Highlights from State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s news conference
• China-Russia relations
Faced with a once-in-a-century pandemic, China and Russia have stood shoulder to shoulder and worked closely to combat “both the coronavirus and the political virus”. China and Russia should be each other’s strategic support, development opportunity and global partner.
• China-Africa relations
China-Africa cooperation stands as a model of South-South cooperation, and a fine example of international cooperation with Africa.
• China-Europe relations
China and Europe are two important players in this multipolar world. Their relationship is equal and open, and is not targeting any third party or controlled by anyone else.
• China-Arab relations
China will work with Arab states in solidarity, pursue common progress and make good preparations for a China-Arab States Summit.
• China-Japan relations
China and Japan should remain focused without being distracted by any single event, in order to make bilateral relations more mature and stable. The two countries should support each other in hosting the upcoming Olympic Games this year and in 2022.
• China-ASEAN relations
China stands ready to develop an even closer community with a shared future with ASEAN as the two sides celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral dialogue relations this year.
• China-India relations
The China-India relationship is essentially about how the world’s two largest developing countries get along and pursue development and rejuvenation together.
• China-Latin American relations
The COVID-19 pandemic has not hindered China-Latin American cooperation. Instead, their peoples have grown closer and are bound by broader common interests.
• Vaccines
China responded to the United Nations’ call to donate vaccines to peacekeepers from various countries and is willing to work with the International Olympic Committee to provide vaccines to athletes preparing to participate in the Olympic Games.
• Multilateralism
Building small circles in the name of multilateralism is in fact “group politics”. Multilateralism with one’s own interests taking precedence is still unilateral thinking, and “selective multilateralism” is not the right choice.
• Xinjiang
The so-called claim of genocide in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is preposterous. It is a rumor fabricated with ulterior motives and a thorough lie.
• Belt and Road Initiative
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in many respects since last year, yet despite the headwinds, Belt and Road cooperation has not paused, but forged ahead with new outcomes, strong resilience and great vitality.
• New development paradigm
China will create a better business environment, pursue opening-up at a higher level and work with various countries to accelerate the building of an open world economy.
• Consular protection
China will launch a spring vaccination program to assist and secure vaccination of overseas Chinese citizens with Chinese or foreign vaccines, and will roll out health certificates for international travelers to facilitate the safe and orderly flow of personnel.
• Iran nuclear issue
The United States and Iran can move forward in a step-by-step and reciprocal manner to resolve the Iran nuclear issue.
• Myanmar tensions
Relevant parties in Myanmar should maintain calm and exercise restraint, address their differences through dialogue and consultation within the constitutional and legal framework and continue to advance the democratic transition.
• Objective coverage of China
However the world changes, the media should stand by its professional ethics. Foreign journalists should not apply any filter to their camera, whether one of beauty or gloom, when reporting on China. Truthful, objective and fair stories will always appeal to people and can stand the scrutiny of history.
Li Biying, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee born to a Taiwan father and raised in Shanghai, has been working to promote civil exchanges between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan for three decades.
Over the years, as the chairperson of the Shanghai branch of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, she has brought together representatives from various social sectors — including those involved in community management and scientific research — across the Taiwan Straits to visit each other’s cities and villages and learn from each other.
“We made suggestions to the Shanghai government after those trips to Taiwan and could later find that some of our takeaways from those inspections were absorbed into the policies and measures of Shanghai,” said Li, who is also a member of the standing committee of the Central Committee of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League and deputy secretarygeneral of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, the city’s legislature.
On the sidelines of the ongoing annual session of the CPPCC, the national political advisers, in Beijing, she brought a proposal to introduce the practice of permaculture to the Chinese mainland to contribute to rural vitalization, a key task after fulfilling poverty alleviation.
Permaculture is the development of agriculture based on natural ecosystems that are complete and selfsustaining. Farmers allow nature to do the work — no weeding, no pruning, no watering, no fertilizers and no pesticides.
For example, in a village in Taiwan that once had only nine households, as many people had migrated for job opportunities, agriculture and related leisure industries developed rapidly several years after the adoption of the practice.
“This model suits the development of small and scattered farmlands, and this can also assist in improving ecological cultivation on scattered farmlands in the cities of the Chinese mainland, which is an ideal supplement to the ecology and agriculture,” said Li.
She said some villages in Shanghai that attempted permaculture in recent years have encountered problems, including a lack of longterm motivation and low enthusiasm among local households.
She suggested that the natural resources of a village, including paddies, windbreak forests and terraced fields, be considered materials for permaculture with a long-term strategy for ecological protection.
“This can also help reduce the use of pesticides, promote the return of paddy organisms, solve the degradation of soil fertility by using natural compost and have good environmental support for potential agricultural landscape tourism,” Li said.
Li, born in 1959, started her career at Shanghai High People’s Court, where she worked for 18 years in the field of external judicial exchanges and administrative management. Since 2006, she has been working at the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League.
Working there, she facilitated representatives from Shanghai and Taiwan to witness each other’s development and experiences.
As Taiwan is famous for friendly relations among neighbors, she led a team of grassroots community officials from Shanghai to visit several parts of Taiwan about seven years ago to see how the humanitarian element could play an important role in community governance.
Civil organizations dedicated to community management were also invited to Shanghai regularly during those years so that they and their counterparts in Shanghai could share and learn from each other.
“Those individuals were not only taken to the neighborhoods near the Bund, but also ones in remote districts, and they were amazed at how Shanghai had thrived,” said Li, who made her very first visit to Taiwan in 2001 and had more than 100 extended family members welcome her in Taichung, the city her father hailed from.
Another of her proposals submitted to the national committee of the country’s top political advisory body this time is to strengthen vocational education in western China to carry on the fruits of the country’s poverty alleviation success.
She said that during an inspection tour to a county in Bijie, Guizhou province, she and her fellow party members noticed that there were rich medicinal resources. But the local vocational education did not make use of them, though they could provide a unique selling point for the region.
“If medicinal resource processing, commerce and trade, and marketing can be involved in local vocational education, I believe better local industries with their own characteristics will be created,” said Li.
In the proposal, she suggested local schools help students obtain more job skills in modern agriculture and animal husbandry, ecotourism, ethnic culture and art, and agricultural products processing combined with e-commerce and computer applications.