Chinese President Xi Jinping has identified Beijing’s urban planning and development, and preparation for its upcoming Winter Olympic Games as the two major tasks for the city at present and in the near future.

Xi made the remark during his inspection tour in Beijing between Feb. 23 and 24, during which he visited the city’s new airport, the Wukesong Sports Center, the Capital Gymnasium, the office of Beijing’s sub-center and the Grand Canal Forest Park.

During his visit to the construction site of the new airport, Xi stressed the control of standards and quality of the project and urged proper relocation and settlement of the people living nearby.

As a landmark project in China’s capital Beijing, the new international airport will become a driving force for the country’s development and it should adopt the strictest standards in its construction and the most advanced technology and expertise in its management, said Xi as he visited the site of the main terminal building.

At the Wukesong Sports Center and the Capital Gymnasium, both venues for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Xi emphasized the importance of learning from foreign experience and technology innovation in stadium planning, design and construction.

At the construction center of Beijing’s sub-center in eastern Tongzhou District, Xi stressed good overall planning as well as functional design of its landscape and buildings.

Later, Xi visited the Grand Canal Forest Park and was debriefed on the history, culture, water treatment and ecological protection of Tongzhou District. He highlighted the importance of protecting historical and cultural heritage and the ecological environment along the canal during the construction of the sub-center.

The discipline watchdog of the Communist Party of China (CPC) exposed six cases involving officials who were held accountable for their poor leadership.

The officials were punished for poor fulfillment of their main responsibilities in strict Party governance and ineffective supervision of disciplinary violation by their subordinates, according to a circular published on the website of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Sunday.

The cases involved gambling, poor investigation in handling public complaints, the illegal general election of a village-level Party committee and lavish wedding banquets, in provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Shandong, Shanxi, Guangdong and Liaoning, it said.

In July 2016, the CCDI issued a regulation to hold CPC officials accountable for poor leadership, targeting leaders of Party committees and discipline inspection committees at all levels.

The circular urged Party committees at all levels to comprehensively deepen strict Party governance and make good use of the accountability mechanism in Party building.

Discipline inspection committees at all levels should perform the duties of supervision, and officials who fail to perform their duty should be held accountable.

The efficiency of Chinese courts has been improved by 20 percent since 2013, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) announced Monday.

The SPC Monday released two white papers on judicial reform and court transparency from 2013 to 2016, recording progress made in fields including judicial accountability, trial mechanism and adjudicative power operation.

According to the SPC, over 26 million court documents have been posted on China Judgement Online, the court document website, and the site has clocked up six billion hits by users from over 200 countries and regions.

China’s courts have improved the way in which they protect human rights, preventing and correcting cases in which people were unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced.

From 2013 to 2016, courts nationwide overturned 34 cases, involving 54 people, deemed to be miscarriage of justice, according to the SPC.

To improve litigation, nearly all courts in China have established supporting systems, the SPC said.

The top court also pledged to improve how cases are filed and legal aid accessed.

The press center for the upcoming annual legislative and political consultative sessions opened Monday.

More than 3,000 reporters from home and abroad have registered to cover the sessions, including an increased number of foreign reporters, according to the press center.

The National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body, will convene their annual sessions on March 5 and March 3, respectively.

Located in the Media Center Hotel in downtown Beijing, the press center will hold a number of press conferences with leading officials in various fields, and respond to public concerns.

As 2017 is a crucial year for the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), hot topics will include macro-economic development, supply-side structural reform, the RMB exchange rate and China’s stock and real estate markets.

John
McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, commenting on reports that the Treasury has asked
government departments to prepare for cuts of 3 per cent and 6 per cent, for
2019/20, said:

“For
all Hammond’s talk of ‘resetting’ the Tory Government’s economic policy last
summer it is now beyond doubt that Hammond represents more of the same Tory
austerity.

"Sneaking out an announcement asking departments to model cuts of 3 per
cent and 6 per cent for 2019/20 is no way to manage public spending.

"Hammond urgently needs to explain why this announcement was made in the
way it was and why after seven years of failed austerity he thinks more of the
same will now work.”