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    China’s automobile imports and exports fell 10 percent month on month in May, according to data provided by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

    The import and export volume totaled 8.33 billion U.S. dollars last month, down 36.9 percent year on year.

    Imports plunged 47.2 percent year on year to 3.78 billion dollars, while exports decreased 24.6 percent from a year earlier to 4.55 billion dollars.

    In terms of exports, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., Chery Automobile Co. and Changan Automobile Co. were among the country’s top 10 car manufacturers during the first five months.

    The top 10 carmakers saw their exports hit 284,000 units during the period, accounting for 87.8 percent of the industry’s total.

    HEFEI, June 17 (Xinhua) — Zhang Yiyi has been annoyed by the leak of her personal information as she often receives harassing phone calls after booking plane tickets online or buying a house from a real estate agency.

    Zhang, a resident in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, hopes the problem could be solved with the country’s newly adopted Civil Code, which clearly defines people’s privacy.

    As the first law to carry the title “code” since New China was founded in 1949, the Civil Code passed at the third session of the 13th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, will take effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

A major innovation of China’s Civil Code, jurists say, is embodied in the section on personality rights.

    Yao Weiyao, partner of the Anhui Huishang Law Firm, said incorporating personality rights provisions into an independent section emphasizes the protection of people’s dignity, which is in line with the people-rooted thoughts of traditional Chinese culture and reflects China’s confidence in its culture.

    The section on personality rights includes provisions on a civil subject’s rights to life, body, health, name, portrait, reputation, and privacy, among others.

    In Yao’s view, the code not only shows China’s innovation in legislation but also contributes to mankind’s achievements in building a law-based civilization.

    The adoption of the Civil Code also excited Deng Jiakai, a judge of the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhu, Anhui Province.

    ”The code is a milestone in the country’s advancement of the rule of law, and adapts to the judicial practices at the grassroots level,” he said. “From the protection of individuals and families to the maintenance of social order, it embodies our excellent traditional values and national spirit.”

    The judge, who has 26 years of trial experience, has heard a succession case before, in which the nephew of a man surnamed Fang, as his only relative, asked for insurance compensation after Fang died in a car accident.

    At that time, Deng could only protect the nephew’s legitimate rights and interests in accordance with a series of legal provisions, such as the tort liability law and General Principles of the Civil Law, and relevant judicial interpretations.

    ”The inheritance provisions in the Civil Code amended the Law of Succession, which highlights traditional values including caring for the elderly and gives judges at grassroots levels more clarity in their decisions,” Deng said.

    In addition to general and supplementary provisions, the Civil Code includes six parts on real rights, contracts, personality rights, marriage and family, inheritance, and tort liabilities, protecting Chinese citizens’ rights from the cradle to the grave. According to the code, even unborn children have the right to an inheritance and gifts.

    Zhou Shihong, vice president of the Anhui Lawyers Association, said the code mentions carrying forward the core socialist values in Article One of its general provisions and also fully reflects the integration of the rule of law and the rule of virtue in the specific articles.

    ”Embodying our fine traditional culture and moral values in laws can in turn promote the further civilization of society, resulting in two-way benefits,” Zhou said. 

    By the end of this month, the Wuhu Yangtze River Third Bridge will be ready for traffic. As a key project of Wuhu city, it is connected to the urban road network, further meeting the needs of urban development.

    Reporters see that asphalt has been laid, street lights, traffic lines and road signs have been installed in place. The route is about 1.37 kilometers long. This section of viaduct is located in the “downtown area”, with large traffic flow, many pedestrians, harsh construction environment, difficult traffic organization, high safety requirements, high technical difficulty, and extremely limited operation space.

    Due to the specific conditions of the project, with the cooperation of relevant municipal departments, the engineers and technicians made a correct understanding of the hoisting process and efficient response through the verification, demonstration of technical data and digital information simulation technology. In the construction process, they avoided the traffic rush hour, carefully organized the work period of each team, worked overtime, and finally completed the whole project successfully.

