South Korea is very keen on joining the Quad grouping, said the South Korean Envoy in India Chang Jae-bok on Wednesday, according to The Hindu. However, just recently, at the G20 summit, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol publicly expressed his hope to promote the stable and healthy development of the South Korea-China relationship. 

Currently, the South Korean government's foreign policy is heavily leaning toward the US, and the eagerness to join the Quad is an extension of this diplomatic policy. The Yoon administration's foreign policy is deeply entrenched in the mind-set of a "new cold war" and cannot extricate itself. 

The South Korean government seems to believe that the world has entered a new cold war and agrees with the US in dividing the world into "liberal" and "authoritarian" camps. In other words, South Korea may acknowledge the need to view non-Western countries as enemies, and cooperation has limitations. South Korea also understands that strengthening relations with the Western camp will lead to friction in the relations between China and South Korea and even on the Korean Peninsula, but it considers this a necessary cost.

The important thing is that South Korea believes that by doing so, it reflects its identity as a "global pivotal state" and assumes global responsibilities. Zhan Debin, director and professor of the Center for Korean Peninsula Studies at the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times that South Korea, which claims to be the vanguard of safeguarding the order of freedom and democracy, has become an important ally in promoting the US Indo-Pacific strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, which can enhance South Korea's international status. However, this confidence and enthusiasm may only be wishful thinking on the part of South Korea.

Since the Yoon administration came to power, it has shown great confidence in joining the Quad. Due to the influence of the Japan-South Korea relationship at that time, Japan did not want to see South Korea's participation, let alone South Korea decreasing its influence within this small circle. Compared to Japan, India is even less willing to see the Quad become an anti-China and anti-Russia group, as this would diminish India's value. As the leader of the Quad, the US has also not provided much support to South Korea.

Despite the active pressure from the Donald Trump administration for the South Korean government to join the Quad, President Joe Biden has not made a proactive statement on this matter. The Yoon administration believed that as long as South Korea proposed it, the US would immediately agree. However, from the perspective of the US, South Korea's capabilities and contributions, especially in terms of security outside the Korean Peninsula, are limited and cannot be of much help to the US.

If South Korea joins the Quad, the US naturally needs to consider how much contribution South Korea can make within the Quad mechanism. Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times that in current Quad mechanism, the US is using India, Japan and Australia to contain China from the Indian Ocean, the West Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. What can South Korea do? It can at most cooperate with the US and Japan in economic and trade measures to suppress China. In other words, South Korea has not yet proved its capabilities among the Quad countries.

For South Korea, the security of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia should be the most concerning issue. Without cooperation with China, South Korea cannot maintain a stable and peaceful situation in the region. However, the inexperienced administration of Yoon clearly does not realize it. On one hand, it claims to maintain China-South Korea relations, but on the other hand, it continuously tests China's bottom line, which is detrimental to regional peace and stability and does not align with South Korea's own interests. If the Yoon administration wants to manage China-South Korea relations well, it needs to show sincerity. If the trilateral summit between China, Japan, and South Korea is only for showcasing South Korea's leadership and international status, the public's dissatisfaction with the government will only continue to rise.

Starting from Monday, the high-level week of the 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will begin and last until September 26. Compared to previous ones, this year's UNGA has placed a greater emphasis on the "Global South" countries. Several high-level meetings to be held during the General Assembly will focus on the priorities of developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, including climate, health and financing. Countries in the South have also influenced and responded to the agendas of the UNGA with a stronger spirit of unity and cooperation as well as a sense of "being the host." The director of an international think tank believes that "this is a year when the countries of the Global South have set the agenda."

For this year's high-level week of the UNGA, Secretary-General António Guterres has long had high hopes, hoping to "help rescue the Sustainable Development Goals." The term "rescue" reveals the current difficulties faced by global development, and also reflects the unbridgeable rift between developing and developed countries. What Guterres mentioned is a fundamental change in the current international situation, that is, the collective rise of developing countries, which brings a call for a more just and reasonable international order. Meanwhile, established major powers such as the US and the West are trying hard to maintain their dominance and resorting to every possible means to discredit, attack and suppress this call. It must be said that this contradiction is the deep factor causing the current geopolitical division.

