Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to capitalize on its unique advantages to play a bigger role in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Guangxi should make full use of its geographical location to promote opening up and development, Xi made the remarks during an inspection tour to the south China region between Wednesday and Friday.

More than 500 Chinese cities have started or are expected to start their “smart-city” transformations during 2017, according to the Economic Information Daily.

Currently, a total of 290 cities have initiated smart-city pilot projects, and more than 300 cities have signed smart-city construction agreements with IT companies, including the three major Chinese telecommunications companies, Ant Financial and Tencent.

By the end of March, more than 500 cities, including 95 percent of provincial capitals and 83 percent of prefecture-level cities, had proposed transitioning into smart cities. As construction of smart cities accelerates, the scale of related markets is expected to hit 100 billion RMB. This figure shoots up to 1 trillion when upstream and downstream industries are included.

The Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Highway has become China’s first “internet highway,” based on its cooperation with mobile payment service provider Alipay and China Guangfa Bank. With more than 40,000 vehicles streaming across the highway every day, it takes a long time for drivers to pay tolls. Through smart-city applications like mobile payments, the time consumed paying toll fees has been greatly reduced.

Another benefit of smart cities can be found in hospitals. According to Cai Xiujun, president of Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital of the School of Medicine at Zhejiang University, patients will soon be able to take care of preliminary processes using their mobile phones, reducing the average time patients spend waiting in the hospital.

With the construction of smart cities, smart-city applications will be increasingly embraced, said Wu Hequan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Wu believes that more and more enterprises will get involved, which will substantially promote the IT industrial chain.

The identity authentication app.[Photo/Chinanew.com]

Guangdong citizens no longer need to worry about proving their identities, even if they don’t happen to have their ID cards on them.

On April 19, Guangzhou police unveiled an identity authentication app that enables citizens to prove their identities via their mobile phones. To date, the city has authorized 20 offices to help citizens register for the service.

Once they register, they can use facial recognition technology, available via the app, to prove their identities whenever and wherever necessary.

Developed by police in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, the app provides highly accurate results while at the same time protecting against personal information leaks.

We are still waiting to learn if the rest of the EU wants to impose tariffs on all their many agricultural exports to us, and on the  cars they send us. Most of the things we export to them are tariff free under WTO rules or would be subject to very low tariffs. All services are tariff free, the things like aerospace parts and planes are tariff free.  The EU  sell us so much more of the limited number of items that do attract serious tariffs under WTO schedules.

I would like to reassure people who are worried about this. If by any chance the rest of the EU does turn down our offer of tariff free trade in an unlikely fit of self harm, we can find plenty of cheaper and better substitutes.

You do not have to buy German or French cars.   There is now a good choice of models, prices and specifications available from a range of UK car factories. If the EU wants tariffs on cars I would recommend the factory owners increase their UK capacity, as we will be wanting more home produced vehicles.

A visit to one of England’s vineyards  taught me that England makes some good white wines.  There are plenty of good  Australian and Californian reds as well as English.

There are many great English cheese, so you don’t need to buy French. There is such an abundance of choice.  Our diary industry was held back and made smaller by EU policy, with a long period of restrictive quotas. It needs more domestic demand for higher value added products.

Our supermarkets do rely on a lot of continental fresh produce, but there are other possible sources at home and abroad outside the EU which would be more attractive if they go for the EU tariff option. The UK could remove tariffs on rest of the world food where they produce things we cannot produce here which would  bring those prices down.

In a world of oversupply, with low rates of world inflation, being the customer has its advantages. All the time we remain in the EU we have to impose high tariff barriers on food from the rest of the world. Out of the EU we can cut or remove tariffs, and can bargain for a better deal for our exporters at the same time. The EU would be silly to make it dearer and more difficult for us to buy their products, when there is plenty of choice elsewhere.

Four shells suspected to have been left by the Japanese army during World War II have been unearthed in Qiqihar, a city in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, local police said Friday.

The shells, each of which weighs 2.5 kilograms and is 30 centimeters long, were found by a group of workers on Sunday in a construction site near a railway station, according to the public security bureau of Ang’angxi district.

A worker spotted a rusty shell while digging about two meters deep into the ground. Later, the workers found another three shells nearby. They reported them to the police. People near the site were evacuated after the discovery, the bureau said.

The shells are believed to have been left by invading Japanese troops during World War II. They were well preserved and had a risk of explosion. The police have moved them to a safe place.

Two Japanese chemical weapon units were once stationed in Qiqihar. After the Japanese retreated, large amounts of bombs, shells and mines were left behind. Undiscovered explosives still pose a threat to local residents.