Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:14 pm
Washington is sending two senior officials to Beijing starting on Tuesday in what analysts describe as an effort to "save" the bilateral relationship, which has taken a beating following a series of "disturbing actions" by the US in recent weeks.
US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Senior White House Asia adviser Jeffrey Bader are expected to be in Beijing until Thursday for talks on a wide range of issues, the foreign ministry's website quoted spokesman Qin Gang as saying on Saturday.
The US officials are expected to also engage Beijing on issues of mutual concern, such as Iran's nuclear program, analysts said.
Beijing "accepted" a US offer for dialogue, the statement said, without specifying which Chinese officials would be meeting with the US envoys.
Steinberg, the No 2 in the US State Department, notably coined the phrase "strategic reassurance" late last year to describe US-China relations, suggesting that Washington should welcome China's arrival as a global power, even as China reassures the US and its neighbors that its rise would not run counter to their interests.
As a senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council, Jeffrey Bader - dubbed a "China-hand" - served as director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a leading Washington-based foreign policy think tank.
"Neither China nor the US hope to see their ties stay strained," the Shanghai based-Oriental Morning Post newspaper commented in a recent article. "After a series of mis-steps, there seems to be some sign showing that the political deadlock might be breaking."
After "a series of disturbing actions", the US has started to make efforts to "save" bilateral ties, Beijing News daily said of the upcoming visit.
Bilateral relations have been strained after the US announced in January that it was planning to sell arms to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama last month.
Such tensions risk complicating the cooperation the US seeks from China on a range of global issues ranging from the financial crisis to climate change, the Associated Press news agency said.
Steinberg may invite senior Chinese officials to the US, and may also urge the nation's leaders to attend a nuclear security conference in Washington in April, said Da Wei, an American studies expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
The two officials are visiting Beijing to clarify issues of mutual concern, such as the Iran nuclear program and the exchange rate of the yuan.
"Certainly, there is also the possibility that the US will press China (on these issues), or just explain its stance and views," Da added.
Jin Canrong, an international relations expert at Renmin University of China, said Sino-US ties currently were "very subtle".
"It's just a start by the US to save strained bilateral ties," Jin said. "In this round of mediation, China should continue to express its stance on Washington's arms sales to Taiwan and the Dalai Lama issue to press the US to avoid any more harm to bilateral ties."
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:13 pm
A nearly 10-year Olympic investigation into age-falsification claims against China has resulted in the country being stripped of a medal.
The athlete in question, Dong Fangxiao, was found to be only 14 at the 2000 Sydney Games. She was one of the gymnastic squad members and helped her team win a bronze medal that will have to be returned.
The Federation International of Gymnastics (FIG) ordered that China must also pay the cost of the investigation.
China also came under fire at the 2008 Beijing Games because of allegations that it was using underage gymnasts, with other countries pointing to official online records that were later removed. The government provided passports and birth certificates for the athletes in question and no action was taken by the FIG.
Chinese sports authorities said Sunday that it was "extremely regrettable" that the FIG Executive Committee decided to void Dong's results.
Lu Shanzhen, who led the Chinese women's gymnastics team in Sydney, claimed Sunday that there was insufficient evidence that Dong's age was falsified when participating in competition in 1999 and 2000, according to an interview with news portal 163.com.
Attempts to contact Lu through her cell phone were unsuccessful Sunday.
The Chinese Gymnastics Association (CGA) said Saturday in a statement posted on its official website that the governing body would further investigate the matter and didn't rule out asking for further explanation or seeking an appeal.
Under the current age rules set by FIG, gymnasts younger than 16 are forbidden to participate at major championships and the Olympics – to protect the health of young athletes.
Lu said that the CGA would do its best to minimize the loss of the medal by further communicating with the FIG, the IOC and Dong and strictly controlling age falsifications in major competitions by complying with relevant regulations set by the FIG.
Dong's results from the 1999 world championships, where she finished sixth in the all-around event, will be also voided, the FIG said.
On the FIG's official website, a profile of Dong shows that she was born on January 20, 1983. However, her accreditation card at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games says that her birth date was January 23, 1986.
Yang Yun, Dong's teammate, who admitted in a TV interview later that she was 14 at the time of the Sydney Olympics, was given a warning Saturday, as "the concrete and objective evidence available is insufficient to prove that the birth date indicated on the official documents was falsified."
The FIG announced in June that it would investigate age falsification surrounding Yang, the uneven bars bronze winner.
Age falsification has long been a problem in gymnastics.
The North Korean women's gymnastics team listed the age of Kim Gwang suk as 15 for three consecutive years at three separate international competitions. Romanian athletes have also been caught cheating.
Age is an issue in gymnastics because younger athletes have a competitive edge over older ones, according to Ren Hai, a professor of sports culture at Beijing Sports University.
"Younger gymnasts learn stunts faster and are bold in experimenting with highly difficult stunts," he said.
And because their bodies are still developing, experts say, the younger athletes are often more limber and smaller.
The age restriction, Ren said, is meant to protect athletes' developing bodies.
"Children who undertake excessive amounts of exercises and practice highly difficult stunts at an early age are likely to suffer lifelong damage to their body," he said.
China has been suspected of using underage competitors for years in other sports as well, including basketball, soccer and table tennis. As a result, local authorities have acted to prevent such fraud.
The Chinese Table Tennis Association, for instance, said last year that athletes who fail two consecutive bone-age tests will be prohibited from attending contests for a year.
It will also disqualify a team found to have two members who fail the age tests.
A recurring issue
The age claims during the 2008 Olympic Games involved He Kexin, who won two gold for China, and teammate Jiang Yuyuan. Many countries claimed they were as young as 14.
But He, along with teammates Jiang, Yang Yilin, Li Shanshan and Deng Linlin, were cleared of the allegations by the FIG two months after they won China's first ever Olympic team gold in women's gymnastics.
Yi Jianlian, a Chinese NBA player, is also suspected of lying about his age.
Yi has never admitted the claims are true, but his middle school registration form available online shows that his birth date is October 27, 1984, contradicting his contention that he was born in 1987.
Last year, the Chinese Football Association was fined $3,000 after the Asian Football Association found that Chinese player Yang Zi had altered his age in two different competitions.
Wang Wei, a sports fan in Beijing, told the Global Times that he doesn't know whether to trust the results of contests, as there are increasingly more scandals involving age fabrication concerning both Chinese athletes and those from other countries.
"A trust crisis is now gripping international sports and will dishearten our fans," he said.
Wang Dazhao, a sports commentator for People's Daily, told the Global Times that China's strong desire to win at international games has contributed to the fabrication of athletes' ages.
"Athletes are innocent and should not be held responsible for the matter," he said. "Some coaches are just too eager to win at high-profile games, and sports officials usually turn a blind eye to the matter."
He said it's high time for Chinese sports practitioners to reflect on whether it is worthy of fabricating ages in case these scandals are being used as a basis for other countries to accuse China.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:13 pm
In a curious twist, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced over the weekend on its website that the country's home price increase in the last year was much less than expected.
The average home price in 70 unidentified cities last year increased 1.5 percent over 2008, with newly built house prices up 1.3 percent and second-hand house prices up 2.4 percent over the previous year, according to data the NBS released over the weekend.
Thousands of Internet users questioned the accuracy of the data. Many feel home prices have soared too much and have gone far beyond their reach in the past year.
"Maybe there should be no decimal point?" an Internet user from Beijing commented on the portal 163.com a few hours after the data was released.
"I am curious that if the increase is only 1.5 percent, why the central government released a series of policies to curb the soaring home prices," another Internet user said.
And an Internet user from Sichuan Province also appealed to the NBS to disclose the exact names of the 70 cities, and the formula the data used.
A survey on 163.com showed 95 percent of 7,023 respondents did not believe the data by 8:30 pm the day it was disclosed.
Pan Jiancheng, deputy director of an economic data monitoring department with the NBS, explained to China National Radio, an official media outlet, over the weekend that home prices at the beginning of last year were much lower, although they rebounded later in the year, and so average home prices for the whole year did not increase too much.
"And it is also average data of 70 cities, so that is why some residents from different areas have different feelings," Pan said.
"That is ridiculous," Zhang Huaxue, a deputy manager of the China Index Academy, which offers real estate data analysis, told the Global Times Sunday. "The real estate market experienced a cold winter in 2008. That everybody knows. So how could the home price only have increased 1.5 percent in 2009, when the market recovered and home prices soared to a record high?"
"Only the NBS can access comprehensive nation-wide data, but we still cannot trust this '1.5 percent' data," Zhang added.
From January to November last year, "the country's average home sales price reached 4,600 yuan ($673.9) per square meters, up 1,000 yuan ($146.5) over the previous year," Yu Bin, director of the macroeconomic research department of the Development Research Center of State Council, said January 16, adding that the home price increase range in 2009 was the largest since housing reform started in 1998.
That would equal nearly a 25 percent increase in home prices last year.
Even developers questioned the accuracy of the data. Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China, a real estate developer, wrote on his microblog that "the NBS just released that the country's 70 cities last year increased 1.5 percent over the previous year, and can you believe it?"
It is not the first time that NBS data has been questioned by the public. Its salary figures recently met with skepticism.
"The salary counting system of the NBS did have some drawbacks," Feng Nailin, direc-tor of the employment department of the NBS, told Xinhua Net two days before the real estate data was issued. "The salaries of some private companies' employees were not included, for instance."
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:12 pm
Forensic tests proved that the murdered Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was suffocated to death, Dubai police said Sunday.
The cause of al-Mabhouh's death was suffocation using a pillow, Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, deputy director of Dubai police, was quoted as saying by Dubai-based English daily Gulf News on its website.
One more suspect will be added to the list of suspects in the assassination, bringing the total identified suspects to 27, Al Mazeina said.
According to the website of Arabian Business, a Dubai-based business journal, forensic tests also showed that there were " substantial" quantities of succinylcholine in al-Mabhouh's body.
The drug, used to induce anaesthesia, is also a muscle relaxant that could "cause immediate and temporary paralysis," a police spokesman was quoted as saying.
He said that while the drug was usually difficult to trace, in this instance it had been administered in quantities which made it easy to detect.
Al-Mabhouh, a senior commander of Hamas military wing the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades, was born in the Gaza Strip but has been living in Syria since 1989. He was found dead in his hotel room on Jan. 20, a day after he arrived in Dubai.
The Hamas official was wanted by the Israeli government in connection with the kidnappings of two Israeli soldiers in 1989. Dubai police have said they are virtually certain that Israel's intelligence agency Mossad was behind the assassination, but Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said there was no proof his country carried out the killing.
On Feb. 15, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said 11 European passport holders are suspected to have been involved in the killing of al-Mabhouh.
Dubai police on Wednesday released a list of 15 additional names and photos of people allegedly involved in the assassination.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:12 pm
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao mainly focused on domestic issues and challenges during his second annual online chat here Saturday with the public, in which he described 2010 as "the most complicated year" for the country.
In the two-hour live webcast, Wen answered more than 20 questions, touching on the country's severe employment situation, fledgling economic recovery, soaring housing prices, inflation, corruption, and a cross-Strait economic pact.
Wen did not touch much on major international issues, except trade conflicts with the United States. The Premier vowed the country would keep open to the outside world when mentioning the up-coming Shanghai World Expo.
In a white shirt and a dark jacket, Wen answered questions with "frankness and sincerity" as netizens described. Some scrupulous watchers even posted messages, saying that "He dressed exactly the same as in last year's online chat," which was also ahead of the country's annual Parliament session.
In his opening remark, Wen said, "I do not feel so nervous this time, but still cherish this opportunity, as such kind of opportunities remain limited."
"The problems of public concern often keep me up night after night, searching for solutions," he said.
Noticing that both netizens' questions and premier's remarks focused on domestic issues in this high-profile event, observers said the phenomenon may exactly illustrate that China was still a developing country with numerous thorny issues of its own.
The chat seems to support the belief of Chinese leaders that the country's most pressing task is to address domestic issues, they said.
Wen did not talk too much about the widely concerned international affairs, such as climate change or the relations with neighboring countries.
Prof. Zheng Yongnian, director of East Asia Institute of National University of Singapore said, "it is reasonable that China is paying more attention to domestic issues, as China's handling of domestic issues, if properly, is itself a contribution to the international society.
"The adroit handling of domestic issues is the foundation for China to hold other responsibilities in the international society, " he added.
GOALS SET WITHIN TERM OF OFFICE
In response to China's would-be homeowners' frustration over the country's soaring housing prices, Wen pledged to tame the "wild-horse" housing market and keep the prices at a reasonable level within his term as Premier.
The government would increase housing supply, and implement land, finance and tax polices to enable more people to buy their own homes.
Another goal set by the Premier within his term was to improve the country's medical insurance system as part of China's on-going medical reform.
"The government would add state spending on medical insurance by 50 percent in 2010, from 80 yuan to 120 yuan per person," Wen said.
Education and food safety were also among Premier Wen's concerns.
Administrative rankings of colleges should be removed, and schools should be run by educationists, the Premier said, calling for changes in the educational bureaucracy, a problem that plagues China for decades.
He said China was formulating a mid and long-term outline for education reform and development which gave priority to reducing academic workload of students, so that they could develop in an all-around way.
Responding public concern over product quality, Wen pledged that companies producing counterfeit or substandard products should be punished with no tolerance and lenience.
"We shall not go soft (on those companies), in order to protect the overall interest of the Chinese nation," Wen said.
Wen said he was confident in China's economic development in 2010, even though it would be "the most complicated year" for the nation's economy.
"Last year was the most difficult year for China's economic development, while this year will be the most complicated," Wen said.
"We will consolidate the economic recovery while addressing new challenges," he said.
"The top priority is balancing stable and comparatively fast economic growth with the adjustment of the economic structure and the transformation of the development pattern, while keeping inflation in check," Wen said.
On Sino-U.S. trade relations, Wen said good Sino-U.S. trade relations could bring fundamental benefits to the peoples of both nations.
Bilateral trade should be balanced and sustainable, and trade disputes between the two countries should be resolved through "negotiation on an equal footing," instead of sanctions, he said.
Wen hoped Sino-U.S. trade dispute would ease. China did not not want 2010 to be "an unpeaceful year" for trade and economic relations with the United States, he said.
On the inflation management, he said China would continue to implement a "moderately loose" monetary policy and ensure stable and comparatively fast economic growth while managing inflationary prospects, he said.
"GREATER DIGNITY" FOR PEOPLE
Chinese citizens shall enjoy full freedom and rights within the framework of the Constitution and laws, which is key to the promotion of "greater dignity" of the population, Wen said.
Explaining his earlier comment on "letting the Chinese live with greater dignity", Wen said all people should be equal before the law.
He said the ultimate purpose of a country's development should be none other than meeting the increasing material and cultural need of the people, and that social development should be based on the full development of individuals.
"We shall create favorable conditions for people's freedom and full development, in order to nurture their intelligence and talents," Wen said.
Meanwhile, the Premier also pledged that China must and should be able to curb the misuse of public funds by promoting democracy and public supervision.
The government must make the use of public resources transparent by having all administrative expenditures included in the budget system and known to the public, he said.
Yu Hai, a sociology professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University, said "The fact that the premier stresses the 'greater dignity' of the people indicates a higher level of governance and a renewed commitment from the government to the people."
"PINKY SWEAR" FOR ANOTHER CHAT
At the end of the chat, the premier promised to continue his online chat with netizens next year.
"Let's pinky swear," the Premier said jokingly.
Wen's talk was rewarded by over 400,000 posts on the Xinhuanet website, and more than 100,000 short messages sent by mobile phone users.
Zhao Yan, hostess of the chat, said in an interview after the event that questions from netizens were "very good" and that the premier's sincerity touched her most.
"It is a truly heart-to-heart and zero-distance chat," Zhao said.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 08:30 am
China has outlined measures to curb fraud and plagiarism in universities and higher-learning institutes.
In a newly-released circular, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council specified punishments for students who plagiarize or commit fraud.
Schools can postpone or refuse to grant degrees to cheats. They can even revoke degrees already awarded.
Tutors of students who commit fraud can be suspended or removed from their post, and all people who involved in the case will be punished according to the relevant regulations, the circular said.
The results of investigation into academic fraud will be written into profiles and made public, according to the circular which was posted on the website of the Ministry of Education.
The committee also urged schools to strengthen the teaching of ethics to both students and teachers.
The committee, however, stressed that the dignity and legitimate rights of those suspected of fraud or plagiarism should be protected during any investigation.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 08:30 am
The US state of Hawaii issued a tsunami warning following the quake and responded by evacuating beach-side residents. But no major waves were reported and the warning was lifted on Saturday afternoon.
Civil defense sirens blared in Hawaii early on Saturday morning. Emergency vehicles patrolling coastal areas urged people to seek higher ground.
At this petrol station, residents queued before sunrise to buy fuel.
Dennis Lopez, Hawaii Resident, said, "Got to get things ready for survival mode now. We're due for one of these things anyway."
Allison Shigezawa, Hawaii Resident, said, "I live very close to the ocean. Yeah, I'm thinking my things are all going to get totally soaked and I don't really want to be there."
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center had warned of waves up to 2.4 meters high that would damage coasts of all the Hawaiian islands.
The warning center added the island state was bracing for its largest tsunami in almost half a century.
Charles Mccreery, Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said, "I would say we aren't expecting it to be a worst-case scenario, but certainly it's going to be a hazard to people on the coasts. It can cause some flooding and probably some property damage as well."
Despite fearing the worst, no damaging tsunamis were reported anywhere along the Hawaiian coast. The warning center said most sensors on the islands detected waves measuring less than 30 centimeters.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 08:30 am
China's energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (about 1464.1 U.S.dollars) of gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 2.2 percent in 2009, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said here Thursday.
Preliminary estimates indicate that the total amount of energy consumption last year stood at 3.1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, up 6.3 percent compared to the 2008 level, according to a report released on the NBS website Thursday.
The report did not reveal the exact amount of energy consumed per 10,000 yuan of GDP, but the figure for 2008 was 1.10 tonnes of standard coal, according to a previous NBS report.
China's water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP totalled 209.3 cubic meters in 2009, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier. Water consumption per 10,000 yuan of industrial output was 116.4 cubic meters in the same period, down 8.2 percent from 2008, said the report.
The report also showed that China consumed 3.02 billion tonnes of coal, 380 million tonnes of crude oil, 88.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 3,697.3 billion kilowatt hours of electric power in 2009, up 9.2 percent, 7.1 percent, 9.1 percent and 6.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.
China has been making efforts to raise energy efficiency by eliminating high energy-consuming equipment and introducing energy-saving technologies, said the previous NBS report.
Energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP was down 1.79 percent year-on-year in 2006, 4.04 percent in 2007, and 4.59 percent in 2008, according to NBS.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 08:29 am
China's Ministry of Finance (MOF) said Friday it would issue 24 billion yuan (3.5 billion U.S. dollars) of book-entry treasury bonds next week.
The three-day issue is scheduled to start on March 1, the MOF said in a statement posted on its website.
The bonds, with a term of 30 years, have a fixed annual interest rate of 4.08 percent to be paid out every half year, it said.
It will be the third time this year that the government has issued book -entry treasury bonds. The first two batches had terms of two years and ten years, respectively.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 08:29 am
Premier Wen Jiabao said Saturday the mainland could sacrifice some of its interests in the negotiations of the cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
"The reason is very simple: Taiwan compatriots are our brothers," Wen said during an online chat with Internet users through the central government website www.gov.cn and www.xinhuanet.com, website of Xinhua News Agency.
Wen said the mainland would take into full consideration the interests of Taiwan's medium and small-sized enterprises and the Taiwan public, especially those of Taiwan farmers.
Advancing the ECFA conforms to the interests of people on the two sides, Wen said.
The ECFA, a wide-ranging economic pact between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, is a current priority in work on deepening cross-Strait economic cooperation.
The basic content of the agreement would cover major economic activities across the Strait, including market access for commodity trade and service trade, Rules of Origin, early harvest program, trade remedy, dispute settlement, investment and economic cooperation.
On Jan. 26, 2010, experts from the mainland and Taiwan held the first round of talks on the ECFA in Beijing.
Formal discussions would be held at the fifth round of talks this year between the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the island's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), two organizations authorized to handle cross-Strait issues.
Saturday 27 February 2010 at 10:07 am
Nineteen people are dead and 49 injured after an explosion in a starch factory in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, on Wednesday, the local government said yesterday.
The massive dust blast ripped through a workshop at the Qianhuangdao Lihua Starch Co Ltd in Funing county, Qinhuangdao, leveling a major portion of the one-story building that covers nearly 6,200 square meters.
Police have detained the company's deputy general manager for work safety violations and the director of the workshop.
Footage on China Central Television showed smashed windows in the remaining section of the workshop that had been used as office space. White smoke blanketed what remained of the workshop.
About 107 people were working when the explosion occurred at about 4 pm, authorities said.
Eighteen workers died at the scene and 50 others were injured. However, the death toll rose to 19 yesterday after one injured worker died.
The condition of the 49 injured workers is listed as stable. Among them, 15 were trapped in the debris but later rescued by firefighters, according to the local fire brigade. Up to 106 firemen were deployed to extinguish the flames.
An initial investigation indicated a dust explosion caused the tragedy, Fu Qiang, deputy director of the Funing county government told Xinhua News Agency.
Dust explosions are caused by the sudden ignition of a mixture of air and a heavy concentration of combustible dust particles.
The flame or spark that sets off a dust explosion can be produced by friction, static electricity, matches, defective wiring, blowtorches or any open flame. Dust composed of grain, flour, starch, coffee, cotton, coal, sugar or other organic materials is highly explosive.
To guard against dust explosions, exhaust fans are used to pull dust into ducts that carry it outside the building or mine shaft, which are also prone to dust explosions.
Work safety authorities, along with local police and officials from the local government, are continuing to investigate the incident, Fu said.
Local authorities have ordered the factory to halt production at its remaining three workshops.
