dispute, Zong Changqing, director-general of the ministry's department of foreign investment administration, said foreign investors have great confidence in China as they believe that driven by long-term demand, both China's productivity and consumption power will grow sustainably.

Chinese consumers, led by middle-income earners, are more open to new products, especially digital ones, he noted.

Eager to seize a greater market share, last year China saw year-on-year FDI growth of 51.1 percent from Singapore, 43.1 percent from the Netherlands and 21.7 percent from South Korea, according to the ministry.

PER CAPITA DISPOSABLE INCOME CROSSES 30,000 YUAN MARK IN 10 REGIONS

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed the per capita disposable income last year in 10 province-level administrative regions of China surpassed 30,000 yuan ($4,347.32).

For the first time, China's per capita disposable income exceeded the 30,000 yuan threshold, rising 2,505 yuan from a year earlier, said Fang Xiaodan, director of the household survey department of the NBS.

Shanghai topped the rank with its per capita disposable income standing at 69,442 yuan, followed by Beijing, Zhejiang, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, Liaoning, Shandong and Inner Mongolia.

The per capita disposable incomes of Shanghai and Beijing were remarkably higher than that in other provincial regions, both registering over 67,000 yuan.

Fang pointed out that Central and West China saw faster growth in per capita disposable income last year, with a growth rate of 9.4 and 9.3 percentage points, respectively, 0.7 and 0.6 percentage points higher than that in East China.

At province level, the growth rate of per capita disposable income at or higher than 9 percent were mostly from the Central and West, among them, the growth rate of Sichuan, Anhui, Guizhou and Tibet exceeded 10 percent.

China's per capita disposable income stood at 30,733 yuan ($4,478) last year, up 5.8 percent growth in real term after deducting price factors according to the NBS.

TRAVEL DOCUMENTS OF HK, MACAO CARRY MORE BENEFITS

Over 8 million Hong Kong and Macao residents and overseas Chinese have benefited from the expanded scope of their exit and entry documents during their stay on the mainland since March last year, the National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday.

The administration worked jointly with 14 departments including the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation to expand the services that overseas Chinese can enjoy with their exit and entry documents.

In total, 35 types of services have been streamlined to help Hong Kong and Macao residents and overseas Chinese reduce inconvenience when using such documents.

With their exit and entry documents, they can now take advantage of public employment services, register for social insurance, apply for social security cards, register companies, make medical appointments online and apply for birth certificates for newborns, among other government affairs services.

Further, public services that will allow them to inquire about personal income tax records, manage taxes online, take professional and technical personnel qualification examinations, apply for teacher qualification certification and other services will be implemented soon.

Measures that allow entry and exit documents to buy plane tickets, perform self check-ins at airports, manage telecommunication services, open bank accounts and register for hotels have been almost fully implemented nationwide.

The remaining services are related to internet applications. Tencent, JD.com and Alipay have taken the lead in connecting with the entry-exit identity authentication platform and accept users' registration with valid entry and exit certificates. Online ride-hailing, bike-sharing and online job-hunting platforms have been upgraded to accept such certificates. A service that will allow the opening of online securities trading accounts is still being upgraded.

"The wider applications of exit and entry documents has made it possible for people in Hong Kong and Macao as well as overseas Chinese to enjoy the same convenient, efficient, intelligent and accurate public livelihood services as mainland residents," said Yin Chengji, deputy director of the National Immigration Administration.

Hong Kong and Macao residents and overseas Chinese make 200 million trips to China each year, accounting for 40 percent of the number of Chinese people entering and leaving the country, according to the administration.

The administration has developed an identity authentication platform for entry and exit documents.

YANGTZE RIVER DELTA HONES ROLE AS INNOVATION HOT SPOT

The Yangtze River Delta region has become an important source of technological innovation for the whole country, with a sharp rise in such advances over the past decade, according to a recent report.