    After the Wuhu Yangtze River Third Bridge is opened to traffic, citizens can cross the Yangtze River from the Chizhu Mountain Road viaduct, and drive into the Wuhu-Hefei Expressway after the toll station, which not only improves the traffic efficiency, but also reduces the traffic pressure of Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge.

                                                        Translated by Yuan Mengwen from Foreign Affairs Office of Wuhu Municipal People’s Government

British premium carmaker Jaguar Land Rover said on Friday that it had entered into agreements with banks in China for a three-year revolving loan of 5 billion yuan ($704.5 million) to help finance its strategy of making the country one of its global centers.

The lenders are Bank of China; Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; China Construction Bank; Bank of Communications as well as Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Arthur Yu, Jaguar Land Rover’s vice-president and chief financial officer of its China operations, said the loan marks the carmaker’s first debt financing in the country since its arrival in 2010.

He said the loan can help the company better manage cash flow amid the coronavirus pandemic.

It will also help finance the carmaker’s goal of turning China into a global center for sales and production, research and development, as well as procurement.

“We have a big plan in China this year and the Chinese market is recovering gradually, so financially we should be ready,” said Yu.

China plays an important part in the British carmaker’s global network.

Sales from China used to account for 25-30 percent of its global sales. But over the past two months it made up 50 percent, Yu said. Jaguar Land Rover set up a joint venture with China’s Chery Automobile in 2012. The manufacturing facility, located in Changshu, Jiangsu province, produces five models under the Jaguar and Land Rover brands as well as its Ingenium engines.

From 2017, the carmaker started to increase investment in research and development in China, Yu said. Looking forward, he said the carmaker may join hands with Chinese internet companies in terms of new energy vehicles and autonomous driving. In terms of sales and marketing efficiency, Jaguar Land Rover said it is continuing its plan codenamed Dragon. Initiated in 2019, it has worked well.

The carmaker’s sales saw double-digit growth for months in a row until the pandemic broke out in January. Now dealers’ inventories have fallen to around 1.5 months’ worth of stock, better than the industry’s average.

As the coronavirus has come under control in China, Yu said the carmaker’s sales are recovering. Deliveries in April were level with same period of 2019 and sales were growing in May.

Yu said the company expects sales in China’s luxury car segment in 2020 to be level with 2019 or see slight growth.

“There are still a number of uncertainties going on, including the pandemic as well as the global economy’s effect on China, so we are cautiously optimistic. In the long run, though, we are very confident in the Chinese market.”

SHANGHAI, June 5 (Xinhua) — Jiang Wei, a business owner in Shanghai, will soon be able to travel to his plant 150 km away in Huzhou in less than half an hour thanks to the building of a new high-speed railway.

Jiang said at present, the journey from Shanghai to Huzhou of the neighboring Zhejiang Province takes him about two hours as the railway first heads south before heading north to Huzhou.

Construction on a new high-speed railway linking Shanghai and the neighboring cities of Suzhou and Huzhou was launched on Friday. The 164-km railway, with a designed top speed of 350 km per hour, is a key project for the Yangtze River Delta to further boost regional integration.

Transportation interconnection is just one example of the coordinated development of the region, which consists of Shanghai Municipality and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. As one of China’s most economically active, open and innovative regions, the Yangtze River delta region produces about one-fourth of the national GDP.

China unveiled an outline for the regional integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta last year. Local governments have rolled out a raft of measures to enhance cooperation and communication in the region.

Thanks to increasingly efficient resource allocation and collaboration, the Yangtze River Delta shows robust market vitality, offering the world a glimpse of the resilience and potential of the Chinese economy.

FORGING AHEAD WITH CONSTRUCTION

Huzhou Mingshuo Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd, founded by Jiang, is a participant and beneficiary of the Yangtze River delta regional integration.

