China urges Philippines to take concrete actions to ease South China Sea situation

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Monday urged the Philippines to take concrete actions to ease the situation in the South China Sea.

Lin Jian, the spokesman, made the call at a regular press briefing in Beijing in response to a media query about the situation.

"If the Philippines truly wants to ease the situation in the South China Sea, it should immediately stop intruding into the waters adjacent to China's Nansha Islands and Huangyan Island, stop transporting construction materials to 'grounded' military vessel at Ren'ai Jiao (Ren'ai Reef) and building permanent facilities there, and stop illegal landing on relevant uninhabited islands and reefs. It must stop forming exclusive blocs, flexing muscles, and spreading disinformation to mislead the international community," he said.

China's cement industry is accelerating its transformation to digitalization and green manufacturing, keeping pace with the country's drive to achieve carbon reduction goals.

China released a plan on ultra-low emissions in cement production to reduce pollutant emissions in January this year. The plan requires half of cement clinker production capacity in the country's key regions for air pollution control to complete ultra-low emission transformation by the end of 2025, and 80 percent of China's overall cement clinker production capacity to finish the transformation the end of 2028.

It marks the ultra-low emission transformation in another traditional industry after coal-fired power plants and the steel industry in China.

"As of 2023, 274 cement factories and 125 cement mines had been listed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as green manufacturers. In the future, cement enterprises will build more green factories and apply more green mining approaches to contribute to the green and low-carbon development of the cement industry." said Kong Xiangzhong, executive president of the China Cement Association.

China's cement production totalled 2.023 billion tons in 2023, ranking first in the world for 38 consecutive years, according to insiders at the World Cement Association Annual Conference 2024 that opened in Nanjing of east China on Saturday.

China's cement output accounted for more than 50 percent of global cement production and the cement sector discharged over 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2023.