Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 05:33 am
Something awful is happening to Tibetan mastiffs in China.
They've become the latest must-have accessory of the very rich, who are willing to pay absurd prices for these dogs solely because they are status symbols. Expos featuring Tibetan mastiffs, like the one on March 19 in Changping, are helping feed the frenzy.
Terrible things happen to dog breeds that experience this type of popularity. High prices lure inexperienced or unscrupulous breeders to churn out litters as quickly as possible. Some don't care if dogs are carelessly matched or even bred with their own offspring.
The result is the quality and temperament soon deteriorate, and poorly bred dogs suffer from physical ailments and their behavior becomes unpredictable. This leads owners to abandon them, rather than spend money on vet bills or obedience training.
Even a properly bred, healthy Tibetan mastiff presents a great challenge for most people, and Chinese aren't the most experienced dog owners.
A Tibetan mastiff needs a lot of exercise and plenty of socialization. "Otherwise, left alone, young Tibetan mastiffs become bored and destructive - and their powerful jaws can literally destroy your living room," cautioned an expert at the website YourPureBredPuppy.com.
"It is a fine guard dog, but too strong-willed and massive to make a good family dog," said the expert, adding, Tibetan mastiffs require continuous training, supervision and control "to prevent excessive suspiciousness or aggression toward other people."
Another website, Woofahs.com, warned that Tibetan mastiffs are so protective of their family and property, "it may be difficult to bring people into your home."
People with children shouldn't even consider getting a Tibetan mastiff. When young, the big dogs are so energetic they can easily knock over a small child. They also can mistake active, physical play between your child and a friend as a threat to a family member, and attack.
Look what happened to a breed that experienced the same kind of popularity as a status symbol in the United States - the pit bull.
At one time, this breed was prized for its strength, courageousness and loyalty. It served as a mascot for national brands like RCA and Buster Brown Shoes.
In World War I, a pit bull named Stubby won acclaim as a hero. Another, named Petie, co-starred with children in a television series called Our Gang. Famous people as varied as author Laura Ingalls, President Theodore Roosevelt and Helen Keller owned pit bulls.
And if a woman who was blind, deaf and mute could enjoy a pit bull as a pet, surely it had to be a friendly, obedient breed.
But starting in the 1980s, pit bulls became the breed of choice for drug lords, gang members and dog fighting fans. They willingly paid high prices for the dogs, leading to inbreeding and erratic temperaments. Many were bred and trained for aggressiveness, becoming macho status symbols for their male owners.
Inevitably, people started getting bitten and even killed by pit bulls. The dogs are now feared and despised. Hundreds of cities have banned them, and three states have tried.
Imagine what kind of mayhem could result from badly bred, poorly trained dogs that can be up to three times larger than pit bulls.
Wednesday 31 March 2010 at 05:33 am
In all the time I’ve been watching British designer fashion, it has never received the kind of establishment recognition that it’s been getting lately. London’s young designers are still reeling from the fact that the Queen invited 300 members of the “clothing” industry to Buckingham Palace two weeks ago – and included them. Then, last week, Anna Wintour threw a Vogue party at Pulino’s for 20 emerging London talents who’d flown into New York to exhibit their clothes at the Soho Grand Hotel. Young British Hollywood talent turned out in support, too, in the shape of co-host Emma Watson, wearing one of Christopher Kane’s embroidered leather and lace dresses.
For a section of industry that has long been ignored, this kind of celebratory acceptance by the upper echelons of royalty, fashion and celebrity represents a rush of extraordinary breakthroughs.
The pinch-us sensation began last year, when Sarah Brown threw her second reception in a row for London Fashion Week at No 10, and she – and then Samantha Cameron – were seen at some shows. Behind the paparazzi shots of glamorous people drinking champagne, something has started to shift. Now that they make beautifully crafted British products that the best stores in the world hang alongside Lanvin, Balmain, Céline and YSL, designer fashion is finally beginning to win respect and political recognition as a serious exporter.
And some of it is coming in the form of Government assistance. For the past 18 months, the UKTI, Britain’s export department, has sponsored the London Show Rooms in Paris, where NewGen talents get to sell their clothes after fashion week. Together with British Airways, it stumped up the funding to underwrite the New York trip. And during the time these small businesses have been helped to take their clothes to market, most of them have doubled, or tripled, their orders. Right in the depths of the recession, they’ve bucked every trend by delivering original, pretty and luxurious clothes that people have clamoured to buy.
Best of all, the revenues are coming straight back to be redistributed in the form of British jobs. Over the past five years, our community of young designers has been working with small British clothing factories in and around London, and with traditional Scottish cashmere manufacturers. Christopher Kane, Erdem, Peter Pilotto, Mary Katrantzou, Mark Fast and many others have helped develop the skills of a British workforce that can now sew, knit and embroider to meet the standards of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Printemps and Colette in Paris. Young, creative Britain isn’t a myth, and it’s capable of generating employment.
In light of the general trepidation over spending cuts to come, money to help the fashion industry might seem the obvious thing to do away with. Whoever wins the next election, though, ought to think about stepping it up to underpin a valuable culture. At the least, the export support should continue. While the UK may be in for another dip, the signs are that the US is slowly on the up. That’s the young British designers’ biggest market. To keep growing, maintaining and creating jobs, they need to be sure to reach it.
Girly and gaudy, Accessorize has us all worked out
You don’t need to be a data-crunching, market-researching business analyst to understand why Monsoon, the company owned by Peter Simon, has had a recession-defying sales spurt in the past year (5.3 per cent up, to £710 million). All you have to do is go into Accessorize, where I was with my daughter last weekend. Generations of females from five to 85 were cheerfully coo-ing over the colourful, hippy-meets-Slumdog Millionaire ethnic patchworth bags and jewellery, swimsuits and beach dresses, fascinators, frilly retro knickers and cutesy trinkets. Everything seems to cost between £10 and £35, which makes it a guilt-free spending trip. But Simon’s cleverness is not simply in making it Primark cheap, which was the way to sell in the binge-spending years. These days, you have to be a hawk-eyed specialist in both psychology and practicality to win. Accessorize is an example of a retailer inhabiting a customer’s mentality and providing, in a tiny space, all the bits and pieces she needs for weddings, christenings, birthdays and holidays. Simon completely gets Britishwoman’s aesthetics (girlie and just this side of gaudy), our practicality (useful, fun-yet-modest holiday kit all in one place) and our indulgence towards daughters, granddaughters, nieces and all their little friends. Congratulations to Simon – as a nation, he has us worked out.
An animal-print cardigan to tame the Easter chill
I can hardly bear it that we’re finding ourselves more in need of knitwear than summer frocks at Easter, but as we face the last blast of this never-ending winter, a British woman’s thoughts desperately turn to cardigans. Since Michelle Obama’s “cardie diplomacy” visit to London last April, a few labels have seized on the First Lady’s favourite knit and transformed it into a cheering, fashionable piece. Last week in New York I ducked into a branch of Mrs O’s beloved J. Crew, where the genius-owner, Mickey Drexler, is now interpreting cardigans with fabric ruffles, in the season’s pastels. The J. Crew catalogue shows their cardis “brought down” against ribbed vests and washed-out, olive-khaki cotton, which looks no-fuss natural in the way only Americans can. In fact, the hybridisation of knitting and fabric isn’t original – it’s something two of my favourite Japanese labels, Sacai and Toga, have been developing for the past few years, but I’m glad it’s catching on, and gladder still that Net-a-Porter will be making J. Crew available in the UK in May. Until that happens, I think an animal-print cardigan would hit the spot. I found one at a Spanish store called Blanco. Diane von Furstenberg and Sonia Rykiel have designer versions, I notice, but the one I’d really like this week is a brown and beige, oversized, leopardspot cardigan on the Boden website. Curses! Turns out everyone else has already identified how hot this cardigan is. It’s a sell-out – and has an 11-week wait for new deliveries, when there should be no need for cardigans, anyway. But the way things have been going, I wouldn’t bank on it.
Tuesday 30 March 2010 at 01:23 am
Thousands of Chinese have submitted opinions and recommendations on a draft government blueprint for education reform and development since it was published on Feb. 28.
When the document on medium and long-term national educational reform and development was closed to public submissions on Sunday, the Ministry of Education had received 27,855 items, said a statement on the ministry's website.
Of the total, 8,317 came in the form of e-mails, 1,064 in letters, and the remainder in posts on the message board on the website.
In addition, the work office in charge of the blueprint itself collected 2.49 million recommendations and opinions from media reports and the Internet.
The message board listed 23 areas for public comment, but the two topics of pre-primary education and nine-year compulsory education attracted the most posts, each topping 3,000.
The comments covered a variety of concerns, such as a standard curriculum, lack of funding for rural schools and when to start teaching English.
The work office was still processing the submissions, which would be actively considered in revising the blueprint, said the statement.
The chief concerns in this round of opinion submissions had yet to be identified.
The draft blueprint was opened to public submissions after several revisions based on the first round of extensive public comment in January and February.
The statement said the first round showed most people wanted the reform to solve problems such as unemployment of college graduates and limited access to urban education for children of migrant workers.
The draft blueprint for 2010 to 2020 states it aims to extend education opportunities and raise educational quality as two of its five strategic goals.
Tuesday 30 March 2010 at 01:21 am
The Social Security Fund (SSF), the nation's largest pension fund, is planning aggressive investments in overseas markets, including private equities, Dai Xianglong, chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund, said on Monday.
"The SSF is keen on expanding its overseas footprint through its investments in stocks, bonds as well as new avenues like private equities," said the chairman.
The fund can invest as much as 20 percent of its total assets abroad, Dai said.
The fund's holding of overseas assets including stocks and bonds were just 6.54 percent of its total portfolio at the end of last year.
Dai said the fund's role would be that of a financial investor and it does not intend to seek control of the investee companies.
The chairman, however, refused to reveal the investment timetable but said the fund was in talks with overseas asset managers on several programs for unlisted companies and private equity funds.
The pension fund will also come out with rules governing its overseas investments after it gains some experience abroad, Dai said.
"There is enough room to improve our overseas investments," said Dai. The fund's next few moves will help diversify the nation's huge foreign exchange holdings of $2.4 trillion, he said.
"The appreciation of the yuan will be gradual and will not affect the overseas investments by SSF if the returns are high enough," said Dai.
The US dollar remains the world's main reserve currency and the American economy is recovering, even though repairs to the financial system will take a "long time", said Dai, adding that he doesn't see Europe's sovereign debt crisis worsening either.
The pension fund's assets are set to increase to 2 trillion yuan in 2015 from 776.5 billion yuan last year, the chairman said. The pension fund started with assets of just 80 billion yuan a decade back.
The SSF got investment yields of 84.9 billion yuan on its investments in 2009, with a return rate of 16.1 percent, according to figures posted on the fund's website. The realized gains on its investments stood at 42.6 billion yuan by the end of last year.
The SSF's total investment yields rose to 244.8 billion yuan in 2009, with an average annual return rate of 9.75 percent. It had total assets of 776.5 billion yuan, an increase of 38 percent from the previous year.
The SSF reported its first annual loss in 2008, losing 6.79 percent on its investments.
But in 2009, nearly 60 percent of SSF's returns came from equity investments thanks to the booming stock markets, said Dai.
The chairman said fluctuations in the stock market are "normal", and 2010 is a difficult year due to the economic situation.
But he remains optimistic on the stock market prospects in the long term.
The pension fund is seeking a yield that exceeds the increase in the consumer price index by a "wide margin", the chairman said.
Monday 29 March 2010 at 05:06 am
Animated 3-D family movie "How to Train Your Dragon" slayed audiences this weekend, ousting "Alice in Wonderland" from its three-week run at the top of the North American box office in another strong showing for the 3-D format.
The DreamWorks Animation 3-D movie about a hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons collected $43.3 million during the three days beginning on Friday, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
But despite heavy promotion and glowing reviews, "Dragon's" opening fell short of the studio's "Monsters Vs. Aliens" 3-D adventure a year ago, which brought in $59.3 million on its opening weekend. "Dragon" cost a reported $165 million to produce, according to website BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Walt Disney Co's psychedelic adventure "Alice in Wonderland" was pushed into second place with $17.3 million, while raunchy new comedy release from MGM, "Hot Tub Time Machine," starring John Cusack, earned $13.6 million for third.
"How to Train Your Dragon" was the third box office hit for a 3-D movie after "Alice" and record-breaking sci-fi fantasy "Avatar."
Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Hollywood.com noted that 3-D movies have led the weekend box office in North America for nine of the 13 weekends of 2010.
Some 68 percent of "Dragon" ticket sales came from more expensive 3-D and Imax screenings, the studio said.
DreamWorks hopes the computer-animated movie will enjoy a strong run through the upcoming spring break holiday for school kids. Audiences were split almost evenly between those under 25 and older movie-goers.
"We are really anticipating some long-term playability based on these strong reviews and word of mouth," said Anne Globe, head of worldwide marketing at DreamWorks Animation.
"I think audiences obviously are very excited about the recent 3-D offerings. DreamWorks Animation is making all of our movies in 3-D going forwards," Globe said. "How to train Your Dragon" was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc.
"Dragon" also brought in an estimated $31 million from overseas markets, opening at No. 1 in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Spain, the studio said. The movie will open in the United Kingdom and France in the coming week.
Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" lost more than one-third of its 3-D sites to "Dragon" as distributors jostle for screen space for three major 3-D releases.
The weekend also saw 20th Century Fox's "Avatar" fall out of the Top 10 movies for the first time since its release in December. "Avatar" has now grossed a record-breaking $2.6 billion at box offices around the world.
Elsewhere, "Hot Tub Time Machine" from struggling studio MGM, which is exploring a sale, opened with $13.6 million after warm reviews for its ribald journey back to the 1980s.
Columbia Pictures romantic comedy "The Bounty Hunter," starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, held on in its second week with $12.4 million, pushing Fox's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," based on the best-selling children's books by Jeff Kinney, into fifth place with $10 million.
Monday 29 March 2010 at 05:05 am
Water stopped rising Monday morning in the flooded coal mine in Shanxi Province, where 153 workers are believed to be trapped, the rescue headquarters said.
Survival chances of the trapped workers were looking better as a consequence, according to the rescue headquarters.
More than ten pumps were pumping up to 125 cubic meters of water per hour and operating round-the-clock at the site. Workers were trying to get huge pipes as long as 2,000 meters into the flood water and maintain ventilation at the same time.
Investigations showed that 261 workers were in the pit of Wangjialing Coal Mine, under construction, when underground water gushed in at about 1:40 p.m.Sunday.
Of them, 108 were lifted safely to the ground while 153 others were trapped in the shaft, according to the rescue headquarters.
Initial investigations showed most of the trapped were migrant workers from Shanxi, Hebei, and Guizhou provinces.
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local authorities to spare no effort to save the trapped while guarding against secondary accidents.
Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang reached the site of the accident early Monday to oversee the search and rescue operation.
The mine, sitting astride Xiangning County of Linfen City and Hejin City of Yuncheng City, covers about 180 square kilometers.
The mining zone is estimated to have more than 2.3 billion tonnes of coal reserves, including nearly 1.04 billion tonnes of proven reserves, according to the company's official website.
The mine, affiliated with the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal Co. Ltd., is a major project approved by the provincial government. It is currently under construction and is expected to produce 6 million tonnes of coal annually once in operation.
Sunday 28 March 2010 at 05:40 am
A number of Chinese universities with some of the world's largest student enrollments are facing bankruptcy in the next decade due to dwindling applications, the head of a major institution has said.
"With the end of the baby boom, we will see less students aged between 18 and 22 years old entering college," said Wuhan University president Gu Hailiang.
"Some schools, particularly private universities and independent colleges, are facing financial challenges," Gu was quoted by the China Youth Daily as saying on Wednesday.
There were 10.2 million students registered to sit for the college entrance exam last year, 400,000 less than in 2008, according to the Ministry of Education.
The number of students who registered for the university exams decreased 20 percent in Shanghai last year, resulting in Shanghai missing its enrollment target for two years in a row, according to the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post.
"Many private universities and independent colleges compete by lowering their selection criteria to attract more students, because they will run at a loss when the number of student applications drops to fewer than 6,000," Gu said.
Private universities and independent colleges also do not have enough avenues for raising revenue, he said, adding that private universities in particular lack practical financial experience compared to their western counterparts.
One of the best options for Chinese schools is to explore courses that attract more students who care about employment, Gu said.
Universities facing financial crises might have to shut within five years, said Guo Shenglian, deputy governor of Hubei province.
A number of Chinese public universities are also reported to be burdened by insurmountable debts.
The debts hit a record of 500 billion yuan in 2006, according to a March 10 report in the Guangzhou Daily. The debts for the universities exceeded 10 billion yuan in both Shandong and Jiangsu provinces, according to the official website of the educational department in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.
Following a government decision to enroll more university students in 1999, universities have seen an annual influx of 5 million students, as opposed to less than a million a decade ago, according to the Ministry of Education.
To cope with this rapid expansion, many universities withdrew huge loans to finance the improvement of their infrastructures, Wang Bintai, director of the Jiangsu provincial education department, was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying in 2007.
Zhou Ji, the former minister of education, suggested in September 2007 that universities in debt should resolve their crises through "land replacement" - selling the land use right of the old campuses to pay the debts accumulated in building the new ones.
However, universities do not have the legal right to carry out "land replacement" to repay their debts, the Ministry of Land and Resources said, explaining that the lands are State-owned and for "educational use".
Sunday 28 March 2010 at 05:39 am
China's Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said Saturday it would assemble more than 1,100 engineers and workers from across the country to dig over 1,600 wells in the country's southwest, where a severe drought is likely to continue.
All of those professionals would be arriving at the droughty areas by April 1 and the first batch set off on Saturday, said the MLR in a statement on its website.
More than 1,600 wells would be drilled, providing 200,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day for 2 million people and 1 million head of livestock, said the ministry, hoping to finish digging 1,400 of the wells by May 10.
So far, the MLR has already dug over 100 wells, which can produce drinking water for more than 100,000 people.
The drought, which has left southwest China suffering since last Autumn, would likely continue till May as no substantial rainfall was expected ahead of the rainy season, according to meteorological agencies.
It has left 18 million residents and 11.7 million heads of livestock in the region with drinking water shortages and caused direct economic losses of 23.7 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion), data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed.
Saturday 27 March 2010 at 01:41 am
The Ministry of Finance published China's overall central financial budget for 2010 on its official website on March 25.
The budget increased 6 percent compared to a year ago, and the budget for domestic added-value tax is 10.3 percent higher than the amount implemented in 2009 with a projection of 1.535 trillion yuan ($224.78 billion), since the country is expected to reach about 8 percent GDP growth, 11 percent industrial added value as well as possible price changes.
For the first time the ministry clarified that government departments are in charge of making their budgets public.
Compared with last year, the budget published this year is more comprehensive and detailed, with the budget report and 12 tables of central finance budgets approved at the National People's Congress (NPC) this year.
The central budget expenditure for 2010 is broken down into 23 categories with 123 items, 82 more than that last year.
Spokesman for the Ministry of Finance Dai Bohua, said a wider range of budget information will be made public in the future to give further transparency to the budget.
Dai added that all departments will commit to more open budgets according to the relevant regulations and principles.
In 2009, the Ministry of Finance published the budget report and four tables of central financial budgets approved by the NPC on its website, immediately after the two sessions.
Saturday 27 March 2010 at 01:38 am
The severe drought ravaging southwest China, home to an ingredient in the anti-flu drug Tamiflu, may prompt Roche, Tamiflu's biggest producer, to use substitute ingredients.
Southwest China produces 85 percent of the world's Star Anise, an ingredient of Tamiflu, and the region's production may be "substantially reduced" as a result of the drought, said Li Changxin of zyctd.com, China's biggest traditional medicine trading website.
Two thirds of the Star Anise used by Tamiflu's biggest producer, F.Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., comes from China, said Lu Shunzhong from the Forestry Research Institute of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
But Roche spokesman Cao Yong told Xinhua he is "not aware of any possible effect on Tamiflu's production posed by the drought."
Star Anise is the best source of shikimic acid, an indispensable part of Tamiflu, which is used against the A/H1N1 flu, said Li Yi, secretary general of Guangxi's Flavors and Fragrances Industry Association.
While it is true a major event like the drought could have a ripple effect, Star Anise can be substituted, and so Tamiflu's production will not be greatly affected, Cao said.
Guangxi produces 80,000 tonnes of the plant annually, about 85 percent of total world production, according to Guangxi Forestry Department statistics.
"Up to 30 percent of the Star Anise plants in Guangxi are withering," said Yang Wende, head of Guangxi's Star Anise Association.
In Yunnan province, the second largest producing region, over 7,000 Mu (466.7 hectares) will see no yield at all while 50,000 Mu of Star Anise crops are withering, said a Yunnan forestry official surnamed Yang.
Star Anise demand is expected to outweigh supply in Guangxi, and its price has already tripled since early 2009, Li said.
The drought has been ravaging southwest China for months, affecting 61.3 million residents and 5 million hectares of crops in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Wednesday.
Demand for Tamiflu may rise sharply if the A/H1N1 flu spreads. Flu cases have been reported in 213 countries and regions and had killed at least 16,455 at the end of Feb. 2010.
The World Health Organization's emergency committee of experts said on Feb. 23 that it is still too early to say the A/H1N1 flu pandemic has peaked.
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned the A/H1N1 flu is "very likely" to break out in summer in southern China.
China's export of Star Anise accounts for over 80 percent of the world's total, with Guangxi exporting 1,714 tonnes in 2009, up 46.5 percent from 2008.
Roche is a Swiss global health care company with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and offices around the world.
Friday 26 March 2010 at 12:16 am
A Beijing lawyer's request to sue the Ministry of Agriculture, in order to force it to release scientific data about genetically modified (GM) rice, was rejected by a local court.
Wei Rujiu, 40, head of the Beijing Weirujiu Law Firm, told the Global Times Tuesday that he tried to file papers with Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court on March 17 but the court turned him away.
He attempted to collect data about the experiments that were done to show GM rice would be safe for consumers.
A court official surnamed Jiang confirmed Thursday to the Global Times that intermediate courts are not obligated to accept such lawsuits because the lawyer did not prove a direct relationship with the ministry.
He suggested the lawyer apply to other relevant government departments for a solution, Jiang said, without naming the departments.
The current Civil Procedure Law, which was amended in 2007 and enacted in April 2008, stipulates that a plaintiff must have direct interest relations with the defendant, or the court has the right to refuse a case.
Wei said although he didn't have any direct relations with the ministry, GM rice poses potential harm to his health.
"Actually, it's a loophole of the law," Wei said. "As a citizen, I couldn't find a place to demand transparency at the ministry-level government."
Two varieties of GM rice along with a corn received safety certificates from the ministry on November 27. Some critics have expressed fears the rice would harm people's health if sold commercially.
Wei said that he asked the ministry on February 1 for the information about GM rice and the ministry sent him a written response on February 25.
The response did not include any details about the experiments. He wanted to find out how the varieties were produced, their impact on the environment, and their safety.
"The ministry replied to me in a timely and formal way, but claimed that some of the information is State secret, and refused to publicize it," Wei said. "It goes against the basic principle of the publicity of government information."
Wei said he would appeal to the Beijing Higher People's Court. "In the discussions about GM rice, beside the voices of authorities, the opinion of the public and environment protection organizations should also be heard and respected," he said.
It was the latest development after the ministry issued safety certificates to the GM crops. That followed warnings from some that the rice may harm the public.
An official in charge of GM food safety at the ministry said the safety certificates do not necessarily mean the products will be approved for commercial production, said people. com.cn, the website of People's Daily. "There aren't any GM grains planted in the country," the official added.
And the central government stressed earlier this year that the new GM varieties would be industrialized "on the basis of scientific appraisal and legal management," the Southern People Weekly reported.
The issue has divided the public.
"The GM grains have lots of shortcomings," according to the weekly. "Some of the GM grains contained a poisonous protein called BT, short for Bacillus Thuringiensis, which is lethal to some pests." "As long as pests could be killed by the BT, people may worry about whether it could do harm to human beings," the report said.
Some scientists expressed other opinions. Yuan Longping, the well-known expert known as the father of hybrid rice, said last Monday that in order to ease public anxiety toward GM rice, he wants to be the first to eat it, Wuhan Evening Post reported.
GM crops also face controversy in developed countries.
The EU has approved the cultivation of a GM potato and the use of three types of altered maize, saying they don't pose a health risk, although critics accused the European Commission of pandering to corporate interests at the expense of public health, the Guardian reported on March 3.
Friday 26 March 2010 at 12:16 am
A college student who killed his roommate for snoring in 2009 was sentenced to death with a 2-year reprieve in northeast China's Jilin Province Thursday.
Guo Liwei, a 24-year-old college student who had become fed up with his roommate's snoring, confessed to stabbing him to death at night on Nov. 14, 2009 in Changchun, the provincial capital.
Zhao Yan, 23, was stabbed in the chest and back in his room at Jilin Agricultural University. Then Guo called the police.
Guo was ordered to compensate the victim's family with over 270,000 yuan (39,542 U.S. dollars) by Changchun Intermediate People's Court.
Guo was also deprived of political rights for life, the verdict reads. Guo said at court that he would not appeal.
Guo had complained to Zhao about his snoring and posted a video of him snoring on a university website, which created tension between the two.
"I told Zhao about it and he became angry. He verbally abused me several times, prompting me to kill him," Guo said.
Thursday 25 March 2010 at 05:56 am
As a thirty-year-old man, Yao Ming has gained a number of social roles beyond being a basketball player. He will become a father this autumn when his first child is born. He is an active supporter of charities for children and victims of poverty and natural disasters. And now he is a diversified businessman.
During the past eight years with the NBA's Houston Rockets, Yao succeeded in translating his popularity among fans and exciting on-court performance into some hefty paychecks.
In Forbes' 2009 list of Chinese celebrities, Yao ranked No 1 with an annual income of 357 million yuan.
Managing that astronomical amount has been the task assigned to his financial team.
His previous investments include co-founding Top100.cn, a Chinese music website, opening several Yao Restaurants in Houston and Shanghai, and snapping up the Shanghai basketball team he used to play for.
These business decisions are all closely associated with his hobbies: pop music, food and basketball.
His latest investment is no exception. As a fan of science and astronomy, Yao signed a five-year endorsement contract with Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co Ltd, a high-tech company specializing in Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies.
According to the deal, Yao purchased 675,000 shares of the company for 375,000 yuan.
Currently, UniStrong is hoping to raise 1.11 billion yuan through offering 30 million shares, with an IPO price of 37 yuan per share on the Small and Medium Enterprise board. As the company's fourth largest shareholder, Yao holds 675,000 shares, accounting for 0.75 percent of the total.
"The high offering price reflected high market recognition and confidence towards UniStrong," said Jiang Zhou, an industry analyst with Xiangcai Securities.
"As a specialist in GPS product research and development, UniStrong is a leading product provider on positioning, navigation and timing adjustment. Currently, our domestic specialized market share has reached 40 percent," said Sun Ying, UniStrong's marketing manager.
According to Zhang Guangrong, an analyst from Rising Securities, the GPS market is globally valued at more than $100 billion, and navigation systems for cars and mobile phones are a fast growing market.
"In 2008, China's satellite navigation sector reported revenue of 28.48 billion yuan, and about 90 percent came from consumers. In other words, this is a sector with great potential," Zhang said. And possibly not a shabby investment for a basketball player either.
Thursday 25 March 2010 at 05:56 am
As a thirty-year-old man, Yao Ming has gained a number of social roles beyond being a basketball player. He will become a father this autumn when his first child is born. He is an active supporter of charities for children and victims of poverty and natural disasters. And now he is a diversified businessman.
During the past eight years with the NBA's Houston Rockets, Yao succeeded in translating his popularity among fans and exciting on-court performance into some hefty paychecks.
In Forbes' 2009 list of Chinese celebrities, Yao ranked No 1 with an annual income of 357 million yuan.
Managing that astronomical amount has been the task assigned to his financial team.
His previous investments include co-founding Top100.cn, a Chinese music website, opening several Yao Restaurants in Houston and Shanghai, and snapping up the Shanghai basketball team he used to play for.
These business decisions are all closely associated with his hobbies: pop music, food and basketball.
His latest investment is no exception. As a fan of science and astronomy, Yao signed a five-year endorsement contract with Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co Ltd, a high-tech company specializing in Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies.
According to the deal, Yao purchased 675,000 shares of the company for 375,000 yuan.
Currently, UniStrong is hoping to raise 1.11 billion yuan through offering 30 million shares, with an IPO price of 37 yuan per share on the Small and Medium Enterprise board. As the company's fourth largest shareholder, Yao holds 675,000 shares, accounting for 0.75 percent of the total.
"The high offering price reflected high market recognition and confidence towards UniStrong," said Jiang Zhou, an industry analyst with Xiangcai Securities.
"As a specialist in GPS product research and development, UniStrong is a leading product provider on positioning, navigation and timing adjustment. Currently, our domestic specialized market share has reached 40 percent," said Sun Ying, UniStrong's marketing manager.
According to Zhang Guangrong, an analyst from Rising Securities, the GPS market is globally valued at more than $100 billion, and navigation systems for cars and mobile phones are a fast growing market.
"In 2008, China's satellite navigation sector reported revenue of 28.48 billion yuan, and about 90 percent came from consumers. In other words, this is a sector with great potential," Zhang said. And possibly not a shabby investment for a basketball player either.
Wednesday 24 March 2010 at 06:18 am
China's year-on-year inflation rate was expected to be between 2 to 2.5 percent for the first quarter this year, the country's top economic planner said here Tuesday.
The consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, would see a "moderate increase" in the first quarter, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement on its website.
China's CPI rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier in February, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
Food prices would begin to fall as the weather got warmer, said the statement. In February, food prices rose 6.2 percent from the previous year due to the Lunar New Year holiday and poor weather.
The Lunar New Year holiday, or Spring Festival, is the most important traditional festival in China for family reunion. People usually spend a lot on food, alcohol, cigarettes and gifts during the period.
The February CPI was within normal range, compared with the Spring Festival months in previous years, said Zhou Wangjun, deputy director of the Department of Prices of the NDRC.
However, Zhou warned that there were still uncertainties in the price trend, including fluctuation in international commodities prices.
China targets a consumer price rise of around 3 percent this year, according to a government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the opening of the annual session of the National People's Congress earlier this month.
Wednesday 24 March 2010 at 06:18 am
China National Offshore Oil Corp will commit to buy liquefied national gas from BG Group Plc in Australia's largest LNG accord today, the Australian Financial Review reported, citing unidentified people close to the deal.
The agreement will be signed at 4 pm local time in Beijing, said one company official who asked not to be named because the contract hasn't been made public. Australian Resources Minister Martin Ferguson will attend the ceremony. The companies in May announced an initial accord for the supply of 3.6 million metric tons annually of LNG from BG's Curtis project over 20 years.
"The gross value of the contract is estimated to be as high as $70 billion, making it the largest LNG deal in Australia," Nik Burns, an analyst at RBS Morgans in Melbourne, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV today.
The transaction will eclipse the A$50 billion ($46 billion) Gorgon contract Exxon Mobil Corp signed last year with PetroChina Co China, the world's second-biggest energy user, wants to treble the use of cleaner-burning gas to about 10 percent of energy consumption by 2020 to reduce reliance on more polluting coal.
Jiang Yongzhi, a spokesman for Cnooc Ltd, China National Offshore's Hong Kong-listed unit, referred a request for comment to the parent, which operates the group's LNG business. Calls to the media office at China National Offshore in Beijing weren't immediately answered.
China National Offshore is set to sign "about three" term contracts to purchase LNG this year, President Fu Chengyu said on March 14. The Beijing-based company operates three LNG terminals in Guangzhou, Fujian and Shanghai and is building a fourth in Zhejiang, according to the company's website.
Australian Ventures
Queensland Curtis is among more than 12 LNG ventures proposed for Australia and Papua New Guinea, targeting Asian demand for cleaner-burning fuels than coal and oil.
Reading, England-based BG is planning one of five coal-seam gas-to-LNG projects at Gladstone in Queensland. UK's third largest oil and gas producer plans to build an LNG plant with first-phase capacity of 7.4 million tons a year from two processing units near Gladstone on the central Queensland coast, according to its website.
Chinese companies have spent at least $13 billion on energy acquisitions in the last two years. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and PetroChina agreed this week to buy Arrow Energy Ltd after raising their offer to A$3.5 billion, marking China's entry to Australia's coal-seam gas industry.
PetroChina's August agreement with Exxon to buy 2.25 million tons a year of LNG from the Chevron Corp-led Gorgon project in Western Australia over 20 years was estimated by the Australian government to be worth about A$50 billion.
Coal-seam gas is mostly methane found on the surface of coal. The gas can be extracted when pressure on the seams is reduced, usually by removing water. LNG is natural gas chilled to liquid form for transport by ship to destinations not connected by pipeline.
Wednesday 24 March 2010 at 06:18 am
It's a disorder that's been spreading through the expat population for years, undetected, untreatable. It starts as soon as you step off the plane and doesn't stop until you leave. It infects family, destroys morals and defiles sense of duty.
It's expatisis. The term, coined by family physician and health blogger, Dr Richard Saint-Cyr in a series of blog posts on his website My Health Blog (www.myhealthblog.com), gives a name to the phenomenon of increased drinking, smoking and stress experienced by a surprisingly high number of expats living in Beijing.
Expatitis, Dr Saint-Cyr explains in his blog, is "a syndrome of multiple physical and mental illnesses brought on by maladaptive coping mechanisms to the stressors inherent to living abroad".
In addition to increased attention to vices, he describes the condition as producing a decrease in sleep, healthy eating and exercise.
In other words - all those words of wisdom expat mothers lovingly passed on to their offspring are recklessly thrown to the wind.
Like high school students escaping parental control when they leave home for the first time, I have witnessed countless expats come to China and end up living a lifestyle reminiscent of their dorm days in university. It doesn't matter the age or the gender.
Having observed an unusually high prevalence of unhealthy behavior amongst my fellow expats, I have to agree with Dr Saint-Cyr's diagnosis. I've watched and wondered as expats come and go, what is it about being in Beijing that leads us to abandon self-regard? More so than anywhere else I've lived, I see people diving to the bottom of a bottle or to the bottom of a bag of McDonalds.
Though Dr Saint-Cyr's diagnosis of the symptoms may be correct, I am not entirely convinced that the root of Expat's detrimental deeds are simply a result of an inability to peacefully settle into a Beijing lifestyle.
I don't disagree that coping is involved in the wild ways we tend to gravitate towards, but I think that there is more to it than simply not being able to adapt.
The social norms that once upon a time dictated lifestyles back home have been replaced by the mores of a different culture and by an relaxing of social and personal inhibitions.
The critical eye once cast upon an individual doing something that would be atypical back home has been replaced by the notion that perhaps this is simply 'how foreigners do it.'
It's also important to look at the general personality types that China tends to attract. Most of them, with the exception of those who have no choice in the matter, come to China seeking an adventure.
They are the types of people who thrive of alternative lifestyles and, regardless of where they are living, reject standard social norms.
Coincidentally, perhaps, they are the type of people who also tend to enjoy more drinks, more cigarettes and less sleep.
It's easy to blame external factors for unhealthy behavior, but every lifestyle is a choice, regardless of location. Here there is a slackening of stability and responsibility that leaves even the most astute boy scout (or girl scout, for that matter) feeling a little more footloose, but that's not a reason to let the locale get the best.
While I'd rather be able to pop a pill to cure this listless lifestyle, the only real cure for expatitis is self-discipline and time.
Well, for now at least the problem has been diagnosed.
Wednesday 24 March 2010 at 06:17 am
A currency swap agreement between China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) came into effect Wednesday.
The currency swap agreement, or the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) agreement, totaled 120 billion U.S. dollars, said a statement posted Wednesday on the website of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank.