For example, what the international community, mainly developing countries, most hope to discuss at the UNGA is how to solve poverty, alleviate high inflation, cope with climate change, among other issues. They hope to promote sustainable development through multilateral dialogues. The key words of the general debate - peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all - which are generally regarded as the "highlights" of the UNGA, also fully reflect this strong desire. What these countries are most worried about is that the Ukraine crisis will once again become the dominant topic in the UNGA and shift people's attention from development issues. The endless chatter about war and overt and covert threats made against other countries, forcing them to pick sides, are the last thing these countries want to hear. However, while the US pays attention to the "Global South," it also declared that "the world cannot address one without the other," meaning the Ukraine crisis and development issues. This shows that the US is well aware of the demands of developing countries, but it insists on bringing in its own agendas at multilateral forums.

There are many similar examples, all of which strongly prove without exception that the practice of bringing geopolitical calculations into multilateral occasions has undermined global cooperation efforts and wasted many opportunities for developing countries and developed nations to reach compromises, reconciliation, and cooperation. It has also severely limited the effectiveness of previously well-functioning multilateral platforms. This is very regrettable. In this process, the US and the West have continuously demonized the legitimate and just demands of developing countries using their powerful public opinion tools. On the eve of the opening of a series of important meetings at the United Nations General Assembly, the G77 + China Summit was held in Havana, the capital of Cuba, from September 15 to 16. The participating representatives unanimously passed the Havana Declaration, which underscored the "right to development in an increasingly exclusive, unfair, unjust, and plundering international order." This became a collective call from developing countries before the high-level meetings at the UNGA. However, it remains uncertain to what extent the voices and concerns of "Global South" countries and the UN Secretary-General can be heard by the representatives of developed countries inside the UNGA in New York. 

The US and other Western countries are clearly increasing their efforts to win over the "Global South," but it is evident that this is not about granting developing countries a more equal status and development opportunities, but rather an attempt to continue to confine them to the periphery of the "center-periphery" system. The reality is that developing countries are now more awake and capable of maintaining independence and autonomy than ever before. This is not only reflected in their cautious and balanced approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict but also in their clear-headedness and calmness in the face of US instigation for confrontation against China and Russia. The UNGA is the most representative multilateral forum globally, and the US and the West should be more humble here and clearly see the mainstream direction of the international community.

September 30 of this year marks the 10th Martyrs' Day in China. On the morning of that very day, in Tian'anmen Square in downtown Beijing, President Xi Jinping and other leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the state presented flower baskets to fallen national heroes. Since 2014, when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress designated September 30 as Martyrs' Day in the form of law, President Xi has participated in the wreath-laying ceremony to honor the heroes of the people each year. Just one day before the National Day on October 1, it holds profound historical and practical significance that the country commemorates the heroes and remembers history in the highest form, outlining the great journey of the Chinese nation's rejuvenation.

The People's Republic of China has been established for 74 years. The tremendous changes having taken place in China's national status, comprehensive strength, and people's living standards have made the glorious history of the revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives and shed their blood for national independence, freedom, and happiness seem somewhat "distant." For some young people, it may even feel somewhat "unfamiliar." "Forgetting history is tantamount to betrayal." The heroes revered by a nation best illustrate this point. Martyrs' Day is a kind of inheritance, passing down the heroic spirit and strength of the Chinese people, ensuring that the heroes and their deeds will not fade away with the passage of time, and inspiring the Chinese people to continue their struggle from generation to generation on the journey of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. This is also the true essence of not forgetting the original intention.

"Any nation with hope cannot be without heroes, and any country with promising prospects cannot be without pioneers." The great achievements that China has made up to date were created by the Chinese people and the heroes of the people, who have contributed their sweat, blood, and even their lives. Every era has seen its own heroes, and although the heroes bear the imprints of different times, their spirit of selflessness and sacrifice for the country, for the nation, and for the people is consistent. The contributions they have made are evident to all. The masses of people can often be discerned at a glance whether someone is an authentic hero. As the saying goes, "By reviewing the heroic deeds of the past and present, we draw inspiration from our predecessors to fuel our own fire," and the spirit represented by the heroes and martyrs has long been integrated into the spiritual world of generations of Chinese sons and daughters, becoming an indelible cultural imprint on the Chinese nation. Heroes of every era should receive the utmost and permanent respect in China, which should form an inviolable social righteousness.

