Recently, I had the opportunity to explore the Liupanshan Mountain in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Shortly after departing from Yinchuan, the capital of the region, we encountered extensive stretches of solar photovoltaic panels and clusters of windmills lining both sides of the highway. 

It is worth noting that this form of power generation has emerged as a crucial economic asset for the western region.

In the past, Ningxia was known for its specialty products, such as sheepskin, wolfberries and Fat choy, but now it has become an important source of electricity for the whole country. One recently launched project is the "Ningxia Electricity to Hunan," which transmits mainly clean electricity from Ningxia to central China's Hunan Province.

The Ningxia wind and solar power transmission line spans 1634 km, from Ningxia, traversing Gansu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Hubei, and terminating in Hunan. The project boasts a designed transmission capacity of 8 million kilowatts and a total investment of 28.1 billion yuan. 

The Western media has recently focused on rising coal-fired power projects in China. They thought this may hinder China's commitment to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

These sorts of projects in Ningxia are a clear response.

Regarding China's geography, the northwest is best suited for wind and solar projects, like the Helan Mountain region and the Tengger Desert in Ningxia. However, these areas are sparsely populated, with little industry and are far from the coastal and southeastern regions, where electricity is most needed. 

How can we ensure wind and solar power transmission remains uninterrupted?

According to a friend who works in the electricity industry, the amount of coal power generated in Ningxia has stayed the same over the past two years. However, newly constructed or renovated coal power projects are being implemented as complementary measures to ensure uninterrupted power transmission along ultra-high-voltage lines to other areas far away from Ningxia.

The project in Zhongwei city, Ningxia, which is involved in the transmission of electricity to Hunan, is to build a power photovoltaic base while at the same time bundling clean, efficient, advanced, energy-saving coal power in the neighborhood to achieve uninterrupted transmission.

A closer examination of China's grassroots efforts in transitioning to energy efficiency helps us understand why China will fulfill its promises.

Once one of the most impoverished regions in China, the Liupanshan mountainous area in Guyuan city, Ningxia, has undergone a remarkable transformation. It has emerged as a renowned scenic destination, boasting a network of bicycle paths stretching over 50 kilometers. These paths provide a convenient means for visitors to explore the picturesque landscape, meandering amidst the lush hills and serene waters.

I walked into a village snack shop and saw that the cookers had been converted into electric stoves. I asked the shopkeeper what she relied on to keep warm in winter. She mentioned that her family was preparing to use electric heaters this winter. 

The heating season in Guyuan lasts five months in winter, and while farmers used to burn wood and coal to heat their homes, they are now expanding their use of electricity, natural gas and solar energy. According to Guyuan's plan, by the end of 2024, the clean heating rate in urban areas will reach 100 percent and 60 percent in rural areas.

The shopkeeper also told me that heating with electricity or natural gas is cheaper than burning coal. According to local farmers, burning coal stoves requires at least 5 tons of coal in winter, and at an average price of 1,200 yuan per ton, it costs about 6,000 yuan; after the switch to electricity, the average monthly electricity bill is about 700 yuan. According to government regulations, households that switch from coal to electricity, coal to gas, or coal to solar energy to heat their homes receive a specific subsidy.

The changes in Guyuan are a microcosm of the world's most significant and ambitious emissions reduction program. When every village and city in China follow this plan to achieve their emissions reduction targets, China will show the world that it is not just reducing emissions but that this emerging economy is creating a new path for human development.

Next, the Chinese will prove to the world that we can not only produce the chips that the Americans are desperately trying to contain, but we can also walk a different path to sustainable development different from the 500-year expansion of the West.

Editor's Note:  

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Through the lens of foreign pundits, we take a look at 10 years of the BRI - how it achieves win-win cooperation between China and participating countries of the BRI and how it has given the people of these countries a sense of fulfillment.

Serbia, a country from Eastern and Central Europe, is one of the most positive examples of cooperation under the BRI framework. In an interview with Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen, Katarina Zakic (Zakic), head of the Regional Center "Belt and Road" in Belgrade, the Institute of International Politics and Economics, shared her views why Serbia is distinct. 

This is the 16th piece of the series.

GT: What do you think of the advancement and development of the BRI over the past 10 years?

Zakic: Since the beginning, it was very clear that this is something extraordinary that doesn't happen every day. We knew that it would be a huge project and huge undertaking by China, to develop it and to fund it.

We have approached the 10th anniversary. When we look at the results, they are really impressive. Regarding the investments, we are reaching the amount of $1 trillion. Who can say which other countries invested so much in one project throughout 10 years? Even many of those projects do not last 10 years. Around 40 million people worldwide do not have the burden of extreme poverty in which they were living before these projects. 

In general, China has achieved excellent results. We are impressed by the results in transportation infrastructure and especially the types of the countries in which they were conducted. Those were the countries that needed those infrastructure projects. One of the reasons that I highly appreciate throughout this project and the idea that China had behind it was that each country should nominate the project it wants to conduct. And we would very much appreciate China's assistance in those regards. We should also highly appreciate that China did not only invest in energy and transportation. It also invested a lot in health sector, in tourism, in culture, in buildings and real estate. 

GT: What makes Serbia the pillar of China-Central and Eastern Europe cooperation?

Zakic: Serbia is in Europe, but it's not an EU member. This is our strategic situation, because for many years, we are still trying to become an EU member. Our cooperation with China and the successful results are partially due to this fact that we are not an EU member, because otherwise the politics within the European Union will affect our relations with China. 