The company has established a research and development (R&D) center in Shanghai, and also cooperated with firms in Anhui to carry out R&D on lithium battery energy storage.

“After the Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou high-speed railway breaks ground, the physical and psychological distance between Huzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou will be further reduced,” said Jiang.

In 2020, more than 10 railway projects in the Yangtze River Delta have been planned to be open or start construction. The entire region’s annual railway investment is planned to exceed 80 billion yuan (about 11 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for nearly one-sixth of the national total.

As China highlighted the importance of new infrastructure, local governments in the delta region have successively released new infrastructure plans to boost the construction of 5G networks, cloud computing and data centers.

Shanghai published a three-year action plan from 2020 to 2022, aiming to invest a total of around 270 billion yuan in its first batch of 48 major new infrastructure projects in the next three years. Jiangsu also introduced relevant measures to invest 12 billion yuan in 2020 to build 52,000 new 5G base stations. Zhejiang will begin construction on 20 large data centers this year.

The region also emphasizes the importance of green and sustainable development. In 2019, a demonstration area in the Yangtze River Delta on ecologically friendly development was launched, spanning across Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGIES

The Yangtze River Delta is a booming land of scientific and technological innovation, thanks to the establishment of research institutes and the industrialization of technological achievements.

In the western suburb of Hefei, capital of Anhui Province, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics is under construction. The project is expected to be delivered by the end of 2020.

Shanghai’s Zhangjiang has had 14 projects of national key science and technology infrastructure completed or under construction, said Peng Song, an official with the office for promoting the construction of science and technology innovation center in Shanghai.

These facilities will open to researchers at home and abroad, said Peng.

“Over the past year, it is easy to observe the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta with faster and more efficient movement of regional factors and more scientific allocation of resources,” said Pan Zhaohui, Party chief of Wuhu City, Anhui.

    On the morning of June 1, 20 new infrastructure projects in the High-Tech Zone (Yijiang District) were signed and started.

    Since the beginning of this year, the High-Tech Zone has seized the opportunity, taken strong measures, sought for projects and made breakthroughs in new infrastructure construction, actively implementing the layout closely around the three leading industries, precisely attracting investment and strengthening leading enterprises. The total investment scale of the new infrastructure projects that participated in the centralized signing and commencement ceremony this time is 11.285 billion yuan, involving 5G, artificial intelligence, data center, smart energy, smart transportation and other fields, which will inject new impetus into Wuhu to cultivate new drivers and promote high-quality economic development.

With this centralized signing and commencement ceremony as a new starting point, High-Tech Zone will further accelerate the speed of industrial layout and promote the development of emerging industries with new infrastructure. We will focus on building a microelectronics industry with distinctive features, a leading intelligent network automobile industry, and an information service industry centered on e-commerce digital economy, to build Yijiang District into a new infrastructure demonstration zone with core competitiveness in the Yangtze River delta region.

 Translated by Yuan Mengwen from Foreign Affairs Office of Wuhu Municipal People’s Government

On May 29, Wuhu City’s first self-help registration all-in-one machine for individual industrial and commercial businesses launched by the Municipal Market Supervision Bureau was officially put into operation. Yue Xiaobing, a business owner from Jiujiang District, printed out his business license through the machine, marking that the city’s individual registration has entered the era of intelligent examination and approval.

Self-help registration machine for individual businesses integrates multiple functional modules such as authentication, data filling, electronic signature, submission for review, and license printing. With an id card, the applicant can conduct face recognition and real-name authentication, and the system will automatically get personal information. Then the applicant can tick the business scope, business site and other contents according to the prompts step by step. The system will automatically generate the form and review it after completion. After the review, the business license can be self-printed. The whole process is about 5 minutes, without filling application forms or manually check, greatly reducing the processing time.

