China needs to prioritize the tackling of solid waste pollution and strengthen supervision over implementation of related law, the country's top legislature said on Tuesday. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress conducted inspections this year on the enforcement of the law on solid waste pollution for the first time since 2005, when the revised law took effect. The inspections were finished by the end of August. Inspection teams headed by top national legislators including Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, visited 10 areas including Tianjin, Shanxi and Jiangsu provinces. Legislators and leaders of the ministries involved discussed the results at a meeting on Tuesday. Zhang acknowledged achievements in preventing and tackling solid waste nationwide in recent years. The teams also found problems that cause environmental and health risks, he said. Problems arise from the large quantity of solid waste, from industrial and agricultural sources, inspections showed. "Solid waste controls should be given priority, along with other pollution reduction efforts," Zhang said, because it is closely linked with air, water and soil pollution. The national legislative body will urge governments to enforce the law, he said, since the inspections' results suggest that governments need to improve their procedures to make the prevention efforts work efficiently and scientifically. Shanxi, one of the inspected provinces, has strengthened controls in reducing solid waste by building more plants to process industrial waste, helping the province, China's coal heartland, improve its environmental quality. "In 2016, 66.1 percent of the solid waste from industrial production, like fly ash and coal refuse, has been processed, for an increase of 44.1 percentage points over the level in 2005, when the revised law took effect," said He Tiancai, vice-governor of Shanxi, in a briefing about the control efforts a week ago. Over 123 million metric tons of solid waste was processed last year in multiple ways, said Zhang Zhanxiang, deputy director of the Shanxi Provincial Economic and Information Committee. For example, fly ash, mainly discharged from coal-fired power plants, has been used to make construction materials like autoclaved bricks and cement, Zhang Zhanxiang said. He added that cement production could consume 9 to 11 million tons annually. Shanxi plans to increase the processing rate for solid waste to 70 percent by the end of 2020 in order to tackle the pollution from solid waste and protect human health, He, the vice-governor, said. kids wristbandswrist band com coupon codecheap silicone wristbandsadjustable wristbandscustom livestrong bracelets
Jinan, Shandong province, will become the first city in the world, by the end of August, to use ultrasecure quantum communication in government, scientists said on Sunday. The network, which cost 120 million yuan ($19.5 million), will connect Party and government offices in the Shandong provincial capital, which has a population of 7 million. The system has passed more than 50 rounds of tests since May and is capable of encrypting more than 4,000 pieces of data every second and transmitting information to 200 terminals in the city. The network has exchanged data more than 51,000 times since its launch in November 2013 - including secure telephone calls, faxes and files - with a success rate of more than 99 percent, Liu Hong, a professor at Shandong University who was involved in the testing, told Xinhua News Agency. The results are satisfactory, Liu said. "This is a milestone for quantum communication in China and the world," said Zhou Fei, assistant to the director of the Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology. The first users of this technology will be government agencies, the military, finance and electricity sectors and fields that require secure communication, he said. Jinan hosts the world's largest and most versatile metropolitan area network for researching and testing quantum communication on a citywide scale. It could serve as a platform for developing services and standards on a national or even international level, Zhou said. Quantum communication is regarded as the most secure because its encryption is based on quantum entanglement, in which two or more subatomic particles affect each other simultaneously, regardless of the distance between them, said Wang Jianyu, a quantum researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. At the same time, the particles cannot be destroyed or duplicated. Any eavesdropper will disrupt the entanglement and alert the authorities, he said. Last year, China launched the world's first quantum satellite, Micius, which is tasked with testing quantum communication by transmitting information through photons - individual units of light - from space. China also finished building a 2,000-kilometer land-based quantum link between Beijing and Shanghai last year. The link is the longest in the world and runs through Jinan and Hefei, Anhui province. Xinhua contributed to this story.
