Day: December 31, 2020

(Xinhua)09:55, December 21, 2020

SHANGHAI, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) — As the sky began to clear up, a drone connected to the citys pilot 5G network circled around the Jingtai Building in Hongkou District of Shanghai for a quick screening.

With its built-in infrared scanner, the drone took pictures of the edifices outer walls to detect any possible leakage or damage. Real-time images were transmitted to the technicians computers.

The technicians are tasked with decoding the on-screen messages — dark patches suggest damp interiors. They can tell from the images if the high-rise suffers from water leakage or bulging bricks.

The information obtained during physical examination of the old buildings can all be transmitted to experts far away from the spot via the 5G network. After consultations with experts, digital modeling of the high-rise and renovation plans are made, said Li Yiqing with China Telecoms Shanghai branch.

The international metropolis of Shanghai is groping for futuristic application scenarios using the 5G technology in fields like urban management.

Since the beginning of this year, the local government has teamed up with the Shanghai branch of China Telecom, one of Chinas major telecommunications operators, to pilot the intelligent scanning mechanism using state-of-the-art technologies.

Most of the high-rise residential buildings in the district were constructed more than two decades ago. Such complexes need to be regularly screened to avert safety hazards.

Conventional ways of troubleshooting take time and human labor. Even a skilled worker needs several days to check the building conditions, and it is hard to pinpoint the most pressing faults that need to be fixed, said Xia Liang with the districts urban operations management center.

Whereas, the high-tech combination of unmanned aircraft and 5G network cut the process down to less than two hours.

Real-time monitoring data showed that the 5G network near the Jingtai Building had a downstream rate of about 990 Mbps and an upstream rate of about 100 Mbps. Due to its unique advantages of large bandwidth and short delay, the 5G network opens up a whole new world for urban life, according to Li.

Earlier this year, local authorities and the telecom company identified 21 spots of high-risk hazards in the LanQiao Building.

Detailed evaluation reports and maintenance plans based upon the data have secured a more scientific and efficient renovation for the residential compound.

The scanning technology is expected to be applied in protecting historical sites and architectures through detecting damage or subsidence of buildings as well as identify illegal constructions, according to Xia.

As of October, the municipality had set up more than 30,000 outdoor 5G base stations.

New infrastructure development, including the 5G network, has transformed the passive troubleshooting into proactive early-warnings, safeguarding urbanites lives while helping the city realize fine management, Xia said.

(Xinhua)16:18, December 21, 2020

SHENYANG, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) — Liaoning, a province on Chinas agriculturally-rich Northeast Plain, has spent 82 million yuan (12.5 million U.S. dollars) in supporting scientific and technological innovation in the agricultural sector since 2019, authorities said.

The province has supported the Liaoning Academy of Agricultural Sciences in developing 10 main discipline clusters covering nearly 100 disciplines, according to the provincial department of finance.

The academy has a series of agricultural innovations to its credit including a new corn breed that has set an output record of 20.2 tonnes per hectare when grown in spring in Chinas northeastern region.

The province has also assigned nearly 400 agri-science personnel to work in 25 counties and districts in the areas of scientific and technological innovation, new variety and new technology demonstration, industry-research collaboration and training.

Dozens of county-level agricultural industries such as greenhouse vegetable production in Beizhen City and mushroom farming in Qingyuan Manchu Autonomous County have been formed, the department said in a press release.

With fertile soil and abundant waterways including Songhua and Nenjiang rivers, the Northeast Plain is a major agricultural base of China.

By XiangYi (Peoples Daily)13:05, December 19, 2020

In March this year, Jack Young, then mayor of Baltimore, Maryland in the U.S., urged residents to put down their guns after a shooting incident.

鈥淲e cannot clog up our hospitals or their beds with people who are being shot senselessly because we鈥檙e going to need those beds for people who might be infected with the coronavirus,鈥?Young said.

Since the beginning of this year, the pressing problem of frequent violent crimes in America has been becoming more salient due to multiple factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recession, societal breakdown and increasing political uncertainty.

The problem of violent crimes in America is long-standing, and frequent mass shootings have become a defining feature of the U.S.

At present, the U.S. population accounts for only 5 percent of the world鈥檚 population, yet 31 percent of the world鈥檚 mass shooting incidents in public places have happened in the country. In 2019, 39,052 people died from gun-related violence in the U.S.

The 鈥淐rime in the United States, 2018鈥?report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2019 showed that in 2018, an estimated 1,206,836 violent crimes occurred nationwide.

The number of violent-crime victims aged 12 or older in the United States was 3.3 million in 2018, rising for three consecutive years, according to the 鈥淐riminal Victimization, 2018鈥?report released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2019.

鈥淭his seems to be the age of mass shootings,鈥?commented USA Today.

