The Communist Party of China Central Committee has published an outline of its plans to build a law-based society in the next five years.
The document sets out the guiding ideas, principles and goals for building a society based on the rule of law.
By 2025, the implementation of the eighth Five-Year Plan on raising public awareness of the law will be completed and the rule of law will be embraced by the people, according to the outline.
Social rules and regulations will be improved and notable progress will be made in integrating core socialist values into the rule of law and social governance.
It added that the legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons and organisations will be effectively safeguarded, and the rule of law in social governance be strengthened by 2025.
Forex reserves
China’s foreign exchange reserves grew 1.61% to US$3.18 trillion at the end of November from a month earlier as the country’s forex market continued to run steadily, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).
The Covid-19 pandemic, progress in vaccine development and expectations of the monetary and financial policies of major economies contributed to a lower US dollar index and stronger non-US dollar currencies, SAFE spokesperson Wang Chunying said.
Wang attributed the monthly rise in forex reserves to the combined effects of currency translation and changes in asset prices.
Market liquidity
China’s central bank injected liquidity into the banking system through open market operations on Tuesday.
The People’s Bank of China injected 60 billion yuan (US$9.2 billion) into the market through seven-day reverse repos at an interest rate of 2.2%, according to a statement on its website.
With 20 billion yuan of reverse repos maturing on the same day, this led to a net liquidity injection of 40 billion yuan.
Local infections
China’s National Health Commission said Tuesday that it received reports of 12 newly confirmed Covid-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Monday, two of which were locally transmitted in Sichuan Province.
Ten cases were imported from outside the mainland, the commission said in its daily report. One new suspected case arriving from outside the mainland was reported in Shanghai.
No new deaths related to the disease were reported.
Company news
JD Health International Inc, the health care branch of e-commerce giant JD.com, made a strong debut on the Hong Kong stock market Tuesday.
Shares of JD Health opened at HK$94.5 (US$12.19) Tuesday morning, 34% up from its offer price of HK$70.58. Its public offering had been oversubscribed over 420 times by local investors and over 30 times by global investors.
The company raised HK$26.46 billion by issuing 381.9 million shares through this initial public offering. According to the prospectus, about 40% of the funds raised will be used for business expansion in areas including retail pharmacy business and online health care services, about 30% for research and development and the rest for potential investments and acquisitions or strategic alliances, as well as working capital and general corporate purposes.
JD Health is the largest online health care platform by revenue in China in 2019, recording a total revenue of 10.8 billion yuan and with a market share of 29.8%, said the Frost & Sullivan Report.
Beijing municipal transport authorities have granted Chinese Internet giant Baidu permission to conduct driverless road tests on public streets in Beijing. Beijing issued a regulation on driverless road tests in November, with one of the clauses requiring vehicles to complete more than 30,000km of safe test driving on open roads before applying for road tests on public streets.
Baidu’s test vehicles have cleared all these requirements. The permission is expected to allow Baidu to gradually reduce human intervention in test vehicles and make them automatically cope with problems such as hardware and software failures.
The stories were compiled by Nadeem Xu and Shan Hui and first published at ATimesCN.com.