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What Belt and Road mean for the world

In less than a month's time, President Xi Jinping will host the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation - his landmark program to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa and Europe. The vision of the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road) projects is essentially about connectivity - facilitated by infrastructure.

Journey to the West inspires theories

Yang Jie, director of the TV series Journey to the West, passed away on April 15 at the age of 88 years, triggering nostalgia, especially among those born in the 1970s and 1980s. Yang's series was adapted from Wu Cheng'en's novel of the same name. Written in the 16th century, the Chinese classic chronicles the legendary pilgrimage of a Buddhist monk, Tang Sanzan, and his four disciples: a monkey (Sun Wukong), also known as the Monkey King, a pig (Zhu Bajie), a former court official (Sha Wujing) and a dragon prince (Bailong) who can transform into a horse.

Real steps needed to reduce medical costs

The Beijing municipal government launched a landmark medical reform early this month by separating drug sales from medical treatment in public hospitals with the aim of lowering overall medical costs and improving services for patients.

US must send a thank-you note for yuan policy

China is not a currency manipulator, US President Donald Trump and the US Treasury Department ultimately said earlier last week. Yet the same conclusion has been reached in the past by many US economists, including former US treasury secretary Larry Summers who admitted the US government was wrong all these years in trying to push China to shore up the yuan when market forces were keeping it down.

Better than expected growth shows economy has resilience

The 6.9 percent economic growth China recorded in the first quarter of this year beat market expectations. Before the figure was released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday, many analysts had expected the economy to expand 6.8 percent in the January-March period, the same rate as in the last quarter of 2016.

Tighter smoking ban needed

According to a recent report jointly published by the World Health Organization and United Nations Development Programme, the economic losses associated with tobacco use in China were about 350 billion yuan ($50.82 billion) in 2014 and more than 1 million people die of tobacco-related diseases every year.

Fake and adulterated food makers will have to pay the deserved price

ON APRIL 6, the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a document mapping out a guideline for work on food safety in 2017 with the goal of ensuring people's health and safety. According to the guideline, a legal framework for food safety should be established and law enforcement enhanced to severely crack down on illegal activities such as producing or selling fake and adulterated food. The Mirror comments:

Administrative changes must be publicized

A MAN RUNNING A CONTACT LENS BUSINESS in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, reportedly spent four days making dozens of phone calls and paying visits to several offices, trying to submit the needed documents to the local food and drug bureau. Southern Metropolis Daily commented on Monday:

Rules to curb campus lending all bark, no bite

THAT A COLLEGE student in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province, committed suicide recently because of the threats she received from lenders when she was unable to pay 570,000 yuan ($83,000) she owed, exposes the lack of supervision over the campus loan industry. Beijing News comments:

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US, DPRK must hold talks before it's too late

Among the possible, but the least desirable, responses to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear and missile tests (although its last one on Sunday was a failure) could be a preemptive strike by the United States. There is no guarantee, though, that the presumed US strike would be precise enough to wipe out all nuclear facilities in the DPRK before Pyongyang launches a nuclear attack in retaliation.