At 11:23 am on Thursday, a round of applause erupted in Air China's first C919 cabin, when the home-made plane, with the registration number of B-919X, landed smoothly at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing.

Welcomed with a water cannon salute at the airport, Air China's first C919 aircraft officially joined the fleet.

About one hour earlier, another C919 received by China Southern Airlines landed at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, also becoming the first of its kind received by China Southern.

It is the second day after the single-aisle C919 were delivered to the two major Chinese air carriers by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) in Shanghai. The aircraft have now returned to their bases, preparing for future service.

The C919 is an excellent aircraft, achieving a very high standard in design, performance, as well as in terms of control feeling and human-computer interaction, Wang Yan, the captain of Air China B-919X, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"I am proud of the Air China C919 aircraft, and I am proud to be a C919 pilot," Wang said.

Wang has long flown Boeing 777 and Airbus 321 aircraft. In July, Wang completed the C919 modification training and obtained a new pilot license.

"We will ensure that domestically-produced large aircraft fly smoothly in the blue sky, prioritizing safety and efficiency," Wang said.

The most striking feature of Air China's C919 is its spaciousness, including the wide aisle, an open cabin layout, and generous seat spacing.

Air China's C919 aircraft has a total of 158 seats, including eight business class seats with a pitch of 40 inches, 150 economy class seats with a pitch of 30-31 inches, and a 45-inch pitch at the safety exit.

Compared with other airlines, which have 164 seats, Air China has one fewer row of economy class seats, so the distance between each row of seats is increased by two inches. The seat spacing is better than that of similar foreign planes.

While seated in an economy class seat, the GT reporter opened the tray table and placed a laptop on it without feeling cramped, while the leg space was comfortable. When the passenger in the middle seat leaves the seat, another passenger does not need to stand up, but can easily make room by turning slightly sideways.

Even if the flight attendants push the dining cart down the central aisle, there is relatively ample space in the aisle on both sides, the reporter noticed.
To ensure safety, Air China set up a flying team for C919, and the first group of ten C919 pilots completed the transition training on July 29 and passed the test organized by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, all with excellent results, receiving their C919 pilot licenses.

Information shared by China Southern showed that the carrier selected three experienced captains, with a total flight time exceeding 35,000 hours.

China Southern said it will launch a route from Guangzhou to Shanghai on September 19. The carrier said it has been deepening cooperation with COMAC in maintenance capability development, parts manufacturing, and aircraft monitoring system to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the C919.

The carrier independently develops an aircraft health management system, the only one in the world compatible with Boeing, Airbus, and the home-made aircraft. It can provide real-time status monitoring, fault diagnosis, and predictive maintenance, and data-driven decision support to improve aircraft safety, reliability and maintenance efficiency.

China Southern announced that it plans to implement the system across all C919 fleet after successful testing.

Currently, a total of nine C919 planes have been delivered to airlines by COMAC. Among them, the C919 aircraft of China Eastern Airlines, the first global user, has been operating smoothly for 15 consecutive months since its first commercial flight, flying five routes, and has completed more than 3,600 commercial flights and 10,000 flight hours.

On August 16, State Grid Bortala Power Supply Company organized personnel to carry out independent inspection of drones on the 10-kilovolt line. Distribution line inspection is the focus of power supply guarantee work. Drones have become an important tool for distribution network line inspection. 

Compared with the previous manual operation of drone inspection methods, drones equipped with adaptive inspection technology do not require staff to remotely command. With one-click operation, a series of tasks such as identifying poles and towers, infrared temperature measurement, and taking pictures can be completed independently.

In order to effectively improve the application effect of independent drone inspection and effectively support the construction and application of a new power system and the construction of core business teams, the company planned in advance and established a joint research special group for adaptive inspection of distribution network drones with Information Industry Group Co., Ltd. and Zhongke Fangcun Zhiwei (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd. 

Through top-down linkage, main production coordination, "training + practical operation," and "outsourcing + independence" methods comprehensively promote full coverage of independent inspection of distribution network drones.

"After adopting adaptive technology, a drone with a team of two people can complete a 10-kilometer inspection task in one day, which is equivalent to the workload of our previous week of walking inspection. This greatly improves the work efficiency at the grassroots level," said Li Jingtao, an employee of the company.

As of now, State Grid Bortala Power Supply Company has used drones for independent inspection of 110 10-kilovolt lines, 36,700 poles and towers, a total of 1,815.93 kilometers, and discovered and dealt with 10,300 various defects. 

