Shenzhou XI manned spacecraft blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China on Oct 17, 2016. [Photo by Feng Yongbin/chinadaily.com.cn]

China is making a new-generation manned spaceship which rivals that of world-leading space powers, a space mission expert said.

“Among the next generation of manned spaceships some foreign countries are developing, only the Orion spacecraft of the US can carry out a moon landing mission,” Zhang Bainan, a spaceship engineer with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, told Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday.

China is working on a new manned spaceship that can fly both in low earth orbit, as well as a moon landing mission, Zhang said. He added that the spacecraft is recoverable and has a larger capacity than the new-generation manned spaceship of foreign countries, which can carry six people in low earth orbit and three to four in a moon landing mission.

As a late-starter in manned space flight, China has made significant advances and its newest spacecraft is set to match the capabilities of other world leaders in space exploration, Zhang said.

Last year, the re-entry module of the new spacecraft was put to the test aboard a Long March-7 rocket.

China first launched a man into space in 2003, 42 years after the former Soviet Union carried out the maiden manned space flight.

The country is projected to build a space station in 2020 and make a manned moon landing in 2030.

Women are making significant progress in the workplace in China, even in some traditionally male-dominated areas, according to a new report released ahead of International Women’s Day on Wednesday.

In China last year, women held 44 percent of senior management roles in companies, according to a report released by LinkedIn, a US-based professional networking website.

The report, based on employee surveys, also showed women represented 35 percent of those who reach the chief executive suite.

While not directly comparable, the numbers appeared to show significant progress when compared with the 2012 Women in Senior Management report released by Grant Thornton International, a professional services network. That report showed women holding 25 percent of the leadership roles at director level or above.

The LinkedIn report said that in several fields, including education and nonprofit organizations, women held up to 47 percent of the jobs at director level or above. In the traditionally male-dominated sector of science and technology, the number of women in senior posts has increased by 18 percent since 2008.

The report was based on surveys with 25,000 employees, one-third of them with Fortune 500 companies.

Zhang Hongxia, program operations director from international charity Save the Children’s Beijing office, said five people out of six on their senior management team are female, including in traditionally male-dominated emergency response jobs.

“Women and children used to be regarded as those who needed help during emergency response, but now, more and more women are engaged in domestic and international emergency response,” Zhang said.

Young women are an increasingly strong presence in leadership positions, the LinkedIn report showed.

Women occupied 51 of 100 senior positions among people below age 35. But the ratio of women on boards decreases with age, becoming only about 1 out of 10 after age 45, the report shows.

Still, the LinkedIn report indicated an imbalance remained in many industries, including finance and consumer goods manufacturing, with male executives still far outnumbering their female counterparts.

Disruption from family commitments and pressure from social opinion are two major obstacles to women advancing in the business world, said Zhu Xueping, vice-chairwoman of Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions.

“But actually, women have unique advantages if hired into leadership positions. They’re more patient, compassionate and sensitive when working with different people and have a stronger ability to build a sense of teamwork,” Zhu said.

“Women shouldn’t set limits for themselves,” she said.

President of Southeast University’s Zhongda Hospital, Teng Gaojun, along with two U.S. experts, has been awarded the SIR Gold Medal, the highest honor presented by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) during its Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 5, 2017.

The award aims to acknowledge “distinguished and extraordinary service to SIR or to the discipline of interventional radiology (IR).” Dr. Teng, as a Chinese pioneer in IR, had been nominated for his continuous hard work during the past 30 years, which has greatly contributed to the standardization of practice, education and research in the field as well as the relations between Chinese Society of Interventional Radiology (CSIR) and many foreign institutions.

Prof. Teng is the first Chinese mainland SIR Gold Medal recipient in the society’s history. As for him, the medal means more than recognition of his personal achievements, but also serves as an acknowledgement of China’s advanced-level status in the IR treatment domain.

Interventional radiology pioneers minimally invasive image-guided (X-rays, CT, ultrasound, MRI, etc.) diagnosis and treatment of diseases in every organ system, which means reaching the source of a medical problem through blood vessels or directly through a tiny incision in the skin to deliver a precise, targeted treatment. With an obvious advantage of less risk, less pain and less recovery time than traditional surgery, it is, to some extent, a synonym of modern medicine.