We have comprehensive cooperation with China. We have relations on very high political levels. We have signed with China the comprehensive strategic agreement. Then we have excellent cooperation on economic level, especially regarding the loans and the investments that we have, not only throughout the BRI, but also throughout the China-Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) cooperation framework. 

Not only political and economic relations are on the high level, but also people-to-people and cultural relations are on a very high level. All these elements help Serbia become the pillar of China's projects and China's relations in the Western market. Serbia didn't have any kind of suspicions or negative reactions toward deepening our cooperation. Each government, starting from 2008, just built up that operation on even higher and higher level. We are in a way complementing each other. We respect each other's policies. Even in some cases when we have some kind of problem, for example, on economic level or regarding the investments, there was always an understanding that we should speak about that and resolve it. In this way we distinct, especially within Balkan countries.

GT: Does Serbia face any pressure from the West in its cooperation with China? What domestic factors in Serbia will promote its deep integration into the BRI?

Zakic: For 22 years, Serbia is trying to become an EU member. When you are trying to become an EU member, all your policies and strategic decisions, not only in economic sense, but also in political sense, have to be in reliance to the EU policies. Countries within the EU have very different kind of cooperation with China. Hungary and Greece have more friendly cooperation with China than Germany, even though Germany is the main partner of China within the EU.

There are concerns coming from the EU about Serbia's cooperation with China. But there are also concerns about some other parts of our journey to the EU. China is just one of the things that the EU wants in a way to change within Serbia.  

In recent years, people in our government really did have the opportunity to learn a lot about China and now they have a deeper understanding about China. Many of us nowadays do understand China in a completely different sense. It was not something that was in a way normal for them. In previous time, for example, when I went to the primary school and high school, usually the students within those levels of education learn about history coming from Europe. They do not learn so much about the Middle East or Asia. Thanks to the China-CEEC and the BRI, we have more opportunities to learn. 

Nowadays, there is a better sense of understanding between all levels of the people within Serbia to understand Chinese people and Chinese culture. For example, Chinese restaurants are very popular in Serbia and people very much like Chinese food and they use chopsticks. So this is something normal to you. But for us, it means that many things in Serbia are big change. And for example, there are more and more books about China in Serbia.

GT: A large number of Chinese companies view Serbia as a "bridgehead" to enter the European market. What do you think of this trend?

Zakic: I think that's a very wise decision. There are many advantages for the Chinese companies to be here. We are in Europe. Our geographical position is very good. But since we are not the EU member and our economy is still developing, there are many advantages for the Chinese companies to have industrial house here or service house here in Serbia. Then because we are very close to the most developed countries within the EU, it is a great opportunity for the Chinese companies to open their production companies or services here in Belgrade.

Also, Serbia is in a way bridge between the East and the West. There are many opportunities that the Serbia government is giving the foreign investors here who want to operate in our country. It's not only just for the Chinese companies. It's a general policy regarding direct investments in Serbia, but I think that many Chinese companies realized all of the benefits to come to Serbia. 

We have five Chinese companies that work in the automotive car industry. They use Serbia as a hub for production. They export all of those things to the EU market. For them, it's ideal. They are very nearby to Europe. So the transportation costs are not so high. All of these things helped those Chinese companies make a decision to come into Serbia. They have the friendly environment, good labor force, very secure political and economic environment. And they can export to the EU market. 

GT: During the G20 summit in September, the US and some other countries outlined plans for a rail and shipping corridor that would connect India with the Middle East and ultimately Europe, another counterweight of the BRI. What do you think of this plan?

Zakic: I see it in a way to counterbalance China's economic and political rise. This project is just one of the cases in which we can see that currently we have some kind of situation that we had during the Cold War, in which the former Soviet Union had very dynamic battle with the US regarding who will have more power and recognition and who will have a better economic success. Now we have that kind of thing going on between China, the US, the EU and of course India as the developing country and economy that wants to be part of this play. 

I do see this project as the competition toward the BRI. But we need to wait and see. This is just a preliminary thing. At this moment, we do not know the financial construction of the whole project. We do not know how much money it will take, who will fund it, and how it will develop. 

GT: Some European countries, following the US, have been calling to de-risk from China. What do you think of this move?

Zakic: The US had a specific situation for many years being one global superpower. And it lasted for long. They had a very clear situation that there was not a power that would become in some periods of time economically and militarily strong to question the US position in this world.

When China started to rise, they were very aware that the Chinese economic development is very strong and very fast. But they were not in a way aware that China would become such a global political and military power as well. When you are no longer No.1, or somebody is questioning your position as a No.1 power in the world, of course that power would always try to use all tools and means to question the other part.

I see this part of political narrative of de-risking as a part of the US trying to still be the No.1 power in the world. At this moment, de-risking is just a part of the narrative to in a way encourage other countries not to cooperate with China so much and to questions China's position in everyday world. Some countries in Europe do try to use it as a term to become not so dependent on China and change this situation to be more self-sufficient. I see it as really a political narrative to destabilize China's position, not only in international politics, but also international economics.

A recent nine-day visit to Xinjiang in September 2023 by 22 foreign journalists from 17 overseas media organizations reported favorably on the vibrant local economy and China's efforts to preserve the local traditional and diverse cultures.

Instead of ending the flood of lies in the US media about Xinjiang, a US State Department agency, the Global Engagement Center, attacked this fact-finding visit, the visiting journalists and also China. This US agency released a 58-page report warning that China's information campaign on Xinjiang "could sway public opinion and undermine US interests." The US corporate media dutifully picked up the report and spread it. 