The city government has launched a two-month overhaul of work safety, Fu said.
The private-run company, with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan ($147 million), produces mainly starch and glucose. It hires 3,300 employees, according to the company's website.
China had its deadliest dust explosion accident in 1987, when a blast at a textile factory in Harbin city killed 54 workers and injured 1,812.
Saturday 27 February 2010 at 10:06 am
China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) had redesigned the layout of its official website so users could better access its information, Shen Deyong, executive vice president of the SPC, said Thursday.
Information disclosure, online services and public participation would be the website's primary functions, and it would aim to ensure easy access to judicial information for the public, Shen said.
With better-arranged online services, the website was also expected to facilitate the legal procedures at the court for people and make journalists' interviews of the SPC easier, Shen said.
Members of China's top legislative and advisory bodies and other ordinary Chinese people could submit their comments and suggestions regarding judiciary work much easier via the new website, which would strengthen supervision of courts, he said.
The official website of the SPC should be taken as a "window" for the courts to keep in tune with the people, according to Shen.
Saturday 27 February 2010 at 10:06 am
China's energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (about 1464.1 U.S.dollars) of gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 2.2 percent in 2009, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said here Thursday.
Preliminary estimates indicate that the total amount of energy consumption last year stood at 3.1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, up 6.3 percent compared to the 2008 level, according to a report released on the NBS website Thursday.
The report did not reveal the exact amount of energy consumed per 10,000 yuan of GDP, but the figure for 2008 was 1.10 tonnes of standard coal, according to a previous NBS report.
China's water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP totalled 209.3 cubic meters in 2009, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier. Water consumption per 10,000 yuan of industrial output was 116.4 cubic meters in the same period, down 8.2 percent from 2008, said the report.
The report also showed that China consumed 3.02 billion tonnes of coal, 380 million tonnes of crude oil, 88.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 3,697.3 billion kilowatt hours of electric power in 2009, up 9.2 percent, 7.1 percent, 9.1 percent and 6.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.
China has been making efforts to raise energy efficiency by eliminating high energy-consuming equipment and introducing energy-saving technologies, said the previous NBS report.
Energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP was down 1.79 percent year-on-year in 2006, 4.04 percent in 2007, and 4.59 percent in 2008, according to NBS.
Saturday 27 February 2010 at 10:06 am
Internet firms are increasingly catering to children for new online revenue growth as the adult market becomes both saturated and more competitive.
While adults were the main targets of Web-based companies over the past decade, websites for children have been burgeoning over the past two years, said observers.
Social networking sites have expanded rapidly into the children's Internet market. More than 10 of these sites for kids and teens have come online in less than two years and some of them are already household names among users aged 6 to 14.
The first and largest, Mole Manor, launched by TaoMee Inc, currently has about 50 million registered users, accounting for 13.8 percent of China's population aged below 16, according to figures from China Children and Teenagers' Fund.
Inspired by Club Penguin - a popular American social networking sites for children purchased by Disney in 2007 - Mole Manor creates a virtual community for 6- to 14-year-olds and provides a range of online games and role-playing activities. Players use cartoon characters to play in a virtual world where moles burrow around in their community.
Its founder and CEO, Wang Haibing, launched the website in May 2008 after leaving his job as a project director of a virtual pet game at rival Tencent Inc. Last year, Tencent was the largest online game developer and operator in China by market share.
Mole Manor generates revenue by selling game cards - used to purchase virtual items and spin-offs such as dolls, toys, and books.
In addition to Mole Manor, TaoMee.com has three other social networking sites for children, a special designed Web browser for them, and a parental supervision system.
Wang said last month that TaoMee began to turn a profit.
"We will expand into movies, television, and print publications in 2010 to develop the brand offline," said 30-year-old Wang. He added that spin-off sales, which are about 10 percent of online sales, might supercede the latter in three years, but he declined to disclose Mole Manor's revenue.
Social networking sites targeting youngsters have become a favorite for investors.
Mole Manor received $1 million capital injection in 2008 from a business angel investment. Another social networking site for children, Aobi.com, which now has 20 million registered users, received $5 million from the US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital last year.
"New, innovative businesses in niche markets are what we are interested in," said Gan Jianping, managing director of Qiming Weichuang Venture Capital Management (Shanghai) Co Ltd.
Many firms are licking their chops at the profit potential of this growing market.
Earlier this month, Tencent officials said the company would launch its own social networking site for kids in the first half of this year. The company said it didn't expect to profit from the site but the move would enable Tencent to reach beyond its adult-client base.
Yet child networking sites are not free from controversy. Popular Mole Manor was criticized for endangering social morals by encouraging online, over-indulgence amongst children.
The game, which by design requires players to place money into their accounts, was criticized by a China Central Television program in September 2009, citing a mother's complaints about her 11-year-old daughter's frequent purchase of game cards.
Networking sites like Mole Manor have tried to solve the problem by using features such as online-time controls and parental-supervision tools, but balancing the commercial benefits with child-friendly formats remains a challenge, said Li Zhi, an analyst with domestic research firm Analysys International.
Some businesses have choosen to enter the market under a different flag: what are commonly described as "educational websites for students".
Zhu Guannan, founder of Huadoo.com is one of them. Launched in December last year, Huadoo was the first animated website for primary school learning in China. He said the website now has more than 30,000 users.
Zhu claims most parents are supportive of their children going online.
Huadoo, which currently has about 100 employees, generates its revenues mainly from sales of learning licenses. Zhu said 20 percent of the website's users have purchased licenses totaling about two million yuan. He expects the company to break even in the middle of this year.
Educational expenses account for up to one-third of the average family's total income, according to domestic research company Horizon Research Consultancy Group, that operates in eight medium- to large-sized Chinese cities. The average household income has largely increased over the past five years, according to a survey by Credit Suisse.
As families earn more, education spending is likely to increase as well.
But Zhu is not the only one to cash in on the market. Big publishers such as the People's Education Press and East China Normal University Press have already set up online learning platforms, providing online textbooks and other learning materials.
That, Zhu said, will make the competition fiercer.
"Companies have begun to look for users in a less saturated markets, honing in on kids and even the senior population," said Li, from Analysys International, adding that competition for market share is sure to grow.
Internet users aged between 10 and 19 accounted for 31.8 percent of China's overall Internet population in 2009.
The next largest group was people aged 20 to 29, with 28.6 percent of the market, followed by those aged 30 to 39, who made up 21.5 percent, according to China Internet Network Information Center.
Saturday 27 February 2010 at 10:03 am
Internet search firm Google's deal that invites the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to help with its inquiry into cyberattacks may pose serious threats to other countries' national and commercial security and is worrisome to world netizens.
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, has become the largest world Internet search engine. It runs more than 1 million servers in data centers around the world, and processes more than 1 billion search requests and 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day.
If we compare Google to a globalized information processing machine, then its collaboration with the NSA would allow its products to flow in vast volume to the spy agency and greatly boost the agency's information collection capabilities.
Hiroyuki Miyawaki, senior consultant at the Japan Research Institute, told Xinhua that intelligence agencies' independent information collecting capacity is usually limited, but joining hands with Google would significantly improve its capacity. That would be manifested not only in the wide range of information but also in the usage of Google's history information, which is counted in large quantities.
In comments on the deal, French magazine L'Expansion said many people have doubts about this kind of collaboration. American magazine Wired wrote a headline like this: 'Don't Be Evil' Meet 'Spy on Everyone': How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google.
"Don't be evil" is Google's unofficial slogan coined by the company's engineer Paul Buchheit.
World experts were also worried about the deal between Google and the NSA.
A researcher at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China told Xinhua that if Google, which holds a sea of information, and the NSA, which is strong in intelligence analysis, work together fully, other countries will face severe potential threats.
In addition, Google remembers not only its users' registration information but also their search and browsing records. That is to say, intelligence agencies such as the NSA can easily get to know who is interested in what if they attain the relevant information and find out the IP address of the user.
During the Cold War, the NSA worked with companies like Western Union to intercept and read millions of telegrams. During the war on terror years, the NSA teamed up with the telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on customers' phone calls and Internet traffic right from the telcos' switching stations.
Michel Riguidel, head of the Department of Computer Science and Networks at Telecom Paris Tech in Paris, said that European companies like Airbus and Total could become targets of the Google-NSA collaboration because collaborations between intelligence agencies and information technology companies in the past mainly focused on commercial or national domestic security areas.
Riguidel suggested that Europe work out corresponding policies for the information industry to break up the monopoly dominated by Google and other U.S. Internet search technologies corporations.
Google is keeping quiet concerning the controversial deal. In a reply to Xinhua on its inquiry into hackers who breached the company's cybersecurity defenses last year, an official in charge of public relations in Google China said: "As we have said before, we are not commenting on our investigation."
To dispel doubts from the outside, Google has emphasized that its cooperation with the NSA will not leak user information.
But French information technology website Generation Nouvelles Technologies commented that Google's promise can hardly convince others, especially when people are facing agencies like the NSA which is notorious for intercepting email and enjoys judicial right of exemption.
Observers believe Google is likely to be the first and foremost victim of the cooperation with the NSA because Internet users will express their disgust by their clicks. They will try to avoid Google to protect their privacy.
Izumi Harada, chief fellow of the Crisis and Risk Management Society of Japan, told Xinhua: "Personally, I will no longer use such search engines that cooperate with U.S. intelligence agencies."
Friday 26 February 2010 at 07:00 am
Despite the fact that tourism authorities in the capital tried to give away two million free tickets to local attractions last year as part of a massive promotion, only 346,000 people made the most of the offer.
The freebies guaranteed entry to almost 50 tourism hot-spots in and around the city.
"Beijing was the first city to give away free tickets in China's tourism market," Wang Jian, director of the No 1 promoting department of the Beijing tourism administration, told METRO yesterday.
"It was a very successful marketing strategy during the global financial crisis last year." According to the latest press release on the administration's website, 980,000 people applied for tickets.
Of those, 346,000 visitors actually used them.
The most popular destination was The Summer Palace, which waved in 53,394 people brandishing free passes.
The give-away generated 980 million yuan for Beijing's tourism economy, the website said.
"Some people booked our free tickets with an errant address or unreadable handwriting, so 8.2 percent of the free tickets could not be delivered to those who registered for them," an officer, surnamed Shi, who was part of the free tickets registration team, told METRO yesterday. "We suggest people leave clear information for us during the following free-ticket events."
Shi explained that tourism authorities viewed the event as a success, even though only 346,000 of the two million free tickets were used. Some 300,000 were grabbed online during the Chinese New Year holiday.
"We were only expecting 200,000 people to use the free tickets, so it was much better than the benchmark we set in the beginning," Shi said. "We are expecting up to one million people to benefit from the free tickets this year."
Shi said the free tickets were responsible for an 11.8 percent growth in tourism income compared to the previous year. Of the free ticket users, some 25,000 people visited the China Central Television (CCTV) high-rise during the Spring Festival holiday. On one day, the influx broke the daily visitor record.
Zhao Yudong, general manager of the CCTV tower, said: "We accepted 4,193 free tickets but at least 10,000 others purchased theirs."
In light of last year's success, the tourism bureau is planning more promotional efforts for Beijing's tourism market.
"This year, we still plan to release up to two million free tickets in Beijing, mainly during the public holidays, and there will be more than 1,000 free rooms in hotels for more lucky visitors," Wang said.
Friday 26 February 2010 at 07:00 am
In what has been called the "first war in the Year of the Tiger", a spat between celebrity blogger Han Han and the master of magic Liu Qian (aka Lu Chen) has ended with Han waving a white flag.
He started the war of words soon after the CCTV Spring Festival Gala fizzled out without providing any real fireworks. Apart from the frissons of nostalgia generated by Faye Wong, and The Little Tigers reunion, the only performance worth a cheer appeared to be Liu's "close-up magic" act.
This included inverting a beaker of (product placement alert) Huiyuan juice without wetting himself, a mystifying card trick and a glass table through which coins vanished and reappeared.
Han sniped about the blatant advertising and blew a big hole in the performance by "revealing" the magic table rotated, magnetic coins were used and, horror of horrors, the volunteers overseeing his close-up magic skills were actually accomplices.
It's got to the point that nobody knows quite what to think until Han has delivered his verdict. It was the same with the movie Avatar. After he reckoned the movie was about the rights of homeowners to resist the developer's wrecking ball, everyone else fell into line and repeated the mantra.
Even Song Zude, formerly the country's most controversial blogger, tried to ingratiate himself to "Big Master Han" by criticizing Liu's magic show and hit well below the belt when he called him a "freaky half-man, half-woman".
"Art requires honesty. Even if magic cannot really be considered an art, it still needs to be practiced in good faith," Song said, echoing Han, and adding for good measure that China has 10,000 magicians as good or better than Liu.
Han's criticism, and by extension Song and the other commentators, seems to be that because Liu deceived the audience he is an imposter.
It's like they have suddenly discovered that miracles don't really exist and are venting their spleen on the performer for disillusioning them, literally. By analogy, it's like a kid finding out there's no such person as Father Christmas and being angry with his parents for pretending there is.
Of course, magic is deception, an illusion, creative use of props, stooges, smoke and mirrors. It's a skill, or an art, whatever, because of the finesse of the magician and his abilities as an entertainer.
Liu has been performing magic since he was 7 and is China's most internationally recognized conjuror, feted for his performance at last year's Gala when he "teleported" a ring into a chicken egg.
Nobody complained this was a trick, precisely because everyone knew it was. We are willing to suspend our disbelief if the performer is agile and intelligent enough to convince us that we should.
Liu is more than able to defend himself and did so by releasing a statement on his website accusing Han of knowing nothing about magic and passing judgment on the basis of rumors. The celebrity fallout was dubbed the "first war in the Year of the Tiger" by a Shanghai paper.
The story had a peaceful ending when Han's post magically disappeared, then reappeared toned down. Liu told a paper he didn't want to bicker and his post vanished too.
Friday 26 February 2010 at 06:59 am
Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, one of the world's greatest opera singers, will undergo surgery after suffering lower abdominal pain while performing in Japan, his official website said on Wednesday.
Domingo, 69, underwent a full physical examination in New York where "his doctors have determined that he needs to undergo 'medically-recommended preventive surgery'," said the website, www.placidodomingo.com.
"After surgery they will have a better idea when Placido Domingo will return to his performing schedule," it said, without giving details as to the nature of the surgery. "It is hoped that it will be in about six weeks."
Domingo is general director of both the Los Angeles Opera and the Washington National Opera. His repertoire encompasses 130 stage roles -- a number unmatched by any other celebrated tenor in history.
Friday 26 February 2010 at 06:59 am
The 10 billionth song has been downloaded from Apple's iTunes, seven years after the launch of the online store which provided a lifeline to the struggling music industry.
"10 billion songs downloaded from iTunes. And counting," read an online counter at the Apple website.
The California company behind the iPod, iPhone and Macintosh computer had promised a 10,000-dollar iTunes gift card to the person who downloaded the 10-billionth song.
To mark the landmark download, Apple provided a list of the all-time top songs on iTunes.
"I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas took the top slot followed by Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" and "Boom Boom Pow," also by the Black Eyed Peas.
The iTunes Music Store was launched in 2003 at a time when the music industry was struggling with digital piracy and plummeting album sales.
Initially offering songs for 99 cents, iTunes has expanded over the years and now offers television shows, movies, podcasts and other content.
In April of last year, Apple changed its song prices and individual tunes now sell for 69 cents, 99 cents or 1.29 dollars with studios deciding pricing.
Apple reportedly made the pricing concession in exchange for studios backing off demands for digital rights management software that prevents music from being copied.
Friday 26 February 2010 at 06:59 am
Invictus star Matt Damon is reportedly in negotiations to play American politician Robert F. Kennedy in an adaptation of Evan Thomas' respected biography Robert Kennedy: His Life.
Like the book, the film is expected to follow the civil rights activist, who was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, from his early life through the 1960 and '68 presidential campaigns until his assassination.
Movie website Deadline Hollywood reports: "The film will trace RFK's transformation from the younger brother in the shadow of President John F. Kennedy to a strong national leader in his own right before he was gunned down in 1968."
Steven Knight is believed to be writing the script for the movie, which will be directed by Gary Ross. No further casting information has been revealed.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 07:36 am
Yahoo Inc plans to integrate Twitter into its collection of websites, as the company seeks to enhance the appeal of its online properties with popular social networking features.
The partnership will allow web surfers to view the short, 140-character messages created by Twitter users, dubbed Tweets, directly within Yahoo sites as well as to publish their own Twitter messages without leaving Yahoo.
The move, which Yahoo announced late on Tuesday, comes a couple of months after Yahoo announced a similar deal with Facebook, the world's No.1 social networking site.
Earlier this month, Google Inc unveiled a new service dubbed Google Buzz that replicated many of the social networking features that have made services like Twitter and Facebook Internet success stories.
Facebook and Twitter - which said on Monday that users of its service generate more than 50 million Tweets every day - pose an increasing threat to established Internet giants like Yahoo and Google whose businesses depend on selling online ads to large audiences.
In January, Facebook overtook Yahoo to become the second most visited website in the United States, according to a recent report by web analytics firm Compete. A separate study by comScore showed Yahoo maintaining its No.2 rank with roughly 164 million unique U.S. visitors, while Facebook was the No.4 site with 112 visitors, behind third-ranked Microsoft Corp.
Yahoo said that beginning on Tuesday its Internet search engine results will display up-to-the-second Tweets about various topics, matching the so-called "real time search" capabilities that Google and Microsoft announced in their own respective deals with Twitter last year.
Yahoo also plans to display a live stream of Tweets within other online properties including its email service and sites devoted to sports, entertainment and finance later this year.
Yahoo executives said that the company was looking at ways to make Twitter messages relevant to each property, such as by customizing the selection of messages that appear alongside an article about a particular sporting event, for example.
"We believe that the content and context side of things is very unique," Yahoo Vice President of Communities Jim Stoneham told Reuters in an interview.
Yahoo would not comment on any financial terms involved in the deal with Twitter.
According to some media reports, Microsoft and Google paid a combined $25 million for the right to include Twitter data in their search results.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 07:35 am
Actor Charlie Sheen, star of U.S. television's hit comedy "Two and a Half Men," has followed his wife and entered a rehabilitation facility as the couple try to put their lives back together after a violent Christmas Day argument.
Sheen, 44, checked in for undisclosed reasons in what his publicist on Tuesday called "a preventative measure," causing his top-rated CBS TV show to temporarily suspend production.
Sheen's third wife, Brooke Mueller, has also been in a rehab facility in the Los Angeles area for the past few days, according to news reports. Mueller, 32, is said to be undergoing treatment for substance abuse.
Sheen was charged earlier this month with assaulting and threatening Mueller on December 25 during a family vacation in Aspen, Colorado. Mueller called police and told them Sheen had pulled a knife on her and threatened to have her killed when she said she would divorce him.
Celebrity news website TMZ.com has said that both were drinking, according to alcohol tests. Sheen is free on bail pending a further hearing on March 15, although Mueller has said repeatedly she wants the case dropped and the two are attempting to reconcile.
"As a preventative measure, Charlie Sheen has entered a rehabilitation facility. He will take some time off from his series 'Two and a Half Men.' He has asked that his privacy be honored. No further statements are planned," publicist Stan Rosenfield said in a statement on Tuesday.
Rosenfield did not immediately return calls for further comment. TMZ.com said Sheen would spend two weeks in rehab.
Sheen plays a womanizing bachelor in "Two and a Half Men," the top-rated comedy on U.S. television. He had continued to work on the show in Los Angeles while out on bail.
CBS and the show's creator said in a statement on Tuesday that they "support Charlie Sheen in his decision today to begin voluntary in-patient care at a treatment center. We wish him nothing but the best as he deals with this personal matter."
They said shooting would be temporarily suspended. Production for the remainder of the 2009-10 season was due to end in April, industry sources said.
The actor, whose film credits include "Platoon" and "Wall Street," has previously been accused of violence. He pleaded no contest to a 1997 battery charge on his then girlfriend -- and in 2006 his second wife -- Denise Richards, and she obtained a restraining order against him.
Sheen and Mueller married in 2008 and have infant twin sons.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 07:29 am
Campaign groups and agriculture experts issued fresh warnings Tuesday about genetically modified (GM) foods.
The statements follow a recent announcement of the government's plan to commercialize such domestically produced foods.
Rural sectors are being urged to promote the commercialization of new GM foods based on scientific evaluations and management, according to a document issued January 31 by the central committee of the Communist Party of China.
And in November, the Ministry of Agriculture for the first time granted safety certificates to domestically produce two types of GM paddy rice and one type of GM corn.
The bio-engineered crops are being planted in central Hubei and eastern Shandong Provinces on trial bases and are "expected to be served at Chinese dinner tables within five years," Zhang Qifa, a professor at Huazhong Agricultural University who studies GM rice, told the Xinhua News Agency.
GM plants, often created to resist pests and insect damage, can indirectly improve output, and GM products are relatively cheaper than traditional foods.
A survey conducted by the official People's Daily website last month polled 50,000 Web users, 84.3 percent of whom said they wouldn't risk their health by buying GM foods, while only 14.2 percent said they would try such foods.
"Rice is the staple food for Chinese people. The government should take a prudent approach toward GM food. We are extremely worried about the risk of GM food to people's health," Fang Lifeng, Greenpeace China spokesman, told the Global Times.
A report released by the World Health Organization in October 2002 suggested that "GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods."
"If the world has not reached a consensus on GM food safety, it would be too proactive and risky to commercialize GM crops on a large scale," Zheng Fengtian, vice dean of the Rural and Agricultural Development Institute at the People's Uni-versity of China, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
And Xue Dayuan, a chief expert on biodiversity at the Nanjing Research Institute of Environmental Sciences, told the Global Times that "although some GM foods are considered safe to consume based on the existing assessment technology, it could still pose safety hazards if more advanced technology is available in the future."