To commemorate our predecessors is to inspire future generations. Although the eras of our predecessors have passed, their spirit is still worthy of our promotion. China is currently in a new stage and position, and the great cause that countless martyrs had fought for is facing new challenges, but at the same time also ushered in more opportunities. The internal and external environment for inheriting the red genes has undergone tremendous changes, which requires us to draw strength and direction from the predecessors and heroes of past generations, to never forget our original intentions, and to forge ahead. Chinese society has indeed entered a more diverse state, which is a reflection of the country's progress. However, the main theme of Chinese society must be filled with a heroic spirit. The main theme and diversity are not contradictory or conflicting, but complementary. The spiritual core of the Chinese people must never change, and we must resolutely fight against historical nihilism and remain vigilant, cautious, and resistant to the ideological infiltration of the West into China. To destroy a nation, one must first erase its history. The historical lessons in this regard are profound.

One more point must be mentioned: The ultimate goal of all the struggles and efforts of the Chinese people to commemorate the martyrs and heroes is to create better conditions for the peace and development of the country and the nation. Just like the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-53), which was fought to defend the our homeland and strive for a peaceful environment for national construction, it is essentially a pursuit of peace. This point is particularly important in the current context. With the accelerated evolution of the global situation over the past century, people remember history and pay tribute to the martyrs in order to better understand the value of cherishing peace while also remembering the principles defended by the heroes and martyrs. In other words, what we need is not only to cherish the hard-won peace but also to firmly uphold justice, as these two are dialectically unified. The inherent logic and historical inevitability of China's firm commitment to the path of peaceful development also lie in this balance.

China's eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays wrapped up on Friday, with the number of domestic trips and tourism revenue seeing robust growth and exceeding that of 2019, underscoring the robust recovery of the world's second-largest economy.

The bustling scenes seen across the country during the Golden Week holidays offered the latest sign of strong vitality in China's consumption, a major economic growth driver, and the vast potential of China's steady economic recovery, in stark contrast to the dire predictions made by Western media and politicians, analysts said.

While downward pressure remains, China's economy will continue to rebound in the rest of the year and could make a full recovery at the end of 2023, thanks to robust recovery in consumption and other areas and a range of policy measures taken to boost growth, analysts noted.

Bustling tourism

A total of 826 million domestic passenger trips were made in China during the eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, a year-on-year increase of 71.3 percent and up 4.1 percent from 2019. Holiday tourism generated 753.43 billion yuan ($104.68 billion), up 129.5 percent year-on-year and 1.5 percent increase from 2019, official data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed on Friday.

Some 59.89 million trips were expected to be made on Friday during the return peak, a year-on-year increase of 58.4 percent, data from the Ministry of Transport showed on Friday. Among them, a total of 18.8 million passengers will travel via the railway with 12,571 trains to be operated, according to China Railway.

Domestic consumption experienced a strong pickup during the holidays, showing the best performance since 2019. For instance, the average daily consumption scale of service retail jumped by 153 percent compared with the same period of 2019, while the consumption scale for dine-in surged by 254 percent, according to data from China's e-commerce platform Meituan.

Multiple provincial-level regions rolled out their tourism reports for the holidays on Friday and Thursday, which returned to or even exceeded the 2019 level.

Shanghai welcomed a total of 21.30 million tourists for the holidays with transactions related to tourism recording a year-on-year increase of 29.7 percent to 29.24 billion yuan, official data showed on Friday.

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region received a total of 14.53 million domestic tourists in the first five days of the holidays, a yearly increase of 5.38 times and 1.29 times more than the same period in 2019, thepaper.cn reported on Thursday. The region generated a total of 9.93 billion yuan in tourism revenue, a year-on-year increase of 6.31 times and 1.12 times increase compared with 2019.

Chinese tourists were able to experience the holidays in diverse forms, from touring domestic and international scenic spots and enjoying leisure time in third- and fourth-tier cities to becoming involved in emerging experiences such as cultural and tourism integration projects, night markets, and musicals, according to reports from Chinese travel agencies.