The agreement was signed in December last year by the finance ministers and central bank governors of the ASEAN, China, Japan and the ROK, as well as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief.
The CMIM agreement aimed to provide financial support to the CMIM participant countries who face short-term liquidity shortages, according to the statement.
Under the CMIM agreement, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the 10-member ASEAN countries will be able to swap their currencies with U.S. dollars for an amount proportionate to their contribution to the regional reserve pool in case of a liquidity shortage, the statement said.
China and Japan contributed 38.4 billion U.S. dollars each to the liquidity pool and the ROK offered 19.2 billion U.S. dollars. The 10 ASEAN nations provided a combined 24 billion U.S. dollars, according to the statement.
Wednesday 24 March 2010 at 06:17 am
A variety of investment instruments will eventually be common in China as retail investors gain the sophistication of investing in different asset classes, and capitalizing on opportunities outside of the country, said Robert Shakotko, managing director of Index Services at Standard & Poor's (S&P).
"Chinese asset and fund managers have started looking at fixed-income products and index commodities," he said. "More Chinese investors are aware of global opportunities when they look for equity investments. When they invest in (the equity stocks of) the Coca-Cola Company, for example, they also invest in the company's global activities."
Shakotko was speaking to the media recently following the licensing of the S&P 500 Index on March 18 to Bosera Asset Management Co, a Chinese mutual-fund company, for the development of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on the index.
The licensing move to Bosera is considered significant to the investment community as 10 years ago nobody in China could imagine engaging in trade outside of the country, he said.
As of the end of 2009, Bosera had 209 billion yuan ($30.62 billion) worth of assets under management, the company's website said. China, and the rest of the Asia-Pacific, remain important strategic markets for S&P to expand its international business.
Shakotko reckoned the first ETF in China would eventually lead to the introduction of other indexes such as different types of bonds and commodities, which are popular in Europe.
However, the main challenge facing the investing community today is the fear of investing after the recent financial crisis.
"After a period of crisis, there will be a period of fear," Shakotko said. "The immediate instinct is to cash out and deposit whatever remains in a safety box. This is the fear that we need to overcome."
Reestablishing a long-term investment strategy would be an immediate, crucial task of fund managers and investors.
"Out of every crisis come profound changes. That the old way of doing things and old companies have disappear, investors now need to identify new companies and new opportunities," he said.
New opportunities include companies running technology, mineral resources and the financial businesses.
Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 07:17 am
"Judge thy neighbor," rather than "love thy neighbor," was the theme of a bilingual workshop on a recent Wednesday evening.
"Tonight's workshop is going to focus on status," exclaimed Beijing Improv Comedy co-founder and leader of the night's workshop, Jonathan Palley at the Jiangjinjiu Bar, a well-respected venue for live music and a future cathedral of comedy.
"Status is the key to interesting stories," Palley explained to a diverse crowd of about 30 participants arranged in a semi-circle around the stage at the inaugural 2010 Beijing Improv Bilingual workshop."
"What are different ways people have status?" he asked.
"Family," one woman offered.
"How do you mean?" Palley inquired.
"You're born into a privileged family, or by order of birth."
"Occupation," a young man chimed in.
"Beauty, or attractiveness," another woman said.
"Money."
"Great," Palley concluded. "Now remember, body language is a great way to show status," adding, "Think about this in your business meetings. People who are good in business know how to manipulate that."
With a deck of cards in hand, Palley let the games of status begin. "The key to comedy is that it's about large status changes - that's when people laugh," he said.
Palley then explained the rules of the game. The cards would be distributed to everyone, their status linked to their card: aces the highest, two's the lowest.
Participants were then instructed to place their card on their forehead without looking.
The objective of the game was to determine their status based on how others treated them.
Jane Yang, the workshop's translator, suggested the scene take place at a company Christmas party, and then Palley gave the signal: "Okay, mingle!"
People with four's were completely ignored, while a young woman with a king ignored everyone that approached her.
When the game finished, everyone was asked to line up in order of what they guessed their status to be.
"If you met someone whose number was really big, and they were really nice to you, you knew your number was really big," a young Chinese woman mentioned in a discussion afterward.
According to Palley, Beijing Improv Comedy came together three years ago at Jiangjin Jiu Bar as a way for friends with improv isation experience to get together once a week and develop their own skills.
But after half a year of building a team and performing for audiences, they decided to do something a little more inclusive. "The workshops were about exploring culture and language, and teaching and learning improv, as well as learning from each other," he said.
Vivian Huang, a 33-year-old market analyst, said the second-time participation has transformed her.
"The first time I came, I found myself acting in ways I never had before," Huang said. "Here all the rules are broken," she said, adding, "I'm Chinese, and in China you only have one way to go - better, higher. But here I can go high and I can go low. I can laugh and cry."
Community building and charity work are also core components of Beijing Improv's audition-only group, which Palley said sold out every one of its monthly shows at Penghao Theater last year. Admission to the performance shows are by donation only, with all of the proceeds going to Hua Dan, an NGO that uses theater to empower migrant workers and their children.
"The thing about improv," Palley concluded, "Is that, yes, it can be applied to a show, but it can also be a philosophy for life.Really, the comedy's just a nice side-effect."
Bilingual improv manual full of helpful tips
English and Chinese speakers, who want to know the tenets of improvisational theater, now have the perfect opportunity, thanks to the collaborative efforts of Guillaume Decarreau and Xiaolu Liu, actors with Beijing Improv Comedy.
Decarreau, who came to Beijing from France five years ago said his involvement with Beijing Improv was a natural process: "I joined the group after I arrived and then I auditioned and joined the performance group. This was two years ago. Now I'm dealing with the website and lead workshops, too."
According to Decarreau, he and Liu began writing the Bilingual Improv Theatre Manual in the summer of 2008. It took them more than a year to complete.
Inspired by Beijing Improv Bilingual workshops, the manual is full of exercises - accompanied by diagrams when necessary - arranged in order of difficulty. It is intended that it be used like a textbook, with users graduating from one lesson to the next.
As it states the aims of each exercise and provides tips, it is easy to identify which exercises are most appropriate for a particular goal.
For instance, "Machine" helps group collaboration by having each player at a time perform a mechanical, repetitive action accompanied by sound to create a giant human machine, while "Silly Walks" is intended to establish character building and observational skills by mocking the strut of an on-stage partner.
For those who would like to own a copy, the Bilingual Improv Theater Manual can be purchased for 25 yuan at Beijing Improv's weekly workshops at Jiangjin Jiu Bar.
Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 07:16 am
, Texas – Perez Hilton aims to hit Ryan Seacrest where it hurts.
The celebrity blogger will be launching a weekly music countdown show in the coming months, he told Billboard in an interview at the South By Southwest music festival.
"I'm really excited about it," Hilton said, "because I want a cooler alternative to Ryan Seacrest."
Hilton envisions the radio show as a platform for interviews as well as a mix of music. "I want the best songs in the country, plus, sprinkle that with my own picks: songs that I would love to expose the masses to."
The Perezhilton.com mogul will also be launching a new website, but he was mum on details about that venture.
As for the countdown show, Hilton explained that he wants to "book great talent ... I want to talk in depth with Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and all of these acts whom I have relationships with. (I want to) ask them the questions that Ryan Seacrest would not ask them. I want to ask Justin Bieber, 'Have you seen that website LesbiansWhoLookLikeJustinBieber.com?'"
I can make fun of someone," Hilton said with a coy grin. "and still be a fan."
On the final Saturday of South by Southwest, Perez put his talent-booking skills on display with a party on Austin's Brazos Street that featured Macy Gray and Snoop Dogg. "It's a beautiful storm, an awesome storm," Hilton said of the show, which he called "1 Night in Austin."
Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 07:16 am
Tom Albanese, president and chief executive officer of mining giant Rio Tinto Group, said Monday the company was committed to repairing and strengthening commercial ties with China.
The world's second-largest iron ore supplier's ties with China could be traced back 50 years as it had provided aluminum to China in the 1960s, Albanese said at the China Development Forum 2010 in Beijing.
He said it was a "pity" that his company lost a chance to forge a strategic partnership with Chinese state-owned aluminum producer Chinalco last year.
Rio Tinto declined Chinalco's offer of a 19.5-billion-U.S.-dollar cash injection in June last year and decided to raise capital through a 15-billion-U.S.-dollar rights issue.
Albanese said he would be glad to see the two companies agree to build a joint venture to develop a rich iron ore deposit in Guinea.
Chinalco is poised to invest 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in the Simandou project to take a 47-percent stake in the joint venture.
The company's ties with China were strained last year partly because of Chinalco's rejected deal and the arrest of four Rio Tinto employees.
The employees, including Australian national Stern Hu, were detained in August on allegations of bribery and stealing commercial secrets.
They are to stand trial in the Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court from Monday to Wednesday, according to a statement posted on the court's website.
Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 07:16 am
Tens of thousands of Britons logged on and registered on Monday as a ticket registration site for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games was launched.
The site launched by the London Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) was receiving 10,000 hits an hour, a spokesman for LOCOG said.
A LOCOG spokesman explained that tickets for the games, which are more than two years away, are not yet on sale but anybody who signs up at www.tickets.london2012.com will have a better chance of getting a ticket when the ballot for them does take place.
About 75 percent of tickets will be available by ballot when it takes place in spring next year. The other 25 percent will be shared between sponsors, hospitality and international sports organisations which will take 13 percent of the total.
The ticket ballot will be open to European Union nationals only, with people from nations outside the EU being expected to apply for tickets through their national Olympic committees.
LOCOG also announced that it had increased the number of tickets available to the public, from 7.7 million to 8 million for the Olympic Games and to 2 million, up 500,000, for the Paralympics. Extra tickets had been created by shortening event lengths, so creating more sessions for spectators.
Paul Deighton, LOCOG's chief executive said that this was the first major announcement on 2012 tickets, and that prices would be announced later in the year during the autumn.
He added, "We're asking people to sign up on the ticketing website and make sure they are in the front row for information. Ticket sales make up a significant part of our income but at the same time we are completely committed to making sure our events are accessible, that tickets are affordable and that our venues are packed to the rafters with sports fans."
Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said, "With 10 million tickets going on sale next year, people will have even more of a chance to get the ticket that makes their dream come true."
Tuesday 23 March 2010 at 07:15 am
Prices of urban residential land in 20 key cities tumbled to 1,885 yuan ($276.09) per square meter on average in the first week of March, down 59 percent week-on-week, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources website.
Statistics from the China Index Academy showed land supply increased compared to the same period last year. During the first week of March, 20 key cities put up 251 pieces of land for sale, an increase of 109 percent week-on-week ratio, with 14.35 million square meters, up 135 percent.
Real estate deals also surged compared to the same period last year. From March 1 to 7, 20 key cities completed 104 land deals, increasing 86 percent week-on-week, with 7.19 million square meters sold, up 94 percent.
As to the slump of average land prices in major cities, industry insiders attribute it to effective policies on land regulation that was implemented this year.
Monday 22 March 2010 at 01:42 am
Some of the new bars and clubs springing up in Changsha, capital city of Hunan Province, have hit upon a unique selling point: foreign showgirls.
Over the last five years, women from Eastern Europe and African countries have traveled to this booming entertainment industry to work at their spicy night venues.
Thirty years ago, the international concept of "nightlife" did not really exist in China. About the most exciting thing to do in Changsha during those dark times might be to get drunk on cheap alcohol and sing songs with a few factory comrades at a friend's home.
Not only did the majority lack the moolah, but the government always used to outlaw this kind of fun. Not anymore.
Glamour Bar, one of the biggest nightclubs in Changsha, employs 10 young women, mostly from African and Eastern European countries.
These leggy lovelies entertain guests by performing "traditional" dances from their homeland. Then they get jiggy with their Chinese counterparts also employed by the bar.
Between dances, they can be found socializing in the bar, drinking and playing games with their male guests. Part of their job is to persuade these men to drink.
This explains why, on average, the bar sells more than 1,000 bottles of vodka and whisky per night.
Not far from Glamour Bar, Changsha's largest theater employs nearly 30 foreign female performers from countries including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The three-hour Tianhan Theater show sells out its 2,000 seats every night. The performers work till the early hours of the morning before returning to their shared apartment.
These photos explore the motivations and experiences of foreign girls coming to work in the entertainment industry. The photographer hopes to unveil the complex paradox between the Chinese male gaze and the girls yearning for stardom and attention. However, these foreign migrants are not unaware of their strange cult star status in a booming economy that lusts for increasingly exotic faces.
Monday 22 March 2010 at 01:40 am
The country's first regulation to monitor online social networking and micro-blogging will be implemented in Chongqing municipality this year, local authorities said on Friday.
Under the new rule, the city will boost monitoring and inspections of online content including those on the major QQ social networking site, micro-blogs and cell phone text messages. Netizens will also have to register their real names when they log onto the Internet, authorities said.
Details are expected to be released later this year, local media reported.
"Chongqing has nearly 6 million Net users and there is one cell phone for every two people on average. Faced with such large social groups, the government has to strengthen management and guidance to crack down on illegal online activity," Liu Guanglei, Party secretary of Chongqing's politics and law committee, was quoted as saying by the Chongqing Evening News.
China's law on real-name web registration was introduced last May when Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, started requiring local netizens to register themselves with valid identification before participating in local chat rooms and forums.
But a number of Internet analysts subsequently questioned the effectiveness of the regulation as they said it only acted as a deterrent at best.
"Although netizens are asked to register themselves, there is no effective way for websites to verify their information," said a website operator in Beijing who only gave his surname as Zheng.
"But authorities can still track netizens who don't use their real names through their IP addresses," he said.
"Therefore, it only forces people to think twice before they express their opinions on the Internet," he said.
It is unnecessary to implement a real-name registration system as the country already has firm ways such as firewalls to monitor online content, Tian Zhihui, a professor of new media research at the Communication University of China, said on Friday.
"So far, only China and South Korea have put in place real-name Web registration systems. But networks have played a more important role in China when the public expressed its views to officials," Tian said.
"For instance, during the city's crackdown on organized crime that started last July, Chongqing residents actively expressed their opinions. But now I worry that the regulation will dampen the enthusiasm of the masses," she said.
Monday 22 March 2010 at 01:40 am
Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan will pay a three-day visit to the United States from March 24 to strengthen economic and trade cooperation, said a statement posted on the official website of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) Friday.
The visit was aimed at expanding bilateral trade and promoting the healthy and stable development of the Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations, the statement said.
Zhong would also negotiate with the U.S. administration over Sino-U.S. trade issues in an effort to increase mutual understanding, and defuse trade frictions, the statement said.
"Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial," said He Ning, director general of the Department of American and Oceanian Affairs of the MOC.
"China believes any economic and trade issues, including the RMB (Chinese currency) exchange rate, can be resolved through dialogue.
"But we should avoid politicizing economic and trade issues," He told journalists Friday in Beijing.
He said commodities trade figures only mirrored flows of the products, but it could not truly reveal the beneficiaries.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier this month that half of China's exports came from the processing trade, in which imported components were assembled at factories in China and 60 percent were made by foreign-funded companies or joint ventures with foreign partners.
MOC spokesman Yao Jian said Tuesday China welcomed more U.S. high-tech exports, and was willing to promote more balanced Sino-U.S. trade. En
Monday 22 March 2010 at 01:39 am
The Thai anti-government red shirts on Saturday evening returned to the main rally site Phan Fah Bridge following their peaceful march around the capital Bangkok.
Two red-shirted core leader Jatuporn Promphan and Natthawut Saikua led the red shirts back to the Phan Fah Bridge at about 6: 00 p.m. local time.
Ten of thousands of the protesters led by United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) have converged on Bangkok since March 12 to press the premier to dissolve the lower House of parliament and call new election.
At about 10:00 a.m. local time, they started their march and moved to several places in Bangkok claiming that they wanted to send smile, love, and happiness to Bangkok residents.
Prime Minister's (PM) Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said the government managed to prevent the traffic problem and clash from occurring during the red-shirted march, the National News Bureau of Thailand (ANT) under the government's Public Relations Department reported.
Security officers also attempted to prevent any confrontation between the protesters and the Bangkokians who are not happy with the red-shirted movement, said Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd, the spokesman of the peace-keeping operation center.
Col Sansern said it was estimated that up to 30,000 supporters participated in the red-shirted procession.
About 4,000 motorcycles were used in the procession by the red shirts on Bangkok streets, according to a report by Bangkok Post's website.
Hence, amid the traffic congestion, Police Major General Panu Kerdlappol, Deputy Police Commander of the Metropolitan Police, who closely monitored the traffic situation, suggested Bangkok residences to avoid the streets occupied by the red shirts.
Also, Police Major General Panu suggested the general public to use public transportation services in a bid to help reduce the traffic problem, Thai News Agency reported.
In a related development, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the government has never rejected a proposed peace talk with the red-shirted group, but this option is unlikely to happen since ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra had turned down the attempt by the National Human Rights Commission to settle the conflict.
Speaking during an interview with Thailand's Channel 3 Television, Abhisit said he has understood why the red-shirts have demanded a House dissolution, but prior to this stage, it is essential to have an agreement between the government and the red- shirts.
Significantly, such an agreement between the government and the red-shirts must be made based on the national interest and democracy, Abhisit said.
Also, Abhisit said "Thaksin is an obstacle of the proposed negotiation. I will talk with the red-shirted leaders if they do not take Thaksin as a condition."
On March 22, Mr. Korbsak Sabhavasu and PM Office Minister Sathit will hold a negotiation with the red shirted core leaders, Abhisit said.
Korbsak is the secretary-general of Prime Minister Abhisit, Thai News Agency reported.
Monday 22 March 2010 at 01:39 am
Food safety is once again being put into the limelight following media reports last week that a "significant portion" of used cooking oil is being recycled and returned to people's dining tables across China.
Catering industry insiders and food safety experts say huge profits, inadequate supervision and the difficulty of disposing of used cooking oil are the main reasons that used oil is collected from kitchen waste and reused as cooking oil.
Huang Fenghong, deputy director of the Oil Crops Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Global Times that, after seven years of field research, his research team has concluded that the use of recycled oil is rampant in some areas, especially where cash-strapped migrant workers and students are major diners.
Recycled cooking oil, dubbed "drainage oil," is refined from discarded kitchen waste and reused in the preparation of meals at restaurants and canteens.
"The use of drainage oil will put the public's health in peril because it may contain heavy metal, waste antibiotics or aflatoxins, a highly toxic substance that could cause cancer," he said.
Huang did not specify how much drainage oil China consumes each year, saying it is difficult to calculate the figure.
Earlier, He Dongping, a nutrition professor at central China's Wuhan Polytechnic University and a member of Huang's team, told the China Youth Daily on Thursday that people in China consume about 2 to 3 million tons of drainage oil a year.
"China consumes about 22.5 million tons of cooking oil annually, which means that one in 10 meals in the country may be cooked with illegal cooking oil," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Although Huang said the media misinterpreted He's statements, which only suggested the total amount of China's recycled oil annually, the shocking report renewed concerns among authorities, experts and citizens over food safety in China.
In Wuhan, the capital of Hebei Province, the Food and Drug Bureau set up a hotline Saturday to process citizens' complaints about the use of drainage oil by restaurants or cafeterias.
A hotline worker who refused to be named told the Global Times Sunday that the line had been busy ever since it was opened. People called in to report what they said might be recycled oil at restaurants, or to report people allegedly involved in the illegal recycling business.
"Many recycling plants are based in the suburbs," Chen Debin, general manager of NZBM, a Beijing-based fast food chain with over 10 outlets in China, told the Global Times that recycling drainage oil for cooking meals is an open secret in the catering industry, and especially so for small restaurants, unlicensed restaurants, roadside food stands and in-house cafeterias.
Chen said that his restaurants don't practice oil recycling.
"They send workers to collect kitchen waste from restaurants. It is normal if they process it into pigwash or soup, but some illegal processors sell it to the black market as cooking oil," he said.
Handing over kitchen waste to private processors seems to be the only way to get rid of the waste, since the sanitation department has stopped collecting it, he said.
Collecting waste oil has become a lucrative industry in China since prices of edible oil surged between 2007 and 2008, according to a report by the Xinhua News Agency on Saturday.
Chen said collectors sometimes fight to get the right to obtain the waste. Some even pay a high price to bid for the right to collect. Whenever a new restaurant opens, there will be oil collectors contacting the restaurant owner.
"They usually pay restaurants 1,000 ($147) to 6,000 yuan each year, and more for hot-pot restaurants, since they discharge more waste oil," Chen said.
Chen did not comment on how hotels deal with their waste, but Zeng Wei, manager of an oil-refining plant in Wuhan, told Xinhua that some plants would pay more than 40,000 yuan per year to get a hotel's kitchen waste, due to the potential profits.
One ton of cooking oil made from kitchen waste costs around 1,000 yuan, while edible oil costs over 6,000 yuan per ton, according to Zeng's estimation. A processor could easily sell one ton of recycled oil at half the price of normal oil to make 2,000 yuan.
James Jia, a student at China Agricultural University, told the Global Times that he sees a waste collection wagon at the back door of his university's cafeteria pumping something from the drain at around 8 pm every day.
"They have never done this in the daytime. I don't know what they do with the substance they pump from the drain," he said.
Lack of inspection is another reason dirty oil continues flowing into the market.
"The processing and trading of it is supervised by the Administration of Industry and Commerce. Once the oil travels to the dining table, it is under the inspection of the Ministry of Health," Chen said. "No specific department is tracking down the issue during the entire process."
Huang appealed to the public to stay away from buying and using cheap oil, like blended oil or oil without clear sources, saying the public has difficulty in telling whether oil is of good quality or not.
On Thursday, the State Food and Drug Administration issued a high-profile crackdown on illegally recycled cooking oil, calling on all levels of inspection agents to punish manufacturers providing dirty oil and restaurants purchasing oil of unclear origin.
"If food-service providers are found to be using cooking oil from an unclear source, or if they have bought 'drainage oil,' their operations will be immediately halted and they will be dealt with in accordance with the law," said a notice posted on the administration's website.
He Dongping said the National Grain and Oil Standardization Committee is stepping up efforts to draft measures and standards on testing drainage oil and the management of drainage oil refined from kitchen waste. The measures are subject to evaluation next month.
China's white paper on drainage oil, drafted by the committee, is due to be submitted to the state authorities by July.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:50 am
China's aviation watchdog Thursday moved to allay fears about safety on Boeing 737 aircraft, saying an emergency inspection directive issued this week was simply "routine," after an isolated incident involving the reputable jetliner in Europe earlier this month.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) ordered domestic airlines to inspect a mechanism that controls tail flaps on 160 Boeing 737 aircraft, days after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive demanding airlines do so for safety reasons.
The watchdog said in a statement on its website (caac.gov.cn) that a similar directive issued March 15 was part of the CAAC's daily safety management routine and that between 1986 to 2009 as many as 6,502 such directives were issued for civilian aircraft registered in China.
The directive could mean a compulsory inspection, a corrective measure or restriction on use of the aircraft if it is not in a reliable condition.
The CAAC has ordered domestic airlines to perform a detailed inspection of Boeing 737-600, 700, 800, 900 and 900ER models to ensure normal flight operations and safety. The inspection results must be submitted to Boeing within 10 days of the directive.
Ding Ling, a staff member with the CAAC, told the Global Times that so far the administration has not re-ceived reports of any faults with the Boeing 737s.
On March 12, the FAA ordered airlines to check some 600 Boeing 737s for loose elevator tabs caused by fractured mounting lugs that help control the tail flaps. The directive concerns flaps on the horizontal tails of the jets, according to the Associated Press.
Media reports said that on March 2, a Boeing 737-800 jetliner operated by Ryanair, an Irish low-fare airline, malfunctioned in flight. The plane experienced severe vibrations en route from the Netherlands to Madrid, Spain and was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Belgium.
The ensuing investigation found "extensive damage" to the left elevator, a movable flap on the horizontal tail that controls the pitch of the airplane, up or down, the AP reported.
A leading specialist assigned to check the Boeing 737s in Beijing declined to give his name, but said the safety hazard warning from Boeing was one of numerous regular notices issued by the manufacturer and passengers need not be concerned.
"Domestic airlines have already started their inspection, and the issue is not as serious as some expected," he said.
The CAAC's statement contradicted a National Business Daily (NBD) report, which said, citing an unnamed CAAC official, that the problem was a "potential safety hazard."
The report said any domestic airline that does not fully carry out the inspection will be prohibited from taking off.
The Boeing 737 series is one of the most popular in China. The NBD report said over 600 Boeing 737s were currently in use on the Chinese mainland.
Boeing supports the CACC's rule and is committed to the safe operation of its airplanes, and is working with the FAA and its airline customers to assure compliance with this rule, Boeing said in a statement to the Global Times.
Wang Yukui, spokesperson of Boeing China, told the Global Times that the directive was triggered by the incident involving the Boeing 737-800 in Europe earlier this month.
"This is only an individual case. In order to prevent similar accidents from happening elsewhere, Boeing issued the maintenance notice to all its clients on March 10," he said.
"This shows the importance with which the CAAC regards the incident and its commitment to guarantee the safe operation of its airlines," Wang said, adding "no airplanes will be allowed to take off if only a tiny safety hazard is found."
China's three major airlines - Air China, China Eastern and China Southern – all have Boeing 737s in service.
An official with Air China, who declined to be named, told the Global Times that the company has received notices from both Boeing and the CAAC and an inspection is under way.
"So far, no problems have been discovered on any of our Boeing 737 airplanes," the official said.
Tan Wangeng, general manager of China Southern Airlines, told the Legal Mirror that it has already conducted inspections on its two Boeing 737 planes.
"No defects have been found from the inspection," he said.
Song Bufu, a 31-year-old regular air traveler, told the Global Times that he would avoid using Boeing 737s for the time being.
"I'd rather book to fly on an Airbus or another Boeing model. I think it's quite normal for passengers to have this kind of reaction to such news," he said.
Globally, the Boeing 737 family is the best-selling commercial jet in history, and more than 7,000 orders have been placed, according to the company's official website.
There have been two major crashes involving Boeing 737s in China. In 1992, a China Southern Boeing 737-300 aircraft crashed, killing all eight crew members and 133 passengers.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:50 am
They turn heads on the red carpet, are besieged by the world's top designers, give tearful acceptance speeches, and go home with a little gold man called Oscar.
But shortly after many actresses win the movie industry's highest honor, their most important relationships fall apart in what has become known in Hollywood as the "Oscar curse."
Sandra Bullock and Kate Winslet, the 2010 and 2009 best actress Oscar winners, this week joined Halle Berry (2002), Julia Roberts (2001), Reese Witherspoon (2006) and Hilary Swank (2005) on that list.
Bullock's husband of five years, motorcycle enthusiast Jesse James, responded to allegations of cheating on Bullock with an apology on Thursday for the grief he had caused. The reasons behind the separation of Winslet from her film director husband Sam Mendes have so far remained private.
Tom O'Neil of the awards website TheEnvelope.com, pondered the link between such breakups and Oscar glory.
"Is it because victory goes to their heads and these women become impossible divas?," O'Neil wrote in a blog. "Or is it because their men are overly macho types who can't tolerate being upstaged?"
In Bullock's case, In Touch Weekly magazine this week quoted a model in California as saying she slept with James while his wife was in Atlanta last year filming what would be her Oscar-winning role in dramatic movie "The Blind Side."
New York divorce lawyer Paul Talbert dismissed the notion of an Oscar curse, saying such breakups were more likely a result of long absences by one partner in a marriage.
"The reality is that these women are extremely successful, hard working women who must spend months away from their families shooting and promoting their films," Talbert said.
"It is no different than the situations of high income New York families where one spouse is often on the road several times per month raising capital for their hedge funds or researching businesses to invest in," he added.
But Hollywood can bring extra temptations in the form of beautiful men and women and the intimacy that can spring from long hours on film sets, especially in romantic scenes. And while nearly 50 percent of marriages fail, it seems the stars have an especially hard time making marriage work.
"Celebrities are uniquely exposed to a lot of very attractive people," said Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of website HollywoodLife.com. "You have to be especially strong to resist that."
Bullock's recent Golden Globe and Screen Actor's Guild acceptance speeches were ironically peppered with heartfelt tribute to James, who despite brief appearances in a number of TV reality shows does not move in A-list circles.
"You get dressed up in monkey suits, and you sit at a table with people you don't know. I love you so much, and you're really hot!," she told him, and the world, in February.
Yet for some men, playing second fiddle in such high profile occasions may be too much to take, said Fuller.
"A lot of guys cannot handle a strong, successful woman, and the Oscar has to be one of ultimate accolades one can receive," she said.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:50 am
The husband of actress Sandra Bullock apologized on Thursday for causing her "pain and embarrassment beyond comprehension" after recent claims he cheated on her while she was filming her Oscar-winning role in "The Blind Side."
Jesse James, a custom motorcycle manufacturer and reality TV star who married Bullock five years ago, said he took full responsibility for his actions. But he stopped short of admitting to published allegations by a California tattoo model of a five-week affair.
Bullock, 45, who won her first Oscar last week, on Wednesday pulled out of the London premiere of "The Blind Side" citing "unforeseen personal reasons" after U.S. celebrity magazine In Touch Weekly published the model's story.
She joins a long line of actresses to have suffered the so-called "Oscar curse" of seeing their personal relationships unravel shortly after winning the movie industry's top honor.
British actress Kate Winslet, who won the Oscar last year for "The Reader", announced on Monday that she had separated from her film director husband Sam Mendes.
"It's because of my poor judgment that I deserve everything bad that is coming my way," James, 40, said in a statement first obtained by People magazine.
"This has caused my wife and kids pain and embarrassment beyond comprehension and I am extremely saddened to have brought this on them. I am truly very sorry for the grief I have caused them. I hope one day they can find it in their hearts to forgive me," he added.
James and Bullock were married in 2005, and he has three children from previous relationships.
Bullock, who has reportedly moved out of their southern California home, paid emotional tributes to James while accepting a slew of awards for her role in "The Blind Side".
The drama about a wealthy mother who befriends a homeless black teen marked a change of style for Bullock, who was previously best-known for romantic comedies like "Miss Congeniality" and "The Proposal."
"It is no surprise that my work got better when I met you, because I never knew before what it felt like for someone to have my back," she told James from the Golden Globe winner's podium in January.
Accepting the Screen Actor's Guild trophy a month later, she said: "You get dressed up in monkey suits, and you sit at a table with people you don't know. I love you so much, and you're really hot!."
Oscar winners Hilary Swank, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon and Julia Roberts also split with their husbands or partners soon after being awarded the coveted gold statuette.
Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of celebrity news website HollywoodLife.com, said it was not so much an Oscar curse as a strong woman curse.
"When women are strong and successful and married or involved with men who maybe feel threatened or insecure, having such public recognition can really destabilize the relationship," Fuller told Reuters.
"A lot of guys cannot handle a strong, successful woman, and the Oscar has to be one of ultimate accolades one can receive."
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:49 am
I started working for the entertainment channel of sina. com in late 2004 and my first lesson, or should I say instruction, from my chief editor was that no negative stories about Zhang Ziyi were to be published on sina. My colleague subsequently explained to me that Zhang's publicist had made a deal with the website: they provided exclusive news about Zhang and the website published only positive stories.
My experience at sina led to complete déjàvu this week, when I read an "exclusive" interview with Zhang by an English newspaper. I guess it is somewhat comforting to see that something about her has stayed the same over the years – positive publicity agreements.
2010 has possibly been the worst year of Zhang Ziyi's life so far. For those who have not followed the news closely, here is a quick review of Zhang's serial scandals: On the night of December 24, posters of her downstairs at her Beijing residence were attacked by ink and ruined. On January 12, socialite Zhao Xinyu revealed to the media that Zhang was being punished for her involvement with a married businessman. On January 28, Zhang was accused of committing fraud when raising money for 2008 Sichuan earthquake victims and the scandal quickly escalated into a media frenzy. Honestly the whole donation fraud thing does not interest me. Charity is commonly used as an accessory by celebrities. Zhang might be completely ignorant of the whole donation process that is more than likely being conveniently handled by her agent and assistants. The donation fraud allegations are not the star's alone.
What I'm curious about is, where is her finance Vivi Nevo, who had reportedly played an important role in Zhang's donation collecting in 2008? Shouldn't he be by her side, backing her up?
I hate to rush to conclusions that they are no long together, or never were to begin with, but I am left with no choice but to let you in on what I know - something you will read for the first time here and only here.
The relationship between Zhang and Nevo was exposed when they were caught kissing during a NBA game in January, 2007 and she made it official by admitting at the Cannes Film Festival in May the same year that Nevo was her boyfriend.
However, shortly after her love announcement, I saw Zhang checking into a lover's suite at China World Hotel spa with Wang Xiaofei. Wang is the son of South Beauty dining chain's CEO Zhang Lan and the owner of high-end restaurant Lan Club. Later, the spa manager, of who I am acquainted, told me that Zhang and Wang always got together whenever Zhang was in Beijing. Their "relationship" lasted at least until early 2009, according to a close friend of Wang's.
Again I'm not making conclusions and assumptions, just laying out the facts.
As always, I'm giving out free tips to survive in the cruel showbiz world. Consider it my charitable gesture:
1. If you are not good with numbers, at least find someone who is, to help you.
2. When trading exclusives with media for positive stories, make sure the deal stays between you and the chief editor so as not to be spread by the rest of the staff.
3. Find somewhere more discreet for your get-togethers with friends in high places, rather than spas and hotels.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:49 am
Jack Lee (not his real name) is a gray-market iPad seller in China - or at least he hopes to be.
For now, until Apple kicks off US sales of the much-hyped tablet PC in early April, all he has to sell is the future, promising delivery of the device by taking orders in advance.
The New York-based postgraduate student's business model is simple: buy a 16G WIFI iPad in the US for $499 (3,407 yuan) and informally ship it directly to his online customers back in China, charging them 5,500 yuan for the privilege of having a gray-market one early. Subtract around $30 for shipping and another $45 to cover NY-sales tax, leaving Lee with a cool 1,890 yuan in his pocket.
To date, Apple hasn't said when or even if it plans to release the iPad in China. Apple China spokesperson Tiffany Yang refused to comment on this story.
While the 24-year-old Lee's idea may sound unique, he is actually far from alone in his venture. A review of popular online shopping website, taobao.com, reveals several hundred people are offering to flog Apple's new tablet for prices ranging from 3,500 yuan to 6,200 yuan.
So far, Lee's business is not exactly booming.
To date he has had 10 inquiries from people asking for details on ordering an iPad but only one person has put down a deposit for the device.
"Faithful Apple fans in China want to take a bite out of the 'new apple' as early as possible, and the market is coming," he said.
From the iPod, to the iPhone, to the iPad, Apple has a tradition of delaying the launch of its latest product in China compared with other countries, spurring complaints from potential domestic customers.
But that policy also benefited another group of consumers - overseas Chinese students, who make extra cash by purchasing products and selling them back to their counterparts at home.
"It's still early, but the business should be profitable," he said.
IPad will make its debut in the US on April 3, followed by Australia, Canada, some European countries and Japan in late April.
Apple's main revenue comes from mature markets such as the United States and the EU countries, but China's fast growing economy in recent years also created many new fans that show the same loyalty to Apple's stylish products as their foreign counterparts.
These consumers, according to industry experts, support much of China's huge smuggled iPhone market, where shipments reached about 2 million since 2007.
Appleinsider.com said the iPhone's slow start in China was attributed to a combination of relatively high prices for non-contract handsets, as well as widespread availability of iPhones on China's gray market.
And there are signs that the iPad may be subject to a similar fate in China.
Wang Heng (not his real name), another US-based student studying economics in Boston, is also looking to tap into the iPad market.
"Most of the students (who buy products in the US for Chinese buyers) pre-order iPads for wholesalers in Beijing's electronics' markets, and then earn a commission from them," said the 23-year-old.
According to Wang, wholesalers usually give them $20 to $30 as commission for each unit, so it's not as profitable as pre-ordering the tablets for individual buyers.
