China's civil aviation industry aims to promote a significant increase in direct flights between China and the US, and promote the operation of the domestically manufactured C919 in more countries, as part of new moves to further lift air travel.
The remarks were made at the annual meeting of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Thursday, which summarized the industry's performance in 2023 and mapped out tasks for 2024.
Expanding overseas flights is among the CAAC's priorities. The CAAC forecast that China's international passenger traffic will continue to recover, and the number of flights is expected to reach 6,000 per week by year-end, recovering to 80 percent of pre-epidemic levels.
Further increasing direct flights between China and the US is at the top of the list.
International flights in 2023 recovered to more than 4,600 per week, compared with fewer than 500 per week at the beginning of last year.
Flights from China to Europe recovered to more than 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The number of regular direct flights between China and the US stands at 63 per week now.
Regarding Chinese-made aircraft, the CAAC said it will promote the approval review of the C919 aircraft for the European Aviation Safety Agency, which aims to allow the aircraft to operate in more countries.
In 2023, domestically built aircraft made a number of notable breakthroughs, such as the ARJ21 aircraft achieving large-scale operation and being exported to Indonesia. The model carried more than 10 million passengers in 2023.
On January 1, 2024, China Eastern Airlines welcomed its fourth C919 aircraft. The C919 completed its maiden commercial flight in May 2023. As of December 31, China Eastern Airlines' C919 fleet had operated 655 commercial flights, carrying a total of nearly 82,000 passengers.
The CAAC said that it will further improve tech innovation and prevent and resolve systemic risks that affect the long-term development of the industry.
The Chinese aviation industry is shrugging off the impact of the epidemic. CAAC data showed that domestic passenger traffic surpassed the pre-epidemic level of 2019 by 1.5 percent last year, the fastest recovery among all modes in China.
In 2024, China's domestic passenger transport will continue to grow steadily, and ridership on domestic routes is expected to reach 630 million people by year-end, exceeding 2019 by 7.7 percentage points, CAAC said.
A sculptor takes a photo of a giant snow sculpture at the Sun Island scenic area in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Dec. 12, 2023. With numerous snow sculptures constructed in the theme park titled "snow world", the city of Harbin, known as China's "ice city" in the northeast, is witnessing the coming of its high season for tourism.(Photo: Xinhua)
In September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered an important speech in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in which he proposed the idea of the "Silk Road Economic Belt." Since then, an initiative that would have a significant impact on the world's development and prosperity has taken root. Over the last decade, the vision of high-quality construction of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has achieved substantial and fruitful results in Kazakhstan and across the Central Asia region. Recently, Global Times reporters Lin Xiaoyi and Xia Wenxin (GT) interviewed former Uzbek deputy prime minister and former minister of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan Saidmukhtar Saidkasimov (Saidkasimov) in Uzbekistan. The diplomat shared his views on how the BRI and Chinese wisdom have primed Central Asian countries to usher in a new era of development in the past decade. GT: What were your impressions when you first heard about the concept of "the Silk Road Economic Belt" (the "Belt") and BRI in general? How does Uzbekistan view this initiative?
Saidkasimov: It is no exaggeration to say that the initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping 10 years ago, generated tremendous interest around the world from the very beginning. It was not only a very bold, but also a hitherto unprecedented large-scale interregional project. What attracted attention to this project, above all, was its practical and applicable orientation, covering all the direct economic interests and benefits of dozens of countries and peoples.
For the first time in history, an unprecedented plan for the formation and development of an interconnected transportation infrastructure across the entire Eurasian continent was presented. Its implementation truly opened up broad prospects for the creation of a fundamentally new transport configuration across the vast expanse of our planet.
Obviously, such an initiative could not go unnoticed at the global level. Indeed, over the last decade, a large number of countries have shown their interest in participating in this ambitious project to create new trade routes, transportation, and economic corridors closely linking the countries of Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Another important goal of the BRI is that it is ultimately aimed at overcoming poverty, social disadvantages, and the enormous development gap in many countries and regions that are breeding grounds for international terrorism, extremism, and illegal migration. All this requires overcoming inequality, domestic stagnation, and stagnation in global economic development.
