The State Administration of Work Safety said Friday that inspectors found local authorities in 18 provinces and municipalities had made progress in workplace safety.

From Aug. 13 – 25, an inspection targeted businesses such as coal mines, fireworks factories and chemical companies, according to the administration.

Inspectors sent by the Work Safety Committee of the State Council found problems including formalism and lax supervision by local authorities. Local governments are required to submit formal feedback on the inspection results to the committee in September.

The teams went to Anhui, Chongqing, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Henan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Sichuan and Yunnan.

Despite regular demands for more focus on work safety, frequent tragedies still occur. A lack of safety awareness, poor regulation and lax implementation of safety measures are among the factors leading to accidents.

In a recent “extremely severe” accident, at least 36 people were killed and 13 others injured on an expressway in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province this month. “Extremely severe” refers to accidents that cause more than 30 deaths, leave more than 100 severely injured or result in more than 100 million yuan (about 15 million U.S. dollars) of direct economic losses.

The number of workplace safety accidents fell 24.7 percent year on year in the January-July period, while related fatalities fell 16.8 percent.

Liu Yunshan, a senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official, said Friday the CPC cadres must improve their political ability.

Liu, president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the school’s autumn semester.

“Political ability is the primary criterion to assess an official,” Liu said.

In selecting officials, Party committees must first determine whether the candidate is sober and firm politically, namely, to gauge their political ability, he explained.

The importance attached by the CPC Central Committee to ideological and political construction is behind the achievements made since the 18th CPC National Congress, Liu said.

Only a large number of officials with strong political ability can advance the country’s development, cope with multiple risks and challenges, consolidate the Party’s ruling status and realize its historical missions, he noted.

Liu asked officials to learn from speeches of Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, and conform to the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core in thought, politics and action.

China’s efforts to become a country of innovation through dedication to education, talent development, technological breakthroughs and structural reforms were shared to a wide circle of foreign guests in Beijing on Thursday.

The story was told by the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee, a front runner in innovation-driven transformation and development, during a thematic briefing at the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC).

“With only 5.8 percent of the country’s population and only 1.1 percent of the total land area, Jiangsu Province has created 10.2 percent of China’s output ,” said Li Qiang, secretary of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee. He attributed much of Jiangsu’s success, 7.6 trillion yuan (US$1.16 trillion) of GDP in 2016, to its dedicated and sustained commitment to innovation.

Home to over 13,000 high-tech companies, the eastern coastal province boasts one of the country’s strongest capacity for innovation with its high-tech industries accounting for over 40 percent of its industrial value, scientific advancements contributing to over 60 percent of its economic growth, while the expenditure on R&D accounts for 2.6 percent of the provincial GDP.

“Companies and talents are the main players of innovation,” said Li.

“We should build a dynamic ‘ecosystem’ which can facilitate innovation.”

He particularly emphasized the role of talented personnel as well as supportive platforms for technological breakthroughs.

Jiangsu Province is also home to 167 colleges and universities, over 1.9 million college students, 757 independent research institutes and 760,000 R&D personnel.

“We strive to provide all-round services to our most-coveted talents covering their work and life including household registration, medical care, education for their children,” Li explained.

According to a local policy, in a bid to attract outstanding personnel, world-class talent teams are eligible to apply for a maximum amount of 100 million yuan of financial support.

As a result, more talents are willing to stay and work in Jiangsu. The number of overseas top talents under the “Thousand Talents Plan” accounts for 11.5 percent of the country’s total, and the number of scholars under the Changjiang Scholars Program, the highest academic award issued to an individual in higher education by the Ministry of Education, tops all provincial-level regions.

Jan-Christer Janson, an academic from the Swedish Royal Society of Science in Uppsala, is one of the international outstanding talents who settled in Jiangsu.

He has been collaborating with Chinese experts for 37 years since 1980 in the field of protein purification and development of protein drugs.

Janson and his team in China has created several vaccines, cancer drugs, human plasma proteins and biomedical devices. He was awarded the 2015 China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award by President Xi Jinping for his contribution.

