City’s new-energy vehicle plan to accelerate growth
SHANGHAI aims to produce 1.2 million new-energy vehicles a year by 2025, with an output value exceeding 350 billion yuan (US$54.2 billion), accounting for more than 35 percent of the city’s automobile manufacturing output value.
With the release of Shanghai’s implementation plan for accelerating the development of new-energy vehicles (2021-25), the city has set ambitious goals to enhance industry application levels that dovetail with the country’s rising momentum in the new-energy vehicle sector.
The city aims to further promote the development of new-energy vehicles, amid rising consumer demand and the city’s goal of becoming a hub of technology and innovation with global influence.
Shanghai hopes to make major breakthroughs in core technologies for vehicles. Research and development and manufacturing of key components such as power batteries are expected to lead the world.
Shanghai will further optimize and enhance the production layout of electric vehicle manufacturers such as Tesla and the Volkswagen modular electric vehicle platform project, cultivate the value of domestic brands such as Zhiji Motor and SAIC Motor’s R brand and drive the city’s new-energy vehicle industry chain development.
To facilitate the use of new-energy vehicles, the city will work to convert existing public charging poles to fast-charging poles and strive to have a total of 10,000 charging poles. By 2025, the city aims to manufacture more than 10,000 fuel-cell vehicles with 70 charging stations for such vehicles.
In 2020, 2.64 million vehicles were manufactured in the city, accounting for more than 10 percent of the country’s total production. More than 238,000 new-energy vehicles were locally produced, a year-on-year increase of 190 percent. The total output value was 66.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 170 percent.
City officials said consumers’ acceptance of new-energy vehicles is on the rise. In 2020, 120,000 were sold compared with the previous level of 70,000 vehicles per year, and 20,000 have already been sold in January.
Shanghai will support the reform of state-owned enterprises and create a number of “unicorn” companies. The city will support Jiading Anting, the Lingang New Area and Jinqiao to build a worldclass new-energy automobile industry cluster.
In addition, it will promote the integrated development of fuelcell and intelligent vehicles in the Yangtze River Delta region.
China’s auto industry is entering a critical period of transformation and industrial upgrade, and the city announced the goals and key tasks for a new round of development.
CHINESE President Xi Jinping announced that China has secured a “complete victory” in its fight against poverty.
Xi said absolute poverty has been eradicated in the world’s most populous country, home to over 1.4 billion people. He made the announcement yesterday while addressing a grand gathering held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to mark the nation’s poverty alleviation accomplishments and honor model poverty fighters.
With absolute poverty eliminated, China has created another “miracle” that will “go down in history,” Xi said.
Over the past eight years, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line have all been lifted out of poverty. All 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages have also been removed from the poverty list.
The country has met the poverty eradication target set out in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.
Combined with povertyreduction results since the late 1970s, China is responsible for over 70 percent of the global reduction in poverty over the period, World Bank statistics have shown. UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres acknowledged the success of China’s anti-poverty campaign, calling it “the most important contribution” to the global poverty reduction cause.
“No country has been able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in such a short time,” Xi said.
At yesterday’s gathering, Xi presented medals, certificates and plaques to role models from the country’s anti-poverty fight. He also joined other Chinese leaders in presenting awards to individuals and groups for their outstanding achievements in the fight against penury.
The recipients include villagers, Party members dispatched to villages to fight poverty, grass-roots officials and college researchers. Some of them were honored posthumously.
Shi Jintong, a village Party chief in central China’s Hunan Province, accepted an award on behalf of his village. Shi’s village, Shibadong, is where Xi, during a visit in 2013, put forward the “targeted poverty alleviation” strategy that was instrumental in the success of China’s poverty eradication campaign. “I feel so honored to meet the general secretary again, yet I am confident at the same time as we have accomplished the task of poverty eradication,” Shi said.
But not all anti-poverty champions lived to see this day. Over the past eight years, more than 1,800 people died fighting poverty on the front lines.
Xi acknowledged these fallen heroes yesterday, saying that their sacrifice and contributions “will never be forgotten by the Party, the people and the republic.”
Building on its victory in eradicating poverty, China is moving on to push for higherlevel development in its rural areas. Shaking off poverty is not the finish line, but the starting point of a new life and new endeavor, Xi said, demanding efforts to consolidate poverty alleviation achievements and initiate a dovetailing drive of “rural vitalization.”
China yesterday inaugurated a new Cabinet body on promoting rural vitalization, which was transformed from the State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development. Xi said efforts must be made to prevent any large-scale relapse into poverty.