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2020下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

The End of the Space Age

太空时代的结束

Inner space is useful. Outer space is history

研究内太空才有用，让外太空研究成为历史

How big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is 12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is the atmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planet’s true diameter is actually nearer 13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For the Earth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites, forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only a few hundred kilometres above the planet’s solid surface. Many, though, form a ring like Saturn’s at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.

地球有多大?任何一本百科全书都会给你答案：赤道直径是12756公里，或者，用英里来表达7926英里。嗯，但是大气层有多大呢?也能计算吗? 包括空气(大气层)在内，地球的直径可能接近13000公里。甚至连这个数据也不够充分。因为现在地球的变化太大(远离平静的状态)。包围大气层的外部空间人造卫星来去匆匆，形成一个在大气层外面的所谓技术层。大部分卫星绕行高度离地球地表仅几百公里。然而，在距地球36000公里的轨道上物体绕转地球一周的时间为24小时，这个物体飞行时持续面对的是地球上的不变的同一个点，这样许多地球同步卫星的运行会形成一个类似的土星环。

Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. And viewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weather forecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised. So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exact location of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioning systems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

从这个方面看，地球比传统的教科书上的回答其实要大很多。这样看来，太空时代已经有了相当的成功。电信业，天气预测，农业，林业，甚至是在矿藏搜寻方面都有了彻底变革。战争也同样如此，再也没有政府能秘密地调兵遣将。这颗星球上的每一幢建筑物的位置都能被精确掌握。基于卫星的全球定位系统能按要求指引智能炸弹到达目标。

Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged by the enthusiastic “space cadets” who got the whole thing going. Though engineers like Wernher von Braun, who built the rockets for both Germany’s second-world-war V2 project and America’s cold-war Apollo project, sold their souls to the military establishment in order to pursue their dreams of space travel by the only means then available, most of them had their eyes on a higher prize. “First Men to a Geostationary Orbit” does not have quite the same ring as “First Men to the Moon”, a book von Braun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early space rockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American space project and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of “Star Trek” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Other planets may or may not have been inhabited by aliens, but they, and even other stars, were there for the taking. That the taking would begin in the lifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

然而没有这些推动太空事业发展的太空学员的满腔热情，太空时代便无法想象。工程师们为了实现遨游太空的梦想全身心地投入到军事机构中，这是唯一的可以获得使用的途径。比如工程师Wernher Braun，他为二战时期的德国V2计划和冷战时期的美国阿波罗计划分别建造了火箭。虽然他们中很多人是为了获得高额的奖金。工程师Wernher Braun在1958年的一本书中写道，第一个到达与地球同步轨道的人并没有得到第一个到达月球的人同样的花环。二十世纪五六十年代，当早期的意在探索冒险的太空火箭升空时，太空遨游的幻想就更热切了。事实上，美国的太空计划署和苏联的太空部门已经忽略了像“星际旅行”和“2001：太空冒险”这样的完美的幻想。

No longer. It is quite conceivable that 36,000km will prove the limit of human ambition. It is equally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return to fantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

从此不再幻想。36000公里成为人类抱负的极限，这件事会相当可信。人类太空飞翔的梦想成为现实，而退回想象也将变得同样可信。换言之，太空时代即将结束。

Bye-bye, sci-fi

再见，科学幻想

Today’s space cadets will, no doubt, oppose that claim vigorously. They will, in particular, point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson in Britain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise of such people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful). The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted International Space Station (ISS), surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that has ever been built in the name of science.

毫无疑问，今天的太空学员们会强烈反对这个声称。他们尤其会提到希望以商业方式实现太空飞翔的个人冒险者，比如美国的Elon Musk和英国的Sir Richard Branson。这些计划冒险的人果真也会像太空学员们一样予以反对。但是这个市场似乎很小也很脆弱。一方面，太空旅行是一项奢侈的服务，不像冲出地球低轨道那么容易(这些如同与月球距离一般可观的巨额花费使潜在客人的数字减少到几个)。另外一方面，是把宇航员飞渡到蒙昧的国际太空站(ISS)所需要的资金来源，无疑是最大的浪费，已经花了千亿美金却还在增长，那个曾经是以科学的名义建立起来的。

The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking 2011 might, in the history books of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets’ dream finally died. It marks the end of America’s space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th. The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make the business of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble. Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, that would not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But the pretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used by NASA, “Space Transportation System”, says it all.