From the very beginning, Uzbekistan was one of the first countries to highly appreciate and greatly support the BRI for many reasons. On the one hand, the idea of active trade permeates the entire centuries-old history of our region. Uzbekistan and Central Asia in very distant years practically connected trade relations of the whole of Eurasia. On the other hand, geographically, Central Asia has been the center and the main route of the legendary Silk Road for centuries, being a strategically important trade hub.
It is noteworthy that the idea of reuniting hundreds of peoples and countries of Eurasia into a single belt of mutually beneficial cooperation was proclaimed by China, where the Silk Road historically originated. China itself demonstrates to the world a great example of successful social development. In a historically short period, a huge number of Chinese people were able to escape poverty and backwardness and achieved a fairly high level of development. This achievement by the Chinese people is a rare, unique phenomenon in world history.
GT: What impact has the BRI had on Uzbekistan's development over the last decade?
Saidkasimov: Uzbekistan attaches great importance to strengthening cooperation with China for joint development in various areas and constantly measures its plans against the potential of the BRI. A huge number of examples convincingly demonstrate the creative power of the broad, multifaceted, and constantly growing cooperation between Uzbekistan and China within the BRI, confirming the reality and validity of the great promising expectations of our peoples to further strengthen friendly ties.
For many years, China has firmly occupied the position of one of the main economic partners of Uzbekistan. A number of interstate, intergovernmental, and interagency agreements and arrangements create the necessary legal framework for the growing investment cooperation. Projects in industrial cooperation, infrastructure modernization, transport, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and the creation of joint industrial parks of high technologies with the participation of companies from both countries have been successfully implemented. The volume of Chinese investments in Uzbekistan's economy in recent years has exceeded $10 billion.
Significant joint projects are being promoted. All four strings of the China-Central Asia gas pipeline pass through the territory of Uzbekistan. The railroad tunnel through Kamchik Pass, the longest in our region, is now operational. The throughput potential of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) highway corridor and the railroad is increasingly opening up. Cooperation on the construction of the CKU railway will expand the geography of trade and transportation from China through Uzbekistan to Europe and the Gulf States from the south. It will also transform Uzbekistan from an inland state into an important communications hub in the region.
Uzbekistan, with the help of China, is significantly diversifying export destinations, modernizing infrastructure, and reorienting investment flows to new areas, increasing their potential. China has also become the main exporter of electric cars to Uzbekistan.
Cultural and humanitarian cooperation between the two countries is also actively developing. In this important sphere, joint mass events are increasingly being organized, including art festivals, gala concerts, exhibitions, and seminars. Cooperation is expanding in such areas as student exchanges, translation and publication of literary works, cinematography, translation and broadcasting of television programs, inter-regional contacts, and personnel training, which effectively contribute to the rapprochement of our peoples.
GT: Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is expected to visit China to attend the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in October. What are your expectations from this visit?
Saidkasimov: The upcoming Belt and Road forum is an important event. Undoubtedly, it will cause a huge resonance on a global scale, because it will most likely deal primarily with plans to further expand the transport capabilities of regional and global trade and economic cooperation, in which Uzbekistan is also interested.
It is no coincidence that President Mirziyoyev took an active part and introduced new initiatives at the first Forum in 2017, and at the second in April 2019. There is no doubt that President Mirziyoyev's upcoming visit to China will make a new contribution to the stable and consistent development of the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership and give a powerful impetus to the further expansion and deepening of Uzbek-Chinese cooperation.
GT: Speaking of the CKU railway, what do you think the three countries can expect from this project?
Saidkasimov: The latest news has shown more positivity. An agreement was signed a year ago and the three countries have already started working on this project. At present, agreements on all technical and financial matters are on a mutually acceptable basis.
This railway, as well as many others, is not a noble gesture by China. All three countries are equally interested in this project. Everyone will benefit from it, be it China, Kyrgyzstan, or Uzbekistan. It is always a great advantage for any country to have a network of good railroads because all countries profit from the opportunity to use them for transportation.
GT: Is Uzbekistan interested in China's development model? What aspects your country is interested in the most?
