A total of 671 major projects in high-tech and sophisticated industries were registered in Beijing last year, according to the annual work meeting of the city’s investment promotion bureau.

In the same period, the bureau managed to attract 747 foreign-funded projects, with a combined value of US$7.02 billion, up by more than 10 percent year on year. Newly registered enterprises paid 15.2 billion yuan (US$2.22 billion) in total in tax last year,

“Since 2016, the investment promotion bureau has been endeavoring to remove the city’s non-capital functions to make the city more livable,” said Zhou Weimin, director of the Beijing Investment Promotion Bureau.

Zhou said these endeavors were the reason that the bureau put a priority over high-tech industries, high-end and high-quality service industries, and high-value cultural industries last year.

The business sector’s growing willingness to invest in Beijing reflects the perfect, amicable business environment of the Chinese capital. In particular, the city’s business administration, tax, finance, among other government agencies are exploring innovative, new measures that could provide good templates for other cities to follow.

For example, among the 40 innovative, new measures in the city’s service sector, there is China’s first aircraft maintenance company formed by a joint-venture and China’s first joint-venture tourism agency dealing with Chinese citizens’ overseas trips.

While the city keeps promoting cutting-edge industries and projects, local enterprises have accelerated their pace in going overseas. Data shows that in the first three quarters of last year, foreign direct investment (FDI) totaled US$13.75 billion, a 94-percent year-on-year increase. The FDI figure was basically on par with US$12.62 billion, the amount of investment Beijing attracted over the same period.

Zhou Weimin said that in 2017, the investment promotion bureau will continue to serve the city’s objective of developing the service-based economy, knowledge-based economy, green economy and headquarters economy, helping control the city’s population, contribute to stable growth and facilitate private investment.

Beijing Mayor Cai Qi vowed to remove Beijing’s non-capital functions at a symposium with state media on Sunday.

Cai said that to remove non-capital functions of Beijing is to do the supply-side structural reform, to make structural adjustments and transform the economical growth pattern, as well as to clear out outdated industries and fill in advanced industries.

The task also entails improving the quality of urban development and living environment as well as the ease of tensions between population, resources and environment, Cai added.

He said Beijing will perform better as the capital and make headway in development through the move.

Beijing will remove non-capital functions for optimization of economic and spatial structure, stepping on a new path featuring sound structure, high quality and efficiency.

For the next step, Beijing will focus on scientific and technological innovation and boost sophisticated industries.

Chinese judges on Monday strongly condemned the murder of a retired judge in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Fu Mingsheng, who worked at a court of Luchuan County in Guangxi, was reportedly killed with a knife at his residence on Jan. 26. by suspect Long Jiancai, a defendant in a divorce case that Fu heard in 1994, according to a statement released by the committee in charge of protecting judges’ rights and interests under the China Association of Judges.

Details of the case are not yet available.

There have been frequent cases of assaults and insults of judges in recent years. Some have been followed, harassed and threatened. Such incidents have diminished the authority and credibility of the judiciary, according to the statement.

Chinese scientists started their 38th ocean scientific expedition on Monday, with the country’s first deep-sea manned submersible Jiaolong.

The mother ship, “Xiangyanghong 09”, left east China’s Qingdao carrying the sub and more than 150 personnel for a 124-day trip, the longest for Jiaolong.

The researchers will carry out surveys in the northwest Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, Yap Trench and the Mariana Trench in the west Pacific Ocean.

With Jiaolong, more discoveries are expected in the northwest Indian Ocean, said chief scientist Han Xiqiu.

The trip lasts until June 9.

Named after a mythical dragon, Jiaolong reached its deepest depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012.

On Monday, “Hailong 2”, or Sea Dragon 2, and “Qianlong 1”, both unmanned submersibles, were officially deployed at the National Deep Sea Center in Qingdao.

“Hailong 2”, which needs a wire to link to the support ship, can work at a maximum depth of 3,500 meters. In 2009, the home-made underwater robot discovered a deep-sea hydrothermal “chimney” vent near the equator in the eastern Pacific.

Wireless “Qianlong 1” can operate at a depth of 6,000 meters.

The three types of subs are all domestically-made and each has its own specialties, according to researchers.

A new mother ship for Jiaolong is estimated to be put into use in March 2019. It will be capable of carrying the three sub types together, said Yu Hongjun, director of the center.

A healthy baby boy has been born from an embryo frozen 16 years ago, a hospital in south China announced on Monday.

A 46-year-old woman gave birth to a son at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong Province in early February. Her other first son, already 16 years old, was from the same batch of embryos frozen in 2000.

“I’m just really ecstatic to have another child,” said the woman. She gave birth to her first child through IVF in 2000, when the hospital froze her 18 other embryos.

Last year, the mother came to the hospital asking to get pregnant again, after China lifted the one-child policy.

“There were a few issues to handle when she asked to unfreeze her embryos,” said Xu Yanwen, director with the reproductive center of the hospital. “It was not easy to awaken the frozen embryos because of freezing techniques and there were also problems with her womb.” Xu added that risks were also high for women of advanced maternal age.

Both the baby and mother are doing well and will be discharged from hospital soon.

Xu Yanwen said that embryos frozen in the hospital date back as early as 1994.

“As more mothers come to have their embryos unfrozen, the record may probably be broken any time,” Xu said.

With the end of the one-child policy, an increasing number of woman of advanced maternal age have visited the hospital to conceive with the help of Assisted Reproductive Technology, Xu said.

“In 2016, we received about 1,000 woman above 40 years old seeking to have more babies, and the average age of women to have their eggs retrieved rose from 32.7 years to 33.7 years,” Xu said.