The safety of such foods is also a major point of concern worldwide.
In 2007, French scientists proved that a type of GM corn produced by Monsanto, the world largest seed company, damages people's livers and kidneys.
And in a report published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2008, American scientists said they found that the immune systems of white rats fed with GM corn for extended periods were compromised.
"We don't oppose developing GM grains, which definitely have great potential. But we can't rely too much on them. Traditional grain breeding should still be our priority," Xue said.
"European Union countries react more strongly against GM foods, so the commercialization of GM rice and corn is likely to affect China's export of crops and other related processed foods to the EU countries," Xue added.
In China, the government earmarked 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) to support the research and development of new GM biological products in 2008.
Supporters of GM foods argue that developing them is a landmark decision by China and could save the Chinese grain market from being dominated by many foreign countries.
Clive James, chair of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, wrote in Crop Biotech Update in early December that "China's approval of biotech rice and maize is a landmark decision that could have enormous impact in Asia."
He said China's exertion of "global leadership" could increase the international adoption of biotech food and feed crops, particularly in developing countries.
According to Greenpeace China, most patent holders of GM rice strains sold to China are multinational bio companies, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience.
Public awareness lacking
Knowledge of GM foods is scarce among Chinese.
"GM grains will definitely worsen the public's concerns over food safety in the country, where it is already a problem," a 23-year-old office worker in Beijing surnamed Wu, told the Global Times. "I have no idea of how the rice is produced or whether it poses a risk to our health."
Xue stressed that "The government should increase the transparency of GM food commercialization and educate people about the product."
The proper labeling of GM food is also being urged.
GM foods such as papayas, soybean oil, tomatoes and potatoes have been sold in the country's markets since 2000, but GM labels are rare on the products.
According to the Regulations on the Administration of Labeling Agricultural Genetically Modified Organisms, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2001, all products containing GM ingredients, including seeds, animal feed and food, should be labeled.
"The regulation should be vigorously enforced so as to protect the consumers' right to know," Xue said.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 07:29 am
Internet regulators have rescinded a recently introduced rule that bars individuals from registering Internet domain names ending with .cn.
In the guideline published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Tuesday, individuals are recognized as "eligible operators of websites" although it said information provided by those registering for websites would be verified more strictly.
"The website operator refers to those that provide information service on the Internet, including individuals and enterprises," the guideline said.
Observers said the statement is an indication that individuals would be allowed to register .cn domain names, three months after authorities issued a ban on non-business entities.
The guideline also specified the materials required for registration. Information submitted about all .cn websites, including individual ones, will be verified by September.
A China Central Television report last year criticized the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a government-backed institution in charge of administration of domain names with .cn, for not exercising its legal responsibility to properly manage domain name registration, which lead to the prevalence of pornographic websites.
It said many website addresses with .cn were approved by domain registration agents, even though the information submitted were inaccurate.
The CNNIC then required applicants of .cn domain registration to have business licenses.
It is estimated that more than 1 million individuals were affected by the decision and more than 100,000 websites were forced to shut down, the Southern Metropolis reported.
The decision triggered a rise in the registration of .com and a large number of websites migrating out of the China.
The CNNIC's statistics showed that 180,000 people registered for .com from December 7-14, a 1,300 percent increase compared to the same period in previous year.
"Prohibiting individuals from registering .cn will force them to either register foreign domain names or provide false information upon registration, we should keep the users and websites within the country," Qi Lin, assistant director of CNNIC, said last month.
The restoration of .cn registration didn't appeal to many Internet users. An online poll on admin5.com showed that over 70 percent out of 1,300 responders would refuse to register a .cn address.
"The policy is different everyday, how am I supposed to know if my websites with .cn won't be shut down someday," said one user.
CNNIC figures revealed that .cn domain names in China reached 13.6 million by the end of 2008, a year-on-year increase of 61 percent.
Thursday 25 February 2010 at 07:28 am
With external pressure growing for the yuan to appreciate, some government departments have been emphasizing that stability in the exchange rate should be maintained.
The yuan should be firmly kept at the current exchange rate, which could help allay the potential impact brought by international capital movements engaging in arbitrage, said an article posted by the National Bureau of Statistics on its website Tuesday.
Li Yizhong, Industry and Information Technology Minister, expressed a similar view Sunday. Li said though China's exports are expected to increase by 8 percent this year, compared with last year's drop of 16 percent, they are not likely to recover to a pre-crisis level.
Maintaining a stable yuan at a reasonable and balanced level not only benefits China, but is good for the world economy, Zhong Shan, vice Minister of Commerce, said earlier this month.
Though the departments are not directly involved in the making of exchange rate policies, which are mainly under the authority of the central bank, their viewpoints are believed to have an influence on exchange rate policies.
The statements came as pressure for the yuan's appreciation has been growing. The global economy continues to see signs of recovery, and speculation on a one-off appreciation of the yuan has resumed in the market.
George Soros, the US billionaire currency speculator, said last month at the World Economic Forum that China should allow the yuan to rise "right now."
Jim O'Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg in January that he believes a one-time appreciation of the yuan of as much as 5 percent is likely, as the country needs to deal with inflationary pressures.
The international pressure on the yuan's appreciation is mostly attributed to the country's better economic funda-mentals, strong recovery during the economic crisis and good economic prospects, and huge foreign exchange reserves, Wang Tao, head of China Economic Research at UBS Securities, told the Global Times.
Wang believes a one-time revaluation is not likely, reflecting the government's standpoints.
Premier Wen Jiabao said as early as 2006 that a one-off appreciation of the yuan would not happen.
The belief that through a one-time revaluation the speculation on the yuan's further appreciation would end is not realistic, said Tan Yaling, head of the China Forex Investment Research Institute.
Wang believes the yuan will gradually appreciate 5-6 percent against the dollar this year.
"The weaker than expected export recovery could actually provide a good opportunity for restarting the appreciation of the RMB. The government has been seriously studying the issue of the exchange rate and is increasingly concerned about rising protectionism from abroad," she wrote in a research report February 10.
Tan said there's little room for the yuan to rise, however. Exchange rate policy-making should be targeted at improving the current currency regime, she noted, and not at responding to outside pressure.
Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 07:56 am
A newly formed Czech travel agency is offering escorted trips for pampered toys.
Send them your favorite animal and they will whisk it around the sights of Prague, taking photographs of it against backgrounds like Prague Castle or the Charles Bridge.
The Toy Traveling agency was pitched to a panel of local businessmen for a TV reality show "Den D" by 22-year old decorator Marek Hlavka last week.
The concept was inspired by the 2001 film "Amelie from Montmartre" in which the heroine has pictures of her father's garden gnome posed in front of various world landmarks sent to him to convince him to fulfill his dream of touring the world.
"As we start, we're focusing on north American and Japanese markets, where there is a huge amount of people owning stuffed animals," said Tomio Okamura, one of the businessmen who have decided to invest in the idea.
He and former Czech minister of information technology Dana Berova have agreed to invest an initial 150,000 crowns ($7,880) each in the project.
In the past week, the venture's website sendyourdarling.com has logged over 15,000 visitors.
"We are very surprised with such a massive interest from clients both from here and from abroad -- we really did not expect that," Hlavka said in an email.
One recurrent request has come from Japan where several toy owners are anxious to have snaps taken at a Bayern Munich match.
Others have been asking for pictures of their stuffed animals enjoying a picnic or a massage.
The cost ranges from 90 euros ($121.5) to 150 euros.
"The most expensive package includes a massage, which takes place on a special rug laid out at a place with the view of the Charles Bridge. We light candles and incense sticks, lay down the plush toy on its back and Mr. Hlavka starts the massage," Okamura said.
The dearest package also includes a cushion and a duvet to provide a comfortable journey for the stuffed client to Prague and then back to its owner.
Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 07:56 am
What's the capital of Australia? If you answered Sydney, you're wrong but in good company, with travel website VirtualTourist.com (www.virtualtourist.com) coming up with a list of the 10 most surprising non-capital cities in the world.
"We've been conditioned to think that because a certain city is the biggest or most popular in its state or country it must be the capital, but that's often not the case. I think some of the cities named on this list might really shock people," VirtualTourist.com general manager Giampiero Ambrosi said.
1. New York City, New York
It may be king of the hill and the top of the heap, but only figuratively. NYC is not the state capital, an honor given to the upstate town of Albany, which is also the birthplace of perforated toilet paper.
2. Sydney, Australia
Iconic though its harbor and opera house may be, it doesn't get star billing. Canberra, which is just a few years away from its centennial celebration, is actually capital of the land "Down Under."
3. Chicago, Illinois
They may have the market cornered on deep dish pizza and football, but the Windy City is the only state title this big city has. Springfield, home to Abraham Lincoln and the annual state fair, is actually the Midwestern state's capital.
4. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
It's fun, exciting and has something for everyone, but that still doesn't make it Brazil's capital. While the city famous for the carnival used to be the capital, Brasilia now takes that position.
5. Istanbul, Turkey
It may have served as capital to ancient Romans and Ottomans, but that designation is long gone for Istanbul. Ankara, a city that is perhaps most famous for its angora-producing goats, is the capital.
6. Geneva, Switzerland
Neither this nor Zurich serve as this precise country's capital. The picturesque, tranquil, UNESCO-recognized town of Bern holds this honor.
7. Johannesburg, South Africa
Interestingly, South Africa has three capital cities, none of which are "Jo'Burg". Divided by branch of government, the capitals are: capital of the judiciary is Bloemfontein, capital of the administrative branch is Pretoria with Cape Town acting as the country's legislative capital.
8. Timbuktu, Mali
Mysterious, exotic, and perhaps the country's most recognizable name, it takes second place to the city of Bamako. Not only is Bamako supposedly the fastest growing city in Africa, but it has emerged as a world-respected center for music, attracting huge industry names to its local pubs where hometown artists play through the night.
9. Las Vegas, Nevada
Betting types gambling on the City of Sin also being the state capital would find themselves with empty pockets. The more family-oriented Carson City wins this hand.
10. Casablanca, Morocco
Not only is Casablanca not the capital of Morocco, neither are the other two top contenders, Fez or Marrakesh. Peaceful and culture-rich Rabat serves as this North African country's capital.
Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 07:56 am
Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of the Pakistan-based Iranian Sunni rebel group Jundallah, has been captured, Iran's English-language satellite channel Press TV reported Tuesday.
Rigi was reportedly captured on a flight from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, to Kyrgyzstan, Press TV said, without providing any further details.
However, Press TV's website quoted the public relations department of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry as saying that Rigi had been arrested in an operation in eastern Iran.
Jundallah, or Peoples' Resistant Movement of Iran, is an insurgent Sunni Islamic organization based in Balochistan of Pakistan that claims to fight for the rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran.
Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 07:54 am
Skyrocketing hotel rates in Hainan province during the Spring Festival holiday scared away tourists and tainted Hainan's image as "China's Hawaii", travel experts said.
Hainan, China's tropical southern island, attracted a record number of tourists seeking leisure or investment opportunities during the Spring Festival holiday. But hotels in Sanya, a city in Hainan, only had a 60 percent occupancy rate, down from 90 percent in previous years, travel experts said.
The province faced criticism from the media and the public for unreasonably high hotel rates and exorbitant charges for services.
The hotel rates in Hainan soared to an unbelievable level during the festival. For example, prices for a room at the Hilton Sanya Resort during the festival started at 11,138 yuan a night.
For some, the hiked prices did not bring any improvement in service.
Fang Hua, who traveled in his car from Guangzhou, Guangdong province, to Hainan last week, said he was disappointed with the poor service.
The no-star hotel he stayed at charged 1,500 yuan for a standard room per night during the festival, up from the usual 200 yuan.
Moreover, when Fang asked the hotel to fix problems in his room - no hot water and blocked plumbing - the hotel did not do anything and also refused to give him another room, because the hotel was full.
"The rate is that of a five-star hotel, but the service is that of a one-star hotel. How can it expect customers to return?" he asked.
The hike in hotel rates is bigger than in the past. Insiders said hotels and travel agencies had high expectations for the travel market during this year's Spring Festival, as not only tourists but also potential investors who think highly of Hainan's real estate market were planning to visit the island during the holiday.
The island secured the central government's support at the end of last year to develop it into a top international tourist destination by 2020.
According to the latest official statistics, at least 1.06 million tourists from home and abroad visited the island between Feb 13 and 19, up 18 percent year-on-year. The province yielded 2.8 billion yuan ($410 million) of tourist revenue in the week, up 62 percent.
Media reports said local tour agencies had booked thousands of hotel rooms and hoped to sell them to tourists at a premium.
But the unusually high price eventually scared away many budget-conscious tourists, who instead camped on public beaches or turned to cheaper family hotels.
Liu Qin, from Lishui, Zhejiang province, who stayed at a family hotel with her husband, said the camping idea is brilliant and romantic.
"Next time, I will bring a tent and camp under the coconut trees," she said.
Yoee.com, a leading travel website, said in a press release yesterday that the average hotel room occupancy rate in Sanya was estimated at only 60 percent during the Spring Festival holiday.
"In the past, occupancy rates for the Spring Festival holidays were more than 90 percent. But this year, the occupancy rate at high-end hotels in Sanya slumped by 15 to 20 percent on average," said Xiao Baojun, who is in charge of Hainan Kang-Tai International Travel Service Co Ltd.
Those who scalped hotel rooms suffered huge losses. Haikou Civil Holiday, a local large travel service, booked at least 1,000 hotel rooms in Sanya. But more than 200 rooms remained vacant during the holiday, incurring a loss of 1.5 million yuan, said General Manager Jiang Yueqin.
"It (the unusual price hike in the holiday) reflects an immature market. It is near-sighted, and will eventually harm the tourist industry of Hainan," said Dai Guofu, deputy chairman of Hainan Association of Tourist Attractions.
Wang Yiwu, a professor with Hainan University, suggested the industry association should make a full investigation of market demand and give guidance to the hotels.
"Hainan has unique natural resources in China, but at a time when going abroad is convenient, Hainan is no longer the only choice. For the same money, many people choose to travel abroad," he said.
On Sunday, hotel rates in Hainan returned to their normal level.
A 22,300-yuan-per-night suite at one hotel during the festival dropped to the normal price of only 3,050 yuan, according to Ctrip.com, a leading online travel service.
On average, the booking price for a standard room at a five-star hotel in Sanya dropped to 1,300 yuan this week, which is only one-tenth of the rate during the festival, it said.
Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 07:54 am
Tweaking the idea of flash-mobs is flash-play, meeting a stranger in an unfamiliar city for the day. Mu Qian explores further
This weekend, why not fly to a random city and spend the day with a stranger, part at the end of the day and never see each other again?
It sounds like a romantic film, but this is a novel activity for some young urban Chinese called "shanwan", or "flash-play".
The flash-play community on douban.com is one of the most popular in China and has signed up thousands of members, while websites devoted to flash-play have also emerged. On QQ, the country's most popular instant messaging service, several flash-play groups have been established.
These flash-players even have a slogan, which is splashed on the home page of bbs.oyesgo.com: "To meet a stranger in a strange city for coffee."
"Because of my high-pressure work, I use weekends to adjust my life. Fortunately, there is fast transport, the airplane, which can take me to another city and back in a short time," says Li Xu, a 26-year-old banker in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
"For me, going to a strange city is less about traveling. It's more about relaxation."
Li usually books a flight and then contacts one or two companions through the Internet to see if they want to go too. He prefers to travel with someone, but if not will go on his own.
"The fun of traveling lies not only in sightseeing, but also in meeting people. The fun of a trip will be ultimately realized when you get to know a strange city and strangers," Li says.
He invented the term flash-play, inspired by terms like "flash-mob", which refers to a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public space, perform a pointless act, and then quickly disperse. He created a page for flash-play on the knowledge-sharing website zhidao.baidu.com, and contributes content.
According to the web page, flash-play means: "A form of trip in which people find companions quickly through the Internet, and use advanced transportation to travel to another city together."
It is characterized, firstly, by brevity of time. A flash-play is usually limited to one day and does not extend overnight. If flash-players get along well during the day, they can continue to be together the next day, but that is not considered flash-play any more.
Second, an airplane is the preferred mode of transport, because of time considerations. In typical flash-play, participants fly to the destination after work on Friday and meet up with their prospective companion on Saturday morning. The flash-players may fly back home in the evening when the flash-play ends, and take a rest on Sunday before beginning work again on Monday.
Third, because of the previous two conditions, the destination for flash-play is usually a city with an airport or facilities for other forms of convenient transportation, and preferably a place unfamiliar to the flash-players. The relative strangeness of the city will be compounded by the unfamiliarity between the flash-players, which makes the trip more exciting and challenging.
Fourth, the participants go Dutch on any fees during the trip.
Li's first flash-play happened on March 1, last year, in Guangzhou. His companion was a young woman named Shu Fan, from Shantou, Guangdong province. After meeting at a Guangzhou subway station, they visited the Chen Clan Academy in the morning, had dimsum at noon, and went to Yuexiu Park in the afternoon.
All that Li knew of Shu after the trip was that she was "a 20-something interpreter of Japanese", but he enjoyed the trip and her company, especially her tales about traveling.
"There might be surprises and disappointments in a flash-play, but I believe one is rewarded most of the time," he says.
Since then he has had other flash-plays, including trips to Qingdao, Dalian and Xiamen. After each trip, he rarely contacts his companions again, except on QQ.
"Why do we have to know each other better?" Li asks.
"The essence of flash-play is to get in a good mood. The companion is just an assistant, a passenger in your life, but that's enough as long as he or she leaves you a good memory," he says.
Li is the founder of the flash-play group on douban.com, where most of the members are single white-collar workers, or freelancers in their 20s.
Tang Yao, a 23-year-old clerk at a Beijing company, took a one-day trip to Tianjin with three other flash-players last November. Taking the bullet train, they arrived in Tianjin within half an hour, and spent the day at Tianjin's scenic spots, streets and a park.
It was Tang's first flash-play experience. She says she chose to go to Tianjin with flash-players because her friends didn't have time to go with her, and she was also curious about traveling with strangers.
"I don't care so much about whom I travel with, as long as they are not disagreeable," she says. "I have a lot of pressure at work and an occasional short trip to another city refreshes me. Life should be like this," Tang says.
On douban.com there are hundreds of posts calling for flash-plays, but they often fall flat.
Li Xiaoyan, a young woman who works in Beijing, called for companions for a flash-play but later cancelled.
"I'm still not prepared for flash-play. I like to travel with close friends, which gives me a feeling of safety and makes me happy wherever we go," she says. "Flash-players probably have a different attitude."
Flash-players generally fall into two main groups: Those who like to travel, and those who want to network or party.
Xu Xueyi, a 26-year-old financial consultant from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, belongs to the former group. She says that before embarking on a journey she usually goes on forums to find a companion, who she meets at the destination.
"It's different from traveling with friends. Meeting a stranger to travel holds more surprises and has more of an 'on the road' feel," she says.
When she traveled to Lanzhou, Gansu province, a local companion who she found on the Internet took her to eat authentic local food and introduced to her interesting places, such as a music festival. The same sort of thing happened in Lhasa.
Others like to organize cyber-friends from the same city for activities such as dinner and sports, and call such activities flash-play, although it is different from how the pioneers define it.
"For me, flash-play means meeting cyber-friends that you do not know in real life," says Li Guokui, a 29-year-old consultant in Beijing.
For this Chinese New Year, Li didn't return to his home in Henan province, but instead stayed in Beijing. He hung out with some people whom he got to know after posting an on-line request.
"I just wanted to find some people to kill the loneliness together. Who cares whether it is flash-play or not?" he says.
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 10:00 am
Foreign companies and investors are increasingly attracted by the growing domestic demand in China and are seeking quality information to help them better comprehend the growth story, the CEO of a London-based brokerage said.
Laurie Pinto, CEO of North Square Blue Oak (NSBO), said Monday in the firm's Beijing office that while the credit crunch that originated in the US has hurt liquidity and confidence in the Western world, China remains a bright spot, with its economy still growing at a fast pace.
Pinto said that the next stage of growth in China, "which is not just for roads and bridges but of the service economy and internal consumption in the Chinese market, will create very strong opportunities."
Investors such as Anthony Bolton of Fidelity International have been preparing to cash in on such opportunities.
Bolton, one of the most successful money managers in the UK, has deferred his retire-ment to set up a new China equity fund in Hong Kong.
Botlon said in a blog piece posted on his company's website in Novermber 2009, "I have become increasingly convinced by the investment opportunities available in China today."
The company said February 9 that it plans to raise about 630 million pounds ($982 million) for Fidelity China Special Situations, the closed-ended fund run by Bolton.
Not only are foreign fund managers interested in trading China-related stocks, but foreign companies, such as Swiss watchmakers and Western drug companies, are also looking forward to selling in China, Pinto said.
Long Feifei, a shop assistant at a Swatch store in Dongzhimen in downtown Beijing, said that a new collection of Swatch watches, based on the traditional Chinese concept of eight natural elements and released in early January, have sold especially well.
Long said that during the peak seasons, such as Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day, the store, which is mid-sized compared with other Swatch stores in the city, can sell about 30 watches a day; most customers are young, urban Chinese.
The latest data from the Ministry of Commerce showed that domestic consumption is robust and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been increasing.
From February 13-19, retail sales of consumer goods across the country reached 340 billion yuan ($49.8 billion), up 17.2 percent from the same Lunar New Year period in 2009, according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, FDI in January was $12.6 billion, up 20.34 percent year-on-year, the sixth consecutive month of growth.
Pinto said that as China and the West, especially the US, are increasingly intertwined, every-one in the Western investment community is trying to understand what China stories are really moving the stock markets, as well as the real intentions of the government.
However, Pinto pointed out that the Western media is politically conservative and media outlets often fail to give an accurate interpretation of what is actually important and what is not in China.
He expects research firms and thinktanks, which provide different but more accurate and commercially useful information on China, will prosper along with the Chinese economy.
