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China and Finland Promote Cultural and Tourism to Improve Trade and Tourism Industry

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 By Xuefei Chen Axelsson

 Zhai Yuhu, Vice Director of Hebei Tourism Development Commission said Hebei province has great advantages and rich cultural and tourism resources. The Great Wall is in Hebei  which embraces both the beach and the mountains as well as skiing site in Zhangjiakou where the 2022 Winter Olympics will be held.
He said the purpose of this visit was to implement the strategic decision between the two countries’ governments.
“In 2017, the governments of Finland and China made the decision to promote cultural exchange with an emphasis on Winter Olympic, energy and tourism,” said Hebei Tourism Development Committee representative Zhai Yu Hu.

The Tourism Development Committee of Hebei Province in association with the Chinese embassy in Helsinki and Visit Finland organised the tourism promotion conference.

The conference was held marking the year 2018 as the EU-China tourism year aimed at promoting the less-known tourist destinations in a proactive way.

Similar to  Finland, Hebei Province also enjoys great sightseeing and snow sport activities in winter. The province is an internationally renowned ice and snow sports and tourism resort in China. It has more than 80 skiing resorts, of which the largest one covers about 156 kilometres. In the 2017-2018 snow season the area received as many as 2.741 million visitors.

In an interview with Greenpost, Zhai Yuhu said that Finland has  long been known as an experienced country in ice and snow activities and sports, Hebei Tourism Development Committee likes to learn from Finland. Besides, the province also aims at knowing more about winter sports equipment from Finnish companies to elevate itself to the international level in terms of manufacturing them.

Zhai Yu Hu said that Hebei  has similar geographical features as Finland, having great forests and a large number of lakes. Embracing the capital city of Beijing and other neighbouring municipalities and facing the Bohai Sea with a 487km coastal line, Hebei Province enjoys great advantages in attracting tourists.

The province  has a variety of top tourism attractions, from the famous Great Wall, world-recognised geological parks and national reserves to the thousand-year historical complex of imperial gardens, ancient palaces and graveyards and temples, it is really worthwhile to visit,  said Zhai Yu Hu.

Apart from a tourism promotion framework, Hebei also has a trade facilitation policy that allows 144-hour visa-free transit for visitors from 53 countries and tax rebate on shopping departures for overseas tourists. A new international airport near Hebei province will open to operation next year to facilitate travel.

Guo Xiaoguang, Cultural Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Helsinki also spoke at the conference. He said China and Finland are really not far away from each other because there is only one country between the two countries, that is Russia.

Guo said that tourism is the best means to increase mutual understanding between the two countries. Therefore, the Chinese embassy to Finland also acts as a bridge between the agencies and companies of Finland and China in accelerating tourism cooperation.

To date, the Finnish national flag carrier Finnair has launched five direct flights from Helsinki to five different cities in China, thereby considerably increasing the number of Finnish tourists to China in recent years, while also adding a large number of Chinese visitors to Finland. Guo again and again introduced Hebei’s famous tourist destinations and warmly welcome Finnish tourists to visit Hebei.

The official tourism promotion board, Visit Finland representative Teemu Ahola, said currently Finnish officials are in China discussing further cooperation between China and Finland in snow sports in 2019 based on Xi jinping’s last year’s visit result.  In December this year,   Finland will go to Zhangjiakou to organise an opening event of the Winter Olympics 2022, which might become a good opportunity for promoting cooperation in sports and tourism between the two countries.

In an interview with Greenpost, Teemu Ahola said China is the fifth largest tourism market for Finnish tourism industry. They really like to tap the great potential of it and will organize promotion activities in China too.

During the promotion conference, the two sides also signed further agreements in deeper cooperation in the future.

About 100 people attended the event.

China, Chinese circle, Energy, Environment, Exchange, Green-tech, Indepth, News, World News