An AP news story "The US warns of a Chinese global disinformation campaign that could undermine peace and stability" used quotes from other government-funded organizations to reinforce its lies. This included Freedom House, which is 90 percent funded by US federal grants. 

The anti-war movement in the US is aware of the media's role. At a recent rally in front of CNN News followed by a march through busy Times Square to the New York Times media conglomerate, the resounding chant was: "Corporate media, we can't take lies anymore! Stop your drumbeat for war." This reflected the growing rage at the role of the largest media conglomerates in promoting militarism and racism. 

"Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth." This comment, attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, is obvious in how news coverage in the US is organized today. Sometimes this leads even well-meaning people astray. They might say that "I've heard so often that there is slave labor and genocide of the Uygur Muslim people in Xinjiang, so it must be true."

I've held a series of talks and interviews with different audiences describing the diversity of cultures, modern cities and new farming techniques in Xinjiang, which I visited this May. My comments were greeted with a mixture of interest, curiosity and a frustrated suspicion from the US media, which have continually lied in the past and demonized a targeted country to justify each war.

In discussing my visit to Xinjiang, I often begin by asking an audience not to take only my short visit as the basis for their understanding of conditions in Xinjiang. It is more important to ask why no Muslim country has ever backed up the charges of genocide in Xinjiang, charges that the US government, its politicians, as well as talking heads in the media repeat endlessly. 

A visit by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation with 57 member states and later a delegation from the Arab League praised the Chinese government's policies and the harmonious relations and respect for the religion and culture of the people that they observed.

The June visit by the delegation from the Arab League was immediately denounced by the VOA. The VOA is a US government-owned news network that produces digital, radio and TV content in 48 languages and distributes it internationally. This response exposes how threatened the US is of a different view of China reaching people around the world. 

The media industry in the US is privately owned by a handful of billionaires. These media conglomerates combine advertising, broadcasting and networking, news, print and publication, digital, recording, and motion pictures, and most have international reach.

The most dangerous aspect of this web that seeps into every area of conscious life is that the media is intermeshed with the top US military corporations.  

All of the military corporations are also privately owned capitalist corporations. Their survival is based on enormous, government subsidized military contracts. Military corporations make the highest rate of profit with the highest returns to stockholders.   

This reality means that the corporate media functions as the public relations arm of the military corporations. The media's task is to sell war, and to justify war.   

The media in turn works with the well-funded think tanks who strategize, provide reports and talking points to the media and to the politicians - Republican and Democrat alike - who vote for ever increasing military budgets.  

This message is reinforced by continual claims that the media in other countries is controlled, combined with constant reassurances that a "free press" exists in the US. 

The US media focus on Xinjiang has a dual role. It is attempting to ingrain deep hostility toward China because the US corporate rulers fear China's growing economic strength and its attractive trade and development plans.  

The US media is also attempting to deflect attention away from the massively destructive US wars against Muslim people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, by claiming concern for Muslims in Xinjiang. China is showing the reality by inviting increasing numbers of visitors to see Xinjiang for themselves.

Chinese experts have criticized Germany's decision to cease granting promotional loans to China and deny China's developing country status, calling it a move that succumbs to pressure from the US' cold-war mentality toward China. They warn that Germany risks undermining its own economic interests and damaging the investment confidence of European enterprises in China.

Germany will no longer grant promotional loans to China from 2026 and no longer treat China as a developing country, the Federal Development Ministry (BMZ) confirmed on Tuesday. 

The German ministry said it has informed the Chinese Ministry of Finance in mid-September of the federal government's decision to permanently stop granting promotional loans to China, Reuters reported.

"We are no longer treating China as a developing country," German Development Minister Svenja Schulze said. "China is and remains an important partner, without whom we cannot successfully overcome global crises," she added.

The move reflects some German politicians' alignment with the US in strengthening "decoupling" from China and creating economic and trade barriers aimed at the country, Chen Jia, an independent analyst on global strategy, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Under this Cold War mentality, Germany's push to implement a decoupling policy is not beneficial to EU-China cooperation, Chen noted.

Song Wei, a professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Germany's decision to cease granting promotional loans to China and deny China's developing country status was primarily influenced by US attempts to strip China of its developing country status.

For some time, the US has attempted to deprive China of its developing country status, which has been slammed by Chinese officials.

China's status as the world's largest developing country is rooted in facts and international law. It's not up to the US to decide whether China is a developing country, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a press conference in June.
China's status as a developing country is supported by concrete facts. China's per capita GDP in 2022 was $12,741, or one-fifth of that of advanced economies and only one-sixth that of the US. 

The move by Germany will create an atmosphere of uncertainty, hinder the growth of bilateral trade and investment, and dampen the investment confidence of European business in China, experts said.

China and EU just concluded productive talks during the 10th High-level Economic and Trade Dialogue, with the two sides reaching multiple consensuses, China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Tuesday.

Both sides agreed to further promote the two-way opening of the financial industry and encourage eligible financial institutions to invest and expand their business in each other's markets. 

In the context of a global economic downturn, Germany's cancellation of promotional loans will dampen the investment confidence and expectations of European enterprises in the Chinese market, which is not conducive to the deepening economic and trade cooperation between China and Europe, Song said.

From 2013 to 2022, promotional loans with a total volume of 3.451 billion euros ($3.62 billion) were agreed upon with China. No promotional loans were granted in 2023, according to the Reuters report.