Since the reform of the business system, the Municipal Market Supervision Bureau has simplified the process and optimized the service link through reducing the time of business establishment, carrying out the whole-process electronic registration of enterprises, and implementing the methods of “oral application and on-the-spot issuance” for individual business licenses. In March this year, the smart examination and approval system for business licenses of enterprises in Wuhu City has been put into operation, and the business licenses have entered the era of “approval in seconds“, constantly improving the registration facilitation.

 Translated by Yuan Mengwen from Foreign Affairs Office of Wuhu Municipal People’s Government

     Reporters learned from the constructors of Wuhu Xuancheng Airport yesterday, that the current airport runway pavement has entered the last concrete link and the terminal area single project has been completed. Next, the construction will officially enter the decoration stage. According to the plan, project in the airfield area of Wuhu Xuancheng Airport will be completed in June and the terminal area in July, and the first flight is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.

    It is worth noting that shortly before, the website of National Development and Reform Commission published the integrated development plan for higher quality of transportation in the Yangtze river delta region, and Wuhu Xuancheng Airport construction project, as a key construction project of national and provincial 13th five-year plan period and an important infrastructure for Anhui’s integration into the development of the Yangtze river delta, has been included in the list of key projects of world-class airports in the Yangtze river delta. In the future, Wuhu Xuancheng Airport construction project will join hands with cities in the Yangtze river delta to jointly build a general aviation industry comprehensive demonstration zone.

    Wuhu Xuancheng Airport is planned to be an air cargo hub, an airport logistics center and an international aircraft maintenance and support center in the Yangtze river delta area. After the official first flight, the airport will complete the transition from self-built to self-operated, and become one of the few “self-built and self-operated” civil airports in China. It is estimated that by 2030, Wuhu Xuancheng Airport will achieve an annual passenger throughput of 1.75 million and an annual cargo throughput of 10,000 tons.

                                                         Translated by Yuan Mengwen from Foreign Affairs Office of Wuhu Municipal People’s Government

  Despite the lack of a GDP growth target, the economy will probably remain stable this year, with government policies focusing on ensuring employment and livelihoods.

  That was the message from national advisers and experts at the weekend.

  As macro policies and economic reforms filter through, growth will recover and support the prime tasks of stabilizing the jobs market and supporting business, they said.

  Following the release of the Government Work Report, which outlined major development goals for the year, attention has focused on the government’s decision to forgo a growth target.

  It will not set a target because of the uncertainty engendered by the coronavirus pandemic and the global economic and trade environment, said the report, which was submitted to the National People’s Congress, the top legislative body, for deliberation on Friday.

  President Xi Jinping said abandoning this year’s growth target is a realistic option in the face of uncertainty, and focusing on ensuring security in six areas, including employment and people’s livelihoods, is in line with China’s pursuit of a new development philosophy and a better life for its people.

  Xi made the remarks while participating in a panel discussion with legislators from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Friday, People’s Daily reported.

  The decline in GDP growth will be minimized as the nation concentrates on ensuring stability on “six fronts” and security in “six areas”, but the focus should not be on safeguarding a specific GDP growth rate, Xi said.

  The “six fronts” and “six areas “refer to the government’s priorities for the year, such as safeguarding employment and livelihoods, and the development of market entities, among other key issues.

Global uncertainty

Workers assemble a car at a factory in Wuhu, Anhui province, last week. As the novel coronavirus outbreak eases in China, production is resuming. ZHOU MU/XINHUA

  Though the COVID-19 pandemic has been broadly brought under control in China, it continues to spread globally, intensifying economic uncertainty.

  The International Monetary Fund is likely to revise downward its previous forecast of a 3 percent contraction in global GDP this year, which would have already signaled the deepest downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s, Reuters reported.

  Liu Zhiqin, a senior researcher with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said that amid unprecedented uncertainty, the government’s decision to abandon a GDP growth target will give policymakers more flexibility to respond to rapid changes in the situation.

  A raft of development goals outlined in the Government Work Report will replace the GDP target to anchor market expectations and help guide more resources into high-quality development that stresses improvements in living standards, Liu said.