Due to the severe pandemic, violent crimes in some U.S. cities have risen dramatically. There were more than seven violent shooting incidents in Chicago every day on average in 2019, resulting in 2,255 injuries and 452 deaths, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. This year, 3,619 people had been shot in the city as of Nov. 9.

Citing data from the police department, CNN reported that New York City had recorded about 1,300 shootings since the beginning of this year, up 94 percent over the same period last year.

The Washington Post pointed out that a survey of 67 big-city police departments in the U.S. found an aggregate 28.7 percent increase in slayings and 10.6 percent rise in aggravated assaults in these cities in the first nine months of this year.

The rampant violent crimes in America are inevitably traced to the scourge of gun violence. Strangely enough, the U.S. Congress has rejected more than 100 gun control proposals.

It should be noted that the surge in gun sales across the U.S. and an increase in the number of first-time gun buyers this year are worsening the risk of violent crimes and making it harder to solve the problem.

In the first 10 months of this year, more than 15.4 million guns had been purchased in the U.S., according to statistics from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) in the U.S. The NSSF predicted that gun sales in the country would hit a record high in 2020.

A new survey found that about 110,000 people in California purchased a firearm this year, including 47,000 first-time gun owners, out of their concerns over violence and civil unrest amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said the Los Angeles Times.

Obviously, too many guns have become a serious issue in the U.S. and the scourge of gun violence in America has become a living nightmare.

The U.S. has fallen into a vicious circle. On the one hand, violent crimes caused by guns are on the rise. On the other hand, growing shooting incidents have prompted more U.S. people to buy guns.

Poor governance in the U.S. is obvious to all. CNN pointed out that the fact that the life of American people couldnt be basically guaranteed has greatly increased the crime rate.

The surging crime rate in America is an inevitable result of a combination of the long-standing social conflicts, which have intertwined during the pandemic. Meanwhile, protests against racism and police violence have intensified conflicts between Americans and law enforcement authorities and between local governments and the federal government, leading to more violent crimes.

The surge in violent crimes was entirely caused by policies of the U.S. government, said John Catanzara, head of the Chicago police union, who suggested the government roll out more effective policies to maintain social stability.

No one thing will prevent gun violence; however, Americans should do something to make them safer, said Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, expressing the wishes of the U.S. people.

There is no doubt that if the root causes for violent crimes are not addressed, safety is an impossible luxury for the American people. The U.S. has long been facing complicated structural problems, including severe racial conflicts, deepening social division, interest groups holding each other back, and inadequate governance capability.

Americans have nothing to do but feel pity for themselves or shout out helplessly through one violent incident after another. Moreover, it seems that the next severe violent crime is looming, but no one can predict when and where it will happen.

By ZhanShifu (Peoples Daily)13:16, December 15, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is like a mirror, and what do the American people see when they look at it? According to a survey report from American think tank Pew Research Center, 77 percent of Americans said the country was more divided than before the outbreak.

Analysts in the U.S. pointed out that political polarization and societal breakdown in the country are at their worst since the end of the Civil War and the U.S. is facing “the darkest moment” in its modern political history.

Due to the presidential election and pandemic, political polarization, an inherent structural problem in the U.S., has dramatically magnified its adverse effects, directly causing serious dilemmas in social governance.

The American political system as a “vetocracy”, or “rule by veto”, is obvious. The term coined by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama describes a situation in which veto players “use their power to veto things not in their interest” and block the government from serving the public interest, which will finally lead to political paralysis.

The long-standing polarized conflicts between the Democratic and Republican political parties in the U.S. have become an obstacle in solving many major issues such as job creation, tax law system, medical reform, and immigration policy, causing political disorder and public policy uncertainties and affecting the effectiveness of national governance.

Practice has indicated that the system of checks and balances designed by American pioneers who drew up the constitution of the U.S. upon its founding is not a panacea.

Before leaving office, George Washington, the first president of the U.S., warned of the dangers of partisan divisions, which split politics and tore society apart.

Although more than 200 years have passed, the U.S. has not yet found a countermeasure. Due to the rise of social media, the phenomenon of polarization in U.S. politics has spread from the country’s political circle to the bottom of society, and party conflicts have increasingly been manifested in the divide among people.

A recent article published on a Spanish news website pointed out that in recent years, the dichotomy between winning and losing, friends and foes, and “supporting me” and “opposing me” has always dominated American politics.

Polarization has touched every aspect of American social life, and is affecting family, friendship, love, marriage, communities, workplaces, schools and even the medical field, said Stephen Stathis, a history expert with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress in the U.S.

However, if the problem of societal breakdown remains unresolved, a small leak will sink a great ship as the U.S.

