Trade tensions

President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump agreed on Saturday to take measures to ease bilateral trade tensions and keep up close contacts, said State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Trump’s China visit in November last year. China will import more marketable products from the United States in efforts to gradually ease imbalances in two-way trade, said Wang.

Gene-editing incident

Authorities on Thursday ordered the suspension of research activities by persons involved in the gene-edited babies incident, denouncing* the matter as “extremely abominable* in nature” and in violation of Chinese laws and science ethics.

The gene-edited twins matter reported by the media has brazenly* violated Chinese laws and regulations and breached the bottom line of science ethics, which is both shocking and unacceptable, Xu Nanping, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, told Xinhua.

Income tax

People saw the tax expenses on their October payslips drop drastically after new tax brackets were adopted on October 1, according to the State Administration of Taxation (SAT).

The tax reduction amounts to 31.6 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) in total while more than 60 million people have been completely exempt from individual income tax, SAT statistics showed.

English public signs

Do not glissade* when you see a sign in a washroom telling you to “Slide carefully!” as it actually means “Caution wet floor!”

Likewise, do not look for a bowl when a bank sign asks you to “wait outside a rice noodle.” Instead, search for a yellow line, or “one-meter line,” which is written the same as “a (serving of) rice noodle” in Chinese. Such mind-boggling* mistranslations, once commonplace in Beijing, are quickly disappearing thanks to a new correction campaign to make the city more foreigner-friendly. Beijing’s foreign affairs office said it had vetted* over 2 million Chinese characters on signs with English translations since a national standard on English translations in public service took effect on December 1, 2017.(SD-Agencies)