Lei Bicao was happy to find out that one of the candidates she had recommended was elected as a delegate for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Lei, who has been a Party member for 26 years in Linwei District in the city of Weinan in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, recalled clearly the recommendation process earlier this year.

“At a mobilization meeting, the secretary of our Party branch announced the qualifications and conditions for candidate nomination and the strict voting discipline then distributed a recommendation form to everyone who had the right to vote,” Lei said.

The next day, Lei recommended four candidates, including Jia Xiangdong, deputy head of the district’s Party organization department. Lei said she believed Jia to be an excellent candidate, capable of exercising the duties of delegates on behalf of ordinary Party members like her.

A total of 276 delegate candidates were initially recommended in the province. Officials accounted for 35 percent and Party members on the frontlines of work and production made up the remaining 65 percent.

The preliminary list of candidates was shortened to 60 after a comprehensive selection process by the CPC Shaanxi provincial committee to ensure broad coverage and proper structure of the candidates.

In May, Jia and 43 others were elected as delegates to the Party’s national congress at a meeting of the 13th CPC Shaanxi provincial congress. Jia’s name was on the list of 2,287 delegates elected to attend the five-yearly national congress on behalf of more than 89 million Party members and 4.5 million grassroots Party organizations. The congress is set to draw a new blueprint for the country’s development.

“As a grassroots Party member, I feel it is my mission to recommend delegate candidates I trust,” Lei said.

The process of selecting delegates featured wide and active participation of Party members across the nation.

All grassroots-level Party committees were included, with 99.2 percent of Party members participating, 1.2 percentage points higher than the figure for the 18th CPC National Congress, according to official data.

Yan Weiping, an official with the Party committee of Renmin sub-district office in Linwei District, said the 24 grassroots Party branches under the committee adopted measures to guarantee the participation of all 883 Party members in the sub-district.

“We organized a meeting for local Party members. We solicited the opinions of 130 Party members outside the area via telephone and WeChat, an instant messaging service. We visited the homes of elderly members, taking recommendation forms and explaining the policy face to face,” said Yan.

The right to vote is valued by Party members.

“I have no reason to neglect such an important role in recommending congress delegates,” said Yi Hongliang, a Party member who runs a private company. After receiving the notice to attend a Party branch meeting, he canceled a business trip in Xi’an, the provincial capital, and returned to Weinan to attend the meeting.

“Without the Party’s policies, I could not have operated such a successful enterprise,” said Yi. “When I wrote down the names of preliminary candidates, I really felt it a very important matter.”

In Shaanxi, 98.73 percent of Party members participated in the delegate recommendation process. Opinion polls and interviews were conducted by provincial Party authorities to assess the comprehensive performance of selected candidates.

“Comrade Wu Xiangqin has a strong Party spirit and a pragmatic work style. She has visited every corner of the village and helped needy families get rid of poverty through planting walnut and chestnut trees as well as silkworm breeding,” Zhang Yuancheng, a Party member in Shaanxi’s Fengshou Village, said about Wu, the village’s Party secretary who was elected as a delegate to the Party’s 19th national congress.

Elected delegates have enjoyed strong support from Party members.

Ling Jihe, a 56-year-old farmer and entrepreneur in east China’s Jiangxi Province, was elected as a delegate to the 19th CPC national congress. His company manages more than 1,000 hectares of crops transferred from migrant workers. He has rewarded outstanding farmers over the past six years and increased the incomes of hundreds of locals.

“Since his business started, Ling has become a role model for local residents,” said Wan Julian, Party secretary of Xilu Village. Ling said he would work hard to live up to the expectations of farmers.

In Guangdong Province, Weng Muhong, an agricultural technical expert in the city of Shantou, failed to be elected as a delegate after being placed on the list of recommended candidates.

“I completely understand the result as it was a concrete expression of opinions among Party members,” said Weng, adding that via participation he felt true intra-Party democracy.

Post authority in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province recently imposed a hefty fine on an express delivery company for failing to check parcels as required by the law.

The post administration of Suqian City fined the unnamed courier company 150,000 yuan (about 23,000 U.S. dollars) last week after receiving evidence from local police that the company’s loophole had been used by drug traffickers to send drugs.

