Since its opening in August 2020, the Hengqin Port in south China's Guangdong Province has handled over 48 million passenger trips and 5.88 million vehicle crossings, with average annual growth rates hitting 62.2 percent and 40.4 percent respectively, according to statistics from the border inspection station of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB).
This significant increase is largely driven by the ongoing development of the Hengqin Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone, built to promote economic diversification of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), and continuous improvements in the port's infrastructure and services.
The latest data showed that the port, located in Zhuhai City, now handles an average of 57,000 passenger trips and 6,000 vehicle crossings daily, more than double the figures from four years ago.
This year, the port set new single-day records, with over 86,000 passenger trips and 7,200 vehicle crossings registered in one day.
The enhanced accessibility through Hengqin is gradually transforming the lifestyle of Macao residents, fueling a growing interest among them in purchasing property, starting businesses and enjoying leisure activities in Hengqin.
"Statistics suggest that among people traveling through the Hengqin Port, mainland residents traveling to the Macao SAR for work and study account for approximately 39 percent, Hong Kong and Macao residents make up about 26 percent, and mainland tourists visiting Macao constitute around 24 percent. The characteristics of the Hengqin Port as a '70-percent livelihood, 30-percent tourism' port are becoming increasingly prominent," said Zeng Xiang, deputy head of the HZMB border inspection station.
"My family bought a property here in Hengqin four or five years ago. Compared to our previous visits, the changes have been enormous. The environment around where we live has improved significantly and everything is much more convenient now. That's why we prefer crossing borders through the Hengqin Port," said Mrs. Wang, a Hong Kong resident.
In recent years, the Hengqin Port has undergone continuous infrastructure upgrades, further streamlining the border crossing process for both vehicles and passengers.
Additionally, the Hengqin Border Inspection Station is accelerating the construction of an intelligent vehicle inspection system and refining the clearance processes for Hengqin-Macao tour groups and frequent travelers to make it more efficient for people to cross borders.
"So far this year, the port has handled over 13 million passenger crossings and approximately 1.4 million vehicle crossings. We anticipate that by the end of the year, the total number of passenger trips could surpass 20 million, and vehicle crossings could exceed 2 million. In response to the growing demand, the Hengqin Border Inspection Station will continue to enhance services and optimize clearance procedures to contribute to the rapid integrated development of Hengqin and Macao," Zeng added.
Sunday marks the fourth anniversary of the opening of the Hengqin Port, which was designed to facilitate travel between Macao and Zhuhai to further boost development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).
Dubbed a "super passage", the main working area of the Hengqin Port is 450,000 square meters, equivalent to 63 football fields. It has a designed daily capacity of 222,000 passengers, which can help ease the pressure of the Gongbei Port -- another major port linking Zhuhai and Macao -- and increase the daily capacity for passenger flow between Guangdong and Macao.
Port linking Macao, mainland handles 48 mln passenger trips since opening four years ago
Port linking Macao, mainland handles 48 mln passenger trips since opening four years ago
Japanese Army Unit 731, a biological and chemical warfare unit stationed in northeast China during World War II, had a strict evaluation and assessment system for technicians, allowing those who conducted live human experiments to be promoted, according to a newly discovered document of the notorious unit.
The new document was disclosed by Japanese scholar Seiya Matsuno, a specially-appointed professor at Heilongjiang International University, in September ahead of the 93rd anniversary of the September 18 Incident of 1931. The archive is important evidence for deepening the research on Japan's bacterial warfare system and is of great significance to fully exposing Japan's biological warfare crimes.
The September 18 Incident of 1931 taking place in the city of Shenyang in northeast China was a precursor to Japan’s launch of a full-scale invasion of China, and a key event ahead of the outbreak of World War Two in Asia.
The new files include the evaluation forms of Unit 731 technicians. On these forms, red words such as "excellent" and "good" are marked. For example, Yoshimura Hisato，a war criminal and leader of the unit’s frostbite study squad, has four "excellent" and one "good" ratings. During this period, Hisato compiled the relevant content of the experiments conducted in Unit 731 into a paper and published it in Japan.
"This paper is a confidential document written by Yoshimura Hisato, a technician with Unit 731, about frostbite. It was published on October 26, 1941. There is a table called Experiment 5, which contains the frostbite resistance index of people under various living conditions. The subjects are marked with ABCDE, and then the data of frostbite resistance indexes are counted under various living conditions, such as soaking in cold water, soaking in warm water, fasting for two days, fasting for three days, and the subjects staying awake day and night. Such data obtained through live human experiments can be seen everywhere in the paper," said Tan Tian, researcher at the exhibition hall of evidence of crimes of Unit 731 in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
According to staff from the International Research Center of Unit 731 under the Harbin Academy of Social Sciences, Hisato joined Unit 731 in March 1938 as a sixth-class technician. While conducting frostbite research and experiments, he was also responsible for the management of the special prison where the subjects were detained, making him a researcher as well as a core secrets administrator of the of Unit 731. He was promoted to the rank of fourth-class technician in October 1942.
"From the perspective of Yoshimura Hisato, he joined Unit 731 in 1938 and completed a three-step career jump in less than four years until 1942. Lying behind such fruitful achievements were the bloody live human experiments he made. Yoshimura Hisato published at least 200 medical papers in his career. The Japanese medical community tacitly approved the anti-human atrocities and human experiments of Unit 731, which further reflects the organized nature of these crimes," said Gong Wenjing, director of the International Research Center of Unit 731 under Harbin Academy of Social Sciences.
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing in China during World War II. The unit is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people. It was based in the Pingfang District of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China, formerly named Manchuria) and had active branch offices throughout China and Southeast Asia.
Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese aggressor troops. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as "logs". Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, biological weapons testing, hypobaric pressure chamber testing, vivisection, organ procurement, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women) and children but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound.
Newly discovered document exposes evaluation system of technicians under wartime Japan's germ warfare unit
