Xi hails role of community workers
President encourages grassroots staff to continue anti-virus efforts in reply letter
President Xi Jinping has called on community workers to continue their steadfast efforts to combat COVID-19 as communities remain an important line of defense against imported cases and a rebound of the outbreak in China.
Xi made the remark in a letter of reply on Wednesday to community workers at a neighborhood which he visited last month during his inspection tour of Wuhan, the Chinese city hit hardest by the outbreak.
During his visit he spoke with community workers, police officers, doctors, officials and volunteers at Donghu Xincheng residential community in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
In his letter to the community workers, Xi said he was glad to know that life in Wuhan was gradually returning to normal.
Wuhan has lifted its 76-day lockdown, but Xi cautioned against any slackening of epidemic prevention work. He noted that routine adoption of epidemic control measures should play a key role in these new circumstances.
The city’s urban and rural community workers have, together with other front-line workers, fought the virus regardless of the risks they faced, he said.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, said that Party members and officials in communities took the lead in this battle.
The widespread prevention and control measures adopted by the public fully reflected China’s capability to win the people’s war against the pandemic, Xi added.
He urged the community workers to continue their efforts in containing the outbreak and serving the people wholeheartedly.
Tao Jiudi is one of the community workers at Donghu Xincheng residential community who wrote to Xi. In the letter they invited him to return to Wuhan when it was possible to do so.
As a long-running legal battle between basketball icon Michael Jordan and a Chinese sportswear firm ended recently, the ruling of China’s top court was also an example of how the country provides equal intellectual property rights protection and an optimized business environment to foreign litigants, experts said.
At the end of March, the Supreme People’s Court ruled in favor of Jordan, a former NBA star from the United States, in an eight-year trademark dispute with Chinese company Qiaodan Sports that illegally used his name.
The top court overturned two previous verdicts made by lower courts in Beijing, prohibiting the company based in Fujian province from using the Chinese translation of Jordan’s name, Qiaodan, as the Chinese characters have a strong connection to the basketball legend and would easily mislead consumers.
“The ruling made by the top court not only recognized Jordan’s right to protect his name across China, but also upheld the equal protection standards offered in IP disputes,” Kang Lixia, an IP lawyer from Beijing Conzen Law Firm, said on Thursday.
“Guaranteeing litigants’ legitimate rights in stricter accordance with laws and giving them equal protection, no matter where they are from, has always been the top priority of Chinese courts when dealing with foreign-related IP cases,” she added.
Li Shunde, a senior IP researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, agrees.
“Equal protection can contribute to optimizing the business environment, and a better business environment will also attract more foreign investors and make them feel safe when investing in our country,” he said.
It was not the first trademark dispute between Jordan and the Chinese company, “and I think it won’t be the last either,” because the firm still has many trademarks relating to him, Li added.
Jordan has not been entirely successful in previous cases.
In 2016, for example, the top court ruled that the registered trademark of the company — Qiaodan, a transliteration of Jordan in Chinese characters — infringed on Jordan’s right to his name and violated provisions of the Chinese Trademark Law. The registration was ordered to be revoked by a Chinese trademark administration.
But the court permitted the company’s use of Qiaodan-related trademarks registered in pinyin, thus partially ruling against Jordan.
On Wednesday, the firm also said in a statement via Sina Weibo that the latest ruling “would not impact the normal use of its other existing trademarks, nor would it affect normal business operations”.
Founded in 2000, the Chinese company registered various styles of trademarks related to Jordan, including those in Chinese characters and pinyin, and a logo of a silhouetted basketball player that has similarities with the “Jumpman” logo used by Nike to promote its “Air Jordan” line of sports shoes.
Li suggested the company and some other Chinese enterprises put more focus on independent innovation and build their own trademarks, regarding it as a long-term solution for their sustainable development.