China will spend 50 billion yuan (about 7.3 billion U.S. dollars) on building methane projects in rural areas as the government seeks to increase the use of clean energy.

According to a plan released by the country’s top economic planner, during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) period, China will build 172 new biogas projects and 3,150 large-scale methane projects.

The plan aims to increase the country’s methane producing capacity by 4.9 billion cubic meters, replace the equivalent of 3.49 million tonnes of standard coal with cleaner energy and cut carbon emissions by 17.62 million tonnes.

The projects will benefit more than 230 million rural residents.

China’s fast-growing economy has seen rural energy consumption surge and the rapid expansion of the livestock breeding and agro-industries. These rural businesses create billions of tons of biomass waste annually, which can potentially be used to produce energy.

According to official estimates, China generates 1.4 billion tonnes of rural waste materials annually that could be used for methane production. This amount of waste could produce 73.6 billion cubic meters of biogas and replace 87.6 million tonnes of standard coal.

There is a mood to sweep away the old centre left and centre right parties on the continent in a desperate bid to have something better . In the USA and the UK there is the wish to force change on the body politic by voting for Brexit and Donald Trump, within the traditional party structures. On both sides of the Atlantic and the Channel there is that same impatience with politics as it has been practised for the last twenty years, and anger at the way the governing corporate,civil service and Ministerial elites have behaved.

The anger is justified. The elites told us they knew best. They assured us they had the expertise. On the continent Tweedledum and Tweedledee parties alternated in government but little of substance changed. In the UK a puppet Parliament pretended to be in control whilst shovelling through thousands of pages of laws and many spending programmes that the EU required, with both parties claiming to support them without criticism or proper debate. In the UK we were made to live through the Exchange Rate Mechanism recession, the Banking Crash recession and the Euro crisis at one remove. The US was put through the Great Recession and the Iraq war. The Euro area had to endure the most economic pain with the ERM crash, the Banking Crash and the continuing Euro crisis.

People not very interested in politics, or pessimistic about their chances of changing anything for many years, have decided to take back control. In the USA Mr Trump first tossed aside all the serious professional well honed politicians of the Republican party to take their crown. He then went on to defeat the doyenne of political insiders, the darling of the elite, Hilary Clinton, who ran on a ticket of expertise and experience. The public said if it meant the expertise that had brought them the Great Recession and the Iraq war, they would rather try something new.

In the UK many groups of people with very varied political opinions united behind a campaign with the express slogan of Take Back Control. The more Remain paraded every great figure of the established governing and corporate bosses, the more the Leave case was supported. The experts who had led much of southern and western European economy into mass unemployment with their Euro currency were surprised when people did not believe their forecasts of gloom if the UK dared to vote Out. My belief Leave would win was strengthened at a big public meeting when many in the audience laughed and cried out their disbelief when the Project Fear forecasts were put before them.

If parties wish to run and support technocratic government it must at least be competent technocratic government. If they believe only they have the expertise to make the decisions and that the people just need bread and circuses, they must make sure everyone can afford the bread and get to the circus. The main reason the old establishment is being swept away is it failed to deliver.
Tomorrow I will look at the parlous light of the Conservative and Labour look alike parties on the continent.

An AIDS patient suffering from a serious heart condition has undergone a successful surgery in Shanghai－the first of its kind in the country－and is about to be released from the hospital next week.

According to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, the HIV-positive patient, identified as Mr Zhou, had been in critical condition due to a problem with a heart valve, and underwent the surgery at the center last month.

“It was China’s first successful heart surgery on an HIV-positive patient,” said Lu Hongzhou, the center’s Party chief and an expert of HIV/AIDS.

The news has somewhat encouraged the HIV/AIDS community in China, where HIV-positive patients are always rejected for a surgery because of medical workers’ worries of exposure to the virus.

“It’s definitely encouraging,” said a web user called Houde Zaixing. “When an HIV-positive person could be taken in by a top hospital for a surgery as a regular patient, I see some hope in this country.”

China has an estimated 650,000 people living with HIV or AIDS. A plan released earlier this week by the State Council for prevention and treatment of the disease sets the goal that by 2020, 90 percent of the people with HIV or AIDS should be detected and 90 percent of those diagnosed should be receiving treatment.

