Day: November 12, 2023

The decisions and goals announced at the meeting will be followed up by a wide range of government agencies with specific policies and timelines. The gatherings usually see the attendance of the Central Committee, which consists of over 370 full and alternate members who hold key party and state positions, including members of the Politburo, ministers, provincial party secretaries, senior generals and heads of state-owned enterprises. Despite the opaqueness around the gathering, a rough pattern has emerged over the past four decades. This is how they generally operate. What is…

GDP growth for the 21-member Apec economies is expected to grow by 3.3 per cent this year, up from 2.6 per cent on 2022, and remain in that range in coming years. But projections for the following three years show them lagging behind a compilation of other global economies. “Apec economic growth is getting more stable than in previous years, we can see that economic growth has improved,” said Carlos Kuriyama, director of Apec’s Singapore-based research arm and co-author of the report. “There are promising signs in Apec, but it…

The researchers, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Singapore General Hospital, published their trial results in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open on October 31. For the study, the team recruited 74 patients who were scheduled to undergo elective surgery under general anaesthesia for the first time. Before surgery, patients put on a virtual reality headset for a tour that led them into an operating theatre and then out to a post-procedure recovery area. “Patients might feel anxious to see staff with surgical gowns and hear sounds…

China’s carbon dioxide emissions are expected to fall in 2024 as a result of record growth in new low-carbon energy sources, according to a new report, even as emissions continue to spike this year following the end of strict zero-Covid policies. China is expected to add 210 gigawatts (GW) of solar, 70GW of wind, 7GW of hydro and 3GW of nuclear power generation capacity in 2023, nearly doubling the 152GW of renewable energy capacity it added in 2022, according to a new analysis from the Helsinki-based research organisation Centre for…

Biden also has strong reason to want to preserve peace and stability ahead of his own re-election bid in November next year, and any further escalation could open him up to attacks from his Republican opponents that he is weak on China. Sandra Oudkirk, the de facto American ambassador to Taiwan, has said Washington believes maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait is good for peace and stability in Taiwan and throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Zhu Zhiqun, an international relations professor at Bucknell University, said Biden was trying to…