Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday sent a congratulatory letter to the 2024 International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) World Congress.
Xi stressed that China has always attached great importance to the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights and has actively promoted efforts to build itself into an IP powerhouse. He noted that China has made historic accomplishments in IP protection and forged a path of IP development with Chinese characteristics.
Xi said China is willing to work with all parties to continue to strengthen cooperation, firmly safeguard the international IP multilateral system, contribute Chinese wisdom and solutions to creating an international environment conducive to innovation and development, promote the development of a global IP governance system in a more just and reasonable direction, and make contribution to the well-being of humankind.
Themed "balanced protection and innovative development of IP rights," the 2024 AIPPI World Congress opened in the city of Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday. The event is co-organized by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the AIPPI.
Xi sends congratulatory letter to 2024 AIPPI World Congress
After over five years of construction, the Urumqi-Yuli Expressway that traverses the Tianshan Mountains in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region opened to traffic on Friday, cutting the time of driving from the southern to the northern parts of the towering mountains by half.
Thanks to the entry into operation of the expressway, the travel time from the regional capital of Urumqi, north of the Tianshan Mountains, to Korla, south of the Tianshan Mountains, has been shortened from seven hours to about 3.5 hours.
The Tianshan Mountains, with a length of 2,500 km, spans across the whole the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway traversing it is 324.7-kilometer long. It includes 12 interchanges, 17 tunnels and hundreds of bridges, culverts and passages. Among them, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the key project.
"With a total length of 22.13 kilometers, the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is the world's longest expressway tunnel, and has the deepest highway shaft worldwide, creating two world records," said Song Hailiang, president of China Communications Construction Company.
The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway not only links the Urumqi metropolitan area, the northern Xinjiang urban belt, and the southern Xinjiang city cluster, but also provides convenient connectivity between the three major pilot free trade zones in Urumqi, Kashgar and Khorgos, significantly reducing logistics costs, effectively promoting mutual complementation of resource advantages between northern and southern Xinjiang, and accelerating the two-way circulation of northern Xinjiang's energy and equipment manufacturing with southern Xinjiang's agricultural products and distinctive resources.
It also connects with multiple important highways at home and abroad.
"The Urumqi-Yuli Expressway connects with New Eurasian Land Bridge, and multiple economic corridors' major arteries linking up China to Central Asia, west Asia and Pakistan. Meanwhile, it also connects with the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Therefore, operation of the expressway will further consolidate Xinjiang's role as a strategic hub in the 'dual circulation' of domestic and international markets," said Guo Sheng, deputy director of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region's Department of Transportation.
Expressway traversing north, south Xinjiang opens to traffic
