Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday urged efforts to accelerate the reform and innovation in standardization work, aiming to promote the quality upgrading in the real economy and strengthen the endogenous momentum for high-quality development.
Li made the remarks while presiding over a State Council study session. Vice premiers Ding Xuexiang, Zhang Guoqing and Liu Guozhong delivered speeches at the meeting.
Standards serve as a crucial foundational system, playing a significant role in developing a modern industrial system and building a unified national market, Li said.
He emphasized the need to optimize the supply of standards to better align with the realities of economic and social development, and to strengthen digital technologies such as artificial intelligence to systematically advance the formulation and revision of standards.
The premier called for stronger implementation of standards, including the establishment of a mandatory responsibility list for enforcement, and efforts to encourage enterprises to adopt high-level standards. Furthermore, he stressed the importance of improving the internationalization of standards and steadily expanding institutional openness in the standards system.
Li highlighted reform and innovation as key drivers to comprehensively elevate the overall level of standards and the effectiveness of standardization management.
He underscored the need to better balance the roles of government and the market, and to support market forces such as businesses and industry alliances in playing a greater role in the development of standards.
Chinese premier calls for reform in standardization work to boost high-quality development
Deliberately targeting civilian service institutions in Iran by the United States and Israel is the biggest operational challenge facing humanitarian workers, according to Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
The United States and Israel on Saturday launched strikes against Iran, plunging the war-torn Middle East into a new round of violent conflicts. Iran has retaliated with a series of counterattacks against Israel and U.S. targets across the region.
A large-scale offensive jointly conducted by Washington and Tel Aviv on Saturday struck a girls' elementary school in southern Iran's Minab, home to a military base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and killed over 160 pupils.
"The first attack targeted a girls' primary school in the city of Minab. It was a brutal and sad incident that was unprecedented in the history of humanity. More than 168 children aged 7, 8, and at most 9 and a half years old were martyred. The school was attacked in two phases, and unconventional weapons were used in this assault," Kolivand said.
At least seven hospitals and emergency stations in Iran, including Tehran's Gandhi Hospital, were struck by U.S. and Israeli attacks on Sunday night, causing widespread destruction and casualties.
The Iranian official framed these attacks as a fundamental violation of international laws.
"Our challenges are these direct attacks on the service providers. Just today, five of my colleagues were injured. And this is against humanitarian law, against the basic principles of the Geneva Conventions and against all international laws. One of our challenges is that international institutions are almost ineffective and we do not see any trace of it. That is, we do not feel any vital signs of it. These are our main challenges. We have no internal challenges," he said.
Iranian Red Crescent chief decries US-Israeli attacks on service institutions