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 10:00 am
Real estate developers' enthusiasm for buying land lots remain unabated despite the flat home sales and tightened property policies.
The Beijing Land Reserve Center (BLRC) announced on its website that 10 plots, with nearly half intended for residential use, started trading on the city's market Monday.
The commercial use NE19- la plot, called the last "golden plot" in the Central Business District, will inevitably be considered a hot buy.
Although no online bidding occurred until late Monday, some developers with huge capital have paid attention to the plot for nearly one month.
On January 29, when BLRC listed the available plot's information, Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China, wrote on his blog that the standard for bidders' eligibility was too high, saying that "only one developer in the world could achieve that requirement," hinting at Sino- Ocean Land Holdings, which admitted it was interested in the plot.
Would-be buyers of the plot must be a consortium of a real estate developer and financial institutions, one of which must have registered capital no less than 5 billion yuan ($732 mil-lion), while the developer must have no less than 3 billion yuan ($439.2 million) in registered capital.
The media has been abuzz over whether the requirements for developers who want to bid on the plot are too high, and whether it was good for fair competition among all developers.
And Zeng Zanrong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources, addressed the controversy by saying the buyer of the plot has not been internally "fixed," and the bidder who offers the highest price will become the owner.
There is no doubt that developers have huge interests in high value plots, judging from the fierce debates.
Jia Wolong, chairman of the China Real Estate and Business Cooperative Federation, said developers with strong capital strength have begun to pay attention to the commercial real estate market, since fewer suppressing policies have been enacted in that sector.
"The central government has released policies to cool down the over-heated residential market, and whether stricter policies will be issued in the future is uncertain," Jia said.
"Consequently some developers have interests in commercial properties to satisfy investors' demands."
Jia added that "developers are still betting the central government's future policies will not be too serious, and will still buy rare plots for residential use, especially in Beijing and Shanghai."
In Shanghai, OCT Properties Co. paid 7.02 billion yuan ($1.03 billion) for a plot with a record floor price of 52,783 yuan ($7,727.43) per square meter.
And Cinda Real Estate Co., Hainan Zhenghe Industrial Group Co. and Lander Real Estate also disclosed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Monday that they bought plots one or two days before the Spring Festival.
Lu Qilin, deputy director of the Shanghai YouWin Real Estate Research Center, said "the developers earned lots of money last year when the market boomed, and of course they will buy plots for further development."
The Ministry of Land and Resources has several times tried to lean on developers that buy large tracts of land and then don't develop them.
However, Lu said that "the punishments are still not serious enough, and some develop-ers will buy plots even without considering the cost."
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 09:59 am
Internet users are overwhelming in support of legalizing same-sex marriage, according to an unscientific online poll.
The proposal was seen by 350,000 readers as of Monday, after it appeared on a forum on people.com.cn.
More than 87,000 respondents said they would support gay marriage while 1,000 opposed the idea.
A gay rights group affiliated with the Youth Internet Association, an NGO that initiated the poll, said they hope the survey would win support for the same-sex marriage.
"People.com.cn is a government-backed website on which our leaders are keeping a close watch. If the survey causes great attention, the proposal might be submitted to the coming two sessions in March," said a person who initiated the poll.
The two sessions occurs every year when the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference convenes.
"I'm not surprised by the number as it is estimated that there are about 35 million homosexuals in China," Yang Ziguang, coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center (LGBT), told the Global Times Monday.
"It doesn't mean every gay wants to get married, but they want the right to do it," he said.
Despite the increasing attention and social tolerance of gay couples, it is still a taboo in society.
Some gays have taken their fight to the public at least in a personal way.
Two men, 47-year-old Zeng Ge and 27-year-old Xiao Pan, reportedly "got married" during a ceremony inside a small bar in Chengdu, Sichuan Province last month. Some viewed it as China's "first" gay marriage although it was a symbolic one.
Previously, gay marriage proposals have been submitted to the two sessions several times, without success. Earlier this month, Zhu Lieyu, a lawyer and representative to the Guangdong provincial people's congress, submitted a plan for gay couples to tie the knot.
He said Guangdong should be the first province to allow same-sex marriage.
"Without official registration, gay couples have to face many social problems that opposite-sex couple don't have, including adopting children, the right to heritage and taking responsibility for a partner's family," Zhu told the Global Times.
"Guangdong, a province that is famous for being open and tolerant, should make the first move to fill void in the country's laws," he said.
A gay advocate in Guangzhou, who calls himself "A Qiang," told the Global Times Monday that the chance of getting approval is very slim.
"Gay Chinese prefer to express their voices and take action on the Internet. That's why the poll attracted that much attention," he said. "It is just an online poll, it is not persuasive."
But he said legalizing gay marriages would save gay people from a lot of trouble.
He said his former partner who was with him for over 10 years married a woman due to family pressure.
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 09:59 am
Red-faced and choked with anger, Liu Tianxiao raised a bottle of mineral water over his head and hurled it at the moderator of a public hearing on water prices in Harbin. The plastic bottle missed its target and landed on the floor without breaking. There were no injuries except to the thrower's ego.
"I've raised my hand six times, why don't you allow me to speak?" Liu shouted at the director of the Harbin Price Control Administration, who appeared stunned and speechless.
A couple of participants who had fallen half-asleep in the meeting hall were suddenly jolted awake.
The meeting had been called to let consumer advocates voice their grievances over a water price hike in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China.
As one of the city's 13 consumer representatives to the hearing, Liu had grown increasingly frustrated at not being heard. He later recalled that the atmosphere inside the hearing room was rather "informal and lackadaisical as participants from the government nodded off at their desks and grass-roots representatives chatted with each other while munching on sunflower seeds."
"Come on, you are at a public hearing, not a food market," Liu told the Global Times.
He said he grasped the water bottle and hurled it "not only following the instinct but also demanding respect for freedom of expression."
Video replay tells the story
Liu attended the hearing believing that he could voice his opposition to a proposed 33 percent increase in the price of residential water, from 1.8 yuan ($0.26) per cubic meter to 2.4 yuan ($0.35).
During the debate session, he repeatedly raised his left hand higher than other hands in the room but wasn't recognized, as seen on the hearing's highly-publicized video.
"I cried out so loud that everyone in the hall should have noticed, except the host, who stared at me in an accusative way and asked for another's opinion instead," Liu told the Global Times.
"Not allowing a consumer representative to speak is equal to depriving the public of its voice. "
Liu's first-ever "throw" in China's public hearing history turned out to be effective.
Following a heavy silence in the room, he was given a chance to speak in opposition to the pricing plan, though the moderator claimed that it was not "the menace of the bottle" but Liu's "eagerness that affected everyone around."
Almost out of breath, Liu was flustered by his own emotional outburst and had to rush through his well-prepared speech titled"Water brother, run slower."
"It lasted no longer than five minutes. I struggled to make some points, but was unable to finish the other nine arguments," he said.
In contrast, participants representing the Harbin Water Supply Drainage Group elaborated their views at a more relaxed pace, arguing that the city's Mopanshan water supply project, bankrolled with a loan of 228 million yuan, had placed a financial burden on local water supply companies.
They said the below-market residential water price in Harbin hadn't been adjusted since December 2001, which went against the rule of thumb.
Liu disagreed.
"It's not the right timing to boost water prices amid the economic downturn," he said. "Such a move, part of a nationwide campaign, is like a tender robbery. "
The GDP of Harbin is ranked 17 among 27 big cities in China, with the sixth-highest water price even without a hike, reported the Harbin Daily.
Liu spent half a year walking through Harbin neighborhoods to gather the opinions of local residents; talking to old folks playing chess, people lining up at bus stops, buyers in front of newsstands and people strolling through public squares.
The consensus was no surprise: Some 99 percent of locals surveyed were against the price hike.
"Most Chinese are pretty thrifty in using water. I saw a middle-aged woman, also a laid-off worker, watering flowers with rice water and cleaning the floor with wastewater, " Liu said.
Residential water consumption in Harbin, with a population of 10.5 million, amounted to 99.8 million cubic meters last year.
At the hearing, Liu was surprised to find himself the only consumer representative who openly objected to the water price increase.
"Administrative management of China's consumer market is rather loose. Citizens have few ways to protect their rights. That's why most people become resigned to the fees charged for public utilities," Liu told the Global Times.
"But if you don't tell the authorities what you strongly want and believe, things will rarely happen as you wish."
Liu was disillusioned when the Heilongjiang Provincial Price Bureau announced its final decision on January 1. The water price increase was approved, effective the same day, according to the administration's official website.
Borrowed idea
China's public hearing system was officially introduced in the 1996 Law on Administrative Punishment.
Borrowed from the West, the idea quickly took off in China.
In 1998, a public hearing system was added to the Law on Pricing, stipulating that authorities must hold a hearing before fixing the price of certain public services, especially utilities.
On January 12, 2002, the State Development Planning Commission organized the country's first hearing to set prices for railway tickets.
Between 2004 and 2006, Liu attended three other hearings on utility prices. He was amazed to see behind-the-scenes decision-making being brought to center stage in full public view.
"It forced pricing departments to become more transparent in their working style," he said.
Lately, however, Liu is dismayed that the hearing system is losing its spirit of openness.
"It's disappointing that people don't really cherish the opportunity to fight back when their interests are threatened."
At the water hearing, he suspected that men in black in front of the hearing hall were there to "watch and make eye-contact with the representatives."
Liu was extremely uncomfortable to be seated in a corner of the room.
"A qualified hearing should be open, fair, impartial and effective, according to the Pricing Law and Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers," he said.
Liu's skepticism over the hearing's validity was echoed by an overwhelming number of media reports and online posts questioning the true identity of consumer representatives at the meeting.
The China Youth Daily reported that Sun Jing, a community official, was seated to replace Yang Xiumei, a grass-roots representative and a no-show at the meeting.
Two people supposed to be grass-roots representatives were later discovered to be a retired official from the Harbin Office for Letters and Calls and the chairman of a hotel management company, it said.
All representatives attending the hearing were given seats by the Harbin Consumers Association instead of being randomly selected by the Harbin Price Control Administration, Wang Wenbin, General Office director of the administration, was quoted as saying.
The country's public hearing system thus came under fire for "being merely shows," "aiming at hikes" and "faking representatives."
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the official organ to supervise price hearings, launched an investigation and released the result on January 4, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Investigators found that the chair reserved for the absentee Yang Xiumei remained vacant throughout the hearing.
The commission said the Harbin Consumer Association recommended 13 consumer representatives under the Measures for Hearing on Government-fixed Prices, but switched the identities of two representatives by mistake. The report didn't explain the association's mistake.
It also claimed that Liu Tianxiao's speech lasted some 10 minutes, the longest in the hearing.
Pros and cons
From January 6 to 13, the Department of Price under the NDRC publicized daily articles in a special online column to defend the country's price hearing system.
"It's unreasonable to believe that the price hearings were carried out just for show. Why would the government invite unprofessional actors and actresses to ruin its own image?" said one of the articles.
Other articles pointed out that "a price hearing is not a meeting for decision-making votes," adding that "the public misunderstands its function" as the two key purposes of price hearings are "to improve the pricing plan based on participants' views and relay the feedback of public opinion to higher authorities."
In response to Liu's behavior, the NDRC said the bottle-throwing incident was "inappropriate" but "reflected a smooth channel to gather public opinion."
The commission acknowledged, however, that the hearing system in China has many deficiencies and it urged administrative departments to improve its credibility and enhance transparency.
"Local governments should publicize the random selection process of participants on TV or the Internet and open hearing materials to the media and the public, including pricing documents," an NDRC article said.
"It's also necessary to invite deputies to the people's congress, experts, third parties and ordinary citizens to oversee the process."
Some academic experts say the hearing process is flawed in other ways.
Wang Xixin, a professor of law at Peking University, said the system requires a fundamental reform rather than technical changes proposed by the NDRC.
"It's quite ironic that the Measures for Hearing on Government-fixed Prices issued by the commission employed the term 'hearing participants' when their powers were not strictly defined by law," he told the Global Times.
Wang said that some local government officials are "losing control of public hearings, making them just window decorations in a melodrama."
"Honestly speaking, the NDRC is controlling all the roles in the pricing game: the judge, the host, the players and the arbiter. One way to improve the reality is to challenge the commission's monopoly on discourse."
Yu Hui, director of the Center for Public Policy in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the core problem "lies in how strictly the government traces the responsibility of those who violate the regulations."
There is no mature interest group representing the diversified voices in a multi-faceted China, according to Ge Shoukun, director of the Institute of Economy in Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences.
"One solution is to form a scientific pricing mechanism that balances the interests of different social groups. It's impossible to satisfy everyone, but at least you can satisfy the majority."
Qiao Xinsheng, a professor at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, warned the public not to expect too much from price hearings.
"The government organizes them mainly for consultation. We should pay more attention to the National People's Congress."
Cult hero
"Karl Marx already described an ideal world to have faith in," Liu told the Global Times.
"It's a society where justice and fairness are encouraged, so all individuals have equal allocation of resources."
With no political affiliation and no religious belief, the consumer rights activist finds it hard to believe that his bottled-up anger at the water hearing made him a cult figure with his own fan clubs on baidu.com, tianya.cn and other popular Web forums.
"The bottle dashed to the ground wasn't lethal, but Liu's outburst has sparked extensive questions and investigations of the hearing, attracted the attention of hundreds of millions of people and put pressure on local authorities," commented the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend.
"It highlights the greatest difference of our times – the public no longer whispers or complains," it said.
Meanwhile, Liu has quieted down after he made an appeal to reopen the water price hearing, but failed.
His dream of running a consumer rights NGO and becoming a deputy to the local people's congress faded as no one provided him substantial support.
Old friends and his family advised him to take a rest.
He is now immersed in a pile of decade-old newspaper clippings and busy working on a new scrapbook.
The only trouble in life that struck a nerve recently was when he reluctantly searched in his back pocket for an extra 30 yuan to cover the family's tap water bill.
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 09:58 am
U.S. President Barack Obama Monday released a health care reform proposal in an attempt to save the bill that has been stuck in Congress since the Democratic Party lost the absolute majority in the Senate.
"President has now put forth a proposal that incorporates the work the House and the Senate have done and adds additional ideas from Republican members of Congress," said the proposal posted on the White House official website.
"The proposal will make health care more affordable, make health insurers more accountable, expand health coverage to all Americans, and make the health system sustainable, stabilizing family budgets, the federal budget and the economy," it said.
However, the proposal did not receive welcome from the Republican side.
"In short, President's proposal continues to defy the will of the American people and contradict longstanding federal policy by providing federal subsidies to private health plans that cover elective abortions," said House Republican Leader John Boehner.
He pointed out that the proposal still uses government funds to subsidize elective abortion, although it includes a "state op-out" provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion.
"The president has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of healthcare based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected," he added.
The proposal was made public days before a bipartisan meeting on the health care reform, which will be broadcast live across the nation.
President Obama hopes that Republicans can also make public their version of health reform proposal prior to the meeting to allow American public to be thoroughly informed of the issue, said a White House official earlier on Monday at a teleconference.
The proposal features five accomplishments that aim at putting American families and small business owners in control their own health care.
It will make insurance more affordable with one of the largest middle class tax cut for the health care in history and cover 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured.
The proposal will also set up a new competitive health insurance market that can offer Americans more options, though it does not include the public option that Obama's initial proposal had.
It can lead to the reduction of the deficit by 100 billion dollars in the first decade and about 1 trillion dollars over the second.
The House of Representatives and the Senate has separately passed their own version of the health care reform bill but the unified version was stalled in Congress after Scott Brown, a Republican, won the special election for a Senate seat in Massachusetts, ending Democratic Party's supermajority status in the floor.
Obama said in his first State of Union on Jan. 27 that he would be seeking bipartisan cooperation to push forward with the legislations.
To seek agreement with Republicans on health care reform, Obama administration include some ideas from the rival camp in the proposal, such as establishing a comprehensive Medicare and Medicaid sanctions database and using of technology for real-time data review.
On the other hand, Republicans have made clear the areas they can agree, including access for all individuals to health care, joint efforts by individuals, small business and other groups to get health insurance at lower cost.
Monday 22 February 2010 at 08:17 am
Tens of thousands of people grabbed prized possessions and fled their houses in the middle of the night following rumors of an imminent earthquake in Shanxi province yesterday.
The rumor - which is believed to have started after a series of earthquake drills at local hospitals - warned that a destructive 6.0 magnitude quake would strike in the cities of Jinzhong, Changzhi, Jincheng and Taiyuan, the provincial capital.
The rumor triggered widespread panic and prompted tens of thousands of people in dozens of cities and counties to leave their houses and run into the streets in the middle of the night.
The chaos forced officials at the Shanxi provincial earthquake administration to officially deny the rumor on its website yesterday. Officials called for calm and warned that only the provincial government could release an earthquake forecast.
Lang Xiaojing, a resident in Taiyuan, said she was very frightened when she first heard the rumor.
"I received two phone calls from my friends at about 4 am and was told that the earthquake would happen at about 6 am. Then I saw many people and cars were moving out into the streets," she said.
Lang said she woke her husband and son, removed 20,000 yuan ($2,900) that she had stored in a bedside table, called her brother and then fled the house.
When they emerged from the property, hundreds of residents were already outside discussing the rumor of the imminent earthquake.
Later, residents received a text message from the provincial government that denied the rumor and encouraged residents to return to their houses.
According to local media reports, the rumor began after earthquake emergency drills were conducted in local hospitals between Jan 6-13 this year.
Shanxi Youth Daily reported that a text message circulated among residents in January saying: "Recently hospitals have been busy with earthquake drills and storing supplies of medicines. This shows that a strong earthquake seems likely to happen. Please prepare for the coming quake and avoid staying in buildings."
The newspaper reported that this message was later modified to say that an earthquake warning was listed on the official website of the provincial earthquake administration and was predicted to be 6.0 in magnitude.
As rumors about the earthquake grew, more people panicked and tried to warn their friends and relatives.
The People's Daily Online reported that people used loudspeakers to wake their neighbors in some villages. Locals were told that they should get out of bed and leave their houses to avoid injury in the earthquake. Many moved their household appliances out of the house.
This is not the first time that the provincial earthquake administration has denied the quake rumors.
On Jan 22, officials at the provincial and city earthquake administrations said experts believed there would be no destructive earthquakes in Shanxi in the near future.
However, two days later, the China Earthquake Administration detected a 4.8 magnitude- earthquake in the province's Yuncheng county, which caused damage to hundreds of houses
Monday 22 February 2010 at 08:16 am
Painful disease affects estimated 600,000 people worldwide
SHANGHAI:Seven-year-old Lu Zhongqian was born healthy in July 2002 in Beijing but 11 months later his father Lu Jinsheng discovered his son was different from others.
"I found ecchymosis (bruising) on his body and joints that we could not explain. So we sent him to a hospital," recalled Lu, a worker with the Ministry of Railways in Beijing.
The boy was soon diagnosed with hemophilia, a congenital bleeding disorder that affects males and which usually becomes apparent in the first years of life when the child starts to move about independently.
It is estimated that about 600,000 males have hemophilia worldwide. Approximately one in every 5,000 men are born with hemophilia A.
The worried parents then began a long quest to seek a cure for their son. Aside from going to hospitals, they contacted volunteers of the patient group Hemophilia Home of China (HHC) to learn about modern treatments through its website and related medical publications.
"Now my son is almost cured, and I'm so glad to see him going to primary school as a normal kid, though he is one year behind his contemporaries because of his illness," said the proud father, watching his son bouncing on to the stage to sing a song in front of a group of doctors dedicated to treating the disease in Shanghai.
Lu Zhongqian is just one of the hundreds of hemophilia patients in China that received support from HHC and the Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which have been working together towards improving the care and treatment of hemophilia patients in China.
The latter has launched a two-phase project to help teach medical staff, patients and their families regarding treatments and promote knowledge about the disease in China.
Since 200the Novo Nordisk Hemophilia Foundation (NNHF) has launched a 3 million yuan first-phase project in China focusing on education, screening and registration within the six main medical centers in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Hefei, Guangzhou and Jinan.
In China, a nation with a population of 1.3 billion, only about 5 percent of the estimated 130,000 sufferers are registered and treated, largely because of a lack of awareness of the disease in China's vast countryside.
NNHF helped launch China's first hemophilia web-based registry system and, so far, more than 6,200 patients have signed up.
NNHF also helps fund six laboratory technicians from three medical centers in China to study at the Royal Free Hospital Laboratory in London and aided the training of 330 physicians, 89 nurses and 65 laboratory technicians in China.
So far, a total of 1,616 people with hemophilia have been tested to confirm their diagnosis and the extent of their bleeding disorder.
With a comprehensive training program for healthcare professionals and patients with their families, the NNHF project team also reached out to a total of 464 sufferers and 275 family members to educate them through workshops over the past two years.
It has printed 34,000 copies of related material such as treatment guidelines and nursing manuals concerning the illness.
NNHF announced at the end of last month it would launch the second phase of its project in China, aiming to promote the project to 10 more cities with another investment of 3 million yuan.
All these efforts received positive feedback and support from the nation's health authority, with the Ministry of Health (MOH) of China issuing a formal notice at the end of November last year to require all provincial authorities to launch their registry centers for the illness.
According to Yi Mei, the division chief for Blood Management at the MOH, the ministry will further encourage registration of hemophilia by designating a hospital in each province as responsible for signing up patients and conducting diagnoses.
"We hope that through charity projects such as NNHF, we can improve society's awareness of the project and help educate more patients to improve the quality of their lives eventually," Chen Jun, vice-president of strategic business development at Novo Nordisk China, told China Business Weekly.
"In the first phase, we mainly focus on promoting medical treatment among relatively economically well-off cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. We found out that even in these areas, awareness among doctors and patients was relatively low," he said.
"That's why we are now launching the second phase, to further expand the project's coverage to more inland provinces in central and western China to enable more people from these areas to get first-hand treatment."