上面提到的第二个理由也许将成为另外一个理由，即未来的历史书将把2011年视作太空学员梦想破灭的一年。它标志着美国航天计划的结束，该计划的最后使命是完成7月8日的发射。太空飞船被假设为一辆能重复使用的货车以期实现把人送往同步轨道的商业事宜。事实是它什么也没完成却带来了麻烦。它曾两次失事扼杀全部乘员(哥伦比亚号和挑战者号)。事实上它只是个试验性运输工具，要不它不应该有让人焦虑的特别理由;宇航员不时的被害。但是太空飞船只是一架普通飞机的假设需要维护。其使用的科学术语是NASA，其实它只是一个“太空运输系统”。

But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone – at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia.

太空飞船事业即将结束。到2020年，ISS将被重设轨道(这个领域的不雅的术语)。事情一旦发生，游戏就将终结。再也没有重返月球的欲望，更不用谈火星推进计划，太空探险的El Dorado计划。技术仍然存在，但是激情已然消失——至少就传统的太空强国，美国和苏联而言。

The space cadets’ other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, like President John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedy’s “by the end of the decade” bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even if China succeeds in matching America’s distant triumph, it still faces the question, “what next?” The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixon’s in 1972, will say “job done” and pull the plug on the whole shebang.

太空学员们的另一个希望之地，中国，也许将拾起接力棒。确定中国就像50年之前的约翰·肯尼迪一样宣布并希望要把人类送达月球表面并安全返回地球。但完成这一愿望的日期看起来是有弹性的。来自北京的宣告缺乏肯尼迪的坚信“到这个年代末”。(阿波罗11号在1969年7月20日登陆月球)。而且，即使中国成功地对接了美国的遥远的胜利，它仍需面对这个问题，“接下来怎么样?”属于中国领导人的那一时刻，是否会像1972年的尼克松一样说“任务完成了”然后拔下整个系统的插头呢。

No bucks, no Buck Rogers

没有激情，也没有太空英雄

With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to the stamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, public interest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.

好在针对太阳系的机器探测仍将持续。但即便如此，风险犹存，因为回报越来越少。现在太阳系中的每颗行星都已经被侦察过，每一颗表面是固体的行星，使者Mercury都已经登陆过。小行星，卫星和彗星已经增加到集邮册里。除非火星上出现生命，或者出现未曾预料之地，公众对探索宇宙的兴趣可能越来越弱。而为它买单的依然是广大的民众。

The future, then, looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past. Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

那么，未来看来要被限制在地球的新的外边界之内，即同步轨道。在这层空间里，各种活动的嗡嗡声将继续增长而充满了整个空间。这部分空间将被人类驯服，就像在过去物种驯服了这么多的荒野。而36000之外的空间仍将是空的。可能也会有偶尔的突袭，就像在南极考察的人们有时为了温暖、食物和朋友离开他们的扎堆而设的研究基地，在返回之前，这些基地早已沉没在南极洲的冰盖之下。但人类想超越领域最前沿的未来梦想已经，褪色很多。

2020下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

The Future of News back to the Coffee House

新闻产业的未来，重回咖啡屋时代

The internet is taking the news industry back to the conversational culture of the era before mass media

互联网正在将新闻产业带回到大众传媒出现前的时代。

Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets, newsletters and broadsides. “The Coffee houses particularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easier Rate all manner of printed News,” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, the New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. At the time of the launch America’s bestselling paper sold just 4,500 copies a day; the Sun, with its steam press, soon reached 15,000. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media.