“I’ve received tremendous support at the very beginning from the government at all different levels in Jiangsu,” he said. “Without them, it would be very difficult to have this very successful development.”

Janson also helped bring on board the Swedish Nobel prize-winner Bengt Samuelsson who decided to use his experience and links all over the world in helping establish a biotech company in Jiangsu.

“This is an excellent example of how scientific ideas born in Sweden grow in Jiangsu by trans-regional research and innovation which contributes to industrial production in Jiangsu, a place where favorable circumstances are at hand.”

Over 380 Fortune 500 companies have invested in the region and many manufacturing companies have set up R&D centers there.

“We have been working closely with prestigious universities like MIT, UC Berkeley and Cambridge for technological research and applications, and meanwhile we encourage more local youngsters to study abroad as well as inviting international students to study here,” said Li.

Hun Many, member of the Central Committee of Cambodian People’s Party and President of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia, has just visited the province on a field trip.

He said: “In an ever-changing world, R&D in the technological innovation field could definitely allow a nation to have an edge in the increasingly fierce market competition…and contribute to the betterment of people’s livelihoods, help answer challenges of population growth, the scarcity of national resources, and climate change.”

And Jiangsu has become a role model in this front, he concluded.

Around 400 people including senior diplomats, scholars and representatives from multinational companies attended the briefing.

People who lost their homes in a May earthquake in Tashkurgan Tajik autonomous county, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, have started to move into the new earthquake-resistant homes.

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake rocked Tashkurgan, home of people from the Tajik ethnic group on the Pamir Plateau, on May 11. Eight people were killed and 31 injured, according to local officials.

More than 4,750 houses were destroyed. The biggest reconstruction project is in Quzgun, the quake’s epicenter, where all the casualties were reported.

On Wednesday, Quzgun villagers began to move into the first 52 new houses from the disaster-relief tents they have been living in for more than four months.

The family of Gulpiya Meli threw a traditional Tajik housewarming party when they moved into their new home on Wednesday. The earthquake had destroyed her family home. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

“I cannot believe that I can sleep in the new house before school summer break is over,” the 15-year-old said while offering guests milk porridge as a gesture of welcome.

In June, the Xinjiang government pledged to build earthquake-resistant houses for those who lost their homes before the harshest cold arrives.

More than 480 million yuan ($72.8 million) has been invested in the reconstruction project. So far, 2,609 houses have been completed and 793 are ready for the locals to move in. The construction work continues.

Mao Ermin, project manager at the Quzgun site, said it is not easy to build so many new houses on the plateau in just 83 days. Tashkurgan sits at 3,090 meters above sea level and is close to the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Many workers suffer from altitude sickness when they came to Tashkurgan in June. They carried on working even with headaches so the villagers could move in before winter arrives,” he said.

Mao and his team were invited to the housewarming party and watched the locals dance while some played the traditional Tajik eagle flutes in the new houses.

He said he believes the hard work has paid off.

The alleged abduction of a Chinese scholar in the US has prompted colleges to emphasize on-campus security, as Li Xueyao and Xia Lin report for Xinhua China Features.

A new school year is beginning in the United States, and as recently arrived international students adjust to the campus environment, security experts are offering tips to help them stay safe.

“The international students are enjoying the area. This may be their first visit, so they are looking around, taking pictures, maybe looking like tourists,” said Wade MacAdam, who works for the Police Department’s Safety Programs at the University of California, Berkeley.

MacAdam believes that those behaviors will make the new arrivals easy targets “so they need to be more aware of their surroundings”.

According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report 2016, released by the FBI this year, the number of violent crimes in the US rose by 5.3 percent in the first six months of last year compared with the same period in 2015.

FBI data shows that the number of aggravated assaults rose by 6.5 percent, murders by 5.2 percent, rapes were up by 7.9 percent, and robberies rose by 3.2 percent.

Many international students arrive at their dream school in the US to enjoy a high level of education, but seeking a safe experience should be more important than academic success, the experts said.

