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Wednesday July 11, 2018

At a Glance

CHINA and Germany on Monday agreed to unequivo-cally oppose protectionism and safeguard a free trade system based on multilateral rules to promote strong, sus-tainable and balanced global economic growth.

Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel co-chaired the fifth round of intergovernmental consultations and made the announcement in Berlin.

Li arrived in Berlin on Sun day, starting a three-day offi-cial visit to Germany.

Both sides agreed to deepen cooperation in finance and economy, make full use of high-level financial dialogue and other mechanisms, strengthen communication in macroeconomic policy and build financing platforms concerning bilateral and third-party markets.

While Germany appreciates China’s further measures to

open its financial market, China supports the construc-tion of a Frankfurt financial center and the offshore market of renminbi.

The two countries agreed to promote bilateral coopera-tion in economy, trade and investment, jointly safeguard free trade and an international market based on fair and recognized rules and relax market access.

China is willing to discuss with the German side to jointly explore the third-party market, and Germany is willing to give full play to its advantages to work with China in Industry 4.0.

China invites Germany to attend the first China International Import Expo and welcomes Germany to expand its investment in China. Beijing also encourages German companies to invest and set up factories in China’s central and western regions.

The two sides noted that they should go with the trend of the times, give full play to their industrial comple-mentarities, and strengthen cooperation in emerging industries such as digitization, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and new energy vehicles.

They agreed to strengthen cooperation on scientific and technological innovation as well as cooperation on agri-culture by fully tapping the potential of digitization.

Moreover, the two coun-tries pledged to make joint contributions for tackling global challenges by stepping up cooperation in fields such as environmental governance, energy saving, biodiversity conservation and dealing with climate change.

The two countries also agreed to expand people-to-people exchanges and deal with the issues concern-

ing the aging population.This round of intergovern-

mental consultations is the first of its kind since the two countries’ new cabinets took office in March, said the pre-mier, adding that it is of great importance to promote and make plans for the all-round cooperation between China and Germany.

Noting that at this year’s annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia, President Xi Jinping gave a firm signal that China will expand its opening to the outside world, Li said China would like to continue to share with Germany the enormous dividends brought by its new round of opening up.

Under the current interna-tional situation, said Merkel, Germany is ready to work with China to strengthen openness and cooperation and send the world a firm signal that both sides will continuously

safeguard multilateralism and facilitate international cooperation.

Germany opposes trade wars and advocates free trade based on rules, stressed Merkel.

She also noted that China and Germany will sign a memorandum of understand-ing on the cooperation of auto-pilot, which is a milestone for the two sides’ cooperation in automobile industry.

After the consultations, Li and Merkel jointly witnessed the signing of a series of bilat-eral cooperation documents in areas such as agriculture, edu-cation, health care, chemical industry, telecommunication, automobile industry as well as autopilot.

Also on Monday, Li and Merkel met the press and introduced the achievements of their intergovernmental consultations. (Xinhua)

China, Germany agree to oppose protectionism

THE government of Liaoning Province is considering policies to relieve the fi nancial burdens of couples who have had a second child. The policies are designed to encourage births and thereby help overcome China’s major demographic challenges — aging and a dwin-dling workforce.

The provincial government said it will help families who have chosen to give birth by providing benefi ts in taxes, education, social security and housing. It will also explore other policies to ease the daily burden of raising children, it said in a guideline released last week.

Other steps will be taken to encourage more couples to have a second child, including pro-viding longer maternity leaves and encouraging employers to

allow fl exible work hours for pregnant women and nursing mothers, the guideline said.

Details are still being stud-ied, according to the Liaoning Development and Reform Commission.

The guideline was released as the workforce has dwindled in the province and the average age has risen over the past few years. Those factors are having negative effects on social and economic development, the government said.

With China’s adoption of the universal second-child policy at the beginning of 2016, the provincial government has set a target of steady population growth from around 44 million in 2015 to 45 million by 2030, according to the commission. That would represent a signifi -cant reversal: The population of

the province has been declining since 2014.

“To achieve the growth target, the government will try every means to encourage births, so society can shift its concept as quickly as possible from one child to two,” the commission said.

The government will also intensify training of local talent and import more from other areas to improve the quantity and quality of the workforce, it said.

The number of people aged 60 or above in Liaoning province reached 9.6 million at the end of last year, accounting for more than 22.6 percent of its popula-tion — far above the national average of 17.3 percent, accord-ing to a report by the Liaoning Working Committee on Aging.

(China Daily)

Liaoning encourages couples to have more kids

MAJOR public medical insti-tutions in Beijing will take measures to improve foreign language services in hospitals, the Beijing Daily reported yes-terday.

Medical services, includ-ing guidance, consultation and registration, and all department signs must have translations to help foreign-ers see doctors, according to the Beijing Municipal Com-mission of Health and Family Planning on Monday.

In addition, the capital’s emergency calls will also be able to transfer to a foreign lan-guage service. When foreign-ers dial emergency numbers 120 or 999, emergency cen-ters will immediately access another line for translation.

The 999 Emergency Center has cooperated with Beijing Language and Culture Uni-versity on training foreign language telephone opera-tors, and established a mul-tilingual translation team to transfer calls.

The health commission plans to create a medical foreign-language speaking talent pool, and to strengthen language training with univer-sities and institutions.

The commission has launched Japanese, French and IELTS training programs, as well as online classes.

As an international metrop-olis, Beijing received nearly 1.2 million inbound tourists in the first four months of the year.

(Xinhua)

Beijing to improve foreign language services in hospitals

Shanghai Disney sued SHANGHAI Disney Resort was brought to court for asking a 10-year-old to buy an adult ticket, the Beijing News reported yesterday.

Liu Demin, a judge at Guangdong High People’s Court, bought a parent-child ticket package online for 499 yuan (US$75) before taking his 10-year-old daughter to the resort in January 2017. However, he was asked by Disneyland staff to buy an adult ticket for the girl at the ticketing window on the grounds she was taller than 1.4 meters. Liu bought an adult ticket and visited the park anyway, he said.Salt lake databaseCHINA has built a database on salt lakes and environmen-tal sciences, according to the

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) yesterday.

Creation of the database began in 2012. The CAS Qin-ghai Institute of Salt Lakes says the database collects information on the environ-ment, resource exploration, images and multimedia archives of salt lakes across the country.

The database has more than 570GB of data, includ-ing information on salt lake areas, weather, satellite images, ecological environ-ment and lake types.Knife attackerZHAO ZEWEI, 28, convicted of killing nine students and injuring 10 others April 27 near a middle school in Mizhi County in northwestern Chi-na’s Shaanxi Province, was sentenced to death.

32nd Beidou navigation satellite launchedThe 32nd Beidou navigation satellite is being launched into orbit on a Long March-3A rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in the southwestern Sichuan Province yesterday. China News Service