Flight bookings for top domestic destinations during the holidays surged by nearly five times compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, with bookings for flights departing on September 29 - the first day of the holidays - hitting a record high on Chinese online travel agency platform Qunar, the company told the Global Times on Friday. Bookings for domestic hotels in popular destinations doubled compared with the pre-COVID period. The top destinations included Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shanghai and other cities.

In addition to visiting well-known cities and metropolises, some Chinese travelers also opted to enjoy the nation's rich cultural heritage and breathtaking natural scenery.

A female traveler surnamed Zhao from Southwest China's Chongqing visited the Bingling Temple Grottoes in Northwest China's Gansu Province -a world cultural heritage with a history stretching back more than 1,600 years. Zhao told the Global Times on Friday that she also encountered some foreign visitors during her visit.

Meanwhile, the ongoing 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, sparked a consumption craze in sports and related fields throughout the holidays. The order volume for service consumption within the province exceeded 195 percent this year compared with 2019, while the dine-in order volume in Hangzhou increased by 443 percent and orders related to sports and fitness increased by 762 percent, per media reports.

At the same time, outbound tourism witnessed a strong rebound for the recently passed holidays. Orders for overseas travel on Chinese online tourism platform Ctrip.com increased by more than eight times year-on-year, according to a report sent to the Global Times on Friday. Meanwhile, bookings for international flights for the holidays on Fliggy reached a peak within the year.

The boom in tourism also spurred a consumption craze. In the first seven days of the holidays, sales of key monitored retail and dining enterprises increased by 9 percent year-on-year, while the major passenger flow in key commercial areas in 36 cities increased by 164 percent year-on-year, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed on Friday. The domestic box office also topped 2.5 billion yuan, a yearly increase of 70 percent.

Experts attributed the rebound in consumption to China's steady economic recovery and effective macroeconomic stimulus policies, showing the nation's strong resilience and huge potential in consumption, which will also play a vital role in bolstering economic growth in the fourth quarter.

Boosting GDP growth

China's economic performance outperformed 2019 in some aspects after nearly one year of post-epidemic growth, shown by the consumption rebound for the holidays and gradual recovery in trade along with other indicators, Cao Heping, an economist at Peking University, told the Global Times on Friday, expecting a full recovery by the end of 2023 or at the latest by February next year.

China's official manufacturing purchasing managers' index for September came in at 50.2, its first time in positive territory since April and after a consecutive increase over the last four months, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on September 30.

The consumption boom reflected the strong resilience and driving force of the spending power of Chinese residents, Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Friday.

Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, echoed Zhang's view and added that the targeted policy measures had further noticeable effects during the Golden Week, stressing the importance of continuing to implement the policies moving froward.

Cong told the Global Times on Friday that the consumption rebound during the holidays reflected China's huge consumption potential while also serving as a significant factor to further shore up market confidence and bolster domestic demand.

This confidence will play a vital role in promoting continuous economic growth while also elevating supply, Cong noted.

Zhang expected the consumption momentum to become an indispensable engine for advancing the economy, as the fourth quarter is also a peak season for domestic consumption, with major consumption events like the Double 11 online shopping festival.

In response to the bearish outlook on the Chinese economy painted by some Western media outlets and politicians, experts said China's consumer market is showing strong recovery and growth signs despite downward pressure with its strong market potential, resilience and confidence.

Cong noted that China maintains its market confidence as the world's second-largest consumption market, especially amid the process of rapid structural upgrading. He also stressed the importance of stepping up efforts in sectors such as infrastructure investment and support for the private economy to ignite market dynamics.

China's economic development should be the least worrying one during the global economic recovery process, Cong said.

After concluding six-month stay at the China Space Station and completing first-ever direct handover in orbit in the country’s aerospace history, three taikonauts of the Shenzhou-14 manned spaceflight mission have safely returned to the Dongfeng landing site in the Gobi Desert, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Sunday. 

At 8:09 pm Sunday, the return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 manned spacecraft carrying three taikonauts conducted successful touchdown in the Dongfeng landing site. The medical personnel confirmed that the taikonauts were in good health, marking a complete success of the return mission, the Global Times has learned from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on Sunday. 