三百年前，新闻以口头或书面形式传播，并且以小册子、简报的形式在小餐馆或咖啡屋中流传。据一名观察员说，咖啡屋是进行自由交谈的不二选择，并且也是休闲阅读的理想场所。但是事情在1883年发生重大转变，第一个面向大众的报纸，纽约《太阳报》诞生，并且首次引入广告来降低新闻成本，一举两得地为赞助商寻到更多的观众。当纽约报纸面世时，美国销量最好的杂志每天可以卖4500份;但是《太阳报》却很快达到15000的销量。报纸以及随后而来的广播、电视将新闻传播方式从两方面的交流变为一方面的由少数公司控制的传播。

Now, as our special report explains, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics.

现在，正如我们的特别报道所言，新闻产业正在向之前咖啡屋相近转变。互联网使新闻变得更易参与，更具有社会性，更容易听到不同的声音，让新闻从大众传媒时代重回百家争鸣的盛况。这对社会及政治将产生重大影响。

In much of the world, the mass media are flourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by 6% between 2005 and 2009, helped by particularly strong demand in places like India, where 110m papers are now sold daily. But those global figures mask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.

在世界大部分地区，大众传媒都在蓬勃发展。世界范围内的报纸销量从2005年到2009年增长了6%，特别是有巨大需求的印度地区，每天就有1亿1千万的销量。但在富裕国家读者人数却大幅下降。

Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving up newspapers and TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinary people are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and distributing news. Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published in their thousands online. Mobile-phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes is posted on social-networking sites and shown on television newscasts. An amateur video taken during the Japanese earthquake has been watched 15m times on YouTube. “Crowdsourcing” projects bring readers and journalists together to sift through troves of documents, from the expense claims of British politicians to Sarah Palin’s e-mails. Social-networking sites help people find, discuss and share news with their friends.

过去十年整个西方世界中，人们逐渐放弃报纸和电视，而是通过其它的方式与时俱进。更引人著目的是更多的普通民众参与到新闻的收集、分享、筛选和讨论中。推特使人们可以随时随地将他们的所见所闻相互分享。各种各样的文件被无数在线用户上传。手机拍客们拍摄的阿拉伯暴乱以及美国龙卷风的视频和照片在社交网络中广泛传播并且为电视报道所引用。YouTube上一部摄于日本地震期间的相关视频被浏览一千五百万次。“众包”将读者与记者紧密联系在了一起，共同处理各种新闻文件，从英国政客的消费声明到Sarah Palin的邮件。社交网络为人们与好友之间寻找、讨论和分享新闻提供了平台。

And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have become important (some say too important) conduits of news. Celebrities and world leaders, including Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez, publish updates directly via social networks; many countries now make raw data available through “open government” initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channels from around the world: The Guardian, a British newspaper, now has more online readers abroad than at home. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sites such as the Huffington Post, to rise to prominence in a very short space of time. And it has made possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practised by WikiLeaks, which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The news agenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets, like the BBC.

不仅仅是读者在向传统传媒发起挑战。包括谷歌、脸谱、推特在内的科技公司也逐渐成为新闻传播的重要渠道。包括奥巴马在内的许多名流和政要通过社交网络公布他们的实时动态。互联网打破了人们阅读报纸及收看电视频道的地域限制：《卫报》，一份英国报纸，现在较其本土读者有更多的网上读者。从博客到类似Huffington Post的网站，互联网使更多人成为新闻的可能提供者，在很短时间内就获得大量关注。互联网也为新闻的发布提供了一种全新的可能，正如维基解密所做的那样，为揭密者提供匿名发布信息的平台。新闻媒体再也不会为少数传媒巨头或部分政府部门所控制，就像BBC。

In principle, every liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social news environment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. A Texan who once had to rely on the Houston Chronicle to interpret the world can now collect information from myriad different sources. Authoritarian rulers everywhere have more to fear. So what, many will say, if journalists have less stable careers? All the same, two areas of concern stand out.

原则上来说，每个自由主义人士都应该为此庆祝。一个更具有参与性与社会性的新闻环境，一个更加集思广益、百家争鸣的新闻环境是值得庆祝的。德克萨斯人曾经必须依靠Houston Chronicle来与外界保持联系，但现在却可以通过无数的渠道得到他们想要的消息。专治统治者忧心忡忡。但也有很多人发问，这会不会对记者这个职业产生冲击呢?同样引起关注的还有两点。

The first worry is the loss of “accountability journalism”, which holds the powerful to account. Shrinking revenues have reduced the amount and quality of investigative and local political reporting in the print press.

