Latest news with #DingLin
Borneo Post
a day ago
- Business
- Borneo Post
China's policy synergy sustains growth, stabilizes employment
Guests attend the latest episode of the China Economic Roundtable, an all-media talk show hosted by Xinhua News Agency. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang) BEIJING (June 6): Amid mounting global uncertainties and a complex external environment, China is reinforcing its commitment to high-quality development to bolster economic stability and resilience. Following a recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, which set priorities for maintaining stable employment, businesses, markets and expectations, relevant government organs have accelerated the rollout of coordinated policies to shore up confidence and sustain momentum. In the latest episode of the China Economic Roundtable, an all-media talk show hosted by Xinhua News Agency, officials from the country's top economic planner, labor authority, and central bank outlined how an expanding policy toolkit is enabling China to navigate headwinds and strengthen the foundations of long-term growth. MACRO POLICY SUPPORT The country's economy remained resilient in the first four months, with solid growth in industrial output, services, domestic demand and exports. Official data showed that retail sales of home appliances and communication equipment surged by more than 20 percent during the period, and investment in purchasing equipment rose by 18.2 percent. Innovation gathered pace, with high-tech manufacturing up 10 percent year on year in April, led by rapid advances in new energy vehicles, large-scale AI models, and humanoid robots. Ding Lin, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, said the upbeat economic data reflected the accelerated rollout of targeted measures and the combined effects of recent policy initiatives. A 0.5 percentage-point cut in the reserve requirement ratio for eligible financial institutions took effect in mid-May, injecting about 1 trillion yuan (139 billion U.S. dollars) in long-term liquidity. It followed a 0.1 percentage-point cut in the seven-day reverse repo rate, effective May 8. These moves, along with expanded re-lending tools and the issuance of sci-tech bonds, form part of a broader push by monetary and financial regulatory bodies to steady markets and support recovery amid external headwinds. 'These policies help expand funding available to the real economy, lower financing costs for businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and ensure more stable business operations,' said Ding Zhijie, head of the Research Institute at the People's Bank of China, the central bank. Official data showed ample market liquidity and substantial credit support for SMEs. By the end of April, the outstanding balance of inclusive loans to micro and small enterprises had reached 34.3 trillion yuan, an 11.9 percent year-on-year increase, outpacing the growth of all other loan categories during the same period. Loans to 'little giant' firms, which refer to novel elites among China's SMEs that are engaged in manufacturing, specialize in a niche market, and boast cutting-edge technologies, stood at 6.3 trillion yuan by the end of the first quarter, marking a 15.1 percent increase. Ding Zhijie, head of the Research Institute at the People's Bank of China, the central bank, speaks at the recording site of the latest episode of the China Economic Roundtable, an all-media talk show hosted by Xinhua News Agency. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang) RISING DOMESTIC DEMAND To strengthen domestic demand as a key driver of growth, China has introduced a series of targeted measures across multiple sectors. These include expanding services consumption, strengthening care for elderly people with disabilities, promoting automobile sales, improving consumption-related infrastructure, encouraging private investment, and launching new policy-based financial instruments. The central bank has introduced a package of structural monetary policies to boost domestic demand, including expanding the re-lending facility for sci-tech innovation and technological upgrading from 500 billion to 800 billion yuan, launching a new 500-billion yuan re-lending program to support elderly care and consumption in sectors such as catering and cultural tourism, and supporting financial institutions, tech firms, and equity investment institutions in issuing sci-tech innovation bonds. Ding Zhijie said that the central bank's recent policies focus on three key aspects: scaling up existing tools, reducing funding costs, and introducing innovative instruments to guide financing toward key areas of consumption and investment. The country announced a new round of the consumer goods trade-in program last year to boost consumer spending, subsidizing trade-ins of automobiles, home appliances, and home decorations — and expanded the scope of the program earlier this year. In the first five months this year, the country's consumer goods trade-in program generated 1.1 trillion yuan in sales, fueling a surge in transactions that included 4.12 million vehicles, 77.62 million units of household appliances and 56.63 million units of digital products such as mobile phones, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. Customers choose dishwashers in a shopping mall in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 8, 2025. (Photo by Zhang Ying/Xinhua) STABLE EMPLOYMENT As domestic demand picks up and macro policies take effect, employment has remained generally stable. From January to April, urban job creation increased at a steady pace and the average surveyed urban unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, according to Chen Yongjia, an official with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. Chen said the ministry has introduced a series of targeted measures to stabilize employment, which have delivered positive results. The country has increased the quota for loans aimed at stabilizing and expanding employment, expanded the coverage of subsidy policies that support job creation, and extended existing measures such as unemployment insurance refunds and skill training subsidies to fully unleash policy dividends. In the first quarter, 3.52 billion yuan in job stabilization funds were issued, along with 23.8 billion yuan in employment subsidies and 156.3 billion yuan in special-purpose loans for job retention and expansion. Starting this year, over 10 million people will benefit from subsidized vocational training programs each year for three consecutive years, alongside specialized courses in elderly care, domestic services, and long-term caregiving to improve workforce skills. The officials said greater efforts will be made to enhance the foresight, precision and effectiveness of macro regulation, ensuring that all policies work in the same direction and reinforce each other. Such coordinated efforts are expected to support the economy's upward momentum, reinforce market confidence, and improve resilience against rising global uncertainties, they said. – Xinhua
