Xi Jinping attends the informal meeting of APEC leaders
习近平在亚太经合组织领导人非正式会议上的讲话
Xi Jinping attended the informal meeting of APEC leaders and listed four goals to be achieved:
Source: 新华网 (original in Chinese)
The world’s largest carbon market is finally about to start trading in China
China’s national carbon market finally began online trading on Friday, as stated by Bloomberg. The credits will be cheap at first and only cover a fraction of China’s total emissions, but the system will expand in the coming years to help the country achieve its climate goals.
At its launch, the system covers more than 2,200 power generators responsible for more than 40% of the country’s emissions and 14% of the world’s energy-generation-related emissions. The idea of the system is to “set quotas for the amount of greenhouse gases that a company can emit during a certain period”.
Source: SupChina
Chinese Counties to Ban Unvaccinated Adults From Public Facilities
In several eastern Chinese counties, adults not vaccinated against COVID-19 will soon lose access to certain public buildings — including hospitals, schools, and shopping malls — as well as public transport.
Unvaccinated people showing up to public buildings will have their information recorded and told to get inoculated, in certain counties in Shandong province.
On social media Weibo, people responded to the new measures with anger and confusion, calling them too rigid and abrupt. “In the beginning, they said (vaccination) was voluntary,” wrote one user. “Turns out it’s mandatory after all.”
Source: Sixth Tone
北京中轴线申遗工作亮相世界遗产大会
Beijing Central Axis Appearance at the World Heritage Conference
The 44th World Heritage Conference “Urban Historical Landscape Protection and Sustainable Development”, co-sponsored by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Beijing Municipal People’s Government, was held at the Fuzhou Strait Cultural Exhibition Center.
The side event invited more than ten internationally renowned experts to share the heritage protection cases of historical cities such as Kyoto, Rome, Brasilia, and at the same time to discuss in depth the effective ways of urban historical landscape protection and the protection and management practices under the framework of the world heritage.
In recent years, Beijing has paid attention to the overall protection of culturally famous cities. The newly promulgated “Regulations on the Protection of Famous Historical and Cultural Cities in Beijing” in 2021 will protect the overall structure of the old city, and demonstrate a gentle, open, magnificent and orderly spatial order.
Source: 新华网 (Original in Chinese)
China’s digital yuan pilot tally reaches $5.3bn in six months
On Friday, the People’s Bank of China released a white paper stating that trials of China’s digital yuan had reached 34.5 billion yuan ($5.34 B) worth of transactions by the end of June.
The trials show the results of Beijing’s efforts to achieve a central bank digital currency, an idea that is generating curiosity amid other central banks, also in the U.S. For many experts, the Chinese crackdown on digital currencies earlier this year is to linked Beijing’s effort of affirming a more stable and easy to manage digital currency.
Source: Nikkei
No. 2 U.S. diplomat Sherman may visit China if talks pan out
China and the U.S. are liaising a potential visit of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, to China at the end of her upcoming Asia trip after she visits Japan, South Korea and Mongolia.
An official said that there is a concrete possibility that the meeting may happen, in a period in which, since the acrimonious meeting in Alaska, there haven’t been many high-level talks. The officer also added that Washington was always open to engagement with Beijing if it was “substantive and consequential”.
Source: Reuters
