During a Monday interview, former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo said she was eager to hear every word in President Xi Jinping's keynote speech to be delivered Tuesday at the opening of the of Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference. [Photo by Xu Jingxing/chinadaily.com.cn] Former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo said she was eager to hear every word of the speech to be delivered by President Xi Jinping on Tuesday at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, due to the importance of China's leadership in the regional and world economies. I am looking forward to every word President Xi has to say, Arroyo said during an interview prior to the keynote speech. He is a very important person in a very important country. We look forward to the continuing leadership of China in the regional economy and even the world economy. About 2,000 global political, business and media leaders are attending the annual event in Boao, Hainan province. Serving as president of the Philippines from 2001-10, Arroyo was elected to the forum's board of directors Monday. Ban Ki-moon, former secretary general of the United Nations, was elected chairman. In remarks made to China Daily, Arroyo said the relationship between China and her country has developed closely due to efforts by her predecessor Fidel Ramos and current president Rodrigo Duterte, who will be joining a group of state leaders at the forum Tuesday. She said previous decades have seen China's rapid economic and social transformation, and China and the Philippines have developed a very friendly relationship. She added that the Philippines has benefited very much from China's opening up to the outside world, and the two economies are complementary to each other. Arroyo said China's success in past decades has been due to its market-oriented reform and she believes China, under President Xi's leadership in the new era, will continue that direction. That has really prepared China over the last 40 years to become an economic giant it is today, Arroyo said. In the new era as an economic giant, China will be playing an extremely important role in the world economy and on the global stage. rainbow rubber braceletswhere can you buy wristbandswholesale custom wristbandssilicone wristbands onlinecool things to do with rubber bracelets
Employees prepare printed copies of the Buddhist classics at Yangzhou Classics Reproductions Co on Wednesday. CHINA DAILY A Song Dynasty (960-1279) Tripitaka, a precious collection of ancient Buddhist classics, has been reprinted through the joint efforts of Chinese and Japanese scholars. The reprinted collection contains 5,500 volumes, weighs a metric ton and is priced at 2.66 million yuan ($413,000). First compiled at the Sixi Yuanjue Monastery in Huzhou during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the collection, titled Sixizang, was completed in the year 1132 but was later ruined during war. However, a full set of the classics was kept at a monastery in Japan. Part of the collection was bought back by Chinese historian Yang Shoujing from 1880 to 1884. In 2012, Chinese and Japanese scholars joined in research for the publication of the Buddhist classics. A ceremony was held on Saturday in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, to mark the publication of the ancient classics after more than 1,000 years. Japanese scholars made arduous efforts to make the project possible. It will not only produce a complete collection of Buddhist classics, but serve as a landmark in the history of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange, said Li Jining, a scholar from National Library of China. Yangzhou Classics Reproductions Co, a company in Jiangsu province that specializes in reprinting ancient classics using traditional techniques, undertook the printing project. Recalling the hard work of research and printing in the past seven years, Xu Liling, the project manager, could not hold back her tears. When the flash drive containing the missing classics was handed over to me from Japan, I held it tight in my arms. I was just trembling, too excited to say a word. The National Library of China and Iwaya-ji Temple in Japan, which had been preserving the classics since the Song Dynasty, were the first Chinese and Japanese institutions to receive the new edition of Sixizang.
