Chinese mainland authorities have released sweeping guidelines to support East China's Fujian Province in exploring new paths for cross-Straits integrated development, outlining a flurry of specific measures to boost economic and trade cooperation between Fujian and Taiwan region in a wide range of areas from services trade and small businesses to high-tech industrial clusters. 

Many Taiwan entrepreneurs on Tuesday hailed the new measures as concrete steps to help businesses from the island to further explore and expand in the mainland, stressing the cross-Straits integrated development is an irreversible trend. Some Taiwan entrepreneurs also expressed doubt about the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) willingness and ability to develop the regional economy. 

Analysts also said that the move fully demonstrated the mainland's goodwill in supporting Taiwan's regional economy and Taiwan compatriots' livelihoods, in stark contrast to the DPP authorities' secessionist rhetoric and actions, which run counter to the development interests of the region. More importantly, if the DPP authorities continue to pursue secessionist actions and jeopardize cross-Straits cooperation, the mainland will take firm actions in response, analysts noted.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said that after the mainland suspended preferential tariffs on 12 chemicals from Taiwan under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), in response to the DPP authorities' restrictions on mainland exports, the DPP has not taken any effective measures to lift those restrictions and has instead tried political manipulation. 

Currently, relevant departments are studying to further suspend preferential tariffs and take other measures on fishery, machinery, auto parts, textile and other products in line with the ECFA, the MOFCOM said.

In a circular made public on Monday, the Ministry of Commerce, the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology outlined 14 measures in five economic and trade areas, including supporting Fujian's opening-up and cooperation with Taiwan, high-quality trade and integrated industrial development. 

Specifically, the circular said that Fujian will explore and establish an institutional system and regulatory model that is conducive to advancing cross-Straits integrated development. Efforts will be made to attract Taiwan petrochemical, textile, machinery, cosmetics and other industry projects to Fujian, and help them explore international markets under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Cooperation, or RCEP, a regional trade agreement among 15 Asia Pacific countries includes the ASEAN members, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

According to the guidelines, measures will be taken to support micro and small businesses from Taiwan to explore the mainland market. Efforts will also be made to support Taiwan businesses' in participating in the new industrialization process and guiding them to invest in advanced manufacturing and high-tech industries. Fujian will also leverage its advantages in the digital economy, integrated circuit (IC), new energy, lithium battery, petrochemical, textile and other sectors to build a Fujian-Taiwan industrial clusters with global competitiveness. Notably, Fujian will build a cross-Straits IC industrial cooperation pilot zone.

The guidelines come after the CPC Central Committee and the State Council announced in September 2023 that Fujian will be built into a demonstration zone for the integrated development across the Taiwan Straits, in a move aimed at deepening integrated development in all fields and advancing the peaceful reunification of the country. 

Coming as the DPP authorities on the island continue to hype secessionist rhetoric ahead of the election of regional leader, the concrete measures offered much-needed assurance for Taiwan businesses and boosted their confidence in future cross-Straits economic and trade cooperation despite noise from the DPP authorities and some in the West. 

Boosting confidence

"This new circular will be of great boost to [Taiwan's] future exchanges and development with Fujian and will support more Taiwan businesses to invest in Fujian," Lai Cheng-i, chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce of the Taiwan island, told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that industrial cooperation in areas such as services and semiconductors will be boosted. 

Lai said that all businesses from around the world, including those from Taiwan region, seek to enter the mainland market given its massive size. "I think Taiwan's business community is looking forward to continued positive development across the Taiwan Straits. This is the general trend." 

Teng Tai-Hsien, secretary general of Straits Economic & Cultural Interchange Association, also said that Fujian has offered Taiwan compatriots equal treatment in both living and investing, which is "very attractive" to Taiwan compatriots. 