It is nearly impossible to know how many people like Lee are profiting from China' gray market, but San Shi, a student who has bought products for others over the years said that overseas students regularly make extra money in this fashion.
"It's illegal, but some of the students have to rely on what they earn from this business to cover their living expenses abroad," said the cyberspace reseller.
Although people like Lee help Apple to introduce their products to China - even if they don't have any marketing planned for iPad in the country.
According to one industry watcher, rampant smuggling actually makes it harder for companies to sell legal devices, especially when the smuggled one cost much less.
"It's not a bad thing for Apple in the short run because it doesn't have to pay a cent to sell its products in China," said Pang Jun, an analyst with research firm GFK China.
"But if it does plan to launch the iPad in China, smuggled goods are likely to affect its sales in the long run."
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:49 am
More than 660,000 people have applied for volunteering jobs for the coming 2010 Asian Games, organizers said here on Thursday.
Volunteers can send in their applications either through the official website (www.gzv2010.com), the 95 designated or moving application centers in the city as well as mobile phones, said the organizers at the press briefing.
Among the applicants up till Wednesday, college students account for 68 percent, said Wang Huanqing, secretary of the volunteers department of the Asian Games.
The 16th Asian Games will run from November 12-27, 2010 in Guangzhou, the second city in China to host the biggest sports gala in the continent after Beijing held the 11th Asian Games in 1990.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:48 am
China's 127 centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reported total gross profits of 134.8 billion yuan (19.77 billion U.S. dollars) in the first two months, up 121 percent year on year, said a statement on Friday.
According to the statement posted on the website of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), SOE operating revenues rose by 52.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.18 trillion yuan in January and February, and the tax paid rose by 43.2 percent to 221.72 billion yuan.
Wang Zhigang, a researcher with the SASAC, said the big year-on-year increases were mainly attributable to poor performances in the same period last year, and were partially boosted by the overall economic situation and Spring Festival spending.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:48 am
Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan will pay a three-day visit to the United States from March 24 to strengthen economic and trade cooperation, said a statement posted on the official website of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) Friday.
The visit was aimed at expanding bilateral trade and promoting the healthy and stable development of the Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations, the statement said.
Zhong would also negotiate with the U.S. administration over Sino-U.S. trade issues in an effort to increase mutual understanding, and defuse trade frictions, the statement said.
"Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations are mutually beneficial," said He Ning, director general of the Department of American and Oceanian Affairs of the MOC.
"China believes any economic and trade issues, including the RMB (Chinese currency) exchange rate, can be resolved through dialogue.
"But we should avoid politicizing economic and trade issues," He told journalists Friday in Beijing.
He said commodities trade figures only mirrored flows of the products, but it could not truly reveal the beneficiaries.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier this month that half of China's exports came from the processing trade, in which imported components were assembled at factories in China and 60 percent were made by foreign-funded companies or joint ventures with foreign partners.
MOC spokesman Yao Jian said Tuesday China welcomed more U.S. high-tech exports, and was willing to promote more balanced Sino-U.S. trade. En
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:48 am
Shanghai will open 42 special bus routes during the upcoming 2010 World Expo to help get visitors to the Expo sites, Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.
Sun Jianping, head of the Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority, said the newly-opened routes will connect with bus hubs and subway stations, as well as entrances and exits to the Expo site.
Buses and subways around the Expo site will also extend operating hours, he said.
"We hope about 50 percent of passengers could come to Expo site by the subway system while the bus system transports another 40 percent," Sun was quoted as saying.
Shanghai's metro system has a daily ridership of 4.3-4.5 million, according to a report on eastday.com, a Shanghai-based portal website.
Eastday.com also said daily ridership may reach to 7.2 million during the Expo, a severe challenge to the network.
Fifty-thousand cabs will also help to meet the transport demand during the Expo, east.com reported.
About 70 millions tourists from home and abroad are expected to visit the 2010 Shanghai World Expo from May 1 to October 31.
Sunday 21 March 2010 at 02:47 am
The country's first regulation to monitor online social networking and micro-blogging will be implemented in Chongqing municipality this year, local authorities said on Friday.
Under the new rule, the city will boost monitoring and inspections of online content including those on the major QQ social networking site, micro-blogs and cell phone text messages. Netizens will also have to register their real names when they log onto the Internet, authorities said.
Details are expected to be released later this year, local media reported.
"Chongqing has nearly 6 million Net users and there is one cell phone for every two people on average. Faced with such large social groups, the government has to strengthen management and guidance to crack down on illegal online activity," Liu Guanglei, Party secretary of Chongqing's politics and law committee, was quoted as saying by the Chongqing Evening News.
China's law on real-name web registration was introduced last May when Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, started requiring local netizens to register themselves with valid identification before participating in local chat rooms and forums.
But a number of Internet analysts subsequently questioned the effectiveness of the regulation as they said it only acted as a deterrent at best.
"Although netizens are asked to register themselves, there is no effective way for websites to verify their information," said a website operator in Beijing who only gave his surname as Zheng.
"But authorities can still track netizens who don't use their real names through their IP addresses," he said.
"Therefore, it only forces people to think twice before they express their opinions on the Internet," he said.
It is unnecessary to implement a real-name registration system as the country already has firm ways such as firewalls to monitor online content, Tian Zhihui, a professor of new media research at the Communication University of China, said on Friday.
"So far, only China and South Korea have put in place real-name Web registration systems. But networks have played a more important role in China when the public expressed its views to officials," Tian said.
"For instance, during the city's crackdown on organized crime that started last July, Chongqing residents actively expressed their opinions. But now I worry that the regulation will dampen the enthusiasm of the masses," she said.
Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:20 am
The efforts by U.S. legislators to pressure China to reform its currency is to make China a scapegoat of the U.S. domestic politics, and may actually hurt the U.S. economy, according to articles published by U.S. well known media in recent two days.
The Wall Street Journal said Thursday that U.S. lawmakers "want to make the yuan a scapegoat and risk a trade war with China," referring to the U.S. Senators' bill proposed Tuesday to call for China to appreciate its currency yuan.
Under the pressure of the election year and high unemployment, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and four other senators unveiled a legislation to threaten China for punitive duties on goods from China if it does not let yuan appreciate against the U.S. dollar.
"China is right to resist these calls, not least because a large revaluation could damage China's growth," the Wall Street Journal said in its Review and Outlook column. "China has helped to lead the global economy out of this recession, and the world needs that to continue."
In another article titled "Pressing China on the yuan won't work," which was published by the Time magazine website on Wednesday, Michael Schuman said that the Schumer bill "clearly shows how politicized the yuan has become."
The article said that Beijing is "an easy target for Americans worried by high unemployment and an uncertain recovery to blame for the country's economic woes."
But "a stronger yuan isn't a panacea to American economic problems."
Schuman said that "there is a belief that if China allowed the yuan to appreciate, U.S. industry would become more competitive and the giant trade deficit with China would evaporate. But that could very well be wishful thinking."
He pointed out that when the yuan was appreciating against the U.S. dollar, from 2005 to 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China actually increased.
"In fact, a stronger yuan might actually be detrimental to the U.S. economy in certain key ways," he said.
A more expensive yuan is making all of those Chinese goods at your local Wal-Mart more expensive -- and that's not good for a U. S. consumer already burdened by debt and job instability.
Besides, the U.S. cannot reverse the greater trends set in motion by globalization by altering the value of the yuan.
Schuman said that if China morphs into a more expensive place to manufacture (which will inevitably happen over time) there is no shortage of other countries with lower costs that can replace China as a base for exporters of consumer goods. Exporters might move to Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and so on.
The article also said that the Chinese are highly sensitive to criticism and pressure on this front, and threats from the U.S. Senate only corners Beijing into a position where it becomes politically difficult for the government to take any action.
Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:19 am
China's government Thursday said safety checks on tail flaps of aircraft made by U.S. giant Boeing were just "routine inspections," after media reports said those checks indicated a "potential safety hazard".
Wednesday's National Business Daily (NBD) said the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) Monday issued an "Emergency Airworthiness Directive" for the "tail flap mechanism" of more than 400 Boeing 737 jets, which the newspaper said indicated a "potential safety hazard", quoting an unidentified source with the CAAC.
The CAAC Thursday posted a "clarification statement" on its website, saying it did order safety checks on the aircraft, but they were just "routine inspections" to ensure flight safety.
Altogether 160 aircraft covering six Boeing 737 models were involved, it said, differing from the reported number of "more than 400".
CAAC Vice Minister Li Jian said the airworthiness directive was a regular CAAC flight safety management procedure. The administration issued approximately 300 such directives last year to urge airline companies to strengthen daily safety checks.
It had altogether issued 6,502 airworthiness directives during the 1986-2009 period, he said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week issued a directive urging immediate inspections of the elevator tab control device on tail flaps of the six models of Boeing 737s, after a Ryanair jet was diverted from its destination due to severe vibrations.
The problem could result in loss of aircraft control and structural integrity, it said.
According to the directive on the FAA website, the Boeing Company Friday issued an alert service bulletin describing the problem and repair procedures.
Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:19 am
Health authorities in north China's Shanxi Province announced Thursday the preliminary result of an investigation into a media report alleging defective vaccines had killed or sickened 78 children in the region.
Investigators from Shanxi Provincial Health Department have found the families of 10 out of the 78 children reported by a Beijing-based newspaper, China Economic Times, Wednesday, Li Gui, chief of disease prevention and control section of the department, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.
The investigators confirmed that only one child who showed adverse reactions and died was diagnosed as being related to vaccines, but this case was not caused by the problematic vaccines on which the report had blamed, Li said.
He didn't make further comments on the number of children affected or their situation described in the report.
In Wednesday's report, the China Economic Times named 15 children out of 78 that received vaccines including encephalitis, hepatitis B and rabies at different times. Four children died between 2007 and 2008, and 74 were sickened.
The report said that Shanxi Province had been selling problematic vaccines since 2006, causing viral encephalitis after vaccination.
The report accused Shanxi Center for Disease Prevention and Control of exposing vaccines to heat in summer causing quality problems.
Shanxi Health Department Wednesday denied the accusation and announced to launch investigation into the case.
China's Ministry of Health (MOH) has also launched an investigation into the case, said a statement on the ministry website Wednesday.
Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:18 am
China's top quality watchdog announced Thursday that Hewlett-Packard had violated China's consumer rights regulations and that its laptops did have faulty graphic chips and display screens.
The findings came out six days after the government agency launched the probe into HP laptops, a statement posted on the official website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said.
The findings showed problematic graphic chips, which resulted in black screens, overheating and computer crashes, were found among HP Pavilion DV2000 and Compaq Presario v3000 laptops.
Defective display screens were also found with six HP laptop models, including the HP 541, the findings showed.
The U.S. company had not "strictly" obeyed the Chinese "Three Guarantees" regulations concerning after sales service, according to the findings.
The "Three Guarantees" are guarantees of a refund, replacement, and repair.
The AQSIQ had sent the findings report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the statement said.
The three government agencies would closely monitor the company in implementing the regulations.
HP on Monday issued an apology to Chinese customers and pledged to extend the warranties for certain laptops.
Friday 19 March 2010 at 12:18 am
GM China Investment Co., Ltd. is to recall 7,942 imported Cadillac CTS cars in the Chinese mainland from April 28 due to possible brake fluid leakages, China's quality watchdog said Thursday.
The rubber part of the brake lining could trap water with impure chemical materials, which could lead to erosion of the brake lining's connection point with the brake cylinder, a statement posted on the official website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said.
The erosion could lead to possible leakages of brake fluid, affecting braking.
From April 28, the Cadillac after-sales service center would contact customers and help replace the old brake linings for free, the statement said.
Thursday 18 March 2010 at 01:31 am
I have been entrusted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) to present this report on its work for your deliberation and approval.
Major Work of the Past Year
The year 2009 was the most difficult year for our country's economic development since the beginning of the new century. Faced with a complex situation and severe challenges, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary, united with and led the people of all the country's ethnic groups in fortifying their confidence, meeting difficulties head-on, and winning new victories in socialist economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological development.
Over the past year, the NPC Standing Committee comprehensively implemented the guiding principles of the Seventeenth National Congress of the CPC and the third and fourth plenary sessions of the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee; took Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three Represents as its guide; thoroughly applied the Scientific Outlook on Development; intimately integrated the leadership of the Party, the position of the people as masters of the country, and the rule of law; carried out its duties in accordance with the law and the guiding principles of the Second Session of the Eleventh NPC, firmly focusing on the overall work of the Party and state; and made new progress in all of its work. In the last year, the NPC deliberated 22 bills and draft decisions on legal issues and passed 14 of them; adopted two resolutions; listened to and deliberated 14 reports by the State Council, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate and an investigative report on a special topic and a follow-up inspection report; checked compliance with three laws; handled 518 bills submitted by NPC deputies; approved six treaties and accords China concluded with foreign countries and accession to an international convention; made decisions on and approved the appointment and removal of a number of employees in state organs; and made new contributions to building socialism with Chinese characteristics.
1. Taking decisive steps toward creating a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics by both enacting new laws and sifting through existing ones
Last year was a key year for reaching the goal of creating a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics by 2010. While raising the quality of legislation, we made decisive progress in creating such a system by both enacting new laws and sifting through existing ones.
1) We revised the Electoral Law of the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses and pressed ahead with the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist election system with Chinese characteristics. In order to implement the requirement set forth at the Seventeenth National Party Congress that we gradually achieve the goal of electing deputies to people's congresses based on the same population ratio in urban and rural areas, the NPC Standing Committee made the revision of the Electoral Law of the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses a focus of its legislative work and promptly began this work. After conscientiously sorting through deputies' proposals and suggestions, conducting thorough investigations and studies, and listening to the opinions of a wide range of sources, we formulated a draft amendment to the Electoral Law. The Standing Committee held a meeting to perform a preliminary evaluation of the draft amendment in October, after which it posted the entire text of the draft on the NPC website and broadly solicited the opinions of the people and all sectors of society. The Standing Committee undertook a further evaluation of the draft at its December meeting and decided to present it to this session of the NPC for its deliberation and approval. The members of the Standing Committee all agree on the guiding ideology and work principles for this amendment to the Electoral Law. We believe that the amendment that proposes electing deputies to people's congresses based on the same population ratio in urban and rural areas and assures an appropriate number of deputies from every locality, ethnic group, and sector is in accord with the guiding principles of the Seventeenth National Party Congress, the realities of our country's economic and social development, and the willing of the people; better embodies the principle that all people, all localities, and all ethnic groups are equal; is beneficial for broadening the scope of people's democracy; and guarantees that the people are masters of the country. Everyone emphasized that amending the Electoral Law and pressing ahead with the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist election system with Chinese characteristics is an important aspect of upholding and improving the system of people's congresses and a necessary requirement for developing socialist democratic politics.
Amending the Electoral Law is a major issue in our legislative work and also an important item on the agenda of this session of the NPC. Before this session, we distributed the draft amendment to the Electoral Law to all NPC deputies and asked them to carefully read, discuss, and comment on it as necessary preparation for deliberation of it at this session. The Standing Committee has also explained the draft amendment at this session. We believe that through the efforts of all deputies, we can amend and improve the Electoral Law.
2) We promulgated and submitted for deliberation a succession of important laws. The Law on Tort Liability is an important civil law that has a direct bearing on the vital interests of the people, and the Ninth NPC carried out an initial review of it as a draft civil law. The Standing Committee of this NPC has exerted considerable effort to carry out major revisions to this draft and deliberated it on a number of occasions. The newly formulated Law on Tort Liability takes our country's conditions and realities as its starting point; details, supplements, and improves the basic system established on the general principles of civil law; and clarifies the basic principle for assigning tort liability and the way that liability is borne. It sets forth specific provisions on issues for which there is public concern and widespread agreement, such as medical malpractice, environmental pollution, product defects, traffic accidents, and damage caused by animals. This law is of great importance for protecting the legitimate rights and interests of civil subjects, preventing and punishing infringements of rights, reducing and resolving conflicts in society, and promoting social harmony and stability.
Establishing a sound Social Security Law is a major issue that affects the vital interests of hundreds of millions of people; therefore, all sides are paying great attention. The Standing Committee attaches great importance to the work of formulating the Social Security Law. On the basis of proposals and suggestions made by deputies to the Tenth NPC, we urged the State Council to research and formulate a draft law. On the basis of thorough investigations and studies, widely solicited opinions from society, and a conscientious review of practical experience, the Standing Committee of the current NPC deliberated the State Council's draft a number of times and made major revisions to it. First, we made specific provisions for old-age, medical, workers' compensation, unemployment, and maternity insurance in separate chapters. Second, we set up a system for workers to transfer their basic old-age insurance accounts from one locality to another, and raised the level of unified management of basic old-age insurance funds. Third, we clearly stipulated that the state would gradually set up a new satisfactory old-age insurance system for rural residents, and formulated principles and provisions for the new type of rural cooperative medical care system. Fourth, we improved employers' and insured persons' oversight of social security, strengthened the oversight authority of the standing committees of people's congresses at all levels over the revenue and expenditures, management, and investment operations of social security funds, and insisted that parties in charge of social security funds ensure they are managed and used properly.
The draft Law on Administrative Enforcement, which the Standing Committee is in the process of deliberating, defines the principles that must be adhered to in administrative enforcement; clarifies the set limits of authority, the enforcing bodies, and related procedures for administrative enforcement; and requires that administrative enforcement be assessed before it is adopted, and that its implementation be subject to periodic evaluation to ensure that the exercise of administrative enforcement is standardized, limited, and subject to oversight in order to avoid and prevent abuses of power. It also endows administrative bodies with necessary means of enforcement, and guarantees that administrative bodies carry out their duties in accordance with the law.
Thursday 18 March 2010 at 01:31 am
For New York City diners whose appetites had been spoiled by scurrying vermin or uncleanliness while eating out, a letter grading system may help them decide where to eat starting this summer.
The New York City Board of Health is introducing a letter grade system this July to rate the sanitary conditions of the restaurants and their kitchens and storerooms health authorities have inspected.
"Anything that is going encourage people to clean up their act and protect the public is a good thing overall," said Tom Colicchio, owner of Craft and other restaurants.
Though the grading system rates eateries from A downward, it may take a while for diners and gourmets to see B's or C's.
City health authorities have decided to give restaurants which fail to meet the sanitary requirements the first time another month to prepare for yet another inspection.
During the reprieve period, a sign "grade pending" will appear in place of a letter.
While many customers may regard the reprieve as a rather lenient approach, critics of the new grading system have argued that even the "grade pending" sign or a letter B or C could prove disastrous to fine dining establishments in the city, which has been hailed as the dining capital of the world.
This is because the 24,000 restaurants in New York will be required to publicly display their grades for food safety and sanitation inspections conducted by the municipal health authorities.
Under the new grading system, restaurants will receive grades based on the number of violations documented during sanitary inspections, and restaurants receiving A's will be inspected less often than those receiving lower grades.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley described the new grading system as giving every potential customer instant access to important information.
"New York City restaurants are among the world's best, and these simple reforms will make them even better," said the commissioner. "Giving consumers more information will help make our restaurants safer and cleaner.
"The grade in the window will give you a sense of how clean the kitchen is -- and it will give every restaurant operator an incentive to maintain safe, sanitary conditions," he added.
But some restaurant owners called the letter grading system unfair.
"They're doing a disservice to the public," said Marc Murphy, vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association and owner of several restaurants in the city.
"Two flies can get you cited for a rodent violation and will hurt our reputation as the restaurant capital of the world," Murphy added.
Each year, the New York City Department of Health inspects 24,000 restaurants to monitor their compliance with the city's health codes, and most establishments maintain good or excellent conditions.
The department posts restaurant inspection reports on its website, and each report includes a numerical score reflecting the number and severity of sanitary violations documented.
The New York City Board of Health argues that the new letter grades will be simpler than numerical scores, and consumers won't need to go online to check them.
Tainted restaurant food causes several thousand hospitalizations in New York City each year, and as many as 10,000 emergency-room visits.
New York health authorities have claimed that after Los Angeles had introduced a letter grading system, the proportion of restaurants meeting the highest food-safety standards rose from 40 percent to more than 80 percent, and hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses fell.
Thursday 18 March 2010 at 01:31 am
China New Era Group Corporation and China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation, two centrally-administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs), were approved by the State Council to restructure into one company, China's State-assets watchdog said in a statement posted on its website.
The number of SOEs under direct supervision of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has been reduced from 128 to 127, according to the statement.
The SASAC is aiming to reduce the number of centrally-administered SOEs to between 80 and 100 by 2010 through a policy of mergers and restructuring. It had responsibility for 196 when it was first established in 2003.
Thursday 18 March 2010 at 01:31 am
Hussein al-Yemeni -- a top al-Qaeda planner appears to have been killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan last week, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
Washington believes the al-Qaida leader helped organize last December's deadly suicide bombing at a CIA base in Afghanistan, as media reported.
"We have indications that Hussein al-Yemeni -- an important al-Qaeda planner and facilitator based in the tribal areas of Pakistan -- was killed last week," a U.S. counterterrorism official said. "He's thought to have played a key role in the attack on December 30th at Khost."
It is reported that al-Yemeni was in his late 20s or early 30s and was a conduit in Pakistan for funds, messages, and recruiting, but that he specialized in suicide operations. Moreover, al-Yemeni had established contact with groups ranging from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to Afghan and Pakistani Taliban militant groups.
CIA Director Leon Panetta, in an interview with the Washington Post published on its website on Wednesday, said attacks against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal regions appear to have driven Osama bin Laden and other leaders deeper into hiding, leaving the organization incapable of planning sophisticated operations.
"It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run," Panetta said.
The CIA has stepped up the intensity of unmanned aerial drone attacks and intelligence-gathering operations in Pakistan since the Dec. 30 bombing in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.
Thursday 18 March 2010 at 01:30 am
With an ever-increasing number of cars on Beijing's streets, some expatriates are pushing to counteract the clog by forming a group of dedicated cyclists which aims to push awareness of commuting options.
The group, Safer Than Cars (STC), was formed by former urban designer and bicycling enthusiast Shannon Bufton and Innes Brune, the German owner of the Natooke bicycle shop in the Wudaoying hutong.
They formed the club in late January and have begun organizing mass bike rides for expatriates and Chinese alike in Beijing.
"We do it during the peak hour of traffic so that people who are sitting in cars hopefully see us and realize that it's a quicker, more efficient way of travel," Bufton, of Australia, said.
A big launch of the STC club will be held at the end of March, when it will announce its website and introduce an iPod application the group has been developing, Bufton said.
The application will help users track their movements cycling through the capital by utilizing the Global Positioning System program installed on the iPhone. After they reach their destination the device will tell the user the journey time and average speed.
"In the end we will be able to calculate the average speed of the whole of Beijing in terms of bicycle use," he said.
Users can rate their route according to safety and quickness. The information will then be uploaded to the club's website.
In addition to providing information, STC is also conducting research. Using about 30 volunteers of varying age, weight, and physical condition, Bufton and company will have the volunteers ride a set distance on different types of bicycles along varying terrain. Participants will monitor their heartbeat and use the data to show how easy it is to ride long distances on modern bicycles.
But his main goal is to simply provide information and support for those looking to get out on a bike.
"I think residents of the city are already starting to look for alternative ways of getting around," he said. "Cars are great, but actually the practicality of getting around on the weekend and during peak hours is pretty horrendous."
The idea for the STC club came to Bufton after he hosted an after-work surprise party for a friend. He scheduled the party at 9 pm on a Friday so that everyone would have to get out of work and eat before coming to the party.
But after putting out a few plates of finger food, it was quickly devoured by party guests.
Asking around, Bufton discovered that because of Friday night traffic, everyone who had taken taxis didn't have time to eat. Those who had ridden their bicycles, however, had eaten.
"It made us realize that cycling is not just more environmentally friendly, it's a smarter and more efficient way of getting around the city," Bufton said.
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 07:08 am
With an ever-increasing number of cars on Beijing's streets, some expatriates are pushing to counteract the clog by forming a group of dedicated cyclists which aims to push awareness of commuting options.
The group, Safer Than Cars (STC), was formed by former urban designer and bicycling enthusiast Shannon Bufton and Innes Brune, the German owner of the Natooke bicycle shop in the Wudaoying hutong.
They formed the club in late January and have begun organizing mass bike rides for expatriates and Chinese alike in Beijing.
"We do it during the peak hour of traffic so that people who are sitting in cars hopefully see us and realize that it's a quicker, more efficient way of travel," Bufton, of Australia, said.
A big launch of the STC club will be held at the end of March, when it will announce its website and introduce an iPod application the group has been developing, Bufton said.
The application will help users track their movements cycling through the capital by utilizing the Global Positioning System program installed on the iPhone. After they reach their destination the device will tell the user the journey time and average speed.
"In the end we will be able to calculate the average speed of the whole of Beijing in terms of bicycle use," he said.
Users can rate their route according to safety and quickness. The information will then be uploaded to the club's website.
In addition to providing information, STC is also conducting research. Using about 30 volunteers of varying age, weight, and physical condition, Bufton and company will have the volunteers ride a set distance on different types of bicycles along varying terrain. Participants will monitor their heartbeat and use the data to show how easy it is to ride long distances on modern bicycles.
But his main goal is to simply provide information and support for those looking to get out on a bike.
"I think residents of the city are already starting to look for alternative ways of getting around," he said. "Cars are great, but actually the practicality of getting around on the weekend and during peak hours is pretty horrendous."
The idea for the STC club came to Bufton after he hosted an after-work surprise party for a friend. He scheduled the party at 9 pm on a Friday so that everyone would have to get out of work and eat before coming to the party.
But after putting out a few plates of finger food, it was quickly devoured by party guests.
Asking around, Bufton discovered that because of Friday night traffic, everyone who had taken taxis didn't have time to eat. Those who had ridden their bicycles, however, had eaten.
"It made us realize that cycling is not just more environmentally friendly, it's a smarter and more efficient way of getting around the city," Bufton said.
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 07:08 am
The following is the full text of the Report on the Work of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), which was delivered by Chairman Wu Bangguo of the NPC Standing Committee on March 9, 2010 for review at the Third Session of the 11th NPC and adopted on March 14, 2010:
REPORT ON THE WORK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE
OF THE NATIONAL PEOPLE'S CONGRESS
Delivered at the Third Session of the Eleventh
National People's Congress on March 9, 2010
Wu Bangguo
Chairman of the Standing Committee
of the National People's Congress
Fellow Deputies,
I have been entrusted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) to present this report on its work for your deliberation and approval.
Major Work of the Past Year
The year 2009 was the most difficult year for our country's economic development since the beginning of the new century. Faced with a complex situation and severe challenges, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary, united with and led the people of all the country's ethnic groups in fortifying their confidence, meeting difficulties head-on, and winning new victories in socialist economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological development.
Over the past year, the NPC Standing Committee comprehensively implemented the guiding principles of the Seventeenth National Congress of the CPC and the third and fourth plenary sessions of the Seventeenth CPC Central Committee; took Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three Represents as its guide; thoroughly applied the Scientific Outlook on Development; intimately integrated the leadership of the Party, the position of the people as masters of the country, and the rule of law; carried out its duties in accordance with the law and the guiding principles of the Second Session of the Eleventh NPC, firmly focusing on the overall work of the Party and state; and made new progress in all of its work. In the last year, the NPC deliberated 22 bills and draft decisions on legal issues and passed 14 of them; adopted two resolutions; listened to and deliberated 14 reports by the State Council, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate and an investigative report on a special topic and a follow-up inspection report; checked compliance with three laws; handled 518 bills submitted by NPC deputies; approved six treaties and accords China concluded with foreign countries and accession to an international convention; made decisions on and approved the appointment and removal of a number of employees in state organs; and made new contributions to building socialism with Chinese characteristics.
1. Taking decisive steps toward creating a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics by both enacting new laws and sifting through existing ones
Last year was a key year for reaching the goal of creating a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics by 2010. While raising the quality of legislation, we made decisive progress in creating such a system by both enacting new laws and sifting through existing ones.
1) We revised the Electoral Law of the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses and pressed ahead with the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist election system with Chinese characteristics. In order to implement the requirement set forth at the Seventeenth National Party Congress that we gradually achieve the goal of electing deputies to people's congresses based on the same population ratio in urban and rural areas, the NPC Standing Committee made the revision of the Electoral Law of the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses a focus of its legislative work and promptly began this work. After conscientiously sorting through deputies' proposals and suggestions, conducting thorough investigations and studies, and listening to the opinions of a wide range of sources, we formulated a draft amendment to the Electoral Law. The Standing Committee held a meeting to perform a preliminary evaluation of the draft amendment in October, after which it posted the entire text of the draft on the NPC website and broadly solicited the opinions of the people and all sectors of society. The Standing Committee undertook a further evaluation of the draft at its December meeting and decided to present it to this session of the NPC for its deliberation and approval. The members of the Standing Committee all agree on the guiding ideology and work principles for this amendment to the Electoral Law. We believe that the amendment that proposes electing deputies to people's congresses based on the same population ratio in urban and rural areas and assures an appropriate number of deputies from every locality, ethnic group, and sector is in accord with the guiding principles of the Seventeenth National Party Congress, the realities of our country's economic and social development, and the willing of the people; better embodies the principle that all people, all localities, and all ethnic groups are equal; is beneficial for broadening the scope of people's democracy; and guarantees that the people are masters of the country. Everyone emphasized that amending the Electoral Law and pressing ahead with the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist election system with Chinese characteristics is an important aspect of upholding and improving the system of people's congresses and a necessary requirement for developing socialist democratic politics.
Amending the Electoral Law is a major issue in our legislative work and also an important item on the agenda of this session of the NPC. Before this session, we distributed the draft amendment to the Electoral Law to all NPC deputies and asked them to carefully read, discuss, and comment on it as necessary preparation for deliberation of it at this session. The Standing Committee has also explained the draft amendment at this session. We believe that through the efforts of all deputies, we can amend and improve the Electoral Law.
2) We promulgated and submitted for deliberation a succession of important laws. The Law on Tort Liability is an important civil law that has a direct bearing on the vital interests of the people, and the Ninth NPC carried out an initial review of it as a draft civil law. The Standing Committee of this NPC has exerted considerable effort to carry out major revisions to this draft and deliberated it on a number of occasions. The newly formulated Law on Tort Liability takes our country's conditions and realities as its starting point; details, supplements, and improves the basic system established on the general principles of civil law; and clarifies the basic principle for assigning tort liability and the way that liability is borne. It sets forth specific provisions on issues for which there is public concern and widespread agreement, such as medical malpractice, environmental pollution, product defects, traffic accidents, and damage caused by animals. This law is of great importance for protecting the legitimate rights and interests of civil subjects, preventing and punishing infringements of rights, reducing and resolving conflicts in society, and promoting social harmony and stability.
Establishing a sound Social Security Law is a major issue that affects the vital interests of hundreds of millions of people; therefore, all sides are paying great attention. The Standing Committee attaches great importance to the work of formulating the Social Security Law. On the basis of proposals and suggestions made by deputies to the Tenth NPC, we urged the State Council to research and formulate a draft law. On the basis of thorough investigations and studies, widely solicited opinions from society, and a conscientious review of practical experience, the Standing Committee of the current NPC deliberated the State Council's draft a number of times and made major revisions to it. First, we made specific provisions for old-age, medical, workers' compensation, unemployment, and maternity insurance in separate chapters. Second, we set up a system for workers to transfer their basic old-age insurance accounts from one locality to another, and raised the level of unified management of basic old-age insurance funds. Third, we clearly stipulated that the state would gradually set up a new satisfactory old-age insurance system for rural residents, and formulated principles and provisions for the new type of rural cooperative medical care system. Fourth, we improved employers' and insured persons' oversight of social security, strengthened the oversight authority of the standing committees of people's congresses at all levels over the revenue and expenditures, management, and investment operations of social security funds, and insisted that parties in charge of social security funds ensure they are managed and used properly.
The draft Law on Administrative Enforcement, which the Standing Committee is in the process of deliberating, defines the principles that must be adhered to in administrative enforcement; clarifies the set limits of authority, the enforcing bodies, and related procedures for administrative enforcement; and requires that administrative enforcement be assessed before it is adopted, and that its implementation be subject to periodic evaluation to ensure that the exercise of administrative enforcement is standardized, limited, and subject to oversight in order to avoid and prevent abuses of power. It also endows administrative bodies with necessary means of enforcement, and guarantees that administrative bodies carry out their duties in accordance with the law.
The state compensation law directly affects the exercise of public power and the protection of citizens' legitimate rights and interests. On the basis of the serious problems reported by NPC deputies and people from all walks of life, the draft amendment to the Law on State Compensation improves provisions of the law mainly in order to make it easier to seek compensation, improve the procedures for awarding compensation, clarify the scope of compensation and the responsibility for producing evidence, and ensure that compensation is paid.
In the 20 plus years since the promulgation and implementation of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees, villagers' self-governance - consisting principally of democratic elections, decision making, supervision, and oversight - has developed by leaps and bounds and won the heartfelt support of rural residents. At the same time, we need to recognize that as our country's economy and society develop and rural residents' political enthusiasm continually increases, we should constantly press ahead with the self-improvement and self-development of the socialist system of villagers' self-governance with Chinese characteristics. The draft amendment to the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees mainly revises and supplements provisions in order to improve procedures for electing and dismissing members of villagers' committees; perfect democratic procedural systems such as villagers' congresses, villagers' conferences and villagers' meetings; and strengthen the oversight and democratic discussion of village affairs.
The draft laws that we are deliberating have wide-ranging implications, will have a significant impact on society, and have complex legal ramifications; therefore, we must proceed carefully. We need to continue to listen to the suggestions of NPC deputies, all sectors of society, and especially people at the primary level, and devote ourselves to completing the revisions in order to promulgate and implement them as soon as possible.
The Standing Committee also drew up the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Rural Land Contract Management Disputes, the National Defense Mobilization Law, the Law on the People's Armed Police Force, the Law on Diplomatic Personnel Stationed Abroad, and the Law on the Protection of Offshore Islands. It revised the procedural rules for the Standing Committee, the Postal Law, the Statistics Law, and the Copyright Law, and passed a decision granting jurisdiction over Hengqin Island where the new campus of Macao University is located to the Macao Special Administrative Region.
3) We made great strides in the current stage of the work of sifting through existing laws. Making a concerted effort to sift through existing laws is an important measure for ensuring that we establish a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics in 2010; an internal requirement for ensuring that the legal system is scientific, unified, and harmonious; and a focus of the legislative work of this Standing Committee. On the basis of the work arrangements made by the Standing Committee, all the special committees and executive organs of the Standing Committee, together with the State Council, Central Military Commission, Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate began comprehensively combing through existing laws beginning in the second half of 2008. After sifting through existing laws, it was clear that some laws clearly do not meet the requirements for economic and social development. There is discordance of varying degrees within the provisions of laws, and a lack of accompanying regulations make it difficult to effectively enforce some laws. To address these problems, the Standing Committee carried out scrupulous research and repeated discussions, and dealt with each in one of three ways. First, it passed the decision to repeal some laws. Based on this decision, it repealed eight laws and decisions on related legal issues, including the Organic Regulations on Police Stations and the Organic Regulations on Urban Community Offices. Second, it decided to revise some laws. It revised 141 clauses of 59 laws, and identified a number of other laws that clearly need to be revised and added them to the legislative agenda and annual plan to ensure they would be dealt with quickly. Third, it urged the State Council and other relevant bodies to promptly draw up auxiliary regulations for some laws, and explicitly demanded that when a legislative subject is chosen and a draft law is written in the future, auxiliary regulations should also be drawn up so they can be put into effect at the same time.