  According to the report, the government will pursue targets related to eight major aspects of economic and social development－such as employment, price levels, foreign trade, personal incomes, poverty elimination and the prevention of financial risks－in line with the requirements of ensuring security in the “six areas”.

  ”This year, we must give priority to stabilizing employment and ensuring living standards, win the battle against poverty and achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects,” the report said.

  Meanwhile, officials said abandoning the GDP growth target does not mean the government will allow the economy to slide out of the proper range.

  The pursuit of stable employment, poverty elimination and financial risk prevention entails support from economic growth, according to Sun Guojun, a senior official at the StatCouncil Research Office, who participated in the drafting of the Government Work Report. 

  With fiscal support to secure employment and livelihoods, and financial policies to safeguard the development of market entities, the economy will gradually stabilize and recover, Sun said on Friday.

  Analysts estimate that China’s fiscal stimulus package will total more than 8 percent of GDP this year, while monetary policy will provide stronger-than-expected credit support for business.

  The ramped up macroeconomic adjustments will help China achieve annual GDP growth of about 3 percent, with year-on-year growth expected to exceed 6 percent in the second half, according to Liu from Renmin University of China.

  He Qiang, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said the country should maintain annual economic growth of between 2 and 4 percent to ensure the accomplishment of major development goals.

  ”Given the 6.8 percent economic contraction in the first quarter, we must spare no effort for economic recovery over the rest of the year,” said He, who is a professor of finance at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

  According to the National Bureau of Statistics, economic indicators recovered from the first quarter as production resumed last month, and the year-on-year change in industrial output turned positive.

  The Government Work Report said that in addition to intensifying macroeconomic adjustment and promoting the resumption of business, the country will deepen reform to boost internal development momentum, such as fostering an encouraging environment for the private sector and promoting market-based allocation of production factors.

  Wang Yiming, senior economist and a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said such reforms will be essential to overcome the mounting risks and push ahead with high-quality development.

  Wang highlighted the pressing need to safeguard the property rights of private enterprises to spur more investment, adding that market-based reforms in land, labor and the capital markets will help drive up productivity.

  Experts said that with macroeconomic policies to bail out hard-hit individuals and businesses, and economic reforms to reduce institutional barriers, the fundamentals of the economy remain solid, despite the disruption caused by the pandemic.

  ”Slower but positive annual economic growth would be acceptable against the backdrop of a contracting world economy and would not point to any major changes in the potential of the Chinese economy,” said Zhang Lianqi, a member of the Standing Committee of the 13th CPPCC National Committee.

  With the nation’s efforts to safeguard employment and livelihoods taking effect, the economic fundamentals will remain stable, enabling average economic growth of more than 5 percent this year and in 2021, Zhang added.

    Several days ago, 109 Anhui’s listed enterprises have published annual reports in 2019. According to statistics, by the end of the reporting period, 99 companies achieved profits. Among them, Conch Group continues to be the leading company, of which the operating income and net profit both ranked the first in Anhui’s listed enterprises.

    As recently as May 13th, Forbes released its 2020 Forbes Global 2000 list, among the 367 Chinese companies, Conch Group ranking 312, up 95 places from its ranking in 2019. 

    In 2019, Conch Group adhered to the international, intelligent and green development, and its economic benefits and production and sales volume kept rising. The company’s total market value exceeded 300 billion yuan. The company insists on promoting the green transformation of traditional manufacturing industry with technological innovation, and takes the lead in building an intelligent cement factory with production of  whole process in the industry, which has truly realized the “green mine, intelligent production, strong efficiency and excellent service”. China took the lead in building the world’s first carbon dioxide capture and purification demonstration project, and realized the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and commercial conversion and utilization of cement industry. The company also further expands the green industrial chain, and actively explores the green upgrading of traditional industries.

Translated by Yuan Mengwen from Foreign Affairs Office of Wuhu Municipal People’s Government