"I think the industrial integration and cooperation between Taiwan and Fujian will likely surpass other regions in the future, and the future prospects are promising," Teng told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

Following the announcement of the establishment of Fujian as a demonstration zone for the integrated development across the Taiwan Straits, mainland authorities have taken a slew of measures to support that. In November, the Ministry of Public Security's exit and entry administration announced new entry-exit policies for Taiwan compatriots, including streamlining the application process for travel passes.

"With support from so many mainland government departments, these measures also demonstrate the mainland's unswerving efforts to promote the integrated development of cross-Straits economic and trade cooperation and its goodwill toward Taiwan compatriots," Wang Jianmin, a senior cross-Straits expert at Minnan Normal University in Fujian, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Wang said that in stark contrast to the mainland's goodwill, the DPP authorities have only been interfering, disrupting and undermining cross-Straits economic and trade cooperation, which will only squeeze the space for cross-Straits cooperation and directly harm the vital interests of Taiwan compatriots.

In addition to its secessionist words and deeds, the DPP authorities have been trying to cut cross-Straits economic and trade ties, while disregarding provisions in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between the mainland and the island. DPP authorities have imposed restrictions on more than 2,500 mainland products. In a firm response, the mainland suspended preferential tariffs under the ECFA on a dozen chemical products from Taiwan starting on January 1.

Analysts said the mainland has made it clear that it would firmly counter the DPP's actions that undermine cross-Straits cooperation and hurt the vital interests of Taiwan compatriots, while at the same time taken favorable policies to boost cross-Straits integrated development and support Taiwan compatriots.

"I think the mainland's policies fully reflect its goodwill toward Taiwan. They are not what some in Taiwan claim to be 'trade barriers' aimed at sanctioning Taiwan," Zhang Wensheng, deputy dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "The mainland has always maintained goodwill toward Taiwan compatriots and also hopes that Taiwan compatriots would treat Fujian as their home."

Tan Lingling’s motto is to never give up on dreams and  her first professional win at the Zhangjiagang Shuangshan Challenge proved it on Friday. 
 
The 40-year-old held off all challengers card a two-under 70 at the China LPGA Tour event for a 54-hole score of five-under 211, winning a prize worth 75,000 yuan ($10,272.2) .
 
“I have played golf for a long time. Unexpectedly, I got my first win just before I am about to retire. I have no regrets any more,” said Tan, who turned pro in 2012, after working as a golf coach. “I don’t think I have the edge when compared with the young generations, be it stamina or technical aspects, but my strength lies in my mindset.” 
 
Chinese veteran Sui Xiang (70) finished runner-up, while Thailand’s Ornnicha Konsunthea (70) was third at three shots back. Pan Yanhong, the first-round leader, closed with a 73 to sit equal fourth with Wang Xinying (70) and Chinese Taipei’s Huang Ching (72) one shot further back. 
 
Playing under overcast skies, Tan held steady through the front nine with a series of pars and a birdie coming at the 499-yard fifth hole to make the turn at four-under. After dropping her only stroke of the day at the 163-yard, par-three 12th, she rebounded with birdies at the 13th and 14th holes, enough to secure the victory. 
 
“I made only one bogey today. At hole 12, I played well the past two days. But today I hit short and chipped a little bit hard, then made two putts,” said Tan who was equal sixth at the CTBC Ladies Classic in September.  
 
Sui, who started the day one stroke back of Tan, found trouble at the 402-yard, par-four third hole where she made her only bogey to drop to one-under. The Guangdong native then picked up birdies at the fifth and seventh holes. After making the turn at three-under, she could only muster a string of pars with her lone birdie on the back nine coming at the 13th hole to get close. 
 
“I was actually satisfied with my play today, but sadly my putts were not so good on the last several holes,” said the 24-year-old Sui, winner of the Zhuhai Challenge last December. “I already tried my best today. The course is still hard and I felt rather tired. I was quite satisfied with my two-under-par score.” 
 