In the next step, the company will explore and deepen the application of drone adaptive technology, strengthen cooperation and exchanges in related fields, draw on advanced experience, better achieve lean operation and maintenance of the distribution network, serve and ensure that the operation safety of grassroots personnel is controllable,work is cost-reduced and efficiency-increased, and fully guarantee the safe and stable operation of the power grid.

China facilitated 110 million cross-border passenger trips in July and August, which marks a year-on-year increase of 30.0% and a 13.0% increase from the May-June period, said the National Immigration Administration on Tuesday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday started holding bilateral events with foreign leaders who will attend the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), scheduled for Sept. 4 to 6 in Beijing.

At 10 a.m., Xi met with Felix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the Great Hall of the People.

During the FOCAC summit, Xi will attend the opening ceremony and deliver a keynote speech on Sept. 5. He will also host a welcome banquet for the leaders and representatives attending the summit.

Following the 2006 Beijing summit, the 2015 Johannesburg summit and the 2018 Beijing summit, the upcoming summit is another event gathering members of the friendly family of China and Africa. It is also the largest diplomatic event hosted by China in recent years, with the highest attendance of foreign leaders.

Starting from Friday, drones have been used to deliver food and essential supplies to visitors at the Badaling section of the Great Wall, marking Beijing's first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) logistics delivery.

The South Ninth Tower of the Badaling section was opened to the public at the end of 2023. To preserve the original appearance of the Great Wall, no commercial facilities have been set up in this area, making it difficult for visitors to replenish supplies such as drinking water and food, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

To address this problem, the Badaling Great Wall Scenic Area partnered with a delivery platform to launch Beijing's first drone logistics delivery route in the area. Visitors can now scan a QR code with their cell phones to log in to the delivery platform, and they can receive items such as medicine, drinking water and food delivered by UAVs in as little as five minutes.

The drone takes off from the rooftop of the Badaling Hotel. When a merchant in the scenic area receives an order from a visitor, a delivery person will quickly collect the order and bring it to the drone takeoff point. The delivery is then weighed, packaged and handed over to ground personnel who secure it to the drone and execute the delivery instructions. 

During the initial test flights, there were many orders for items like drinking water and emergency medicines, reports said. The drone delivery service operates from 10 am to 4 pm.

After the delivery hours, these drones switch roles to assist with waste management, a task that has traditionally been labor-intensive. 

Using UAVs for delivery improves the visitors' experience by providing quick access to essential supplies like drinking water, food and emergency medicines in remote sections, where traditional commercial facilities are not available. This is particularly important in the South Ninth Tower area, where visitors would otherwise have to endure long walks before obtaining basic necessities. 

In the future, UAV logistics delivery might be considered for more scenarios to address delivery challenges in hard-to-reach areas where delivery personnel struggle to arrive quickly, bringing even more convenience, experts said.

A summer camp was held at the Tianjin University in Tianjin from August 11 to August 24, with the aim to strengthen higher education cooperation and exchanges between the ASEAN and China, and improve student enthusiasm for learning marine science and technology.
The Education Counsellor of the Malaysian Embassy in China Muhammad Sallehuddin delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the Blue Ocean Summer Camp on August 11.

Sallehuddin shared with the students the benefits of participating in the student exchange programs, which are strengthening self-improvement and developing leadership skills to become future leaders.

The summer camp promotes comprehensive cooperation and exchanges between universities in ASEAN member countries and Chinese universities in the fields of talent training, scientific research, and cultural exchanges. A total of 19 ASEAN students participated in the summer camp, including five from Malaysia.

Featuring about 70 sessions, the education cooperation week has developed into a high-end platform and bridge making positive contributions to China-ASEAN relations.

Magdalena Czechonska, director of the Culture Office at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in China visited the "Instant and Eternity," a Polish Amber Culture and Art Exhibition at the Tianjin Museum on August 20.

This is the first international exhibition introduced by the Tianjin Museum in recent years. It is also an important cultural exchange project between Poland and China.

The exhibition features at least 600 artworks made of amber.
Artifacts featured in the exhibition include a Fairy Tale Chess set made of silver and amber, a set of art jewelry by Iwona Tamborska, a dress decorated with amber, as well as an amber seal selected from the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220). Many visitors may not know that three-quarters of global sales of amber come from Poland.
Czechonska also met Yao Yang, director of the Tianjin Museum.

The exhibition is open until August 25.

China and Poland boast a long history and profound cultural traditions, and people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two sides have become increasingly active in recent years.

The People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, has conducted three major monetary policy adjustments to precisely support economic growth this year, and it will continue to strengthen counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments to consolidate the economic recovery, said PBC Governor Pan Gongsheng.