The number of patent applications in the region rose from 281,000 in 2008 to nearly 1.2 million in 2017, accounting for more than 35 percent of the national total and higher than any other Chinese region focused on integrated development, said the report.

It was published on Dec 22 by the Fudan Development Institute affiliated with Fudan University and a think tank affiliated with Guangming Daily.

In November, 2018, President Xi Jinping listed the integrated development of the region as a key national strategy. A plan unveiled last month by the central government mapped out how the delta region would be built into an economic powerhouse that will add to the country's high-quality development.

The plan aims to boost vitality in the region, which is about the same size as Germany and encompasses Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. It contributes roughly a quarter of national GDP and accounts for one-third of China's foreign trade and investment.

The report also found that Shanghai, Ningbo and Hangzhou in Zhejiang and Suzhou, Jiangsu, have become the main drivers of the integrated development of scientific and technological innovation, said Zhu Chunkui, a professor with the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, who was a leading researcher for the report.

The number of patents among cross-provincial collaborations led by Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu accounted for more than half of all types of filings nationwide, most of which are in the fields of chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering, he said.

Shanghai plays a leading role in cross-provincial collaborative patents, and as the report pointed out, the city was the main patent holder at the provincial level, accounting for 42 percent of such filings.

Wang Cailiang, executive director and deputy general manager of Shanghai Kindly Medical Instruments Co, which specializes in intracardiac interventional devices, said a raft of new measures have been unveiled in the past year to spur the growth of medical technology innovation in the region.

"For example, the policies allow medical device producers to register in Shanghai and manufacture in other places in the delta region, which helps boost vitality in product innovation and allows enterprises to dig into more potential in the division of labor and a more intensive cooperation network across the region," he said.

LAND-SEA TRADE CORRIDOR BOOSTS WESTERN REGIONS

In early November, a batch of fresh "Musang King" durian fruit still in their hard skins arrived in Chongqing from Malaysia. They sold out immediately.

In the past, due to the extended transportation time, it was not easy for residents of inland China to obtain the perishable fruit.

However, thanks to a land-sea freight route launched in September 2017 that connects western China with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, it now takes just 10 days to transport the fruit from Malaysia to China. The journey is 20 days shorter and about 40 percent cheaper than the traditional ocean route.

Eventually, the land-sea corridor will extend primarily from Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Chongqing to a group of Beibu Gulf ports in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Yangpu Port in Hainan province, connecting to Southeast Asia via the sea. It also will better link China's northwestern inland regions to major ports in the south.

The route comprises a network of railways, roads and air connections, with Chongqing and Chengdu serving as the key logistics hubs.

At present, the trade corridor connects 20 railway stations in 10 cities in China and reaches 84 countries and 200 ports on six continents.

By Dec 6, the ports on Beibu Gulf had seen 2,000 rail journeys since the launch of the rapid transit service that combines rail lines and sea routes.

Transportation has long been a hurdle to the economic development of China's landlocked western provinces, especially in terms of the export and import industries, which used to rely on the Yangtze River as a connection with Shanghai and the outside world.

In a bid to accelerate the opening-up and high-quality development of western China and deepen international economic and trade cooperation, Chongqing started exploring the new trade route several years ago.

The southwestern municipality on the upper reaches of the Yangtze boasts key geographical advantages as a strategic pivot of the development program for the western regions. It is also a connection point for the Belt and Road Initiative and the Yangtze Economic Belt.

The corridor was jointly built by western Chinese provinces and ASEAN members under the framework of the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, signed in 2016.

After two years of experiments, the route was developed into a national strategy in August. The development plan, unveiled by the National Development and Reform Commission, aims to build an economical, efficient, convenient, green and safe land-sea corridor for the western regions.

"Now, as China is entering a new era and the development in the western region is facing a new situation, we need new opening-up policies and strategies," said Fan Yijiang, a senior official with the NDRC's Transportation Research Department.

The land-sea corridor will be completed by 2035, providing better transportation capacity and world-class customs clearance and logistics services, according to the NDRC.