The Shenzhou-14 manned spacecraft successfully separated with the China Space Station combination at 11:01 am Sunday. Before their departure, the Shenzhou-14 crew, with the help of a local ground team, completed the handover with the Shenzhou-15 crew, and other tasks including downloading the experiment data, the CMSA said earlier. 

“It marked the first return mission after the completion of China Space Station’s T-shape basic structure assembly, the first after gathering of six taikonauts at the space station, and also a first that has taken place in the winter night at the Dongfeng site,” Peng Huakang, the person-in-charge of the manned spacecraft recovery team with the spacecraft developer China Academy of Spacecraft Technology (CAST,) told the Global Times.

The return of the Shenzhou-14 manned spacecraft consisted of five stages before the final touchdown, including the separation of spacecraft from the space station, the braking maneuver, the re-entry to atmosphere and decelerating before landing. 

Adopting a rapid return strategy similar to previous missions, the Shenzhou-14 craft rounded Earth only five times before making its re-entry. Then the orbiter capsule separated with the return capsule. And with the help of the propelling capsule in two braking maneuvers, the combination of the return capsule and propelling capsule then descended from 400-kilometer orbit to 100-kilometer one before their separation, the CAST explained in a statement provided to the Global Times.

The propelling capsule was burnt up during re-entry to the atmosphere and the return capsule took on a well-calculated trajectory to be headed back to Earth’s atmosphere and to the Dongfeng site.

Besides personal items, the "luggage" carried by the three taikonauts back also includes a batch of medical science experiment samples, mainly body fluid and cytology samples, which can allow the ground research team to better understand the changes inside human body during their life in space, the Global Times learned from the CMSA.

According to Li Yinghui, a researcher with the Chinese astronaut training system, the "luggage" includes astronauts' blood, urine, and saliva. Researchers can study human adaptability to the environment with in-depth, at the level of cells, molecules, and genes, which enables China to have its own genetic resource bank for environmental adaptation in orbit.

Search and rescue work for the Shenzhou-14 return capsule is of great significance in boosting China’s international image, as the task marks the conclusion to the construction stage of the China Space Station, Bian Hancheng, the deputy chief designer of the manned space project landing site system, told the Global Times.

China has signed agreements with more than a dozen countries and regions to carry out space experiment projects on the China Space Station, and this is the first time that space application system has participated in the search and rescue works at Dongfeng, according to Bian, who is also a senior engineer with the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China’s Gansu Province. The task has opened a new normal for the landing site to recover space application payload from domestic and foreign customers, he said.

The biggest challenges facing the search and rescue mission s extreme cold and night conditions that could lead to most complicated and difficult situations, according to the Dongfeng landing site authorities. 

Bian explained that it is more difficult to identify and locate the target craft at night than during daytime and it is also extra hard to arrive at the landing site, as landing a helicopter would be more difficult given the poor visibility of surroundings during the night time in remote Gobi Desert. 

Dubbed the China Space Station’s busiest crew to date, Shenzhou-14 mission commander Chen Dong and his fellow crewmembers Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe conducted three extravehicular activities or known as the spacewalks, delivered a new episode of the Tiangong Classroom space lecture sessions, carried out multiple space experiment and application projects, and above all, participated and witnessed the completion of the China Space Station’s three-module T-shape basic structure assembly.

They also greeted the incoming Shenzhou-15 crew on Wednesday, handing over the key to the China Space Station to the Shenzhou-15 taikonauts on Saturday, in addition to completing the country’s first-ever in-orbit work handover. 

Moreover, Chen Dong the mission’s commander also became the first taikonaut to have worked and lived in orbit for more than 200 days during the Shenzhou-14 mission that lasted more 183 days. He previously worked in orbit for 33 days during the Shenzhou-11 mission in 2016.

An extraordinary story has emerged with the recent discovery of a rare fossil dating back approximately 125 million years ago, through joint efforts between Chinese and Canadian researchers. This fossil unveil a remarkable encounter where a large herbivorous dinosaur fell victim to an attack by a carnivorous mammal.

About the size of a large dog, the dinosaur fossil was identified as Psittacosaurus whereas the badger-like mammal fossil is an example of Repenomamus robustus, one of the largest mammals during the Cretaceous - a time when mammals had not yet become the dominant animals on Earth.