2. Concentrating on core issues, emphasizing key points, and achieving positive results in promoting the implementation of the major decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee
Faced with the severe impact of the global financial crisis, the Central Committee sized up the situation and responded calmly by adopting a proactive fiscal policy and a moderately easy monetary policy, and fully implementing and constantly enriching and improving the package plan and policies and measures for responding to the impact of the crisis. The Standing Committee concentrated on core issues, emphasized key points, and made promoting the implementation of the major decisions and arrangements of the Central Committee the top priority of NPC oversight work. We exercised our oversight functions and powers in accordance with the law, applied a variety of oversight methods, and supervised and supported the State Council, Supreme People's Court, and Supreme People's Procuratorate in carrying out their work on the basis of the targets and tasks set forth in their work reports, in order to ensure that the year's tasks for economic and social development were accomplished successfully.
1) We strengthened oversight of economic work. Maintaining steady and rapid economic development was the foremost task in our economic work last year. It was especially important to improve the NPC's oversight of economic work due to the special circumstances under which our economic development encountered acute difficulties. At each meeting of the Standing Committee last year, we heard and deliberated reports of the State Council on its work in this area, and the Standing Committee and special committees carried out investigations and studies closely related to this issue.
Given that the central government's investment plan was not only on a large scale and wide-ranging, but the time for implementing it was tight and the work load heavy, in order to ensure its effective implementation the Standing Committee, on the basis of advice from NPC deputies, chose four topics and launched three-month investigations and studies on projects to improve people's wellbeing such as low-income housing, education, and health; technological upgrading; innovations in science and technology; and water conservancy. The reports on these investigations and studies were heard and deliberated together with the related work report of the State Council at the Standing Committee meeting held in October. Investigation groups of the Standing Committee fully affirmed the results achieved by all localities and departments in conscientiously implementing the central government's investment plan. At the same time, to counter outstanding problems, such as the preparatory work of some projects not being done well, supporting funds not being fully available, local governments being saddled with risky debts, progress being uneven, and projects being launched indiscriminately, we promptly discussed these problems with local governments and relevant departments of the State Council by means of forums and exchanges, and submitted preliminary investigative reports to the State Council to help relevant authorities improve their work, policies, and measures. We invited leading comrades of relevant departments of the State Council to attend the Standing Committee meeting in October to hear our comments and suggestions personally. During the meeting, members of the Standing Committee stated that to use investment to stimulate economic growth, we must stay firmly rooted in the present while looking ahead to the future, plan scientifically, and not try to do more than we are capable of; strictly maintain the orientation of investment and optimize the investment structure; and ensure local governments make supporting funds available, standardize management procedures, and strengthen supervision over investment to prevent redundant construction and make sure funds are used where they are most needed. After the meeting, we collated the comments and suggestions of Standing Committee members and other comrades attending the meeting as observers, and submitted them together with the investigative reports to the State Council to study and deal with them. We required that the State Council submit a written report to the Standing Committee on how it dealt with them by the end of this April. It must be stressed here that we conducted investigations and studies on the special topics and deliberated the related work report of the State Council during the implementation of the central government's investment plan, and that it was a useful attempt by the Standing Committee to increase the intensity and raise the level of its oversight work. It not only made the NPC's oversight work expeditious, but also enriched its methods of oversight work. In future, we will further review our experiences and continually improve.
The Standing Committee attached great importance to raising the quality and efficiency of economic growth and promoted economic restructuring and industrial upgrading. In addition to hearing and discussing the report on the implementation of the plan for national economic and social development in the first half of 2009, as is customary, we also made special arrangements to hear and deliberate reports of the State Council on transforming the pattern of economic development and restructuring the economy and on promoting the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. Members of the Standing Committee agreed that, owing to common efforts of the country from top to bottom, economic growth picked up each quarter in 2009, the economic turnaround gradually gained momentum, and overall economic development was better than expected. All this proved that the series of decisions, arrangements, policies, and measures made by the Central Committee to deal with the impact of the global financial crisis were correct, timely, and effective. Members of the Standing Committee stated that the serious difficulties encountered in China's economic development were both the result of the global financial crisis and a reflection of the problems of China's overall extensive pattern of development and an irrational economic structure; and that the global financial crisis makes the task of restructuring even more urgent. They emphasized that we need to correctly handle the relationships between maintaining economic growth and restructuring the economy, and between solving current difficulties and sustaining long-term development; set economic turnaround on a foundation of structural optimization and upgrading; and make responding to the impact of the global financial crisis the means by which we increase the sustainability of our development. First, we need to vigorously carry out technological upgrading in enterprises, with the focus on conserving energy, reducing its consumption, and developing a circular economy. Second, we need to strengthen technological innovation, accelerate R&D on high-end products, and upgrade industries and products. Third, we need to energetically develop emerging industries, with the focus on a green economy and a low-carbon economy, and foster new areas of economic growth.
Improving oversight of government budgets has always been an important aspect of the Standing Committee's oversight work. At the Standing Committee meeting in June last year, we heard and deliberated reports on the final central government budget for 2008 and the auditing work report, examined and approved the final budget for 2008, and discussed the implementation of the 2009 budget in the first five months of the year. Members of the Standing Committee noted that national revenue had declined significantly from January to May compared to the previous year, resulting in a serious discrepancy between revenue and expenditures, and making it extremely difficult to meet the budget targets for the whole year. In response to this, the State Council and its relevant departments should take this problem seriously and adopt more effective measures to solve it. First, they must conscientiously implement policies for structural tax reductions, support the development of enterprises, strengthen tax collection and management in accordance with the law, and strive to reverse the steady decline in fiscal revenue. At the same time, they must collect only prescribed taxes to avoid placing an unreasonable burden on enterprises. Second, they must use budgetary funds more effectively, strictly control the orientation of investment and policies, and ensure funding for key projects and crucial areas. At the same time, they must firmly practice austerity, refrain from taking on more than they could handle, act diligently and frugally in all their dealings, oppose extravagance and waste, avoid launching new projects indiscriminately, and never do things for appearance's sake. Third, they must press ahead with reform of the fiscal and taxation systems, set up a sound public finance system in which the financial resources of the central and local governments are commensurate with their respective responsibilities, standardize the transfer payment system, and promptly establish a mechanism to ensure adequate basic financial resources for county-level governments. At the same time, they must strictly enforce laws and regulations as well as economic and financial discipline, strengthen the oversight and supervision of key areas of revenue and expenditure, standardize budget preparation and implementation, and guard against financial risks.
2) We strengthened oversight of solving problems affecting people's wellbeing. Ensuring and improving people's wellbeing is an inherent requirement for applying the Scientific Outlook on Development and the ultimate goal of our economic development. Deputies to the NPC and members of the Standing Committee attach great importance to this issue. The Standing Committee listened to and deliberated 11 special work reports by the State Council, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate last year, six of which directly related to problems of deep concern to the people and affected their wellbeing. Last year we carried out three investigations of compliance with laws and all three directly concerned problems affecting people's wellbeing.
We strengthened follow-up oversight in a variety of ways to promote the comprehensive, balanced, and sustainable development of employment and social security programs. First, the NPC Chairperson's Council decided to have the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee make follow-up inspections after we heard and deliberated the State Council's report on developing the social security system in rural areas in April, and the Standing Committee heard and deliberated the report on follow-up inspections at its December meeting. Second, having investigated compliance with the Labor Contract Law in 2008, last year we heard and deliberated the State Council's reports on reforming and developing vocational education and promoting employment and reemployment. Third, in light of new circumstances and new problems arising as a result of the global financial crisis, last year we carried out a new round of inspections on compliance with the Trade Union Law last year on the basis of the compliance investigations we carried out in 2004. While fully affirming the positive progress achieved in these areas, members of the Standing Committee also made the following comments and suggestions. First, we need to increase government funding for social security in rural areas, establish a stable funding mechanism for rural social security, constantly improve the rural social security system in accordance with the principle of taking all factors into consideration, work hard to extend the new type of rural old-age insurance system to all rural residents, and promptly solve the problems of transferring basic old-age pension accounts for rural migrant workers moving from one region to another and providing social security for landless rural residents. Second, we need to conscientiously implement a more active employment policy; do our utmost to expand employment and promote reemployment, with the focus on college graduates, rural migrant workers, and the needy; further strengthen training in vocational skills; set up a sound mechanism to ensure funding for vocational education; and gradually make secondary vocational education free. Third, we need to make full use of the role of trade unions in safeguarding workers' legitimate rights and interests and keeping labor relationships stable, and promptly set up a wage negotiation mechanism with the participation of workers, a mechanism for regular pay increases, and a mechanism to ensure wages are paid on time.
In June 2009, the Standing Committee made special arrangements to hear and deliberate the State Council's report on recovery and reconstruction following the devastating earthquake that hit Wenchuan, Sichuan Province. Members of the Standing Committee fully endorsed the work done in the first stage of post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction and approved the work plan for the next stage. We emphasized that we need to put people's wellbeing first, stay firmly rooted in the specific conditions of areas devastated by the earthquake, have long-term development in mind, ensure quality and results, improve our planning and policies, and steadily press ahead with the recovery and reconstruction work. We need to put our efforts into building housing for quake-affected urban and rural residents, especially those with severe difficulties; intensify the recovery and reconstruction work on public facilities such as schools and medical and health institutions as well as infrastructure such as transport and water conservancy facilities; and quickly build the quake-stricken area into a desirable homeland where people live and work in peace and enjoy social harmony and prosperity.
Food safety is vital to people's health and lives and has drawn widespread attention from deputies to the NPC and all sectors of society. The Standing Committee attaches great importance to work in this area. Shortly after the Law on Food Safety was passed in February 2009, the Standing Committee began to check compliance with it throughout China and urged relevant departments to promptly formulate, sort out or improve supporting regulations, quickly draw up sound food safety standards, set up a risk monitoring and assessment mechanism for food safety, further improve the oversight and supervision system, strengthen food safety oversight capabilities, exercise scientific oversight and supervision of food from production to sale, and strive to improve the food safety situation. In addition, we checked compliance with the Stockbreeding Law and made important suggestions concerning preventing and controlling animal diseases, preventing drastic fluctuations in the price of livestock products, focusing on regulating the use of clenobuterol hydrochloride and sulfa-drug additives, supporting safe disposal of infected livestock and poultry, and the full utilization of resources.
In order to promote justice in the judicial system and ensure social fairness, every year the Standing Committee focuses on major problems of common concern to the people and strengthens oversight of the work of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate. In response to such problems as the difficulty of ensuring compliance with court decisions and dereliction of duty, infringements of rights, and criminal acts by employees of state organs, last year the Standing Committee heard and deliberated the report of the Supreme People's Court on strengthening the enforcement of civil law, maintaining authority in the legal system and justice in the judicial system, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate's report on strengthening procuratorial work regarding dereliction of duty and infringements of rights, promoting government administration in accordance with the law, and impartial justice. Members of the NPC Standing Committee gave a positive appraisal of the Supreme People's Court's and the Supreme People's Procuratorate's willingness to submit to the oversight of the NPC and their efforts to effectively clear long-pending cases of law enforcement and improve their work, and expressed the hope that courts and procuratorates at all levels would carry out judicial and procuratorial work for the people's benefit; improve the quality of judicial and procuratorial workers; intensify institutional improvements; standardize judicial and procuratorial actions; make greater efforts to enforce civil law and investigate and prosecute cases of dereliction of duty, infringements of rights, and criminal acts; safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of concerned parties; and ensure criminal behavior is prosecuted in accordance with the law.
3. Adhering to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment, and promoting the work to address climate change
Climate change is a major challenge facing the whole of humankind. It is attracting increasing attention from countries around the world, and cooperation among the international community is needed to address it. Intensifying our efforts to address climate change is an inherent requirement for developing scientifically and for raising our ability to develop sustainably. There is widespread concern among NPC deputies and Standing Committee members on this issue. The Standing Committee further intensified its work in this area by passing a special resolution, hearing and deliberating special work reports, amending relevant laws, and participating in international cooperation.
In light of the new situation and requirements resulting from the need to respond to climate change, and on the basis of suggestions put forward by the Environment and Resources Protection Committee when it dealt with NPC deputies' proposals, the Standing Committee added two items to the agenda of its August meeting. One was to hear and deliberate the State Council's report on addressing climate change, and the other was for the NPC Standing Committee to pass a resolution on addressing climate change. These were important measures taken by the Standing Committee to respond to climate change. Members of the Standing Committee believe that China is a large responsible country that has always paid close attention to the problem of climate change and made enormous efforts to tackle it. China considers conserving resources and protecting the environment to be its basic state policies, and has made achieving sustainable development a national strategy. It has formulated laws and regulations pertaining to all areas affecting climate change, and adopted and implemented the National Climate Change Program. It has made conserving energy, reducing emissions, and increasing forest coverage binding targets in the national long- and medium-term development plan. It has adopted other related policies and measures, and made a positive contribution to slowing and responding to climate change. The Standing Committee's resolution further clarified the guiding thoughts, basic principles, and required measures of China's response to climate change; reiterated its principled stand that it will actively participate in international cooperation to address climate change; and emphasized the need to adhere to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The resolution also stated that with a high sense of responsibility to the survival and long-term development of humankind, China is willing to work with the international community to promote complete, effective, and continuous implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol and make new contributions to address climate change. Before this, at its April meeting, the Standing Committee heard and deliberated the State Council's report on its progress in preventing and controlling air pollution, and demanded the State Council make accelerating economic restructuring and transformation of the pattern of economic development the fundamental policy for improving air quality, and ensure that the targets for reducing major air pollutants set forth in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan are reached. Last November the State Council called an executive conference to study and make arrangements for addressing climate change. At the conference, the State Council stated that it would decrease carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45% from the 2005 level, raise the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15%, and increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters over 2005 by 2020. In addition, the State Council stated it would incorporate these figures into China's long- and medium-term plan for national economic and social development as binding targets. All this was widely acclaimed in the international community, especially in developing countries.
The Standing Committee also intensified its legislative work for a green economy and a low-carbon economy in order to address climate change. On the basis of bills submitted by NPC deputies, the Standing Committee promptly revised the Law on Renewable Energy on the basis of an in-depth review of practical experience and extensive consultation with relevant parties. The revised law has further clarified the main content and principles for formulating plans for developing and using renewable energy; improved systems for drawing up, examining, approving, and filing such plans; created a national system based on law to guarantee the purchase of all electricity generated from renewable energy, a mechanism to compensate power grid operators who purchase such electricity, and a national fund for developing renewable energy. The revised law also requires power grid operators to increase their capacity for absorbing electricity generated from renewable energy. All this is of great significance for promoting sound and rapid development of China's renewable energy industry, adjusting its energy structure, and intensifying the development of a resource-conserving and environmentally friendly society.
We attach great importance to international exchanges and cooperation in addressing climate change and have made them an important component of the NPC's foreign relations work. During various types of occasions, such as receiving foreign visitors, visiting other countries on invitation, and hosting or attending international meetings, we have adopted a variety of means to widely publicize China's principled stand, policies, and measures, and give detailed accounts of the tremendous efforts we have made and the positive results we have achieved in fighting climate change. We worked hard to promote pragmatic cooperation in the areas of the low-carbon economy, renewable energy, and clean energy, established close communication and coordination with international parliamentary organizations and with national congresses or parliaments of other countries, deepened mutual understanding, increased cooperation and consensus, and promoted an atmosphere of cooperation in which all countries join hands in fighting global climate change.
4. Respecting the important position of NPC deputies and making better use of their role
Deputies to the NPC are members of the country's highest organ of state power. The NPC cannot perform its work well without giving full play to its deputies. We took upholding and improving the system of people's congresses as our starting point, respected the important role of deputies, and maintained an attitude of serving them. We further improved our work system, strived to improve the level of our services to deputies, supported deputies in the lawful exercise of their duties, ensured they were able to do so, and made better use of their role.
1) We diligently handled deputies' bills and proposals. We effectively combined the work of handling deputies' bills and proposals with Standing Committee work and ensured deputies fully played their role. Special committees dealt with 518 bills assigned to deputies by the Presidium of the Second Session of the Eleventh NPC. Of these bills, 13 involved six laws, all of which have been deliberated by the Standing Committee; 34 involved six laws that are now being deliberated by the Standing Committee; and 249 involved 42 legislative items that have been included in the legislative plan. Deputies made 7,426 proposals, comments and suggestions, and we have either resolved or made plans to resolve problems raised in 5,523 of them, 74.4% of the total.
2) We further expanded deputies' participation in the work of the Standing Committee and special committees. In order to hear all the comments and suggestions of deputies and increase the vitality of the NPC's work, the Standing Committee invites deputies and heads of groups of deputies making bills to attend its meetings as observers, and special committees invite deputies to attend their plenary meetings, special-topic meetings, forums, and debates. The Standing Committee also invites deputies from different backgrounds to participate in inspections on compliance with laws and investigations and studies on special topics. More than 400 deputies participated in these activities last year. Deputies attending meetings as observers and participating in such activities carefully prepared in advance and actively contributed to the discussions. This gave the people a voice and played an important role in improving the quality of the work of the Standing Committee and special committees.
3) We continued to improve services to deputies. We organized inspection tours for more than 1,800 deputies and investigations and studies on special topics for over 1,900 others. These activities resulted in more than 100 reports. We arranged for deputies from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to go on inspection tours and carry out investigations and studies on the mainland. We formed 264 deputy activity groups, and held six training sessions on special topics for more than 1,200 deputies. We improved our work of ensuring that deputies receive the services they require.
5. Continuing to comply with and serve the country's overall diplomatic work and increasing the NPC's foreign contacts
The NPC's foreign contacts are an important component of the country's overall diplomatic work. We continued to comply with and serve the country's overall diplomatic work, took the particular nature of the NPC's foreign contacts as our starting point, strengthened and improved the mechanism of regular exchanges with national congresses and parliaments of other countries, and strengthened our friendly foreign contacts at all levels. All this made a positive contribution to extending the important period of strategic opportunities for China's development and promoting the building of a harmonious world with lasting peace and prosperity for all.
We successfully hosted the third meeting of the cooperation council consisting of the NPC, the Russian Federation Council, and the State Duma of Russia. The two sides reached an important consensus on strengthening their cooperation under the new circumstances and noted that their contacts should enhance mutual political trust, safeguard common interests, promote pragmatic cooperation and a common response to the global financial crisis, and carry on a lasting friendship, and lay a solid social foundation for Sino-Russian relations. We promptly invited the leader of the new US Congress to visit China, and successfully organized the first official visit to the United States by a chairman of the NPC Standing Committee in the past two decades, both of which were highly significant for promoting contacts between the two congresses and developing Sino-US relations. The two sides exchanged views on contacts between them, Sino-US relations, and other important issues of common concern. Both sides agreed that they should maintain close contact, strengthen exchanges on a regular basis, conduct multilevel friendly exchanges, deepen frank and open dialogue, expand mutual political trust, promote pragmatic cooperation, and be constructive forces for promoting the sound, steady development of Sino-US relations. We deepened our exchanges with the national parliaments and congresses of Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Egypt, and Chile as well as with the European Parliament through the mechanism of regular exchanges, and at the same time successfully began exchanges with the French National Assembly and the Italian Senate under the same mechanism.
In accordance with the overall arrangements of the Standing Committee, members of the Chairperson's Council, special committees, executive organs of the Standing Committee, and bilateral friendship groups improved their high-level contacts and exchanges in their specific fields with national parliaments and congresses of other countries; deepened their work related to leaders of these parliaments and congresses, their members, and aides to these members; and achieved excellent results. We also actively engaged in multilateral diplomatic activities among parliaments and congresses and played a constructive role in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, the Latin American Parliament, and other international and regional parliamentary organizations.
During our dealings with foreign contacts, especially those with Western parliaments and congresses, we repeatedly pointed out that it is entirely understandable that different countries have different views, even disagreements, on some issues due to the differences in their history, culture, stages of development, social systems, and ideology. Countries with disagreements may sit down and talk about them, and if they are temporarily unable to reach agreement then they can at least increase their mutual understanding. Disagreements should not become obstacles to cooperation; nor can they be allowed to serve as a pretext for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. We believe in promoting democracy in international relations, respecting the diversity of the world and the rights of peoples of all countries to independently choose their development paths, and refraining from interfering in other countries' internal affairs and imposing one's will upon others. We oppose the support or disguised support for separatist forces advocating the independence of Taiwan and Tibet, and the "East Turkistan" separatist forces under the pretext of freedom of speech and religious beliefs to interfere in China's internal affairs. We remain committed to developing friendly cooperation with all countries based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. We stress that mutual respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity and respect and consideration for each other's core interests are the political bases upon which China establishes and develops relations with foreign countries and international organizations. On this point, we will never change.
6. Adhering to the correct political orientation and continuing to strengthen self-development
The Standing Committee is the permanent organ of the NPC, and it has been assigned important responsibilities by the Constitution and laws. Intensifying its self-development efforts is of the utmost importance for better exercising its power, fulfilling its responsibilities, and doing its work well.
We continued to give top priority to ideological and political development, adhered to the correct political orientation throughout the performance of the NPC's functions in accordance with the law, reached a thorough understanding of the essential differences between our country's system of people's congresses and Western capitalist countries' systems of political power, and constantly became more purposeful and resolute in keeping to the socialist path of political development with Chinese characteristics and in upholding and improving the system of people's congresses. At the same time, we carried out capacity building and institutional development. First, we continued to provide training for NPC deputies on how to carry out their duties, organized regular group study sessions, and held lectures on the topics of each Standing Committee meeting. In light of their work, all Standing Committee members learned from the people, past experience, and experts and worked hard to understand relevant problems in the course of formulating laws, adopting resolutions, deliberating and approving work reports, and carrying out inspections on compliance with laws. Second, we strengthened investigations and studies, stayed firmly grounded in our legislative and oversight work, visited community-level organizations, and acquired an understanding of particular conditions. We focused on widespread problems that indicate an unhealthy trend, and strove to identify their root causes, provide reasonable solutions based on good grounds, and make practicable decisions. This both improved the quality of the Standing Committee's work and prompted other parties to improve their work. Third, we improved our work system. We promptly revised the procedural rules of Standing Committee meetings, further standardized the order of procedures, and raised the efficiency of procedures at meetings. We made use of the activities celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of New China and the 10th anniversary of the implementation of the Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region to extensively publicize the socialist path of political development with Chinese characteristics, the system of people's congresses, and the principle of "one country, two systems," and to vigorously expand and deepen publicity of the NPC's work.
The special committees of the NPC have capable personnel, a rich fund of knowledge, and a wealth of experience. They made full use of these unique features and strengths; focused on the central tasks of the NPC and its Standing Committee; carried out investigations and studies to attain a deep understanding of particular circumstances, earnestly researched, deliberated, and drafted bills; strengthened their communication and coordination with other parties; enhanced cooperation among themselves; and made a large number of valuable comments and suggestions; thereby effectively raising the overall level of the Standing Committee's work.
Taking advantage of the opportunity created by consolidating achievements in the campaign to thoroughly study and apply the Scientific Outlook on Development, and taking improving Party building as their fulcrum, the organs of the NPC improved their work systems; comprehensively invigorated their own development; fully aroused the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of their employees; and expanded their role in collectively providing advice, assistance, and service.
Last year was the 30th anniversary of the founding of standing committees of local people's congresses at and above the county level. Their founding was an important measure for improving the system of local political power as well as a major development and improvement in our country's system of people's congresses. We hosted forums and a variety of other commemorative activities to review and exchange successful experiences and practices in strengthening and improving the work of local people's congresses, and further strengthened our ties with them. The Standing Committee invited leading members of the standing committees of people's congresses of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government to attend all its meetings as observers, and earnestly listened to their comments and suggestions. We also promptly informed these local standing committees of related developments. Local people's congresses and their standing committees have long fully supported and closely cooperated with the NPC Standing Committee in carrying out its legislative, oversight, deputy-related, and foreign relations work, and worked with it to constantly carry its work forward.
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 07:07 am
A record 51 percent of Chinese depositors regard prices of consumer goods as "unacceptably high," a central bank survey revealed Tuesday.
It was the highest such result since the start of the survey in 1999, said People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, in a statement on its website.
The quarterly survey of depositors was carried out in 50 cities across the country in the mid to late February, it said.
Last Thursday's economic data showed China's consumer price index (CPI) grew more than expected in February, up 2.7 percent year on year. The figure in January was 1.5 percent.
Public expectations of inflation would continue to rise next quarter, and probably restrain consumption, said the bank.
The poll showed only 15.3 percent of savers were prepared to spend more, while 43.6 percent chose to save more in the banks and 41.2 percent wanted to invest more.
The survey also showed over 70 percent of savers questioned thought housing prices were unacceptably high.
Despite government measures to curb property prices, China's property market grew at its fastest pace in 20 months in February, with housing prices rising 10.7 percent from a year ago.
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 07:07 am
China New Era Group Corporation and China Energy Conservation Investment Corporation, two centrally-administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs), were approved by the State Council to restructure into one company, China's State-assets watchdog said in a statement posted on its website.
The number of SOEs under direct supervision of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has been reduced from 128 to 127, according to the statement.
The SASAC is aiming to reduce the number of centrally-administered SOEs to between 80 and 100 by 2010 through a policy of mergers and restructuring. It had responsibility for 196 when it was first established in 2003.
Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 07:07 am
For New York City diners whose appetites had been spoiled by scurrying vermin or uncleanliness while eating out, a letter grading system may help them decide where to eat starting this summer.
The New York City Board of Health is introducing a letter grade system this July to rate the sanitary conditions of the restaurants and their kitchens and storerooms health authorities have inspected.
"Anything that is going encourage people to clean up their act and protect the public is a good thing overall," said Tom Colicchio, owner of Craft and other restaurants.
Though the grading system rates eateries from A downward, it may take a while for diners and gourmets to see B's or C's.
City health authorities have decided to give restaurants which fail to meet the sanitary requirements the first time another month to prepare for yet another inspection.
During the reprieve period, a sign "grade pending" will appear in place of a letter.
While many customers may regard the reprieve as a rather lenient approach, critics of the new grading system have argued that even the "grade pending" sign or a letter B or C could prove disastrous to fine dining establishments in the city, which has been hailed as the dining capital of the world.
This is because the 24,000 restaurants in New York will be required to publicly display their grades for food safety and sanitation inspections conducted by the municipal health authorities.
Under the new grading system, restaurants will receive grades based on the number of violations documented during sanitary inspections, and restaurants receiving A's will be inspected less often than those receiving lower grades.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley described the new grading system as giving every potential customer instant access to important information.
"New York City restaurants are among the world's best, and these simple reforms will make them even better," said the commissioner. "Giving consumers more information will help make our restaurants safer and cleaner.
"The grade in the window will give you a sense of how clean the kitchen is -- and it will give every restaurant operator an incentive to maintain safe, sanitary conditions," he added.
But some restaurant owners called the letter grading system unfair.
"They're doing a disservice to the public," said Marc Murphy, vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association and owner of several restaurants in the city.
"Two flies can get you cited for a rodent violation and will hurt our reputation as the restaurant capital of the world," Murphy added.
Each year, the New York City Department of Health inspects 24,000 restaurants to monitor their compliance with the city's health codes, and most establishments maintain good or excellent conditions.
The department posts restaurant inspection reports on its website, and each report includes a numerical score reflecting the number and severity of sanitary violations documented.
The New York City Board of Health argues that the new letter grades will be simpler than numerical scores, and consumers won't need to go online to check them.
Tainted restaurant food causes several thousand hospitalizations in New York City each year, and as many as 10,000 emergency-room visits.
New York health authorities have claimed that after Los Angeles had introduced a letter grading system, the proportion of restaurants meeting the highest food-safety standards rose from 40 percent to more than 80 percent, and hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses fell.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 01:46 am
Real Madrid coach Manuel Pellegrini praised his side's reaction to their midweek European exit after watching them bounce back to the top of Spain's BBVA Primera Liga with a 4-1 thrashing of hapless Valladolid.
Gonzalo Higuain scored a hat-trick as Madrid achieved its eighth successive win in the BBVA League. With his side level on points with FC Barcelona, Pellegrini admitted that whoever kept their nerve would end up as Champions.
"Barcelona and Real Madrid are playing at the same level, so whoever makes the fewest mistakes will end up winning La Liga," he said on the Real Madrid website on Monday.
"All that matters now is that we carry on looking to win no matter where we play. We have won eight straight matches and are averaging three or more goals per match," he added.
Pellegrini also had words for Higuain, who had been singled out for criticism following the European failure.
"Higuain was quite upset on Wednesday, but he has a lot of personality. I am very happy for him. He immediately found his feet and scored goals, which he has been doing all season long," he said.
"I am very happy with the way we played. Every match is a final for us and today we needed to win to stay positive. We need to compete for the title" added the Madrid coach.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 01:45 am
Few news consumers surveyed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism said they are prepared to pay for news online, the Associate Press quoted the project's report as saying.
The project surveyed more than 2,200 online news consumers between Dec. 28, 2009, and Jan. 19, 2010.
The report said that 71 percent of Internet users, or 53 percent of all American adults, get news online. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.
Only 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a "favorite" news website, and of this group, only 19 percent said they would pay to visit their favorite site.
"Because so few online news consumers even have a favorite site this translates to only seven percent of all people who get news online having a favorite online news source that they say they would pay for," the report said.
Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," it suggested.
Meanwhile, revenue for online advertising has also been declining. The report said 79 percent of the online news consumers surveyed said they never or only rarely clicked on an online ad.
"They don't mind them. They simply ignore them," said the report.
The project also found that major news portals -- like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL, and Topix - are the most commonly used online news sources.
Currently, the Wall Street Journal charges readers for full access online and the New York Times has also announced plans to charge for full access to its website in 2011.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 01:44 am
CNOOC Ltd, China's biggest offshore oil explorer, agreed to buy a 50 percent stake in Argentine producer Bridas Corp for $3.1 billion to meet demand in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Bridas, controlled by Argentine businessman Carlos Bulgheroni, owns a 40 percent stake in Pan American Energy LLC, the country's largest crude oil exporter, and also has oil and gas assets in Chile and Bolivia, CNOOC said yesterday in a statement to Hong Kong's stock exchange. BP Plc, Europe's largest oil company, owns the remainder of Pan American.
China's oil and gas companies spent at least $13 billion on acquisitions since 2008 as the nation scours the globe for resources. The offer values Bridas's proven reserves around $10 a barrel, about half of what BP Plc paid Devon Energy Corp last week for assets in Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and Azerbaijan, according to Sanford C Bernstein & Co analyst Neil Beveridge.
"This seems like a relatively attractive valuation and the acquisition is entirely in keeping with the Chinese government's policy of increasing oil reserves," Beveridge said by telephone from Hong Kong today. "It raises CNOOC's reserves by about 12 percent and also gives it an entry into Latin America."
China is the world's second-biggest energy consumer, after the US, and CNOOC estimates the Bridas investment will add 318 million barrels of reserves and also boost its average daily production by 46,000 barrels. Devon's assets may add 40,000 barrels a day for BP starting next year, based on current production, with "huge potential" for exploration, BP spokesman David Nicholas said March 11.
CNOOC reserves
According to Cnooc's website, the Beijing-based company had total proven reserves of about 2.52 billion barrels of oil equivalent at the end of 2008, and average daily production was 530,728 barrels of oil equivalent.
China's economic growth will accelerate to 8.8 percent this year, four times faster than that of the US, according to the United Nations. That's stoking Chinese demand for fuel in autos and industry.
"Given China's increasing reliance on imported oil and the nation's robust demand in fuel driven by the rapid growth in automobile sales, it is a priority for the Chinese government and its companies to secure resources globally," Wang Aochao, head of China energy research at UOB-Kay Hian in Hong Kong, said in an interview.
Pan American Energy was formed in September 1997 through the merger of the Argentine units of Bridas and Amoco Corp, acquired by BP in August 1998. Pan American is the country's second-biggest producer of crude after Repsol YPF SA. CNOOC was interested in buying a minority stake in the Argentine YPF unit of Repsol, three people familiar with the talks said in July.
'Good beachhead'
Bridas represents "a very good beachhead for us to enter Latin America," CNOOC President Yang Hua said in the statement. The company made "good progress" since stepping up efforts in December 2008 to boost cooperation with foreign countries and companies, Chairman Fu Chengyu said in an interview yesterday.
In August 2005, CNOOC dropped an $18.5 billion offer for Unocal Corp, the largest overseas acquisition attempted by a Chinese company at the time, after meeting resistance from US lawmakers on grounds the takeover would threaten national security. The company was subsequently bought by Chevron Corp.
Overseas expansion
"CNOOC will have to expand overseas production through acquisitions because its domestic fields are unlikely to be able to help the company reach its output goals for this year," said Qiu Xiaofeng, an oil analyst at China Merchants Securities Ltd.
China relied on imports for more than half its crude oil needs last year, with monthly shipments reaching a record 20.9 million tons in December. The country may post a new all-time high for crude imports this year as a resurgent economy drives fuel-demand growth, an estimate from China National Petroleum Corp showed on Feb 4.
Bulgheroni has dual Argentine and Italian nationality and resides in Madrid, according to the website of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, of which he is a trustee. In addition to being president of Bridas, he is president of Energy Developments and Investments Corporation, which explores for oil and gas in North Africa, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East, according to the Washington, DC-based CSIS.
San Jorge Basin
About 94 percent of Pan American's total crude production comes from Argentina's San Jorge basin, straddling the remote Patagonian provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz. The basin is home to Cerro Dragon, Argentina's most productive field. Pan American produces about 17 percent of the nation's crude and about 15 percent of its gas, according to the company's website.
PetroChina Co in December won approval from the Canadian government to buy a stake in two Alberta oil-sands projects for C$1.9 billion ($1.86 billion). China Petrochemical Corp completed its C$8.3 billion acquisition of Addax Petroleum Corp in August.
YPF was also named last year as a possible takeover target for China National Petroleum Corp, the parent of PetroChina. Repsol, based in Madrid, is seeking to reduce its stake in the unit to fund expansion elsewhere, such as in Brazil's offshore pre-salt fields, home to the largest oil discovery in the Western Hemisphere since Mexico's Cantarell in 1976.
Robert Wine, a London-based spokesman for BP, declined to comment on CNOOC's planned investment in Bridas and Pan American Energy. The UK company last week agreed to pay Devon Energy $7 billion for assets in Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and Azerbaijan.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 01:44 am
At least 16 Bangladeshi nationals were wounded Sunday afternoon as India's Border Security Force ( BSF) opened fire trespassing on two places at Jaintapur in Bangladesh's Sylhet district, 241 km northeast of the capital Dhaka, prompting retaliation from Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) when both sides traded several hundred gunshots.
BSF have also dug as many as 25 bunkers within the Bangladesh territory and taken position with guns creating panic among the Bangladeshi civilians, who were leaving their villages for shelter , website of leading English newspaper The Independent reported on Monday.
The exchange of gunfight began at about 2:30 p.m. when BSF opened fire upon Bangladeshi fishermen in the latest in a series of intrusions by BSF in recent weeks to escort Indian fishermen to fish in the waterbody on the Bangladesh side.
BDR also retaliated. Several hundred of gunshots were exchanged during the over two-hour trouble that ended at about 5:00 p.m., BDR and villagers said. The injured were admitted to local hospital.
BSF was opening fire on the innocent people of Bangladesh, Lt Col Khondker Zahirul Alam of BDR's 21 Rifle Battalion said.
He said BSF was reinforcing troops in the border areas without any reason. BDR, however, is also remaining alert.
He said BSF intruded 90 meters into Bangladesh territory in Jaintapur and took position with heavy weapons digging about 25 bunkers.
The Bangladeshi people in bordering areas are being shifted to other places as tense situation was prevailing in the borders, he added.
So far, there is no comment on the incident from the Indian side.
Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 01:43 am
Chen Juan, 24, often recalls the tough old days when she founded her shop on Taobao.com with her older sister four years ago.
Although her shop, which sells South Korean cosmetics, had annual sales of 5.4 million yuan ($791,101 million) and a profit of about 600,000 yuan ($87,900) last year, she said this did not come easily.