首先就是担心负责任的媒体会越来越少，这些媒体会对他们报道的内容负责。经费的减少降低了调查研究和本地政治报道的数量和质量。

But old-style journalism was never quite as morally upstanding as journalists like to think. Indeed, the News of the World, a British newspaper which has been caught hacking into people’s mobile phones, is a very traditional sort of scandal sheet. Meantime, the internet is spawning new forms of accountability. A growing band of non-profit outfits such as ProPublica, the Sunlight Foundation and WikiLeaks are helping to fill the gap left by the decline of watchdog media. This is still a work in progress, but the degree of activity and experimentation provides cause for optimism.

但传统传媒却并不总是像记者所想像的一样高尚。世界新闻报，一份英国报纸，被指证窃听人们的手机，这是非常普遍的丑闻之一。同时，互联网正在传播一种新的责任形式。一些个还在增加的非盈利组织，像Propublica、Sunlight Foundation以及wikiLeaks，正在帮助减小由于“看门狗”媒体下降带来的断带。这是一项仍未完成的任务，但是活动和实验的程度为乐观主义者提供了信心。

The second concern has to do with partisanship. In the mass-media era local monopolies often had to be relatively impartial to maximise their appeal to readers and advertisers. In a more competitive world the money seems to be in creating an echo chamber for people’s prejudices: thus Fox News, a conservative American cable-news channel, makes more profits than its less strident rivals, CNN and MSNBC, combined.

第二个值得关注的就是党派性。在大众传媒时代，地方寡头必须保持相对的公正性以吸引读者和赞助商。在一个更具有竞争性的世界中，金钱似乎正在为偏见提供肥沃的土壤：就像Fox News，一家美国保守派有线新闻电视台，比没有它言语犀利的两家CNN和MSNBC合起来赚得还要多。

In one way the increasing availability of partisan news is to be welcomed. In the past many people – especially right-wing Americans, since most American television was left-leaning – had nothing to watch that reflected their views. But as news is becoming more opinionated, both politics and the facts are suffering: witness some American conservatives’ insistence that Barack Obama was born outside America, and others’ refusal to accept that taxes must rise.

在某种情况下，大量政党新闻的涌入是会被欢迎的。在过去，许多人——特别是右翼人士，因为大多数美国电视是左倾的——在电视上找不到反应他们政治立场的节目。政治与事实都在忍受固执己见的新闻的打击：有人坚称奥巴马是在国外出生的，也有人拒绝接受税收必须上调。

What is to be done? At a societal level, not much. The transformation of the news business is unstoppable, and attempts to reverse it are doomed to failure. But there are steps individuals can take to mitigate these worries. As producers of new journalism, they can be scrupulous with facts and transparent with their sources. As consumers, they can be catholic in their tastes and demanding in their standards. And although this transformation does raise concerns, there is much to celebrate in the noisy, diverse, vociferous, argumentative and stridently alive environment of the news business in the age of the internet. The coffee house is back. Enjoy it.

有什么需要做的呢?在社会层面需要我们做的并不多。新闻产业的转型势不可挡，任何意图阻止转型的行为都注定失败。但个人确实可以采取有效措施来减轻前面提到的几种担心。大众作为新式传媒的缔造者，可以自己对所谓事实的真实性把关并公开信息来源。而作为新闻受众的时候，大众可以接触更多领域的信息并且降低需求的标准。虽然转型确实带来了一些麻烦，但更值得庆祝的是在互联网时代有这样一个集思广益、百家争鸣的新闻平台。咖啡屋时代即将回归。与它共舞吧!