Monday 22 February 2010 at 08:15 am
Tens of thousands of residents in northern Shanxi Province fled their homes early Sunday morning, scrambling for open areas after receiving what police later called false information regarding an earthquake prediction.
Hours after the panic, seismological authorities in the region dismissed the earthquake rumors. The incident came almost a month after a 4.8 magnitude quake hit the province.
Jia Wei, deputy director of the Monitoring and Information Center of the Shanxi Seismological Bureau, told the Global Times that the center conducts routine monitoring for seismic activity, but that doesn't mean an earthquake is expected.
"Since Saturday night, we have been receiving numerous calls from the public asking about whether an earthquake will take place in the coming days," Jia said, adding that the bureau's website actually crashed temporarily due to traffic.
"The rumor that a destructive earthquake will strike some areas of the province are groundless, and residents should stop believing such rumors to avoid social panic and to stabilize order," an online statement by the Seismological Bureau of Taiyuan, the capital city, said Sunday.
A Taiyuan police officer who asked to remain anonymous said the speculations were simply rumors, but he declined to respond to questions about the source or intentions of the rumors.
China Business News reported Sunday that the rumor was that an earthquake would "hit the province between 3 am and 6 am Sunday," and word of it spread quickly through 10 cities and counties, including Tai-yuan, Jinzhong, Changzhi and Pingyao.
Loudspeaker announcements awoke some villagers, and streets and parks were popular places of refuge, the newspaper reported.
Cao Hui of Taiyuan said he fled his home at 3 am after receiving an urgent call from one of his friends.
"Earthquake! Earthquake! Get up and run," he said, recalling the telephone warning for the Global Times.
"I doubted it at first and thought it could be a joke. But I started to believe it when I saw hundreds of people standing outside on my block. Some were even holding their bank cards," Cao said.
Similar scenes were seen in Yuncheng, Jinzhong and Pingyao.
Wang Peilu, a Pingyao resident, told the Global Times that a warning on the Internet that a 6.0 earthquake would hit Shanxi early Sunday made him extremely worried.
"My family stayed up dressed the whole night, and we left our door open," Wang said. "Although there was no official confirmation, I wasn't going to risk my life."
On January 24, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck Shanxi Province, three days after the local seismic authorities dismissed a widespread earthquake rumor, local media reported.
According to the Shanxi Youth Daily, that rumor started after intensified earthquake drills staged by local hospitals led some residents to believe that a major earthquake would strike the province.
A widely circulated text message was one source of the rumor, saying, "In recent days, major hospitals in Taiyuan have been busy with earthquake drills, storing medical supplies and selecting qualified doctors and nurses as earthquake rescuers. It seems that Taiyuan is likely to experience a major earthquake soon. Please get prepared and avoid staying in buildings."
Rumors spread fast and developed into several versions, with some even claiming that the provincial seismic bureau said on its website that a magnitude 6.0 earthquake would hit the province.
The local seismic bureau was embarrassed and later clarified that the bureau hadn't predicted a "destructive" earthquake, referring to any earthquake above magnitude 6.0.
The bureau also noted that the province had an average of two earthquakes of similar size every year and said it wasn't necessary to issue warnings.
Statistics by the local seismic authorities indicate that over the past 4,000 years, more than 120 earthquakes above magnitude 4.7 have occurred in Shanxi Province, which contains a fault line with frequent seismic activity.
Globally, an average of 18 earthquakes above magnitude 7.0 hit the world each year, and one or two earthquakes above magnitude 8.0 are expected.
Xu Xu, deputy director-general of the Nanjing Seismological Bureau, told the Global Times Sunday that although several earthquakes have been successfully forecasted in the past, it is still almost technically impossible or extremely difficult to predict a majority of earthquakes.
"Earthquakes are much more devastating than some other disasters and not easy to forecast in advance," he said. "Only government-authorized information can help minimize public panic."
However, the claim that only the government can issue an earthquake forecast does not necessarily mean the government can make an accurate forecast, Shen Jie, a sociology researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Monday 22 February 2010 at 08:15 am
President Hu Jintao became a registered microblogger on a Chinese-language site owned by People's Daily.
It carried a profile that said: General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
The identity of the micro blog account holder on t.people. com.cn was confirmed by the website's receptionist service system Sunday as belonging to the president of China.
By 6 pm Sunday, more than 7,000 people were followers of the account @Hujintao in Chinese characters, which is similar to the Twitter blog.
Updates of the account will be delivered to followers via a browsing page, using Windows Messenger services or the Google G-talks.
On the blog, which was unveiled by People's Daily on February 1, more than 500 bloggers posted comments to Hu's account.
A blogger named Shao Mingbo wrote, "I will keep awake tonight to see who can be the first lucky follower of the account."
An hour later, a blogger named "feiquanmingqin" was hailed as the first follower of President Hu's microblog.
The person wrote, "Calm down, calm down, in response to other blogger's congratulations."
Some bloggers even took the chance to send New Year wishes to Hu.
Blogger "dothink" wrote, "I wish President Hu a happy New Year."
A blogger named Jiubai wrote, "I come here to follow President Hu."
On June 20, 2008, President Hu talked to Net users via the People's Daily online forum, the first time that China's top leaders have conducted direct online communications with Web users.
Monday 22 February 2010 at 08:14 am
China's Education Ministry on Sunday warned students considering studying overseas against Australian schools run by the GEOS group after more than 40 Chinese students were left stranded with the group's collapse.
More than 2,300 students in GEOS group schools across Australia were affected after the college closures. The schools were scattered across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Cairns.
GEOS is a Japanese company which owns hundreds of colleges around the world. The GEOS group has run out of money for its Australian colleges,according to Australian media reports.
Chinese embassies and consulates in Australia are negotiating with local authorities to settle the issue to safeguard students' legitimate rights.
The Education Ministry has drawn up a recommendation list of nearly 15,000 schools in 33 countries worldwide on its website. The recommended schools are relatively trustworthy and reliable.
Australia has been a preferred destination for overseas education for Indian and Chinese students.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the number of Chinese student enrollments was 146,000 by June 2009, up an average annual 16 percent over the past six years.
Sunday 21 February 2010 at 08:15 am
Two new regulations aimed at monitoring working capital loans and personal loans have been put into effect, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), the country's banking watchdog, announced Saturday on its website.
Working capital loans cannot be used in investments including fixed assets and shareholding, the regulation on working capital loans stipulates. The issuance of excessive loans and appropriation of loans should be avoided, according to the regulation.
Face to face interviews will be made necessary when approving personal loans, according to the regulation on personal loans.
The two regulations both state lenders and borrowers should declare the purpose of loans before they are made.
The implementation of the two regulations, aimed at reining in excessive liquidity and preventing potential credit risks, is timely and a must in the current economic context, said Lu Zhengwei, a senior economist at Industrial Bank.
Loan growth in the first month of this year totaled 1.39 trillion yuan ($203.51 billion). "Though it's a bit shy of those extremely high numbers in 2009, a year of extraordinarily loose money policy, this…is a huge amount by any standards," economists led by Lu Ting of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong said in a research note released February 12.
The January data came after the country's monetary authorities began to take actions to control the flood of liquid-ity in the latter part of the first month. It's widely believed loans for the whole year will be about 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.10 trillion), compared with nearly 10 trillion yuan ($1.46 trillion) last year.
Credit growth this year will continue to concentrate on medium- to long-term loans, said Sun Peng, a banking sector analyst with BOCI, a subsidiary of Bank of China (BOC), adding that though banks' operation costs will be raised and their profitability will be affected after the implementation of the regulations, their credit risks will be lowered afterward.
But Lu was concerned the regulations may not prove as feasible as expected.
Personal information including credit records and repayment capability is not so transparent as that of corporations, which poses a challenge to examining the authenticity of information vital to evaluating credit risks, he said.
The declaration of loan use ahead of time stipulated by the regulation is also tough to monitor, Lu said. He said emerging unsecured loans issued by some banks do not make clear the definite purpose of loans. Current banking services may have to be adjusted to conform to the regulations, he said.
Loan growth will stay stable this year, as "financial institutions and regulatory bodies have started to understand each other after the tug of war between the two sides in January," Lu said.
Sunday 21 February 2010 at 08:14 am
Yemen has closed off main waterways leading to its seacoasts at the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea in a bid to prevent "African infiltrators" from entering its soil, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.
The ministry has already commanded the Police Coast Guard (PCG) at the coastal provinces on the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea to shut out the main waterways to ward off African illegal immigrants from infiltrating into the Yemeni territories, read a statement issued by the ministry on its website.
It said this step came in line with the efforts exerted by the Yemeni government to bar "terrorist elements in the Horn of Africa" from sneaking to the Yemeni soil, specially after Somali- based wing of al-Qaida Young Mujahideen (al-Shabab al-Mujahideen) announced its intention to support the Yemeni-based branch of al- Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
"The security agencies have been keeping the Somali refugees in Yemen under constant surveillance," said the ministry, confirming - at the same time that the Yemeni government's commitment to meet obligations towards supporting Somali refugees has not changed.
"The government is keen to continually providing appropriate living conditions for their (Somali refugees) stay on its territory," the ministry added.
Sanaa government, which is stepping up efforts to solve a discontent among southern separate group and implement economic reforms after it ends a six-year fighting with northern Shiite rebels, came under mounting pressure from Washington to turn its focus on fighting al-Qaida affiliate activating within its borders.
Though Yemeni government has long welcomed Somali refugees fleeing their war-torn country and sailing to Yemen, the government is now particularly concerned that al-Qaida infiltrators could be among those new arrivals, local media said.
Yemen hosts 78,000 Somali refugees by the end of 2009 out of 171,000 total registered refugees, according to statistics of the UN refugee agency. Interior Ministry officials say many more Somalis are still unregistered.
Sunday 21 February 2010 at 08:14 am
China's banking regulator has issued two regulations that aim to tighten banks' lending and risk management controls.
Banks must set a lending quota after "prudent calculation" of borrowers' "actual demand" and must not lend excessively, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said in a statement on its website on Saturday.
Banks are also required to improve risk control after granting loans and to be aware of factors that might influence the repaying capabilities of borrowers through inspections and monitoring, the statement said.
For personal lending, CBRC asked banks to be more sophisticated in the management of the lending process, especially on the use of the loans, according to the regulation.
Borrowers will not be able to obtain loans without declaration of a specific use, and they should meet bank representatives in person to avoid false claims, according to CBRC.
The regulations took effect on February12 and aim to achieve systematic management of credit risk and avoidance of loan appropriation, the statement said.
China's banking regulator asked lenders to keep 2010 credit growth at a reasonable pace last month and vowed to tighten supervision of property loans amid increased concern about an asset bubble.
Liu Mingkang, the CBRC chairman, said on January 27 the Chinese government is aiming to restrict credit supply to 7.5 trillion yuan (about $1.1 trillion) in 2010.
China has raised the deposit reserve requirement ratio (RRR) twice this year, after holding it steady for over a year, to handle the "comparatively loose liquidity" while keeping the "moderately easy" monetary policy unchanged, according to the central bank.
China's yuan-denominated lending in 2009 hit a record 9.59 trillion yuan, almost double that of the previous year. New yuan-denominated lending in January stood at 1.39 trillion yuan, down 14.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the People's Bank of China, the central bank.
Sunday 21 February 2010 at 08:12 am
Australian tennis chiefs were told last year that security plans for October's Commonwealth Games in India had been stolen, according to a report.
Tennis Australia said information on the alleged theft came from its own independent security assessment ahead of its Davis Cup tie with India in Chennai last May.
It subsequently decided to pull out and forfeit the series.
Australia were fined 10,000 US dollars by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) for failing to fulfil the fixture. Tennis Australia at the time said the decision was based on concerns over security arrangements.
A Tennis Australia spokesman said it understood that sensitive plans had been stolen from a computer, while another official told The Sydney Morning Herald said that the theft had led to a major security review.
There were media reports in India in March 2009 that computers containing Games security information were stolen from the office of New Delhi Police's Joint Commissioner for the Games.
However, police at the time denied that any sensitive material had gone missing in the theft, insisting that only an entertainment system and car papers were stolen from a vehicle belonging to a Games security official.
"It is clear that there was no theft of any security related or official documents whatsoever," the police said at the time.
According to a report prepared by Tennis Australia and published by the Herald, the sporting body commissioned two security firms to assess the risk to its players competing in the Chennai tie.
Their report rejected an earlier security assessment by a Chennai consultant as inadequate and conflicted, The Herald said.
The newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying that the alleged theft "forced the organisers to rejig the whole security plans for the Games".
Tennis Australia president Geoff Pollard said fears of escalated activity by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers coinciding with the volatile month-long Indian election period were the major reasons for withdrawing from the Davis Cup tie.
But Pollard told the newspaper the security assessment cited the alleged theft as evidence of lax safety measures.
"Al-Qaeda are everywhere in the world but they are a slightly higher risk in India than in other places," Pollard said.
"If the stolen plans had been the only risk, I think we would have gone to Chennai but we had the two extra risks of the election and the Tamils in the dying weeks of their last fight," he said, referring to the final weeks of the 37-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka.
Australian Commonwealth Games Association (ACGA) chief executive Perry Crosswhite told the newspaper he had seen reports of plans missing but was uncertain that they related to security.
"I'm not aware what specifically happened but I am aware of reports from India that Commonwealth Games plans had been lost, or stolen," Crosswhite said.
Tennis will be part of the New Delhi Games for the first time but Pollard said Australia's participation would be an issue for the ACGA.
Fresh security fears have surfaced in India after a bombing last weekend at a restaurant in the western city of Pune, which killed 11 people.
The Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online news website added to concerns when it said this week that it had received a warning from an Al-Qaeda-linked militant group about attacking sports events in India.
India vowed on Wednesday to "protect every player" in upcoming sports events, including the forthcoming hockey World Cup, Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament in March as well as October's Commonwealth Games.
Sunday 21 February 2010 at 08:12 am
Animal feed and feed additive companies are obliged to immediately recall products upon discovery of any defect that may result in harm to animals or people, a draft regulation made public Saturday said.
The draft of a revised regulation on the administration of animal feed and feed additives is designed to meet increased public demand for better animal product food quality and safety, according to the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, China's cabinet.
The office and the Ministry of Agriculture jointly drafted the revised regulation. It is now open to public comment.
Producers should immediately cease production and sales of defective products, recall the products and report the situation to relevant administrative authorities, the draft said.
The draft also imposes tougher punishment for abusive use of animal feed or feed additives.
Animal farming businesses may be fined as much as 50,000 yuan if they are found to have uses feed or feed additives forbidden or not included in the catalogue of approved items, the draft said.
The public is invited to comment on the draft before March 15 through online postings, email or letter.
The draft is available on the official website of the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, www.chinalaw.gov.cn.
The current Regulations on Administration of Animal Feed and Feed Additives took effect in May 1999, and was amended in Nov. 2001.
Saturday 20 February 2010 at 07:58 am
Google Inc won approval from U.S. energy regulators to act as a power marketer, which will make it easier for the Internet search giant to obtain renewable energy to run its huge data centers.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday approved Google's request to purchase electricity and resell it to wholesale customers.
A company spokeswoman previously said that the Google Energy LLC subsidiary wanted the authority from FERC "to contain and manage the cost of energy for Google."
In its approval order, FERC pointed out that Google does not own or control any facilities that generate electricity to sell in the wholesale markets.
Google says the extent of its electric generation ownership is to provide power solely to the company's facilities and for emergency backup power.
Other companies that consume a lot of electricity have been given similar power marketing authority by FERC to help control their energy costs.
The agency lists on its website about 1,500 companies that have subsidiaries with the same market-based rate authority, including Alcoa, the Safeway grocery store chain and Walmart.
Information technology and telecommunications facilities, such as those that Google own, account for approximately 120 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually -- or 3 percent of all U.S. electricity use, according to the Energy Department.
Rapid growth in the U.S. data center industry is projected to require two new large power plants per year just to keep pace with the expected demand growth, the department says.
Saturday 20 February 2010 at 07:58 am
Top New York Times executives expressed confidence Friday that a plan to start charging readers of the newspaper's website from next year will not result in a significant loss of traffic.
"We are, and have been for quite a long time, the largest newspaper-owned website in the world," said Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations at the Times.
"We intend to remain the largest newspaper-owned website in the world," Nisenholtz said at "paidContent 2010," a day-long conference here hosted by technology and media website paidContent.org.
The Times Co. announced last month that it would begin charging readers of NYTimes.com in early 2011, using a "metered model" that will offer users free access to a set number of articles before they will be asked to pay.
"We have reached a point where we have enough scope and scale to make this move," Nisenholtz said, adding that the goal is to "maximize overall revenue" through online subscriptions and online advertising.
"The metered model will allow us to remain a very, very large website at the same time as we get a second revenue stream," he said.
Nisenholtz, Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger and Times Co. president and chief executive Janet Robinson answered questions about the plan during a panel discussion at paidContent 2010 but revealed few new details.
Their move is being closely watched by others in a US newspaper industry faced with declining print advertising revenue, falling circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.
The Wall Street Journal and Long Island's Newsday are currently the only major US newspapers charging readers for full online access.
A number of other US publishers are considering the move but fear it may drive readers away and result in a loss of revenue from online advertising.
"We believe the direction we're headed is going to be the direction that quality information, and maybe not quality information, is going to be going," Sulzberger said.
"It's a question of seeing what works, adapting it, making it work better," he said. "This is the next step on a journey of transformation."
Sulzberger cautioned that charging readers may not be for everybody.
"The answer we're coming up with is not necessarily the right answer at this moment in time for other news organizations. There are other opportunities that might work for them," he said.
"This is an answer, we believe, for The New York Times in its particular place in society in the United States and globally," he said.
The executives defended the newspaper's last experience with making readers pay, a system called TimesSelect which involved putting columnists and editorials behind a pay wall. TimesSelect was aborted after 18 months.
"It was not a failure," Robinson said. "It proved that people were willing to pay for content, certainly of a premium nature."
"We were making good money off of TimesSelect," Sulzberger added. "We simply knew we could make more by taking it down."
Nisenholtz declined to specify how many users the Times had determined would be ready to pay for the newspaper online.
"The research tells us that a sufficient number of users are open to the idea to make this a viable model," he said. "That's all we're going to say."
Citing Nielsen figures, Nisenholtz said NYTimes.com receives about 21 million unique visitors a month from the United States and "some will pay because they're heavy users of our site."
Nisenholtz also said the Times' currently free Apple iPhone application had been downloaded 3.2 million times and would likely be included in the metered model when NYTimes.com begins charging next year.
Saturday 20 February 2010 at 07:57 am
Sino-US ties, already strained from a number of disputes in recent weeks, suffered their latest setback Thursday when US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton met with the Dalai Lama in Washington.
The meeting marked the 12th time the Dalai Lama has met with a sitting US president.
Some Chinese observers say the US' playing of the "Dalai Lama card" is a relatively predictable variable in the bilateral ties, which are becoming increasingly complicated. Arms sales to Taiwan, trade disputes and the US' demand for appreciation of the Chinese currency are among the issues that have drawn Beijing's ire as of late.
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai Friday summoned US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman and lodged solemn representations over Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama.
"The US act amounted to serious interference in Chinese domestic affairs and has seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and seriously damaged China-US relations," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement on the department's website.
He urged the US to immediately take effective steps to eradicate the malign effects of the meeting and stop conniving and supporting anti-China separatist forces that seek "Tibetan independence," to which the US has repeatedly committed to giving no support.
Beijing's written statement, issued early Friday morning, was obviously prepared beforehand and in line with some previous remarks about the Dalai Lama's encounters with foreign political leaders. Time magazine noted that "the reaction from Beijing was relatively muted."
By comparison, Obama's plan to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan last month drew quick opposition from five Chinese governmental departments.
According to AFP, the White House had meticulously planned Thursday's meeting. Obama sat down with the Dalai Lama in the low-profile Map Room of the White House instead of the Oval Office, and no independent photographers or reporters were allowed in.
The White House press office later put out a picture of the two in the 45-minute "private meeting" and issued a statement backing the Dalai Lama's goals.
Obama kept his meeting with the Dalai Lama "off-camera and low-key in an attempt to avoid inflaming tensions with China," the Associated Press suggested, adding that there was no welcome fanfare and even the White House de-scription of the talks was done on paper.
Such distinctions were meant as a sign to Beijing that the Tibetan monk was not being received as a political leader, Reuters said.
Du Yongbin, a researcher at the China Tibetology Research Center, however, told the Xinhua News Agency that the Dalai Lama's religious and political identities could not be separated, as he is not only a living Buddha of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism, but also the de facto leader of the theocratic "government-in-exile."
Originally named Lhamo Thondup, the Dalai Lama was conferred the title of the 14th Dalai Lama by the central government of China in 1940. After launching a failed armed rebellion in March 1950, he fled to India and formed a so-called Tibet government-in-exile.
Xinhua added that, under the guise of religion, the Dalai Lama has since been involved in activities aimed to separate China and to undermine Tibet's social stability.
The 74-year-old Dalai Lama did meet with reporters outside the White House afterward, telling them he was "very happy" with Obama's support.
A researcher of US-China relations, who asked to remain anonymous, said the US government has constrained itself by its years of efforts to deify the Dalai Lama.
"With the assistance of the US, the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize and gained influence. The White House, in return, is left with limited political options since meetings between US presidents and the Dalai Lama became a standard in US politics and a tradition for US presidents since the 1980s," the researcher said.
Obama also wanted to show his dissatisfaction with the current status of bilateral relations with the rise of China, the researcher speculated.
Obama declined to see the Dalai Lama during his Washington stay in October because it would have come before the president's November visit to China.
The move was criticized locally as giving much to China and getting little in return.