China's financial system is stable overall, with risks in key sectors being resolved in an orderly fashion, Pan said in an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television on Saturday.

The central bank will make significant efforts in the areas of technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance and digital finance, Pan said, and it will continue to promote financial opening-up by increasing the transparency, stability and predictability of relevant policies.

The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed to efforts to deepen reform of the financial system. It said that the country will move faster to improve the central bank system and the monetary policy transmission mechanism.

Reforms outlined in the resolution adopted by the third plenum chart the direction of monetary and fiscal policies as well as industrial development policies so as to enhance social expectations, Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin School of Administration, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Amid the trend of interest rate cuts in major economies, it is expected that the PBC may announce cuts to interest rates or the reserve requirement ratio by the end of 2024, Wen Bin, chief economist at China Minsheng Bank, told the Global Times.

Thanks to favorable factors including a low interest rate environment, stable real estate market and policies to boost consumption, consumers' willingness to spend and borrow will gradually recover, he said.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Friday concluded his visit to Belarus, during which Beijing and Minsk pledged to further promote practical cooperation in various fields ranging from trade, finance, security and agriculture to science and technology, and education, according to a joint communique released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday.

Analysts said Premier Li's visit to Belarus demonstrates a high-level political mutual trust and the momentum of close cooperation between the two countries. The expanding China-Belarus cooperation will also inject impetus into the steady development of bilateral relations and also play an exemplary role in the region.

Li arrived in Minsk on Thursday after co-chairing the 29th regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian heads of government in Moscow and a visit to Russia.

During a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday local time, Premier Li said that China stands ready to work with the Belarusian side to push for the high-level development of their all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership to better benefit the two peoples. 

Li said that China-Belarus relations, regardless of how the international situation changes, have always shown vigor and vitality since the establishment of diplomatic ties 32 years ago. 

Noting that China will continue to firmly support Belarus in pursuing a development path suited to its national conditions, Li said that China stands ready to further synergize development strategies with Belarus, solidly advance cooperation in various fields, steadily expand trade scale.

Lukashenko hailed that Belarus-China relations are enjoying a strong momentum of development and are at an all-time high. He said that Belarus stands ready to maintain close high-level exchanges with China, and to deepen practical cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, agriculture, science and technology.

In meeting with Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko, Li said China stands ready to work with Belarus to firmly support each other in defending core interests and remain each other's true friend and good partner.

In the joint communique, the two sides also expressed that they will firmly oppose external forces' interference in other countries' internal affairs under any pretext.

The communique said that Belarus reiterates its firm commitment to the one-China principle, firmly opposes any form of "Taiwan independence"  and firmly supports the Chinese government in achieving national reunification. 

On regional hotspot issues, the two sides expressed support for peaceful resolution of conflicts and constructive bilateral dialogue between countries.

Yang Jin, an associate research fellow with the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that Premier Li's visit to Minsk highlights a high-level political mutual trust and the momentum of close cooperation between China and Belarus, which will continue in the future. 

Premier Li's visit is also part of frequent political interactions between the two countries in recent years. President Lukashenko visited China twice in 2023. He also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, in July 2024.

Zhao Huirong, an Eastern European studies expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that exchanges at the government level will effectively implement the strategic plans of the two heads of state, consolidate political trust and provide new impetus for the steady development of bilateral relations.

"China-Belarus relations are a role model of a new type of international relations," Zhao said, "The two countries uphold mutual respect, mutual benefit, and share the same views on the international order and affairs, which is why they have achieved fruitful results in both bilateral and multilateral cooperation."

Expanding scope

In terms of practical cooperation, the China-Belarus joint communique said the two countries will enhance cooperation in industrial supply chains, and cooperation in service trade and e-commerce. 

The communique said the two sides will jointly promote the high-quality development of the China-Belarus Industrial Park, and agreed to strengthen cooperation on China-Europe freight trains by promoting infrastructure connectivity, and jointly ensuring the safety of the China-Europe freight train transport corridor.

The two sides have also expressed willingness to strengthen cooperation in agriculture and welcome each other's high-quality agricultural products to enter their markets. 

In addition to the traditional cooperative sectors, the communiques said the two countries will carry out mutually beneficial cooperation in the fields of information and communication technology.

The two sides said they will deepen cooperation in biomedicine, culture and tourism, sports, news and communication.

The communique said that the two sides will support practical cooperation between scientific research institutions, universities and enterprises, and encourage the establishment of joint laboratories, joint applied research centers, joint ventures, high-tech parks and other scientific research institutions.

