Foreign trade

China’s foreign trade rose 9.7 percent year on year to a historic high of 30.51 trillion yuan (US$4.5 trillion) in 2018, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said on Monday.

The value was 2.7 trillion yuan higher than that of 2017, according to the GAC. Exports rose 7.1 percent year on year to 16.42 trillion yuan last year, while imports grew 12.9 percent to 14.09 trillion yuan, resulting in a trade surplus* of 2.33 trillion yuan, which narrowed by 18.3 percent.

Lunar exploration

The country will launch the Chang’e-5 probe by the end of this year to bring moon samples back to Earth, a senior official at the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Monday.

The Chang’e-4 mission realized the first-ever soft-landing on the far side of the moon, and its success has inaugurated the fourth phase of China’s lunar exploration program. Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the CNSA, said the Chang’e-6 mission will be designed to bring samples back from the South Pole of the moon.

Beijing’s subcenter

Four key municipal organs of Beijing moved their offices from the downtown area to the eastern suburb of Tongzhou District, the city’s subcenter, on Friday.

The four organs are the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, Beijing Municipal People’s Government and the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. On Thursday evening, the nameplate on the municipal government’s old main building in the downtown area was taken off and handed over to the archives.

New buzzword

“Hair loss” has become a buzzword* for young people in China as a way to show the stress they experience in their daily lives, according to a recent survey by the China Youth Daily.

In the survey covering 1,901 people aged between 18 to 35, about 64 percent of the young people said they would describe themselves as “nearly going bald” to others when feeling stressed. More than 67 percent of the people said the buzzword was used in an attempt to relieve anxiety. (SD-Agencies)