Shanghai FTZ allows litigation in English
Foreigners involved in commercial disputes in the Lingang Special Area, newly added to the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, will be allowed to use English in litigation materials and court hearings if both parties agree, the Shanghai High People’s Court said.
A simultaneous interpretation system will be used during court hearings to aid the process, Pan Yunbo, director of the court’s commercial tribunal, said on Dec 30.
The court unveiled 21 measures designed to provide efficient, international standard judicial services as part of the city’s effort to forge a topclass business environment that will enhance the international influence and competitiveness of the Lingang Special Area.
“The use of the English language is an international practice in litigation and trials involving parties from different countries,” Pan said.
Kiribati president set for state visit
Kiribati President Taneti Mamau will kick off his first state visit to China on Jan 4 at the invitation of President Xi Jinping.
The eight-day trip, which will be the first state visit hosted by China in the new year, will bring Mamau to Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces.
It will be the first visit to China by a Kiribati president since the two countries formally resumed diplomatic ties in September after the central Pacific island nation severed its so-called “diplomatic ties” with Taiwan.
“China stands ready to work with Kiribati at the opportunity of this visit to strengthen pragmatic cooperation and friendly exchanges with Kiribati on the basis of equality and mutual respect, to better benefit the people of both countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a news conference in Beijing.
Super-tall bridge opens in Guizhou
A super-tall bridge inaugurated in Southwest China’s Guizhou province on Dec 30 will connect the province’s industrialized north and mountainous, less developed south and halve travel time between the impoverished counties of Pingtang and Luodian.
The 2,135-meter-long Pingtang Grand Bridge, supported by three towers and numerous cables, fully opened to the public on Jan 1, the provincial transport authorities said.
It will allow drivers to travel between the two counties in about an hour, via a newly completed highway, with a speed limit of 80 kilometers an hour.
Construction of the cable-stayed bridge started in April 2016 and the provincial government said it cost 1.5 billion yuan ($215 million) to build.
Its tallest tower is 332 meters tall, equivalent to a 110-story skyscraper, and is the world’s tallest reinforced concrete bridge tower.
Viral pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan
Twenty-seven people infected by viral pneumonia have been quarantined in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, and those who were in close contact with them are being watched closely as the local health authority investigates the cause of the infection.
Seven of the infected are in critical condition, while the others are “stable” with “controllable” symptoms, according to a media release from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission
on Dec 31.
Two patients may be discharged from hospital in the coming days, it added.
Their main symptom is fever, though a few of them also have breathing difficulties. “So far, no person-to-person transmission has been found as the investigation continues. No medical worker has been infected,” the release noted.
The commission recently received reports from some medical institutes that they received patients, infected with viral pneumonia, who work in a local seafood market.
Top legislature slams fatal stabbing of doctor
China’s top legislature and health commission have condemned the fatal stabbing of a doctor at a Beijing hospital by a patient’s relative last week.
“Instead of a simple medical dispute, the stabbing was a serious offense. Any harm to medical staff cannot be tolerated,” Zhao Ning, head of the National Health Commission’s law and regulation division, said on Dec 28.
She made the remark at a news conference after the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the top legislative body, voted to pass the country’s first fundamental and comprehensive law on basic medical and health care.
Yuan Jie, an official from the NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission, highlighted the protection for medical staff in the law during the news conference, adding that assaults on medical workers must be condemned by moral standards and punished by the law.
Gene-editing scientist gets 3 years in prison
Chinese researcher He Jiankui, who claimed to have created the world’s first gene-edited babies, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 3 million yuan ($430,000) for illegal practice of medicine, a court in Shenzhen said on Dec 30.
In November 2018, he said he had used the genome editor CRISPR to produce twin girls immune to HIV, provoking an international outcry over bioethics and prompting an immediate investigation by authorities.
The court said He, as well as two other people on his research team — Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou, from two medical institutions in Guangdong province — were not licensed as doctors, deliberately violated national regulations on scientific research and medical management in pursuit of fame and wealth, and crossed the bottom line of scientific and medical ethics. Authorities work to boost pork supply
Agricultural authorities will redouble efforts to boost the production of pork, which has already shown signs of recovery following a slump caused by African swine fever, an agriculture vice-minister said on Dec 30.
The stock of hogs increased by 2 percent in November over the previous month, while the stock of breeding sows saw a month-on-month increase of 4 percent, marking the first time since April last year that both stocks had increased, Yu Kangzhen, vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs, said.
With a narrowing of the gap between supply and demand, pork prices began falling across China early last month, figures released by the ministry showed.
The average price for wholesale pork in China was about 43 yuan ($6.20) a kilogram on Dec 27, a fall of more than 18 percent from the peak level on Nov 1, according to the ministry.
Consumer goods sales expected to top $5.73t
China’s retail sales of consumer goods are expected to have exceeded 40 trillion yuan ($5.73 trillion) for the first time in 2019, maintaining their pillar position in the country’s economic growth for six consecutive years, officials from the Ministry of Commerce said on Dec 30.
Total retail sales of consumer goods are likely to reach 41.1 trillion yuan for the year, up 8 percent on a year-on-year basis, said Wang Bin, deputy director-general of the ministry’s department of market operations and consumption promotion.
Thanks to emerging business models such as fresh food and broadcasting-themed e-commerce, as well as the expansion of global firms including the US warehouse club chain Costco and German supermarket chain Aldi in China last year, the country’s online retail sales amounted to 7.6 trillion yuan between January and November, up 19.7 percent from the same period a year earlier.