"We worked almost 15 hours a day, seven days a week to earn the first few orders," said Chen. "We had a potato or a simple box lunch as meals every day at that time and the only reward was to have a hot pot outside on Friday night."
Chen went all the way from her home in Sichuan province to Weihai, a city that overlooks South Korea across the Huanghai Sea in Shandong province, to set up her business called Weihai Lizhuangge Trading Co Ltd.
She did not have a single relative or friend there but was determined to start her career from scratch with her sister, who used to sell cosmetics as a part-time job.
"We raised 30,000 yuan from our relatives and set out," she said. "We just thought we should try our luck and give it a shot."
They spent their first few months in Weihai in an 80 square meter house - their bedroom and storeroom - looking for supplies of goods and running a website that introduced Korean cosmetics and skin care tips to increase the company's popularity.
"I was almost exhausted at one point when my sister and I had to do all the work by ourselves, replenishing stock, taking orders, packing goods, and answering all kinds of questions from customers. I used to panic when I heard the phone ring," she joked.
But she was pleased that her hard work finally paid off. She later found several overseas Chinese who run duty-free shops in South Korea, from whom she bought goods at discount prices to sell.
"We make a small profit from each item but this mounts up considerably as we sell more," she said.
She has moved her work place to a two-storey 200 square meter house and is looking for a bigger one. Her company, which originally had only two staff, she and her sister, now has 11 employees. Chen is also planning to expand her business by selling other goods than cosmetics.
Lu Jinghua, who runs a vegetarian food shop on Taobao.com, tells a different story. At 57 her age surprises many buyers in the sphere of computers and e-business.
"I feel comfortable though," said Lu, a Buddhist who used to work in a canteen in Beijing.
She set up the shop in 2007, four years after her retirement, and takes care of almost every aspect of the business, including sending goods to buyers who live in Beijing.
"I take that as exercise, a way to keep healthy," said Lu.
She said she feels young interacting with young buyers. One of the frequently asked questions from buyers is "Are you really Aunty Lu?"
They doubt whether the seller, who types fast and likes to use smileys when chatting online, is really the 57-year-old businesswoman.
Lu is an experienced typist after spending much time over the years chatting with her daughter online. Her shop is not big. It has only 145 items and she doesn't earn much money from it.
"Just enough for everyday meals but I enjoy it," she said.
Monday 15 March 2010 at 05:22 am
US computer maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) may have to face a series of lawsuits this year from Chinese consumers who found their HP notebook computers faulty, according to a lawyer representing more than 170 consumers angry with the company.
It may become the biggest organized consumer action against HP since the company entered China in 1985.
Wang Yufeng, a lawyer at the Yingke Law Firm in Beijing, said his group is preparing to take HP to court later this year.
He said the plaintiffs of the first suit were two HP purchasers in Beijing and the group was also planning to launch a series of lawsuits representing another 15 consumers against the company later this year.
Wang's group has filed a complaint to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine this month on behalf of more than 170 consumers against HP.
According to figures from Laweach, a not-for-profit website that helped organize laptop users for the case, it has received complaints from more than 1,300 Chinese people who reported their notebook computers had malfunctioning screens and overheating problems. It requests the Chinese government to investigate the case and order HP to launch a recall of the allegedly faulty notebooks.
HP contended in a statement last week that there were some "common symptoms" in certain models of its notebook computers sold in China. But it said the reasons that caused the symptoms varied.
HP said it had offered an extension of warranty periods for some notebook models and urged consumers to contact the company's after-sales team to report the problem.
Xu Wei, one of the angry HP consumers says that is not a thorough solution to the problem. He believes that the problem is a defect in the design and wants HP to give him a new computer.
The 30-year-old employee of a clothing firm in Beijing said he bought an HP laptop V3803 in May 2008 for his wife. Four months later, he found the product often made strange noises and had a severe overheating problem. Later, the screen of the laptop failed to work.
"In the following 18 months I took my laptop to HP six times but they still couldn't solve the problem," said Xu. He said he has lost confidence with HP and plans to launch a lawsuit against the company if his demands are not met.
According to Wang, the problems with HP's product were down to faulty graphics cards produced by Nvidia, a chipmaker which supplies several PC producers.
In July 2008, Nvidia publicly acknowledged quality problems with some graphics cards and announced that it was paying PC makers to deal with resulting problems.
"HP has recalled many products in foreign markets since 2003 but it never did in China," said Wang. He thinks that is "discrimination" towards Chinese consumers. Wang admitted that the lawsuit against HP was a way of attracting attention from the government and the public because China has yet to have any regulations on computer recalls.
According to Yao Haifang, an teacher at the law school in Renmin University, China launched its first recall regulation in 2004 for automobiles and currently only has similar regulations on pharmaceuticals, toys and food products.
But Wang said he hopes they can set a precedent and help strengthen the protection of consumer rights in China.
Monday 15 March 2010 at 05:21 am
China's top quality watchdog said Sunday it has received complaints from consumers against HP laptops for quality problems.
The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine pays close attention to the complaints and has started investigations, said a brief statement posted on the administration's website.
Monday 15 March 2010 at 05:21 am
The private sector disagrees with the House dissolution, which is demanded by the red-shirted people, Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) Chairperson Santi Vilassakdanont said on Sunday.
The anti-government United front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) core leader, Veera Musikapong officially announced an ultimatum of a House dissolution at the main rally site in the capital of Bangkok at about 12:00 p.m. on Sunday.
The UDD, or red-shirted protesters, require the answer from the government by 12:00 p.m. on Monday.
The UDD group said they would march to rally outside the 11th Infantry Regiment, where a key security command is located, on Monday, if Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva does not dissolve the House.
Santi said that as the coalition government has a term of only about a year left, it should be given a chance to further stimulate the country's economy, according to the National News Bureau of Thailand (NNT) under the state-owned Public Relations Department.
Amid the global economic recovery, entrepreneurs would like the government's economic stimulus measures to continue as other economic stimulus packages are also needed to further shore up the domestic economy, Santi explained.
Moreover, Santi said a new general election might disrupt the continuation of the economic recovery since the country in the past experienced the change on government policies due to political instability.
Puea Pandin leader and Industry Minister Charnchai Chairungruang echoed Santi's view, saying that the number of the UDD protesters is not a key factor for making the decision to dissolve the House of Representatives, Bangkok Post website reported.
Chart Thai Pattana leader and Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa took the same tone, saying there is no reason to dissolve the parliament for the time being.
In a related development, hotel reservations nationwide have reduced by 10-20 percent year-on-year, mainly due to the ongoing mass rally.
Moreover, Thai Hotels Association Director Sakarin Chorsawai has forecast the reservation rate would not rebound until the end of March.
The tourism industry is one of the key engines, which have boosted growth of Thailand's gross domestic product (GDP) for years.
Sakarin has urged the UDD protesters not to provoke violence since it will affect foreign tourists' confidence.
Hence, in a bid to maintain security, acting national police chief Pateep Tanprasert has ordered the maximum-level-security measures to prevent violence from occurring amid the mass rally, Thai News Agency reported.
The acting national police chief has also expressed his confidence that the UDD rally outside the 11th Infantry Regiment on Monday will be under control.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of security affairs Suthep Thaugsuban said whether or not an emergency decree will be enforced will depend on the rally situation.
Also, Suthep, acting national police chief Pateep, and Army Commander-in-Chief General Anupong Paochinda on Sunday urged security men to remain patient to deal with the UDD protesters.
Last Tuesday, Thailand's weekly cabinet decided to impose the Internal Security Act (ISA) during March 11-23 to ensure law and order in the mass rally.
The ISA imposition has taken effect in the whole area of the capital Bangkok and Nonthaburi, which is next to Bangkok.
Also, the ISA law has been enforced in some 21 districts of six other provinces nearby Bangkok, including Pathum Thani, Samut Prakan, Samut Sakhon, Chachoengsao, Nakhon Pathom, and Ayutthaya.
Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit on Sunday visited Phra Nangklao Hospital in Nonthaburi to check its readiness to handle water transport accidents since many UDD supporters travel to Bangkok by boat.
Jurin has also assured the ministry is well prepared to deal with rally situation.
There are 79 emergency medical service centers nationwide, including the major one in Bangkok, which are ready to deal with the rally situation.
For Bangkok alone, there are totally 850 beds of hospitals available for those who might get injured during the mass rally, Jurin cited.
Doctor Paijit Warachit, Permanent Secretary of the Public Health Ministry, disclosed for the seven other provinces, some 448 beds, including 46 beds in Nonthaburi, are prepared for those who might be injured.
Meanwhile, over 40 rescue boats are also prepared to handle water transport accidents.
Monday 15 March 2010 at 05:21 am
Chen Juan, 24, often recalls the tough old days when she founded her shop on Taobao.com with her older sister four years ago.
Although her shop, which sells South Korean cosmetics, had annual sales of 5.4 million yuan ($791,101 million) and a profit of about 600,000 yuan ($87,900) last year, she said this did not come easily.
"We worked almost 15 hours a day, seven days a week to earn the first few orders," said Chen. "We had a potato or a simple box lunch as meals every day at that time and the only reward was to have a hot pot outside on Friday night."
Chen went all the way from her home in Sichuan province to Weihai, a city that overlooks South Korea across the Huanghai Sea in Shandong province, to set up her business called Weihai Lizhuangge Trading Co Ltd.
She did not have a single relative or friend there but was determined to start her career from scratch with her sister, who used to sell cosmetics as a part-time job.
"We raised 30,000 yuan from our relatives and set out," she said. "We just thought we should try our luck and give it a shot."
They spent their first few months in Weihai in an 80 square meter house - their bedroom and storeroom - looking for supplies of goods and running a website that introduced Korean cosmetics and skin care tips to increase the company's popularity.
"I was almost exhausted at one point when my sister and I had to do all the work by ourselves, replenishing stock, taking orders, packing goods, and answering all kinds of questions from customers. I used to panic when I heard the phone ring," she joked.
But she was pleased that her hard work finally paid off. She later found several overseas Chinese who run duty-free shops in South Korea, from whom she bought goods at discount prices to sell.
"We make a small profit from each item but this mounts up considerably as we sell more," she said.
She has moved her work place to a two-storey 200 square meter house and is looking for a bigger one. Her company, which originally had only two staff, she and her sister, now has 11 employees. Chen is also planning to expand her business by selling other goods than cosmetics.
Lu Jinghua, who runs a vegetarian food shop on Taobao.com, tells a different story. At 57 her age surprises many buyers in the sphere of computers and e-business.
"I feel comfortable though," said Lu, a Buddhist who used to work in a canteen in Beijing.
She set up the shop in 2007, four years after her retirement, and takes care of almost every aspect of the business, including sending goods to buyers who live in Beijing.
"I take that as exercise, a way to keep healthy," said Lu.
She said she feels young interacting with young buyers. One of the frequently asked questions from buyers is "Are you really Aunty Lu?"
They doubt whether the seller, who types fast and likes to use smileys when chatting online, is really the 57-year-old businesswoman.
Lu is an experienced typist after spending much time over the years chatting with her daughter online. Her shop is not big. It has only 145 items and she doesn't earn much money from it.
"Just enough for everyday meals but I enjoy it," she said.
Monday 15 March 2010 at 05:20 am
The Feb. 27 earthquake in Chile has not only caused the Earth to spin faster but caused it to wobble differently as well, a U.S. scientist said Saturday.
Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said he had computed the changes the massive 8.8-magnitude quake had caused to the movement of the Earth.
The California-based scientist had posted his calculation on the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) website.
"The Earth spins faster just like an ice skater spins faster as she moves her arms closer to her body," Gross told Xinhua on Saturday.
"The same thing happened as a result of the earthquake. The earthquake caused the Earth's mass to be rearranged in such a way that, on average, the Earth's mass is a bit closer to its rotation axis, so the Earth is rotating a bit faster."
The earthquake has also caused the Earth to wobble a bit differently, he said.
"The Earth rotates about its rotation axis, but the mass of the Earth is balanced about a different axis, its figure axis," explained the scientist.
He said because the Earth is not rotating around its figure axis, it wobbles as it rotates, just as the tire on the car will vibrate or wobble if the tire is not perfectly balanced.
"By balancing the tire on your car, you are making the rotation axis be the same as the figure axis of the tire. In this way, the tire rotates smoothly. But for the Earth, the rotation and figure axes are different so the Earth does not rotate smoothly but wobbles as it rotates," Gross said.
The scientist explained that now the Earth's wobble is a bit different from what it used to be in that the Chile temblor had rearranged the Earth's mass only to change its figure axis which in turn has affected the way the planet wobbles.
"I used seismic estimates for the slip on the fault caused by the earthquake and computed the resulting change in the arrangement of the Earth's mass and hence the change in the Earth's rotation," said Gross.
But Gross noted since the change in the Earth's rotation caused by the Chilean earthquake is so small that it will have no noticeable effects.
The Earth's rotation is constantly changing, mainly in response to changes in the strength and direction of atmospheric winds and oceanic currents.
"In fact, the changes caused by the winds and currents are about 800 times larger than the changes caused by the earthquakes. So the earthquake-induced changes are really quite small and will have no noticeable effects," said Gross.
NASA quoted Gross as saying on March 1 that the Chile quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds. A microsecond is one millionth of a second.
According to Gross' calculation, the Chile earthquake should have moved Earth's figure axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches).
The Earth's figure axis is offset by about 10 meters with its north-south axis.
"The Chilean quake shifted enough material to change the mass balance of our entire planet," Gross said.
Researches explained that a shifting of the figure axis is nothing new.
On its own, the figure axis moves about 10 centimeters per year as a result of the "Ice Age rebound."
After the last great glacial period some 11,000 years ago, many heavy ice sheets disappeared and this unloaded the crust and mantle of the Earth, allowing the planet to relax or "rebound" back into a more spherical shape. The rebounding process is still under way and so the figure axis naturally moves all the time.
But the Chilean quake may have moved the figure axis as much in a matter of minutes as it normally moves in a whole year.
The changes, however, were still the result of calculation and speculation.
"We haven't actually measured the shift," said Gross. "But I intend to give it a try."
He said the key is GPS.
"Using a global network of GPS receivers, we can monitor the rotation of the Earth with high precision."
"Changes in Earth's spin and the orientation of Earth's axes affect (the phase and timing of) signals we get from the satellites in Earth orbit," he added.
"I have to take the GPS Earth rotation measurements and subtract the effects of tides, winds and ocean currents," he explained. "Then the (change of) earthquake should stand out."
Sunday 14 March 2010 at 12:23 am
Reigning champ "Alice in Wonderland" is sure to score an easy victory at the weekend box office in North America despite four wide releases hitting theaters Friday.
Disney's 3D fantasy, the latest collaboration between director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, opened with $116 million last weekend. Industry observers believe "Alice" will fall 50% or less in its second weekend. As a result, the motion-capture/live-action hybrid might climb above $200 million through its first 10 days.
Meanwhile, Matt Damon's Iraq War thriller "Green Zone" appears the strongest of the debutants, and could open with $14 million-$16 million.
But with a budget of at least $100 million, the Universal release will have to take in plenty of green for at least a few weekends if the R-rated picture is to enter the profit zone. A recent surplus of R-rated releases doesn't help its weekend prospects, and early reviews have been mixed.
Elsewhere, Fox Searchlight opens the Forest Whitaker vehicle "Our Family Wedding," targeting urban demos. The film could stuff $11 million or more in its gift pouch.
Summit Entertainment sends out "Remember Me," a romantic drama starring Robert Pattinson, with prospects of fetching a similar sum.
Paramount opens the R-rated romantic comedy "She's Out of My League," which boasts a youthful cast and is likely to register only $8 million or so through Sunday.
Also Friday, Summit and Canadian partner Maple re-expand "The Hurt Locker" to 348 domestic playdates -- up from 275 last weekend -- following its big success at the Academy Awards. But despite a victory in the oft-lucrative best picture category, "Locker" is unlikely to reap dramatic new business theatrically as the Iraq War thriller already is out on home video. The film's total is approaching $15 million.
Fox Searchlight's "Crazy Heart," for which Jeff Bridges won the best actor statuette Sunday, is set for roughly 1,500 engagements in an expansion from last weekend's 1,274.
Sunday 14 March 2010 at 12:23 am
CBS Corp's Showtime Networks Inc said on Thursday it has signed a deal to air movies from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Studios, in a long-term agreement that could help restore content Showtime lost when three top studios started their own channel.
Showtime Networks reached its deal with the Walt Disney Co, which is handling distribution for privately held DreamWorks, a separate company from publicly traded DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.
Showtime will air up to 35 DreamWorks Studios movies between this year and 2015, the cable network said.
Showtime Networks Chairman and CEO Matthew Blank said in a statement that his company expects a "great supply of high-profile, commercially successful films" from Spielberg and DreamWorks Chief Executive Stacey Snider.
In 2008, Showtime lost movie content from three studios when Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer walked away to start their own premium pay channel. The studios' Epix channel was launched last fall.
Showtime already has long-term deals with independent studios Summit Entertainment and the Weinstein Company.
DreamWorks upcoming movies include the comedy "Dinner for Schmucks," which is due out this summer, and next year's "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," directed by Spielberg.
Sunday 14 March 2010 at 12:22 am
Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
"Green Zone" — All the war-zone authenticity in the Arab world cannot salvage the silly Hollywood plot at the heart of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass' first collaboration outside the Jason Bourne realm. Their thriller about the futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a visual and visceral knockout utterly deflated by a story as unappetizing as Army field rations. Damon's an Army guy hurled into a simple-minded conspiracy concocted by the filmmakers to explain why the WMD hunt keeps coming up empty. The cast, including Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson and Jason Isaacs, generally delivers serviceable performances in roles that do not call for much more. As Damon's translator and tipster, Khalid Abdalla does capture a sense of Iraqis' conflicted emotions over the U.S. occupation. For pure ambiance, the movie is a marvel. Greengrass, who directed Damon in "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "The Bourne Supremacy," applies a similar docudrama style to create a you-are-there sense of Bagdhad in chaos. R for violence and language. Running time: 114 minutes. Two stars out of four.
• David Germain, AP Movie Writer
"Our Family Wedding" — One enters a movie like this bracing for cheesiness. But as "Our Family Wedding" moves along, the realization dawns that director Rick Famuyiwa ("The Wood") has made a mostly charming movie despite its cliche milieu. America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a newly engaged couple who have returned home to Los Angeles to break the news to their families, one black, the other Latino. A culture clash follows, with patriarchs Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia predictably feuding. It loses its balance around the time the goat gets loose and eats a bunch of Viagra. But, thanks partly to the performances, the film is mostly filled with quieter, more realistic moments. With a soundtrack of Daptone soul, kicked off by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. PG-13 for some sexual content and brief strong language. Running time: 101 minutes. Two stars out of four.
• Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer
"Remember Me" — Robert Pattinson has temporarily stepped away from "Twilight," apparently in search of his "Five Easy Pieces" or "Rebel Without a Cause." In the film, directed by Allen Coulter ("Hollywoodland"), Pattinson plays a self-destructive, poetic 21-year-old who quotes Gandhi in voiceover, makes love to Sigur Ros and (understandably) can't be moved to laughter by "American Pie 2." Set in the summer of 2001 in New York, "Remember Me" is a story of young romance (Emilie de Ravin plays his love interest) full of dread. Long before the big reveal ending, one begins to feel "Remember Me" is romanticizing — even fetishizing — tragedy. Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper play the fathers, each giving considerable heft to Will Fetters' uneven script. But this is Pattinson's vehicle (he also executive produced). He has unmistakable screen presence, but he pours it on thickly and self-consciously. Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, language and smoking. Running time: 113 minutes. Two stars out of four.
• Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer
"She's Out of My League" — Remember the hoo-ha over whether Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl made a believable couple in "Knocked Up"? The makers of "She's Out of My League" sure do. They've built an entire comedy from the premise, pairing string-bean Jay Baruchel with gorgeous newcomer Alice Eve and surrounding them with a chorus of Doubting Thomas friends who tell them their relationship can never work. The central idea, vaguely lurking around the edges of the movie's gross-out humor and then spelled out at the end, is pure wish-fulfillment. Nerds and babes can hook up (really!), just so long as the geek possesses a good heart and healthy self-esteem. One problem. The filmmakers forgot to give Baruchel's yammering, stammering airport security worker an actual personality that might appeal to the opposite sex. Say what you want about the professional prospects of Rogen's weed-loving loafer in "Knocked Up," you have to admit the dude made you laugh. And, from what we've heard, women do like a sense of humor. R for language and sexual content. 107 minutes. Two stars out of four.
• Glenn Whipp, For The Associated Press
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 08:43 am
While last year's drop in western outbound travel could be worrisome, many tourism professionals are developing new marketing skills to attract more Chinese tourists.
At the China Outbound Tourism Marketing Seminar on Thursday, an event held during the world's largest tourism fair ITB in Berlin, travel professionals were provided with new insights on how to attract the Chinese market.
"In 2009 China was up 4 percent in both travel and spending while the rest of the world is down 4 to 6 percent", said Professor Wolfgang Georg Arlt, founder of COTRI research Institute.
Getting over last year's economic slump isn't going to be easy, especially for the travel industry.
Professor Geoffrey Lipman, assistant-secretary general of the World Tourism Organization, told Xinhua: "Chinese outbound tourism is not going to be a cure for the weakened global tourism."
"It's the whole economy that's weak," he said. "If the global economy rights itself over the next few years, tourism will come back."
This year's ITB fair is putting a lot of emphasis on how to adapt to the post-crisis era.
Jens Thraenhart, founder of China Travel Trends website, sees social media as the most important tool in capturing new market share.
"There are 390 million online Chinese Internet users, more than in the United States and there are 42 million bloggers, which is more than Europe and the United States together," Thraenhart said at the marketing event.
Thraenhart said that offering travel services only on English Web sites was not sufficient enough to attract Chinese travelers.
"People are going to have to tap into the Chinese social media landscape, like RenRen," Thraenhart said. RenRen is one of the leading social networking Web sites in China.
Dominique Hertzer, an entrepreneur who studied Chinese and is building her tourism business in Germany, told Xinhua that "after attending this seminar, I have a new business model.'
"I realize now that social media is the most important communication tool in the Chinese market," she said.
Djibril Baba Taboure, who runs a business travel service company in Mali, Africa, said the lecture proved hopeful for his present business model.
"We are getting a lot of business people from China coming to Africa," Taboure said. "And I hope Chinese tourists will come after that."
Lipman said that China "is one of those places that once you begin to understand it, you cannot get it out of your head."
"By 2020, China will be the largest inbound and outbound tourism market in the world," he said.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 08:43 am
While last year's drop in western outbound travel could be worrisome, many tourism professionals are developing new marketing skills to attract more Chinese tourists.
At the China Outbound Tourism Marketing Seminar on Thursday, an event held during the world's largest tourism fair ITB in Berlin, travel professionals were provided with new insights on how to attract the Chinese market.
"In 2009 China was up 4 percent in both travel and spending while the rest of the world is down 4 to 6 percent", said Professor Wolfgang Georg Arlt, founder of COTRI research Institute.
Getting over last year's economic slump isn't going to be easy, especially for the travel industry.
Professor Geoffrey Lipman, assistant-secretary general of the World Tourism Organization, told Xinhua: "Chinese outbound tourism is not going to be a cure for the weakened global tourism."
"It's the whole economy that's weak," he said. "If the global economy rights itself over the next few years, tourism will come back."
This year's ITB fair is putting a lot of emphasis on how to adapt to the post-crisis era.
Jens Thraenhart, founder of China Travel Trends website, sees social media as the most important tool in capturing new market share.
"There are 390 million online Chinese Internet users, more than in the United States and there are 42 million bloggers, which is more than Europe and the United States together," Thraenhart said at the marketing event.
Thraenhart said that offering travel services only on English Web sites was not sufficient enough to attract Chinese travelers.
"People are going to have to tap into the Chinese social media landscape, like RenRen," Thraenhart said. RenRen is one of the leading social networking Web sites in China.
Dominique Hertzer, an entrepreneur who studied Chinese and is building her tourism business in Germany, told Xinhua that "after attending this seminar, I have a new business model.'
"I realize now that social media is the most important communication tool in the Chinese market," she said.
Djibril Baba Taboure, who runs a business travel service company in Mali, Africa, said the lecture proved hopeful for his present business model.
"We are getting a lot of business people from China coming to Africa," Taboure said. "And I hope Chinese tourists will come after that."
Lipman said that China "is one of those places that once you begin to understand it, you cannot get it out of your head."
"By 2020, China will be the largest inbound and outbound tourism market in the world," he said.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 08:43 am
Shanghai GM would recall the Chevrolet Captiva 2006, 2007 and 2008 off-road vehicles due to ineffective steering systems in the Chinese mainland starting on Friday, the country's top quality watchdog said.
The vehicles were produced by GM Daewoo, a unit of U.S. carmaker General Motors based in the Republic of Korea (ROK), and were imported by the China-based Shanghai GM, said a statement posted on the official website of the regulator, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ).
The watchdog also warned Chinese car owners to stop driving the vehicles as ineffective steering systems could lead to accidents.
Shanghai GM would recall all the Chevrolet Captiva off-road vehicles produced before Dec. 31, 2007, according to the statement.
A total of 2,065 vehicles were involved in the recall in the Chinese mainland, the statement said.
Shanghai GM would be responsible for checking and repairing faulty steering systems of the recalled vehicles, the statement said.
The watchdog also ordered a halt to imports of Chevrolet Captiva cars made by GM Daewoo. It also required quality inspection agencies to examine the company's other types of cars being imported to China "one by one."
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 08:42 am
Google "will bear the consequences" if it stops censoring search results on its Chinese website, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Friday.
The statement by Minister Li Yizhong at a press conference was the strongest one yet by the Chinese government over the issue since Jan 12, when the US-based Internet search giant threatened to pull out of China because of cyber attacks that it claimed originated from the country.
The Chinese government welcomes Google to expand its market share in the country if it abides by Chinese laws and regulations, Li said.
But when reporters asked him what China would do if Google stops censoring search results on its local website, Li, 65, said: "If you don't respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and you will bear the consequences."
Google has been in negotiations with Chinese authorities over providing unfiltered online services since its announcement two months ago of the alleged cyber attacks and its unwillingness to continue censoring its search results on domestic website Google.cn.
But talks between the Chinese authorities and Google have made little headway, with MIIT Vice-Minister Miao Wei telling reporters earlier that there has not been any "direct contact" with the search engine.
Google was reportedly planning to stop censorship of its search results on its Chinese website within weeks, the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday cited an unnamed source as saying. The report came shortly after Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he expected his company to reach a conclusion soon in its talks with the Chinese government.
Google may end up making individual agreements with different Chinese agencies to allow it to operate some parts of its business in a patchwork arrangement, the newspaper reported.
Li on Friday did not confirm if his ministry was in talks with Google.
Still, he said Google has "done a good job" by taking up 30 percent of China's search engine market since it entered the country in 2007.
"If Google chooses to stay, that will be beneficial to China's Internet market and we welcome that," Li said.
But China respects Google's rights if it decides to pull out of the country and the country's online market will continue to grow with or without Google, he said.
Google established a joint venture in China in 2007 and launched its domestic website Google.cn. The domestic website accepts the government's requirement to censor some of the content such as political issues and pornography.
Such content needs to be regulated by the government, according to current Chinese laws and regulations.
The country's Internet market is open and government regulation of it is in line with international practices, Li said.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 08:42 am
A man who first claimed to be poisoned when drinking a Sprite soft drink has admitted to putting mercury in the beverage container, the Beijing News reported on Friday.
Though the Beijing police refused to comment, saying the case is still under investigation, sources told the newspaper that it had confirmed the mercury was "injected into the container".
On Nov 7 last year, 21-year-old Ma Sai, a worker at the Xuanwu environment and sanitation bureau, was hospitalized for mercury poisoning after he drank a can of Sprite in a restaurant in Xidan, a shopping district in the capital.
Coca-Cola China, which manufactures the beverage, later paid 20,000 yuan ($2,950) for Ma's month-long treatment.
Mercury, also known as quicksilver, is extremely toxic and can cause chest pain, cough and impairment of pulmonary function.
On Jan 17, Wang Chen, a 13-year-old student, became the second person to be hospitalized for mercury poisoning after drinking Sprite. On Feb 3, Coca-Cola China again released 20,000 yuan for the teen's treatment.
Days later, the police recovered a broken mercury thermometer from Wang's house. The teenager told the police he broke the thermometer on the night of Jan 16 and cleaned the quicksilver on the floor using his hand.
Doctors said the quantity of quicksilver in a thermometer is not enough to cause obviously damage to the human body.
Wang was discharged from the hospital on Feb 9, even as his parents were still worried about the teen's health since there is no safe mercury standard for children.
On Feb 2, Coca-Cola China released a statement on its website, saying the company's bottling system worldwide has very stringent quality control processes to ensure all products are safe for consumption and are in full compliance with the national food and beverage quality and safety standards.
On Feb 4, the police sent the metal packaging of the Sprite drink, which Ma consumed, to the Tianjin-based China Packaging Research & Test Center to analyze the inner coating, hermeticity and exterior appearance.
Police officers, Ma's family and representatives from the beverage magnate attended the test and agreed the results were "vital evidence" to prove whether or not the mercury was deliberately injected into the can.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 12:57 am
Football star turned actor Merlin Olsen, who was a key member of the Los Angeles Rams' defensive line nicknamed the "Fearsome Foursome," died at the age of 69 on Thursday after a battle with cancer.
Olsen died at a Los Angeles hospital, his alma matter, Utah State University, said in a statement on its website.
The sports star was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982 after a career with the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League that spanned from 1962 to 1976.
During the 1960s, Olsen played defensive lineman with Deacon Jones, Rosey Grier and Lamar Lundy who collectively became known as the "Fearsome Foursome" for their ability to stop ball-carriers in their tracks and sack opposing quarterbacks.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Olsen "cared deeply about people, especially those that shared the game of football with him."
Chip Rosenbloom, owner of the Rams, who have moved to St. Louis, said Olsen "lived as he played, with ferocity and determination."
Olsen missed only two games during his pro career, said Utah State, which called Olsen the best athlete in the school's history.
"He was a great athlete and an even better man," said Olsen's former agent, Bob Williams of Burns Entertainment and Sports Marketing in Evanston, Illinois.
After football, Olsen turned to a career in acting and in 1977 made his first appearance in the television drama "Little House on the Prairie." He played Jonathan Garvey, a friend of the main family in the series set in 19th century rural America.
In 1981, Olsen moved on to star in the series "Father Murphy," playing a kind-hearted frontiersman in that show, which lasted until 1983.
He also returned to sports as a commentator for TV coverage of NFL games, analyzing plays during broadcasts.
He is survived by wife Susan, and their three children.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 12:57 am
Reporters covering the two sessions are having a hard time trying to stop officials for interviews before they hurry away without answering questions. But one enterprising female reporter from the Xinhua News Agency has found an unusual way to get officials to stand still for her questions.
Instead of waiting in the reporters' zone in front of the microphone stand, the video reporter stands beside the officials as if she is their assistant. On some occasions, she has even held an official's arm.
Reporters from other media organizations don't seem to resent the long-haired reporter using her feminine wiles to coax high-ranking officials into interviews. They actually support her use of "physical contact" to drag senior officials in front of the TV cameras. Once the officials are cornered, the entire press corps of news-hounds can call out questions.
The Xinhua reporter, holding a microphone with a "XHTV" logo, does video reports for the Xinhua website, which confirmed that she works for the audio-visual department but asked that her name not be divulged.
She has been seen holding the left arms of at least six ministry-level officials during the two sessions. One of the officials is Chen Deming, the Minister of Commerce.
"Our colleagues all understand her behavior, because all reporters at the two sessions are making a great effort to get close to those who participate in the meeting," one of her colleagues said on condition of anonymity.
"And each reporter has to think how to get interviews with senior figures."
On one occasion, the female reporter "escorted" the Minister of Education Yuan Guiren from his seat in the conference room to meet with the waiting journalists, Singapore-based newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported.
The paper reported that her methods were successful.
Reporters from other media outlets give her a thumbs-up.
"She did help us a lot, because many senior officials were too busy to talk with reporters. Her behavior deeply moved the officials and convinced them to talk to the media," another reporter was quoted in the Southern Metropolis Daily Thursday.
Lüqiu Luwei, a Phoenix Television reporter who gained fame as the first Chinese fe-male correspondent to cover the battlefield in Iraq, wrote in her blog on Wednesday that the Xinhua female reporter did help other journalists to gain interview chances.
Lüqiu admitted that she sometimes uses creative ways to snag interviews with VIPs, but added that she would never resort to "physical contact."
"It's interesting that the female reporter did not stand in the reporters zone opposite the officials when they were interviewed," she said. "So the photographers also caught her while taking photos."
Reporters have resorted to various methods to grab the attention of officials during the two sessions, including written notes passed to the meeting host, wearing eye-catching clothes, or even snatching the microphone away from nearby reporters, according to a report on people.com.cn, the website of People's Daily.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 12:56 am
China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday it had signed an agreement with the Tibetan Autonomous Regional Government on Wednesday on boosting the region's economy.
The MOC would increase support for Tibet in expanding its foreign trade and domestic commerce, said the Ministry in a statement on its website.
The agreement signing ceremony was attended by Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce, and Zhang Qingli, the Region's party chief.
The statement said the MOC would help Tibet tap the Region's great tourism potential, strengthen its economic and trade cooperation with South Asian countries, and accelerate the building and opening-up process of its border trading zone.
Tibet had maintained an average economic growth rate of 12.3 percent in the past eight years thanks to support from the central government and other provinces, said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Standing Committee of Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Congress, last week.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 12:56 am
The non-performing loan (NPL) rate of China's five major banks was down by one percentage point to 1.8 percent from the start of the year, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said Thursday.
Non-performing loans fell by 63.8 billion yuan to 357 billion yuan (52.3 U.S. dollars) in 2009, according to the statement, accounting for about 72 percent of the total bad loans of all Chinese commercial banks, the CBRC said in a statement on its website.
The NPL rate for the major banks was higher than the average level of all Chinese banks, which was 1.58 percent.
The five banks include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications, which are all listed companies, in addition to the unlisted Agricultural Bank of China.
The four listed lenders' provision cover was 163.41 percent, above the level of 150 percent required by the CBRC, and that of the Agricultural Bank of China stood at 105.81 percent, higher than the required 100 percent, the CBRC said.
Liu Mingkang, chairman of the CBRC, said China's big and medium-sized banks should attach great importance to risk control, and reforms and innovations should be carried out to raise their core competitiveness.
Friday 12 March 2010 at 12:56 am
Search giant says operations in the country are running as usual
Beijing - Google on Thursday denied it was planning to shut down its business in China by the end of the month, dispelling rumors that it had informed its Chinese advertising agents to cease their business operations in the country.
Google's spokeswoman Marsha Wang told China Daily on Thursday that the company had not ordered its domestic advertising agents to stop doing business.
"That's not possible. Our China operations are still at normal," Wang said.
Google's China team continued to develop new services, hire people and its businesses were "as usual", Wang said.
ertising agencies also confirmed to China Daily on Thursday that their business was "running well".
Rumors about Google's possible retreat from China were running high on Thursday ever since its CEO Eric Schmidt said at a media summit in Abu Dhabi a day earlier that he expected "something will happen soon" about its high-profile spat with China.
Schmidt had said on Wednesday that Google's dispute with China would be solved "soon" and that the search giant was still in active negotiations with Chinese officials.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology refused to comment on the Google issue on Thursday.
But Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a regular press briefing that "the communication channel between relevant Chinese ministries and foreign Internet operators is running well."
Qin also reiterated that foreign Internet operators should respect Chinese law while doing business in the country.
Google sent shockwaves across the business and political world when it declared on Jan 12 that it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and said it was considering pulling out of the country.
The announcement quickly turned into a political spat between Beijing and the US administration, which is weighing the merits of taking the dispute to the World Trade Organization.
Most industry experts believe that Google's likely exit from China may be a lose-lose deal for the search leader and China.