The South China Sea nine-dash line

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Stockholm, July 15(Greenpost)–The South China Sea territorial disputes between China and its neighbours can be partly traced to an internal map published by the Republic of China government in 1947 that included an “eleven-dash line” enclosing much of the waters. China did not explain the significance of the line at the time. It was adopted by the People’s Republic of China government after the Communists came to power two years later. Then, in 1953, China unveiled a new map with a “nine-dash line” that covered a slightly smaller area of the South China Sea, losing two dashes that ran through the Gulf of Tonkin between China and Vietnam.
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The US remained silent on the “nine-dash line” until February 2014 when Daniel Russel, a top state department official, said China should clarify its meaning.
Trefor Moss, 12 September, 2013:
Diaoyu/Senkaku islands … administered from Taiwan long before Japan annexed them.
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China arguably has a decent case regarding Scarborough Shoal. Here’s one important element of the case: China publicised its claim in 1948, and it took the Philippines five decades to object and counter with a claim of its own. Prima facie, that strengthens China’s claim quite substantially.
On the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA):
From wikipedia:
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) is an intergovernmental organization located at The Hague in the Netherlands. The PCA is not a court, but rather an organiser of arbitral tribunals to resolve conflicts between member states, international organizations, or private parties. It should not be confused with the International Court of Justice which is the primary judicial branch of the United Nations, while the PCA is not a UN agency.
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1899
The court was established in 1899 by the first Hague Peace Conference. The Peace Palace was built for the Court in 1913 with funds from American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.
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Unlike the judges from the International Court of Justice who are paid by the UN, members of the PCA are paid from that same income the PCA earns.
South China Morning Post, 14 July, 2016:
The Permanent Court of Arbitration rents space in the same building as the UN’s International Court of Justice, but the two organisations are not related.
Members of «the court»:
Most of them come from countries unfriendly towards China – and most of these countries are characterized by heavy American news domination:
Many «international courts» are also dominated by American lawyers. Here is one reasons:
From Yale Law School guide (2012):
This guide provides information regarding some of the courts outside of the U.S.—international tribunals and intergovernmental courts, as well as national courts—where current law students and graduates may find temporary positions, paid and unpaid:
On UNCLOS
Huffington Post on UNCLOS: China, the Philippines and the Rule of Law
The threshold question really is whether the PRC can be bound by UNCLOS courts and tribunals, including its arbitral panels. The PRC ratified UNCLOS in 1996, but in 2006 the Chinese government filed a statement with UNCLOS saying that it “does not accept any of the procedures provided for in Section 2 of Part XV of the Convention with respect to all the categories of disputes referred to in paragraph 1 (a), (b), and (c) of Article 298 of the Convention.” These provisions of the Convention refer to “Compulsory Procedures Entailing Binding Decisions” issued by at least four venues: the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, an “arbitral tribunal” which may refer to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), and a “special arbitral tribunal.”
While there are venues available for the resolutions of disputes under the UNCLOS regime, the PRC does not wish to be bound by its compulsory processes — the ICJ and PCA included.
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The PRC knew this day would come. Its 2006 statement effectively served as a “reservation” against any binding outcome of UNCLOS’s grievance procedure in the future.
Maps:
By LPJ: «The South China Sea Arbitration: A Chinese Perspective», most part of the book are accessible through Google Books:
From page 193:
(By Demetri Sevastopulo )
News

Greenpost had a record high of visits last June 4

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STOCKHOLM, June 4(Greenpost)–Today it marks one year anniversary of the highest visits of this website www.greenpost.se with a record of 5941 visits.

I see it as the good beginning of this website. But after that it stablizes around 2000 every day more or less.

I hope there will be another record later and when it breaks one million visits we shall have a good celebration.

Right now it is 667467 in total over a year.

World News

Kajita, MaDonald win 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics

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By Xuefei Chen Axelsson

Stockholm, Oct. 7(Greenpost)–The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Noble Prize in Physics for 2015 toTakaaki Kajita,  and Arthur B. McDonald “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, showing that neutrinos have mass”.

Permanent Secretary Goran Hansson made this announcement at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.

Around the turn of the millennium, Takaaki Kajita presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch between two identities on their way to the Super-Kamio­kande detector in Japan.

Meanwhile, the research group in Canada led by Arthur B. McDonald could demonstrate that the neutrinos from the Sun were not disappearing on their way to Earth. Instead they were captured with a different identity when arriving to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

A neutrino puzzle that physicists had wrestled with for decades had been resolved. Compared to theoretical calculations of the number of neutrinos created in nuclear reactions inside the Sun, up to two thirds of neutrinos were missing in measurements performed on Earth. Now, the two experiments discovered that the neutrinos had changed identities.

The two discoveries led to the far-reaching conclusion that neutrinos, which for a long time were considered massless, must have some mass, however small.

For particle physics this was a historic discovery. Its Standard Model of the innermost workings of matter had been incredibly successful, having resisted all experimental chal­lenges for more than twenty years. However, as it requires neutrinos to be massless, the new observations had clearly showed that the Standard Model cannot be the complete theory of the fundamental constituents of the universe.

