China's five-year bioeconomy plan to focus on low-carbon growth

China will promote lowcarbon growth and enhance its biosafety capacity against epidemics as it develops the bioeconomy, according to a plan spanning from 2021 to 2025 unveiled Tuesday.

The country will explore biomass to help boost sustainable development and resource conservation. It will reinforce prevention, control and treatment of biosafety risks like epidemics or animal and plant diseases, according to the plan released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The plan also outlined two other key areas of the bioeconomy to be developed through 2025. Innovation in medicine will be encouraged and the supply chain of highend medical products improved to better protect people's health, while biobased breeding, fertilizers and pesticides will be employed in agriculture to safeguard grain security and enable healthier diets.

Health care, bio-agriculture, biofuel, bio-information are expected to be the four pillar industries of the bioeconomy, NDRC official

Wang Xiang told a press conference.

The country will use genetic testing and other cutting-edge technologies to help prevent diseases, and expedite research and development of vaccines, said Wang.

Tuesday's document also urged more financing support for biotechnology companies, which include encouraging outstanding firms to be listed on China's main boards and the sci-tech innovation board.

Overloaded trucks and cars packed with families ply narrow, bumpy mountain roads surrounding this Yemeni city long-besieged by Huthi rebels-evidence that the terms of a truce have yet to be met.

Announced just over a month ago, the truce called for warring parties to reopen the main roads into Taez, a city of roughly 600,000 people in Yemen's southwest that has been largely cut off from the world since 2015.

So far, however, those roads remain closed, meaning truck drivers and ordinary civilians have no choice but to seek out dangerous alternative routes prone to accidents and seemingly endless traffic jams.

In normal times, one such road, known as "AlAqroudh", should allow drivers to reach the village of Al-Hawban east of Taez in just 15 minutes.

But now the trip can take up to eight hours.

"People are tired, especially children and women. We wait in traffic jams for three or four hours because of the narrowness of the road," truck driver Abdo alJaachani told AFP.

These days he only uses the road once or twice a week to avoid a rough journey that is compounded by the wear-and-tear on vehicles as well as the rising price of fuel.

Yemen's war pits the Iran-aligned Huthis against the Saudi-led military coalition backing the country's internationally recognised government.

The Huthis took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting the coalition to intervene the following year and giving rise to what the United Nations has termed the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and the country has been pushed to the brink of famine.

Despite the coalition's backing, forces loyal to the government have failed to prevent the Huthis from seizing control of most of northern Yemen and eyeing other strategic areas.

The two-month renewable truce began in early April, coinciding with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

It has provided much of the Arab world's poorest country with a rare respite from violence.