Top Chinese officials have, during the past few days, also sounded ambiguous over whether Google was still in talks to resolve the issue or not, signaling the difficulties for the two parties to achieve any sort of meaningful agreement.
Chinese officials attending the Two Sessions over the last few days have repeatedly urged Google to respect related laws of China
But a senior Google official said on Wednesday that the company had not changed its decision to stop censoring its Chinese language search site and that it was prepared to shutter the website if necessary. Tao Wenzhao, an expert on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it would be a lose-lose deal if Google retreated from China.
A series of conflicts between the two powers, ranging from the US move to sell arms to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama, have put the ties on ice.
Tensions, however, now appear to be easing after Washington sent two high-level officials earlier this month to mend relations.
Tao said even if Google finally decided to exit from China, the incident would have little impact on the soured relations between Beijing and Washington.
"It is worth remembering that Google is not the American government. This is just a commercial case," Tao said.
Tan Yingzi in Washington contributed to the story
Thursday 11 March 2010 at 05:17 am
A Chinese factory contracted to produce figurines of the 2010 World Cup mascots denied Wednesday allegations of sweatshop conditions and use of child labor, saying it operates in complete compliance of Chinese laws.
Global Brands Group (GBG), a Singaporebased company licensed for all FIFA World Cup 2010 merchandise, said Tuesday that it has suspended its approval of Shanghai Fashion Plastic Products to produce the leopardlike mascot Zakumi after an audit showed the factorys operations were flawed.
The audit was prompted after Britain's News of the World newspaper alleged that the company employed teenage workers, ran 13hour shifts and paid workers only 21 yuan ($3) a day.
"Our company, if not the best, remains one of the top two companies in the whole of the Yangtze River Delta area. We employ workers in strict compliance with Chinese laws," a company official who only gave her surname, Chen, told the Global Times Wednesday.
Shanghai Fashion Plastic Products, established in 1975 in Hong Kong, specializes in manufacturing plastic gifts, anatomical models, mannequins and other products to Japan, Europe, the United States and other countries.
It also manufactures mascots for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and this year's World Expo in Shanghai and currently employs more than 500 workers in Guangdong and Shanghai, according to the corporate profile published on its website.
Chen said the company's production of the Zakumi toys had been suspended but production of other products remains normal.
"The suspension of Zakumi does impact our business but will not paralyze our operation," he said.
A Global Times reporter was denied access to the factory Wednesday afternoon. There were no workers available for interview.
Shanghai Fashion was subcontracted by Ascendo Industrial, a factory and distributor based in KwaZuluNatal province, in South Africa. Ascendo is owned by African National Congress MP ShiaanBin Huang and his wife, SuLuan. It was contracted to produce 100,000 figurines of the leopard mascot, according to British newspaper The Times.
Huang expected the suspension to be lifted as early as next week and manufacturing to be resumed.
"There is no big issue. There was an inspection. But when the media reports began, the factory began paying its workers more and changing, so I think by next week they will be making the figurines again," he told The Times.
Chen denounced the allegation that their workers are underpaid as baseless, saying that the company would attract no workers if it paid less than average, since China is currently suffering from a severe labor shortage.
As the economic recovery has gained momentum, and especially since the beginning of the Chinese New Year last month, there has been a lack of labor in the Yangtze River Delta, home to a number of laborintensive enterprises.
Chen also denied that the company has employed children, saying it has issued a legal letter to News of the World and demanded it stop infringing on its rights and remove the report.
"The factory checks every worker's ID card when they are hired, and the company carries out all procedures stipulated by the current law," she said.
Henry Li, spokesperson for Intertek, an international organization authorized by GBG to visit the factory and conduct an ethical and social compliance audit of its operations, declined to disclose the outcome of the audit.
GBG spokesman Paul Zacks told The Times earlier that an audit identified a number of areas of noncompliance with GBG's policies.
"A corrective action plan has been put together with the manufacturer to close the gaps and make necessary improvements," he said.
Chen said the factory would fully cooperate with the investigation and make improvements on any problems.
"So far, the incompliance discovered is only limited to arbitrary placement of fire extinguishers and other equipment," she said.
Chen suggested that the incident was incited by the widespread resentment about high unemployment in South Africa, which was said to have reached 25 percent.
Her company has fallen victim to political struggle and protectionism in South Africa, she said.
The ruling party in South Africa is facing increasing pressure from its citizens who demand the government curb high unemployment.
Earlier reports about the company's practice were exploited by different parties in South Africa, with the Congress of South African Trade Unions challenging why the mascot was being made by lowwage Chinese workers while a large number of workers in South Africa remain jobless.
Reports about child laborers and sweatshops in China are not uncommon.
Last month, Apple Inc. admitted that some Chinese factories it had subcontracted to produce its computers, iPods and iPhones had used child labor, some aged 15 and working more than 60 hours a week.
A deadly explosion at a firecracker factory in southern China's Guangxi province in November led to revelations that children under 14 were working there for less than three yuan a day.
Under the Labor Law of the People' s Republic of China, Chinese employees cannot be forced to work more than eight hours a day and overtime must not exceed 40 hours a month.
Song Shengxia and Guo Qiang contributed to this story
Thursday 11 March 2010 at 05:17 am
Hundreds of "pro-Tibet independence" and anti-China activists have tried to storm Chinese diplomatic organs in Nepal and India over the last two days, marking the 51st anniversary of "Tibetan Uprising Day."
The Dalai Lama led a failed armed rebellion on March 10, 1959, for Tibet independence. Nepal and India border China's Tibet Autonomous Region.
China is becoming more adept at curbing such attempts to create chaos on the anniversary, following deadly riots two years ago in Tibet's regional capital of Lhasa, which left 19 dead, including one policeman, and 400 injured. In all, seven schools, five hospitals and 120 homes were destroyed by fire.
Nepalese police Wednesday arrested around half a dozen protesters from a main Buddhist monastery, located in the capital Kathmandu, when around 300 people demonstrated alongside Buddhist monks and some Westerners, shouting "Free Tibet" and waving the old Tibetan flag, Nepalnews.com reported.
In a separate incident yesterday, police detained about a dozen young protestors when they tried to make a dash toward a Chinese consulate office in Kathmandu where visas are issued, Reuters said.
Nepal is home to around 20,000 proindependence Tibetans, and the capital has been the scene of several antiChina protests since the unrest in 2008. A large presence of riot police could be seen in many parts of the country Wednesday.
In a preemptive move, Thinley Gyatso, the representative of the Dalai Lama in Nepal, was arrested by police Sunday and warned not to incite antiChina sentiment in the country, according to Nepalnews.com.
Security was also beefed up along the border that Nepal shares with Tibet, while Chinese authorities have grounded flights from Kathmandu to Lhasa and virtually closed the bridge connecting northern Nepal with Tibet, while ordering tour operators to suspend Tibet tours until March 28, Indo Asian News Service reported.
In neighboring India, heavy security was deployed Wednesday to prevent unrest in New Delhi a day after Tibetan separatists tried to storm the Chinese embassy, which led to the arrest of around 30 Tibetan activists.
"Indian police have taken stringent measures to protect the Chinese embassy and guard the safety of personnel.Any illegal entry of the Tibetan separatists to India is banned by the government," the Indian embassy in Beijing told the Global Times.
Wang Lei, a People's Daily correspondent in India, said the younger generation of Tibetan separatists comprises extremists who often resort to violence.
Hu Shisheng, a researcher of South Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said similar violent protests have become a routine "political show" on and around some sensitive anniversaries regarding Tibet.
"The protests have been largely ceremonial and aimed at catching global attention in order to get support and money. Many of the socalled protesters were hired and paid by the separatists," Hu said, adding that they were protesting for the sake of protesting.
Following the 1959 uprising, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, forming a "Tibetan government in exile" in Dharamshala. China has considered Tibet an inalienable part of China since the 13th century.
In an address marking the 51year anniversary of his fleeing Tibet, the Dalai Lama yesterday accused Beijing of restricting Tibetan people's free practice of culture and religion, which he described as trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet, AFP reported.
He also publicly displayed his support for Xinjiang separatists by referring to Xinjiang as "East Turkestan," the name given to the province by proindependence exiles, according to the AP.
Chinese authorities have repeatedly said the Dalai Lama means to instigate independence, though he has denied such claims.
"If you do not support Tibet independence, why did you propose a 'Greater Tibet' and keep the 'government-in-exile' with a so-called constitution?" said Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the annual session of the National People's Congress, last week.
Dealing with separatists
Li Wei, an antiterrorism expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the month of March is a sensitive period for Tibet, but the central government now has more measures to quell Tibetan separatists.
A staff member identified as Pema at the Phuntsok Kasang International Youth Hostel, which is located in the center of Lhasa, told the Global Times that security has been tightened in the city, especially this month, with many policeman patrolling the streets.
The number of visitors, all domestic, at her hostel remains roughly the same as this time last year, but there were few foreign tourists, she said.
"Foreign visitors have to sign up with one of the Chinese travel agencies to obtain a permit to enter Tibet," Pema said. "But I don't expect to take any foreigners at this time of the year."
Local residents contacted by AFP said no government curfew or other security notices had been issued.
"If there were no antiChina forces or no Dalai to destroy and create chaos, Tibet would be better off than it is today," the region's Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, said on a government website.
"Although antiChina forces and the Dalai clique are trying to ... destroy our harmony and stability, they can never shake our heartfelt belief that China cannot live without Tibet and Tibet cannot live without China," he said.
Over the last eight years, Tibet has witnessed a 12 percent economic growth annually as 180 billion yuan ($26 billion) have been poured into regional infrastructure, mostly by the central government.
Thursday 11 March 2010 at 05:16 am
Walt Disney Co's Chief Executive Bob Iger said on Wednesday that the top U.S. media company was keeping its options open for dealing with TV network ABC and its struggling news division, including a spin-off.
At Disney's shareholders' meeting, Iger noted that ABC News, which cut 300 to 400 jobs as part of a drive to refocus and recapture viewers lost to the Internet, is in a business undergoing significant challenges because of changes in the way people access and consume news.
Asked by a shareholder if Disney intended to spin off ABC, Iger said he was comfortable with the current mix of assets but added that the company was always reviewing the longer-term options for all its businesses.
"There are no guarantees in terms of what will remain part of our company and what will not," he said.
Speculation has surfaced from time to time in the media and among analysts that ABC might be split from Disney. But Alan Gould, an analyst with Soleil Research, does not believe Iger was signaling any developments in the works.
"Iger was just making sure he was not locking himself into a position by saying he'd never sell ABC News. He was keeping all of his options open," Gould said.
Sanford C Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson said such speculation resurfaces periodically, on the argument that ABC does not fit in well with Disney's focus on exploiting its content and theme park properties across all divisions.
"ABC doesn't add a lot of value to Disney's other divisions," he said. But he did not expect Disney to spin off ABC, particularly in light of its recent squabble with Cablevision Systems Corp over fees to transmit its programing.
Media conglomerates have pressured cable distributors for fees for transmitting their content, a much-needed new source of revenue.
The ABC-Cablevision dispute followed a bitter battle last year over retransmission fees between Time Warner Cable Inc and News Corp. Time Warner Cable plans to renegotiate fees with Disney in August.
"I'd wait to see how all these retransmission negotiations would go to see if the value of these assets would improve. I would not exit (from ABC) right now," said Nathanson.
ONE PASS TO RULE THEM ALL
At its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, Disney also unveiled a $700 single annual pass to both Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
The pass was created as a special option for some of its most ardent fans who shuttle between the two resorts.
Disney generated $36 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year and owns media properties including the Walt Disney Pictures movie studio, ABC Television Networks and cable sports network ESPN, plus part of online video website Hulu.
Last month, Disney reported better-than-expected earnings on the back of a strong performance at its cable division and cost cuts at its film studio, but signaled that its theme parks division remained under pressure, with room reservations at its parks for the second quarter down 10 percent from a year before.
Noting that 2009 had been challenging, Iger said the company had put in place various strategic measures. He cited its newly restructured film division's success with the recently released "Alice in Wonderland" and drew applause when he unveiled previews of its upcoming "Toy Story 3" and "Tron Legacy."
Shareholders at the meeting elected Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, and reelected the 12 other nominees to its board, expanding its size to 13.
The move to tap Sandberg reflects Disney's aggressive push into the younger, popular world of online social networks, which was a key part of its successful marketing of "Alice."
Sandberg's experience at Facebook, which has more than tripled in size during the past 16 months to more than 350 million users, will provide Disney with helpful insight from one of the Internet's fastest-growing companies in a way that is more cost-efficient than acquiring a company.
Shareholders voted against a proposal on executive pay that had asked for a nonbinding, advisory vote on the pay packages of top Disney executives. The "say on pay" initiative was voted down in the previous year's annual meeting. Disney was one of many companies facing such a proposal.
Thursday 11 March 2010 at 05:16 am
If start-up Media Derivatives and broker dealer Cantor Fitzgerald have their way, investors may soon be able to place bets on the box office showing of summer blockbuster "Iron Man 2."
Media Derivatives, a division of Veriana Networks, and Cantor are racing to set up the first U.S. exchanges to offer futures on movie box office receipts.
Though the concept has been kicked around for a decade, both say they are closing in on their goal of offering hedging -- and speculation -- instruments to investors and movie studios wary of audience fickleness and box office volatility.
"It's the right place and right time to build an exchange," said Veriana CEO Robert Swagger. While other futures exchange start-ups have largely tried to wrest market share from existing exchanges, he said, Trend Exchange has a better chance of succeeding because it is an entirely new market.
The rush to offer futures could allow Hollywood studios to lessen the pain from a box office flop. The latest plans come as global box office rose to nearly $30 billion last year.
Hollywood studios often bring in partners to invest in their movies and minimize their risk. A futures market could give producers another measure of protection.
Media Derivatives' Trend Exchange, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is slated to get the green light from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on March 24, and plans to begin trading by midyear, Swagger said in an interview on Wednesday on the sidelines of the annual Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
Veriana plans to target institutional investors.
Cantor Fitzgerald has regulatory leave to start funding accounts on March 15, and plans to begin trading seven days a week on April 20, Cantor Exchange president Rich Jaycobs said on the sidelines of the same conference.
As an example of how it would work, if the expected box office revenue of a film is $170 million, an investor could buy a futures contract for $170 and, if the movie does better than expected, could sell at a higher price, Cantor said.
EAGER "INVESTORS"
The idea of creating a Hollywood futures market has been around at least a decade. In 1996, a website called The Hollywood Stock Exchange was started where participants could invest fake dollars on box office outcomes. A division of Cantor Fitzgerald bought the site in 2001.
At the time, a source said Cantor was working on launching movie futures. In late 2008, the company announced it planned to list box office receipt contracts on its Cantor Exchange in the first quarter of 2009 -- but those plans were delayed.
That was partly because getting U.S. government regulatory approval for a box office futures market has been a challenge.
The U.S. and Canada box office crossed the $10 billion mark for the first time in 2009. News Corp studio Twentieth Century Fox's 3-D movie "Avatar" made a record-shattering $2.6 billion worldwide. The Walt Disney Co's "Alice in Wonderland," also in 3-D, beat "Avatar's" opening numbers by making $116 million from Friday through Sunday.
But as DVD sales -- a sector that had previously sustained the industry -- declined 13 percent, Hollywood studios released 12 percent fewer movies in 2009 than in 2008.
At least some of the drop in U.S. film production is due to the constriction in credit after the financial crisis. The availability of futures contracts to hedge risk could encourage financiers to reverse that trend, Swagger said.
TrendEx will clear through Minneapolis Grain Exchange using a traditional futures-exchange structure, he said. Cantor will self-clear, using prefunded accounts.
While the film industry is small by commodity futures markets standards, having two exchanges in such a small space could benefit both, as traders try to profit on any price differences between the two markets, Jaycobs said.
Trend Exchange didn't provide any details on the contracts it plans to offer. Cantor plans to offer contracts valued at one-millionth of a film's cumulative four-week box office take, making it much more accessible to a retail trader than a typical futures contract.
Thursday 11 March 2010 at 05:15 am
Agencies selling secondhand properties must display their credentials and provide a list of charges and copies of legal contracts in their shops, as the government works to curb cheating in secondhand property transactions.
The Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development on Tuesday issued an alert to consumers on the new requirements.
"The alert is aimed at making the real estate market transparent and the duties of the agencies clear," the commission said on its website.
The commission also asked housing authorities at the municipal and district levels to make regular spot checks, beginning April 1, to ensure the rules are followed.
The 10 items include the business license, headquarters address of the agency, service procedures, agents' certificates, charge details and a contact phone number for complaints.
The commission also reminded buyers of secondhand homes to be cautious about six widespread tricks of the agencies, such as fake contracts and repetitive charges.
The Beijing No 1 Intermediate Court in December said lawsuits related to secondhand property agencies have been rising since 2002.
The court handled only three such cases in 2002, but the number rose to 243 in 2008 and 265 in the first 11 months of 2009.
"One small agent sold one apartment to 30 buyers at the same time illegally and fled with the millions the buyers had paid," said Shao Bao, a sales director in 5i5j real estate agency.
"The regulation will not stop the rise of property prices, but can regulate the market," Shao added.
"The government announced some of the requirements earlier and our branch store has posted the related documents on the wall since we started our business," said Tian Kun, sales manager of the Jingchengguangsha real estate agency. "It is just a policy to reinforce the regulations.
"However, as far as I know, only 20 to 30 percent of the real estate agents in Beijing have professional certificates because the rules were not strict before," he said.
"Releasing the policy before the coming International Day for Protecting Consumers' Rights will have some positive effect for consumers," said Zhang Yue, a market researcher at Homelink agency. "They need more guidance on how to protect their own rights, especially on big purchases like houses and apartments."
Wu Jing, a lawyer who specializes in housing disputes, said her firm's latest case involves misdeeds by a real estate agency. Such incidents are making up a larger portion of her caseload. "It is good news that the government has begun to pay attention to the market, but without any detailed regulations on the corresponding punishment, I doubt the efficacy of the policy," said Wu. "It will be difficult to implement."
Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 06:33 am
Alibaba Group, a privately owned Hangzhoubased family of Internetbased businesses, announced Tuesday it has launched a new wholesale online website.
Alibaba's Chinese site, alibaba.com.cn, was updated to become an online transaction website with a new domain name of 1688.com. When pronounced in Chinese, the numbers sound akin to the phrase "make a fortune."
"After surveying a large number of small and mediumsized companies, we found that in China numbers in domain names can be easily remembered," Wu Hao, who is responsible for the B2B company with Alibaba Group, told the Global Times Tuesday.
One of the major differences between alibaba.com.cn and 1688.com is the former offers online transactions via Alipay, a thirdparty online payment platform under the same group, while the latter just publishes sales information, Wu said.
And Wei Zhe, CEO of Alibaba, said the strategic update will resolve the difficulties small companies face during internal trade.
Zhang Lele, owner of a clothing store at the Guangcai wholesale market in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, said nearly 80 percent of his goods were purchased through alibaba.com.cn.
It saved time and money, and online purchasing will be the development trend in the future, Zhang said.
Using Alipay on the new website will further shorten trading time, Wu said.
More than 500,000 merchants are registered on the new website, in over 6,000 sectors ranging from clothing to mechanical appliances.
On the day 1688.com was launched, 6.39 million users browsed the website, equal to the number of visitors to the Yiwu small commodities wholesale market in an entire month.
Sales volume reached 3.06 million units the first day.
Analysts said Alibaba filled a gap in internal wholesale online transactions.
"Through this move Alibaba has covered all the areas of online transactions, and 1688. com and taobao.com, a C2C website also affiliated with Alibaba group, will be closely connected," Sun Chonghui, an analyst at iResearch, a supplier of online business and new economy developments service, said Tuesday.
Some merchants also retail products on 1688.com.
Asked whether the site would take market share from Taobao, Sun said it might pull away some customers in the short term, but it fits with Alibaba's long term strategy, which is businesstobusinesstoconsumer.
Last May, Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, announced a pilot program with Taobao to help exportoriented businesses find domestic buyers.
Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 06:32 am
Parents and children need not panic about hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) despite recent reported cases of minor epidemics at some nursery schools, an expert claims.
"There is no need for panic as HFMD is not fatal and it fixes itself," said a health consultant surnamed Wang with Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The expert opinion comes after a small number of epidemics were reported in some nursery schools and kindergartens in early March. The names of the schools and kindergartens remain unannounced.
Zhao Tao, associate counselor with the Beijing municipal health bureau, said the recent increase in disease cases is normal.
"HFMD often occurs in small epidemics at nursery schools and kindergartens from May to July in Beijing," he said.
Zhao advised schools and parents to pay specific attention to cleanliness, and not to be too concerned about the apparent increase in case frequency.
"When the normal quantity of reported cases is low, any growth appears as huge. However, this increase is mild and definitely not a surge," Zhao said. HFMD usually affects children under 10 years old and is caused by a combination of intestinal viruses and infection.
Wang said the disease usually begins with a fever, loss of appetite, mouth ulcers and a sore throat.
"There is no specific treatment for HFMD," Wang said. She also said that washing hands and drinking plenty of fluids were good ways to prevent infection.
The disease is spread through the transfer of fluids from infected people. Currently, there is no vaccine to protect against the viruses and HFMD does not affect animals, Wang said.
As many as 48 HFMD cases were reported in the last week of February, according to the latest epidemic report on the website of the health bureau. That figure was 200 percent more than the week before.
Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 06:32 am
The auctions of six large lots of land have been postponed for a week until March 15, with bidders angry over what experts claim is to avoid catch too much attention at the Two Sessions.
Among the six pieces, two slots - Yizhuang in Daxing district and Dongsheng in Haidian district - will be set aside for commercial use.
The other four pieces are to be used for residential projects, according to the website for the Land Consolidation Reserve Center in Beijing.
The center gave the official reason for postponement as excessive auctioning of land on the planned date of March 8.
However, Miller Lee, a real estate financial expert at a Beijing-based consulting company, told METRO on Tuesday the actual reason was the on-going annual National People's Congress (NPC) and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sessions.
The annual conference is currently in session and the real estate industry is an obvious area of focus.
"If another record-high land sale occurs during the conference, it would be deeply embarrassing for those involved," Lee said.
"Since most of the land for auction is intended for residential use, it is a sensitive issue," he added.
Experts argued however that the auction delay would have little impact on market prices.
"The policy from the NPC is not clear yet, so we just need to wait until after the conference to see," Li Wenjie, general manager of property agency Centaline China (North China region), said on Tuesday.
"The number of available houses in Beijing has dropped to below 90,000 now, which is a huge stimulus for real estate developers to buy up land," Zhang Dawei, director of the research department at Centaline China, said on Tuesday.
"There will be fierce competition on March 15," Zhang predicted.
Fifteen bidders are already in the queue to bid for one residential piece of land in Changping district, with the starting bid set at 2.675 billion yuan.
Dealing with such large amounts of money, some real estate companies are naturally angry about the recent date change.
Ren Zhiqiang, CEO of Huayuan real estate company, described his feelings on his Sina micro-blog account on March 8.
"We have wasted one week's interest on the margin we paid to the government. Are they going to return this money to us?" he asked.
As many as 46 pieces of land have already been auctioned in the city this year, statistics show.
Among them, the average land value for residences hit 10,187 yuan per sq m. Those for commercial purposes were lower at 3,895 yuan, according to Centaline China.
"Residential land prices are much higher than commercial land, which is different to other countries," said Zhang.
Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 06:32 am
Turkish State Minister Zafer Caglayan cancelled his trip to the United States in response to the U.S. adoption of a resolution labelling the incidents of 1915 as "genocide," local Daily News reported on its website Tuesday.
Caglayan, who is in charge of foreign trade, was scheduled to depart for the U.S. on March 19 with a large business delegation, according to the report.
The decision was made Monday during a meeting with the Turkish Ambassador to Washington Namik Tan, who had earlier been recalled in a show of protest.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that Turkey would not send back its ambassador to U.S. before seeing clear results, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
Attitude of the U.S. in the next period was very important, Erdogan said, adding that he did not believe the U.S. would sacrifice its strategic partner for simple political discussions.
On March 4, Turkey temporarily recalled its ambassador to the U. S. Namik Tan minutes after a U.S. congressional panel approved a resolution concerning Turkey.
The resolution on Armenian allegations related to the incidents of 1915 was adopted at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in a voting of 23-22.
Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols last October to normalize relations; however, parliaments of the two countries have not passed them yet.
Turkey strongly rejects genocide allegations and regards the events as civil strife in wartime which claimed lives of many Turks and Armenians.
Turkey and Armenia have been bogged down in the row over the deaths of Armenians and have no diplomatic or economic ties since Armenia declared its independence in 1991.
Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 06:31 am
For anyone banging his or her head against the wall in the world of dating, it seems the answer could lie in your calculator.
I recently spoke to Shanghai millionaire Dr Li Song, the CEO and co-founder of the world's largest matchmaking website for Chinese speakers, www.zhenai.com.
It boasts 23 million registered users - and new ones are signing up at a rate of 30,000 a day.
The key to Dr Li's company's matchmaking success? Some amazing intuition into how lovers feel, into how their hearts beat, what makes their tears flow?
Not at all. In fact, it all comes down to quantifiable statistics and probability.
The size of Dr Li's database enables his team of 400 call-center matchmakers to input the data for each new seeker of love, and out pops the most likely suitor for his or her profile.
Details such as length and style of hair, clothes, manner of speaking, are all collected.
The matchmakers advise those who sign up that 70 percent of women with long, straight hair get second dates.
Just 5 percent of those with short, curly hair do.
His team advises women to wear above-the-knee skirts, high heels, and definitely black, transparent pantyhose. "Not too low-cut for the tops. If you wear something too low-cut you lead a man to think of you in the wrong way. In other words you want to be sexy, but not sexual," he stresses.
"We don't worry about being politically correct. We merely tell our clients what we have observed."
His observations, statistics and enormous database have produced some rather surprising findings.
"Despite the feminist argument in recent years, we find that women still care far more about profession, social status and income than looks," he says.
"Men are better off dressing as close to a business style as possible, but it's not the most important thing at all."
For the men - salary is barely important, but the women should be 27, either teachers or nurses, and 1.62m tall.
"There are two approaches to matchmaking," says Dr Li.
"One is that you come up with a psychological theory and predict the results based on your theory, but because my background is more mathematically inclined, I don't have a theory to begin with.
"What I do is based on statistical results, reverse engineering, and is a learning process.
"We operate on two matrices: how many of our callers get at least one date (we aim at 93 per cent) and the time it takes between establishing contact and the actual date. This should be within two and a half weeks."
So much for the language of poets: better speak equations, qualitative finance and probability are more important if you want success in the romance department.
A former finance PhD student at Cornell, the bespectacled, mid-40s Li does look just like a mathematician.
There are no roses or chocolates in his very ordinary double room at the Beijing International Hotel, and he wears a slightly marked, pale orange sweatshirt with baggy grayish slacks.
But despite his own shortcomings style wise, he knows the dress code for success.
He tells me I would be all wrong in my trousers, though the high heels are a good idea. And he admits that when he met his wife, she was wearing black pantyhose.
Tuesday 09 March 2010 at 05:04 am
While everyone knows that NBA center Yao Ming will become a father this summer, the big buzz in China is about whether the baby will be an American.
The Shanghai native's personal life is closely followed by his many fans at home, from his 2007 Shanghai wedding to fellow basketball player Ye Li to last month's reports the couple is expecting a baby girl in July.
The 2.25-meter star, sidelined this season with a broken left foot, recently returned to the United States with Ye, igniting speculation that the baby will be born there.
Yao's baby would automatically be an American citizen if born in the US.
However, Chinese law does not recognize dual citizenship.
A few say it would be a betrayal of China and that the Chinese team could be denied a future basketball star.
But most support Yao and don't care which country claims the baby.
"Yao Ming is an individual, not a political tool," said one comment on popular basketball Website Hoop China.
"He has the right to choose where his child is born and what kind of medical care and education will be available to her. His child's citizenship has nothing to do with loyalty."
Yao and his camp have been tight-lipped on the pregnancy and have not issued any public statements on the matter.
It is not clear if Yao and his wife are indeed planning to have the baby in the US or how they will handle any citizenship issues.
'Private matter'
Yao spokesman Zhang Mingji declined to comment on the baby, saying it was a private matter.
He said Yao was still recovering from his injury and was returning to the US to continue treatment.
A number of Chinese celebrities - including actor Jet Li, actress Gong Li and director Chen Kaige - have in recent years been criticized for becoming naturalized citizens of other countries.
Chinese are subject to stringent visa requirements and some of the celebrities argued it was easier to travel internationally with passports from countries like Singapore or the US.
Baby Yao has captured the imagination of fans in China, who wonder what her basketball skills will be like, with a superstar father and 1.9-meter mother who is a former center for China.
Scientists have predicted the girl will grow up to be about 1.86 meters.
Tuesday 09 March 2010 at 05:03 am
Donations exceeding 5 billion yuan (732 million U.S. dollars) have been allocated to reconstruction in the area hit by the 8-magnitude May 12 earthquake of 2008, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced Tuesday.
The ministry had received quake-relief donations of 5.06 billion yuan by Oct. 31, 2009, all of which has been channeled into the southwest China quake zone, said a statement on the ministry's website.
More than 4.5 billion yuan had been channeled to the governments of quake-hit provinces, and 528.6 million yuan to governments of provinces that provided quake-relief materials, said the statement.
Worst affected Sichuan Province received more than 1.9 billion yuan, Gansu Province more than 1.75 billion yuan, Shannxi Province 812 million yuan, Yunnan Province 1 million yuan and Chongqing Municipality 59.4 million yuan.
The rest of the donations, 6.22 million yuan, had been used in developing a donation information database, subsidizing Customs officers in quake-hit areas, and purchasing rehabilitation devices for children.
Apart from the 5 billion yuan in donations, quake-relief donations listed as "special Party membership fees" of 7.98 billion yuan donated by the Communist Party members across China had also been allocated.
Tuesday 09 March 2010 at 05:03 am
Compared with some colleagues' motions on important state affairs, Chen Fei, a 55-year-old farmer lawmaker, came to the annual legislative session with a proposal on how an ID card can be eco-friendly.
"An ID card has information on both sides. When you want to photocopy it, you have to use the photocopy machine twice," he said.
He handed in a proposal that all key information should be printed on only one side of the card during the annual full session of the National People's Congress, the country's national legislature, which began on Friday.
"Some might think a tiny problem like this does not need attention at such an important session," he said. "But I think it is related to saving energy and reducing emission of greenhouse gases since there are plenty of occasions for everyone to photocopy his ID card."
He also proposed charging customers when they use disposable appliance at hotels.
In the past three years, all proposals Chen submitted as an NPC deputy were related to protecting the environment.
He is also well known for his environmental gestures, such as presenting bamboo baskets and handkerchiefs to fellow lawmakers at the annual session.
As a farmer in Yongjia of in eastern Zhejiang Province, Chen was elected deputy to the NPC in 2008.
In 2000, he was shocked to find trees in his rural hometown covered with plastic bags that had been blown up by a storm.
"They looked ugly. My son also told me that they were poisonous. I decided that I could not let it be," Chen said.
Since then, at his own expense, Chen has handed out bamboo baskets to people, hoping that they can stop using plastic shopping bags, first at local bazaars and later during the campaigns in big cities, including Shanghai and Beijing.
"Electing me as an NPC deputy is an indication itself that our country is more and more aware of environmental issues," he said.
While Chen continued handing out baskets and even managed to send some to the Copenhagen summit last year, the country banned the free use of plastic shopping bags in June 2008.
"Last year I made a proposal to continue the ban. Recently I received a feedback report from the Ministry of Commerce. Some of my advice has been taken," Chen said.
In 2009, the Chinese government pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emission intensity per unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 against 2005 levels.
In the government work report submitted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to the NPC session on Friday, there included various measures to improve energy efficiency, as well as build sewage plants and plant trees.
At this year's session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, media representatives can download manuals from the official website and notices are sent by e-mails and text messages on cell phones instead of using papers.
"Everyone can contribute to the great campaign of the country if he can take care of some tiny details in his daily life," Chen said.
Tuesday 09 March 2010 at 05:02 am
Toyota has dropped from the top 10 list of the best selling cars in China this month, for the first time in years.
According to statistics released by China Passenger Car Association, in February, FAW Toyota - the Japanese automaker's joint venture in China - disappeared from the Top 10 sales list for the first time.
Although Toyota China said its total sales rose 30 percent in February from a year earlier to 45,400 units, the figure continued a sharp decrease from 72,000 vehicles in the previous month.
In January, the recall-plagued brand encountered the first drop of 16.3 percent from last December, however, in an aggressively growing auto market.
Public opinion appears to be negative on Japanese brands in general, as seen in a recent Internet poll.
According to a survey conducted by Chinese website sina.com, 73.6 percent of online respondents said they would not buy Toyota or Honda branded cars after the recalls, with only 16.4 percent maintaining Japanese cars are still their preference in terms of choices.
The online poll was conducted on 258,000 participants between March 1 and March 8, 2010. Sina.com was not able to provide a demographic breakdown of the survey's online respondents.
Akio Toyoda, the Japanese automaker's president, forecast last week during a visit to Beijing that the company's 2010 sales would hit 800,000 units this year in China, up from 709,000 in 2009.
He was here to apologize to Chinese consumers for Toyota vehicle sticky accelerator pedals.
To salvage sliding sales and a public opinion nightmare, Toyota has kicked off a series of sales incentives to lure buyers in China.
"We cannot sit still and wait any more," said Niu Yu, Toyota's spokesman last Friday in Beijing.
Toyota will offer buyers zero-interest financing for some of its models, and its venture FAW-Toyota is also providing a year's premium of car insurance and two years of 24-hour roadside assistance to new buyers, in addition to free fuel cards for potential customers who test-drive its cars.
Moreover, some dealers have reduced the price of the recall-involved RAV4 vehicle by 8,000 yuan, a model buyers had to add 6,000 to 10,000 yuan to get the vehicle right away or wait for at least two months, before the quality crisis.
Tuesday 09 March 2010 at 05:02 am
SAIC Motor, the listed arm of Chinese auto giant Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), Tuesday announced car sales totaled 555,757 units in January and February, up 67.16 percent from a year earlier.
Sales for February alone were up 45.6 percent to 248,435, compared with 170,526 in the same period of last year, according to a company statement filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange website.
Shanghai GM, SAIC's joint venture with General Motors, sold 148,762 vehicles in the first two months, up 108.97 percent from a year ago, while sales of its venture with Volkswagen were 128,593, up 56.32 percent.
Monday 08 March 2010 at 12:52 am
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday that the government is to strictly control the launching of new projects this year in an effort to curb redundant investment.
Government investment at all levels should be concentrated in the most important areas and be mainly spent to carry on and complete existing projects, Wen said in the government work report he delivered at the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature.
Nevertheless, Wen urged local governments to advance reconstruction work in areas devastated by the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit southwest Sichuan and its adjacent provinces in May 2008.
NPC deputy Lu Xiulu agreed that the government needs to properly control investment to avoid over-depending on it to power economic growth.
"Government investment needs to be kept at a certain scale, but last year's 30.1 percent growth rate is obviously unsustainable," said Lu, also deputy director of the Development and Reform Commission of the southern Guangdong Province.
In the report, Wen said the government will strengthen and improve the supervision of investment.
"For projects financed through the public treasury, relevant departments need to exercise oversight of the entire course of the project," Wen said.
He also vowed to prevent the construction of "image projects" in the name of boosting domestic demand.
The term "image projects" refer to those built largely for displaying local governments' achievements rather than for use by ordinary people.
Wen said the government should ensure public investments are spent promoting social and economic development and improving people's livelihood. "That should be able to stand the test of practice and history."
China put out an economic stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan (587 billion U.S. dollars) to finance projects over two years to 2010 in a combat against the global financial crisis.
The massive stimulus plan has stirred public concerns over corruption as a large part of the money goes to infrastructure construction.