Beginning in the 1980s, China’s IR practice is among one of the nation’s most rapidly developed medical specialties, and has formed its own therapy system.

The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) is one of the world’s earliest and most influential academic societies in IR treatment, with a core purpose of improving patient care through image-guided therapy. Every year, the society bestows its ultimate accolade on two or three interventional radiologists. The SIR Gold Medal was established in 1996.

Along with Dr. Teng, this year’s Gold Medal recipients include Katharine L. Krol and Jeanne M. LaBerge, who “embody the inspiration and promise of IR’s limitless potential,” according to SIR 2016–17 President Charles E. Ray Jr.

International experts have once again contributed their insights into the drafting of the latest annual Government Work Report – now the third year in a row – as the Chinese government values their opinions and treats them as an important force for innovation.

This year’s special panel, consisting of 11 experts from six countries including Britain, Japan, and the United States, were invited to speak at a symposium on Jan. 12, around two months before the opening of this year’s National People’s Congress (NPC) session, when the annual Government Work Report was still at its drafting stage.

Among them is John Ross, director of Economic and Business Policy in the administration of the Mayor of London (2000-2008) and currently a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.

He warned that an economic slowdown may be caused by “a decline in fixed investment,” alluding to the government’s effort to reduce capacity in steel, cement, among other sectors. In turn, he tried to soothe the Chinese government’s worry over sluggish consumption growth, saying that it was “impossible to have a high growth in consumption without a high growth in GDP.”

He also urged Chinese economic regulators to pay closer attention to the consumption growth rate, rather than the proportion of consumption in GDP, because the higher the proportion in isolation, the less deposits and investment – leading to a lower GDP growth rate.

Ted Tokuchi, former managing director and chairman of CITIC Securities and board member and Researcher of CIDEG, Tsinghua University was the only Japanese expert invited to the panel. He aired his general objections to administrative industrial policies quoting similar, failed examples in Japan in the past decades.

He noted that the Japanese government introduced industrial policies, remedial instead of directive in nature, in the decades after World War II. He said that the Chinese government should work on improving fairness and transparency of the business environment since industrial policies essentially legitimize unfair competition.

Aware of a recent debate between two prestigious Chinese economists – Zhang Weiying and Lin Yifu (Justin) – on whether China should abolish industrial policies, Tokuchi said that he personally favoured total abandonment of industrial policies, but understood that China’s imperfect business environment for market competition would still require administrative support for the industries most vital to the country’s core strategic interests.

Apart from raising market fairness, Tokuchi added that China’s industrial policies should focus on the transformation and phasing-out of industries that have major social impacts.

Other experts shared their thoughts on seeking new growth engines, preventing systematic financial risks, monetary policies, responses to the aging population, among other matters of great importance to the Chinese government in the era of a “new normal” of economic development.

Huang Shuhong, head of the State Council Research Office and leader of the report’s drafting team, told international experts that the Chinese senior leadership greatly values their wisdom.

“China will always be a great country learning from others. Whichever stage of development it reaches, China will always learn from people of other countries in the world in a humble manner,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said to foreign experts in May, 2014.

Huang assured these experts that their contributions would be well received by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, as opinions gathered at previous years’ symposium were highly valued in the drafting of the Government Work Report.

The symposium was jointly organized by the State Council Research Office and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, the agency responsible for seeking international talents for China’s overall development.

The learning process is a mutual one. While sharing their professional insights with the Chinese government, many also said that they were also learning from how China keeps reaching its development goals despite uncertainties and challenges.

China will make more efforts to supervise and prevent duty-related crimes on 69 poverty alleviation projects, said a circular Tuesday.

“The projects cover villages that need to be relocated to another place so as to get rid of poverty,” said the circular, issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

“Duty-related crimes should be prevented during identifying poor population, operating central and local funds, handling loans and resettlement housing construction, and bidding,” the circular said.

It also urged procuratorates, development and reform organs, and poverty reduction departments at all levels to increase efforts in punishing violators, and providing judicial protection to project operations and funds security.