Ornnicha, a fifth-year pro, put together her best result on the CLPGA Tour on the strength of a strong final round where she carded three birdies and a lone bogey. 
 
“I am very happy and satisfied with my play today. I played more relaxedly and the atmosphere was not so tense,” said the 26-year-old. “At the 10th, I made a long putt from around 15 yards. At the 11th, I played my approach shot well. The ball ended very close to the pin.” 

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) allows countries of Global South to connect with each other, a Pakistani economist told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"We have seen that China itself has come out of years and decades of poverty, and it has transitioned into a country that is fast developing. So for them to tailor a program for the developing countries is much easier than for the Global North," said Vaqar Ahmed, joint executive director at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank.

This is what China has been trying to do under the BRI, he added.

The BRI is a very decent model for cooperation, particularly for the developing countries, because many programs are led or participated in by developing countries, and by some of the poorest countries of the world, Ahmed said.

"So it's not like traditional development programs, for example, a model having bilateral, multilateral donors involved that will come in and do a diagnostic of their own, and then they will offer you a platter or a choice set, that this is what we can do for you, would you sign up for it," he said.

But it's not the way that the BRI, or its flagship project of the Chine-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has operated, he said.

Launched in 2013, the CPEC is a corridor linking the Gwadar port in southwestern Pakistan with Kashgar in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which highlights energy, transport and industrial cooperation.

"In BRI or like in the case of CPEC, you were asked to come up with a priority of choices. What do you want? Where do you want Chinese investment to go? You prioritize that," the economist added.

Most of the BRI's technical assistance projects, in the case of infrastructure, are backed by a financial model, which is easier for developing countries to participate in, as most of them are in investment mode, Ahmed said.

Even if they are loan projects, he noted that they are loans for longer time periods with repayments not around the corner, which is really helping the developing countries to come on board and has allowed more and more of these countries to become part of the BRI umbrella.

Highlighting the upcoming third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in October, the economist said that one of its objectives is that the countries of the Global South, who are beneficiaries of the BRI should actually come together to share those experiences and knowledge.

It's not just the responsibility of China, but in fact, all those countries who are participating in the BRI should utilize this opportunity to share their experiences, he said.

"So without naming any multilateral institution from the Global North, if they were delivering you a project in let's say, five years or 10 years, BRI was able to cut short that time," said Ahmed, adding a BRI project would have been delivered in one or two years maybe and "there are countless examples within Pakistan."

Elaborating on the importance of understanding the global trade architecture, the economist noted that the way the BRI stands at the moment would potentially create more opportunities and productive capacities for developing countries in the future.

"Once those productive capacities are created, for example, in my large-scale manufacturing sector, I would like to trade more. But this is the time when Global North should not change the rules of the trade," said the economist.

"If you don't like multilateralism now, that's going to send a very negative signal to the Global South, to the developing countries, who have added productive capacities due to BRI, due to CPEC," he pointed out.

Argentine President Alberto Fernandez visited the Memorial of the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s First National Congress in downtown Shanghai, on October 15, before he attended the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.

Staffers at the memorial shared stories of how the young CPC pioneers founded the Party a century ago with Fernandez during his visit. At the hall in the memorial, Fernandez took photos of the full-body bronze statues of the 13 delegates of the CPC's first National Congress.

According to the memorial's staffers, Fernandez carefully listened to the docent's introduction and periodically asked questions. He inquired about the statue of Li Hanjun, who was one of the 13 delegates and the site's owner at that time. The site of the CPC's first National Congress was originally a traditional Shanghai-style "shikumen" apartment. 

"The memorial's display and presentation are very well done," praised Fernandez.

Argentine Ambassador to China Sabino Vaca Narvaja also accompanied the Argentine President on the Sunday visit. 

During the visit to the memorial, Narvaja shared that his Chinese name "Niu Wangdao" came from a renowned Chinese translator Chen Wangdao, who was the first person to translate The Communist Manifesto into Chinese in 1920. Shanghai was the first stop on Fernandez's China tour.

