Provinces and regions along the Silk Road Economic Belt are working together to boost trade by reducing the red tape required for exports and imports, specifically targeting inspection and quarantine regulations. The reform, which takes effect on July 1, includes the 10 provinces and regions along the 4,000 km route from Qingdao to the Alataw Pass. Initiated by the Shandong Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, the reform aims to “optimize and simplify inspection and quarantine procedures between places of origin and ports of entry, which help lower the burden of companies,” said Zhou Jian’an, Director of the Shandong Bureau. An agreement signed on June 17 in the port city of Qingdao gives the green light to exported goods that already have gone through the quarantine and inspection process at places of origin, and to imported goods that have already completed the quarantine and inspection process at ports of entry. After unifying quarantine and clearance standards, tens of thousands of shipments of goods can use a simpler declaration process, reducing clearance costs for companies by 20% to 30%. The eight other participating provinces and regions besides Shandong and Xinjiang are Shanxi, Henan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces and the Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions, the China Daily reports.

Tens of millions of Chinese are being poisoned by unsafe levels of fluoride and arsenic in drinking water, despite decades of official efforts to improve supplies, state media say. Elevated fluoride levels were found in the water in more than 1,000 counties across the country at the end of 2013, according to Gao Yanhui, Expert at the National Center for Endemic Disease Control. Nearly 21 million people suffered diseases caused by excessive exposure, such as skeletal fluorosis, and 87 million people were at risk nationwide. Henan province was the most acutely affected. Arsenic poisoning was another concern, with about 600,000 people in 131 counties in about half of all provinces affected. Excessive iodine intake due to poor drinking water had put 30 million people at risk of goiter, a figure little changed from a decade ago, when nationwide research put the number at 30.98 million. The central government had spent hundreds of billions of yuan over the past decade on improving drinking water in rural areas, but local governments were still short of funds to continue the work, the South China Morning Post reports.

Surging investment by Chinese companies in U.S. research labs is yielding a fast-growing trove of patents, part of a push to mine the U.S. for ideas to help China shift from being the world’s factory floor to a driver of innovation, according to an analysis of Thomson Reuters’ global intellectual property database. Patented inventions by Chinese firms that involved at least one U.S. researcher roughly doubled worldwide in each of the last three years, reaching 910 in 2014.

The China Beige Book based on a survey of over 2,000 firms in different sectors and geographic regions, showed an economic rebound driven by several factors, mainly a welcome resurgence in retail and a broad-based rebound in property. Manufacturing, services, real estate, agriculture and mining all saw both year-on-year and quarterly gains. The only exceptions were shipping and travel, which decelerated. The report also indicated a recovery in prices and profits after months of producer price deflation. The data showed that 45% of respondents saw profit margins gain on-year, and 37% of respondents reported an uptick in sales prices for their products or services. The report said one of the reasons the recovery did not show up in media reports or official statistics is that it was primarily driven by firms in the central and southwestern regions of China, while the developed coastal business centers led by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province posted no or negligible improvement. The labor market also improved, with stable wages, the South China Morning Post reports.

The market for luxury homes in Beijing is heating up as more high-end projects have been approved. Of the 21 projects that received pre-sale permits from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development this month, four were planned to sell for more than CNY100,000 per square meter. The most expensive project is priced at CNY175,000 per sq m. There are now more than 20 housing projects with prices set at more than CNY100,000 per sq m available for sale in the capital. At least four super luxury projects, which aim to sell for more than CNY100 million per unit, were set to launch this year, including the Xishang Yihaoyuan project of developer Sunac China. Zhang Dawei, Chief Analyst at property agency Centaline, said that the residential market in Beijing had become increasingly dominated by luxury projects. Although transactions in the luxury sector had grown, supply was increasing rapidly, stirring up competition, he said. Over the past two months, luxury properties that sold for more than CNY10 million each in Beijing more than doubled compared to the previous year, according to figures from the China Real Estate Information Corp (CRIC). New properties in Beijing priced between CNY20 million and CNY30 million were traded most actively in the first five months of this year with transaction volumes totaling 88 units, the highest since 2010, the South China Morning Post reports.