Cui Hongjian, a professor with the Academy of Regional and Global Governance with Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times that these loans primarily support projects related to infrastructure, climate change, environmental protection, and sustainable development. The advantage lies in their relatively fixed and extendable repayment period, as well as the relatively favorable interest rates compared to market rates. 

Cui said that in the future, there may be a shift toward more commercial cooperation rather than policy-driven projects. Additionally, this change may not have a significant impact on large-scale projects, as the Chinese side has sufficient financial capacity for investment, Cui said.

As the 8-day Golden Week holidays approach, tourists are swarming to China's famous landmarks and scenic spots like Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, the Bund in Shanghai, and West Lake in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. The vibrant atmosphere, buzzing with excitement and activities, serves as a vivid reflection of the unwavering confidence of the Chinese people in the country's economy and bright future.

An estimated around 800 million travel trips will be made during the eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays which will kick off on Friday. With record demand for travel and the sustained economic impact of the Asian Games, this year's Golden Week holidays are poised to become the most vibrant and prosperous in recent memory. 

As an important window to observe economic vitality, the upcoming Golden Week holidays will lead a significant consumption rebound in the fourth quarter, playing a crucial role in driving economic growth throughout the entire year, experts said.

Despite downward pressure due to multiple factors, China's consumer market is currently displaying signs of recovery and growth. The resilience, potential, and dynamism of consumption remain strong and unchanged, experts said, refuting Western media and politicians' bearish outlook on Chinese economy.

Hundreds of millions hitting the road

Latest data on holiday travel, accommodation, and tourism products all pointed to a stark rebound from the levels seen in 2019, indicating a remarkable resurgence in consumption activity.

Wednesday marks the first day of the Golden Week holidays travel rush. The railway network in the Yangtze River Delta region is expected to deliver more than 2.5 million passenger trips on Wednesday, 600,000 above the 2019 level, representing growth of over 30 percent, according to China Railway Shanghai Group Co.

According to the China Tourism Academy, over 100 million travel trips will be made per day during the Golden Week holidays, far surpassing the levels of last year and 2019. In terms of commercial aviation, more than 21 million travelers will take flights in the span of eight days and an average of 14,000 domestic flights will be operated per day, up 18 percent from the same period in 2019. China Railway Group forecast that 190 million railway trips will be made during the holidays, up from the 138 million trips seen in 2019.

Hotel bookings for popular destinations have also surged. Data from Qunar showed that domestic hotel bookings for the holidays have increased by 514 percent compared to 2019.

Outbound tourism is expected to see a 20-fold year-on-year increase, according to online traveling platform Trip.com. Travel agency U-tour predicted the number of outbound travelers would exceed this year's May Day holidays by five folds.

According to the National Immigration Administration, the average daily number of inbound and outbound passenger trips during the holidays are expected to reach 1.58 million, three times higher than the same period last year.

Additionally, traveling to Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province has become a spotlight and a unique spark for holidays spending as the eight-day holidays coincide with the main competition days of the Hangzhou Asian Games which last from September 23 to October 8.
Data from the online travel platform Fliggy shows that during the Asian Games, international flight bookings bound for Hangzhou have surged 20 times compared to the same period last year. Train ticket bookings have recorded a 4.7 times year-on-year growth, and hotel bookings near venues have increased by three times compared to last year. The other five cities in the province co-hosting the games also experienced a boom in tourist numbers.

With a substantial surge in bookings for flights, train tickets, accommodations, and tourism products, this holidays break is expected to unleash further consumption potential which vividly illustrates the positive trajectory of the Chinese economy, experts said.

In light of record booking and travel data, indicating a growing consumption enthusiasm, Tian Yun, a Beijing based economist attributed the growth to the lengthier holidays break and spill-out effect of events like the Asian Games, which have injected energy into the economy.
Accelerator of economic growth in Q4

Experts predict that thanks to effective macroeconomic stimulus policies and the boost from the Golden Week holidays, consumption will bounce back strongly in the fourth quarter, playing a crucial role in driving economic growth for the entire year. They have also dismissed smear and bearish outlook painted by some foreign media and Western politicians about the Chinese economy.

China's retail sales, a main gauge of consumption, beat expectations in August thanks to a bumper summer travel peak and consumption-boosting measures, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

Driven by the accelerated sales of travel and a wider range of spending options, retail sales of consumer goods in August recorded a year-on-year growth of 4.6 percent to 3.79 trillion yuan ($521.13 billion), 2.1 percentage points higher than the growth rate in the previous month, according to the NBS.

Experts said that the Golden Week holidays and the Asian Games will further accelerate the consumption recovery and economic growth in the fourth quarter, expecting more policy tools to kick in. In addition, the Belt and Road Summit in October and the China International Import Expo in November will both provide a strong boost to China's economy and development.

The extended holiday period provides a significant opportunity for a retail spending peak and is expected to have a significant impact on the GDP growth in the fourth quarter, acting as "an accelerator," Cong Yi, a professor from the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The Asian Games in particular will be a major boost for consumption-related sectors from sports and culture to catering for the host city and nearby cities in East China's Zhejiang Province as well as the Yangtze River Delta region, Cong added.

According to media reports, citing official information from Zhejiang Province, the preparations for the Asian Games between 2016 and 2020 are estimated to have added about 414.1 billion yuan to Hangzhou's economy, accounting for 7.6 percent of the city's total economic output during that time. It also led to an increase of around 103.3 billion yuan in government revenue, which is about 8.2 percent of the total revenue collected. Additionally, the Games has created job opportunities for approximately 670,000 people, accounting for 2.4 percent of the total employment during that period.