The two were found "locked in mortal combat," and "intimately intertwined," said Dr Jordan Mallon, the palaeobiologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature who handled the fossils.

The discovery of these two species Psittacosaurus and Repenomamus robustus was not a "novel finding" in and of itself, but the "predatory behaviour" on display is a rare find, Mallon emphasized.

Wu Xiaochun, a core figure on the project, told the Global Times that the fossils reveal the mammal was not feasting on an already dead dinosaur, but was actively attacking the animal.

"Similar articles that feature a predator mammal have been published before, but only until this one can we show it had its prey alive," said Wu, who is also the head of the Paleobiology Research and Collections Department of the Canadian Museum of Nature.
A typical case of a smaller predator attacking bigger prey, the fossils show, according to Mallon, that they had both lost their lives in the "roily aftermath."

While the fossil had been researched for years since it was first excavated in 2012 in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, the study was only published on Tuesday in Scientific Reports, a scholarly journal. Mallon is the co-author of the paper.

From excavation to publication, Wu played a pivotal role in bringing the researchers from China and Canada together for the project.

In 2012, the fossil was collected in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, more exactly from the Liujitun fossil beds, which are dubbed "China's Dinosaur Pompeii." After excavation, the fossils were in the care of study co-author Dr Han Gang in China, and later Wu helped Han connect with Mallon.

The research projects between China and Canada "will continue in 2023," Wu revealed to the Global Times.

"Joint research projects such as one on a marine reptile in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, is coming along," Wu said.

Some towns in Yancheng, East China's Jiangsu Province, were hit by a tornado on Sunday afternoon. The tornado took two lives and injured 15 people, according to the local authorities. 

The tornado hit Yancheng at around 4:15 pm Sunday, in some towns in Dafeng district, Yancheng, under the influence of strong convective weather. The tornado was identified by experts as EF2 level (medium intensity), China Central Television (CCTV) reported Sunday.

The wind speed of a EF2-level tornado is estimated at 178 to 217 km per hour and usually causes a considerable damage. Under a EF2-level tornado, whole roofs ripped off frame houses, interiors of frame homes damaged, and small, medium, and large trees uprooted. Weak structures such as barns, mobile homes, sheds, and outhouses have been completely destroyed. Cars were lifted off the ground.

According to local authorities, two deaths and 15 injuries were reported from the disaster. All of the injured have been sent to hospital for treatment and none of the injuries are life-threatening. 

According to preliminary verification, 283 agricultural houses and 32 vegetable greenhouses have been damaged. The damage is being further verified, CCTV reported.

All the affected people have now been properly relocated, while post-disaster recovery and reconstruction work is being carried out in an orderly manner, according to CCTV.

Verdant villages prospering in eastern China's Zhejiang Province, Yangtze finless porpoise, also called the "panda in the water" for its rarity, being spotted more often in rivers, scientific expedition team members seeing lakes on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau with clearer water… all these significant changes over the past decades have marked China's continuous efforts to achieve a core concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," which gave inspiration to the country's first National Ecology Day.

On August 15, China's first National Ecology Day, Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged the whole society to vigorously promote and act as role models in practicing the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.

Ecological conservation is of vital importance for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation, Xi said.

On the new journey of building a modern socialist country in all aspects, efforts should be made to maintain strategic resolve in advancing ecological progress and promote high-quality development in sync with high-standard protection, Xi said.

With a focus on carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, the country should facilitate the gradual transition from dual control over the amount and intensity of energy consumption to dual control over the amount and intensity of carbon emissions, Xi noted.

The country has already set ambitious goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

Observers believe that the National Ecology Day will not only help raise ecological awareness across society, but also provide an opportunity to share China's story of ecological civilization construction with the international community, allowing better participation in global environmental and climate governance.

Today marks the inaugural National Ecology Day, a pioneering and symbolic commemoration, reflecting the significant position of ecological civilization construction in the new era, Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a press conference on Tuesday. It embodies the steadfast determination to promote the construction of a Beautiful China and also demonstrates China's firm stance in actively participating in global environmental and climate governance, as well as its commitment to fostering a shared future for humanity.

