Premier gets close look at China-made tractor Li calls for further efforts to drive agricultural modernization
Premier Li Keqiang called on Monday for further efforts to drive agricultural modernization and manufacturing upgrades amid China’s economic transformation.
Li, during his inspection tour in Central China’s Henan province, visited an agricultural machinery manufacturing plant in Kaifeng and climbed aboard on a newly made tractor developed using domestic technology.
The premier had previously proposed developing highpowered tractors to achieve technological breakthrough.
Li also visited people living in a floodplain.
The tractor company recently designed and began making the farm tractor, which is powered by a 230-horsepower engine — a product that used to be dependent on overseas technology.
Wang Hongmei, the company’s office director, said the tractors are eagerly awaited in Northeast China as well as the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where large-scale farm- ing and deep plowing are common.
Li, boarding the tractor and learning in detail about its operation from Wang Jinfu, deputy director of Zoomlion, stressed that such technology upgrades should be more widely applied to agriculture modernization.
With almost all control panels inside the operator’s cab, Wang explained that the tractor can be controlled with only one hand.
The application of big data as well as an internet platform also is used by the company for product information collection, as it also developed an internet monitoring platform for all of its machinery products across China.
Breakdown in any area of a machine will be monitored by the internet platform terminal, while such information and data platform are also used for Zoomlion sales.
The company has seen a consecutive increase in sales from January to April this year.
Henan province, located alongside the lower reaches of the Yellow River, has long relied on agricultural production.
On Monday, Li paid visits to several households in Lizhuang township along the Yellow River floodplain area, where in villages scattered in low-lying areas suffer frequent flooding. Li urged the relocation of these villages. The township has 18 villages undergoing such conditions.
What I did went against my identity as a lawyer ... tainted the image of the country.”
Xie Yang
Police placed Xie under investigation in July 2015 and arrested him in January 2016, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Xie had attended sessions organized by overseas groups that increased his resentment toward the Chinese political system. Xie wrote over 180 posts attacking the Chinese government and system on his Sina Weibo account, with some posts calling subverting state power a human right. The posts had 300,000 hits online, prosecutors said.
He was also accused of disrupting court order on March 9, 2015, when he was representing a number of villagers from Yuhua district of Changsha in a dispute over land reclamation.
During the hearing, the court discovered that two others Xie hired to represent the villagers did not have lawyer’s certificates, so the court ordered the two to leave the court. Xie then pounded a desk and verbally abused the judge, prosecutors said, adding that he incited the parties involved to confront the court, causing chaos in the courtroom and forcing suspension of the trial.
On Monday, Xie was represented by two lawyers from his former law firm, He Xiaodian and Liu Zhijiang, who insisted that their client should be immune from punishment on the charge of disrupting court order since he did not collude with those involved to disrupt court order before the hearing.
During his court statement, Xie also said that police and prosecutors had not used torture to force a confession, and expressed his sincere apology for misleading the public over reports of his “torture”.
“The court hearing has given me a fuller understanding that my previous actions have constituted crime. I feel ashamed and regret deeply my previous actions,” he said.