The consumption vitality generated by the Hangzhou Asian Games extends far beyond Hangzhou, with the ripple effect gradually emerging in various parts of Zhejiang Province and even the entire Yangtze River Delta region.

During the Asian Games, hotel bookings in Ningbo, Wenzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing, and Jinhua cities have all increased by more than fivefold compared to 2019, with Shaoxing experiencing the highest growth rate of 720 percent in hotel bookings.
Beyond the tourism, the sports craze sparked by the Asian Games has ignited the sports economy, sports manufacturing and foreign trade. According to customs data, the export of sports goods from Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province reached 5.08 billion yuan in the first eight months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 33 percent.

Tian said that the sustained success of the Asian Games and other major events this year will continue to further drive not only domestic consumption but also international consumption, presenting a window for China's opening-up.

Expert noted that China's consumption potential remains untapped and a massive household saving indicates a significant market for emerging consumer goods and upgraded consumption needs.

By the end of August, the balance of savings deposits for urban and rural residents in China exceeded 7 trillion yuan for the first time, standing at 7.06 trillion yuan.

More can be done to stimulate the consumer market, Tian said, pointing to upgraded consumption demand and new consumption drivers.

New-energy vehicles, domestically produced 5G smartphones, domestically produced large aircraft, and the cruise economy will all become new growth points for China's consumer economy, Tian said.

He is confident that with the government's efforts, the gradual recovery of individuals from the pandemic's impact, the retail sales growth could reach 6 percent in the fourth quarter.

"It is expected that macro policies will focus on creating more jobs and promoting economic growth in the fourth quarter. It will also address long-term issues like aged care to boost market confidence," Tian said.
Li Yong, president of Chongqing Frontier Regional Economic Research Institute, told the Global Times that stimulating consumer spending through the issuance of shopping vouchers is a good method, especially for the catering and tourism sectors, which will encourage people to visit malls and take trips.

Experts also defied attacks by some Western politicians and media outlets that paint the Chinese economy as being at the cusp of collapse.

Cong dismissed smear from foreign media, as the trend of consumption upgrading in China's massive market of 1.4 billion people remains unchanged. He also noted that the bearish view on the Chinese economy is a long-standing line of attack from sections of the Western media, yet it has never managed to drag down China's economy.

"China is well on track to achieve the GDP growth target of around 5 percent for the whole year, and the final quarter growth will solidify the target," Cong said.

Tian predicted China's economic growth to grow at around 5.2 percent for this year.

"Actions speak louder than words. As China remains focused on its economic work, progressing at its own pace and avoiding empty rhetoric, there is no need to pay attention to Western attempts to discredit it," Li said, predicting China's economic growth would finish in a range of 5 percent to 5.2 percent this year.

It was one of the biggest climate change questions of the early 2000s: Had the planet’s rising fever stalled, even as humans pumped more heat-trapping gases into Earth’s atmosphere?

By the turn of the century, the scientific understanding of climate change was on firm footing. Decades of research showed that carbon dioxide was accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere, thanks to human activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down carbon-storing forests, and that global temperatures were rising as a result. Yet weather records seemed to show that global warming slowed between around 1998 and 2012. How could that be?
After careful study, scientists found the apparent pause to be a hiccup in the data. Earth had, in fact, continued to warm. This hiccup, though, prompted an outsize response from climate skeptics and scientists. It serves as a case study for how public perception shapes what science gets done, for better or worse.

The mystery of what came to be called the “global warming hiatus” arose as scientists built up, year after year, data on the planet’s average surface temperature. Several organizations maintain their own temperature datasets; each relies on observations gathered at weather stations and from ships and buoys around the globe. The actual amount of warming varies from year to year, but overall the trend is going up, and record-hot years are becoming more common. The 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, for instance, noted that recent years had been among the warmest recorded since 1860.

And then came the powerful El Niño of 1997–1998, a weather pattern that transferred large amounts of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere. The planet’s temperature soared as a result — but then, according to the weather records, it appeared to slacken dramatically. Between 1998 and 2012, the global average surface temperature rose at less than half the rate it did between 1951 and 2012. That didn’t make sense. Global warming should be accelerating over time as people ramp up the rate at which they add heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere.
By the mid-2000s, climate skeptics had seized on the narrative that “global warming has stopped.” Most professional climate scientists were not studying the phenomenon, since most believed the apparent pause fell within the range of natural temperature variability. But public attention soon caught up to them, and researchers began investigating whether the pause was a real thing. It was a high-profile shift in scientific focus.

“In studying that anomalous period, we learned a lot of lessons about both the climate system and the scientific process,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist now with the technology company Stripe.

By the early 2010s, scientists were busily working to explain why the global temperature records seemed to be flatlining. Ideas included the contribution of cooling sulfur particles emitted by coal-burning power plants and heat being taken up by the Atlantic and Southern oceans. Such studies were the most focused attempt ever to understand the factors that drive year-to-year temperature variability. They revealed how much natural variability can be expected when factors such as a powerful El Niño are superimposed onto a long-term warming trend.

