Medical teams from China and Vietnam provided free medical services along the border between the two countries' on Tuesday as part of the 10th border defense friendship exchange.
Free medical clinics were held in the Dongxing County-level City in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and in Vietnam's Quang Ninh Province.
Focused on treating common diseases among the local population, the medical teams set up 13 departments, including cardiology, orthopedics, dermatology and stomatology, with Chinese and Vietnamese medics working together to provide treatments.
"We have had a lot of discussions on external therapies using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and TCM classic treatments and prescriptions. They (the Vietnamese medical workers) are particularly interested in some of the innovative acupuncture and external treatment techniques that have recently emerged in China. They work in a military hospital with a focus on traditional medicine, and we think they are doing great. We are also very interested in their work and want to hold exchanges with them," said Song Limei, a Chinese medical worker.
For those patients who could not make it to the clinics, the Chinese and Vietnamese medics provided home visits.
On Tuesday alone, the medical teams in both Dongxing and Quang Ninh Province consulted with over 1,700 patients and distributed more than 1,100 medicines.
China, Vietnam provide free medical services in border areas
China on Wednesday issued a guideline outlining arrangements for pilot work to extend rural land contracts by an additional 30 years upon the expiration of the second-round contracts.
The document, jointly issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, comprises 15 specific measures with a mandate to strengthen the protection of farmers' contractual land rights and interests, enhance the management of rural land contracting, and reinforce organization work and leadership, among others.
The document emphasizes the unchanged policies of unwaveringly upholding the collective ownership of rural land and the farmer household land contracting and operating system, ensuring the principal position of farmers and the stability of rural society.
To carry out the rural land contracts extension pilot work effectively, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and other competent authorities have since 2020 guided various provinces in gradually expanding the scope of the pilot program. This year, province-wide trials are expected to be conducted across 29 provincial-level regions.
Under China's household contract responsibility system, all rural land is owned by rural collectives, which allocate contract rights for parcels of farmland to eligible households. The tenure of contract rights was 15 years in the 1980s and renewed by another 30 years for the second-round contracts in the 1990s. The expiration of second-round contracts is expected to enter a peak period from 2026 to 2028.
China issues pilot work guideline for rural land contracts extension
