Unfounded allegations by some U.S. politicians that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a Chinese lab are making it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic and fueling online bullying, according to a recent news article in the British scientific journal Nature.

"Even without strong supporting evidence," calls to investigate Chinese laboratories have reached a fever pitch in the United States, said the article, adding that for many researchers, the tone of the growing demands is unsettling, which could thwart efforts to study the virus's origins.

The "one country, two systems", an innovative policy created by the Communist Party of China with political wisdom, has made extraordinary contributions to the mankind, the central government's top liaison official in Hong Kong said on Saturday.

Luo Huining, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, made the remarks at a forum jointly held by the liaison office, the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Hong Kong SAR, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Garrison in the Hong Kong SAR, and the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong SAR.

Positive economic growth: only major economy with positive performance in pandemic

Due to China’s swift recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the country has become the only major economy to record positive performance in 2020, with a projected 1.8- percent growth, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in December. Despite a 6.8-percent year-on-year contraction in the first quarter, the Chinese economy increased by 3.2 percent in the second quarter and maintained a steady growth of 4.9 percent in the third quarter, showing a V-shaped recovery.

Complete mission impossible: elimination of extreme poverty & building a moderately prosperous society in all respects

In the face of compounded challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a teetering global economy and other dire planetary, such as climate changes, have raised a question to the Chinese authorities: can the country keep its promise to eradicate extreme poverty by the end of 2020?

-- "One of the great misunderstandings is that China is not a democracy," said Mario Cavolo, an Italian-American writer and commentator.

-- "The whole-process democracy is a hallmark of socialist democracy that distinguishes it from various capitalist democratic systems," senior lawmaker Wang Chen said.

-- China aims to develop a system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, and this system will take shape over the next five years.

 Opening a book decorated with simple pictures and written in the Tibetan language, Tatse introduces his latest work to readers.

"This book is called 'My First Tibetan Alphabet Book,' and it teaches children the Tibetan language through pictures," said Tatse, 33.

China on Friday expressed opposition to United States President Joe Biden's expansion of restrictions on investments in certain Chinese companies and vowed to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights of Chinese enterprises.

Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that prohibits US citizens from owning or trading any securities tied to 59 companies, citing alleged ties to China's military and the so-called threat posed by Chinese surveillance technology.

The grave epidemic situation in India, the world's largest vaccine producer, the WHO's approval of Chinese vaccines for emergency use, lingering questions on whether the US can really deliver its promise to provide vaccines to the world, all these have led to a widely acknowledged situation that China could be a much more reliable global vaccine supplier, especially as domestic vaccine producers vowed to ramp up production to meet domestic immunity targets and overseas demand.

China has issued its first batch of forest carbon credit stamps in Sanming City, east China's Fujian Province, in a move to use market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions.

Forest carbon credits are permits for companies to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. They are converted from added forest areas and the amount of carbon they can capture. The first five stamps issued on Tuesday in Sanming offer forest owners credits for 29,715 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The State Council Information Office held a news conference on the outcome of the seventh national population census on Tuesday. Here are the highlights:

 - Chinese mainland registers a population of 1.41 billion, with an annual growth rate of 0.53 percent in the past decade, down from 0.57 percent recorded from 2000 to 2010.

China has been making continuous efforts to protect copyrights for online literature, including introducing a revised copyright law and increasing the awareness of industry players toward copyright protections.

Last year, China's top legislature adopted the latest amendment to the country's copyright law, which will come into force on June 1, 2021, and is expected to ensure the better protection of online literature copyrights.

China will relax rules for foreign investment, increasing its market appeal to global investors and signaling its determination to deepen opening up.

The country's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) has made public its plan for formulating regulations and laws in 2021, putting on agenda the revision of the guideline on foreign strategic investment in Chinese listed firms.

Wearing a ponytail and a red backpack, China’s first virtual student Hua Zhibing made her debut at the 2021 Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) Conference on June 1.

Photo shows the virtual character Hua Zhibing, whose face and voice were virtually synthesized. 

On the occasion of the centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the State Council Information Office of China recently issued a report on the country’s political party system, which demonstrated China’s determination and efforts to uphold CPC leadership, develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, and improve its political party system.

During the Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Dialogue Relations and the 6th Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, both held in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality from June 7 to 8, participants reached a general consensus on enhancing China-ASEAN cooperation and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, showing their wish to jointly create a brighter future through solidarity and deeper cooperation.

Poverty is a huge problem for countries all over the world, and poverty alleviation has long been a difficult task for the international community. People who live in extreme poverty are deprived of basic human needs such as food, clean drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, shelter, and education. The United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) all prioritize eradicating poverty and hunger. Whether in its own modernization efforts or in implementing the UN's MDGs and SDGs, the Chinese government has always placed a high priority on poverty issues and actively investigated ways to alleviate poverty.

China's economy is expected to continue to gain momentum in the coming months as exports and manufacturing investment see optimistic growth, British think tank Oxford Economics said in a report released Friday.

"We expect the economy to continue to gain momentum in the coming months, with a rotation in terms of the drivers of growth taking hold," said the report.

Using China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), scientists have discovered 201 pulsars, including faint pulsars and millisecond pulsars.

The research was led by the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The findings were published in the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics on Thursday.

China's total value of foreign trade in goods in the first two months of 2021 reached 5.44 trillion yuan ($836.1 billion), up 32.2 percent year on year. In particular, the country's exports registered a remarkable 50.1-percent growth rate from the same period last year. China's foreign trade has maintained momentum since resuming positive growth last June.

As China makes constant efforts to push forward with higher-level opening up, the country is obtaining greater competitive edges in global markets with the help of such growth drivers as technology research and development, talent cultivation, China-Europe freight trains, as well as cross-border e-commerce.