Scientists spent years investigating the purported warming pause — devoting more time and resources than they otherwise might have. So many papers were published on the apparent pause that scientists began joking that the journal Nature Climate Change should change its name to Nature Hiatus.
Then in 2015, a team led by researchers at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a jaw-dropping conclusion in the journal Science. The rise in global temperatures had not plateaued; rather, incomplete data had obscured ongoing global warming. When more Arctic temperature records were included and biases in ocean temperature data were corrected, the NOAA dataset showed the heat-up continuing. With the newly corrected data, the apparent pause in global warming vanished. A 2017 study led by Hausfather confirmed and extended these findings, as did other reports.

Even after these studies were published, the hiatus remained a favored topic among climate skeptics, who used it to argue that concern over global warming was overblown. Congressman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who chaired the House of Representatives’ science committee in the mid-2010s, was particularly incensed by the 2015 NOAA study. He demanded to see the underlying data while also accusing NOAA of altering it. (The agency denied fudging the data.)

“In retrospect, it is clear that we focused too much on the apparent hiatus,” Hausfather says. Figuring out why global temperature records seemed to plateau between 1998 and 2012 is important — but so is keeping a big-picture view of the broader understanding of climate change. The hiccup represented a short fluctuation in a much longer and much more important trend.
Science relies on testing hypotheses and questioning conclusions, but here’s a case where probing an anomaly was taken arguably too far. It caused researchers to doubt their conclusions and spend large amounts of time questioning their well-established methods, says Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol who has studied climate scientists’ response to the hiatus. Scientists studying the hiatus could have been working instead on providing clear information to policy makers about the reality of global warming and the urgency of addressing it.

The debates over whether the hiatus was real or not fed public confusion and undermined efforts to convince people to take aggressive action to reduce climate change’s impacts. That’s an important lesson going forward, Lewandowsky says.

“My sense is that the scientific community has moved on,” he says. “By contrast, the political operatives behind organized denial have learned a different lesson, which is that the ‘global warming has stopped’ meme is very effective in generating public complacency, and so they will use it at every opportunity.”

Already, some climate deniers are talking about a new “pause” in global warming because not every one of the past five years has set a new record, he notes. Yet the big-picture trend remains clear: Global temperatures have continued to rise in recent years. The warmest seven years on record have all occurred since 2015, and each decade since the 1980s has been warmer than the one before.

The windy and chaotic remains surrounding recently exploded stars may be launching the fastest particles in the universe.

Highly magnetic neutron stars known as pulsars whip up a fast and strong magnetic wind. When charged particles, specifically electrons, get caught in those turbulent conditions, they can be boosted to extreme energies, astrophysicists report April 28 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. What’s more, those zippy electrons can then go on to boost some ambient light to equally extreme energies, possibly creating the very high-energy gamma-ray photons that led astronomers to detect these particle launchers in the first place.

“This is the first step in exploring the connection between the pulsars and the ultrahigh-energy emissions,” says astrophysicist Ke Fang of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in this new work.

Last year, researchers with the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory, or LHAASO, in China announced the discovery of the highest-energy gamma rays ever detected, up to 1.4 quadrillion electron volts (SN: 2/2/21). That’s roughly 100 times as energetic as the highest energies achievable with the world’s premier particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. Identifying what’s causing these and other extremely high-energy gamma rays could point, literally, to the locations of cosmic rays — the zippy protons, heavier atomic nuclei and electrons that bombard Earth from locales beyond our solar system.
Some gamma rays are thought to originate in the same environs as cosmic rays. One way they’re produced is that cosmic rays, shortly after being launched, can slam into relatively low-energy ambient photons, boosting them to high-energy gamma rays. But the electrically charged cosmic rays are buffeted by galactic magnetic fields, which means they don’t travel in a straight line, thus complicating efforts to trace the zippy particles back to their source. Gamma rays, however, are impervious to magnetic fields, so astrophysicists can trace their unwavering paths back to their origins — and figure out where cosmic rays are created.

To that end, the LHAASO team traced the hundreds of gamma-ray photons that it detected to 12 spots on the sky. While the team identified one spot as the Crab Nebula, the remnant of a supernova about 6,500 light-years from Earth, the researchers suggested that the rest could be associated with other sites of stellar explosions or even young massive star clusters (SN: 6/24/19).

In the new study, astrophysicist Emma de Oña Wilhelmi and colleagues zeroed in one of those possible points of origin: pulsar wind nebulas, the clouds of turbulence and charged particles surrounding a pulsar. The researchers weren’t convinced such locales could create such high-energy particles and light, so they set out to show through calculations that pulsar wind nebulas weren’t the sources of extreme gamma rays. “But to our surprise, we saw at the very extreme conditions, you can explain all the sources [that LHAASO saw],” says de Oña Wilhelmi, of the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg.

The young pulsars at the heart of these nebulas — no more than 200,000 years old — can provide all that oomph because of their ultrastrong magnetic fields, which create a turbulent magnetic bubble called a magnetosphere.

Any charged particles moving in an intense magnetic field get accelerated, says de Oña Wilhelmi. That’s how the Large Hadron Collider boosts particles to extreme energies (SN: 4/22/22). A pulsar-powered accelerator, though, can boost particles to even higher energies, the team calculates. That’s because the electrons escape the pulsar’s magnetosphere and meet up with the material and magnetic fields from the stellar explosion that created the pulsar. These magnetic fields can further accelerate the electrons to even higher energies, the team finds, and if those electrons slam into ambient photons, they can boost those particles of light to ultrahigh energies, turning them into gamma rays.

“Pulsars are definitely very powerful accelerators,” Fang says, with “several places where particle acceleration can happen.”

