by Teodoro Raúl Rentería Villa
Vice President of Colegio Nacional de Licenciados en Periodismo, General Director of Irradia Noticias, Mexico
As we proposed in our first installment, it is impossible to have a single first impression of China. This visit to Chongqing opens our eyes and gives us the opportunity to address several topics to share with our countries.
Sustainability: Way of Life in China
China’s great opening has led to cities like Chongqing becoming nodal centers of global distribution; from this region products are transported by rail, sea, air and land with the highest logistical development.
Located in the southwestern interior of China, built on the upper course of the Yangtze River, it has an area of 82,400 square kilometers, and is divided into 38 districts and counties (26 districts, 8 counties, 4 autonomous counties). It has a population of 32.13 million permanent residents, and the urbanization rate reaches 70.96 percent.
The Yangtze River crosses the city with a stretch of 691 kilometers, converging with the Jialing River and the Wu River.
The planning and development of this city has been proposed under the regulation established by President Xi Jinping in 1997 when it became a centrally administered municipality. Its history can be known in the visit to the Planning Exhibition Gallery that allows you to locate its geography, orography, rain fountains, and its origin more than 3,000 years ago.
United by bridges and roads, the central area is a space of modernity and architectural challenge. It highlights its respect for the environment, its cleanliness, organization and pedestrian respect; this city with more than 30 million inhabitants does not know about pollution or vehicular saturation. The fog that characterizes it is a product of the semi-tropical climate and the humidity provided by the rivers that make it shine in all its splendor: Yangtse and Jialing.
Its International Container Logistics Park of the Tuanjiecun railway station is one of the largest in the world, with great potential due to its rapid movement. From Chongqing you cross the Asian continent and reach Europe.
Some hard data can help to understand the dimension of the growth and importance of the region:
Chongqing recorded positive progress in 2019 in the work of multidimensional opening to the outside. He made a huge effort to explore and diversify international markets. As a result, the import and export volume with ASEAN, the EU and the countries along the Belt and Route grew by 39%, 11% and 30%, respectively. The “direct channel” system was applied for large-scale foreign investment projects. The real use of foreign capital exceeded 10 billion dollars and the number of international investment entities exceeded 6,000. 153 international fairs and forums were held, with remarkable effects assorted by Smart China Expo, WCIFIT, the Chongqing talent summit and the China-Singapore financial summit.
As in the vast majority of modern China, its young inhabitants speak several languages; technology is a factor in daily life.
Their communication systems are linked to their payment method for practically all services; the same to acquire a candy in a vending machine, to occupy the transport as to comply with the payment of the bill in a restaurant. Cash and bank cards are a thing of the past.
Its Wechat link system, with more than a billion users worldwide, is not limited to sending messages; it is a new way of life.
When we visited China for the first time, on that occasion we were surprised precisely by the absence of public telephones, that is, telephones on the streets. And the biggest blow when we realized that when the minors left their schools they carried a cell phone with which they paid for their transportation. For that year in our nation, cellular telephony was very high in cost and limited in its range.
From that time to date, Mexico has advanced in technology and digital communication; but the return to China once again leaves us with the desire to reach its great stage of life. The combination of modernity and respect for the environment, sustainability, is a world example.
During our visit to this region within the framework of the International Forum of the Route and the Silk 2024 on behalf of the National College of Journalism Graduates and through its president, Eva Guerrero Ríos, of the Federation of Associations of Mexican Journalists, we will be publishing our contributions that we hope will be an incentive to reach stages of life as the Chinese people do.
Culture and Tradition, Promoters in Rongchang
A few kilometers from the central area of Chongqing, we arrived at the also millennial Rongchang, which according to the city’s chief spokesperson, Wan Rong, its meaning is “prosperity.”
It is surprising to learn that with more than 200 ceramic companies and their industries, in the Rongchang Tao district, one of the three in which the immense metropolis is divided, they achieved a production of 3,259 million yuan in 2023; approximately 460 million dollars.