Saidkasimov: Uzbekistan is very closely following the development of China as a reliable strategic partner. We are increasingly interested in all aspects and spheres of its development. Uzbekistan is studying China's modernization plan because we feel very close to many of China's approaches to solving problems.
Uzbekistan first paid special attention to the development of China's real economy, the improvement of the income distribution system, and ensuring grain security. In addition, the development strategy of President Mirziyoyev emphasizes the development of science and technology. In this regard, China's approach of considering science and technology as the main productive force and innovation as the main driving force of growth is in line with and interesting to us. China's experience in developing high-tech industry is of special interest to our republic.
Uzbekistan will closely follow China's commitment to focus on breakthroughs in advanced technologies while enhancing the resilience and capabilities of industrial and logistics chains in terms of strengthening the foundation for building production capacity and developing its own solution for restructuring international industrial chains, modernizing through stimulus measures in areas such as manufacturing, product quality, aerospace, transport, cyberspace, and digital development.
Second, as President Mirziyoyev has repeatedly noted, Uzbekistan pays special attention to China's experience in achieving inclusive social justice, pulling more and more people out of poverty, and increasing the size of the middle class, thus achieving universal equality in society. China's success in this area is well-known in Uzbekistan. On the initiative of President Mirziyoyev, a special program of cooperation to introduce China's experience in overcoming poverty has been developed and is being actively implemented in our republic. Such rich experience in overcoming the country's historically complex and multidimensional social problems is being carefully studied.
Third, the strategic aspirations of China and Uzbekistan also coincide in the sphere of harmonious coexistence between human and nature. This goal is among the main ones in the long-term program proposed by President Mirziyoyev. As in China, innovativeness, coordination, environmental friendliness, openness and sharing, and the maximum protection of nature and the environment are introduced in this sphere in our republic. The experience of the emerging carbon trading market and clean power generation system, as well as China's willingness to work with other countries to promote the transformation to a clean and low-carbon development model, are also noteworthy.
In general, the policy of President Mirziyoyev, aims at the constant expansion of comprehensive cooperation with China, is immensely fruitful in the most diverse spheres of social development, and has the full support of the people of Uzbekistan.
GT: How has Uzbekistan's attitude toward China changed over the years?
Saidkasimov: In recent years, some top European Union leaders have visited our country. Some of them wanted to create the illusion that "China is dangerous." But Uzbekistan's response was unambiguous and confidently principled that we decide our relations with other countries based on our national interests. That is, no one needs to teach Uzbekistan how to conduct its relations with other countries. And for us, we see only positivity in developing good relations with China.
GT: We know that Uzbekistan has been going through reform in recent years under President Mirziyoyev. Could you please tell us what has changed over the years during this reform?
Saidkasimov: Uzbekistan began to change dramatically after President Mirziyoyev took office. The Uzbekistan before Mirziyoyev and after Mirziyoyev is completely different: Back then, it was a closed state; foreign relations were very limited, even with our four neighbors; we had a completely closed press, freedom of expression was prohibited; and we did not carry out any reforms, neither in the economy nor in other spheres. After Mirziyoyev took office, this all began to change radically.
Many Chinese experts called Mirziyoyev a reformer, indeed the Uzbek Deng Xiaoping. Knowing what a huge role Deng played in the fundamental transformation of Chinese society, I would fully agree with such an assessment.
He knows well the situation and all the problems in Uzbekistan. Now he is pursuing a policy to transform Uzbekistan in all directions to build a "New Uzbekistan."
First of all, in foreign policy, he started to actively develop relations with all friendly countries. Among his main priorities, he made a state visit to China. He also visited European Union countries and the US. We have dramatically increased the number of embassies in other countries. Many other countries also opened their embassies in Tashkent.
In terms of the economy, we see the development of entrepreneurship. All restrictions for both large and small businesses have been removed. The state has begun to provide this influential support, primarily to small and medium-size businesses. In this case, financial support was very well provided, while various benefits were created for entrepreneurs. For the first time, we also opened foreign bank branches. As a result, our GDP per capita has changed noticeably over these seven years.
In general, great changes have taken place in the economy, social life, and cultural development. That is to say, today we can say that Uzbekistan is developing as a modern state in a very free, calm, and even manner.
