China plans to relocate 3.4 million people from poverty-stricken communities to more developed areas this year as part of its poverty reduction drive, according to government sources.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s economic planner, said 2.49 million people living in poverty had been relocated in 2016, meeting the target for the year.

By the end of 2016, there were relocation projects in 22 provinces, which include housing, infrastructure and public services, Yang Qian, an official with the NDRC said.

Local authorities are also exploring supportive industries, employment and social security for the relocated people.

China has vowed to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020. Alleviating poverty through relocation is one aspect of the strategy.

By the end of 2016, there were 45 million people living in poverty, many in areas without roads, clean drinking water or power.

Tiger keepers in a northeastern province in China have found a novel way to keep their cats in shape over the winter — a cat and mouse game, but the mouse in this instance is the keeper’s vehicle.

The staff at the Siberian Tiger Park in Heilongjiang, a world leader in tiger breeding, realized that the tigers always followed the feeding truck around their enclosure, so the keepers turned into coaches and started to drive the vehicle around between meals.

Captive tigers eat about 8kg of meat each day, and the staff at the Siberian Tiger Park feed their big cats 10 percent more in winter because of the cold, said Liu Dan, with the park.

If the cats do not exercise they will gain weight and, like humans, if they are obese they are at risk of high blood pressure, metabolic disorders and could die earlier.

A male adult Siberian tiger normally weighs around 250 kg.

China Railway Corp. expects 8.2 million trips to be made by rail Saturday as it is Lantern Festival, the end of the lunar new year celebrations.

The company said it had scheduled an additional 598 trains to cope with demand.

On Friday, 8.92 million trips were made by rail.

The Lunar New Year holiday was from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 this year. The period, which is also known as Spring Festival, is known as the largest human migration in the world, as hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns, putting huge stress on the transportation system.

The first post-festival travel rush started toward the end of the week-long holiday. The second travel rush usually happens around Lantern Festival, when students return to start a new semester and migrant workers return to work.

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.

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.