Most of the world's hopes for the outcome of the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee can be summed up in three words: stability, stability, stability.
Despite strong Chinese and Russian opposition, the Republic of Korea's defense ministry signed a contract with the Lotte Group on Tuesday for a land swap that will enable the deployment of a US anti-missile system.
China's State-owned enterprises registered an average 6.7 percent growth in profits year-on-year in 2016, ending the negative growth of the previous two years, statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics show.
BIKE-SHARING SERVICES operated by platforms such as Mobike have become an effective solution to the "last mile" problem for urban commuters, Minister of Transport Li Xiaopeng said on Monday. Sznews.com commented on Wednesday:
REPORTS SHOW THAT at least 700 enterprises managed to avoid repaying their bank debts over the past five years, which caused losses of billions of yuan to domestic banks. This year, China Banking Association submitted a number of lawsuits for banks, involving about 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion). Although the banks won, they have still failed to get their money back, Beijing Youth Daily comments:
IN GUANGZHOU in South China's Guangdong province about 90 million yuan ($14.5 million) has reportedly been stolen from people through the fraudulent use of quick response codes which are often scanned for product identification and mobile platform access. Southern Metropolis Daily commented on Wednesday:
Given prevailing concerns about potential uncertainties following Donald Trump's precedent-breaking remarks on sensitive topics, State Councilor Yang Jiechi's visit to Washington D.C. was not about breaking new ground, but about preserving and sustaining the precious turnaround enabled by the recent phone conversation between the US president and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Lotte Group, the biggest operator of department stores and duty-free shops in the Republic of Korea, agreed to provide land to the government for the deployment of the United States' Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system on Monday, a move that undermines the security interests of other countries in the region, including China.
ON MONDAY, DOMESTIC E-COMMERCE GIANT ALIBABA announced that in 2016 it had found 4,495 instances of businesses making or selling fake goods. The judiciary investigated 1,184 of them, yet only 33 people have received sentences. Beijing News comments:
ONE STUDENT WAS KILLED AND TWO INJURED in a recent violent clash at a junior middle school in Hengshui in North China's Hebei province. Southern Metropolis Daily commented on Tuesday:
THE MAKERS of seaweed products mentioned in a video clip claiming their products were made of plastic, say they have lost hundreds of millions of yuan since the video went viral. The companies in Quanzhou, Fujian province, East China, have reported the matter to the authorities. Beijing News commented on Tuesday:
During President Xi Jinping's two-day inspection tour last week, when he visited the construction site of the capital's new airport in southern Beijing and the administrative sub-center Tongzhou district, he urged officials to improve urban planning, in order to build a "harmonious, world-class capital city" that better serves its residents.