2020下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

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驻巴基斯坦大使姚敬在巴主流媒体发表署名文章

2019年7月5日

新疆是中国距离巴基斯坦最近的地方。我们经常说的“中巴友谊比山高”，指的就是新疆与巴基斯坦之间的喀喇昆仑山脉。作为中巴经济走廊的起点和“一带一路”中国丝绸之路经济带建设核心区，新疆正迎来前所未有的发展机遇。

1978年至2018年，中国新疆实现跨越式发展，人民生活水平不断提高。新疆地区生产总值由39.07亿元人民币增长至1.15万亿元，人均生产总值由313元增长至48000元，分别增长294倍和153倍。旅游业成为高质量发展的重要引擎，去年来疆旅游人数突破1.5亿人次、增长40%以上。

新疆最大的魅力在于多民族和睦共处、多元文化荟萃。新疆现有清真寺、教堂、寺院等宗教活动场所2.5万座，其中清真寺2.44万座，平均每530位穆斯林就拥有一座清真寺。今天新疆人口达2500万，维吾尔、汉、哈萨克、回、柯尔克孜、蒙古、锡伯、塔吉克、东乡等56个民族齐全，少数民族人口占总人口的59.9%。各族人民像石榴籽那样紧紧抱在一起，像珍视自己的生命一样珍视民族团结。

新疆经济社会发展之所以取得显著成就，得益于中国政府坚定坚决地严厉打击恐怖活动、切实维护社会稳定的政策措施。从20世纪90年代以来，中国境内外恐怖、分裂、极端“三股势力”在新疆策划并组织实施了数千起暴力恐怖事件，造成大量无辜各族群众伤亡。其中，2009年乌鲁木齐“7·5”打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件，造成197人死亡、1700多人受伤。新疆一度处于被恐怖主义吞噬的危险边缘。

在借鉴吸收国际社会反恐经验的基础上，中国政府采取了一系列去极端化措施，包括设立职业技能教育培训中心。教培中心以学习国家通用语言文字、法律知识、职业技能和开展去极端化工作为主要内容，为受到极端思想影响的群众免费提供职业技能培训，帮助其掌握一技之长，实现自力更生。培训期间向学员发放劳动报酬，尊重和保护不同民族、不同信仰学员的正常风俗习惯。学员结业后可获推荐在当地企业就业。

新疆去极端化工作已取得明显成效，新疆已近3年未发生暴力恐怖案件，刑事、治安案件大幅下降，社会治安状况明显好转。极端主义渗透得到有效遏制。现在新疆不仅美丽，而且很安全。但一段时间以来，西方舆论中总是有部分杂音，一些人攻击教培中心是“监狱”、“集中营”，“严重侵犯了人权”。这主要有两部分人，一部分从未到过新疆，只是道听途说、人云亦云，缺乏对现实的了解;还有一部分人是别有用心、颠倒黑白，企图抹黑中国形象，企图将中国维护国际社会稳定的努力同宗教相挂钩，有意离间中国和穆斯林国家关系。

针对第一种情况，中国愿意“请进来”，通过沟通增信释疑。近期，我们邀请了包括联合国、伊斯兰合作组织等国际机构代表团和巴基斯坦、马来西亚、土耳其、沙特等一些国家的官方和媒体人士到新疆实地参访，到教培中心同学员面对面交流。大家亲眼看到了当地穆斯林安居乐业、充分享有宗教信仰自由等情况，高度赞赏中国政府奉行的民族宗教自由政策，积极肯定中方预防性反恐和去极端化努力。针对第二种情况，中国知道永远也叫不醒装睡的人，不指望他们能说中国的好话。我们相信事实胜于雄辩，谎言终究无法掩盖真相。

巴基斯坦曾长期受恐怖主义威胁，但在巴政府、军队和人民的积极努力下，付出巨大牺牲，现在巴已基本消灭这一公害，社会安全得到有效维护。多年来，中巴双方合作打击“三股势力”，保障中巴经济走廊建设安全。我们支持巴基斯坦将国家反恐行动计划进行到底，愿继续共同加强反恐能力建设，加强反恐国际合作，为维护两国安全利益和地区和平稳定发挥积极作用。考生如果怕自己错过考试报名时间和考试时间的话，可以 免费预约短信提醒，届时会以短信的方式提醒大家报名和考试时间。

Xinjiang: A Sweet and Peaceful Homeland for People of All Ethnics Group

Signed Article by Ambassador Yao Jing on Pakistani Newspapers

5 July 2019

Xinjiang is the nearest place of China to Pakistan. When we say that “Sino-Pakistan friendship is higher than mountains”, it refers to the Karakoram Mountains between Xinjiang and Pakistan. As the starting point for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the hub area of the “Belt and Road” Initiative, Xinjiang is facing unprecedented opportunities for development.