China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has newly launched the city's first and one of the world's largest satellite manufacturing facilities, known as AMC. The facility revealed to the Global Times in an exclusive interview that their first made-in-Hong Kong, high-quality satellite would hopefully be delivered by the beginning of 2024.

Referred also as the ASPACE Hong Kong Satellite Manufacturing Center under the HK Aerospace Technology Group, the AMC, was launched on July 25, marking an important milestone in the development of the city's aerospace technology industry.

AMC is located at the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate and covering a site area of 200,000 square feet (approximately 18,580 square meters,) or three and a half football fields, the center hosts 18 subsystems and over 200 sets of equipment, covering various comprehensive production line equipment including satellite overall structure, optical calibration, vibration, mechanical performance, electromagnetic compatibility, thermal control, and precision, etc. It can provide the most comprehensive system production support for satellites and various related aerospace products before they leave the factory, AMC said in responding to the Global Times' inquiries via email.

According to AMC, at the early stage following its launch, its main products include remote sensing satellite constellation (both optical and radar,) key payloads such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical cameras, etc., used to obtain more detailed and accurate Earth observation data.

AMC would also provide customized technologies, including developing customized products according to specific use requirements, such as carbon monitoring satellites, meteorological satellites, etc., for monitoring and forecasting in specific fields.

AMC will also work to manufacture communication satellite constellation to provide global communication services and meet the communication needs of governments and commercial companies, navigation enhancement satellites to provide more accurate and reliable navigation positioning services, meeting the navigation needs of transportation departments and individual users, and multi-functional integrated satellites that integrate communication, navigation, and remote sensing functions to provide various application services.
The Hong Kong-based satellite manufacturing center said their main customers include government departments such as the China Meteorological Administration, environmental protection departments, transportation departments, commercial companies in the fields covering land asset management, carbon trading, ESG service products, research institutions including universities, key astronomical research laboratories, and remote sensing application laboratories, and individual users.

"The AMC satellites procurement and satellite applications require close cooperation with the mainland, especially in areas such as production line research and development, satellite product upgrades, satellite launch and orbit control, and supplier solutions," the group explained in the email it provided to the Global Times.

It is worth noting that China successfully launched the Golden Bauhinia-3, -4 and -6 satellites via the Long March-2D carrier rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on January 15, 2023. Those satellites are developed by the HK Aerospace Technology Group.

The group has successfully launched 12 satellites for its Golden Bauhinia Constellation project so far and plans to manufacture and launch the remaining satellites under the Golden Bauhinia Constellation project during the period from the end of 2023 to 2026.

The constellation is an active-passive hybrid low-orbit high-frequency satellite constellation that combines optical remote sensing and synthetic aperture radar to form an all-weather and near-real-time dynamic monitoring system.

AMC highlighted that after the comprehensive deployment of our Golden Bauhinia satellite constellation, they will consider user groups in the Greater Bay Area as an early priority and provide long-term satellite data application services to support its smart city construction, environmental governance, climate monitoring, and other key areas.

Chinese space observers hailed on Monday that as the country's space strengths have advanced to the first-class tier worldwide, science and research institutions such as universities in the Hong Kong SAR could fully play their part by keeping up the country's momentum, fully displaying their basic research and innovation capabilities, especially in the aerospace domain.

It is important for Hong Kong to play its due part as the innovation center and forerunner in the Greater Bay Area, which is in line with the national positioning of the city, Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based space watcher and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Monday.

In return, Hong Kong could bridge and improve international cooperation in space with the China as the city does in other fields, he added.

Also, as an international hub, Hong Kong could launch their satellites not only from the Chinese mainland, but also from overseas. The robust aerospace development could bring forth new economic growth and inject impetus to the city, Song noted.
The target market for ASPACE Hong Kong Satellite Manufacturing Center is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2027, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Sun Dong, Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry of the HKSAR government, said that the centre will be the most advanced satellite manufacturing centre in Asia in the next three to five years.