The Christian Science Monitor said Tuesday that the widely expressed anger and frustration in media and political circles during Obama's visit to China was "a classic illustration" of Americans' concerns that the country "can no longer deal with others in the way that it has, that it can no longer assume a relationship of superiority in its dealings with China, and that it has to seek a new understanding of China rather than expect the latter to continue to play second fiddle."
The researcher predicted limited negative impact of the meeting on the Sino-US ties and said the countries would make every effort to strike a balance between a tough stance on specific issues and the overall picture of bilateral relations.
The Washington Post reported Friday that US official said the meeting was "the latest episode in the increasingly complicated relations between the US and China, which have long been marked by mutual distrust but a begrudging agreement on the interdependence between Washington and Beijing."
A columnist with Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper said Friday that, as far as was possible, this meeting was handled strictly within the expected diplomatic parameters – a welcome sign after the turbulence of recent months.
However, the columnist warned that trade and some other issues would be much more difficult, and substantive hurdles will need to be overcome as "the interdependence between the two countries spawns as many reasons to a fight as it does to reach an accommodation."
Additionally, Obama pushed China's exchange rate practices to the top of the bilateral agenda this month when he said that countries undervaluing their currency put US companies at a huge competitive disadvantage.
Saturday 20 February 2010 at 07:56 am
The only Master of Wine in Asia, Lee started buying wines by the case in 1996. She would keep the wines and drink them three years later.
"If you really love wine, it's part of the fun to see how it changes, develops, and compares with three to five years ago," she says. "It's like an interesting friend, whom you meet again and find he's done so much."
In that sense Lee herself can be deemed a bottle of great wine. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee has lived around the world, in New York, Boston, London and Kuala Lumpur. She went to Oxford University in the United Kingdom, Smith College in Massachusetts and got a Master's Degree from Harvard University. She has lived in Hong Kong for the past 17 years.
Lee worked in business journalism, but her passion for food and wine led her to obtain the Certificat de Cuisine from Cordon Bleu and the WSET Diploma. In 2008, she became one of world's 279 Masters of Wine, and the only one from Asia.
Although she has been to the mainland many times, her recent visit, to host a wine dinner at the Gallery, Park Hyatt Beijing, on Jan 28, was her first public function in the capital city. Lee paired 10 courses at a grand dinner that evening. Executive chef Jack Aw Yong prepared a surprisingly diversified dinner, with a range of typical North Chinese dishes, such as cold appetizers, sea cucumber, steamed garoupa, wok-fried prawn, Mongolian barbequed lamb saddle, and hand-pulled noodles. The dishes were fabulous, and the wines matched up.
For sea cucumber with foie gras, Lee chose a versatile Maison Joseph Drouhin Beaune Ier Cru Clos de Mouches Red 2007. Mongolian barbequed lamb was paired with Shaw &Smith Shiraz 2006, a fruity wine. Imperial abalone with pine mushroom soup came with Chateau Palmer Alter Ego 2003, a fresh Bordeaux wine with a grippy, savory, tannic finish. Shanxi hand-pulled noodles with stewed pork belly, a tasty winner, was matched with Domaine Thalabert 2005, a smooth and velvety wine with a fresh finish.
"In general North Chinese foods are more intense, and I prefer to use gentle wines, instead of strong wines, which might fight with the food," Lee says.
She says, usually, the older and more mature a wine is, the more it merges. It becomes smoother and softer.
She says she pairs textured food with texture wines. Then, she chooses wine, not according to the foodstuff, but rather according to the taste of the condiment. For instance, is it soy sauce, or chili? Finally, she recommends chilling the wine a little bit to pair with hot food, so as to make it taste fresh.
"For a North Chinese meal it is helpful to have two or three wines, which is consistent with the way we eat," she says.
Interestingly, Lee switched from white to red during the dinner, defying the common rule that red wines, and the best wines, come last.
"In China the more important dishes often come at the beginning," Lee says. "Wine should follow the same rhythm of the food. Let the wine makers follow our ways."
As the only Master of Wine of Asian origin, Lee said she often gives speeches in the United States and the UK as an Asian representative. That fuels her incentive to visit China more often, which she does at least twice a year. She has visited big vineyards in Xinjiang, Gansu, Shanxi and Shandong, and contacted big wine companies here, such as ASC and Summer Gates, to see them for herself.
Lee said she saw "a lot of patriotism" in China's and Japan's wine businesses, where local wines are widely consumed. Korean people, though, mostly drink imported wines.
"Chinese wines are really improving," she said. "However, if you compare them to other wines in the world, they are still not internationally competitive."
She named Qingdao Huadong white wine, Grace Vineyard's Chardonnay and Dragon Seal as some good choices here.
Many Masters of Wine work as wine buyers. Some work for or own wine companies, and some, like Lee, specialize in wine writing. Lee said she spends two to three days a week writing for various publications, such as Wine Spectator, The World of Fine Wine, Revue du Vin, Wine Business International and Decanter.
She said she feels comfortable living in Hong Kong. She said she made sure that her four daughters' first language was Chinese. Their second language is English, third Korean, and fourth, French. She still returns to Korea for major holidays to visit her parents, who have retired and live in Pusan.
Jeannie Cho Lee's Asian Palate, published in 2009, talks about Asian foods, and how to pair them with wine. The innovative book has already won her two major awards in the US and the UK. She said her second book is coming soon.
For now, most of the time, she's working on her website and a mobile application for the pairing of Asian food and wine, which will be in English, Chinese and Korean. Users will get access to 15,000 notes on wine Lee has taken in the past 15 years. She expects that to be ready in May.
Saturday 20 February 2010 at 07:56 am
British pop superstar Elton John stirred controversy in a magazine interview Friday when he claimed that Jesus Christ was "gay."
"I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems," John said in an interview posted on the website of US celebrity news magazine Parade.
"On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead," said John, who is gay.
The Catholic League, the largest US Catholic rights group, condemned the comments.
"Jesus was certainly compassionate, but to say he was 'super-intelligent' is to compare the son of God to a successful game-show contestant," league president Bill Donohue said in a statement.
"More seriously, to call Jesus a homosexual is to label him a sexual deviant. But what else would we expect from a man who previously said, 'From my point of view, I would ban religion completely'?"
Friday 19 February 2010 at 07:34 am
The Golden Cameras are awarded by a popular German TV-magazine honouring excellence in the areas of television, film and entertainment.
Friday 19 February 2010 at 07:33 am
Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs took the wraps off a sleek tablet that it called the iPad, pitching the new gadget at a surprisingly low price to bridge the gap between smartphones and laptops.
A buoyant Jobs took the stage at a packed theater on Wednesday to show off the 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet, which looks like a large iPhone, and to introduce a new iBook electronic reader service that will compete with Amazon.com Inc's Kindle.
The iPad is Apple's biggest bet on a new product since the iPhone three years ago, and seeks to tap an unproven market for tablets. Analysts, while impressed by the iPad's seamless functionality, also pointed out that consumers already have smartphones and laptops for their mobile computing needs.
Jobs described the iPad as a "third category" of devices, a do-everything media gadget that can surf the Web, and play movies and video games. He also left little doubt that Apple was going after the e-book market that Amazon had popularized.
"If there's going to be a third category of device, it's going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone; otherwise it has no reason for being," said Jobs, who still appeared thin following his liver transplant last year.
"Now Amazon's done a great job of pioneering this functionality with their Kindle. And we're going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further," he said.
Famous for his skills as a pitchman, Jobs, dressed in his trademark blue jeans and black turtleneck, created plenty of drama as he waited until late in the event to discuss the cost of the iPad, which analysts had expected to be up to $1,000.
Apple elected to price it for as little as $499 for 16 gigabytes of storage, starting in late March. An extra $130 is needed to equip the iPad with third-generation (3G) wireless capability. Higher-capacity models will sell for $599 and $699.
"Pricing is very aggressive, so it's pretty positive from a mass adoption perspective," said Brian Marshall, an analyst with Broadpoint Amtech.
Research group IDC said it expects Apple to ship 4 million iPad units in 2010, with about 2 million in the United States.
Shares of Apple rose to as high as $210.58 after the pricing news, up 5.5 percent from their session low. The stock closed up 0.94 percent at $207.88 on Nasdaq, within reach of its all-time high of $215.59 logged on Jan 5.
The half-inch thick, 1.5-pound iPad features Apple's own processor and 10 hours of battery life. It runs a version of the iPhone's operating system and can use virtually all of the 140,000 apps currently available for the smartphone.
"What once occupied half your living room can now be dropped in a bag," said Outsell Inc analyst Ned May. "It's pulling together a variety of needs (in) a universal entertainment device."
Apple announced a data plan deal with AT&T Inc, which appeared to have beaten out Verizon Wireless. AT&T will offer two monthly data plans for the iPad, a limited one for $14.99 and an unlimited one for $29.99.
IPHONE-LIKE ANTICIPATION
Other technology companies, including Microsoft Corp and Toshiba Corp, have launched tablets that failed to take off in recent years.
But analysts said they were impressed with the technology that Apple showed off. The iPad has a near life-size touch keyboard, and comes with all the expected features, including a calendar, an address book and maps.
"One thing Apple has proven is that they can consumerise new concepts, new technologies," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a consulting firm. "That will probably be their claim to fame again with this."
However, some also mentioned potential cannibalization of other Apple products.
"If it's doing all these things and does it better than a notebook then they'd have to tell me why I'd want a MacBook," said NPD analyst Steve Baker.
Some industry watchers said the iPad, with its multimedia bells and whistles, will be a tough competitor for Amazon's Kindle. The iBooks store will let users buy from publishers including Pearson Plc's Penguin, News Corp's HarperCollins, and Hachette Book Group.
But other analysts noted that the Kindle costs less -- $259 for the cheapest version -- and was more tailored for long-form reading, at least for now.
"This is not an e-reader -- this is a device that can be used to read books," Cowen & Co analyst James Friedland said of the iPad. "This doesn't change the game -- at the same time, Apple is a formidable competitor and our view is that over time, Apple and Amazon will emerge as the two largest players" in e-books.
Shares of Amazon took a brief hit but recovered to end 2.7 percent higher at $122.75 on Nasdaq.
In an online poll on reuters.com before Wednesday's media event, 37 percent of more than 1,000 respondents said they would pay $500-$699 for the tablet. Nearly 30 percent weren't interested, while 20 percent said they would pay $700-$899.
Friday 19 February 2010 at 07:33 am
A community show to celebrate the upcoming Spring Festival for local residents wooed its audience with amateur but whole-hearted performances on Saturday.
The show, initiated by the Huilongguan Volunteer Association and community forum and performed by residents and migrant workers, received unexpectedly warm response from a packed room.
More than 2,000 people turned up on Saturday night to an auditorium in a campus in Huilongguan community, one of the largest residential compounds in northern Beijing.
The standard Spring Festival Gala, aired by the China Central Television, is the must-see event for the year and the sole entertainment for most Chinese during the largest holiday of the year.
But over recent years, many other performances have emerged to battle the giant.
"The audience loved the show because the performers were from the same area," said Wang Yuyu, director of the community Spring Festival celebration.
Wang said the show cost about 400,000 yuan to put together, with sponsorship from local companies.
He said most of the performers were from Huilongguan community, and aged between 40 and 60 years-old.
"The audience feels connected and satisfied despite the amateur performances," he added. "Because of their low expectations, they enjoyed what they saw on stage."
Dong Jilu, a member of the audience, said she was thrilled by how dedicated the children in a drum show were, and their apparent joy from the performance.
"The kids looked so excited. They took the show very seriously," she said.
Most of the dance and percussion performances were provided by 34 students from Qinghe Elementary School, a migrant workers' children's elementary School.
Xu Fang, 11, said she was really excited about her dance performance despite the fact that her migrant worker parents could not come to the show.
Having moved to Beijing with her parents in 2007 to run a small supermarket near the community, Xu said she really missed the days when her family was together in their hometown in Shanxi province.
"The show reminded me of how great the festival is," she said. "It can build the children's confidence in public performances and make them more comfortable in the city," said Liu Fengguo, an investor in Qinghe Elementary School.
Friday 19 February 2010 at 07:32 am
Camping in a hotel is not a joke in China's hottest travel destination of Hainan, as a hotel on the tropical island offered tent-rooms to cope with the travel boom during China's Lunar New Year festival.
"Compared with the price of 2,680 yuan (392 U.S. dollars) for a standard room in the hotel, a tent house priced at 580 yuan a night is a fair choice in the travel season," said Li Xiangxin, a tourist staying in the tent hotel room in Sanya, a coastal resort city on the island province.
He introduced that the room has nearly everything necessary for a standard hotel room, like an independent toilet, beds, TV, a closet and a frig.
The provincial holiday and travel coordination bureau reported on Wednesday that the province welcomed 100,000 tourist arrivals on Wednesday, which was the highest daily record since the week-long Spring Festival holiday started on Saturday.
The province has been affected by cold air since Wednesday, when the daily high temperature was only 16 degrees Celsius. However, the chill forecast to linger to Friday has not affected the province's booming tourism.
The holiday travel rush had also driven up cost for hotel accommodation in the province.
The average price for a single night stay at five-star hotels has reached a whopping 10,000 yuan a week before the Spring Festival, which fell on Feb. 14 this year.
The cheapest room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Sanya is going for 18,400 yuan, while the most expensive is 34,500 yuan per night. Prices for a room at the Hilton Sanya Resort range from 11,138 yuan to 16,048 yuan, according to ctrip.com, a leading travel website.
A survey on Hainan's 21 hotels showed they accommodated 8,703 travelers on Wednesday, as compared with 6,101 travelers on Saturday.
Friday 19 February 2010 at 07:00 am
Simon Cowell believes a woman is likely to win his final season on "American Idol."
The acerbic British judge told a teleconference Thursday he thinks one of the 12 women among the ninth season's 24 semifinalists has a good shot to win the Fox singing contest.
"We've had a few years of guys winning the show, and I would say there is definitely a better chance of a girl winning the show this year, certainly, than last year," Cowell said.
Whatever the gender, Cowell, who will leave at the end of the season to executive produce and judge an American edition of "The X Factor," just wants to crown someone relevant.
"I'd love to find a Taylor Swift," he said.
Lady Gaga is his top pick for a potential music industry mentor to guide this season's contestants, which include platinum-haired crooner Lilly Scott and throwback rocker Tyler Grady. Cowell called the outrageous Lady Gaga the "most relevant pop artist in the world right now."
Past mentors have included Gwen Stefani, Dolly Parton, Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino.
As far as his replacement goes, Cowell said a couple of folks have already asked him for his gig, but they were both "boring." He insisted the right candidates must have music industry experience and "know what they are talking about."
Does that mean newcomer Ellen DeGeneres, the talk show host with no formal music training, didn't belong on the judging panel?
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 07:54 am
"Gossip Girl" actor Sebastian Stan will star opposite Ashley Green in "The Apparition," a supernatural horror project.
Rookie filmmaker Todd Lincoln is directing from his own script -- which is said to be inspired by true events -- for Dark Castle Entertainment, the label behind such films as "Orphan" and "Ninja Assassin."
The story revolves around a couple haunted by a supernatural presence unleashed during a college experiment. Shooting is scheduled to begin February 1 in Germany.
The lead is the biggest movie part yet for Stan, who plays Carter Baizen on CW's "Gossip Girl." He just wrapped shooting Darren Aronofsky's thriller "Black Swan" and will appear in the John Cusack comedy "Hot Tub Time Machine."
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 07:54 am
A senior police officer in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, has come under fire for hosting a lavish wedding reception for his daughter at a five-star hotel, with netizens and local media wondering how a public servant can acquire so much money.
There were more than 110 tables full of wedding guests at the party, which was held in a 1,000-sq-m banquet hall in the Kempinski Hotel on Sunday.
The menu included shark fin, grouper and abalone.
"I expected the media will report the way I celebrated my daughter's wedding. But I could not have cancelled the banquet, in which most of the guests were friends. Both the families have lived in Shenzhen for decades," Southern Metropolis Daily quoted the deputy director of Shenzhen public security bureau's airport branch, surnamed Liu, as saying.
Liu said "80 percent of the guests were merely friends".
Liu refused to reveal exactly how much the banquet cost him or how much money he received in hongbao (red envelopes).
It is still not clear if Liu's banquet went against local regulations.
The Shenzhen public security bureau could not be reached for comment yesterday.
"Officials like Liu know the purpose of such a party. They take the opportunity of a wedding or a funeral to collect hongbao, which has become a nationwide trend," Wang Yukai, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, told China Daily.
"If they were not powerful officials, there wouldn't be so many people present at their dinner parties," he said.
The lavish banquet was held just five days after a top police officer in Guangdong province was suspended in the wake of allegations of receiving money from guests he invited to celebrate the purchase of his new villa.
Chen Xizhao, deputy-director of the public security bureau of Lianjiang county, organized a banquet for more than 1,000 people, including colleagues and owners of entertainment venues.
Chen allegedly arranged empty red envelopes for invitees to leave money, and treated the guests to Martell Cordon Bleu cognac wine, which costs 3,000 yuan ($483) a bottle.
Last Thursday, the county's disciplinary supervision authority released a notice that prohibits local Party members and government officials from collecting hongbao even when they are hosts at weddings or funerals.
Officials will be dismissed immediately if they are found to have set more than 10 tables for guests at any party, Guangzhou Daily reported last Friday.
The education authority of Shaanxi province dismissed Wu Fengzhou, a high-profile schoolmaster of the Guanjia town center school in Ankang city, local Huashang Daily reported yesterday.
Most teachers of 13 middle and primary schools in town were at the wedding banquet of Wu's son. Therefore, classes for some 2,805 students had to be suspended on Dec 28.
"With no specific punitive measures, most crackdowns on such practices are of little consequence," professor Wang said.
"If the measures adopted by Lianjiang county turn out to be effective, people will increase their confidence in government officials. The measures may also be included in a national regulation."
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 07:53 am
The government recently unveiled measures to build South China's Hainan Province into a top international tourism destination by 2020, including opening the gaming industry.
According to a proposal released by the State Council on Monday, the country will introduce international sports and entertainment activities and explore ways to promote local lottery and gaming industries.
It is possible that Hainan may be a trial base for gambling options that could include horse racing, Information Times reported Tuesday.
According to the National Lottery Center, income from lottery sales in Hainan reached 100 million yuan (14 million U.S. dollars) in 2009, the last of the 31 sales centers of the nation.
The government plans to boost tourism-based GDP from 8 percent in 2015 to more than 12 percent by 2020.
Hainan's GDP stood at 145.9 billion yuan (21.36 billion U.S. dollars) in 2008.
"If entertainment elements are not introduced in Hainan, something will be missing in an international tourism destination," Wang Yongsheng of Regional Tourism Development of the Regional Science Association of China, told China Securities Journal.
"Gambling is forbidden in South Korea, but overseas passport holders can gamble in the Walrk Hill in Seoul; this fits the national policies and also meets the entertainment needs of overseas visitors," said Wang.
The government will further extend its favorable visa-free policy to five other nations of Finland, Denmark, Norway, Ukraine and Kazakhstan from the previous 21 nations including the United States, Japan and Canada.
Efforts to push forward a trial program involving cross-border trade in Renminbi settlement on the island and encourage qualified tourism firms to get listed in the stock market are also on the agenda, according to the proposal.
The province also intends to further extend the tax-free service to domestic tourists, besides the overseas visitors, to encourage shopping.
The government will also expand oil and gas exploration, improve transportation networks, and reduce pollution.
Specific measures of the proposal will be reported to the State Council later.
China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, Tax Bureau and other 15 ministries of the nation said they would support Hainan turning itself into an international tourism island.
Several travel agencies in Chongqing said that they would organize tourists to go shopping in Hainan once the policy is approved.
"It'll be much more convenient to purchase luxurious goods in Hainan than Hong Kong, as the return flight tickets and price of local hotels are cheaper, and tourists don't need to apply for an exit permit in advance or choose international flights," Liao Wei, general manager of China Travel Service Group in Chongqing, told Chongqing Business News.
He predicted that Hainan will attract 20 to 30 percent more tourists every year if the new programs are implemented.
Dong Liming, an urban planning professor from Peking University, said the island is currently underdeveloped and most of the tourists are domestic travelers.
"A gambling industry and tax-free service will contribute to the economic growth of the island; but it should also improve the urban infrastructure, service and management level to attract more foreign tourists," he told the Global Times.
Wang Zhi, deputy director of CNTA, said visa-free, tax-free, simplified custom clearance procedure, and currency exchange services are essential to tourism development.
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 07:53 am
"Empire State of Mind" has been a chart-topping hit for Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, spending five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. The No. 1 anthem is also responsible for reigniting the singing aspirations of songwriter/producer Angela Hunte, who penned and produced "Empire" with writing partner Jane't "Jnay" Sewell-Ulepic. It all started with a bad case of homesickness.
"My writing partner and I were in London, missing home," Hunte says. "We said to ourselves, 'We complain so much about New York -- about the busy streets, about the crowds and the pushing, about the subway system -- but I would trade that for anything right now.' Before we left the hotel that night, we knew we would write a song about our city."
The pair sent the song to entertainment company Roc Nation in hopes that its founder, rapper Jay-Z, would record the song. But when that attempt failed, they became convinced it was the end of the line for the track.
Eight months later, Big Jon Platt, president of North American Creative for EMI Music Publishing, heard the song and fell in love with it. He suggested to Hunte and Sewell-Ulepic that it would be a perfect fit for Jay-Z. Despite the women's hesitance given the results of their first pitch, Platt sent the song to the rapper, who, Hunte says, "recorded it that night." Jay-Z wrote all new verses inspired by the original lyrics and left Hunte's words in the song's hook. At Hunte's recommendation, Alicia Keys was recruited to sing the hook.
"We were so happy he wanted to honor our work," Hunte says. "For him as a rapper to take a song by two female writer/producers? That's not a combination you see a lot. And Alicia has my same vocal tone. She made the song sound so close to the original. She just nailed it."