That point is illustrated by the story of Zhang Yingying, a physics student from China who attends the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has been missing – allegedly abducted – since June 9. The 26-year-old Fujian province native is presumed dead, and a local man has been arrested in connection with her disappearance.

“Some international students, including those from China, are usually introverted, unfamiliar with the new environment, and even speak poor English,” said Qiao Fengxiang, a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston.

“When the police chief introduces security services during school orientation, some may not listen carefully or even fully understand what is being said. So they lack such knowledge.”

California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Illinois are the five top destinations for international students, according to the Institute of International Education.

Xinhua interviewed students, local residents, security officers and professors from universities in those states to discover useful safety tips. They provided four essentials for international students.

‘Blue light’ phones

Most US colleges employ “Blue Light” emergency phones. If a student feels threatened, he or she can push the “call’ button on the phone, which will alert campus police who will be dispatched within a few minutes. Students are usually familiarized with the system during campus tours and freshman orientation.

The emergency phone system is a timely way to call campus police, especially in areas where local conditions result in unstable or weak network or wireless coverage.

“Don’t necessarily call 911, because it goes straight to the Houston Police Department and they’ll call us, causing a delay,” said Fred Brown, deputy chief of the police force at Texas Southern University.

MacAdam, from UC Berkeley, agreed. “If you call 911 from your cellphone, it might go to a neighboring department and route to the university police. The big advantage with the blue light phones is that we know where they are located. If you call from your cellphone, we don’t know, and you have to relay that information to us,” he said.

Security escorts

The security escort service is another useful campus aid students can rely on. The service is usually provided late at night. Different universities have their own specific operating times and locations.

The service offered by New York University is called Safe Ride. It is a shared ride service, which is available for transportation to and from NYU facilities, and on three local mass transit stations during the academic term from midnight to 7:30 am.

Northwestern University, in Illinois, also provides a “Safe Ride” service. “If you are out late, you can call a police officer to walk with you, or even request a squad car,” said Shi Jiayan, an NU student.

Similarly, UC Berkeley has the “Bearwalk” program. It operates from sunset to 3 am. The major difference is that with Bearwalk, a uniformed security officer will walk students safely from point A to point B within the campus boundaries.

According to MacAdam, many robberies occur when individuals are walking by themselves. “So if someone is walking with someone in uniform, they are unlikely to be a victim of crime,” he said.

Avoid becoming isolated

Even though most of the students interviewed by Xinhua said the general on-campus safety environment is positive, the situation changes when they leave college boundaries, especially at night.

“When you go off-campus, it becomes a little bit more dangerous, at least at night it does,” said Molly Hurley, a sophomore at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Qingni Yu, a junior student at UC Berkeley, echoed that view: “I don’t usually stay at school very late. If I have to stay at school, I will ask my roommate if we can go home together, or I will take the bus. My apartment is close to the school, so I can walk. However, I avoid walking alone, especially at night.”

Yuan Wang, a student at NYU, said, “Whether it is boys or girls staying outside at night or in places with few people, it is better to team up with friends, both for confidence and power.”

Awareness

Students and security officers said being alert to the surroundings and not wearing headphones are sensible approaches to staying safe.

According to Shi, from Northwestern University, students should always be aware of their surroundings. “If you buy a ticket at the subway station, you should take account of the surroundings before you take out your wallet, or you should make sure you have the right amount (in your hand) before buying your ticket. You should not wear headphones when you are walking. I think these tips are good for all students.”

Henry Cheng, a student at UC Berkeley, also warned of the dangers of a lack of awareness and the use of headphones.

“Don’t plug both your ears while you are walking home in the middle of the night because that will make you very vulnerable and an easy target,” he said.

MacAdam made the same point. “They (students) should not be on their cellphones, texting, looking at Facebook and therefore advertising their electronic devices. They need to be aware of their surroundings. Also, they should not wear headphones, because that also advertises their electronic devices, and they cannot hear if someone is sneaking up on them.”