The processing trade is one of the sectors most affected by rising labor costs in China. In the eyes of some Westerners, China's labor-intensive processing trade has lost its competitiveness, but the real story of the labor-intensive industry chain is much more complex than the industrial transfer trend as depicted by these pessimists.

Chinese authorities recently rolled out a guideline to improve the development of the processing trade. The guideline, regarded as the most important for the reform of China's processing trade since 2016, put forward 12 measures across six categories, involving efforts to encourage the expansion of Chinese domestic markets for processing trade.

Processing trade refers to the business activity of importing all or parts of raw and auxiliary materials, parts, accessories and packaging materials, and re-exporting finished products after processing or assembly is completed by companies within China. But people's concept of China's processing trade needs to change, as the country promotes sales of finished products in the domestic market and also integrates the development of domestic and foreign trade.

The processing trade is an important aspect of international industrial transfers. Since China launched its epochal reform and opening-up drive in 1978, the country has utilized an organic combination of capital, techniques, management and other advantages of foreign investment with the advantage of low-cost elements in China, such as the labor force, and it has become a globally oriented processing and manufacturing base.

The proportion of processing trade in China's foreign trade peaked at 53 percent in 1998. It plays an important role in the foreign trade and national economic development of China.

The international environment and domestic conditions for the development of the processing trade have undergone material changes. On the one hand, increasing labor costs have put pressure on traditional sectors in the coastal regions. Meanwhile, the rise of trade protectionism in the US-led West, as well as weak external demand, have posed challenges to China's processing trade, especially the development of labor-intensive industries.

On the other hand, China's foreign trade also has new opportunities. The rise of domestic consumer power in China is becoming a new advantage in China's foreign trade. China's economic miracle in the past few decades has led to the rise of its middle class, making China an increasingly important importer in the global industry chain and a consumer market for finished products.

China has strengthened the integration of domestic and foreign trade. Efforts have been made to break down industry barriers, promote the convergence of domestic and international standards, and accelerate the mutual recognition in conformity assessment.

Recently, some Western media outlets have run reports about "industrial transfers," "the withdrawal of foreign investment" and "economic decoupling from China," which constitute a new round of bad-mouthing China's economy with a sinister intention. Some Westerners always like to exaggerate the risks faced by the Chinese economy and deliberately ignore its positive aspects.

The issuance of guidance on the processing trade at this time shows that Chinese policymakers are accelerating the integration of China's foreign trade advantages and consumption advantages. China is the world's largest trading country and the second-largest consumer market.

The power of this fusion will be astonishing. It will create new advantages for the development of China's processing trade, and promote China's transformation from a world factory relying on cheap labor to a trading powerhouse.

The guidance also said China will encourage the processing trade of high value-added products, while supporting the development of advanced manufacturing and strategic emerging industries in the processing trade. It is expected that more favorable policies will be introduced, promoting China's foreign trade reform to create new advantages in the global competition.

People visit the Mirzaam Expo in Hawalli Governorate, Kuwait, on Dec. 12, 2023. The Mirzaam Expo, an interior design and decor exhibition, kicked off here on Tuesday and will last until Dec. 16.(Photo: Xinhua)

The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Emirates Institute of Finance (EIF) and the COP28 Presidency have launched the COP28 UAE TechSprint, a global initiative aimed at promoting innovation in scaling sustainable finance and combating climate change.

The launch of the COP28 UAE TechSprint comes ahead of the UAE's hosting of COP28 later this year.

The initiative aims to encourage the participation of financial innovators and developers from global private and public sector entities in fast-tracking innovative technology solutions to address challenges in green and sustainable finance through technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and sensor technologies across three problem statements:

• AI solutions for sustainable finance reporting, verification, and disclosure in the financial services industry.
• Blockchain solutions for auditing and enhancing transparency, traceability, and accountability in sustainable finance.
• IoT and sensor technology solutions for sustainable finance to ensure informed assessments of impact or risk.

Khaled Mohamed Balama, Governor of CBUAE and Chairman of EIF, said, "In line with the vision of the UAE's leadership, and its endeavours to address the challenges of climate change; we value the partnership with COP28 UAE and the BIS in launching this international initiative aimed at encouraging innovators across the globe to leverage financial technology in developing new green and sustainable finance solutions."

Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President Designate, said, "Tackling climate change requires available, accessible and affordable finance. By introducing advanced technological solutions that support the development of sustainable finance standards and instruments, we can help to foster investor confidence and better ensure that capital reaches those who require it the most. COP28 looks forward to working with its partners to drive real solutions to scale up climate action and fast-track sustainable finance initiatives around the world."

Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, said, "Combating climate change is more urgent than ever. It calls for a profound change in the way economies operate and grow. To finance the needed transformation, investors need certainty that their funds are channeled to their intended uses. Technologies that promote the timely measurement and disclosure of climate-related information are part of the solution. The BIS Innovation Hub has explored how to apply technologies such as AI, blockchain and internet-of-things to green finance instruments and climate-related disclosure. This TechSprint in collaboration with the COP28 UAE, the CBUAE and EIF will complement these efforts to address remaining gaps in the green finance market."

The COP28 UAE TechSprint is open to technology and financial innovators and developers from around the world. To participate, please register at link and submit technology proposals to one or more problem statements by [Friday, 6 October 2023].

Shortlisted participants for each problem statement will be invited to further develop their solutions and will be eligible for a stipend of [AED 45,000 (approximately USD 12,000)].

A winner for each problem statement will be selected by an independent panel of experts. The winners will be announced at COP28 UAE in December 2023, with each winner eligible for an award of AED 220,000 (approximately USD 60,000).

Boosting the activity of certain brain cells can help a mouse climb the social ladder.

Nerve cells in a region called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex appear to control whether male mice are dominant or submissive to other males, researchers report in the July 14 Science. The finding adds to previous evidence that this brain region is involved in social interactions in mammals.

Like men flexing muscles or flaunting sports cars to win status, male mice compete to establish a social pecking order. When every mouse knows his place, there can be less social conflict in the long run, says James Curley, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin who wasn’t part of the study.
In dominance tests, researchers pitted mice head-to-head in a plastic tube too narrow for the animals to pass each other. With no way forward, the lower-ranking mouse eventually retreats, pushed out of the tube by the more dominant mouse.

Researchers recorded the activity of individual nerve cells, or neurons, in mice’s brains while they engaged in the tube test. A group of neurons in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex fired faster when mice were pushing forward to claim space in the tube, and fired more slowly as the mice retreated, says study coauthor Hailan Hu, a neuroscientist at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.

Hu’s team then manipulated the activity of those neurons and once again measured the mice’s performance in the tube. Mice with these neurons inactivated via druglike small molecules didn’t try as hard on the tube task and were more likely to lose the competition, the researchers found. Mice with those neurons amped up with light, on the other hand, won against opponents who had previously beaten them. If those mice won enough times in one day, they’d even keep their newly elevated status for two or three days.
Other studies have also suggested a role for the prefrontal cortex in controlling social dynamics in several species, including humans, Curley says. The new study adds detail by allowing the researchers to track how neural firing influences behavior immediately and then follow the effect over time.

However, the tube experiment measures dominance dynamics in pairs of mice, Curley points out, rather than in larger groups. “Whether the same mechanism underlies social dominance under all contexts is yet to be discovered,” he says.

Other factors, such as an animal’s size, can also influence its ability to win a fight. But Hu says that persistence is key, and that this group of neurons appears to affect that quality. “In risk tests, what’s important is how much effort you want to put into the competition,” she says. “Some mice quit easily.”

Mouse studies like this one don’t translate directly to humans. But they allow scientists to study the neurobiology of dominance behaviors in levels of detail that aren’t possible in human subjects.

The study tested only male mice. In the future, Hu wants to find out whether a similar brain mechanism holds for female mice, too.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Kissing cousins aren’t doing their children any evolutionary favors, some preliminary data suggest.

Mating with a close relative, known as inbreeding, reduces nonhuman animals’ evolutionary fitness — measured by the ability to produce offspring. Inbreeding, it turns out, also puts a hit on humans’ reproductive success, David Clark of the University of Edinburgh reported October 20 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Offspring of second cousins or closer relatives make up about 10 percent of the world population, Clark said. He and colleagues collected data on more than a million people from more than 100 culturally diverse populations and calculated the effect inbreeding has on traits related to evolutionary fitness.
Compared with outbred peers, offspring of first cousins have 1.4 fewer opposite-sex sexual partners, have sex for the first time 11 months later, have 0.11 fewer children and are 1.6 times as likely to be childless — all indicators of reduced reproductive ability. Childlessness was not because of a lack of opportunity to have kids, but rather because of fertility problems, Clark said. Children of first cousins are also 1 centimeter shorter, on average, than their peers and 0.84 kilograms lighter at birth. They also have five fewer months of education, presumably because they have less intellectual capacity than people with more distantly related parents, Clark said.

The more closely related the parents, the bigger the hit on reproductive fitness. Children of incest are 3 centimeters shorter and four times as likely to be childless than outbred peers, Clark said.