On this day, 26 years ago, on August 23, 1999 (July 13, 1999, the UPU Conference was held in China for the first time. The opening ceremony of the 22nd Universal Postal Union Conference was grandly held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on August 23, 1999. More than 2300 representatives from the 189 members of the UPU gathered together to discuss international postal plans for the 21st century. This is the first time that such a conference has been held in China since the founding of the Universal Postal Union 125 years ago and China joined the Universal Postal Union 85 years ago. The conference will last until September 15. The main tasks of this conference are to revise various laws and regulations, formulate postal development strategies, approve expenditures, elect members of the Administrative Council and Postal Management Council, and elect deputy directors of the International Bureau of the UPU Conference. In particular, the conference conducted in-depth discussions on the opportunities and challenges facing world postal services, and finally formed the "Beijing Strategy" to determine development goals for the next five years, so that postal services can achieve better development in the global communications market in the next century. The Universal Postal Union is an intergovernmental international organization that agrees on postal matters. It is also the specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for postal matters. It is headquartered in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. The UPU Conference is the highest authority of the UPU and is composed of representatives sent by the governments of member states. The postal departments of the 189 member states of the UPU constitute the world's largest physical delivery network. About 6.1 million postal employees work in more than 700,000 post offices around the world, processing approximately 430 billion pieces of domestic mail and nearly 10 billion pieces of international mail every day. Jiang Zemin delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the 22nd Universal Postal Union Conference.