GT: You founded the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in 1992. What motivated you to create this university?
Saidkasimov: It has more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the collapse, 15 former republics became independent. The point is that during the Soviet era, only Moscow was in charge of these republics' foreign policy, because the Soviet Union was a unified state, and therefore a unified foreign policy was implemented with the center. Moreover, foreign policy specialists and diplomats were trained only in Moscow.
When we became independent, we had to open an embassy and accept foreign diplomats, but then we found out that Uzbekistan has no specialists or national diplomats. After all, diplomacy is a special sphere of activity that needs its own professionals who defend the national interests. Therefore, having experience in this sphere as a professor in universities in Moscow to prepare diplomats, I felt it necessary to establish such a study institution in Tashkent. Our university was the first of such in the former Soviet Union states. Our university had a special status and requirements, and we selected the strongest trained young people. As a result, everything went successfully, creating a highly professional national corps of Uzbek diplomats. Today, many Uzbek Ambassadors are graduates of this university.
A common blood sugar medication or an extra dose of a thyroid hormone can reverse signs of cognitive damage in rats exposed in utero to alcohol. Both affect an enzyme that controls memory-related genes in the hippocampus, researchers report July 18 in Molecular Psychiatry.
That insight might someday help scientists find an effective human treatment for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, which can cause lifelong problems with concentration, learning and memory. “At this moment, there’s really no pharmaceutical therapy,” says R. Thomas Zoeller, a neurobiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Fetal alcohol syndrome disorders may affect up to 5 percent of U.S. kids, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scientists don’t know exactly why alcohol has such a strong effect on developing brains. But the lower thyroid hormone levels commonly induced by alcohol exposure might be one explanation, suggests study coauthor Eva Redei, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“The mother has to supply the thyroid hormones for brain development,” says Redei. So, pregnant women who drink might not be providing their fetuses with enough hormones for normal brain development. That could disrupt the developing hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory.
To counter alcohol’s effects, Redei and her colleagues gave doses of thyroxine, a thyroid hormone, to newborn rats that had been exposed to alcohol before birth. (That timing coincides developmentally with the third trimester of pregnancy in humans.) The amount of alcohol fed to the rat moms corresponded roughly to a woman drinking a glass or two of wine a day.
The treatment helped, the team found. Healthy rats will freeze in place when they’re put in a room where they’ve previously experienced a mild electrical shock. Adult rats exposed to alcohol during development freeze for a shorter period of time, suggesting that they might not learn the association between the shock and the room as effectively. Thyroxine treatment after birth made rats freeze about 30 percent longer than rats that didn’t get the treatment — almost on par with rats born to nondrinking moms.
Surprisingly, treatment with a blood sugar drug called metformin also had a similar effect. While seemingly unrelated, the two treatments work in similar ways, Redei says. Alcohol makes the hippocampus produce less of an enzyme called Dnmt1. That enzyme regulates the way key learning and memory-related genes turn on and off during development. Disruptions in that process can harm hippocampus function. “Both treatments normalize those enzyme levels,” Redei says. Whether this treatment will work in people is far from a guarantee: Many promising treatments shown in rats don’t pan out in humans. Plus, fetal alcohol syndrome includes a complex suite of physical, cognitive and behavioral symptoms, which probably aren’t all controlled by thyroid hormone levels.
“Kids with fetal alcohol effects don’t look like kids with congenital hypothyroidism,” a condition resulting in low thyroid hormone levels, says Zoeller. Alcohol exposure during development affects other systems, too, like the immune system.
Still, Redei eventually hopes to test thyroxine and metformin in pregnant drinkers during their third trimester to see if the drugs might improve their kids’ outcomes. (Both are generally recognized as safe for pregnant women at standard doses.)
If treatment works, it might be particularly helpful for women who drank heavily in their first trimester before realizing they were pregnant, says Joanne Rovet, who studies fetal alcohol syndrome at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
A new genetics study adds fuel to the debate about muscle aches that have been reported by many people taking popular cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.
