SOCIETY

BATMAN

A wingsuit athlete carries out a trial flight in Zhangjiajie,central China’s Hunan Province,on October 14,a few days ahead of the World Wingsuit Championship held in the resort.

Wingsuit flying is the activity of gliding through the air using a special jumpsuit. It’s a highly dangerous and difficult extreme sport that only a few hundred or so athletes in the world have dared to take up.

Willingness to Help

A hairdresser serves a local resident at a volunteering event in Beijing’s Zhongguancun Neighborhood on September 20.

According to statistics released by the Beijing Volunteers’Association on October 12,the city has more than 3 million registered volunteers in a variety of social service programs.

Party Meeting

The 18th CPC Central Committee will hold its Fifth Plenary Session from October 26 to 29 in Beijing to discuss a development plan for the next five years,said a statement released after a meeting of the committee’s Political Bureau on October 12.

While economic development will be the central task,a people-centered approach will be employed in the 2016-20 plan,involving the development of democracy,guarantees of social equity and justice through the rule of law and encouragement for innovation,according to the statement.

The meeting also adopted revised versions of a regulation on clean governance and rules on sanctions of those who break party rules. The former sets high standards for Party members and leading cadres,while the latter marks out the bottom line for Party organizations and members.

The Political Bureau’s statement stressed that the revision upholds the principle that Party discipline is stricter than the law and discipline should be put before the law.

Poverty Reduction

Despite various challenges,China is determined to achieve its goal of lifting all people out of poverty by 2020,an official said at a press conference ahead of the 23rd International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17,which also marked China’s second National Poverty Relief Day.

The country still had 70.17 million people in the countryside living below the country’s poverty line of 2,300 yuan($376) in annual income at the end of 2014,said Hong Tianyun,Deputy Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development of China.

He announced that the government will come up with a string of more effective and targeted measures to achieve the goal,including launching education campaigns,encouraging financial support and building public platforms to mobilize more people to join the fight.

In the past 15 years,China has lifted more than 600 million people out of poverty,accounting for about 70 percent of those brought out of poverty worldwide. It was the first developing country to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty and hunger ahead of the 2015 deadline.

Operation Skynet

The money trails left by many fugitive corrupt officials have been tracked by Chinese authorities,the People’s Bank of China (PBC) said on October 10.

It revealed that investigators have so far handled 92 major cases,involving 800 billion yuan ($126 billion) of embezzled money transferred through underground banks and offshore companies.

Since April,the PBC has worked with the Supreme People’s Court,the Supreme People’s Procuratorate,the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to track down illicit assets exported overseas under the Operation Skynet campaign,which aims to hunt down corrupt officials who have fled abroad.

COLORFUL PASSAGE

Cars run in a rainbow-like tunnel in Zhengzhou,Henan Province,which is designed to relieve the visual fatigue of drivers,on October 13

Water Diversion

China’s south-to-north water diversion project has supplied about 34 million people since it went into partial operation last December,new official data showed.

More than 1.7 billion cubic meters of water has been delivered through the 1,432-km middle route of the project to Beijing,Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei and Henan,the route’s management bureau said on October 14.

The project now supplies 70 and 80 percent of the water consumed in Beijing and its neighboring Tianjin,respectively,it added.

The water diversion project,the world’s largest at an estimated cost of 500 billion yuan ($82 billion),was designed to take water from China’s longest river,the Yangtze,through eastern,middle and western routes to feed dry areas in the north.

The middle route,as part of the project’s first phase,begins at Danjiangkou Reservoir in central Hubei Province and runs across Henan and Hebei before reaching Beijing and Tianjin.

The other two routes are not yet operational.

Massacre Database

China will set up a special database and upgrade the protection of documents regarding the Nanjing Massacre after files on the atrocity were listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

A number of domestic archives will work together to establish the database,which will be open to the public at home and abroad,said a source with the Second Historical Archives of China on October 11.

The database can help people learn more about the historical calamity caused by war,said the source.

Lasting more than six weeks,from December 1937 to January 1938,the Nanjing Massacre saw the deaths of 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers after the city fell into the hands of the Japanese.

On October 9,11 sets of Nanjing Massacre files,including film,photographs and texts taken and written between 1937 and 1948,were listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register,despite Japan’s protests.

Nanjing Massacre documents are mainly housed in the Second Historical Archives of China,the Nanjing Municipal Archives and the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.

Ebola Vaccine

A private Chinese biotechnology company plans to mass-produce a vaccine against the Ebola virus developed by Chinese military scientists,according to company sources on October 14.

It is reported that Tianjin CanSino Biotechnology Inc. has started construction of a facility to produce the vaccine in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area.

Investment in the facility totals 2 billion yuan ($317 million),and construction will be completed in September 2018. It will also produce other vaccines against pneumonia,meningitis and tuberculosis. Annual production is around 200 million vaccines.

Developed by a team of biotech experts with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences,the Ebola vaccine is based on the 2014 mutant gene type and takes the form of freezedried powder,which can remain stable for at least two weeks in temperatures of up to 37 degrees Celsius.

Experts say that it is suitable for the tropical climate in West African countries,where the deadly epidemic outbreak has killed more than 11,297 people since 2014.

According to the Ministry of Health of Sierra Leone,one of the three most affected countries along with Liberia and Guinea,the vaccine has proven“clinically safe.”

“There is a large number of archives on the slaughter [in Nanjing] from the aggressors,victims and third parties.The amount and variety of the documents were unmatched compared with similar heritage events.”

Guo Biqiang,a researcher with the Second Historical Archives of China→

Tourism Promotion

Representatives from different countries and regions attend the Sand Pagoda Sculpturing ceremony during the 2015 International Islands Tourism Conference in Zhoushan,east China’s Zhejiang Province,on October 13.

The conference attracted more than 1,000 participants from 25 countries and regions.

Construction Completed

Attendees power on Huayang and Chigua lighthouses on Huayang Reef of China’s Nansha Islands in the South China Sea at a ceremony on October 9.

The two lighthouses,as the first civil aids to navigation in the Nansha waters,will greatly improve navigational conditions and reduce navigational risks and accidents by providing route guidance,safety information,emergency rescue and other public services to passing vessels,according to China’s Ministry of Transport.

Construction of the 50-meter-high cylindrical Huayang

Lighthouse and cone-cylindrical Chigua Lighthouse began on May 26. They have reinforced concrete structures,a light range of 22 nautical miles and a glowing cycle of 8 seconds.