The New York Times published an article titled “Will the Coronavirus Kill What’s Left of Americans’ Faith in Washington?” several months ago. Survey data indicated that the number of Americans who trust the federal government reached one of the lowest points since the measure (anti-coronavirus measure) began and the pandemic appears to be eroding their faith even more, according to the article.

There is an old saying: “The water that keeps a ship afloat can also upset it.” The U.S. failed to pool strong synergy in the fight against the pandemic and more than 290,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, which leads to rising public anger.

Some U.S. politicians viewed the pandemic as an opportunity to seize power and partisan interests, instead of making the health and safety of Americans their primary task, which only aggravated deep-rooted contradictions.

American groups with different political stances resorted to protests to take their frustration out, which even turned into violent conflicts.

The current U.S. is like a gunpowder keg, said an article published on the website of L’Express, a weekly French newspaper.

The pandemic would have been an occasion for Americans to put aside their differences and rally around the flag, but it has served to deepen polarization, said Francis Fukuyama in an article titled “The Wages of American Political Decay”.

The U.S. has fallen into a vicious circle of obvious escalation of partisan conflicts and societal breakdown.

Why is it difficult for the U.S. system to address inadequacies concerning governance? Will the American society’s ability to correct itself suffice to reverse the trend of parochialism, xenophobia and hatred? These questions are worth thinking of.

It will be difficult for the U.S. society to stop worsening societal breakdown without a clear understanding of reality and correct solution to the issue. Obviously, the U.S. is still on the way to finding answers.

(Xinhua)08:16, December 18, 2020

FUZHOU, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — Coronary stents, used to treat coronary heart disease, were once priced at about 13,000 yuan (1,989 U.S. dollars) each in China. Now they are expected to cost patients only 700 yuan on average.

The massive price slash ensued from the initial round of the Chinese governments centralized procurement program for high-value medical consumables in early November.

The program, which aims to bring down the pricing by large-scale purchasing and squeezing out multiple layers of agent middlemen, owes its origin to Sanming, an industrial city with a permanent population of 2.6 million in east Chinas Fujian Province.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has paid close attention to the countrys medical reform progress, and praised Sanmings medical advancement at several key meetings.

At the 33rd meeting of the central leading group for deepening overall reform on March 24, 2017, Xi hailed Sanmings experience in medical reform. He said Sanmings medical reform is in the right direction and has produced obvious results, urging promotion of Sanmings practice nationwide.

CHANGE FOR HEALTH

Chen Ruibang, a resident of Sanming who is a diabetes and high blood pressure patient, spent 9,668 yuan on medication in 2019. But he only had to pay 10 percent of the amount as his medical insurance covered the remaining cost.

Medical reform is a real boon for ordinary people, Chen said.

Back in 2011, the citys social medical insurance scheme for urban employees faced a deficit of 210 million yuan, which was equivalent to about 14.4 percent of the citys fiscal revenue.

The problem called for a fundamental change and the city decided to crack down on markups on drug prices and medical materials.

Policymakers negotiated with drug companies to push prices down. For example, the price of Acarbose tablets, an oral drug that Chen took to control blood sugar levels, plummeted from 100 yuan to 9.21 yuan per box.

The city also streamlined the supply chains to cut down on middlemen profiting. In the citys public hospitals, revenue from drugs accounted for 34 percent of total revenues in 2019, down from 60 percent in 2012, said Zhan Jifu, head of Sanmings leading group for medical reforms.

Reform never stops in Sanming, which has endeavored to build regional medical groups consisting of big hospitals and grassroots clinics.

ECOLOGICAL PROGRESS PIONEER

Xi attaches great importance to ecological conservation and environmental protection. A sound ecological environment is a basic foundation for the sustainable development of humanity and society, he says.

When Xi worked in Fujian Province, he visited Sanming 11 times. During an inspection tour on tourism and ecological protection in Taining County, Sanming, in April 1997, Xi told local people that lush mountains and lucid waters are priceless treasures and demanded good environmental protection.

Deng Wenshan, 65, was proud of a reform he initiated 22 years ago. Back in the 1990s, Deng, then Party chief of Hongtian village in Sanming, was concerned about the shrinking forests due to illegal logging and unattended wildfires.

The forests were collectively owned by all the villagers, therefore no one would consider illegal logging as stealing, or felt obliged to put out wildfires, Deng said.

Hongtian village rolled out an audacious plan in 1998, allocating mountains and forests to individual households. Once villagers got the right to use and profit from the forest, they stopped cutting trees and took to planting. Farmers have signed long-term operating contracts with the government, while ownership of the forest land remains with the government.

Dubbed the forest version of the household responsibility system — a vital rural reform adopted in the late 1970s that allows the distribution of land to farmers so that they manage their own production, the practice was adopted nationwide several years later.

It echoed Xis instruction to develop forestry as an industry while maintaining its ecological functions when he visited Sanmings Shaxian County in 1997.

