The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released a draft for soliciting opinions on management of cybersecurity incident reporting on Friday. The draft specifies that the theft of national security information should be recognized as a severe cybersecurity incident, and those who fail to report it as required will be subject to punishment.

According to the CAC, the document is intended to standardize the reporting of cybersecurity incidents and reduce the losses and damage caused by such incidents, so as to safeguard national cybersecurity.

The document clarifies that operators should promptly initiate emergency response plans to deal with network security incidents. Based on the guidelines for the classification of network security incidents, those considered large, severe, or extremely severe incidents should be reported within one hour.

According to the guidelines, if important networks and information systems suffer from particularly severe system losses, resulting in widespread system paralysis and loss of business processing capabilities, it is considered an extremely severe network security incident.

This classification also includes a situation in which state secret information, important sensitive information, and important data is lost or stolen, tampered with or counterfeited, posing a particularly serious threat to national security and social stability.

Other events that pose serious threats to national security, social order, economic development, and public interests are also considered to be extremely severe network security incidents.

Specifically, if provincial-level and above Party and government portal websites or key news websites cannot be accessed for more than 24 hours due to attacks or malfunctions, or if the overall operation of critical information infrastructure is interrupted for more than six hours or the main functions are interrupted for more than 24 hours, it can generally be identified as an extremely severe cybersecurity incident.

If the event affects the work and lives of more than 30 percent of the population in a single provincial-level administrative region, or affects the use of water, electricity, gas, oil, heating, or transportation of more than 10 million people, it also falls into this category.

Additionally, the guidelines specify that if the incident leads to the leakage of personal information of more than 100 million people or causes direct economic losses of more than 100 million yuan ($14 million), it will also be considered an extremely severe cybersecurity incident.

The draft for comment of the document shows that the governance of network security in China has entered an important stage of high-quality development, Qin An, deputy director of the expert committee of counter-terrorism and cyber security governance at the China Society of Police Law, told the Global Times on Friday.

Qin noted that the classification of network security incidents by severity level is a highlight of the document, as it allows for the categorization of incidents based on their urgency and importance. "The classification resolves some of the confusion that may arise during actual implementation," he said.

According to the CAC, if the operator delays reporting, falsely reports, or conceals a cybersecurity incident, resulting in significant harmful consequences, the operator and relevant responsible individuals shall be severely punished according to the law.

"The implementation of relevant punitive measures is crucial to ensure the effective enforcement of laws and to safeguard national security," the expert said.

According to the CAC, when encountering a cybersecurity incident, an operator should report the name of the unit where the incident happens and basic information about the facilities, systems, and platforms involved, as well as the time, location, type of event, and the impact and harm caused.

Additionally, the document states that the report should include the measures that have been taken and their effectiveness, the development trend of the situation, potential further impact and harm, and preliminary analysis of the causes of the incident.

The alarming conclusion has been drawn from the first-ever IUCN red list assessment of freshwater species, which identifies global heating, pollution, overfishing, and falling water levels as major threats to vital aquatic populations.

A comprehensive study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlights the precarious state of freshwater fish globally, with iconic species such as the Lake Turkana robber and the Mekong giant catfish facing the imminent risk of disappearing.

Of the 14,898 assessed species, a staggering 3,086 are now in danger of vanishing, with nearly one-fifth of all threatened freshwater species directly impacted by climate change-induced factors such as falling water levels and shifting seasons.

The assessment also sheds light on the escalating threats to other species, including mahogany, Atlantic salmon, and green turtles. Big leaf mahogany, a highly sought-after plant commercially, is now classified as endangered due to a 60% decline in numbers over the past 180 years.

Atlantic salmon, once abundant and considered of least concern, is now near threatened, with a 23% global population decline and disappearance from many UK rivers.

Amidst these alarming findings, the report also brings attention to positive conservation efforts. The saiga antelope, moving from critically endangered to near threatened, experienced a remarkable 1,100% population increase in just seven years in Kazakhstan. Similarly, the scimitar-horned oryx, once extinct in Chad due to overhunting, has seen successful reintroduction efforts, leading to a vulnerable classification.

IUCN President Razan Al Mubarak has emphasized the need for coordinated global conservation efforts in the face of the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises.

The report underscored the importance of addressing these issues to ensure the durability of conservation actions.

The assessment also highlights the vulnerability of central south Pacific and east Pacific green turtles, major victims of industrial and artisanal fishing, with rising global temperatures affecting their hatching success and sea temperature fluctuations endangering their nesting sites.

Since 2017, the permanent population of Beijing has been declining for six consecutive years, and the distribution of the population shows a pattern of multiple support points and gradient distribution, while the health and cultural quality of the population ranking among the top in the country, according to the Beijing Administration Institute (BAI) on Saturday.

On Saturday, the "Beijing Population Blue Book: Research Report on Beijing Population Development (2023)" was released by the BAI, analyzing and forecasting Beijing's population trends. It focuses on the population development of Beijing from various perspectives such as preschool education, youth population, childbearing age population, elderly population and the population living in the capital's metropolitan area, in addition to conducting in-depth research on coping with an ageing population.

The permanent population of the capital city was 21.843 million in 2022, with a registered population of 14.277 million, maintaining a steady decline in the size of the permanent population and a continued growth in the registered population.

In addition, in 2022, the birth rate for the city's permanent population continued to decline, and the natural growth rate of the permanent population revealed a negative value synchronized with the national level. In terms of population structure, the aging of the population has become more pronounced, while the proportion of the working-age population is still higher than the national average.

In 2022, the city's permanent population aged 60 and above was 4.651 million, accounting for 21.3 percent of the total population, which is 1.5 percentage points higher than the national average. The size of the working-age population aged 15 to 64 has been continuously declining from 2015, reaching 15.902 million in 2022, accounting for 72.8 percent of the total population, also higher than the national average.

In terms of population distribution, the report noted that the regional distribution of the population in the city has remained stable, showing a pattern of multiple support points and gradient distribution. Both the population size and proportion in downtown areas have declined, while the population size and proportion in the urban sub-center and the plain new city have increased. The number of residents living in the city's designated ecological conservation area has fluctuated, and the pattern of population distribution with multiple support points continues to form, which has helped Beijing achieve balanced development in multiple areas.

The report also points out that the health level and cultural quality of the population in this city are among the best in the country. In 2021, the average life expectancy of registered residents stood at 82.47 years, higher than the national average. In 2020, the average years of education for the permanent population aged 15 and above was 12.64 years, far exceeding the national average. In 2022, there were 56,181 people with a college degree or above per 100,000 permanent residents aged 15 and above in Beijing.

The stable size of high-quality labor force has laid a solid foundation for Beijing to build an international science and technology innovation center and high-level talent hub, and promote the deep integration of innovation chain, industry chain, capital chain and talent chain, it noted.

It also added that the city is still in an opportunity window for economic transformation and upgrading, which will not close in the short term. The document recommended greater focus on achieving a balanced population structure, leveraging the dividends of reform and talent, and releasing the dividends of population. In addition, the report also suggests that the city should make good use of the opportunities brought by the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region and enhance the vitality of Beijing's population development in building an integrated high-quality development demonstration zone.