Cashless Journey

Around 2.64 trillion yuan

($406.8 billion) has been invested to fi nance water conservation projects since 2013, while investment for proj- ects still under construction exceeds 900 billion yuan ($138.7 billion).

China will continue to advance water conservation projects, includ- ing the allocation of water resources in the Pearl River Delta region and the fortifi cation of small and vulner- able reservoirs across the country in 2018, according to Chen.

Elderly Nursing

China has improved services at nursing institutions for the el- derly, Minister of Civil Affairs Huang Shuxian said on January 2.

Medical services were provided in 93.4 percent of all nursing homes, and the proportion of nursing beds designed for those incapable of taking care of themselves rose from less than 30 percent in 2015 to 46.4 percent by the end of November 2017, according to Huang.

As of September 2017, the coun- try had more than 28,000 registered nursing institutions for the elderly, with nearly 7 million beds. More than 12,500 of these institutions were private, up 7.8 percent year on year, Huang said.

Of China’s 1.4 billion people, around 230 million were aged 60 or above at the end of 2016, 16.7 per- cent of the total population. Among them, 51.3 percent were not living with their children.

Power Access

A sparsely populated township in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region has been connected to the state electricity grid, bringing to an end life without electricity for its 32 residents, local authorities said on January 2.

The 15-km-long, 10-kv power line, which took fi ve months to com- plete, is connected to the remote Yulmed Township in Luntse County via 108 electric poles which traverse a 5,000-meter-high mountain, ac- cording to the contractor, an electric power company in neighboring Qinghai Province.

Yulmed has an average elevation of 3,650 meters and its population was once reduced to one three-member household. There are currently nine households living in the township.

In 2008, the local government built a small hydropower station, but it was unable to meet increasing power demands due to the improved living standards of the residents, resulting in frequent power outages.

Intelligence Park

A technology park dedicated to the development of artifi cial intelligence will be built in Beijing in the next fi ve years, authorities said.

The park will be located in the suburban Mentougou District in west Beijing, covering 54.87 hectares, The Beijing News reported, citing a plan released by the Mentougou District Government on January 2. With a projected investment of 13.8 billion yuan ($2.1 billion), the park is expected to attract around 400 enterprises, with an estimated annual output value of 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion).

Enterprises in the park will focus on developing areas such as super high-speed big data, cloud computing, biometric identifi cation and deep learning. Its technologi- cal infrastructure includes a fi fth- generation mobile network, a super computer and cloud services.

The developer of the park, a company of the Zhongguancun Development Group, will seek partnerships with Chinese and over- seas universities, research institutes and large companies to establish various research centers in the park, including a national-level artifi cial intelligence lab.

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