Again with the breakthroughs!
Gen Z Chinese athletes are a new breed. Zheng Qinwen, the 21-year-old tennis gold medallist, said in her interview that she welcomed the title “Queen Wen.” “This may not align with Chinese culture of humility, but I feel so very proud now. Call me Queen Wen, because I honor the name”.
The 1951 PRC Labour Law set the retirement age at 50 for women and 60 for men, when life expectancy was 43 years—a reasonable policy then. However, by 2023, China’s average life expectancy had risen to 77 years. Given this increase, it should be updated to align retirement policies with current realities.
A Guangdong company has banned anyone born in the year of the dog from applying for a job fearing it would bring bad luck to the boss. Sanxing Transportation posted a job description for a clerk’s role with a monthly salary of 3,000-4,000 yuan but an employee told Hubei Television that they wouldn’t consider any applicant born in the year of the dog, no matter how qualified, because the company head was a “dragon” and “dragons and dogs do not get along well”.
80% of the sand used in China’s construction industry is manufactured: solution to a crisis?. Sand has been used in buildings for at least 60,000 years but now, 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel – stones larger than sand – is extracted for construction every year, enough to build a wall 27 meters (88 feet) wide and 27 meters high around the planet.
Two small town boys got into the Tsinghua and Peking University, the first of their townsmen to make it to a major university. For a thousand years townships have been embarrassing successful scholars this way!
When a scholar rides in a high carriage drawn by four horses, flag-bearers running ahead with a mounted escort bringing up the rear, people gather on both sides of the road to watch and sigh.
Ordinary men and foolish women rush forward in excitement and humbly prostrate themselves in the dust stirred up by his carriage. This is a scholar’s joy. This is when his ambition is fulfilled. Ouyang Xiu, 1044 AD.
When www.google.cn launched in 2006, the iPhone did not exist, nor Android-based smartphones. Google was one-fifth as large and valuable as it is today, and the Chinese internet was a backwater of knockoff products devoid of innovation. Google’s Chinese search engine represented the most controversial experiment to date in internet diplomacy. To get into China, the young company that had defined itself by the motto “Don’t be evil” agreed to censor the search results shown to Chinese users.
Polluters held liable to restore environment. Restorative justice: China has adopted a restorative justice approach to handling environmental pollution cases as part of efforts to enhance its ecological governance system, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said on Monday. In the first half of this year, 1,597 individuals were prosecuted in 668 cases for environmental pollution offenses, according to the top procuratorate. It said that environmental pollution crimes present a mix of old and new challenges, requiring comprehensive strategies and intensified governance efforts. In February, the top procuratorate launched a special nationwide operation focused on addressing livelihood issues, including the protection of the environment and natural resources, which will run until December.
China’s FM: the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has long colluded with anti-China forces, including Hong Kong rioter Jimmy Lai. In 2020, the NED set
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up multiple projects related to Hong Kong in its funding list, totalling more than $310,000, to provide support for the Hong Kong rioters. In 2023, the NED collaborated with the British NGO “Hong Kong Watch” and Amnesty International, as well as anti-China politicians in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, to nominate Jimmy Lai for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.
“That has scary implications. Remember, most of Hemingway’s stories in Men Without Women are about violence. They feature gangsters, bullfighters, and wounded soldiers. The most famous story is called simply “The Killers”. It may be that the coming generation of Asian men without women will find harmless outlets for their inevitable frustrations, like team sports or video games. But I doubt it. Either this bachelor generation will be a source of domestic instability, whether Brazilian-style crime or Arab-style revolution—or, as happened in Europe, they and their testosterone will be exported. There’s already enough shrill nationalism in Asia as it is. Don’t be surprised if, in the next generation, it takes the form of macho militarism and even imperialism. Lock up your daughters.”
Once upon a time, such paranoia would have earned you free therapy or a basket-weaving holiday. Nowadays it gets you a TV series. Funny old world.
Xinjiang textile exports increased to record levels despite US legislation banning imports over forced labor risks in the region which produces a fifth of the world’s cotton.
Nine point plan for a greener, cleaner electricity system by 2027:
Power system stability guaranteed.
Large-scale and high-proportion new energy external transmission breakthroughs.
High-quality development of distribution network.
Construction of intelligent dispatching system.
Improvement of new-energy system-friendly performance
Upgrade to a new generation of coal power.
Optimize power system regulation capacity.
Expand electric vehicle charging facility network.
Enhance demand-side synergy capacity
Action Plan for Low-Carbon Transformation and Construction of Coal Power Generation (2024 – 2027). By 2027, the CO2/kWh of related projects will be reduced by 50% compared to the average in 2023, approaching the carbon emission level of natural gas power generation units. Transformation Methods:
Biomass Co-Firing. Utilize biomass resources such as agricultural and forestry wastes, psammophytes, and energy plants.
Green Ammonia Co-Firing. Utilize surplus electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power to produce green hydrogen through electrolysis of water and synthesize green ammonia, and implement the co-firing of green ammonia in coal power units to replace part of the coal.
Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage. Adopt technologies such as chemical methods, adsorption methods, and membrane methods to separate and capture carbon dioxide in the flue gas of coal boilers, and realize the regeneration and purification and compression of carbon dioxide through methods such as pressure and temperature adjustment. Promote and apply geological utilization technologies such as efficient carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery and chemical utilization technologies such as hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to methanol. Implement carbon dioxide geological storage based on local conditions.
Accelerating the Comprehensive Green Transformation of Economic and Social Development (State Council) positive progress will have been made in the green transformation of key fields:
By 2030
the green production mode and lifestyle will have basically taken shape,
the synergy capacity of pollution reduction and carbon reduction will be significantly enhanced,
the efficiency of the main resource utilization will be further improved,
the policy and standard system supporting green development will be further improved, and
remarkable results will have been achieved in the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development.
By 2035
the economic system of green, low-carbon and circular development will be basically established,
the green production mode and lifestyle will be widely formed,
remarkable progress will have been made in the synergy of pollution reduction and carbon reduction,
the main resource utilization efficiency will reach the international advanced level,
economic and social development will have fully entered the green and low-carbon track,
carbon emissions will have steadily decreased after peaking, and
the goal of a Beautiful China will have been basically achieved.