FROM BROOKLYN TO EUROPE
A Brooklyn native, Hunte -- who grew up at 560 State Street, the address Jay-Z mentions on the track -- launched her music career as a singer. But eventually she began studying production alongside mentor/producer Salaam Remi because, Hunte says, she found music becoming more "commercial. I just felt there was no place for me (as a performer) in music at that time."
In 2001, she signed a deal brokered by Remi with EMI and moved to Europe, where she began writing for Ms. Dynamite, Mis-teeq and British R&B singer Beverly Knight, among others. Hunte received her big break when she wrote the track "Do Somethin'" for Britney Spears. The song appeared on Spears' "Greatest Hits: My Prerogative" compilation and was released as the second single off the 2004 set.
Three years later, Hunte returned to the United States. Netting a writing gig with girl group Danity Kane, she wrote the act's first single, "Show Stopper." The track reached No. 8 on the Hot 100. Since then, Hunte has worked with Justin Timberlake, Timbaland and newcomer Melanie Fiona. She's slated to go into the studio to collaborate with Young Jeezy, Roc Nation artist J. Cole and up-and-coming rapper H 2-0.
Hunte is also at work on her own as-yet-untitled album, which she describes as a "pop, electronic set."
But Hunte will always remember the impact that "Empire" has had on her career. Although the singer/songwriter/producer declined to reveal more details, she promises that the original version of "Empire State of Mind" will be released one day.
Thursday 18 February 2010 at 07:52 am
Television entered a new dimension on Tuesday as US sports giant ESPN said it will broadcast some World Cup soccer matches live from South Africa in 3-D and Sony teamed up with Discovery and IMAX to launch a 3-D TV network in the United States.
The new "ESPN 3-D" service plans at least 85 live sporting events during its first year, starting with the opening FIFA World Cup match between South Africa and Mexico on June 11, ESPN and ABC Sports president George Bodenheimer said.
Up to 25 World Cup matches will be shown on what ESPN called "the industry's first 3-D television network" along with college basketball, college football and other US domestic sports events.
Japanese electronics giant Sony, Discovery Communications and IMAX Corp. announced meanwhile that they were creating a joint venture to "develop the first 24/7 dedicated 3-D television network" in the United States.
They said the new 3-D network, which is expected to launch next year, will feature "high-quality premium content from genres that are most appealing in 3-D, including natural history, space, exploration, adventure, engineering, science and technology, motion pictures and children's programming."
Sony, Discovery and IMAX said they will be equal partners in the venture aimed at bringing a "high-quality three-dimensional viewing experience to home television audiences."
The dueling announcements came as representatives of leading electronics firms from around the world gathered in Las Vegas for the annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Japanese and South Korean television manufacturers have been pushing 3-D TV in the home for some time now but its growth has been stunted by a lack of programming, the need to wear special glasses and the high price of a 3-D set.
Last month's release of science fiction blockbuster "Avatar," a 3-D film by "Titanic" director James Cameron, has renewed interest in 3-D, however, and some industry leaders believe the time has come for 3-D TV in the home.
"This is a turning point for 3-D," Consumer Electronics Association chief executive Gary Shapiro told USA Today newspaper.
ESPN's Bodenheimer said ESPN 3-D "marries great content with new technology to enhance the fan's viewing experience and puts ESPN at the forefront of the next big advance for TV viewing."
ESPN said it had tested the technology for more than two years, including events where it showed a US college football game in a limited number of movie theaters.
For the moment, ESPN will just broadcast special live sports events in 3-D while the Sony, Discovery, IMAX deal calls for the creation of a dedicated 3-D channel.
"By partnering with Sony and IMAX on 3D, Discovery will lead the way in revolutionizing the next-generation home viewing experience in the US and around the world," Discovery president and chief executive David Zaslav said.
Sony president and chief executive Sir Howard Stringer called it a "groundbreaking new venture."
"It is clear to us that consumers will always migrate to a better and richer entertainment experience, and together we are determined to be the leader in providing that around the world," Stringer said in a statement.
IMAX chief executive Richard Gelfond said "this new business venture is the first step in our strategic effort to take 3-D into the home and extend the IMAX brand."
"We are thrilled to work with such strong partners to be the first to make in-home 3-D a reality," he said.
Discovery, Sony and IMAX said the 3-D network would launch first in the United States and they would eventually "explore international distribution opportunities in selected markets."
Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 09:05 am
The Iranian government plans to permanently suspend Google Inc's email service in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Wednesday.
Google said it experienced a sharp drop in email traffic in Iran, and that some users in the country were having trouble accessing Gmail, but said its networks were working properly.
The report comes as Iran braces for new opposition protests on Thursday during rallies marking the 1979 Islamic revolution. Protesters made use of modern networking tools such as Twitter and Gmail instant messaging last June after a disputed election plunged Iran into crisis.
Google is already at loggerheads with China's government after it threatened to withdraw from the country last month over claims of online attacks and issues over censorship.
Iran's telecommunications agency announced the suspension and said a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Google reported a drop in email traffic, but did not confirm the Journal report.
"We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail," a Google spokesman wrote in an e-mail to Reuters. "We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly."
He added that Google supported free online communication, but "sometimes it is not within our control."
There was no immediate comment from Tehran, where it was after midnight when the news broke. Opposition leaders have called on supporters to take to the streets on Thursday, raising the risk of renewed violence.
The U.S. State Department could not confirm the report, but said any efforts to keep information from Iranians would fail.
"While information technologies are enabling people around the world to communicate ... like never before, the Iranian government seems determined to deny its citizens access to information, the ability to express themselves freely, network and share ideas," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
"Virtual walls won't work in the 21st century any better than physical walls worked in the 20th century."
Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 09:03 am
China's drive to curb overseas trips by officials using public money has significantly cut the number of such trips in 2009, the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) said in a report on its website.
In 2009, government and Communist Party of China (CPC) officials went on 123,553 overseas trips in 33,507 groups on public funds, down 45.5 percent and 49 percent, respectively, from the average of the previous three years, according to the report released Tuesday.
The cost of the trips was 37.6 percent, or 1.63 billion yuan (238.67 million U.S. dollars), less than the average of the previous three years.
China will continue its drive to strictly curb and appropriately reduce public-funded overseas trips by officials, and will seek to establish a permanent mechanism to prevent public funds from being abused for sightseeing, the report said.
The government will control the total number of public-funded overseas trips by incorporating the expense of the trips into its budget and by applying a stricter approval system, the report said.
Officials who violated the regulation will be severely punished, with their cases being made public so other officials will learn a lesson, the report said.
Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 09:02 am
Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Tuesday rejected U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments that Iran is moving toward military dictatorship.
Mottaki said in a statement, "We are sorry that Mrs. Clinton ... is trying to divert public opinion of the region (Middle East), to unreal and incorrect subjects and we consider such policies as a new deceit."
"The regional states will never be deceived by the U.S. policies," Mottaki was quoted as saying.
He accused the U.S. of interfering in the domestic affairs of the "independent and democratic countries" and of "creating crisis " in those countries in the guise of "soft war."
Mottaki also said that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and the offenses against the innocent people were the examples of "U.S. military dictatorship."
Clinton warned in Doha on Monday that Iran is "moving toward a military dictatorship," saying top posts in the country are being "supplanted."
"We are planning to try to bring the world community together in applying pressure to Iran through sanctions adopted by the United Nations that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard which we believe, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran," she said in remarks posted on the website of the U.S. Department of State.
"We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving towards a military dictatorship. Now, that is our view," Clinton said.
Tehran has reiterated its displeasure in what Tehran says the West's attempts to back Iranian opposition and to destabilize the country.
Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 09:02 am
The GSM Association (GSMA), an organization representing the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, announced Monday that China Telecom, KDDI and Verizon Wireless have joined the organization after committing to deploy services based on Long-Term Evolution (LTE).
LTE is seen as the next generation of wireless technology for mobile broadband and will out perform today's fixed-line broadband networks with peak rate speeds of up to 100Mbs downlink and 50Mbs uplink.
The organization unites almost 800 mobile operators and over 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem in 219 countries and regions. Under its umbrella one can find such diverse interests as handset makers, software companies as well as media and entertainment organizations.
"As the largest state-owned operator in China, China Telecom is very excited to join the GSMA, which will enable us to extend our reach and network across the global mobile ecosystem," said Cao Lei, Director of Technology, China Telecom in the GSMA official press release.
Meanwhile Alex Sinclair, the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at the GSMA, commented on the decision taken by China Telecom and the other new members.
"With its compelling, high-speed and cost-effective network architecture, LTE is bringing the GSM and CDMA communities together," he said.
"We are delighted that China Telecom, KDDI, and Verizon Wireless have joined the GSMA along with Qualcomm, and will be among the first operators to launch commercial LTE services," added Sinclair.
"LTE is widely regarded as 'the' Mobile Broadband technology that will be adopted by the vast majority of mobile operators globally," he concluded.
Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 09:01 am
Foreign-funded enterprises in China exported 494.4 billion U.S. dollars worth of machinery, electrical and electronic products in 2009.
A document posted on the website of the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said the figure made up 69.3 percent of the country's total exports of such products in the past year.
Exports of machinery, electrical and electronic products by privately-owned enterprises totalled 106.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2009, down 8.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the document.
State-owned enterprises only exported 92.1 billion U.S. dollars worth of machinery, electrical and electronic products, accounting for 12.9 percent of the country's total machinery, electrical and electronic products last year.
The GAC document also said the majority of the country's exports of machinery, electrical and electronic products fell into the category of processing and assembling trade.
China's exports of machinery, electrical and electronic products in the category of processing and assembling trade totalled 466.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, making up 65.4 percent of the country's total exports of such products.
The country exported 713.1 billion U.S. dollars worth of machinery, electrical and electronic products last year, down 13.4 percent year-on-year. The exports contributed 59.3 percent to China's total exports in 2009.
The European Union (EU), the United States of America and Hong Kong were the three major destinations for the China mainland's exports of machinery, electrical and electronic products last year.
China exported 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars worth of products last year, down 16 percent from 2008, replacing Germany as the world's largest exporter.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 05:05 am
However, that is not the case with Major League Baseball (MLB), which is aiming to popularize the sport in the most populous nation through an ambitious 10-year development program.
In its eyes, China, with a booming economy, huge population and a long history of playing baseball, could turn into a lucrative market for the MLB, much like the NBA has enjoyed over the past decade.
"We plan on taking advantage of the dynamic climate that is taking place in China right now," said Jim Small, vice-president of MLB Asia.
"With so many things changing so quickly, with information much more accessible through the internet and through other means, it is possible to make changes much quicker now than 10 years ago."
Small may sound a little overconfident concerning the current state of baseball in China. For the most part, the sport remains in obscurity and games are rarely shown on television. And the only standard baseball venue in Beijing, the Wukesong Baseball Stadium, which hosted the Olympic competition during the 2008 Summer Games, was demolished to clear the way for real estate projects. Even the nation's seven-team professional league struggles to draw spectators and sponsors.
To add salt to the wound, the sport will not be included at the next two Olympic Games, which means its government funding will fall dramatically.
However, MLB has found the sport is deeply ingrained in China and that has given the organization the impetus to carry on.
The Chinese Baseball Association (CBA) says there are 4 million people playing baseball in China and more than 60 Chinese universities and colleges and 1,000 high and primary schools have their own teams.
According to a survey by TNS Sports Asia in 2008, 16.2 percent of the Chinese population was interested in baseball and almost 1 percent were loyal baseball fans. Also, up to 26 percent of Chinese are interested in MLB and its merchandise and the majority of them are young, highly educated and have high incomes.
"I believe the sport of baseball has tremendous potential in China. What MLB wants is to agitate this big market and get more people playing baseball in China," said Xie Long, managing director of MLB China.
To cultivate the potential Chinese market, MLB launched the MLB Baseball Park, China's first-ever baseball-themed entertainment tour, in five major metropolises, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuxi, last year. According to MLB, up to 400,000 people took part.
"It was a very good start and we plan to attract more Chinese youth to take part in the tour," said Xie, who revealed the park would tour 10 more cities in China next year, bringing the total to 15.
MLB is also seriously thinking about discovering a baseball version of Yao Ming, considering how much interest the Houston Rockets' All-Star center has sparked for the NBA in his home country. That's why MLB has decided to work with the nation's education and sports departments to promote the sport in public schools and communities, hoping to reach millions of Chinese youngsters and find and nurture future talent.
The MLB Baseball Development Center (MBDC), a baseball academy established in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, in September, is the cream of the crop of such cooperation.
The academy hosts 16 select school-aged baseball hopefuls and provides them with regular classes, baseball training and English lessons.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 05:04 am
Amidst continuing reports of other singers being approached to front Aerosmith, Steven Tyler and his handlers are taking steps to reassert his position in the band.
Tyler's Los Angeles-based attorney, Skip Miller, fired off a letter to Aerosmith manager Howard Kaufman last week, independently obtained by Billboard.com, requesting that Aerosmith's management "immediately cease and desist from engaging in acts and conduct to the harm and detriment of your own client, Aerosmith, and our client who is one of its members."
Miller subsequently told Billboard.com that on behalf of Tyler he has called a meeting of Aerosmith's "shareholders" on February 9 to discuss the band's future, including such matters as the recording of a new album and tours this year of Europe and South America. The four-page letter also states that "we reserve all of our legal rights and remedies in this matter, including, without limitation, pursuing legal action for damages and other appropriate relief."
"Steven Tyler does not want lawsuits," said Miller. "We do not want to go in that direction. The direction we want is Aerosmith, with Steven Tyler, touring in Europe, touring Latin America, releasing a new album ... This is the direction it's all intended to go. It's just amazing to me current management would be taking any other position."
Aerosmith's management declined comment. Miller says he has not yet received a response from Kaufman or any of Aerosmith's other representatives. As for what the next step will be if Aerosmith continues with its search for a new singer, Miller said, "We'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. I hope we don't. I don't think we will."
Tyler is undergoing therapy for a painkiller addiction brought on by orthopedic problems. The location of his treatment is unknown, but recent public appearances -- singing karaoke at a bar in Palm Springs, Calif., and signing autographs and singing over the public address system at a Home Depot in Rancho Mirage -- led to speculation that he's at the nearby Betty Ford Center.
NOT WANTED
Miller says the January 27 letter was prompted by Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's recent comments in the Canadian press about replacing Tyler and by a meeting earlier in January attended by Kaufman; Tyler's music attorney, John Branca; and Tyler's new manager, Allen Kovac of 10th Street Entertainment. Kaufman, according to Miller, "said point blank he didn't think Steven should be part of Aerosmith, flat-out said the band would be better off without Steven -- which, in my opinion, is a very questionable management decision by a fiduciary."
Miller's letter argues that "the animus and negativity you have expressed toward Mr. Tyler has created an inability to protect both Steven as an individual and the band as a whole. This behavior directed toward a person committing to rehabilitation and recovery is detrimental and hurtful on both a personal and professional level. This is a time Steven has dedicated to transform his life."
Miller pointed to Tyler's December 22 statement, in which the singer "confirms his desire to be a part of Aerosmith" and accuses Kaufman of "playing band members off against one another instead of seeking to solidify their relationships and unify them for the overall good of the band ... Contrary to all common sense, you are seeking to bring about the replacement of Steven Tyler. Aerosmith without Steven Tyler is like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger, or U2 without Bono. While this management strategy may get the band on the road a few months sooner, it ultimately could destroy Aerosmith."
Miller added, "Can you imagine the manager of the Rolling Stones calling for the replacement of Mick Jagger? It's just absurd ... Tyler is very unique, distinctive. Steven is Aerosmith, along with the others. He's the guy the public knows. He's the singer. I'm blown away that the current manager would even suggest something like (replacing him)."
Both the letter and Miller said that Tyler has been writing songs for a new Aerosmith album and will be ready to perform at the proposed European and South American dates later in the year. Aerosmith had started to record a new album -- its first since 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo" and first of all-original material since 2001's "Just Push Play" -- with producer Brendan O'Brien in late 2008 but put it on hold due to health concerns, including Tyler's bout with pneumonia, and to prepare for a tour last summer with ZZ Top that was aborted after Tyler fell from the stage on August 5 in Sturgis, S.D.
Perry, meanwhile, is touring to promote his latest solo album, "Have Guitar, Will Travel," while Brad Whitford is gearing up for an Experience Hendrix tour in March, and drummer Joey Kramer is promoting his autobiography, "Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top."
The Tyler camp's actions come at a time when rumors are plentiful about who might step in for Tyler. A weekend report by blogger Perez Hilton claimed that Billy Idol, who has been widely reported as under consideration, had to skip a scheduled meeting with Perry because of a cold, while other published reports maintain that Chris Cornell and Paul Rodgers have both been approached. Lenny Kravitz, another rumored candidate, has publicly stated he's not interested.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 05:04 am
The Golden Cameras are awarded by a popular German TV-magazine honouring excellence in the areas of television, film and entertainment.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 05:03 am
Chinese film star Zhang Ziyi is being criticized for not yet honoring her more than $1 million commitment to earthquake relief in Sichuan.
According to the Southern Metropolis Daily last week, bloggers on tianya.cn claimed that Zhang had given just 840,000 yuan (about $123,500) of her promised donation to help those affected by the devastating earthquake on May 12, 2008.
The money was pledged to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation (CRCF).
Meanwhile, some supporters are questioning whether the criticism is unwarranted, saying some people just want to make her look bad.
The Web page outlining CRCF donations shows that on May 15, 2008, Zhang remitted 440,000 yuan and 400,000 yuan, successively, to CRCF.
Media reportes indicated that Zhang promised to donate 1 million yuan of her own money within a few days of the quake. But later on, she said at the Cannes Film Festival in France that she had raised the total $1 million she had promised.
At a film music concert in Beijing on Sunday, Zhang declined to respond to inquiries about her recent scandals, simply saying, "It's not easy to be an actress," the Beijing News reported Monday.
The only statement was made Thursday through her agent, Ji Lingling, which said that Zhang had set up the Ziyi Zhang Foundation in California in 2008 shortly after the earthquake and organized an overseas fundraising drive, according to 163.com.
"At that time, many potential donors made oral commitments to donate money to Sichuan, but it was hard to realize and follow through on some of these donations," the statement says. "But I (Zhang) have not given up my efforts to fulfill my promise."
Ji told 163.com that someone simply wanted to foment trouble for Zhang, and the secretary of Zhang's foundation was prepared to respond soon.
Divided reactions by Chinese Web users have been rife online.
Some asked why, after more than a year and a half, she hasn't donated anymore of her promised contribution.
Some users pointed out that Zhang had fulfilled most of the money she pledged, and she has already helped a lot with the relief efforts.
In December, Zhang placed first on a list of the 50 "most beautiful people in China," an annual event organized by the Beijing News. The Xinhua News Agency reported that the recognition was given partly because she organized an overseas fundraising campaign to help survivors of the earthquake.
Once a favorite actress of Zhang Yimou, a renowned Chinese director, Zhang Ziyi eventually made her name internationally known by staring in the Hollywood-made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha.
However, the spotlight she has attracted has also brought her problems – a phenomenon that has been growing along with the Chinese entertainment industry.
On December 23, a poster with Zhang's image put up at the Boyue Hotel in Beijing was splashed with ink by a group of men, prompting reports speculating that Zhang was caught up in economic and romantic disputes, a report by 163.com said.
Later, a Beijing-based newspaper, Shopping Guide, ran a story on January 13 claiming that Zhang was the mistress of a businessman dubbed "Mr A" and that she had broken up with her boyfriend, Vivi Nevo.
Zhang sued the paper Wednesday, saying her reputation had been tarnished.
Early last year, Zhang made headlines after appearing partially nude in beach photos posted online. After only a few hours, searches for the terms "Zhang Ziyi sex-photo-gate" on major search engines, including Baidu and Google.cn, reportedly yielded more than 100,000 results.
In 2005, Zhang was faulted by many Chinese for accepting the role of a Japanese geisha in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, as Japan is often an unfavorable target of Chinese anger for its invasion of China during World War II.
Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, said that the recent scandals related to Zhang Ziyi might not be a bad thing for the actress, but he suggested that the public's overreaction shows its mistrust in elites.
"Everyone's got to experience hardships and adversity, and international celebrities are no exception," he said. "This is part of their growing pains. Zhang is not ethically perfect, but being too harsh on her is also not good for her."
He said that the public shouldn't idolize celebrities' moral standards or per-sonalities, nor should it totally denounce them when scandals erupt.
"We can't deny Zhang's cultural value, despite what has happened recently," he said.
Tian Jinshuang, an entertainment critic and chief of an entertainment training school, attributed Zhang Ziyi's current awkward situation to her inappropriate response to those consecutive scandals and a failure by her public relations companies to deal with the aftermath of the events.
"Zhang is a famous entertainment star and could be seen as an entertainment commodity. The outbreak of consecutive scandals could undoubtedly make her more famous, but her reputation and credibility will be seriously hurt," he said.
Following these scandals, Zhang Ziyi took a harsh attitude toward media reports of those scandals, Tian said, which is why she failed to win sympathy from the public and lost her best opportunity to help herself out of the scandals.
"These scandals involving Zhang reflect people's mentality of hating the rich and the famous," he said.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 05:02 am
Sony Pictures plans to lay off 450 employees, or 6.5 percent of its workforce, in coming weeks to combat falling DVD sales, online piracy and other factors hurting long-term growth.
Sony Pictures Entertainment, a division of Sony Corp said on Monday most of the layoff notifications will be completed by the first week of March.
More than half the layoffs will occur in home entertainment and the information technology group, the company said.
"We are going through a painful time now, and the next couple of months are going to be challenging for everybody," Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said in a video message to employees.
Sony Pictures last week restructured its home entertainment division, shuffling the executive team for that unit in a move tied to the restructuring.
Aside from laying off 450 employees, Sony Pictures also said it plans to close 100 open positions.
In a memo to employees, Pascal and Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, said Sony was adjusting to the growth of online piracy, the effects of online social media on box office performance, and changes in DVD buying habits.