In fact, both the HKSAR and China's Macao Special Administrative Region have become increasingly involved in the country's major space program.

According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on May 29, the selection of the fourth group of taikonauts, China's new generation of astronauts, is proceeding as planned and will be completed by the end of this year, and more than 100 candidates then entered the second round, including more than 10 from Hong Kong and Macao.

The selection process was launched in 2022 and will result in 12 to 14 reserve taikonauts being picked, each with different specialisms, such as spacecraft pilots, flight engineers and payload specialists, per the CMSA's previous comments.

The Kepler space telescope, NASA’s premier planet hunter, is about to embark on a hunt for planets toward the center of the galaxy. But on April 7, just hours before its new mission was set to begin, the observatory gave astronomers a scare by temporarily hunkering down in an emergency state that prevented mission controllers from communicating with the spacecraft. As of April 11, though, Kepler was talking to Earth again, and engineers are getting the telescope prepped for its new quest.

“A cause has not been determined; that will take time,” says NASA spokesperson Michelle Johnson. “The priority is returning the spacecraft to science mode.”
Kepler has previously had problems with its reaction wheels, which are necessary for keeping the spacecraft pointed in the right direction. After two of its wheels stopped working, the telescope took a break from planet hunting in 2013. Engineers at Ball Aerospace figured out how to get Kepler working again with the two remaining wheels by using pressure from sunlight to balance the telescope. While engineers don’t yet know why Kepler shut down this time, early reports indicate that the remaining reaction wheels are not to blame.

Once the spacecraft checks out, Kepler will kick off its latest effort, looking toward the galactic center for planets whose gravity distorts the light from far more distant stars. This technique, known as gravitational microlensing, has been used with ground-based telescopes to discover about 46 planets, some of them orphaned from their parent stars. But the method is a first for Kepler, which searches for dips in starlight caused by planets crossing in front of their suns.

This phase of Kepler’s mission will last until July 1. Even if it doesn’t turn up any new exoplanets, it’s guaranteed to see at least one world: To look at the center of the galaxy, Kepler has to point toward Earth. The telescope that has spent over half a decade searching for other worlds will snap a picture of our planet that will be released later this year.

This forlorn-looking face of a 4-day-old zebrafish embryo represents “a whole new avenue of research” for geneticist Oscar Ruiz, who studies how faces and facial abnormalities develop at the cellular level.

The research is possible thanks to a new method, developed by Ruiz and colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, for mounting embryos in a gel that allows for clear, head-on pictures. A technique called confocal microscopy captures images like the one above, the first-place winner of this year’s Nikon Small World photography contest.
The embryo was euthanized before having its picture taken. But Ruiz is experimenting with taking time-lapse images of live, anesthetized zebrafish embryos. The camera snaps an image every five minutes for up to 48 hours, meaning that “we’re able to watch the development happening,” Ruiz says.

So far, the team has looked at embryos ranging from 1 to 6 days old. The researchers are compiling the images into an atlas documenting the developmental stages of the zebrafish face. They plan to use CRISPR/Cas9, a powerful gene-editing tool, to alter genes involved in facial abnormalities in the fish and then watch what changes, if any, occur. The research could one day be used to help scientists understand how a cleft lip or cleft palate develops in humans and possibly help treat it, Ruiz says.

In the image above, shown at 10x magnification, basal cells (green) in the bottom layer of skin give rise to more developed surface skin cells (red). Cell nuclei appear in blue.

“Everyone’s first impression is that those two holes in the center are its developing eyes,” Ruiz says. But they’re not. Those deceptive hollows are nascent olfactory tissue, used to smell. The eyes are actually the big bulges on either side of the face.
Although this was the first time Ruiz entered the microscopy photography contest, he is an amateur photographer. Landscape or travel photos — not fish photos — are his subject matter of choice.