Up to 44 percent of the respondents to an online survey by the people.com.cn, website of the People's Daily, voted that "malpractice and corruption is a serious problem in the construction area."
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) reported in December a total of 88 cases involving 198 CPC officials were found to misspend money from the stimulus package a year after its launch.
In February, the State Council issued a regulation on the implementation of the Audit Law, aiming to step up supervision on areas highly prone to corruption.
The regulation stated that construction projects whose government investment exceeds 50 percent, and those with less than 50 percent government investment but with construction and operation being controlled by the government, must accept auditing.
Monday 08 March 2010 at 12:51 am
Overseas media have been paying great attention to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's government work report on sustaining a healthy and rapid economic development in 2010.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in an editorial that people can see from Wen's report that China is aiming to promote a sustainable economic development and protect social fairness and justice in the new year.
China is pursuing an economic transformation from the original export and investment-driven economy to a domestic consumption-dominant one, said the newspaper.
However, the goal is not easy to be achieved, said the report. To keep a sustainable growth, China must shift its emphasis to the "quality" of the economic development.
French newspaper Le Figaro pointed out in an article that the dilemma China currently faces is that on the one hand the economic policy must not hamper the economic growth, yet on the other hand economic stimulus measures must not lead to an overheated economy and cause an inflation bubble.
In order to achieve this goal, China must change its model of economic development and stimulate domestic spending, the article said.
Reuters said Wen's report shows that China would continue to maintain an "appropriately easy monetary stance and an active fiscal policy" in 2010, encouraging domestic spending, adjusting economic structure, and stabilizing export at the same time to ensure an 8-percent GDP growth in the new year.
The article also noted that the report has given equal importance to the reform of the natural resources tax and the improvement of people's livelihood.
The U.S. Chinese Biz News in a commentary referred to 2010 as a crucial year for China to fend off the global financial crisis, as the country should achieve all the targets of the 11th Five-Year Plan and lay a solid foundation for the 12th Five-Year plan, adding that it is also a period of transition for China to adjust its economic structure and improve people's livelihood.
The commentary said in 2009 China's economy went through a U-turn recovery and achieved admirable growth after being hard hit by the global economic crisis.
It is a common concern of the deputies to the NPC and CPPCC as well as the rest of Chinese people to see whether China's economy could make a smooth transformation in 2010 in current complicated situations, said the commentary.
For both developed countries and emerging markets, economic transformation and upgrading is the only way leading to a fast and sustainable development, the commentary said.
It added China is in an urgent need of a transformation of its economic growth pattern at a time when the country is facing periodic adjustments and the world is embroiled in an economic downturn.
The Japanese business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted Chinese Premier Wen as saying China expects its economy to grow around 8 percent in 2010 and the government is committed to achieving an economic transformation based on an economic growth model powered by the domestic demand.
However, China should prevent an overheated economy and forestall a risky bubble in the real estate market in the process of transformation, the newspaper said.
An article on the Japanese Sankei Shimbun's website also quoted Wen as saying that 2010 is a crucial year for China to continue to combat the global financial crisis, maintain a steady and rapid economic development and accelerate the transformation of the growth pattern. It added China is adjusting its economy to an energy-efficient model.
The Wall Street Journal said in an article on its website that one year after a financial crisis hit world economy, China has shifted its focus to preventing a real estate bubble, managing capital inflow and revaluing its currency in an effort to promote the economic restructuring.
Monday 08 March 2010 at 12:51 am
Rain and snow will continue to hit most parts of China over the next two days, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) forecasted on Sunday.
A new cold front is expected to sweep north China over the next two days, bringing strong winds and a temperature drop, while the previous one will be still in China's southern part, said the CMA in a statement on its website.
Parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Hebei provinces as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are forecasted to see heavy snow from March 7 to 9, while rainfall will ease in southern part of the country, it said.
Temperatures in those regions would go down by six to eight degrees centigrade, with some areas experiencing a even sharper temperature decline of 10 to 12 degrees centigrade, according to the CMA.
The CMA expertise warned that the freezing weather might cause damages to wheat in the north and cole in the south and asked local governments to take relevant protective measures.
Monday 08 March 2010 at 12:51 am
America-born al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn has been arrested in Pakistan, reports said Sunday.
Gadahn, one of the most wanted persons in the United States, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, Pakistani security officials were quoted as saying.
Gadahn, 31, has appeared several times on videos threatening the West. A U.S. court charged the America-born al-Qaida spokesman with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years.
Earlier on Sunday, a video was released on a website showing the al-Qaida leader calling on Muslims in the United States to launch attacks against the country and undermine the U.S. economy.
He called for "carefully timed and targeted attacks" to undermine the West's struggling economies, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors al-Qaida announcements.
However, news of his detention cannot be verified independently, said security officials on condition of anonymity.
Gadahn grew up in California and converted to Islam before he moved to Pakistan in 1998 and attended an al-Qaida training camp six years later, according to media reports.
U.S. intelligence agencies had offered a 1-million-U.S.-dollar reward for information leading to Gadahn's arrest.
Monday 08 March 2010 at 12:50 am
A male beggar whose rugged looks were compared to a Japanese movie star and whose clothes were described by Internet bloggers as coordinated and fashion-conscious is no longer a mystery to the public.
Family members reunited with the vagabond-looking man last week after several years on the streets in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.
Nicknamed "Brother Sharp" for his clothes, Cheng Guorong, 34, checked out of Ningbo Mental Hospital where he was admitted after he gained publicity for his looks, Guangzhou Daily reported Sunday.
Cheng, a native of Shangrao, Jiangxi Province, is the father of a 10 and 11 year old.
He became a hot topic on the Internet after a Japanese website said he looks like pop star Hiro Mizushima.
In one photo, Cheng is dressed in multiple layers of clothing, including a full-length coat over a shorter jacket, along with a shirt, sweater and heavy snow pants. His thick hair is soiled and he walks down a street looking like a character in a Mad Max movie.
The beggar became a media topic after a factory owner took his picture last month outside Tianyi Plaza in Ningbo and posted it online.
The British newspaper, The Independent, carried a photo of the beggar on Thursday and described him as "walking with a model's measured gait, and wearing a rag-tag but well coordinated overcoat on top of a leather jacket."
There was speculation that Cheng served as a solider in Nanchang, Jiangxi in 1998, and went to Ningbo to work in 2002.
His fiancéwanted to meet Cheng in Ningbo, but she was killed in a car crash. After the accident, Cheng was in shock and was fired.
A college student at Zhejiang Institute of Finance told his father that "Brother Sharp" looks like his neighbor's brother Cheng Guosheng in hometown in Shangrao.
The local media then contacted Cheng Guosheng, who brought his 60-year-old mother to Ningbo last week when the beggar brother was admitted to a mental hospital with the help of local government officials.
The younger brother said the beggar went to work in Ningbo in 2002, and lost contact with the family in 2003.
The younger brother also said his big brother was not aware that his wife and father both died in car accidents.
"My big brother is reserved and has a strong sense of self-respect. He thought he did not make lots of money so he had no 'face' to contact the family," the younger brother said.
The beggar brother was mentally healthy when he left home at 23, but hospital staff said he is now insane.
"His mental status is stable but there are signs of insanity," said Liu Tanglong, director of the medical branch at the mental hospital. "He does not like to communicate with others but he likes to write down his answers on paper. He said he does not want to be famous."
Family members took "Brother Sharp" out of the hospital on Friday, even though doctors suggested he needed observation.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:33 am
Hamas police on Thursday decided to ban males from working as coiffures or being present in any women hair saloons in the Gaza Strip where the Islamic movement holds sway.
"Anybody violating this announcement would subject himself to legal accountability," the police said in a statement posted on its website.
There are hundreds of barbershops for women across the Gaza Strip, but no more than seven are run by male hairdressers, clustering in the prestigious Gaza city's downtown.
The decision, the latest step in Hamas' undeclared plan to impose Islamic lifestyle on the 1.5 million society, was contemned by the owners of these saloons.
"There is no room for more unemployment here," said Adnan Barakat, who has been working as a hairstylist for 25 years. "I employ four people and as you know there are no industry or trade in Gaza so we won't find an alternative job," he added.
Barakat said he has not yet been officially informed about the police decision, vowing to bring a suit if he was ordered not to open his shop.
Last summer, Hamas, which routed forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and ousted his secular Fatah movement in June 2007, launched what it called "the virtue campaign" which included distributing posters and leaflets urging women to cover their hair, people to quit smoking, parents to withhold entertainment channels from their children, and youths to stop taking pain-killers extensively.
Hatem Al-Ghoul, another coiffeur, said the decision was "a big catastrophe." Noting that his shop was blown up two times after Hamas seized Gaza, he said he would seek asylum "if the authorities here cut my solo source of income."
The coiffeurs said their work doesn't go further than making a hairdo and that their business doesn't include body-hair razor or any thing related to body care.
But Hassan al-Jojo, president of the Shari'a Appeals Court in Gaza, said Islam has forbidden woman to expose anything of her body, except face and hands, to any stranger.
"A man working in women beauty centers is prohibited in Islam," he said. "This stylist would touch the woman's face, hold her head, apply make-up on her face... etc. This is of a great sin," Al-Jojo told Xinhua.
"A woman is not allowed to make hairdo for a man and the man is not allowed to do so for the woman," Al-Jojo went on.
Hatem, the 32-year-old stylist, said the Gaza coiffeurs "have a kind reputation and they are of respected families and won't go at odds with traditions and customs."
He also recalled that he has a section in his shop dedicated only for "covered women" who don't want to be exposed to men. "We don't force any woman to come. Our door is open. But many women are looking for the hairdresser who took this profession through education, not an amateur one."
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:32 am
When Google Inc, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, said on Jan 12 it may close its website in China, Edinburgh money manager James Anderson sold the stock and bought Beijing-based rival Baidu Inc.
Since then, Baidu has risen 34 percent and Google has lost 8.5 percent. That kind of call helped propel Anderson's closed-end fund, Baillie Gifford & Co's 1.87 billion-pound ($2.8 billion) Scottish Mortgage Trust Plc, to the best performance among its UK peers over the past year.
"Google was admitting they had lost in China," said Anderson, who is Baillie Gifford's chief investment officer and responsible for 56 billion pounds in total. "It was revealing and added to the imputed value of Baidu."
Fund managers in the Scottish capital are increasingly moving their money to reflect the shift in economic power to countries such as China and Brazil from the US and Europe.
Scottish Mortgage has 60 percent of its assets in US, UK and other European stocks, down from 80 percent in 2004, and Anderson expects that to fall further.
The century-old Scottish Mortgage Trust's biggest holding is Rio de Janeiro-based Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil producer, making up 5.1 percent of the fund. The firm, known as Petrobras, is also the biggest stake for Murray International Trust Plc, another Edinburgh fund.
"I like my ideas to come from the countries producing economic growth," said Anderson.
'Special' China
The switch to Baidu from Google meant each company accounted for 2.7 percent of Scottish Mortgage's assets as of Jan 31, putting the Internet search companies among the fund's 10 largest holdings.
"We find many, many more individual Chinese companies that are great secular growth companies similar to what you saw in America," Anderson said. "China is a special category beyond all others."
Scottish Mortgage, Baillie Gifford's first client, was founded in 1909 to invest in rubber estates in Malaysia and Sri Lanka to benefit from demand for automobile tires.
Baillie Gifford's main clients are US retirement funds including the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest US public pension fund, as well as money managers such as Vanguard Group.
Investments in what Anderson calls "rising powers", along with lessening dependence on the UK and avoidance of most financial stocks, helped boost returns.
Best return
Scottish Mortgage is a general growth fund, which targets stocks and bonds that gain in price more than average. It advanced 90 percent over the year to March 1, compared with an average return of 50 percent for 30 similar funds, according to data from Chicago-based research firm Morningstar Inc.
Anderson has run the fund since 2000. His second-biggest Chinese holding, after Baidu, is in Beijing-based New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc, the largest private education company in the country.
Other investments include Ctrip.com International Ltd, China's biggest online-ticketing company, Belle International Holdings Ltd, the largest retailer of women's shoes, and Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's biggest Internet company.
Brazil accounts for three of Scottish Mortgage's largest investments, with index-linked government bonds due 2045 and Vale SA, the world's largest iron ore producer, alongside Petrobras. Earnings from Brazil also are the reason behind his stake in Banco Santander SA, Spain's largest bank.
"The Western financial system and the Western housing markets were unsustainable," he said. "We have known that for 15 years. It was implausible that we could have continued. You need to split off casino banking from utility banking."
Scottish Mortgage had avoided large holdings in financial stocks "for some time", although it made a mistake in owning shares of UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank by assets, said Anderson. UBS is down 17 percent over the past six months.
This year, Anderson bought or added to stakes including San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc, the world's largest maker of networking equipment, Intuitive Surgical Inc, maker of robotic surgical systems, Polish copper miner KGHM Polska Miedz SA and Poland's former phone monopoly, Telekomunikacja Polska SA.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:32 am
The Chinese government is working on a new regulation that would require all mobile phone users to subscribe with their real names, as part of an ongoing effort to fight against cellphone fraud.
But telecom operators and industry experts said the proposed regulation would require billions of yuan in investment to renovate phone carrier's existing systems, plus it may also raise public concerns over the security of their private information.
Li Yizhong, minister of Industry and Information Technology, said at a conference last week that the government is working on the real name cellphone registration, which is designed to protect China's 700 million cellphone users.
According to IT industry news website ChinaTechNews.com, Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department said that at the end of April 2009, the province had cracked 468 phone-based fraud cases, eliminated 46 fraud-engaged gangs, caught 323 suspects and took possession of stolen money totaling 2.45 million yuan ($0.36 million).
The public security department has suggested that due to public security risks sparked by illegal activities via SMS or text messaging, the related government departments should launch a real name mobile phone SIM card system, a ChinaTechNews.com report said.
This would tie purchases of all SIM cards and phones to the identities of the people who purchase those cards and phones, the report said.
Efforts for the real name registration have been discussed for years in China, as many cellphone users have complained of bothersome spam messages. Industrial regulators said it is extremely difficult to track the source of spam-message senders because telecom carriers do not require all users to provide their real identities.
Although Li did not disclose a timetable for the new regulation, earlier reports have said it could begin at the end of 2010.
One local newspaper in Liaoning province also reported on Thursday that the regulation would first be introduced in the Southeast China province.
According to government figures, China had 747 million cellphone users at the end of 2009. It is estimated that over half did not register using their real names.
Although the government proposal has been circulating in the media for over two years, major telecom operators remain in the dark about the nuts and bolts of the registration plan. "If the government is planning on implementing the requirement we will have no choice but to follow it. But we have yet to hear any details about it," said a spokesman for China Unicom that requested anonymity.
He said even if launched, plan execution would be "extremely difficult".
Xiang Ligang, a professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, agreed saying real name registration will provide a much needed boost for China's telecom industry in the long term as it paves the way for new wireless business models such as a mobile payment system, which requires the secure management of data.
But for Xiang nothing will happen overnight.
"In the short term, it is a huge project and I don't think it could be rolled out anytime soon," he said.
Xiang estimated that the registration plan, if rolled out, will force cellphone carriers to upgrade their existing systems and overhaul their current sales and distribution channels, which could cost as much as 5 billion yuan ($732 million).
Telecom operators' text messaging revenues will also be cut up to 10 percent on lost subscribers after the rollout of the plan takes place, he added.
"Real name registration will inevitably increase costs for cellphone operators and their sales partners, which is one of the biggest obstacles for the new regulation," said Zhang Bing, an analyst from CITIC Securities. He said the regulation might also raise concerns from users over privacy protection.
Mobile phone real-name systems have been implemented in several countries including Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan and Singapore. In China, major telecom carriers have also required a portion of users - mostly high-end cellphone users - to subscribe using their real names.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:31 am
A northern Chinese city's massive appointment of officials has left the local government in hot water as netizens and media question potential misconduct in the move.
In late January, 89 officials were appointed to new posts in various government departments - at least three of which were newly established last year - according to a statement on the website of Handan city in Hebei province.
The appointments came as the city wound up a major revamp of local government organizations at the end of last year and shed four former departments.
China's central government, the State Council, launched a revamp of ministries and committees in March 2008. Regional governments are allowed to follow suit under their own schedules.
The institutional revamps are designed to reduce overlapping functions and positions at government departments.
But the statement triggered concern among netizens who said the local government might have breached rules by appointing too many deputy chiefs in a single department.
For instance, the number of deputy chiefs reached 11 in the department of human resources and social security after the appointments, according to a post published by an anonymous Internet user.
In China, the number of deputy officials at each political body is usually restricted, but the department is new so the limit has not yet been set.
Netizens even worried that the chances of corruption may rise proportionately, resulting from the boost in the ranks of officials.
"I hadn't anticipated such a negative response at all," an official surnamed Wang, who has direct knowledge of the appointments, told China Daily on Thursday.
The excessive appointment of deputies is due to the latest departmental revamp in Handan, Wang explained.
The 11 deputy chiefs at the department got their posts after a merger of two former government organizations, instead of being appointed through the normal route, for which more administrative approvals would be required, said Lou Cunjiang, another official in charge of the appointments.
In addition, five of them do not count towards the allocated number of senior officials for the department for administrative reasons, according to Lou.
However, Wang admitted that even the other six deputy chiefs are more than what is needed for the new department.
The government is aware of the excess of deputies and is drawing up plans to reduce the numbers, said Wang.
"Now we need places to put the redundant officials from the slashed departments."
Lately, appointments and promotions of government employees have been closely watched.
In early February, six government employees as young as 23 who were slated for promotions in northern Shandong province hit the spotlight when the public thought they were unqualified for senior-level posts because of shortfalls in work experience.
The local government in Shandong argued that it had not violated any rules regulating promotions and maintained the decisions despite the disputes.
"We named too many officials at the same time," said Wang. And the city should have been aware of the timing of the appointments. "If only we had made some explanations beforehand," he added.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:31 am
A total of 23 people accused of involvement in one of the country's biggest-ever child trafficking cases stood trial on Thursday for selling 49 babies over four years from Southwest China's Yunnan province.
Lu Danjun, an official at the Wuhan Intermediate Railway Transportation Court, told China Daily that the trial, which began on Wednesday, was spread out over two days because of the large number of defendants. The trial ended Thursday without a verdict.
"Most of them have had little education and didn't realize that what they had done breaks the law," Lu said.
In June 2009, police in Wuhan rescued 29 children in a nationwide crackdown on the trafficking of children and most of the parents have not yet been located.
Prosecutors allege that Yu Lixiang, one of the 23 suspects, participated in selling 31 babies, including three who died while being transported.
Testimony also revealed that one of the traffickers on trial had been trafficked herself. Yu and her sister, Yu Xiaofen, were trafficked from their hometown in Yunnan to North China's Hebei province as teenagers and were forced into marriage. Yu Lixiang has married four times and has four children.
About 10 years ago, Yu Lixiang's brother, Yu Xiaoxin, went to Hebei to find his sisters and took with him two infants to sell. Yu Lixiang and Yu Xiaofen found child trafficking was a good way to make money and began "their business," according to the indictment by the prosecutors.
Yu Lixiang told Wuhan-based Changjiang Times that she cared about nothing after years of an abnormal life.
From March 2005, Yu Lixiang and her husband allegedly trafficked dozens of babies from Shizong county in Yunnan to Hebei province. Later they formed a baby trafficking gang with relatives and friends.
In May 2009, police at Wuchang railway station rescued 29 children and detained 18 suspects in an eight-day campaign targeting trains pulling in from the city of Kunming, Yunnan province.
According to the prosecutor, between March 2005 and July 2009, the gang trafficked 49 children to Hebei and Shanxi provinces.
The gang would buy a boy for 13,000 yuan ($1,900) to 20,000 yuan and a girl for 5,000 yuan to 14,000 yuan in Yunnan. They sold boys for about 40,000 yuan each and girls for 20,000 yuan in Hebei, the indictment said.
Chinese babies, especially boys, from poor and remote areas are sometimes sold to more prosperous people. Some older children are also sold to gangs.
Under Chinese criminal law, child traffickers face punishment ranging from five years in jail to the death sentence.
The buyer of a trafficked child can be jailed for a maximum of three years.
The Ministry of Public Security said earlier about 3,000 cases of women and child abductions are investigated each year in the country.
However, the website humantrafficking.org, a resource for combating human trafficking, estimates that the number of victims of human trafficking ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 each year on the Chinese mainland, and 90 percent are women and children from Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.
Chinese police freed 3,455 children and 7,365 women during a nine-month national campaign against human trafficking that was launched in early April 2009, according to official statistics.
Police said they will speed up the construction of a DNA database, including DNA from abducted children and their parents, to combat child trafficking, said Huang Zuyue, a deputy director of the ministry's criminal investigation bureau.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:31 am
An official in East China's Jiangsu Province, who apparently owns four luxurious villas and practices superstitious activities, is being investigated by the Party's disciplinary commission after he was exposed on a website.
Details about Zhang Yichun, deputy chief of the Organization Department of Ganyu county, were revealed by a local professional anti-corruption practitioner on Monday who provided details about the official on his anti-corruption blog.
Zhu Kongjian wrote about the villas and posted photos of the villas on the website.
The photos show one of the villas is as grand as the neighboring three-story official building used by the local judicial bureau.
Zhu said that Zhang built two ornamental columns similar to the one at Tian'anmen Square, as well as a replica of the Golden Water Bridge when he was the Party chief of Haitou township.
"Zhang did that in response to a fortuneteller's advice who said doing so could help him get promoted more easily," Zhu told the Global Times Thursday.
"It was a coincidence that Zhang got promoted 10 months after he began to construct the columns and the bridge, which made him more arrogant and he crazily accumulated wealth in illegal ways."
Zhu said that he had submitted the report to the local Party's disciplinary commis-sion.
He also asked the Party's supervision department to further investigate the issue.
Zhu said that the local cost of real estate is about 3,000 yuan ($439) per square meter, and the cost of the four villas was far beyond what the official could afford.
Zhu had previously reported six local officials to the local Party's disciplinary commission in July 2009 on bribery allegations.
All six were later sacked or demoted.
In November, Zhu reported on his blog that Wang Fen, the local Party's secretary of discipline, who headed the local political and judicial commission.
Wang was dismissed from her position at the local political and judicial commission two months later.
An employee in the office of the local Party's disciplinary commission told the Global Times over the phone Thursday that the commission has started an investigation into Zhang on Tuesday.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:30 am
The 6.7-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Taiwan at 8:18 a.m. Beijing Time on Thursday has left 64 people injured, according to the latest statistics from local fire department.
Those injured have been taken to local hospitals, it said, without identifying them.
A blackout caused by the earthquake affected some 540,500 households. Electricity was restored at 2 p.m..
According to a separate report from education authorities, some 340 school buildings were damaged and classes were suspended in some schools Thursday. The report did not specify on the names of the schools.
The epicenter of the earthquake, at a depth of about 6 km, was 22.9 degrees north and 120.6 degrees east, at the juncture of the southern Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties, the China Earthquake Networks Center(CENC) said.
Xinhua reporters in Taipei felt the quake when it hit and telecommunications went down for a short time after.
An official with Jiasian Township at the epicenter told local media that at least three small landslides were triggered by the quake and cracks were found in houses.
Taiwan media footage showed cave-ins, landslides, cracks in school buildings, and power cuts. Many travelers were temporarily stranded at stations due to the temporary closure of high-speed railways.
Local media in Taiwan said the military was mobilized to help in quake-relief efforts.
The tremor was also felt in the mainland's Fujian Province on the western side of Taiwan Strait.
A man who identified himself as Lin in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, said he was on the seventh floor when he felt a tremor. He said computer panels rattled furiously for a brief moment.
Residents of Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, all in Fujian, also said they felt an intense tremor when the quake hit.
An expert with Fujian Provincial Seismological Bureau told Xinhua that the earthquake had not caused any major damage in the province.
According to Taiwan's local authorities, the quake registered 6.4 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was at a depth of about 5 km.
Figures posted on the website of China Earthquake Administration (CEA) showed that a 7-magnitude occurred nearby in 1964, leaving 106 people dead and another 229 people seriously injured.
The Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) expressed sympathy through the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) for Taiwan people affected by the earthquake.
The mainland was deeply concerned about the injured and financial losses in Taiwan and hoped the people affected could resume their normal lives as soon as possible, the ARATS said in a letter to the SEF.
Yang Yi, spokesman with the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, also sent "heartfelt sympathy and solicitude" for the people affected, and hoped they would recover soon and resume their normal lives.
"It's not clear how much damage the earthquake caused, but we can sympathize with those who are affected by it," said Lin Shengzhong, vice president of the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots. "We are ready to initiate donations for them."
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:30 am
Overseas media have widely reported China's measures to maintain social and economic development, after the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opened Wednesday.
The session outlined plans to keep the steady and fast development of economy, narrow the gap between city and country, and adjust income distribution pattern.
The AP said that CPPCC National Committee Chairman Jia Qinglin said in a work report "2010 is a crucial year for China to respond to the impact of the global financial crisis and maintain steady and rapid economic development."
The annual session of China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), which opens Friday, was expected to "give a full airing to hot-button issues such as soaring real estate prices in many Chinese cities," it said.
The Chinese government, which released a budget and work plan for the year, was expected to boost spending on education, pensions and medical care, continuing a push begun in the past decade to strengthen a tattered social safety net, it said.
The annual plenary sessions of the NPC and the CPPCC National Committee are known as China's "two sessions."
The AFP said China opened its annual parliamentary season Wednesday with a call from the Chinese leadership to keep up economic growth, maintain social stability and tackle a yawning urban-rural income gap.
The two gatherings were the Chinese leadership's chance to showcase its efforts to tackle the key challenges facing the country, and economic concerns looked set to top that list, it said.
Online, The Wall Street Journal Asia Edition said in an article the NPC's annual session would kick off Friday and this year's theme "naturally" was the economy.
In a talk with China's netizens last week, Premier Wen Jiabao said "while it is the government's responsibility to expand the 'pie' of national wealth, it is the government's conscience to distribute it in an adequate manner," the article said.
The Yonhap news agency said the Chinese government was speeding up its economic transformation after the global financial crisis because it realised it could not overcome future crises with its current economic structure dominated by cheap exports. China should keep a balanced development of service sectors and agriculture, and nurture the domestic market, it said. Economic transformation would be one of the hot topics of this year's NPC, it said.
Yonhap said, although the Chinese economy was gradually recovering, China faced some serious problems, such as the widening urban-rural gap.
China recently focused on migrant workers, eyeing the new generation of migrant workers born in the 1990s, and would discuss the making of the medium- and long-term layout for migrant workers.
The Wall Street Journal said, while the 2009 NPC was obsessed with attaining an 8 percent growth rate, the priority for this year's session was to ensure a more equitable distribution of national income.
A commentary on the website of Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao said that, from the perspective of China's economic development, it was in accordance with the needs of expanding China's consumption and transforming its economic growth mode for the country to gradually annul the dualistic structure between city and countryside, promote urbanization, scrap social welfare policies that discriminated against farmers, and ensure farmers' equal rights with urban dwellers.
One of the major reasons for the long-term inequality between city and countryside was China didn't have a big enough "pie" to ensure the fair distribution of interests, it said.
Canada's leading public policy magazine Policy Options said in a commentary that the Chinese leadership was paying more and more attention to the demands of the poor in remote regions.
From the list of the central government's financial expenditures, it could be found that the government would heavily invest on infrastructure development and maintenance, medical reforms, poverty reduction and education, it said.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:29 am
China's Ministry of Public Security has dispatched four inspection groups to identify fire risks during the annual sessions of the country's top legislature and top political advisory body, the ministry said Thursday.
The 20-day inspection campaign, which is to be concluded on March 15, would focus on session venues, the participants' restaurants and the media center, the ministry said in a report posted on its website.
Crowded public venues within 200 meters of the venues would also be targeted, the report said.
The inspection groups would also go to Beijing's neighboring provincial-level regions to conduct checks on companies responsible for supplying water, electricity, oil, gas and heat for the capital.
Local fire brigades should ensure their equipment and fire engines were well maintained, and emergency plans could be carried out successfully, according to the report.
The ministry urged police nationwide to ensure security for the annual national sessions late last month.
Police in seven neighboring provincial-level regions have been asked to maintain social stability and reinforce checks on vehicles, flights and trains entering the city from March 1 to 15.
The annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC) and that of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 04:29 am
U.S. health regulators warned units of Nestle and more than a dozen other foodmakers about overstating or misstating the nutritional value of baby food, nuts and other products on their labels.
Most of the letters made public on Wednesday accuse the companies of making claims on their food packages and websites over trans fat content, antioxidant advantages, and omega-3 benefits that fail to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.
The warnings come as the FDA is set to push for new package labeling to make it easier for people to understand the nutritional content of food.
While Wednesday's warnings are not indicative of labeling practices in the entire food industry, they should "give food manufacturers further clarification about what is expected of them as they review their current labeling," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in an open letter to the industry.
The FDA plans to issue draft guidelines for nutritional labeling and to work with the food industry on a new labeling system, she added.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, urged the FDA to crack down on manufacturers that "for far too long ... have exaggerated the healthfulness of their products."
New regulations should take a stronger stance on claims over trans fats and whole wheat as well as make the nutritional facts panel on the back of food packages easier to understand, the group said.
In a letter to baby food maker Gerber, a unit of Nestle, the FDA cited issues with Gerber 2nd Foods Carrot and Graduates Fruit Puffs products. It said their "labeling includes unauthorized nutrient content claims."
The labels claim that the foods are "Healthy as Fresh," an "Excellent Source ... of Vitamin A" and have "No Added Sugar," according to the letter dated February 22. "These regulations do not allow the claim for products specifically intended for children under two years of age," the FDA wrote.
The FDA issued a similar warning to Beech-Nut, a unit of Swiss company Hero Group, the same day.
A list of the companies that received letters and links to those letters can be found at: link.reuters.com/deb33j
Others receiving warning letters include snack food company Diamond Foods Inc, relating to the health claims for the omega-3 fatty acids in the company's walnuts, and Spectrum Organic Products Inc, a unit of Hain Celestial Group, over labeling for its vegetable shortening.
Nestle's Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream unit was warned over labeling of certain products.
A Nestle spokesman said the company was cooperating with the FDA but does not comment on pending regulatory inquiries.
Diamond expects to be able to make any changes required to packaging and the website "expeditiously and with minimal expense," it said in a statement.
Hain and Beech-Nut could not be reached for comment.
The FDA wants the companies to immediately correct the products' labeling and respond to the agency within 15 days from the date of the letter. Most warning letters are resolved without further incident, although the agency does have the power to impose fines and other civil penalties.
Shares of Nestle closed down 1.8 percent in Europe. Shares of Diamond Foods closed down 1.6 percent, while shares of Hain Celestial closed up 1.7 percent, both on the Nasdaq.
Friday 05 March 2010 at 12:43 am
An official in East China's Jiangsu Province, who apparently owns four luxurious villas and practices superstitious activities, is being investigated by the Party's disciplinary commission after he was exposed on a website.
Details about Zhang Yichun, deputy chief of the Organization Department of Ganyu county, were revealed by a local professional anti-corruption practitioner on Monday who provided details about the official on his anti-corruption blog.
Zhu Kongjian wrote about the villas and posted photos of the villas on the website.
The photos show one of the villas is as grand as the neighboring three-story official building used by the local judicial bureau.
Zhu said that Zhang built two ornamental columns similar to the one at Tian'anmen Square, as well as a replica of the Golden Water Bridge when he was the Party chief of Haitou township.
"Zhang did that in response to a fortuneteller's advice who said doing so could help him get promoted more easily," Zhu told the Global Times Thursday.
"It was a coincidence that Zhang got promoted 10 months after he began to construct the columns and the bridge, which made him more arrogant and he crazily accumulated wealth in illegal ways."
Zhu said that he had submitted the report to the local Party's disciplinary commis-sion.
He also asked the Party's supervision department to further investigate the issue.
Zhu said that the local cost of real estate is about 3,000 yuan ($439) per square meter, and the cost of the four villas was far beyond what the official could afford.
Zhu had previously reported six local officials to the local Party's disciplinary commission in July 2009 on bribery allegations.
All six were later sacked or demoted.
In November, Zhu reported on his blog that Wang Fen, the local Party's secretary of discipline, who headed the local political and judicial commission.
Wang was dismissed from her position at the local political and judicial commission two months later.
An employee in the office of the local Party's disciplinary commission told the Global Times over the phone Thursday that the commission has started an investigation into Zhang on Tuesday.
Friday 05 March 2010 at 12:42 am
Boys priced at 40,000 yuan, girls at 20,000
WUHAN: A total of 23 people accused of involvement in one of the country's biggest-ever child trafficking cases stood trial on Thursday for selling 49 babies over four years from Southwest China's Yunnan province.
Lu Danjun, an official at the Wuhan Intermediate Railway Transportation Court, told China Daily that the trial, which began on Wednesday, was spread out over two days because of the large number of defendants. The trial ended Thursday without a verdict.
"Most of them have had little education and didn't realize that what they had done breaks the law," Lu said.
In June 2009, police in Wuhan rescued 29 children in a nationwide crackdown on the trafficking of children and most of the parents have not yet been located.
Prosecutors allege that Yu Lixiang, one of the 23 suspects, participated in selling 31 babies, including three who died while being transported.
Testimony also revealed that one of the traffickers on trial had been trafficked herself. Yu and her sister, Yu Xiaofen, were trafficked from their hometown in Yunnan to North China's Hebei province as teenagers and were forced into marriage. Yu Lixiang has married four times and has four children.
About 10 years ago, Yu Lixiang's brother, Yu Xiaoxin, went to Hebei to find his sisters and took with him two infants to sell. Yu Lixiang and Yu Xiaofen found child trafficking was a good way to make money and began "their business," according to the indictment by the prosecutors.
Yu Lixiang told Wuhan-based Changjiang Times that she cared about nothing after years of an abnormal life.
From March 2005, Yu Lixiang and her husband allegedly trafficked dozens of babies from Shizong county in Yunnan to Hebei province. Later they formed a baby trafficking gang with relatives and friends.
In May 2009, police at Wuchang railway station rescued 29 children and detained 18 suspects in an eight-day campaign targeting trains pulling in from the city of Kunming, Yunnan province.
According to the prosecutor, between March 2005 and July 2009, the gang trafficked 49 children to Hebei and Shanxi provinces.
The gang would buy a boy for 13,000 yuan ($1,900) to 20,000 yuan and a girl for 5,000 yuan to 14,000 yuan in Yunnan. They sold boys for about 40,000 yuan each and girls for 20,000 yuan in Hebei, the indictment said.
Chinese babies, especially boys, from poor and remote areas are sometimes sold to more prosperous people. Some older children are also sold to gangs.
Under Chinese criminal law, child traffickers face punishment ranging from five years in jail to the death sentence.
The buyer of a trafficked child can be jailed for a maximum of three years.
The Ministry of Public Security said earlier about 3,000 cases of women and child abductions are investigated each year in the country.
However, the website humantrafficking.org, a resource for combating human trafficking, estimates that the number of victims of human trafficking ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 each year on the Chinese mainland, and 90 percent are women and children from Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.
Chinese police freed 3,455 children and 7,365 women during a nine-month national campaign against human trafficking that was launched in early April 2009, according to official statistics.
Police said they will speed up the construction of a DNA database, including DNA from abducted children and their parents, to combat child trafficking, said Huang Zuyue, a deputy director of the ministry's criminal investigation bureau.
Friday 05 March 2010 at 12:41 am
The 6.7-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Taiwan at 8:18 a.m. Beijing Time on Thursday has left 64 people injured, according to the latest statistics from local fire department.
Those injured have been taken to local hospitals, it said, without identifying them.
A blackout caused by the earthquake affected some 540,500 households. Electricity was restored at 2 p.m..
According to a separate report from education authorities, some 340 school buildings were damaged and classes were suspended in some schools Thursday. The report did not specify on the names of the schools.
