URUMQI - Over 30 years ago, a war against desertification was waged silently in Kekeya, a little-known place in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. But the influence was earth-shattering. Locals won the battle and passed on the spirit of fighting mother nature's ills to those who will continue striving for a better environment.Located at the northwestern edge of the Taklimakan, the largest desert in China, Kekeya was once notorious for its erratic weather and constant sand storms.Taklimakan Desert covers 337,000 square kilometers, slightly smaller than the size of Germany. It is also the world's second-largest shifting sand desert.An afforestation project to prevent the desert from expanding and to reduce the impacts of sand and dust storms on nearby residents was launched in Kekeya in 1986 and completed in 2015.Over the past 30 years, a great green wall stretching around 77,000 hectares has been gradually erected between the desert and towns.The remarkable achievement of Kekeya, located in the Aksu Prefecture, has inspired more people to participate in ecological campaigns, which are already underway and expected to transform the desert into an oasis.Mission impossiblePeople in Kekeya suffered from droughts for hundreds of years.Historical records show that, during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), a local official hired people to drill wells and explore underground water in Kekeya. But authorities abandoned such attempts, as the total cost was likely to be extremely high.Before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, locals made a second attempt, digging several wells in Kekeya, but no water came out. In the 1960s, a project to channel water from a river in the city of Aksu was also forsaken.Planting trees in Kekeya is no different from farming fish in sand, said Eli Sulayman, 77, a retired forester in Kekeya.Eli said Kekeya suffered around 100 days of sand and dust storms every year. In spring and winter, fierce winds blew up and sand engulfed the cities. Residents had to turn on the lights even during the daytime.Either we endured or we escaped, said Eli.In 1985, heads of departments in Aksu decided enough was enough. A head office for desertification was then established the following year to improve the situation.Many people had doubts about the risky decision, but Bi Kexian, then director of the local forestry department, said that, For the sake of our next generations, I was willing to take the risk of turning the bare land into green.Bi took the lead by surveying the soil environment. Huge obstacles ahead included deep ravines and salty soil in need of water irrigation.Groups of technicians and workers headed into Kekeya to solve soil and water problems, and built roads to aid the transportation of plants and trees in the barren land.Meanwhile, the local government had been mobilizing the masses to grow trees from the very beginning. Later, people from all walks of life in Aksu voluntarily joined the campaign, digging holes for trees and fertilizing the land.Until now, I often dream about digging tree holes, which made my entire body ache, said 50-something Lai Qing, reminiscing about the days of tree planting when she was 20.From 1986 to 2015, 3.4-million-person-time volunteers planted about 13.37 million trees in Aksu, according to the local forestry bureau.The dusty days in a year decreased sharply, from about 100 days to 29, the local meteorological department said.Thanks to the efforts of forest rangers, the survival rate of trees in Kekeya also exceeded 87.5 percent, way beyond expectations.I would feel guilty if I failed to take care of those trees that people had worked so hard to plant, said Imam Memet, who has been patrolling and protecting Aksu's forests for three decades.Mission continuesIn a memorial hall in Kekeya, a red account book showing records of afforested areas in the region is displayed. The figures have been increasing without a stop thanks to the completion of Kekeya's greening project.Three more ecological projects on the peripheries of the Taklimakan Desert were launched after Kekeya's project was completed.In the basin of the Aksu River, an 84,000-hectare greening project has been completed. This autumn, a 71,000-hectare project in the Ogan River Valley is on track to completion. In the spring, Kongtailike District planted 4,000 hectares of trees.Transport networks, irrigation and reforestation in the three areas have also been developed along with the three ecological projects, which are expected to benefit 1 million residents after all of them are completed by 2020.For the better preservation of the hard-won forests and to further stabilize residents' incomes, the local government has introduced more cash crops including apple trees, walnut trees and jujube trees.The sweet juicy Aksu apple has become signature to Xinjiang's agricultural products, which are widely known among Chinese people.After years of development, Aksu has become a major forestry and fruit production area in Xinjiang, with the output of the prefecture reaching over 13 billion yuan (1.88 billion US dollars) in 2017.To improve people's living standards, the local government has also been increasing pollution control and city construction, and residents are encouraged to go for a walk by the clean rivers, new parks and squares around the city. figured wristbandrubber band holder braceletblank wristbandsilicone wristbandpersonalized rubber bracelets
Paul Chan (left), HK's financial secretary, and Vice-Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying shake hands during the signing ceremony of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement Agreement on Trade in Goods. ROY LIU/CHINA DAILY The central government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government have inked an updated version of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangements (CEPA) - a step that would boost the trading of goods between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. The Agreement on Trade in Goods under the CEPA framework was signed on Friday in the presence of Fu Ziying, international trade representative and vice-minister of commerce and Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the chief executive of HKSAR. Under the agreement, goods of Hong Kong origin imported into the mainland will enjoy zero tariffs, starting from January 2019, through the enhanced agreement or rules of origin (ROO). Besides, a general ROO - based on the calculation of the value added to the products in Hong Kong - has also been introduced under the agreement, allowing products without product-specific ROOs at present to enjoy zero tariffs while being imported into the mainland subject to fulfillment of the general ROO. At the same time, the agreement establishes principles of trade facilitation and sets out measures to expedite Customs clearance of goods with a view to facilitating movement of goods in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, thereby enhancing the Customs clearance capacity and efficiency of the control points in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the facilitation measures also include simplifying Customs procedures, enhancing transparency of related measures and strengthening cooperation in the relevant areas. The CEPA upgrade signifies that the mainland and Hong Kong have established a comprehensive, independent Customs territory, and entered into a brand-new phase of cooperation, said Fu Ziying, adding that the signing of the agreement would lead to more collaboration platforms afterward. The Agreement on Trade in Goods is an ever-evolving and dynamic protocol, said Paul Chan Mo-po, financial secretary of Hong Kong SAR, adding that the upgrade of CEPA this time is a milestone for the economic and trade cooperation between the mainland and the SAR. The CEPA, which has been on for 15 years, offers Hong Kong enterprises the most favorable conditions for doing businesses on the mainland, while the ceaseless efforts of SAR entrepreneurs in the mainland market have been a catalyst for economic transformation and upgrading, as well as industrial modernization, said Chan. Hong Kong will embark on further liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, and further enrich the CEPA framework, added Chan, in an effort to fully utilize the potential of the mainland market. The central government also signed the Agreement on Trade in Goods under the updated version of CEPA with the Macao SAR government on Wednesday, which finalized 19 policy measures for mutually beneficial cooperation, further tearing down barriers for cross-border trade between the two sides.
