Hebei

BELGRADE - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic met on Wednesday with a delegation of China's Hebei province, headed by Hebei Chinese Communist Party Provincial Committee Secretary Ni Yuefeng, to discuss strengthening the Sino-Serbian strategic partnership and advancement of cooperation in development of green/low-carbon steel and the economy, commerce, logistics and technology.

Temperatures in Beijing increased above 40 degrees Celsius on Thursday for the first time since 2014, breaking the record for the hottest day in June and the Chinese capital warned of extremely hot weather over the weekend, Reuters reported.

Tens of thousands of people were being evacuated from flood-hit regions of central China on July 22 as officials raised the death toll from heavy rains that have deluged Henan province for almost a week to 33 people.

A city in northern China is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to deal with an anticipated overflow of patients as COVID-19 cases rise ahead of the Lunar New Year travel rush.

China recorded its first COVID-19 death in eight months on Jan. 14, as experts huddled to discuss worrying new strains of the coronavirus that are spreading rapidly around the globe.

The gathering in Geneva of the World Health Organization's emergency committee comes as their colleagues landed in Wuhan for a long-delayed mission to find the origins of the virus.

The Chinese authorities have announced the lockdown of the cities of Shijiazhuang, Xingtai and Langfang with a total population of over 23 mln due to a new coronavirus outbreak, according to the Hebei province's health committee.

The coronavirus situation in China's capital is "extremely severe", a city official warned on June 16, as 27 new infections were reported from Beijing where a new cluster has sparked a huge trace-and-test programme.    

China's most festive holiday began in the shadow of a worrying new virus on Jan. 25 as the death toll surpassed 40, an unprecedented lockdown that kept people from traveling was expanded to more than 50 million residents and authorities canceled a host of Lunar New Year events.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the military to be ready for war and not to be afraid of death in defending the state.

Xi told the troops gathered in the Hebei province "to always be ready to fight and sure to win," and that they should fear neither hardship nor death."

According to the Guardian, the move was designed to "further strengthen his political position." The British newspaper also said that the Chinese president "reaffirmed his status as China's most dominant leader since Chairman Mao."