Here are more finalists and honorable mentions from the competition:

Like entry to an exclusive nightclub, getting inside a gram-negative bacterial cell is no easy feat for chemical compounds. But now a secret handshake has been revealed: A new study lays out several rules to successfully cross the cells’ fortified exteriors, which could lead to the development of sorely needed antibiotics.

“It’s a breakthrough,” says microbiologist Kim Lewis of Northeastern University in Boston, who was not involved with the work. The traditional way to learn how compounds get across the bacterial barrier is to study the barrier, he says. “They decided to attack the problem from the other end: What are the properties of the molecules that may allow them to penetrate across the barrier?” The work describing these properties is published online in Nature on May 10.

Escherichia coli and other gram-negative bacteria — so described because of how they look when exposed to a violet dye called a gram stain — have two cellular membranes. The outer membrane is impermeable to most antibiotics, says Paul Hergenrother, a chemical biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Even if a drug might be really good at killing that gram-negative pathogen, it may not be able to get in the bacteria,” he says.

Many antibiotics that have been effective against gram-negative bacteria are becoming unreliable, as the bugs have developed resistance (SN: 10/15/16, p. 11). To encourage drug development, in February the World Health Organization released a list of pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs and threaten human health. All of the bacteria in the critical priority group are gram-negative.
The outer membrane of gram-negative cells is dotted with proteins called porins. These channel structures allow the bacteria to take up nutrients. Those antibiotics that can get inside gram-negative bacteria typically pass through porins, says Hergenrother.

To uncover the dos and don’ts of porin passage, Hergenrother’s group synthesized 100 compounds that share characteristics with antimicrobials found in nature, such as those from plants. The researchers took each compound, incubated it with E. coli bacteria in a tube for 10 minutes and then measured how much got inside the cells.

One feature stood out among the dozen of those compounds that significantly accumulated inside the bacterial cells: They all contained an amine group, a chemical group that contains the element nitrogen.

Next, the team collected a larger set of compounds that have amine groups and again measured whether or not the compounds accumulated inside E. coli cells. The researchers used a computer program to predict what other attributes would be necessary to get through porins. This analysis revealed that a compound should be rigid, rather than flexible, and flat, as opposed to spherical. It’s much easier to put a ruler through a narrow opening than a basketball, notes Hergenrother.

To test the new rules, the researchers turned to an antimicrobial called deoxynybomycin. This compound is effective only against gram-positive bacteria, which has just one cellular membrane. Deoxynybomycin is flat and rigid, so it already has “the right geometrical parameters,” says Hergenrother. That makes it a good compound “to try to add an amine to, in a place that doesn’t disrupt how it interacts with the biological target.”

The team synthesized a derivative of deoxynybomycin with an amine group and tested the compound against a number of gram-negative pathogens that are resistant to many antibiotics. The altered deoxynybomycin successfully killed all but one of the types of pathogens tested.

It’s possible other antibiotics that specifically target gram-positive bacteria could be converted into drugs that kill gram-negative bugs too by following the new rules, says Hergenrother. And keeping these guidelines in mind when assembling compound collections could make screening for drug candidates more successful.

The research could also “revive the failed effort to rationally design antibiotics,” says Lewis. Knowing the rules, it may be possible to build a compound that both hits its bacterial target and has the features needed to penetrate the target’s barrier.

Discoveries about the clocklike ups and downs of daily life have won Jeffery C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Circadian rhythms are daily cycles of hormones, gene activity and other biological processes that govern sleep, body temperature and metabolism. When thrown out of whack, there can be serious health consequences, including increased risk of diabetes, heart and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Hall and Rosbash discovered the first molecular gear of the circadian clockworks: A protein called Period increases and decreases in abundance on a regular cycle during the day. Young discovered that another protein called Timeless works with Period to drive the clock. Young also discovered other circadian clockworks.