On behalf of Secretary Hong Bo, the spokeswoman explained that there are almost 200 original heirs that multiply by tens of thousands of professionals in the ceramic industry; “the rise of cultural prosperity is accelerating interpretation as a movement of industrial ascent and professional prosperity.”
In recent years, Rongchang has inherited the millennial historical context, has promoted the deep integration and development of “cultural and commercial tourism”, has carefully built cultural and tourist platforms with a clear degree of recognition, such as the city of Antao and the city of Xiabu.
As part of the activities of the “Belt and Road” 2024 Journalists’ Cooperation Forum, we have traveled its highways and roads that allow us to observe the contrast between the cities and their countryside; between Chongqing and Rongchang there is approximately 100 kilometers of distance between which one can observe the dignified housing, so to speak, of those who work the land.
On a recent visit we made to Wuhan in 2019, before the declaration of the COVID pandemic, we toured its mountainous area dedicated to the cultivation of herbs and aromatic flowers for tea making. Teamwork through cooperatives, as they explained to us, guarantees them sowing, cultivation, harvesting, processing, industrialization, export and sale. Something similar happens in this region.
Here they take culture as a bridge to promote exchanges and cooperation. There is an open and beneficial cooperation for all, they see it as the permanent challenge of human development.
Rongchang takes advantage of historical opportunities, takes culture as its main line, adheres to the combination of “introduction” and “emerge”, regularly organizes international seminars on “reducing resistance” of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, the China Livestock Science and Technology Forum, the “Belt and Road” International Ceramics Forum.
They develop other international exchange activities, such as the “Millennium Rongchang”.
As well as the “Historical and Cultural Week” and the “Festival of Tradition” in which the countries that make up the “Belt and Road” are invited to carry out in-depth cultural exchanges, such as ceramics and xiabu.
He actively participates in international film festivals and international exhibitions of basic products to show the world a rich, colorful, vivid and three-dimensional image at all levels.
Our proud host points out that they go for the “Rongchang of the millennium”, through promoting the creative transformation and innovative development of the excellent traditional culture, using the power of cultural civilization, promoting exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese and foreign civilizations, as well as “going in both directions” with the world with an open attitude.
Chongqing’s Land Connectivity: Another Factor of Global Development
The policy of openness and the size of the Chinese territory generates a large number of opportunities for internal and foreign trade, but at the same time it requires a competitive, high-tech and high-quality logistics task.
In these latitudes, under a vision of high competitiveness, industry, commerce, technology, science, public policies, education and social commitment converge; large Chinese brands find in this region their production area and their immediate distribution to the world.
After getting to know the railway fortress we visited the Chongqing Highway Logistics Base, CAI, which joins the strategic development plan as a national logistics center for trade and exchange, which includes a national first-class cold chain as well as a national e-commerce demonstration logistics park.
The CAI has linked Jingdong, South China City, Beijing Xinfadi, SF, Shentong and more than 80 other leading logistics companies, more than 6,000 market players. It has formed a synergistic development pattern of five large industrial clusters, namely, professional market, e-commerce, comprehensive logistics, international trade, food and agricultural product processing, and has reached a market turnover of nearly 600 billion yuan (more than 84 billion dollars).
The Chongqing Highway Logistics Base is the starting point for the cross-border highways of the new western land and sea corridor. It has become one of the three main modes of transport (rail-to-sea intermodal transport, international rail intermodal transport and cross-border trucks by road) operating in Chongqing for the New Western Land and Maritime Corridor, and has opened 11 main transport routes, achieving great coverage and expanding to some countries in Central and South Asia, and forming an external transport system of “3 directions, 11 lines and 23 ports.”
