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China's railway network saw a surge in passenger trips in the first three quarters of this year, with a total of 354 billion.
Passenger trips made up 6% year on year.
That is according to the China State Railway Group Company.
This figure was represents a record high for the same period in history, and the railway transportation remained safe, stable and orderly.
The railway operator made full use of newly operating railway lines and stations to increase transport capacity and made flexible adjustments to train operation plans in the first three quarters.
The company said that an average of 11,000
87 passenger trains were operating daily during the period, up 7.1% year on year.
Cross-border passenger transport also gained momentum, with the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and the China-Laos Railway handling 2331 million and 197000 cross-border passenger trips during the nine-month period.
This effectively facilitated personnel exchanges as well as trade and business activities.
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The world's fastest bullet train, the cr450, has begun a battery of pre-service trials on a high-speed line in China, clocking a single train speed of 453 km per hour.
The CR450 series, engineered for a top test speed of 450 km per hour and a commercial service speed, is now undergoing qualification trials on the high-speed rail linking the eastern city of Shanghai and a western inland one of Chengdu.
The high-speed train can sprint from standstill to 350 km per hour in just 4 minutes 40 seconds, and two trains have set a record by passing each other at a combined speed of 896 km per hour compared with its predecessor, CR 400.
The CR 450 features a longer sleeker nose, a 20-centimeter lower roofline and a 50-ton weight reduction, thereby cutting aerodynamic drag.
The CR400 Fuxing high-speed trains currently in service operate at a speed of 350 km per hour.
The CR450 will log 600,000 trouble-free kilometers before it is cleared to carry passengers.
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Following in the footsteps of City Walk, City Fly, which ranges from paragliding and skydiving to scenic helicopter rides, is fast becoming a buzzword among young Chinese travelers, reflecting a consumer shift driven by China's burgeoning low-altitude economy.
On an autumn morning, Li Duo, a woman in her early twenties from Shanghai, tried paragliding for the first time, taking off under the guidance of an instructor from a paragliding base on Mogan Mountain in Deqing County in East China's Zhejiang Province.
After landing, Li said with excitement that it's simply breathtaking to glide over the rolling bamboo forests and tea gardens while the wind roars in her ears.
Yang Aiping, manager of the paragliding base, noted that annual visitor numbers have skyrocketed from fewer than 10000 in 2019, when the base first opened, to over 100000 today.
In Zhejiang Province.
Low-altitude tourism is transitioning from a niche adventure to a mainstream pursuit.
During the eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, which ended on October 8th, Huzhou City, which administers Deqing, launched 16 low altitude flight routes connecting seven sites, attracting a growing number of tourists.
Deqing and Anji, another county under Huzhou's administration, have been designated as the provincial-level pilot zones for the low-altitude economy, reflecting strong policy backing for the sector's rapid development in Zhejiang.
The trend is evident nationwide.
In Sanya, a resort city in South China's Hainan Province, skydiving has become one of the hottest attractions.
Zhang Enming, manager of a skydiving base there, said that the base received around 6 000 customers in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of over 20.
Official data showed that Sanya's low-altitude tourism sector served approximately 287000 tourists in the first half of last year, marking a 112 surge from the previous year.
The sector generated over 730 million yuan in revenue and created 2300 jobs during the period.
The robust growth has continued into this year.
China's low-altitude economy has gained unprecedented traction after being included in the Government Work Report in 2024, which positioned it as a new growth engine.
The sector is projected to reach a market size of 15 trillion yuan by 2025 and expand further to 35 trillion yuan by 2035, as forecast by the civil aviation administration of china.
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Chinese Premier Li Qiang has signed a State Council decree unveiling a regulation on the protection of water sources of the Miyun Reservoir in the northeast suburb of Beijing.
The new regulation, which will take effect on December 1 2025, sets out overall requirements and policy support to bolster both the green developments of the Meiyun Reservoir Basin and the water security of China's capital.
To further beef up protection of this reservoir's water sources, the regulation emphasizes the principle of prioritizing protection, while also coordinating protection and development.
According to this new regulation, the Beijing municipal government and the Hebei provincial government should work together to formulate a comprehensive plan regarding the protection of the reservoir's water sources.
Originally built for flood prevention and control purposes, The Meiyun Reservoir, located in the Meiyun District of the capital, is the largest reservoir in North China and an important surface drinking water source for Beijing.
The regulation notes that efforts should be strengthened to prevent and control pollution in the Meiyun Reservoir basin, including delimiting livestock and poultry prohibited zones, implementing agricultural pollution control and enhancing rural domestic waste and sewage treatment.
The new regulation also stresses the need to enhance law enforcement in this regard, vowing to crack down on illegal acts that undermine the reservoir's water sources.
