Xi to attend welcome ceremony held by French President Macron

Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend a welcome ceremony held by French President Emmanuel Macron at Les Invalides in Paris on Monday.

Xi arrived in Paris on Sunday for a state visit to France at the invitation of Macron. France is the first leg of Xi's three-European country tour, which will later take him to Serbia and Hungary.

Over 70 percent of the projects funded by China's additional one-trillion-yuan treasury bonds issued late last year have started construction, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Saturday.

So far, 15,000 projects funded by the issued treasury bonds have been implemented, with 11,000, or 72 percent of them having started construction, said Hu He, chief of the General Office of NDRC's Investment Division, adding that efforts will be made to ensure that all the remaining projects will be in construction before late June.

"Among them (the funded projects), those for post-disaster reconstruction have seen rapid progress. Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei have activated 95 percent of these projects, and a batch of post-disaster reconstruction projects for improving the people's wellbeing such as schools, hospitals, water supply facilities and roads, have basically been completed, and are ready for timely use," said Hu.

Late last year, China issued an additional one-trillion-yuan treasury bonds, mainly covering projects of eight key areas including those for post-disaster construction, enhancing north China and other regions' capacity for post-disaster reconstruction, disaster prevention and mitigation, and helping the affected regions restore their basic production and living conditions and economic development to the pre-disaster level.

"The additional treasury bonds issued in 2023 strengthened support for enhancing the capacity for post-disaster reconstruction, disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, raising the support standards for the projects all at once, thus greatly easing the local government's financial pressure. The measure is both aimed at helping the affected population to restore as fast as possible the normal working and living conditions and enhancing the capacity for disaster prevention and relief in the long run, so as to better protect people's lives and property in the future," said Hu.