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A new highway along the Yellow River in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province opened to traffic on Monday.

Photo taken on Aug 8, 2017 shows the newly-opened 828.5-kilometer-long highway pointing to the Mountain Huashan in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. The 828.5-kilometer-long highway, which runs along the Yellow River, opened to traffic on Monday.

The north-south highway which starts in the city of Yulin and ends in Weinan travels 828.5 km along the west bank of the Yellow River.

At cost of 6.9 billion yuan (1 billion U.S. dollars), the highway across 12 districts and counties will benefit more than 2 million people.

The highway links several tourist destinations in Shaanxi including the Hukou Waterfall and Mount Huashan, one of China’s five sacred mountains.

The highway also links nine expressways, 13 major highways and 80 country roads, said Feng Xining, director of the Shaanxi provincial transport department.

A Communist Party of China (CPC) senior official has called for the use of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to fight terrorism in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Meng Jianzhu, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks during a five-day inspection in Xinjiang, which concluded Sunday.

He highlighted the role of political and legal organs in safeguarding stability of Xinjiang and national security, calling on police officers to improve their political quality and abilities to better fight crime and protect the people.

Meng met with CPC members and cadres, police officers and common people of different ethnic groups that have been on the front line of the battle against terrorism.

Xinjiang must continue to give top priority to fighting secessionists and focus on the crackdown on terrorist activities, he said.

President Xi Jinping has stressed ongoing efforts in building an ecological civilization by adhering to green development concepts.

Tourists herd horses with local guides last month on a trail in Saihanba National Forest Park. The man-made forest, grown out of the desert and known for its ecotourism in Hebei province, shields Beijing and other big cities from sandstorms. [Photo/China Daily]

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remark in an instruction on the achievements of the man-made Saihanba Forest Farm in Hebei province.

Efforts to pursue green development and an ecological civilization should be made generation by generation to create harmony between people and nature and leave a better environment for future generations, Xi said.

These instructions were passed down at a seminar on Monday in Beijing about how to learn from the Saihanba experience. The seminar was presided over by Liu Qibao, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee.

The Saihanba Forest Farm, just 150 kilometers from Beijing, has managed within 55 years to form a natural barrier between the capital and sandstorms that blow in from the north, increasing forest coverage in the area from 12 percent in 1962 to 80 percent in 2016, data from the farm showed.

The largest man-made forest in China has supplied 137 million cubic meters of clean water to nature around the Beijing and Tianjin areas annually, and the annual amount of oxygen discharged from the forest is about 550,000 metric tons, making it important for the capital and its neighbors.

After the reports beginning in July on the transformation from a wasteland into a forest, Saihanba has attracted an increasing number of tourists from home and abroad.

“It’s a miracle that such a lush and beautiful forest park was transformed from a wasteland,” said Wang Yulong, a tourist visiting Saihanba National Forest Park from Xi’an in Shaanxi province.

Wang and his family drove to Chengde in early August to visit a famous scenic spot－the Chengde Imperial Summer Resort, about 180 kilometers from Saihanba.

“We didn’t plan to visit Saihanba, but changed our minds when we heard from many media reports that a vast forest nearby was totally man-made, with efforts spanning more than five decades,” Wang said.

During the 55 years, three generations of foresters kept planting trees in the area, where temperatures could drop to -43 C in winter.

Many tourists like Wang traveled from across the country as well as from abroad. Between Jan 1 and Aug 19, more than 355,000 tourists visited Saihanba, 13,000 more than the same period a year earlier, according to Tian Yawei, the office director of a company promoting Saihanba tourism.

Tian said the increase mainly came from the tourism boom the past two months.

These visitors also included people who want to learn more about how the forest was created and to be inspired by the spirit of foresters in Saihanba.

Cai Xingbo, general manger of Jianlong Mining Co Ltd in Kuancheng county, Chengde, said he decided to close his mining business after a recent visit to Saihanba and plans to restore mountains in his hometown to develop ecological tourism, such as planting fruit trees.

“As long as we have faith and persistence, we can restore bare mountains with the help of modern technologies,” Cai said, adding that the spirit originated from Saihanba has inspired him.

A city district in Shanghai will permanently bar people convicted of sex-related offenses from entering professions that have close contact with juveniles. It’s the latest effort to better protect minors from potential sexual assault.

People with records of rape, child molestation, organizing prostitution, introducing others to prostitutes or providing shelter for prostitution will be forbidden from working in schools, medical institutions, amusement venues, sports stadiums and libraries that have close contact with minors in Minhang district, the district’s procuratorate said.

The ban, the first of such in the country, took effect on Friday.

The names and records of people with sexual offenses have been provided by the district’s police department and prosecuting agency to all relevant institutions, and will be updated regularly to ensure that the information is accurate.

Su Wenying, a child protection officer at the China office of UNICEF, said the regulation is an effective approach to protect children.

“There has been research in some Western countries showing that pedophiles and those who could possibly sexually abuse juveniles are more inclined to choose industries with plenty of opportunities to get near minors,” Su said. “It’s essential to remove such people from areas for children.”

She said applicants for jobs related to children in the United Kingdom and the United States－such as coaches or jobs in schools or children’s hospitals－must be screened for past sexual offenses. The same rule applies to some international organizations specializing in children’s issues.

She also praised the ban, which is the result of a five-month discussion among various government sectors in the district, including the prosecuting agency, the police, courts, education, civil affairs, sports and health.

“Protecting minors is not only the responsibility of law enforcement departments. It must combine the efforts of various social resources,” Su said.

Song Yinghui, deputy director of the law school at Beijing Normal University, said the ban is worth extending to all regions in Shanghai, and even the whole country, to better establish a barrier to protect children from potential harm.

In November, the Minhang district people’s court sentenced a male teacher from an educational institution where children take extra classes outside of school, to two years and six months in prison for molesting a girl during private tutoring at his home in July last year.

The man, surnamed Qian, was also barred from all educational institutions in the city for three years after completing his jail term. It was the first time a sexual offender in the city was banned from an industry to protect minors.