The regulation says that supportive policies concerning resource allocation and green industrial development will be implemented to promote the green development of the Miyun Reservoir Basin, while encouraging financial institutions to offer financial services suitable for achieving this target.
Special English.
China has recently added 22 wetlands to its list of wetlands of national importance, bringing the total number to 80.
That is according to the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The new additions reflect China's continued commitment to strengthening wetland conservation in recent years, including the implementation of its first specialized law on wetland protection, a milestone in its ecological protection efforts.
To date, China is home to 82 wetlands recognized as internationally important and 22 international wetland cities.
Meanwhile, the country has added or restored more than 1 million hectares of wetlands nationwide.
Looking ahead, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said it will further promote wetland restoration and monitoring efforts to enhance the quality and stability of wetland ecosystems.
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A group of researchers has constructed guano indices of emperor penguins to reveal the changes in the species breeding habitats over the past 11 years.
According to the researchers, for every one degree Celsius rise in temperature, emperor penguins shift their breeding site an average of 73 meters further, while each additional centimeter of snowfall adds another 66 meters to the move.
Emperor penguins serve as early warning sentinels for the Antarctic ecosystem and climate change, as noted in in a recent research article in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.
Understanding how climate change influences their habitat use provides insights into the fragile polar ecosystem.
Supporting climate actions under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
However, it remains unclear how the gradual climate change and extreme climatic events affect the dispersal of emperor penguin breeding habitats, due to the lack of a systematic and long-term data set documenting their habitat use.
Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University and the University of Montana developed guano indices.
They presented an automated approach to map emperor penguin breeding habitats from 2013 to 2023 at a 30-meter spatial resolution, using Earth observation satellite imagery.
Lin Hong, the paper's first author, said that their findings showed that, under the pressure of climate change, emperor penguins are now having to relocate their breeding grounds frequently.
Lin, also a PhD student of Sun Yat-sen University's School of Geospatial Engineering and Science, noted that, unlike most birds, Emperor penguins cannot fly, nor do they build nests.
Instead, they rely on a stable sea ice surface to breed.
The study found that some emperor penguins are comparatively fortunate because their breeding sites are shielded by nearby islands, towering ice cliffs or grounded icebergs, and they are within easy reach of open waters rich in prey.
In these locations.
The penguins rarely change their breeding sites, which are often reused for up to seven years.
Yet where no such protective barriers exist, Emperor penguins' ice homes are far more vulnerable.
To break up, underscoring that climate change, coastal topography and prey availability all interact to shape emperor penguin survival.
The researchers further revealed that habitat dispersal is sensitive to four extreme events, including heat blizzards, storms and low sea ice concentration.
Specifically, colonies exposed to intense climate extremes generally exhibit more fragmented distributions.
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Following in the footsteps of CityWalk, CityFly, which ranges from paragliding and skydiving to scenic helicopter rides, is fast becoming a buzzword among young Chinese travelers, reflecting a consumer shift driven by China's burgeoning low-altitude economy.
On an autumn morning, Li Duo, a woman from her early 20s from Shanghai, tried paragliding for the first time, taking off under the guidance of an instructor from a paragliding base on Mougan Mountain in Deqing County in East China's Zhejiang Province.
After landing, Li said with excitement that it's simply breathtaking to glide over the rolling bamboo forests and tea gardens while a wind roars in her ears.
Yang Aiping, manager of the paragliding base, noted that annual visitor numbers have skyrocketed from fewer than 10000 in 2019, when the base first opened, to over 100000 today.
In Zhejiang Province.
Low-altitude tourism is transitioning from a niche adventure to a mainstream pursuit.
During the eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, which ended on October 8th, Huzhou City, which administers Deqing, launched 16 low-altitude flight routes connecting seven sites, attracting a growing number of tourists.
Deqing and Anji, another county under Huzhou's administration, have been designated as the provincial-level pilot zones for the low-altitude economy, reflecting strong policy backing for the sector's rapid development in Zhejiang.
The trend is evident nationwide.
In Sanya, a resort city in South China's Hainan Province, skydiving has become one of the hottest attractions.
Jiang Enming, manager of the skydiving base there, said that the base received around 6000 customers in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of over 20.
Official data showed that Sanya's low-altitude tourism sector served approximately 287000 tourists in the first half of last year, marking a 112 surge from the previous year.
The sector generated over 730 million yuan in revenue about 1029 million US dollars and created 2300 jobs during the period.
The robust growth has continued into this year.
China's low-altitude economy has gained unprecedented traction after being included in the government work report in 2024, which positioned it as a new growth engine.
The sector is projected to reach a market size of 15 trillion yuan by 2025 and expand further to 35 trillion yuan by 2035, as forecast by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
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