Two suspects, identified by their surnames as Chen and Liu, had hidden methamphetamines in toys and sent them through the courier company for multiple times, according to police officer Lu Hua.

“We investigated the courier company and found that at last three branches of the company had not checked the parcels nor identify the senders, which apparently broke the the Anti-Terrorism Law.

The company’s CEO and managers of the branches were also fined 10,000 yuan each.

Lu said this was the first such penalty imposed in Suqian since the Anti-Terrorism Law was enforced on Jan. 1, 2016.

According to the law, rail, road, sea, air and express delivery operators must check the identity of their clients, and perform a safety check for all transported goods.

Those who violate the law are subject to a fine of between 100,000 to 500,000 yuan.

Gu Dalong, assistant professor of law in Southeast University, said the courier company was correctly fined.

In October last year, a courier company in Fujian Province was fined 110,000 yuan for delivering 100 parcels containing marijuana.

“Express delivery is an industry that relates to almost every household. Supervision of the industry needs to be stepped up,” said Zhu Lijia from the Chinese Academy of Governance.

China has released documents and spent more money to improve services in the cultural sector since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

According to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, the cultural industry and its related industries accounted for 4.07 percent of the country’s GDP in 2016 from 3.48 percent in 2012.

China spent more than 77 billion yuan (11.6 billion U.S. dollars) in developing cultural sector in 2016, up 60.5 percent from 2012, according to official figures.

Chinese films reached nearly 49.3 billion yuan in ticket sales, growing from 17 billion yuan in 2012, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT).

In the overseas market, Chinese films earned more than 3.8 billion yuan in 2016, 3.6 times that in 2012, and more than 2.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2017, SAPPRFT reported.

China also issued a guideline and a law to promote cultural services for the public.

Since 2012, the central government has invested 1.6 billion yuan to support the construction of 214 public libraries, museums, and cultural centers at prefecture level.

Chinese broadcasters have aired a documentary on the achievements of military reforms during the last five years, inspiring confidence in the country’s goal of building a strong army.

The eight-episode series, aired from Sept. 29, highlights how the Chinese army has stepped forward to solve problems and reshape its political ecology, organizational structure, system and work style, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

The documentary, Qiang Jun, which means building a strong army, was produced by the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission and is being aired on both the state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) and local television stations.

Many Chinese have expressed their pride after watching some episodes.

“A documentary worth waiting for. China has undergone such great changes during the five-year reform,” said a user named “Guihang.”

Chu Qingyi, 21, said that she has longed to join the army since she was a child and that desire is stronger after watching the documentary.

He Xiaoming, daughter of revolutionary Marshal He Long, said there had been worries about the development of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army but the military “has been reborn and took on new look” after just five years of reform.

North China’s Hebei Province, home to several of China’s most polluted cities, is taking measures to tackle air pollution ahead of the winter heating season.

The province has ordered its rural regions surrounding Beijing to use electricity and natural gas to replace coal burning, a major cause of smog in winter.

By the end of October, raw coal burning in rural homes will be banned in 18 counties and districts under the jurisdiction of Langfang and Baoding which border Beijing and Tianjin.

In other regions, 1.8 million households must change from traditional coal-fired heating sources to gas and electric ones.

The province is also improving energy efficiency and replacing coal with clean energy in the industrial sector.

Authorities have ordered heavily polluting industries, including steel, casting and coking, to restrict production and cut their emissions of industrial pollutants during the four-month winter heating period that usually starts on November 15.

The port city of Tianjin has issued similar measures for heavily polluting industries.

Data shows that pollutants created by the burning of coal increase by 30 percent during winter, said Yang Yong from Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau.

Without output limits, one of the most effective ways to reduce pollution, the levels of pollutants would exceed environmental capacity, he said.

Most of the industries affected have been operating over capacity and the limits will not lead to a marked shortage of supply, he said.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region sits in the heart of the North China Plain where air pollution, particularly winter smog, often occurs as a result of the high concentration of industrial and vehicle emissions, limited air circulation and the burning of coal.

Local governments are taking harsher measures to fight air pollution with more residents increasingly worried about the health impacts, particularly of PM 2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter.

China has set a target to reduce the level of PM 2.5 pollution by at least 15 percent in the cities around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region between October 2017 and March 2018.