The Sanya branch of the Peking University (PKU) Hospital of Stomatology based in the tourist resort city of Sanya in south China's tropical Hainan Province -- the country's first national-level regional dental specialty center -- officially opened on Saturday, providing local residents and tourists with access to top-tier dental care without leaving Hainan.
As a key city in the Hainan Free Trade Port and a hub for both tourism and wellness, Sanya has seen rising demand for oral healthcare. Local resources, however, have long been strained.
The newly launched hospital aims to ease the situation. Both its management and medical teams come directly from the main campus of the PKU Hospita of Stomatology in Beijing, ensuring seamless integration and unified standards across diagnoses, treatment, and service quality. The facility comprises of nine specialized buildings, including an emergency outpatient complex and an international medical services building, covering all sub-specialties in dental medicine.
"Since the official start of Hainan Free Trade Port's island-wide special customs operations [on December 18, 2025], the very first zero-tariff items entering the region were advanced dental equipment for our hospital. This enables a wide range of patients in the Hainan region to access the world's latest dental treatment equipment and technology more quickly," said Deng Xuliang, president of the PKU Hospital of Stomatology.
Looking ahead, the main campus of the PKU Hospital of Stomatology will collaborate with medical universities in Hainan to jointly train more specialized professionals for grassroots-level healthcare institutions across the region. Through technical mentorship and integrated training programs, the initiative aims to leverage the policy advantages of the free trade port to build a high-level, comprehensive platform that integrates medical services, education, research, public health, and healthcare management, with particular attention on international patient services and comfort-focused treatment.
"The operation of medical care plus health and wellness programs and of medical care plus tourism projects has jointly contributed to the formation of an internationalized medical care platform in Sanya, which presents a major opportunity for both Sanya and the rest of Hainan, especially as the free trade port enters full operation, making more duty-free medicines and medical devices available locally," said Hu Yulei, director of the Sanya Municipal Health Commission.
Hainan's Sanya opens first national dental specialty center
China will strive to further reduce the number of heavy pollution days and improve water quality in rural areas during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Thursday.
While meeting the press following the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), Huang outlined the main tasks of pollution control during the 2026-2030 period.
Although the national average proportion of heavy pollution days has dropped to less than one percent last year, said Huang, during autumn and winter seasons, such weather events still occasionally occur in certain regions, including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surround areas, as well as urban clusters in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
Therefore, reducing the number of heavy pollution days will continue to be a major task for relevant authorities, he said.
"An important goal of pollution prevention and control during the 15th Five-Year Plan period is to continue reducing the number of heavy pollution days. We are quite confident in achieving this. We will adhere to the approaches of systematic and source-based management, addressing both symptoms and root causes, with a focus on the latter. In particular, we will seize the favorable opportunities brought by advancing the goal of peaking carbon emissions during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and the promulgation of the Ecological and Environmental Code today to promote green and low-carbon development of our industrial, energy, and transportation structures, as well as the development of new quality productive forces. Our fundamental solution is to reduce pollutant emissions at the source," he said.
Water quality improvement is another major task, according to Huang.
Over the years, China has seen significant progress in managing the water quality in major rivers and lakes, but in rural areas and urban-rural fringe areas, pollution problems, like black and odorous waters, remain quite prominent in small and micro water bodies, he said, adding that these pollution sources near people's homes may seem minor, they are actually directly related to the well-being of the people.
"This year, we will introduce relevant documents to deepen water pollution control, shifting our focus and efforts further towards rural areas, urban-rural fringe areas, and counties. At the same time, we'll set up over 200 national-level monitoring sites and a number of monitoring sites at the provincial level, in order to help local authorities to better manage small and micro water bodies," said Huang.
China will strive to further improve air, water quality in following five years: minister