The discoveries rewarded with this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics have yielded crucial insights into the all but hidden world of neutrinos. After photons, the particles of light, neutrinos are the most numerous in the entire cosmos. The Earth is constantly bombarded by them.

Many neutrinos are created in reactions between cosmic radiation and the Earth’s atmosphere. Others are produced in nuclear reactions inside the Sun. Thousands of billions of neutrinos are streaming through our bodies each second. Hardly anything can stop them passing, neutrinos are nature’s most elusive elementary particles.

Now the experiments continue and intense activity is underway worldwide in order to capture neutrinos and examine their properties. New discoveries about their deepest secrets are expected to change current understandings of the history, structure and future fate of the universe.

Takaaki Kajita, Japanese citizen. Born 1959 in Higashimatsuyama, Japan. Ph.D. 1986 from University of Tokyo, Japan. Director of Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and Professor at University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan.
http://www.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/about/greeting_eng.html

Arthur B. McDonald, Canadian citizen. Born 1943 in Sydney, Canada. Ph.D. 1969 from Californa Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.
http://www.queensu.ca/physics/arthur-mcdonald 

Prize amount: 8 million Swedish krona, to be shared equally between the Laureates.

In an interview after the press conference, Professor Per Carlsson said the discoveries are great for us to understand how the sun works and how neutrinos the smallest particles work and it contributes a lot for future research.

Business, Green-tech, News, World News

Insulin pump reduces mortality from cardiovascular disease by almost 50%

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Insulin pump reduces mortality from cardiovascular disease by almost 50%

Stockholm, July 6(Greenpost)–People with type 1 diabetes who use insulin pump therapy face almost 50% less risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who take insulin by multiple daily injections, according to a statement reaching here from Gothenburg.

The British Medical Journal has published the study conducted at Sahlgrenska Academy.

Based on the Swedish National Diabetes Register, researchers monitored 18,168 Swedes with type 1 diabetes from 2005 to 2012. While 2,441 of the subjects used insulin pump therapy, the others relied on multiple daily injections.

The study found that insulin pump users had a substantially lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease than the daily injection group. The correlation was statistically certain.

“We carefully analyzed the findings to eliminate the risk of bias or confounding and concluded that the effect had been fully verified,” says Isabelle Steineck, researcher at Sahlgrenska Academy.

The next step will be to identify the mechanisms that explain the extra benefits of insulin pump therapy. Dr. Steineck believes that one reason for the difference between the two therapies is that the insulin pump method is accompanied by more extensive patient training and more frequent blood glucose monitoring.

”There is a rationale for insulin pump treatment resulting in more stable blood glucose concentrations than multiple daily injections” she says. ”Previous studies have shown that insulin pump can reduce the frequencies of severe hypoglycemic episodes. Severe hypoglycaemia can be a risk factor for cardiovascular events, particularly among high risk individuals.”

”We evaluated the patients who used insulin pump therapy and do not know if the observed effect is attributable to continuous infusion of insulin or that some of the effect is attributable to intensified glucose monitoring, increased motivation to control blood glucose, or a better knowledge about having diabetes type 1”says Isabelle Steineck.

The researchers have concluded that insulin pumps not only make life easier for patients, but represent a safe and effective treatment method.

“This is good news for anyone with type 1 diabetes,” says Soffia Gudbjörnsdottir, diabetologist and director of the Swedish National Diabetes Register. “But not everybody wants to use a pump, and the biggest priority is still to optimize blood glucose monitoring.”

Approximately 20% of Swedish type 1 diabetes patients have access to insulin pump therapy. But earlier studies at Sahlgrenska Academy have demonstrated that hospitals vary greatly – anywhere from 12% to almost 30% of patients may receive pumps.

The article “Insulin Pump Therapy, Multiple Daily Injections and Cardiovascular Mortality in 18,168 People with Type 1 Diabetes: Observational Study” was published online by the British Medical Journal on June 22.

Link to article: http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h3234

 

Business, China, News, World News

China relaxes e-commerce investor rules for foreigners

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China relaxes e-commerce investor rules for foreigners

BEIJING, June 19 (Greenpost) — China has decided to give foreign investors greater freedom in the booming e-commerce industry by allowing them to fully own e-commerce companies in the country, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced Friday.

The MIIT said in a brief statement that it would open up the online data processing and transaction processing businesses to foreign investors.

The new policy will enable more foreign companies to compete with local firms, thereby driving the sector to higher standards, the MIIT said.