Evolving policies were rolled out and brought benefits to farmers. Ownership certificates can be used as collateral for loans, and forest owners are encouraged to establish cooperatives for large-scale operations.

The core of Sanming forestry reform lies in the persistent pursuit of turning ecological advantages into better lives for local people through innovative policies and institutions, said Liu Xiaoyan, head of Sanmings forestry bureau.

The total output value of forestry reached 114.6 billion yuan last year in Sanming. This year, the citys forest coverage is expected to exceed 80 percent.

With its bold and persistent reforms in various sectors, Sanmings GDP rose from 17.26 billion yuan in 1996 to 260.16 billion yuan in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 10.8 percent.

As long as we practice our people-centered development philosophy, have the courage to make up our minds and tackle difficulties head-on, we will be able to accomplish many big things, said Yu Hongsheng, mayor of Sanming.

(Xinhua)09:10, December 18, 2020

NANJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — Chinas Dark Matter Particle Explorer, nicknamed Wukong or Monkey King, will extend its mission in space by another year, as it is still functioning well after five years of service.

The satellite was launched in December 2015 as Chinas first dark matter probe satellite and originally designed to serve in space for three years, but its operators decided at the end of 2018 to extend its service life by two years.

Chang Jin, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and chief scientist of the Wukong project, said the satellites latest mission extension was greenlighted by the National Space Science Center under the CAS after an evaluation of its current condition.

Its key performance indicators have barely changed compared to five years ago when it was launched, Chang said, adding that his team is quite confident about the satellite working another year in space.

As of Thursday, Wukong has orbited the earth 27,822 times in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, detecting around 9.36 billion cosmic particles.

Wukong has been helping scientists search for the invisible dark matter by detecting the high-energy electrons and gamma rays in space, which might be generated in the process of annihilation or decay of dark matter. The satellite has also been used for astrophysical studies and researching the origin of cosmic rays.

The satellite has completed its original objectives and contributed to a number of influential academic results, according to the team.

Yuan Qiang, another scientist from the team, said they will focus on analyzing elements including boron, carbon, oxygen and iron in the cosmic rays detected by Wukong, which may shed light on how cosmic rays travel in the Milky Way galaxy.

Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for around 80 percent of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. It has not been observed directly.

(Xinhua)09:26, December 18, 2020

BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — China plans to launch four manned spacecraft as part of its space station construction program in the next two years, said an official with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) Thursday.

Chinas manned space program will be very busy in 2021 and 2022, said Wu Yanhua, vice administrator of the CNSA, at a press conference on Chinas Change-5 lunar mission.

Wu said a total of 11 missions to build Chinas space station are planned for the next two years, including the construction of the core module that is scheduled to be launched in the first half of next year, two lab capsules, as well as four manned craft and four cargo craft.

A large number of in-orbit scientific experiments will then be carried out on Chinas space station, he added.

In October, the China Manned Space Agency announced that the countrys manned space program had entered the mission preparation stage with the selection of a new group of 18 reserve astronauts.

(Xinhua)10:50, December 18, 2020

HONG KONG, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) research team, which developed one of the key systems for Chinas first lunar sample return mission, has done more than 1,000 times of simulation to help complete the sampling, the team leader said on Thursday.

The return capsule of Change-5 probe touched down on Earth early Thursday, bringing back Chinas first samples collected from the moon.

Satisfied, excited, happy! Yung Kai-leung, chair professor of Precision Engineering and associate head of Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering of PolyU, who led the research team, told the media that he stayed up until 3:00 a.m. local time on Thursday to witness the return.

Change-5 probe adopts two methods of moon surface sampling, one uses a robotic arm for multiple-point surface sample collections, and the other is to drill underground.

The PolyU-developed system, the Surface Sampling and Packing System, was developed in collaboration with the China Academy of Space Technology. The PolyU team was tasked in 2011 to develop the system for lunar surface sampling, packaging and sealing.

Consisting of two samplers for collecting loose and sticky forms of lunar regolith, two near-field cameras, as well as a packaging and sealing system, the Surface Sampling and Packing System has more than 400 components constructed in different materials which make the instruments light in weight but at the same time durable and strong enough to withstand the harsh space environment.

Yung said the process of developing the surface sampling and packing system was extremely difficult because deep space exploration was full of uncertainties.

There was a 1:1 model of Change-5 lander-ascender vehicle in the teams laboratory, where, under Yungs leadership, the team has done more than 1,000 simulations.

Yung said the PolyUs research team was honored to fulfil the task of developing this key device. He said the country has trust in Hong Kong, so it has given us such an important task.

I will review my experience in surface sampling and packing system, submit more proposals to the country, and strive to continue to play a role in the national deep space exploration program, he said.