Vigorous efforts

According to a bluebook on China's ecological conservation red lines released by the Ministry of Natural Resources on Tuesday, the red line of ecological conservation is approximately 3.19 million square kilometers, covering all 35 priority areas for biodiversity conservation in China and over 90 percent of typical ecological system types.

The ecological conservation red line refers to areas within an ecological space that have particularly important ecological functions and must be strictly protected on a mandatory basis, including water conservation, biodiversity maintenance, soil and water conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, and coastal ecological stability, as well as environmentally sensitive and fragile areas prone to soil erosion, land desertification, rock desertification and salinization.

China is a mega-diverse country in terms of biodiversity. The protection of biodiversity has been elevated to a national strategy and has become a consensus and action for the entire society, Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Over the past years, China has actively promoted biodiversity conservation, taking a series of robust measures, including the innovative establishment of the ecological conservation red line system," Ma said.

"Based on what we have observed, the demarcation of the ecological red line has been essentially completed across the entire country," he added.

Besides drawing the red lines, Chinese authorities make full use of resources such as satellites, manned and unmanned aircraft, fixed ground and mobile patrol monitoring to construct an integrated ecological quality monitoring network from "sky to ground," according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

Those monitoring measures focus on natural reserves, ecological conservation red lines and key ecological function areas, Huang Runqiu, head of the ministry, told a press conference on July 27.

More than over 5,000 key issues were identified in national nature reserves, and 79 ecological damage issues were found in five pilot provinces with ecological conservation red lines up to July 27.

Currently, China has over 30 laws on ecological and environmental protection, more than 100 administrative regulations, and over 1,000 local regulations, the National People's Congress said in a post on Tuesday. They lay a solid foundation for establishing and improving the system of ecological civilization.

Chinese authorities released a guideline on Tuesday to enhance the integration of law enforcement and administering justice in forestry and grassland affairs.

Jointly issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, the guideline is centered on building a coordination mechanism for administrative law enforcement and prosecutorial public interest litigation in forestry and grassland affairs.

In the past decade, the national forest coverage rate increased from 21.63 percent to 24.02 percent, according to a statement sent by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration to the Global Times on Tuesday.

China has contributed one quarter, the most in the world, to the increase in global green coverage. Grasslands have an overall vegetation coverage of 50.32 percent and their status has transformed from production to ecological purposes, the authority said.

Core concept

As the birthplace and first demonstration site of the concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," residents in East China's Zhejiang Province, especially Huzhou, have a more vivid experience of the concept.

Huzhou's Yucun village, previously the largest limestone mining area in Anji county, is an example as it transformed the local economy from mining to greener industries.

The air in the village used to be shrouded with coal dust and the green bamboo leaves on the mountains were covered in soot. Miners who came out of the mines looked all the same - all covered in black.

The change started in 2002 when Yucun village began shutting down the mines. The momentum of green development became stronger after Xi, then Party Chief of Zhejiang, raised the "two mountains" concept on August 15, 2005 during his inspection trip to the county.

Nowadays, former miners are able to wake up breathing fresh air every day and have sought out ways to make a living in industries related to eco-tourism, such as running guest houses and shops, as well as high-tech agriculture.

The "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" concept for local people is that they are able to enjoy beautiful and green ecology and at the same time live an abundant life, Chen Guangju, the deputy head of the "Two Mountains" Concept Research Institute affiliated with Huzhou University, told the Global Times.

What other places can learn from the Zhejiang experience is that the practice should first prioritize ecology and seek a development path that fits local conditions so as to reach the goal of common prosperity, Chen said.

The "two mountains" concept is and will lead to a new form of human civilization, Chen said.

China's ecological governance approach not only addresses domestic environmental issues but also has a positive impact on global sustainable development and climate management, Sun Shao, a senior researcher at Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

China's practices in ecological restoration and sustainable development can offer insights and lessons for other countries, propelling worldwide environmental conservation efforts, Sun said.

"Through collaborative initiatives, technology sharing and international cooperation, China plays a vital role in global environmental management, contributing to addressing global challenges such as climate change," he added.

Most people don’t live close to a coral reef. If we want to visit one, we have to travel far, to the tropical waters that are home to these beautiful and diverse ecosystems. But, it turns out, most coral reefs aren’t that far from people. And it’s those really accessible reefs that we should be worrying about, a new study argues.