The document said the two countries will expand interbank credit and financial cooperation and expand channels for bilateral financial cooperation. The two sides hope to increase the proportion of local currency used in bilateral trade, investment, credit and other economic transactions and establish an effective local currency settlement system.

According to Yang, the communiques demonstrate three characteristics of China-Belarus cooperation: "rich in content, pragmatic, and high in quality."

China-Belarus cooperation also reflects the concrete measures taken by China to implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which includes further expanding high-standard opening-up and expanding high-quality international cooperation. 

"Belarus appreciates the development experience of Chinese modernization and hopes to learn from China's experience in governance," Zhao said, adding that cooperation with China in various fields can also help Belarus effectively maintain national stability and economic development.

On Thursday, the two countries also inked an agreement on trade in services and investments, which will further tap the potential of trade in services and investment cooperation and promote the high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Cui Hongjian, a professor from the Academy of Regional and Global Governance with Beijing Foreign Studies University said that China-Belarus cooperation will play an exemplary role in the region, as Belarus is not only an important partner but also a crucial hub for BRI and China-Europe freight trains.

Through some institutionalized, long-term frameworks, the two sides can further activate the potential for sustainable development in the areas of trade in services and also some emerging industries such as new energy and digital economy, Cui said. 

According to data from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, China is the second-largest trading partner of Belarus and its largest trading partner in Asia, with bilateral trade exceeding $8.4 billion in 2023. 

The Chinese swim team has faced unprecedented levels of anti-doping scrutiny, undergoing nearly 200 tests administered by the International Testing Agency (ITA) since arriving in France, according to Yu Liang, the national swim team nutritionist. 

This intensive testing regime has sparked concerns about the impact on athletes' rest and preparation for the upcoming Paris Olympics. Yu highlighted the disruption caused by the frequent tests. 

"We've been in France for 10 days now, and during these 10 days, our 31 athletes have not only been training and adjusting to the time difference but have also been subjected to nearly 200 doping tests by the ITA, averaging almost 20 tests per day," Yu said in a social media post on Sina Weibo.

The Chinese national swim team is now training in Deauville before moving to Paris.

"Each athlete has been tested 5-7 times on average. The tests come early in the morning before we're even awake, during midday rest periods, forcing us to rest on hotel lobby sofas, and even late at night, keeping us up past midnight."

Yu's Sina Weibo post was later deleted for unspecified reasons, but it has already been widely circulated on social media.

An unnamed official within the ITA acknowledged the high frequency of testing but insisted it was part of the mandated plan. 

"The number of tests is indeed excessive, but we can't do anything about it - it's all part of the plan given to us from above," the unnamed official said as quoted by Yu. 

"I can't imagine the cooperation level you and the Chinese athletes have shown. If it were another team, they would have been complaining loudly and filing complaints all over the place by now."

The increased scrutiny of Chinese swimmers is set against a backdrop of ongoing tensions between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the US. 

Former senior International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound warned that the US' legal overreach, specifically through the Rodchenkov Act, could jeopardize the US' status as a future Olympic host. This Act, which extends US jurisdiction over international sporting events, is seen as non-compliant with WADA's anti-doping code.

Pound suggested that WADA might review US compliance, potentially affecting Los Angeles' hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics and Salt Lake City's bid for the 2034 Winter Olympics. 

"The Rodchenkov Act is problematic," Pound said in an interview with the Reuters news agency published on Wednesday. 

"It's out of step with the international anti-doping code and could lead to the US being declared non-compliant."

Chinese swimmers have been subjected to far more tests than their US counterparts. Data from the Aquatics Integrity Unit shows that top Chinese swimmers like Zhang Yufei, Qin Haiyang, and Li Bingjie each underwent over 40 anti-doping tests in 2023. In contrast, leading US swimmers such as Lilly King, Caeleb Dressel, and Katie Ledecky were tested around 10 times.

The scrutiny intensified following positive tests for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) by 23 Chinese swimmers during a 2021 domestic competition. Subsequent investigations attributed the results to contaminated food, a conclusion accepted by both WADA and World Aquatics.

Despite this, the ITA has mandated that Chinese athletes be tested at least eight times from January 1, 2024, to the start of the Paris Olympics, double the frequency of athletes from other countries. 

Additionally, these tests are to be conducted by non-Chinese authorities, and samples analyzed outside of China to ensure impartiality, according to swimming's governing body World Aquatics.

The swimming events at the Paris Olympics are set to begin on July 27, a day after the opening ceremony.