"The business is going through a rough period of trial and transition, and we have an obligation to take the steps necessary to get through it," the memo said.
Monday 15 February 2010 at 08:03 am
Liao Hsin-chung's Our Taiwan in These Years has become a hit after it first appeared as a series of posts on a BBS explaining the lives of ordinary people in Taiwan in the past 30 years. Mu Qian reports
When Liao Hsin-chung, a Taiwanese salesman working in Shanghai, started posting stories about the lives of ordinary Taiwanese more than a year ago he didn't expect himself to become a best-selling author.
But a collection of these posts was published in late November and sold half a million copies, according to Beijing Dook Publishing Company, whose long-term aim for the distribution of the book is 10 million copies.
Our Taiwan in These Years (我们台湾这些年) topped the chart of China's Top 10 Books of last year by www.sina.com, and was among the best 10 books of 2009 selected by a number of media, including China Daily and www.dangdang.com.
Liao's account begins in 1977, when he was born, and goes on till 2009. Through anecdotes and against the backdrop of influential events, he writes the history of Taiwan. The topics range from the election of Taiwan's leaders, to baseball, Michael Jackson's concert in Taipei to mandatory military service.
Before beginning his postings in May 2008, there were a lot of articles and TV programs about the 30 years of reform and opening-up in the mainland and it occurred to Liao that it would make sense to write something about the past 30 years in Taiwan, which is relatively unknown here. "I know, that for most mainlanders, Taiwan is an empty political concept. Most people don't really know what happened in Taiwan in the past 30 years and what kind of lives Taiwanese lead," he wrote. "Actually, the changes in the past 30 years are no less than those in the mainland."
He begins with the stereotyped views that he had of the mainland because of his early education in Taiwan, which included the idea that the Communist Party would "take Taiwan in bloodbath".
Then he tells of his school experiences, the relationships between different groups of people, the booming economy, the media, the process of democratization, and how these have affected him and his family.
Liao's posts soon became one of the hottest forums at www.tianya.cn, a popular hosting website, and many netizens encouraged him to write more, complaining he was not updating quickly enough.
Many mainlanders were surprised to find a lot of things that Liao said about Taiwan had parallels on the mainland, such as pejorative terms to describe the other side of the Straits. There were similarities when it came to medical care and admission to college.
"My knowledge of Taiwan was limited to the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, and books by Li Ao. Thanks to the posts for promoting understanding and communication. I hope there will be more such exchanges," one netizen commented.
Some Taiwan netizens also shared their experiences of the eras that Liao talked about.
Liao says these comments helped him to revise his work when he compiled the posts into a book.
But there were also some negative comments, one of which accused him of being "a spy of the Democratic Progressive Party".
The posts also sparked debates between mainlanders and Taiwanese, and sometimes just between mainlanders.
These comments would often be about sensitive issues that Liao didn't want to talk about, and sometimes he was concerned they would be banned.
Long after Liao finished posting articles, in May 2008, netizens kept commenting, and there are now more than 100,000 comments.
"Many of the comments are better written than my posts," Liao says.
While Liao was still posting, Beijing Dook Publishing Company board director Hua Nan sought out Liao to talk about a publishing deal. They signed a contract in December 2008.
"I knew it would become a bestseller as soon as I read it on the Internet," Hua says. "We used to hear about Taiwan in political discourses, and then we knew Taiwan through entertainment, but we never really got to know much about the lives of ordinary people in Taiwan."
However, it took almost a year for the book to get approval. As a private company, Dook had to publish the book in partnership with an official publishing house, the Chongqing Publishing House in this case. The book was inspected by the Chongqing Publishing House, the Administration of Press and Publication of Chongqing, the General Administration of Press and Publication of China, and the Taiwan Affairs Office of State Council. Dook got final approval in 2009.
"I was not worried too much about approval," Hua says. "First, the government is now advocating exchanges across the Taiwan Straits; second, it is a personal account of what the author has gone through in these years, which does not involve much about politics."
Liao's Internet writing totaled some 250,000 characters, but the published book was about 210,000 characters. Besides necessary deletions for the sake of the book's structure, some parts were deleted because the publisher deemed them improper.
"The more recent the incidents are, the more sensitive they are, and the more of them got deleted," Liao says. "But the core content remains: What people in Taiwan, under the same cultural structure, have gone through in the last three decades."
But he finds it a pity that some parts, such as those detailing how the Taiwan authorities depicted the mainland in the early 1980s were deleted, because they sound funny today.
Our Taiwan in These Years has become so popular that Liao has been contracted to write two sequels: One is a concise version of the book with pictures, and the other one is his answers to 150 questions from mainlanders about Taiwan.
"What I hope the book can achieve is give mainland readers some tangible information about Taiwan so that when they watch TV news about Taiwan they will have some clearer ideas of what is happening," Liao says.
Monday 15 February 2010 at 08:02 am
Pioneers in the development of the first MP3 players this week unveiled ground-breaking technology aimed at offering new content to music lovers during the MIDEM music industry trade fair.
The new MP3 file format, called MusicDNA, offers a wide range of additional content to music lovers about favourite artists and bands -- including lyrics, videos, tour dates and social networks such as Twitter -- viewable alongside tracks.
BACH Technology, the company behind MusicDNA, is headed up by Dagfinn Bach, a leading pioneer of digital music who helped develop the first MP3 player.
"Twenty years on from the initial development of the MP3, it is time for digital audio to once again evolve. Just as vinyl gave way to the CD and the CD to MP3, it is time for the MP3 to pass the baton on to MusicDNA," the BACH Technology CEO told journalists at MIDEM, which closes its doors Wednesday.
MusicDNA will be available on the company's website and is fully compatible on Apple's iconic iPods as well as all MP3 players, the company stressed.
Cost of the file will be up to the retailer but BACH said it expects it to be around the same cost as current MP3s.
Experts here this week noted that the new service will compete with Apple iTunes LP service, which offers users an opportunity to buy additional multimedia elements and content.
The BACH format, however, aims to provide users with more information than on iTunes and to automatically update data on labels, bands or retailers each time the player is connected to the Internet.
MusicDNA will also only automatically update legitimately purchased tracks and anyone downloading the music file illegally will not have their information updated.
Record labels such as Britain's influential independent label, Beggars Group, and Tommy Boy Entertainment, have already signed up.
Other partners on board for the initial launch early this year include Delta Records in the United States and Italy's Amiata Records.
Some digital service providers and retailers, including China's 2RG, which operates China's largest online independent music store, Sweden's InProdicon and Britain's People's Music Store are also offering support.
None of the world's leading record labels, however, have signed up to date though a company spokesman told AFP that it is currently in talks with a large number of other labels, including a number of major labels.
"We are getting very good feedback and the fact that we are looking to include everyone in this, and not competing against them helps," BACH chief executive Stefan Kohlmeyer, whose company is based in Norway, Germany and China, told journalists.
Rollout is to be staggered over 2010 with a full commercial launch expected in mid-2010.
According to the company, the MusicDNA player will be available free from the MusicDNA website.
Response to the announcement was immense, with some 30,000 people trying to access the website in one day.
Monday 15 February 2010 at 08:02 am
The word "hutong" is synonymous with history, and Zhuanta is the prototypical example. This lane has born witness to events as far back as the Yuan Dynasty, 700 years ago. During that time, as well as in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Zhuanta was an entertainment center where up to 10 different opera troupes flourished. In early 1900, it was occupied as the headquarters of the Boxers (aka the Righteous and Harmonious Fists) during the Yi Ho Tuan Movement, a drive to expel foreign influences from the city.
After the retaliatory Eight Nation Alliance arrived and took control of the city, the hutong was significantly damaged, resulting in the evacuation of the opera players. Soon afterwards, Zhuanta was taken over by ordinary residents.
Zhuanta has also harbored more recent celebrities like Lu Xun and Zhang Henshui, two writers from recent history.
But Zhuanta's most obvious landmark continues to be the brick tower for which the hutong is named. While the residents and homes surrounding it have evolved constantly, this single tower remains as a legacy to its long history.
A monument for a monk
The owner of the tower was an old monk named Wan Song who lived during the early Yuan Dynasty. A monk since the age of 15, before settling in Beijing Wan traveled the country to study Buddhism, and was thus considered quite erudite in his old age. After his death in 1246, people built the brick tower to commemorate this respectable monk.
But Wan's story is not quite so cut and dry. He's also linked to YeLüChucai, the senior assistant of Genghis Khan who later became prime minister of the Yuan Dynasty. Wan was his lifelong tutor, and his advice to manage a country with Confucianism and a heart with Buddhism had a great influence on Ye's governance.
For a time after Wan's death, the tower's significance was forgotten, and individuals moved in to open inns and meat stores. Some nearby residents even used the bricks of the tower for knife grinding. But during the Ming Dynasty, a traveling monk from the south named Le Yan passed through. Realizing the true story of the tower, he bought it and funded its reconstruction with donations, living there as its safeguard until his own death.
Le Yan's reconstruction of the 10-meter tall, nine-floor tower would not be its last; a more recent one was in 1976, to repair damage after the Tang Shan earthquake. Fortunately, the tower's original Yuan Dynasty style has been preserved.
Although it is situated at the entrance of the hutong, the tower currently is not easy to find. A 50-year-old woman surnamed Zhang, who has lived in the area for decades, explained that new reconstruction commenced in 2008 but has yet to be completed. According to Xicheng district's website, the tower is leaning three degrees to the northeast. That and the consideration of potential shifting due to construction of Subway Line 4 prompted the city to erect scaffolding around the tower for support. Xu Wei, the vice president of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of Xicheng district, said that the stabilized tower will be partially reconstructed and also observed to see if the subway has an impact on it before it's reopened to the public.
The writers' home
Zhuanta Hutong, as mentioned, was also home to writer and noted house-hopper Lu Xun, who moved into No. 64 (which is now No. 84) after splitting up with his brother, Zhou Zuoren (see last week's HOTW). The small, shabby door and narrow yard in the corner of the hutong hardly seem like a suitable residence for one of China's most well known writers, but when Lu moved there in 1923, he was going through a rough patch. His poor financial condition meant he had to squeeze into the three-room house with his mother and wife; the two women occupied the side rooms, while Lu stayed in the middle room, which was used as a living room during the day and his workroom at night. Still, he managed to accomplish masterpieces like Zhu Fu (Blessing) during this period.
The modern neighbors are unfazed. "You should go to the Lu Xun museum not here," an old man living in No. 64 said. "All the houses in this siheyuan were completely reconstructed 2 decades ago."
Lu only spent a year in Zhuanta, but the writer Zhang Henshui lived in No. 43 spent half his life in this hutong. In 1946, Zhang came from Nanjing to Beijing to organize the Beijing version of the Xin Min Newspaper. He bought around 30 houses for newspaper staff to work and live; the back door of the paper's siheyuan opened onto Zhuanta. In his article "Hei Xiangxing" ("A Walk in a Dark Lane"), Zhang wrote of falling into a world of darkness and quiet, with only a few far away lights to remind one of the distance of the main street. Visit Zhuanta in the evening, and it's very easy to see what he meant.
While the atmosphere remains the same, Zhang's old place has been completely razed. Apart from a few old locust trees, nothing of the houses remains.
Invisible opera houses and temples
However quiet it is now, the hutong was once considered one of the busiest places for opera activities, where songs and music played from morning till night during the last three dynasties. There were approximately 20 theaters, some large enough to accommodate audiences in the thousands. That's all history now; the music is long gone.
Not far from the tower, some private small restaurants and stores have replaced the original inns that occupied 50 meters of roadside from the entrance. Some migrant workers finish their day's work having dinner and beers in a noodle restaurant. The lights are on in other stores, but no one's shopping. Many people pass by on the main road, but none seem to see the hutong entrance, and no one bothers to enter.
If they did, they might happen across one door in particular, with a note reading "Historical Remains Under Official Protection." A 60-year-old woman who was born and raised in the hutong explained that this was the old Guan Yu Temple. "Actually, the original temple was there when I was young, but it was thoroughly razed during the Cultural Revolution and nothing else remains," she said. In that case, the note's claim seems farfetched or is but a sign of a burst of attention to heritage that has come decades too late.
Monday 15 February 2010 at 08:01 am
Parents in China can pull the plug on their kids' online gaming by asking game operators to end services for minors, according to a program launched over the weekend by the culture ministry and six major online gaming companies.
The program is designed to address the increasingly serious problem of teenagers younger than 18 obsessed with online games, according to a statement by the Ministry of Culture on Friday.
Parents and guardians can submit their kids' account numbers, as well as documents proving kinship between them, if they want the online gaming companies to restrict or terminate services.
With the online gaming market growing rapidly in China, the problem has drawn the attention of society, added the statement.
But the program falls short of defining what is meant by obsession with online games.
Teenagers currently account for 17 percent of online game players, totaling 11.8 million, according to the 2009 White Paper on China's online gaming market published last month by the culture ministry.
In 2009, revenues from online games in China increased 39 percent from the previous year to 25.8 billion yuan ($3.8 billion), according to the report.
Six online gaming companies, including Shenzhen-based Tencent, Inc, Shanghai-based Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd and Guangzhou-based NetEase.com, Inc, joined the program. The three companies have a combined 52 percent share of the total online gaming market in China.
Companies in the industry should do their best to prevent teenagers from becoming addicted to online games, an unnamed chief of the ministry's department of cultural market said on Friday. The department regulates the online gaming industry.
Compared to adults, teenage players are less addicted to online games, found the 2009 White Paper. On average, 19 percent of them played for more than 20 hours per week.
Since last Friday, NetEase.com has begun to accept reports from parents who are worried that their kids are addicted to online games or that the entertainment will impair their studies.
The company's staff will contact parents within 72 hours after receiving their reports, according to a post published on the company's website.
Once the parent's complaints are confirmed, the kids could have their gaming accounts suspended until they are adults.
Monday 15 February 2010 at 08:01 am
China seized 91,000 criminal suspects and confiscated 28.8 tonnes of drugs in 2009 as the country's war on drugs intensified.
Chinese police destroyed 391 drug factories and warehouses, up 60.2 percent year on year, according to a statement posted on the website of the Ministry of Public Security Monday.
Police and other government departments - including frontier defense, railways, transportation, civil aviation, forestry and post - strengthened coordination, the statement said.
Police seized 1,559 drug traffickers of foreign nationality in 2009 while police and government administrative departments closed 264 entertainment venues where drug-related crimes were discovered.
Figures from the National Narcotics Control Commission (CNNCC) show China had more than 1.335 million registered drug users by the end of 2009, up 18.6 percent from the previous year, with males making up 84.6 percent of the total.
Some 173,000 drug addicts were forced to receive treatment in 2009 while 60,000 former addicts had stayed off drugs for more than three years.
Sunday 14 February 2010 at 09:26 am
Yahoo Inc executives defended the company's commitment to Internet search on Wednesday, vowing to reverse the erosion of the company's market share and to fix the "misconception" that the company has given up on the business it helped create.
Speaking at Yahoo's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters on Wednesday, a string of Yahoo executives took the stage to provide a peek at innovations that Yahoo said will distinguish its product after it completes a deal to let Microsoft Corp handle the back-end technology that powers its Internet search service.
"We have not been sitting on our backside doing nothing. We just have not been talking about it," said Shashi Seth, Yahoo's new Vice President of Search, who joined the company last month.
"We are doing a lot to continue to invest in that space, continue to maintain our market share and grow the market share," he said.
Executives pointed to a variety of features under development, including a way to search for restaurants on smartphones by using a finger to draw a circle on an online map, that it said will produce the "next generation" of search.
Yahoo executives also showed examples of search results that instantly bring up a variety of related information, for instance, images of albums alongside search results for the rock band U2. And the company said it was working to better integrate search results into other popular Yahoo properties like email.
On Tuesday, Google Inc unveiled a new product called Google Buzz that adds social networking features directly into the company's Web-based email product Gmail, a feature that Yahoo unveiled last year.
Yahoo, the world's No.2 search engine behind Google, has been shedding assets and reorganizing the company under CEO Carol Bartz, who took the helm in January 2009.
In recent weeks, Yahoo has announced the sale of the Hot Jobs website and the Zimbra email business. In July, the company signed a 10-year deal with Microsoft designed to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in expenses by shifting Web indexing chores to Microsoft while Yahoo focuses on improving the consumer search experience. Yahoo executives said they still expected the deal to win regulatory approval and close early this year.
But Yahoo's slide in share has raised questions about its staying power in the search business.
Yahoo's share of the U.S. search market has declined or been flat every month since January 2009, when it had a 21 percent share, according to ComScore. Last month, Yahoo's U.S. search share was 17 percent, according to the latest comScore numbers cited in a note to investors from JP Morgan on Tuesday.
Google had 65.4 percent share in January, JP Morgan said, while Microsoft had 11.3 percent share.
Seth reiterated previous comments by Yahoo executives that the share loss was primarily the result of Yahoo walking away from unprofitable distribution deals with PC makers.
He noted that the company's popular Web properties, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News, meant that it already had plenty of traffic for its search engine, eliminating the need to strike partnership deals for placement with PC makers.
Asked when he expected Yahoo to begin regaining search share, Seth would only say that it would take time. "In the next couple of quarters we will both know if our efforts in this space are paying off," Seth said.
Tuesday 09 February 2010 at 06:43 am
Chinese consumers spent 166 trillion yuan (24.3 trillion U.S. dollars) with their bank cards last year in China, up 30.5 percent from 2008, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said Monday in a statement on its official website.
The total number of bank card transactions in China topped 19.7 billion in 2009, a growth of 18.1 percent year on year, said the PBOC.
China issued 270 million new bank cards last year, down 10.1 percent from 2008, according to the statement.
Tuesday 09 February 2010 at 06:42 am
Parents in China can pull the plug on their kids' online gaming by asking game operators to end services for minors, according to a program launched over the weekend by the culture ministry and six major online gaming companies.
The program is designed to address the increasingly serious problem of teenagers younger than 18 obsessed with online games, according to a statement by the Ministry of Culture on Friday.
Parents and guardians can submit their kids' account numbers, as well as documents proving kinship between them, if they want the online gaming companies to restrict or terminate services.
With the online gaming market growing rapidly in China, the problem has drawn the attention of society, added the statement.
But the program falls short of defining what is meant by obsession with online games.
Teenagers currently account for 17 percent of online game players, totaling 11.8 million, according to the 2009 White Paper on China's online gaming market published last month by the culture ministry.
In 2009, revenues from online games in China increased 39 percent from the previous year to 25.8 billion yuan ($3.8 billion), according to the report.
Six online gaming companies, including Shenzhen-based Tencent, Inc, Shanghai-based Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd and Guangzhou-based NetEase.com, Inc, joined the program. The three companies have a combined 52 percent share of the total online gaming market in China.
Companies in the industry should do their best to prevent teenagers from becoming addicted to online games, an unnamed chief of the ministry's department of cultural market said on Friday. The department regulates the online gaming industry.
Compared to adults, teenage players are less addicted to online games, found the 2009 White Paper. On average, 19 percent of them played for more than 20 hours per week.
Since last Friday, NetEase.com has begun to accept reports from parents who are worried that their kids are addicted to online games or that the entertainment will impair their studies.
The company's staff will contact parents within 72 hours after receiving their reports, according to a post published on the company's website.
Once the parent's complaints are confirmed, the kids could have their gaming accounts suspended until they are adults.
Thursday 04 February 2010 at 08:31 am
A lawmaker of southern China's Guangdong Province has been pressing the provincial authorities to disclose government budget, months after Guangzhou, the provincial capital, opened its budget for public scrutiny.
"Government budget is public finance. It should not be seen as confidential," Guangdong lawmaker Xin Pu told Xinhua Thursday.
Xin, general economist of Guangdong Power Corp., asked the Guangdong Provincial Finance Bureau to disclose budget of all provincial-level departments at the annual session of the Guangdong provincial People's Congress, which ended on Feb. 1.
During the session, more than 700 Guangdong lawmakers, including Xin,reviewed and voted on the provincial budget plan submitted by the Provincial Finance Bureau.
"The budget plan covers 116 departments and is as high as 469.5 billion yuan (about 69 billion U.S. dollars). It's such a large amount of money. The public should know how and where the money will be used," Xin said.
As of Thursday, Xin hasn't received an official reply from the Provincial Finance Bureau.
Liu Kun, director of the bureau, told Xinhua that opening provincial budget to the public did not have legal ground.
"Provincial budget is open to lawmakers according to the law. But there is no law saying that government budget must be open to the public," said Liu.
Liu said China was revising the Budget Law. "Guangdong will disclose the budget if disclosure to the public is written into the law."
The government of Guangzhou released budgets of all its 114 departments on the official website of the finance bureau in October last year in response to the query of finance observer Li Detao, the first time for a Chinese city to break the secret.
The website came to an intermittent halt the second day as citizens flooded to download documents. People had blamed Guangzhou government for excessive investment in nine kindergartens established for children of government officers.
Guo Weiqing, professor of politics and public affairs with Zhongshan University based in Guangzhou, said tax payers were entitled to obtain information of how the government distributed the public money.
"A transparent system will help improve government efficiency and is conducive to a stable social environment," said Guo.
Guangzhou's step has pushed other Chinese cities to improve government transparency.
Shanghai, one of the cities that refused to open budget in the feedback to Li's proposal last year, has pledged to seek ways to promote "sunlight finance."
Beijing removed "confidential" from the cover of the 200-page budget draft offered to lawmakers last week during the annual legislative session. Legislators were also allowed to take the document home rather than turning them back before leaving the venue.
Xin's proposal has received support from other lawmakers.
"Public supervision would help improve financial efficiency and justice. There is no reason that the budget cannot be made public," said Xu Zhihui, another Guangdong legislator.
Xin said he was still looking forward to a formal reply from the Guangdong Finance Bureau. "I'll keep pushing for the disclosure of the budget. I believe the day will come sooner or later."