From 1978 to 2018, Xinjiang has made great improvement in people’s living standards. The GDP of Xinjiang increased from 3.9 billion yuan to 1.15 trillion yuan ($168.6 billion) and the per capita GDP increased from 313 yuan to 48,000 yuan ($7000), an increase of 294 times and 153 times respectively. Tourism has become an important engine for high-quality development. Last year, the number of domestic and international tourists in Xinjiang exceeded 150 million, an increase of more than 40%.

The greatest charm of Xinjiang lies in the multi-ethnic harmony and diversity in cultures. There are 25,000 places for religious activities, including 24,400 mosques. On average, there is one mosque for every 530 Muslims. Xinjiang has a population of 25 million and hosts all 56 ethnic groups in China such as Uygur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kirgiz, Mongolia, Tajik, etc. The minority population accounts for 59.9% of the total population. The people of all ethnic groups hold together like pomegranate seeds, cherishing national unity as much as their own lives.

The remarkable economic and social development that Xinjiang has achieved attributed to the policy of the Chinese government in firmly cracking down on terrorism and safeguarding social stability. Since the 1990’s, terrorists, extremists and separatists inside and outside China have planned and organized thousands of violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, resulting in a large number of casualties of innocent people of all ethnic groups. Among these attacks are some notorious cases. On 5 July 2009, mobs smashed the city of Urumqi, causing 197 deaths and more than 1,700 injuries. At that time, Xinjiang was on the verge of being swallowed by terrorism.

By combining anti-terrorism experience of the international community with the ground situation, the Chinese government has taken a series of deradicalization measures, including establishing the vocation and education training center. Lessons on official language of China, Chinese laws, vocational training and deradicalization were offered for free, so trainees can master a skill and achieve self-reliance after the training. During the training, customs and habits of different ethnic groups and different religions are respected. After the training is completed, trainees are recommended jobs in local enterprises.

Deradicalization in Xinjiang has been proven effective with remarkable outcomes. For nearly 3 years, no violent terrorist attacks have taken place in Xinjiang. Number of criminal and public security cases also decreased sharply, and the infiltration of extremism has been effectively curbed. Today, Xinjiang is not only as beautiful as it used to be, but also much safer. It becomes a beautiful home for people of all ethnics to live and work in peace. Despite all the development in Xinjiang, in the past few months, there have been some noises by Western media. Some attacked the training center as “prisons” or “concentration camps”, which “seriously violated human rights”. Among those who make voices, some have never been to Xinjiang, their allegation is based on rumours or imagination; some have hidden motives, who intentionally twist the truth to discredit China or provoke conflict between China and Muslim countries by linking the effort of Chinese government in maintaining social stability with “religion repression”.

For those who do not have a chance to know what is happening in Xinjinga, they are welcome to visit Xinjiang truth with their own eyes. Recently, representatives from international organizations including the UN, OIC, and government officials and media groups from Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some other countries visited Xinjiang and met face-to-face with the trainees. They witnessed how local Muslims lived and worked in peace and fully enjoy the freedom of religion. They highly appreciated the ethnic and religious policies of China, and firmly supported China’s preventive anti-terrorism and deradicalization efforts. For those who pretend to be asleep, we know that they can never be awakened. We believe that facts speak louder than words, while lies cannot hide the truth.

Pakistan has long been disturbed by terrorism. Under the joint efforts of the Pakistani government, the armed forces and the people, terrorism has been basically eliminated with tremendous sacrifices paid by the society. Social security has been effectively maintained. China and Pakistan have cooperated with each other in combating the “three forces” over the years, and jointly safeguarded the construction of the CPEC. China supports Pakistan in its efforts in carrying out the National Action Plan on Anti-terrorism. China is ready to jointly enhance counter-terrorism capacity, and beef up international cooperation with Pakistan. Working hand in hand, China and Pakistan will play a more positive role in safeguarding the security of the two brotherly countries, as well as the peace and stability in the region.