Borneo Post
a day ago
- Business
- Borneo Post
China's economy on steady upward trajectory amid external challenges: official
This photo taken on June 21, 2023 shows the Drum Tower as seen from the Jingshan Park in Beijing, capital of China. — Xinhua photo BEIJING (June 6): Building on a positive start in the first quarter of 2025, China's economy is continuing to make steady progress, said Ding Lin, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission. Speaking on the latest episode of China Economic Roundtable, an all-media talk show hosted by Xinhua News Agency, Ding noted that despite a complex external environment, China's economy has remained resilient. Notably, key indicators like industrial production, the service sector, domestic demand and exports have shown robust growth. Ding emphasized China's innovative dynamism, citing 10-percent growth in the high-tech manufacturing sector in April, nearly 4 percentage points higher than the country's overall industrial growth rate. Ding also highlighted the accelerated development of industries such as drones, new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence and humanoid robots. 'In general, as pro-growth measures are swiftly implemented, their effects will continue to emerge, further promoting the country's high-quality economic development,' Ding added. China's GDP grew by 5.4 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2025. – Xinhua China Ding Lin World Economic Forum
Borneo Post
20-05-2025
- Science
- Borneo Post
Oyster fossils offer new insights into history of global warming
Judges check oysters after being shucked during John Bil Oyster Shucking Competition at the 2022 Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto, Canada, on May 11, 2022.(Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua) BEIJING (May 21): Oysters are a popular delicacy on the dining table, but they also serve as natural recorders of environmental changes. Akin to the rings of a tree, the growth bands on oyster shells reveal not only the creature's age but also the climatic conditions at the time they were formed. High temperatures in summer can boost their growth and result in wider and light-colored bands, while low temperatures in winter may slow down their growth and lead to thinner and darker bands. Scientists believe that reading the growth bands on oyster fossils dating back millions of years can reveal the environmental information of the Earth's past and offer new understanding of the planet's future. A study led by scientists from China, Germany, Britain and Madagascar focused on four oyster fossils from Madagascar and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau dating back to the Early Cretaceous (about 140 million years ago), an era when dinosaurs thrived and the climate was warm and greenhouse-like. They discovered notable seasonal variations in sea surface temperatures, along with periodic melting of polar ice sheets and glaciers, indicating that during that ancient warm era, sea temperatures did not consistently rise but fluctuated instead, with cooler periods allowing polar ice to reform. These findings, published in the international journal Science Advances earlier this month, have challenged the long-standing view of 'minimal seasonality and rare glacial activity during greenhouse climates,' revealing the complexity of Earth's climate evolution, said lead researcher Ding Lin, an academician from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). A visitor holding an oyster poses for photos at an oyster gala held in Rushan City, east China's Shandong Province, Jan. 11, 2020. (Xinhua/Guo Xulei) As early as 2014, Ding's team revealed through analysis of ostracode shell fossils that the Gangdise Mountains are older than the Himalayas. To accurately identify the growth bands, the researchers used advanced instruments to observe the microstructure of the oyster fossils and analyze their chemical composition. Global climate computing models also assisted researchers in verifying the reliability of the data. They found that in the warm Early Cretaceous, winter ocean temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere's mid-latitudes were 10 to 15 degrees Celsius lower than in summer, similar to current seasonal variations in the same region, which suggests that seasonal temperature variations were still quite noticeable under the ancient greenhouse-like climate. Moreover, seasonal glacial meltwater possibly flowed into the oceans during that time, much like the summer melting of glaciers on Greenland's ice sheet today, implying that despite the overall warm climate, glaciers still existed and would melt in summer, releasing fresh water into the oceans. 'The Early Cretaceous greenhouse Earth seems like a symphony, and its warm melodies occasionally punctuated by brief glacial notes,' said the first author He Songlin, a postdoctoral researcher at the CAS institute. He predicts that before the polar ice sheet vanishes entirely, there would be an intermediate phase characterized by periodic fluctuations in ice sheet and glacier activity due to global warming. The study highlights that climate change is not a constant warming trend. Increases in greenhouse gases can result in more frequent extreme weather rather than uniformly rising temperatures. Seagulls perch on the floating ice at the Disko Bay close to Ilulissat, Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, March 22, 2025. (Xinhua/Zhao Dingzhe) The study suggests that the brief glacier events 140 million years ago were likely caused by volcanic activity and shifts in Earth's orbit. 'It reminds us that natural factors, alongside human activities, could cause unexpected cooling events in today's warming world,' said co-first author Wang Tianyang, a postdoctoral researcher at the CAS institute. Unlike the common perception of global warming as a steady rise in temperatures, the researchers warn that the climate system can behave in complex and unpredictable ways. This research opens a new window into Earth's ancient climate and reveals the planet's hidden seasonal rhythms and icy echoes, said co-author Andreas Mulch, a professor at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre. – Xinhua China climate change conservation Oysters