And that could lead to a bit of confusion. Gamma-ray telescopes have pretty fuzzy vision. For example, LHASSO can make out details only as small as about half the size of the full moon. So the gamma-ray sources that the telescope detected look like blobs or bubbles, says de Oña Wilhelmi. There could be multiple energetic sources within those blobs, unresolved to current observatories.

“With better angular resolution and better sensitivity, we should be able to identify what [and] where the accelerator is,” she says. A few future observatories — such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array and the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory — could help, but they’re several years out.

That’s one small stem for a plant, one giant leap for plant science.

In a tiny, lab-grown garden, the first seeds ever sown in lunar dirt have sprouted. This small crop, planted in samples returned by Apollo missions, offers hope that astronauts could someday grow their own food on the moon.

But plants potted in lunar dirt grew more slowly and were scrawnier than others grown in volcanic material from Earth, researchers report May 12 in Communications Biology. That finding suggests that farming on the moon would take a lot more than a green thumb.
“Ah! It’s so cool!” says University of Wisconsin–Madison astrobotanist Richard Barker of the experiment.

“Ever since these samples came back, there’s been botanists that wanted to know what would happen if you grew plants in them,” says Barker, who wasn’t involved in the study. “But everyone knows those precious samples … are priceless, and so you can understand why [NASA was] reluctant to release them.”

Now, NASA’s upcoming plans to send astronauts back to the moon as part of its Artemis program have offered a new incentive to examine that precious dirt and explore how lunar resources could support long-term missions (SN: 7/15/19).

The dirt, or regolith, that covers the moon is basically a gardener’s worst nightmare. This fine powder of razor-sharp bits is full of metallic iron, rather than the oxidized kind that is palatable to plants (SN: 9/15/20). It’s also full of tiny glass shards forged by space rocks pelting the moon. What it is not full of is nitrogen, phosphorus or much else plants need to grow. So, even though scientists have gotten pretty good at coaxing plants to grow in fake moon dust made of earthly materials, no one knew whether newborn plants could put down their delicate roots in the real stuff.

To find out, a trio of researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville ran experiments with thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana). This well-studied plant is in the same family as mustards and can grow in just a tiny clod of material. That was key because the researchers had only a little bit of the moon to go around.

The team planted seeds in tiny pots that each held about a gram of dirt. Four pots were filled with samples returned by Apollo 11, another four with Apollo 12 samples and a final four with dirt from Apollo 17. Another 16 pots were filled with earthly volcanic material used in past experiments to mimic moon dirt. All were grown under LED lights in the lab and watered with a broth of nutrients.
“Nothing really compared to when we first saw the seedlings as they were sprouting in the lunar regolith,” says Anna-Lisa Paul, a plant molecular biologist. “That was a moving experience, to be able to say that we’re watching the very first terrestrial organisms to grow in extraterrestrial materials, ever. And it was amazing. Just amazing.”

Plants grew in all the pots of lunar dirt, but none grew as well as those cultivated in earthly material. “The healthiest ones were just smaller,” Paul says. The sickliest moon-grown plants were tiny and had purplish pigmentation — a red flag for plant stress. Plants grown in Apollo 11 samples, which had been exposed on the lunar surface the longest, were most stunted.

Paul and colleagues also inspected the genes in their mini alien Eden. “By seeing what kind of genes are turned on and turned off in response to a stress, that shows you what tools plants are pulling out of their metabolic toolbox to deal with that stress,” she says. All plants grown in moon dirt pulled out genetic tools typically seen in plants struggling with stress from salt, metals or reactive oxygen species (SN: 9/8/21).

Apollo 11 seedlings had the most severely stressed genetic profile, offering more evidence that regolith exposed to the lunar surface longer — and therefore littered with more impact glass and metallic iron — is more toxic to plants.

Future space explorers could choose the site for their lunar habitat accordingly. Perhaps lunar dirt could also be modified somehow to make it more comfortable for plants. Or plants could be genetically engineered to feel more at home in alien soil. “We can also choose plants that do better,” Paul says. “Maybe spinach plants, which are very salt-tolerant, would have no trouble growing in lunar regolith.”

Barker isn’t daunted by the challenges promised by this first attempt at lunar gardening. “There’s many, many steps and pieces of technology to be developed before humanity can really engage in lunar agriculture,” he says. “But having this particular dataset is really important for those of us that believe it’s possible and important.”

As health officials continue their investigation of unexplained cases of liver inflammation in children, what is known is still outpaced by what isn’t.

At least 500 cases of hepatitis from an unknown cause have been reported in children in roughly 30 countries, according to health agencies in Europe and the United States. As of May 18, 180 cases are under review in 36 U.S. states and territories.

Many of the children have recovered. But some cases have been severe, with more than two dozen of the kids needing liver transplants. At least a dozen children have died, including five in the United States.
The illnesses have mainly been seen in children under age 5. So far, health agencies have ruled out common causes of hepatitis, while reporting that some of the children have tested positive for adenovirus. That pathogen — which infects basically everyone, usually without serious issues — is not known as a primary cause of liver damage. For some children who are positive, officials have identified the particular adenovirus: type 41.

But there are several reasons why pinning an adenovirus as the sole hepatitis culprit doesn’t fully add up, researchers say. Nor is it clear whether the recent cases indicate an uptick in hepatitis illnesses, or just more attention. Though the cases seem to have popped up out of nowhere, “we’ve seen similar rare severe liver disease like this in children,” says Anna Peters, a pediatric transplant hepatologist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Most of all, it’s important for parents to remember that the cases described so far “are a rare phenomenon,” Peters says. “Parents shouldn’t panic.”