Zhou, 58, started developing chest pain in late 2016. The symptoms worsened at night, along with shortness of breath, and he later started to cough blood.

A CT scan found he had calcification of an artery and doctors determined that surgery was the only way to correct it.

To ensure a smooth procedure, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center organized a team of 40 workers from departments such as infectious disease, chest surgery, anesthesiology and medical care to give the patient round-the-clock intensive care.

On Jan 6, professor Sun Xiaoning from Zhongshan Hospital under Fudan University in Shanghai performed the surgery at the center’s invitation. The patient’s conditions started to stabilize after supportive treatments and anti-infection therapy for HIV/AIDS.

“There is an occupational risk when operating on HIV-positive patients,” Sun said. “But our team was not afraid because of the full awareness of the disease, and it’s a medical worker’s obligation to give patients a new life.”

Zhu Tongyu, a director of the center, said that for seven years his organization has offered a one-stop service for patients with HIV or AIDS, and AIDS patients can receive treatments including general surgery, orthopedics, urology, ophthalmology, oncology and gynecology, and obstetrics.

China’s technology giant Huawei on Friday donated relief materials including food items to people affected by the insurgency of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

At an event in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, Huawei handed over the food items to the Nigerian government, saying it will increase its social responsibility to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and others facing humanitarian challenges in the West African country.

“Huawei Technologies Ltd, as a company which has been doing business here for more than 15 years, would like to extend our deep commitment to Nigeria by standing by her in her time of need,” said Zhong Haiying, deputy managing director of the tech firm.

The donated food items included 2,300 bags of rice, 200 cartons of spaghetti, sugar and oil.

Speaking at the event, Zhou Pingjian, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, hailed Huawei’s decision to bring succor to the IDPs in the country as a lofty idea that needed to be encouraged.

“As a good friend of Nigeria, we are ready to play our due part. At the government level, we are working with the government to do something on the issue and at the business level we encourage more and more Chinese companies here to follow Huawei’s example to better integrate with the Nigerians here,” Zhou said.

On behalf of the Nigerian government, Minister of Interior Abdulrahman Dambazau expressed gratitude to Huawei for the humanitarian effort “by contributing toward making life meaningful for the internally displaced persons, most of them being women and children.

More than 2.3 million people have been internally displaced by Boko Haram since the insurgency in northeast Nigeria started in 2009. Most of the internally displaced people are reportedly suffering food shortage.

The United States conducting frequent and large-scale reconnaissance missions in the South China Sea is the root cause of accidents between US and Chinese militaries, experts said.

Therefore, China and US militaries should enhance communication and strengthen mutual trust to nip potential accidents in the bud, they added.

A US Navy plane approached a Chinese military aircraft on Wednesday in the airspace near Huangyan Island, one of China’s islands in the South China Sea, an official close to China’s Defense Ministry said on Friday. The Chinese plane, which was conducting routine training in the region, reacted professionally and adhered to law.

“We hope the US will take the big picture of Sino-US military relations into account, and take practical measures to remove the root cause of accidents between the two countries in air and on sea,” the official added.

This was the first time US and Chinese military planes met in 2017. The last two incidents were on May 17 and June 7. A US official told Reuters that the incident was rare and inadvertent.

Ma Gang, a professor from the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, said the US has been conducting frequent and large-scale reconnaissance missions in the South China Sea for decades, and “this is the root cause for the accidents.”

“If the US still views China as an obstacle, then similar accidents are still likely to occur,” he said. “Accident prevention requires the US to keep an open mind about China and remain honest in dialogue.”

The US government will remain committed to the one-China policy, and develop “a constructive relationship that benefits both the US and China,” according to a White House news release on US President Donald Trump’s first phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Thursday, which described the call as “extremely cordial”

Last week, US Defense Secretary James Mattis suggested that diplomacy should be the priority in the South China Sea, and the US saw no need for “dramatic military moves” at this time.

Fu Mengzi, the vice-president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said it is a good sign that China and the US are having positive interactions, and the US should build mutual trust and respect China’s stance on principle issues like national sovereignty and territorial integrity.