The move is an expansion of a pilot scheme launched in January in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

Currently, China’s lucrative e-commerce business is dominated by big homegrown firms. The e-commerce market hit 13.4 trillion yuan (2.2 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2014, and China is aiming to almost double the value of the sector in two years. Enditem

Source Xinhua

Editor    Xuefei Chen Axelsson

Business, China, Green-tech, News, World News

China’s software sector presents new features

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China’s software sector presents new features

DALIAN, June 19 (Greenpost) – China’s software industry has exhibited new trends and features alongside the rapidly developing global software and information services market, according to a report released on China International Software and Information Service Forum 2015 held here Friday.

In 2014, the country’s software export continued to rise at a fast pace and industrial structure was further optimized together with service taking up a steadily rising proportion in the entire software sector.

Meanwhile, software developers revealed an eye-catching profitability when labor costs rose constantly.

Besides, software business in central and west China saw faster revenue growth than in other places of China. (Edited by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)

Source Xinhua

Editor  Xuefei Chen Axelsson

Business, China, News, World News

Fastest cargo train linking China, Europe to add station

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Fastest cargo train linking China, Europe to add station

 

Stockholm, June 2(Greenpost) — A cargo train route that links southwest China’s Chengdu city with the Polish city of Lodz will add a new station in western Europe, it was announced Wednesday.

The candidate countries include France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, according to Chengdu officials who attended the third Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Riga, Latvia.

The 9,826-kilometer Chengdu-Lodz line, upon which travels the fastest freight train on the Eurasian continent, leaves China at the Alataw Pass in northwestern Xinjiang before passing through Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus on its way to Poland. From Lodz, cargo can reach any country in Europe within three days by rail or land.

As of April, the line has transported over 20,000 tonnes of cargo from China worth more than 600 million U.S. dollars since it was opened in 2013.

Another regular cargo train linking northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province to central Russia was launched in February.

A number of mainland cities — including Chongqing in southwest China; Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Changsha in central China; and Shenyang in northeast China — have rail freight services to Europe. Enditem   Source Xinhua

Editor Xuefei Chen Axelsson

China, News

China to roll out energy-saving photovoltaic-driven inverter air conditioners

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China to roll out energy-saving photovoltaic-driven inverter air conditioners

Stockholm, June 2, (Greenpost) – China’s photovoltaic company Yingli Solar and the country’s leading home appliances manufacturer Gree Electric Appliances (000651.SZ) have inked a cooperation agreement on the promotion and application of photovoltaic-driven inverter central air conditioners across the world.

According to the agreement, Yingli Solar will provide solar power generating products and relevant technologies and solutions to Gree’s ‘photovoltaic-driven inverter centrifuges, ‘photovoltaic-driven inverter variable refrigerant volume’, and other photovoltaic-driven inverter central air conditioning systems. The product series are capable of using solar energy to lower investment costs and improve the utilization of solar energy.

The two sides will also share their channels to jointly promote the ‘photovoltaic-driven inverter central air conditioning’ product series across the globe, and Gree is to use its global marketing network to promote Yingli Solar’s distributed photovoltaic power generation system.

Zhang Zhe, general manager of Yingli Photovoltaic Power Investment Group, said the cooperation with Gree will open a new era for the collaboration between solar power generation and home appliances industries and it will help facilitate solar energy to enter more households.

Source Xinhua

Editor  Xuefei Chen Axelsson

News

China to close cultural development gap between rich, poor areas

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China to close cultural development gap between rich, poor areas

Stockholm, June 2 (Greenpost)  — China is working to close the gap of cultural development between developed and poor regions in order to meet the public demand and enhance the country’s soft power, the cultural minister said on April 22.
Currently, cultural development in rural-urban fringe zone, poor areas, ethnic minority regions and border areas still lags far behind developed regions, Luo Shugang cited a report by the State Council up for review to the top legislature’s week-long bimonthly session starting from Monday.
Inadequate cultural services are partially caused by local government’s “overemphasis on economic development and deliberate ignorance to cultural development,” the report said.
About 601,000 rural libraries have been built in China’s villages, said the report, adding 16,000 digital libraries have been built in the country’s poor, remote areas.
More publications, TV and radio programs in ethnic minority languages have been produced and publication of books for the blind have been strengthened, it said.
According to the report, China ranked the third globally in terms of the annual amount of film production. Meanwhile, it was the world’s largest TV series producer.
China has attached more importance to culture. A draft law on the overall national security strategy, tabled for its second reading on Monday, called for reinforced education and dissemination of socialist core values, to prevent the infiltration of harmful moral standards and culture.   Enditem  Source Xinhua

Editor   Xuefei Chen Axelsson