The CAI has obtained the GMS cross-border train license and the TIR (International Road Transport System) certificate of approval. It has connected the Customs Logistics Center (Type B) of the Nanpeng Highway, the International Distribution Customs Supervision Center (Highway), the ASEAN Goods Collection City, the RCEP Investment and Trade Services Center of Chongqing, the China-ASEAN Logistics Industry Docking Base and other open platforms, and has been deeply integrated into the construction of the new land and sea western corridor.
Non-invasive Surgery, China’s Contribution to Humanity
– Scientist Wang Zhibiao, a “Happy Genius.”
Chongqing, China.- “This is a technology for humanity,” with these words Wang Zhibiao, creator of the non-invasive surgery promoted by the company Haifu, leaves behind the terms such as intervention, operation, scalpel and many others that although it is true they were the option to save lives, telemedicine finds another dimension.
His passion in explaining the “focused ultrasound ablation surgery as a non-invasive treatment”, made us qualify him and we told him, as a “happy genius.”
At the Haifu research center located in Chongqing, we received an extensive explanation from the communication managers:
Ultrasound is emitted from the outside of the body to focus on damaged tissues, instantly generating a high temperature of 65-100 degrees Celsius, to produce irreversible coagulative necrosis, and thus achieve the purpose of non-invasive treatment.
“The entire treatment process is without incision, without blood, without radiation, non-invasive, and only a single “shaped” ablation of the diseased tissues, which can preserve the structure and functional integrity of normal tissues and organs.”
This procedure has enormous advantages, it is an outpatient treatment without surgeries, without cuts, without bleeding and without invasion; the length of stay depends on the specific case, but generally the patient can return home within the next 24 hours, after the intervention with Haifu.
With this treatment, patients find an alternative against cancer and against sequelae such as lethargy, reduced defenses, hair loss and propensity to infections resulting from chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
The pathologies that can be treated with Haifu are both malignant (liver, pancreatic, breast, bone, kidney or sarcoma cancer) and benign (myomatosis, uterine adenomiosis, abdominal ectopic endometriosis, ectopic pregnancy in cesarean scar, placenta acreta and breast fibroadenoma).
The technology is present in 33 countries; in Latin America it is found in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.
In our country, the first “opirating room” is from a private company and is in the process of being installed in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City.
In Colombia Haifu, the new technology was presented on October 26, 2023 and is located at the San Diego Clinical Oncology Research Center (CIOSAD), in Bogotá.
Data reveal that successful treatments have been achieved in more than 240,000 patients in health centers in countries such as Germany, Egypt, Spain, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, Singapore and Argentina.
A revealing fact is from Dr. Herman Bayona, head of surgery of CIOSAD, who states that “the fact that the patient has no pain, that he has no invasion, that there is no bleeding allows him even in advanced age, from 85-88 years, to have a therapeutic alternative that with normal surgery could not do.”
“Currently, with the technology of focused ultrasound therapy as a link, under the traction of medical demand, HAIFU Medical and the Key State Laboratory of Medical Ultrasound Engineering, the National Research Center for Medical Ultrasound Treatment Engineering, and the training base of high-intensity focused ultrasound oncological treatment have been synergistically developed, have established the theoretical system of biological effect of focused ultrasound, and have successfully established the “foundation” in the field of focused ultrasound. “On this basis, the development of the “twin towers” of medicine and engineering has been carried out, and the characteristic mode of collaborative innovation between industry, academia, research and application in the field of original innovative medical devices has been explored.
What will be your next contribution to the world? We ask the man who within the simplicity of his clothing, at 61 years old, is aware that global health will change with his contribution.
In a similar device, he assures, the patient will arrive without knowing what he is suffering from, he will be checked, diagnosed and operated on to go home on foot in a few minutes.
We said to him: “You are a happy genius.” His eyes shone, his smile appeared, his hands shook, and he indicated gratitude to us.
The gratitude goes back to these human beings whose contribution is forever; they will never be able to measure the benefit that their hours of research and testing will provide to future generations.
This technology in China is very clear about its destination in social security; we hope that all over the world, governments have that vision so that it is within the reach of all humanity.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.