Hepatitis in children
Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver that can interfere with the organ’s many functions, including filtering blood and regulating clotting. Three hepatitis viruses, called hepatitis A, B and C, are common causes of the illness in the United States. Hepatitis A is spread when infected fecal material reaches the mouth. Children can get B and C when it’s transmitted from a pregnant person to an infant. There are vaccines available for A and B but not C. An excessive dose of acetaminophen can also cause hepatitis in children.

The signs of hepatitis can include nausea, fatigue, a yellow tinge to skin and eyes, urine that’s darker than usual and stools that are light-colored, among other symptoms. Hepatitis that arises quickly usually resolves, whereas some cases progress more slowly and lead to liver damage over time.

It’s rare for a child to develop sudden liver failure. An estimated 500 to 600 cases occur each year in the United States, and around 30 percent of those are “indeterminate,” meaning a cause isn’t found, according to the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition.

The indeterminate category of sudden liver failure has been known for some time, Peters says, and that subset of cases has similarities to the hepatitis under investigation. There hasn’t been data reported yet on whether the recent cases represent an increase over what’s been seen in prior years, Peters says. “Maybe this is just increased recognition of something that’s been going on.”

Adenovirus as a suspect
Not all of the children with hepatitis have been positive for adenovirus, nor have they all been tested. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or ECDC, has reported that of 151 cases tested, 90 were positive, or 60 percent. The last dispatch from the U.K. Health Security Agency, from early May, noted that 126 samples out of 163 had been tested, with 91, or 72 percent, positive. Further analysis of 18 cases identified adenovirus type 41.

Adenoviruses commonly infect people, typically causing colds, bronchitis or other respiratory illnesses. Two types, adenovirus 40 and 41, target the intestines, leading to gastrointestinal symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea.

“All of these types, including this prime suspect type 41, have been detected everywhere continuously,” says virologist Adriana Kajon of the Lovelace Biomedical Research Institute in Albuquerque. “All of them have existed and have been reported continuously for decades.”

People usually recover from an adenovirus infection. The exception is those whose immune systems aren’t functioning properly — then, an infection can be serious. There have been cases of hepatitis from adenovirus in immunocompromised children, but the kids under investigation are not immunocompromised.

There are several curious details about the adenovirus findings. For example, the children who have tested positive for the virus had low levels in their blood. In cases of hepatitis from adenovirus, “the virus levels are very, very high,” Peters says.

Nor has adenovirus been found in the liver. In a study of nine children with the hepatitis in Alabama who were positive for adenovirus in blood samples, researchers studied liver tissue from six of the kids. There was no sign of the virus in the liver, the researchers report May 6 in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“It’s very hard to implicate a virus that you cannot find in the crime scene,” Kajon said May 3 at a symposium for clinical virology in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Another oddity: There doesn’t seem to be a path of viral spread from one location to another. That’s unlike SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, “where there was quite clearly a spread from some epicenter originally,” says virologist and clinician Andrew Tai of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, who treats patients with liver disease.

An adenovirus culprit is not out of the realm of possibility, but “virus associations with diseases are always hard to really nail down and prove,” says virologist Katherine Spindler, also of the University of Michigan Medical School. “We’re going to be hard pressed to say this is due to adenovirus 41, let alone adenovirus.”

Considering COVID-19
Looming over all of this is the possibility that a many-magnitudes-larger infectious disease outbreak, COVID-19, could have a part.

Researchers have found that SARS-CoV-2 impacts the liver in milder and more severe cases of COVID-19. There is evidence that the liver becomes inflamed in children and adults during an infection. Liver failure can occur with a severe bout of COVID-19. And children who develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, after COVID-19 can have hepatitis as part of that syndrome.

Peters and her colleagues have described yet another way SARS-CoV-2 could put the liver at risk. The team reported the case of a young female patient from the fall of 2020, who had sudden liver failure about three weeks after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. She did not have MIS-C. A liver biopsy showed signs of autoimmune hepatitis, a type in which the body attacks its own liver, Peters and colleagues report in the May Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition Reports. The patient recovered after treatment with anti-inflammatory medication.

Some of the children with hepatitis have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but more haven’t. The ECDC has reported that 20 of 173 cases tested were positive for SARS-CoV-2, while the U.K. Health Security Agency detected the virus in 24 of 132 samples tested.

However, there have been very little data reported on whether the children have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, which would be evidence of a past infection. (Vaccination hasn’t been available to most of these young children.) The ECDC found that of 19 cases tested, 14 were positive for antibodies to the virus.

One theory is that an earlier SARS-CoV-2 infection has set the stage for an unexpected response to an adenovirus or other infection. With people no longer minimizing contact, the spread of adenoviruses and other respiratory viruses is returning to prepandemic levels.

“We are possibly seeing the return of these forgotten pathogens, so to speak, aggravating disease or eliciting severe inflammation resulting from some kind of preexisting condition,” which could be COVID-19, Kajon said on May 3.

“I cannot think of anything else that has had a worldwide impact that can explain cases of hepatitis in places as distant as the U.K. and Argentina,” Kajon says.

With SARS-CoV-2, researchers have a good sense of how it causes disease during an active infection, Peters says. But for the longer-term effects, “everybody is still sorting things out.”