Eva Maire of the University of Montpellier in France and colleagues started by breaking up all of the world’s coral reefs into 1-kilometer-square cells. They then calculated how much travel time sat between each of those cells and the nearest human settlement, doing their best to account for whether a person would have to use a boat, a road or a meager track to reach the reef.
Fifty-eight percent of the cells are less than 30 minutes from people, the group reports February 15 in Ecology Letters. Most of those reefs can be found in the Caribbean, the Coral Triangle off Southeast Asia, the Western Indian Ocean and around islands in the Pacific. Others, such as those in the Coral Sea or the northwest Hawaiian Islands, are largely inaccessible, requiring 12 hours or more to reach — too far for a quick fishing jaunt.

Being close to people means that a reef and its resources can be more easily accessed and exploited. Proximity to a market — a source of income for fishermen with easy access to a rich catch — may make that even easier. The researchers found that a quarter of the reefs were within four hours of a major market, and nearly a third were more than 12 hours away. And how close a reef sat to a market appears to matter when it comes to the amount of fish swimming on the reef — those that are closer have lower amounts of fish, the team calculated.

Then the group looked at the pattern of protection for reefs. Many reefs are in marine protected areas that have been set up to limit exploitation. But the reefs most likely to be in a protected area are those that are far from people. An isolated coral reef is more than twice as likely to be protected than average.

The pattern is easy to explain. To set up a protected area, a government has to get everyone who is using that swath of ocean — for fishing, recreation, tourism or anything else — on board with the restrictions that will be placed on usage. And it’s a lot easier to do that with remote patches that not many people are using.

The problem with this, Maire and her colleagues note, is that it means that we may be protecting areas of the ocean that don’t really need protection. And it’s possible that the global goal of protecting 10 percent of the ocean by 2020 “can be met without actually reducing human impacts on the seascape,” they write.

There needs to be more work analyzing the pattern of marine protected areas before any such conclusion can be drawn. And there’s also something to be said for protecting coral reefs now, before they’re totally exploited. Corals already face an uphill battle for survival, given the threats of climate change and ocean acidification. Setting some reefs aside before fishermen and others can do damage doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

BALTIMORE — Metamaterials, among the most intricate and skillfully designed configurations of matter ever devised by science, could be improved with the help of Legos.

Famous for their use in cloaking devices, metamaterials are artificial structures that play unnatural tricks with light and sound and other vibrations. Scientists have investigated the use of such materials for soundproofing rooms or protecting buildings from the shaking of earthquakes, among other things. But to do their jobs, metamaterials must be properly designed and fabricated using precisely manufactured components. Testing ideas for new metamaterials is therefore time-consuming and expensive.
So Paolo Celli and colleagues at the University of Minnesota sought alternatives. They considered 3-D printing, Celli said March 15 at a meeting of the American Physical Society. But the printing process can be slow and the “ink” isn’t cheap, so they rejected that idea. “That’s when we thought, ‘Why don’t we use Lego bricks?’” he said. Legos are relatively cheap and can rapidly be rearranged into all sorts of configurations.

Celli and colleagues arranged Lego bricks on a base plate attached to a wooden frame and investigated how the arrangements influenced the way vibrations traveled through the plate. For some arrangements, certain vibration wavelengths could not be transmitted. Manipulation of the Legos allowed the scientists to determine what processes created the forbidden wavelength zones (known as bandgaps), providing valuable data for future designs of real metamaterials.

Further experiments showed how Lego arrangements could identify metamaterial architectures that might provide a shield for buildings at risk from earthquake waves. “We might be able to design a metamaterial shield that might block some frequencies that can be harmful to that structure,” Celli said.

Ahmed Elbanna, a materials researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, called the work with Legos exciting and said in principle it could be applicable to designing metamaterials for some applications. He said he was “a little bit more skeptical” that it could result in useful earthquake protection.

Celli emphasized that the motivation behind the work was not solely to produce better metamaterials. “We’ve been looking for an agile and versatile experimental platform,” he said, “but we were also looking for something that people can relate to…. We think that this platform is probably very powerful” for promoting this branch of physics to a broader community.

Asked if he played with Legos as a child, Celli replied, “a lot.”