About 60 percent of people of European descent carry a genetic variant that may make them more susceptible to muscle aches in general. But counterintuitively, these people had a lower risk of muscle pain when they took statins compared with placebos, researchers report August 29 in the European Heart Journal. Millions of people take statins to lower cholesterol and fend off the hardening of arteries. But up to 78 percent of patients stop taking the medicine. One common reason for ceasing the drugs’ use is side effects, especially muscle pain, says John Guyton, a clinical lipidologist at Duke University School of Medicine.
It has been unclear, however, whether statins are to blame for the pain. In one study, 43 percent of patients who had muscle aches while taking at least one type of statin were also pained by other types of statin (SN: 5/13/17, p. 22). But 37 percent of muscle-ache sufferers in that study had pain not related to statin use. Other clinical trials have found no difference in muscle aches between people taking statins and those not taking the drugs.
The new study hints that genetic factors, especially ones involved in the immune system’s maintenance and repair of muscles, may affect people’s reactions to statins. “This is a major advance in our understanding about myalgia,” or muscle pain, says Guyton, who was not involved in the study.
People with two copies of the common form of the gene LILRB5 tend to have higher-than-usual blood levels of two proteins released by injured muscles, creatine phosphokinase and lactate dehydrogenase. Higher levels of those proteins may predispose people to more aches and pains. In an examination of data from several studies involving white Europeans, people with dual copies of the common variant were nearly twice as likely to have achy muscles while taking statins as people with a less common variant, Moneeza Siddiqui of the University of Dundee School of Medicine in Scotland and colleagues discovered.
But when researchers examined who had pain when taking statins versus placebos, those with two copies of the common variant seemed to be protected from getting statin-associated muscle pain. Why is not clear. People with double copies of the common form of the gene who experience muscle pain may stop taking statins because they erroneously think the drugs are causing the pain, study coauthor Colin Palmer of the University of Dundee said in a news release.
The less common version of the gene is linked to reduced levels of the muscle-damage proteins, and should protect against myalgia. Yet people with this version of the gene were the ones more likely to develop muscle pain specifically linked to taking statins during the trials.
The finding suggests that when people with the less common variant develop muscle pain while taking statins, the effect really is from the drugs, the researchers say.
But researchers still don’t know the nitty-gritty details of how the genetic variants promote or protect against myalgia while on statins. Neither version of the gene guarantees that a patient will develop side effects — or that they won’t. The team proposes further clinical trials to unravel interactions between the gene and the drugs.
More study is needed before doctors can add the gene to the list of tests patients get, Guyton says. “I don’t think we’re ready to put this genetic screen into clinical practice at all,” he says. For now, “it’s much easier just to give the patient the statin” and see what happens.
SEATTLE — Tyrannosaurus rex may have had small arms, but it was no pushover.
This fierce dinosaur is known for its giant head, powerful jaws and overall fearsome appearance — except for those comical-looking arms. But the roughly meter-long limbs weren’t just vestigial reminders of a longer-armed past, paleontologist Steven Stanley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa said October 23 at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. Instead, the limbs were well-adapted for vicious slashing at close quarters, he argued. T. rex ancestors had longer arms that the dinos used for grasping. But at some point, T. rex and other tyrannosaurs began to use their giant jaws for grasping instead, and the limbs eventually atrophied. Many people have hypothesized that the shrunken arms were, at best, used for mating or perhaps pushing the animal up off the ground; at worst, they were completely functionless.
But Stanley noted that the arms were quite strong, with robust bones that could sustain the impact of slashing. Each arm ended in two sharp claws about 10 centimeters long. Two claws give more slashing power than three, because each one can apply heavier pressure. Furthermore, the edges of the claws are beveled and sharp like those of a bear rather than flat like the grasping claws of an eagle. Those traits support the slasher hypothesis, Stanley concluded.
Many scientists aren’t convinced. While an interesting idea, it’s still unlikely that an adult T. rex would have used its arms as a primary weapon, says vertebrate paleontologist Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved in the study. Although strong, the arm of a fully grown T. rex would barely reach past its chest, greatly reducing its potential strike zone. But a T. rex’s arms grew more slowly than its body, so younger dinos would have had proportionally longer arms. It’s possible the juveniles might have found them useful for slashing prey, he says.