The epicenter of the earthquake, at a depth of about 6 km, was 22.9 degrees north and 120.6 degrees east, at the juncture of the southern Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties, the China Earthquake Networks Center(CENC) said.
Xinhua reporters in Taipei felt the quake when it hit and telecommunications went down for a short time after.
An official with Jiasian Township at the epicenter told local media that at least three small landslides were triggered by the quake and cracks were found in houses.
Taiwan media footage showed cave-ins, landslides, cracks in school buildings, and power cuts. Many travelers were temporarily stranded at stations due to the temporary closure of high-speed railways.
Local media in Taiwan said the military was mobilized to help in quake-relief efforts.
The tremor was also felt in the mainland's Fujian Province on the western side of Taiwan Strait.
A man who identified himself as Lin in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, said he was on the seventh floor when he felt a tremor. He said computer panels rattled furiously for a brief moment.
Residents of Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, all in Fujian, also said they felt an intense tremor when the quake hit.
An expert with Fujian Provincial Seismological Bureau told Xinhua that the earthquake had not caused any major damage in the province.
According to Taiwan's local authorities, the quake registered 6.4 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was at a depth of about 5 km.
Figures posted on the website of China Earthquake Administration (CEA) showed that a 7-magnitude occurred nearby in 1964, leaving 106 people dead and another 229 people seriously injured.
The Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) expressed sympathy through the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) for Taiwan people affected by the earthquake.
The mainland was deeply concerned about the injured and financial losses in Taiwan and hoped the people affected could resume their normal lives as soon as possible, the ARATS said in a letter to the SEF.
Yang Yi, spokesman with the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, also sent "heartfelt sympathy and solicitude" for the people affected, and hoped they would recover soon and resume their normal lives.
"It's not clear how much damage the earthquake caused, but we can sympathize with those who are affected by it," said Lin Shengzhong, vice president of the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots. "We are ready to initiate donations for them."
Friday 05 March 2010 at 12:41 am
A northern Chinese city's massive appointment of officials has left the local government in hot water as netizens and media question potential misconduct in the move.
In late January, 89 officials were appointed to new posts in various government departments - at least three of which were newly established last year - according to a statement on the website of Handan city in Hebei province.
The appointments came as the city wound up a major revamp of local government organizations at the end of last year and shed four former departments.
China's central government, the State Council, launched a revamp of ministries and committees in March 2008. Regional governments are allowed to follow suit under their own schedules.
The institutional revamps are designed to reduce overlapping functions and positions at government departments.
But the statement triggered concern among netizens who said the local government might have breached rules by appointing too many deputy chiefs in a single department.
For instance, the number of deputy chiefs reached 11 in the department of human resources and social security after the appointments, according to a post published by an anonymous Internet user.
In China, the number of deputy officials at each political body is usually restricted, but the department is new so the limit has not yet been set.
Netizens even worried that the chances of corruption may rise proportionately, resulting from the boost in the ranks of officials.
"I hadn't anticipated such a negative response at all," an official surnamed Wang, who has direct knowledge of the appointments, told China Daily on Thursday.
The excessive appointment of deputies is due to the latest departmental revamp in Handan, Wang explained.
The 11 deputy chiefs at the department got their posts after a merger of two former government organizations, instead of being appointed through the normal route, for which more administrative approvals would be required, said Lou Cunjiang, another official in charge of the appointments.
In addition, five of them do not count towards the allocated number of senior officials for the department for administrative reasons, according to Lou.
However, Wang admitted that even the other six deputy chiefs are more than what is needed for the new department.
The government is aware of the excess of deputies and is drawing up plans to reduce the numbers, said Wang.
"Now we need places to put the redundant officials from the slashed departments."
Lately, appointments and promotions of government employees have been closely watched.
In early February, six government employees as young as 23 who were slated for promotions in northern Shandong province hit the spotlight when the public thought they were unqualified for senior-level posts because of shortfalls in work experience.
The local government in Shandong argued that it had not violated any rules regulating promotions and maintained the decisions despite the disputes.
"We named too many officials at the same time," said Wang. And the city should have been aware of the timing of the appointments. "If only we had made some explanations beforehand," he added.
Friday 05 March 2010 at 12:41 am
Overseas media have widely reported China's measures to maintain social and economic development, after the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) opened Wednesday.
The session outlined plans to keep the steady and fast development of economy, narrow the gap between city and country, and adjust income distribution pattern.
The AP said that CPPCC National Committee Chairman Jia Qinglin said in a work report "2010 is a crucial year for China to respond to the impact of the global financial crisis and maintain steady and rapid economic development."
The annual session of China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), which opens Friday, was expected to "give a full airing to hot-button issues such as soaring real estate prices in many Chinese cities," it said.
The Chinese government, which released a budget and work plan for the year, was expected to boost spending on education, pensions and medical care, continuing a push begun in the past decade to strengthen a tattered social safety net, it said.
The annual plenary sessions of the NPC and the CPPCC National Committee are known as China's "two sessions."
The AFP said China opened its annual parliamentary season Wednesday with a call from the Chinese leadership to keep up economic growth, maintain social stability and tackle a yawning urban-rural income gap.
The two gatherings were the Chinese leadership's chance to showcase its efforts to tackle the key challenges facing the country, and economic concerns looked set to top that list, it said.
Online, The Wall Street Journal Asia Edition said in an article the NPC's annual session would kick off Friday and this year's theme "naturally" was the economy.
In a talk with China's netizens last week, Premier Wen Jiabao said "while it is the government's responsibility to expand the 'pie' of national wealth, it is the government's conscience to distribute it in an adequate manner," the article said.
The Yonhap news agency said the Chinese government was speeding up its economic transformation after the global financial crisis because it realised it could not overcome future crises with its current economic structure dominated by cheap exports. China should keep a balanced development of service sectors and agriculture, and nurture the domestic market, it said. Economic transformation would be one of the hot topics of this year's NPC, it said.
Yonhap said, although the Chinese economy was gradually recovering, China faced some serious problems, such as the widening urban-rural gap.
China recently focused on migrant workers, eyeing the new generation of migrant workers born in the 1990s, and would discuss the making of the medium- and long-term layout for migrant workers.
The Wall Street Journal said, while the 2009 NPC was obsessed with attaining an 8 percent growth rate, the priority for this year's session was to ensure a more equitable distribution of national income.
A commentary on the website of Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao said that, from the perspective of China's economic development, it was in accordance with the needs of expanding China's consumption and transforming its economic growth mode for the country to gradually annul the dualistic structure between city and countryside, promote urbanization, scrap social welfare policies that discriminated against farmers, and ensure farmers' equal rights with urban dwellers.
One of the major reasons for the long-term inequality between city and countryside was China didn't have a big enough "pie" to ensure the fair distribution of interests, it said.
Canada's leading public policy magazine Policy Options said in a commentary that the Chinese leadership was paying more and more attention to the demands of the poor in remote regions.
From the list of the central government's financial expenditures, it could be found that the government would heavily invest on infrastructure development and maintenance, medical reforms, poverty reduction and education, it said.
Thursday 04 March 2010 at 06:49 am
India will conduct its fourth test of the mocked interception of ballistic missile in less than two weeks, the Indian newspaper The Hindu reported on its website on Tuesday evening.
The launch window would be chosen between March 10 and 15, the paper quoted Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) spokesman V.K. Saraswat as saying.
During the test day, an intercepting missile, named the Advanced Defense missile, will blast off from the Wheeler Island off the coast of Orissa, after a simulated ballistic missile lifts off from the Integrated Test Range at Balasore in Orissa, said Saraswat.
The intercepting missile will track and kill the incoming ballistic missile at an altitude of less than 20 kilometers.
This will be the fourth time for the DRDO to test its intercepting missile. The three previous tests were conducted on Nov. 27, 2006; Dec. 6, 2007; and March 6, 2009.
Thursday 04 March 2010 at 06:48 am
Actress Pamela Anderson and 80-year-old former astronaut Buzz Aldrin were on Monday named among a line-up of celebrities for the latest series of hit TV show "Dancing With The Stars."
Kate Gosselin, who rose to fame through the reality TV show "Jon and Kate plus 8," will also feature in the ABC network's highest-rated show, in which famous personalities pair with professional dancers in a knockout ballroom dancing contest.
The 10th season of the series starts on March 22. "Dancing With The Stars" is the second most watched show on U.S. television after "American Idol" which is on Fox, and is based on the British TV show "Strictly Come Dancing."
Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger, "Beverly Hills 90210" star Shannen Doherty, ESPN host Erin Andrews, comedienne Niecy Nash and British soap star Aiden Turner will also be put through their paces on the show.
The line-up also includes some sporty participants such as Olympic gold medalist figure skater Evan Lysacek and NFL star Chad Ochocinco.
"These actors, athletes, musicians, reality stars, astronauts(!!) and where-are-they-now personalities start out as lumbering Frankensteins with two left feet, and they slowly transform (we hope) into graceful twinkle-toed Baryshnikovs," the production team said on the show's website.
Last season was won by singer Donny Osmond, who was the oldest winner of the dancing contest at the age of 52. The final last November attracted an audience of 19.2 million but this was the lowest rated ending in the show's four-year history.
Walt Disney Co's ABC is the second-most-watched U.S. network with an average audience of 9.1 million overall after CBS Corp's CBS wit h11.6 million.
Previous winners of "Dancing With The Stars" include Olympic gold medal gymnast Shawn Johnson, model and TV host Brooke Burke, Olympic gold medal figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, and Brazilian auto racing driver Helio Castroneves.
Thursday 04 March 2010 at 06:48 am
The tournament, named The Great Wall Cup of Beijing (www.thegreatwallcup.com ), will be hosted by the Beijing Municipal Sports Administration, and undertaken by the Beijing Football Association, the Olympic Sports Center and China Sports Tour. In the first year of the event, the committee will invite teams from all over the world, both boys and girls, in the age categories 14, 16, and 18, as well as eight local teams. The event is considered to be the first ever international youth soccer tournament of this scale to be held in Beijing. International clubs and teams are welcome to register now.
The current status of Chinese soccer teams is unusual, according to Sports Minister Mr. Liu Peng, who states, "The shortage of reserve talent is the key reason for its low level." The government has already realized the problem and started to focus on youth development. Promoting the international youth soccer tournament is a way to give local youngsters opportunities to communicate and practice with international teams so they can improve their technique and social skills.
"Chinese young players have little chance to play against foreign teams," says Mr. Yang Junsheng, the president of the Beijing Football Association, "That is the reason why we fully support this event. We hope this tournament can serve as a kind of festival for all young players who participate in it. We sincerely hope this event will also draw more public attention to youth soccer. The Great Wall Cup of Beijing is not only a platform for Chinese youngsters to learn and experience the most advanced soccer skills, but also a window to show Beijing and China to the young generation of the world. We sincerely hope that through the Great Wall Cup, not only can Chinese players learn from other teams, but also first time visitors can have the opportunity to learn the spirit of the city, to experience the culture, the people and the fun." By using the top sports facilities in Beijing and promoting a combination of culture, sports and travel, the tournament will satisfy participants and make them feel fulfilled by taking part in the one-week event.
Beijing, as a dynastic city, has become a preferred place to host popular international sports events, especially after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, a youth soccer tournament has never been hosted there before. Inspired by the successes and great impact of the youth soccer tournaments in Europe, such as the Gothia Cup and Norway Cup, the Great Wall cup is trying to attract boys and girls from all over the world who love this amazing sport, offering them the opportunity to spend a week to enjoy the tournament and experience something unique. "Beijing has become an international city; it has already hosted several big-name events drawing public awareness, yet we do not have any youth sporting events. The Beijing Football Association sincerely hopes to take this opportunity to make the Great Wall Cull of Beijing a symbol of the Post-Olympics Beijing," Mr. Yang explained.
One highlight of the one-week program of the Great Wall Cup of Beijing is called ChinaTouch. ChinaTouch is a workshop that provides foreign players the opportunity to learn and experience Chinese culture and art. The workshop will be held in the hotel lobby all week so every participant can take part. "Teams can learn basic Chinese, calligraphy, and practice kung fu with our kung fu master," says Shine Liu, the managing director of China Sports Tour. "We arranged this workshop to allow international teams to experience something new and unique. It is easier to learn and make new friends in a happy atmosphere."
Mr. Shine Liu also explained more details of the event: "Not only do we want to add fun and cultural elements to this tournament, but we are also trying to create more opportunities for talented players professionally, and that is why we have the 'Meet the Future Star' event. Professional coaches, scouts and sports agents from China and other Asian countries will be invited to observe the games, they will pick the players they like, and we will help them to arrange a face-to-face conversation so that they can better get to know each other, and to see if there is any possibility of future cooperation." Besides these activities already mentioned, a grand opening ceremony, a closing banquet, and a Leaders' Party will be held during the week.
Teams will also have a selection of sightseeing opportunities. They will get the chance to take a one-day trip to the famous Great Wall, visit the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, the Drum and Bell Tower, the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube, take a tour of old Beijing Hutongs and enjoy a lakeside dinner.
"Inviting international teams to join the Great Wall Cup will make this the biggest international youth soccer event in China ever," states Mr. Shine Liu, "We feel really honored and excited to be the organization exclusively authorized to promote the tournament internationally." Back in the late 90s, a youth tournament named "The Four Asia Tigers" was considered to be the most influential youth soccer event in China. Mr. Shine Liu commented, "Unfortunately, the Four Asia Tiger tournament only lasted around three years, and it was Asia-wide only."
The 2010 Great Wall Cup of Beijing will be held from July 25th-31st at the Beijing Olympic Sports Center Football Park, just across the street from the Bird's Nest. This tournament will become an annual event in the future and aim to be one of the biggest international sports events in Beijing along with the China Open and the Italian Super Cup.
The Great Wall Cup of Beijing is now looking to cooperate with all kinds of organizations and companies worldwide. Sponsorship packages are also available for companies who want to use this as a platform to introduce their brand and products to China and the world. "The tournament welcomes companies and organizations to join the Great Wall Cup of Beijing together with the teams. With the Beijing Football Association's support, taking part in the event will definitely help companies to open a window to the Chinese market," Mr. Shine Liu revealed, "As an international event that is supported and organized by the Beijing Municipal Sports Administration and the Beijing Football Association, media exposure will be inconceivable. Newspaper, portal website and TV media will come in great numbers to report on the tournament and the stories behind it. We believe we will give our sponsors and partners a great return. By participating in this exciting event, companies will not only increase their brand awareness in China, but also build a solid foundation with potential business partners in China. The organizing committee has been talking to Chinese portal websites, national TV stations and influential newspapers. They have all showed great interest in the Great Wall Cup and would like to broadcast, interview and report on it because this is the very first international youth soccer tournament in China, and all media know the importance and significant meaning of the event." For more information and details about the tournament sponsorship packages, please contact Mr. Shine Liu at shine@chinasportstour.com.
Teams from America, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and Cameroon have already shown interest in coming for the 2010 Great Wall Cup of Beijing. The team registration fee will be waived for teams registering before Feb 28th, 2010. For more information, please visit www.thegreatwallcup.com , or email info@thegreatwallcup.com.
Thursday 04 March 2010 at 06:48 am
The fight against corruption and the improvement of people's livelihoods are the most pressing issues for the upcoming annual sessions of the top legislature and political advisory body, according to an online survey conducted by China Daily.
Some 57.27 percent of the respondents said the anti-corruption push is the most urgent topic to be discussed during the two sessions. The survey was posted on the China Daily website in late January. Some 21.83 percent of respondents were from other countries.
Soaring real estate prices (55.57 percent), the widening gap between the rich and the poor (54.18 percent), better medical insurance and fair education (43.96 percent) are the other top four concerns for the respondents.
In a similar survey by Xinhua News Agency, the top three issues of most concern are income disparities, housing and the anti-corruption bid.
"Without a fair income distribution system, China cannot achieve a harmonious society," a netizen named "xzwp" said.
"Corruption is most severe among county-level officials. And the anti-corruption fight should be carried out beginning with grassroots departments," said a netizen named "literacy".
On Monday, a dozen metropolitan newspapers published a common editorial calling for the quick reform of household registration.
Last Saturday, Premier Wen Jiabao had his second annual online chat with the public, in which he answered more than 20 questions, most of them related to domestic affairs.
He pledged to tame the "wild-horse" housing market and to keep prices at a reasonable level by increasing the supply of housing and by implementing land, finance and tax policies to enable more people to buy their own homes during his term as premier. He also vowed to improve the country's medical insurance system as part of China's ongoing medical reform.
Wen further stressed the importance of the fair distribution of social wealth and called for an increase in people's incomes in relation to the national income, as well as the use of fiscal and tax instruments to help disadvantaged groups.
Thursday 04 March 2010 at 06:47 am
General Motors will recall 1.3 million compact vehicles to correct a power steering problem, the company has announced on its website.
Vehicles affected are the 2005-2010 Chevrolet Cobalt, 2007-2010 Pontiac G5, 2005-2006 Pontiac Pursuit sold in Canada, and the 2005- 2006 Pontiac G4 sold in Mexico, according to the announcement issued late Monday.
GM plans to replace defective power steering motors that are prone to failure, but an exact fix for the affected cars isn't yet ready. Customers will be notified when one is, and company officials say the cars can be safely driven until a fix is prepared.
"While greater steering effort under 15 mph may be required, these vehicles are safe to drive because the customer can still steer the vehicle," Jamie Hresko, GM's vice president of quality, said in a statement.
GM's announcement comes on the heels of troubling recalls by Japanese rival Toyota Motor Co. following numerous complaints of unintended acceleration and braking issues.
Toyota has issued recalls for more than 8.5 million vehicles, more than 6 million of them in the United States alone.
GM's recall, while smaller in scale than Toyota's, extends beyond earlier problems reported by federal auto safety regulators.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a preliminary investigation in late January into more than 905,000 Chevy Cobalts, after receiving more than 1,100 complaints from consumers related to power steering failures.
NHTSA records show 14 crashes have resulted from power steering failures, with one injury reported. A formal investigation was announced in early February.
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 06:41 am
By Zhang Hui
In need of an affordable afternoon keeping the kids occupied but can't bear to put them in front of the TV yet again? Stop by the recently opened national Museum of Women and Children, the first of its kind in China, located on the north side of East Chang'an Avenue, for a day of educational distractions.
In China, children and women's causes are often administered by the same institution, in this case, the All-China Women's Federation, which is the entity responsible for the new museum.
Back in October 2007, Zhang Shiping, general secretary of the federation at that time, explained the reason for the museum's construction in an article at www.china.com.cn. Zhang said that although China has about 2,300 museums, none are specifically dedicated to women and children. Yet in Chinese cultural history, the culture of women is a rich and indispensable part of the nation's history.
Thus Beijing received a curvy, modern structure containing a floor area of 35,000 square meters spread over six floors.
To create a diversified atmosphere and personalize the experience, the museum combines panel illustrations, relic displays, models, virtual reality images, digital videos, hands-on production and traditional games in exhibits that include more than 30,000 collections detailing the historical lives of China's women and children.
An emphasis on learning
Visitors entering the Children of Ancient China hall are first greeted by the intense scene of primitive children learning survival skills by following their parents as they chase prey in the mountains. Exhibits from centuries later detail feudal society's private education system, when talented boys were chosen to sit for imperial examinations according to the Han Dynasty (206BC - 220AD)'s selection system.
The scholarly can inspect rare, ancient editions of Chinese classics like The Analects of Confucius and The Great Learning, while the anthropologically minded can learn more about traditions like naming rituals and zhuazhoucezhi, wherein a one-year-old baby picks up articles that predict what the child will become as an adult. Vivid miniatures explain moral education, such as the story of Mencius' mother, who moved three times to find the best place to educate her son.
"Moral education is very important for children. Currently, material conditions for children's education have been greatly improved, but many parents ignore moral education. For example, many children don't follow traditions of basic filial piety toward their parents," remarked Zhao Changlin, a research fellow in a science research center who quite enjoyed visiting this section of the museum. "It is very necessary for children to learn those ancient moral stories," Zhao said.
The most persistent theme in the hall dedicated to the children of modern China is patriotism, including the organizations, activities and heroic deeds of children during tumultuous times. Uniforms, pistols, and red-tasseled spears used by the Anti-Japanese Children's Group during the 1930s and 40s are on display, as are many pictures of children, who were rarely photographed during that period.
Women's role in the evolution of civilization
Six halls dedicated to women cover ancient, modern and contemporary China, as well as international friendships, costumes and art. The ancient hall offers some standout Tang Dynasty figurines garbed in the bright colors of the time, but the most startling section is the one about bound feet. A photograph and an X-ray of an adult woman's bound feet show the hunched appendages crushed down to a length no more than three inches. Several pairs of delicate, tiny shoes are also displayed.
The modern hall, like that of the children, is dedicated to revolutionaries and rebels. It also has no shortage of photos and displays of women involved in clothing and shoe production to support the liberating army. The contemporary hall also has women engaged in such productive work, this time with the aim of feeding families and dressing children and husbands.
Stop by the friendship hall to see Chinese women's contributions to maintaining world peace, and promoting mutual development and equality of men and women. Drift to the art hall to inspect everything from embroidery and brocade to paper cuts and dye processes from different time periods, regions and ethnic groups. "If I hadn't come here, I wouldn't know there are so many different varieties of Chinese embroidery," Li Na, a girl in her twenties, remarked. A Shu-style embroidery of pandas from Sichuan is so lifelike that many visitors have confused it for a photograph.
The costume hall, as in any Chinese museum, displays ethnic costumes from all 56 minority groups, as well as some Qing Dynasty costumes. Explanations are given in Chinese and English.
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 06:41 am
If you can ever find a word to describe what most of our members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) were doing at the sessions, it must be a word combining the most creative thoughts and a Chinese characteristic.
'Smilence' is the word. Look familiar? It's a combination of 'smile' and 'silence', which was created by China's talented netizens to show a facial expression or a kind of response to other people's actions.
That kind of response was just what most of our members of the National Committee of the CPPCC were giving when exercising power at the annual sessions.
The cnr.cn website cited some observers as saying that two-thirds of the members of the committee never raise any proposals, more than 10 percent never speak and 30 percent never join any organized discussions.
"In the year of general elections, the sum of ballot tickets returned would be two to three less than those handed out,” Zhao Yongqiu, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC, was cited by the website as saying. “Some people say the missing ballot tickets may have been stored as collectibles,” Zhao said.
Some members even think their role is just an honorary title. Some never speak a word at meetings and don't know what to do or how to make a proposal, the website said.
The 'smilence' phenomenon has decreased in recent years though, the website said. A lot of members, such as China's richest lady Zhang Yin and the star official Li Jinhua, have drawn public attention by raising valuable proposals.
As this year's annual plenary sessions of the National Committee of the CPPCC and the National People's Congress are set to begin, let's hope the members do more than sit in silence. They should do what are expected of them.
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 06:40 am
FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta Monday inaugurated his personal website as he prepares to move into politics.
Laporta will abandon the Presidency of the most successful football club of 2009 at the end of the current season. During recent months he had already indicated that the political life appealed to him.
Now with the opening of his website: www.laporta2010.cat, he has taken that interest a step further.
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 06:40 am
The purchasing managers' index (PMI) reached 52 in February, down 3.8 points from January, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) announced Monday.
The PMI, hitting a 12-month low, was much weaker than expected. "Overall, there remain lots of uncertainties, as China's economy is being transitioned from government-driven growth to independent, stable and sustainable growth," Zhang Liqun, a special analyst with CFLP, said in a statement the organization posted on its website Monday.
Of the 11 sub-indexes of the PMI, only the reading measuring the finished goods inventory was unchanged at 47.3, while other sub-indexes all reported a decline over the previous month.
The sub-indexes that measure output, new orders, quantity of purchases and input prices saw substantial declines exceeding six percentage points.
Economists attributed the sharply declining PMI mostly to the Chinese Lunar New Year falling in February.
"Due to possible statistical noise, we are waiting until the March report before making conclusive comments on this sharp fall in the PMI," Sun Mingchun, chief China economist with Nomura Securities in Hong Kong, wrote in a research note Monday.
However, the PMI reading was above 50 for the 12th consecutive month, signaling that the manufacturing sector continued to expand. Fourteen of 20 industries surveyed for the PMI recorded readings above 50.
Economists Song Yu and Qiao Hong of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong said in a research note Monday that strong real economic growth is demonstrated by the more reliable electricity data consis-tently pointing to a year-on-year growth rate of around 30 percent.
"This type of strong activity growth is consistent with the loose monetary conditions as the amount of liquidity injected into the real economy remains large despite apparent tightening measures including the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) hikes," the research note said.
February loan growth is due to be released by the central bank around March 11.
Some industry analysts expect last month's new loans to total about 700 billion yuan ($102.53 billion), following January's 1.39 trillion yuan ($203.6 billion).
Nomura's Sun maintained a forecast of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 10.5 percent this year.
"Should the decline prove to be the beginning of an economic slowdown – possibly the result of credit tightening measures in January – we judge it will likely reduce the need for more aggressive government policy tightening," he said.
The HSBC PMI released Monday also showed a decline over January, but its reading differed from the official PMI co-compiled by the CFLP and the National Bureau of Statistics.
The official PMI surveys a larger sample size, mostly focusing on large- and medium-sized State enterprises, while the HSBC PMI covers more small- and medium-sized non- State enterprises.
The HSBC PMI reported an increase in new export orders in February, hitting a new, nearly five year high, while the same sub-index of the official PMI was down 2.9 points.
Such a contrast between two PMI readings may indicate a change in the driving force behind China's economic growth, said Lu Zhengwei, a senior economist with Industrial Bank.
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 06:40 am
As part of China Daily's aggressive strategy to boost its presence at home and abroad, METRO Beijing has just been relaunched with significantly more pages and reporting.
At a time when the news about papers is all doom and gloom half a world way, readers may be a little bewildered by the robust local media scene. With a resident foreign population of about 110,000, the city already publishes half a dozen English newspapers and magazines. There is a general consensus that in the West, newspapers' heyday is already over as they enter the decline phase of their product life cycle. But will newspapers in China be immune from the laws of media economics?
No, they won't. Some Chinese pundits have already forecast that due to an Internet-enabled freefall in readership and ad revenues, by 2025 market-driven newspapers will become an endangered species in China and only a very small number of "quality" newspapers will survive.
The capital used to be a battleground for cut-throat competition among a dozen Chinese-language metropolitan dailies.
But now the local market is dominated by about four morning or evening newspapers that are fighting for a declining readership eroded by Internet.
To make their life even more difficult, newspapers in China generally allow their nemesis news portals to scoop their content at dirt cheap prices or for free.
In China, newspaper alliances that target news portals have been formed and collapsed over and over again, because there are always some newspapers that want the aggregators to help them capture larger shares of the market.
The English media will be no exception. Each will need to provide essential coverage that differentiates itself from the pack. Even without the Internet, no traditional media would be able to survive, if they don't produce differentiated content that makes their product unique and sustainable.
At the same time, local English news media will need to integrate themselves with Web technologies. METRO will try to increase the "stickiness" of its website by encouraging its dynamic journalists, including those print-hardened ones, to become Internet-savvy and interactive.
There will be also be other major challenges for any State media when attempting to develop viable content and business models for sustained development.
As State media, we will probably always meet skepticism from foreign readers, because the independent press is a central feature of the dominant value system in the West. We're aware that if communication goes against one's aspirations, values and motivations, it is likely not to be received at all or at best, to be resisted, as management guru Peter Drucker once said.
METRO will uphold universal professional journalism standards as we strive to be timely, accurate, complete, objective, balanced and fair.
When dishing up local news and views, we don't avoid reporting sensitive issues in our extensive coverage of the city. Readers will also find a diversity of opinions as we encourage debate on a combination of print and Web platforms.
It may sound an arduous task. But we're following the official guidelines for effective reporting. That is, news must be close to readers, reality and life.
It's hard to know whether and when the Internet will kill off newspapers.
But it's obvious a newspaper will die sooner rather than later, if it provides mundane content and refuses to embrace new communication technology.
And we believe a newspaper that practices good journalism will have better chances to survive, as it might have more time to tap into the potential of the Web and experiment with new print mode.
Monday 01 March 2010 at 09:09 am
For holidaymakers looking for homes away from home, with a twist, travel website TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) has come up with a list of the world's quirkiest vacation rental homes.
1. DOME ECILE, St. George Island, Florida
A geometrical wonder, DOME ECILE not only is a sight in and of itself, but it also sports beautiful beach views.
2. Calypso Castle, Skopelos, Greece
Complete with a stone tower and gorgeous views, Calypso Castle is a great rental home for travelers looking for a royal retreat.
3. Unique Hilltop Windmill Rental, Odemira, Portugal
Only in Portugal can you rent your own windmill-inspired house on top of its own mini-mountain for under $800 per week. As one TripAdvisor traveler puts it, "The Mill on the hill is rustic, homely, cozy and down to earth just the way it should be!"
4. 1926 C&O Caboose, Natural Bridge, Virginia, U.S.
Put on your conductor's hat and all aboard this bright red vacation rental constructed out of a classic railcar.
5. Chalet Tropical Crazy Cottages, Las Galeras, Dominican Republic
While this rental may look like a giant, thatched hut from the outside, it's spacious and stocked with all the comforts of home on the inside. It's also a short walk from the beach and the village of Las Galeras.
6. The White Elephant Floating Inn, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
For travelers looking to relive history and have their own Boston Tea Party, The White Elephant Floating Inn in Boston may be the perfect place to stay.
7. ModernCottage, Vancouver, Canada
Sprouting up from among the trees overlooking Pender Harbor, this modern architectural marvel has the look of a giant wooden box resting on a steep hill. It comes complete with chic decor and great views of the surrounding wilderness.
8. Elk Run, Crested Butte, Colorado, U.S.
Say hello to the not-so-little house on the prairie, offering enough space to sleep 12 and access to over 800 acres of land for hiking, biking, fishing and snowmobiling.
9. Anna Maria Island Private Tropical Garden Home, Holmes Beach, Florida, U.S.
With a tropical garden and waterfall pool right in its backyard, travelers staying at this rental may not find many reasons to leave "home" during their vacation.
10. 18'x86' Houseboat for Weekend Rentals, Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.
For travelers with strong sea legs, the 18'x86' Houseboat offers not only a unique vacation rental experience but also plenty of amenities, including an upper deck hot tub, two entertainment bars and a gas grill with eight burners.
Monday 01 March 2010 at 09:09 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.
Monday 01 March 2010 at 09:08 am
A coal mine flood in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has trapped dozens of people in the pit since Monday morning, safety authorities said.
The accident happened at around 7:30 am at Luotuoshan (Mt. Camel) Coal Mine in Wuhai City, at least 600 kilometers from the regional capital Hohhot, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) said on its website.
It said 44 mine workers were trapped.
Local authorities in Wuhai, however, said "about 40" were trapped, of whom eight had been rescued as of 2 pm.
SAWS chief Luo Lin and deputy chief Zhao Tiechui -- who is in charge of coal mine safety -- are on their way to the site.
Luotuoshan Coal Mine is owned by Wuhai Energy Co. Ltd. and its parent company is Shenhua Group, one of China's mining giants.
Monday 01 March 2010 at 09:08 am
Gary Wang comes across as more like a professional game player than his major role as the founder and chief executive of Tudou.com, one of China's largest online video websites.
Even when his company endured a government-led online crackdown on copyrighted video content last year and had to face a group of new giant competitors such as CCTV and Baidu, the 36-year-old chief executive still maintained his calm and confidence rather than submitting to worry or panic, something many had expected.
Wang dropped out from China's rigid education system in the 1990s, but later managed to get his bachelor, master and MBA degrees at the world's best educational institutions. He enjoys hiking and reading and describes himself as a "world citizen". He is also the author of a popular Chinese fiction book that some believe to have described his early days of studying in the United States and France.
As a man who comfortably mixes his work and free time, Wang is happy dealing with business emails while camping during a hike and allows flexible working hour for his employees. As an interviewee he is relaxed to the point of resting his legs on the office table while excitably discussing his favorite books.
Surprisingly, these characteristics, regarded by some as perhaps conceited and arrogant, helped Wang win approval from many investors, one of whom once said he felt "assured" by Wang's attitude towards work and life.
"Doing business is like playing games: You grow up by passing each level and fight with bigger bosses each time," Wang said, sitting in his office in Beijing soon after CCTV and Baidu announced they were establishing their own video websites. "I believe we can survive and thrive."
Although looking at ease, Wang admits that now may be the most difficult time business-wise since he first developed Tudou.com in April 2005. It was one of the first video websites perhaps in the world, considering that YouTube.com was established in Feb 2005.
During the past three months, at least three of China's largest State-owned media groups (CCTV, Hunan Satellite TV and Shanghai Media Group) as well as two domestic Internet giants (Baidu and Shanda) announced plans to establish their own video websites.
Wang's company, backed by foreign venture capital, hasn't yet made a profit so the sudden direct competition from businesses with regulatory and investment advantages was not particularly welcome.
According to figures from research firm Analysys International, the revenue of China's online video market reached 199 million yuan ($29 million) in the fourth quarter of last year, an increase of 96.2 percent compared with the same period of 2008. Major players including Youku.com, Ku6.com and Tudou.com have all announced that their revenues have seen rapid growth and will be able to balance their books in the next couple of years.
However, the global financial crisis in 2008 led to many video websites in China losing investment from foreign venture capital firms. A government-led Internet crackdown launched last year also led to the shutdown of hundreds of Chinese video websites.
"The success of Hulu in the US emboldened Chinese companies and media groups regarding this business model's huge potential," said Edward Yu, chief executive officer of Analysys International. Yu said websites such as Youku.com and Tudou.com have long been accused of offering pirated content uploaded by their users and may need to shift their focus to specific market sectors such as entertainment programming or user-generated content.
Hulu is jointly owned by NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment Group and ABC Inc and allows viewers to stream TV shows over the net free of charge in the US. The website has won over users as well as advertisers from YouTube since its debut in 2007.
For many like Tudou, the arrival of new competitors is akin to a group of scrumpers helping themselves to the ripe grapes one had looked after for years. But Wang said he knew this would happen "from the first day when I established the company".
He said: "It is natural that big elephants will come when the market matures, but I don't believe that anyone can dominate China's online video market."
He denies his firm is in direct competition with content makers such as CCTV and Hunan TV because "the licensed content on Tudou.com only accounts for two to three percent of our total traffic".
Instead, he regards Tudou's biggest rival as Baidu, China's biggest search engine, because "a significant part" of Tudou's traffic comes from Baidu's video search service, and now it is launching its own content.
Liu Ning, an analyst at research firm BDA China, said compared with video sharing websites such as Youku.com and Tudou.com, Chinese video streaming websites such as PPStream, PPLive and Xunlei may be the first to feel the heat.
In 2005, Google acquired YouTube and has provided billions in investment to make it the world's largest video sharing website.
Google's investment, Wang said, gave YouTube a unique advantage over its competitors, making it the world's biggest online video website even though it is still struggling to make a profit.
"The Chinese Internet firms are still small compared with their foreign counterparts, making them less capable of providing enough investment that online video websites require in their early days," Wang said.
However, he added that some Chinese Internet firms are now ready for acquisition. "We have also grown big enough," he said.
Baidu plans to establish an online platform similar to Hulu.com. The firm announced last week that its new video website, called Qiyi.com, will be launched in March.
However, Wang said he didn't think Hulu.com's business model could be successfully copied in China, mainly because the nation lacked dominant copyright owners and because of Chinese users' disparate appetite for video.
He said even CCTV, China's biggest video content maker, accounts for only seven percent of China's soap opera market.
"In the United States, major networks could provide most of the content that American users want," he said.
"But in the Chinese mainland, Internet users want to watch videos from Taiwan province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the United States, Japan and South Korea."
He said his company plans to stick to user-generated content (UGC), although this often invites copyright disputes and sometimes scares away advertisers, according to the experience of YouTube. "Chinese advertisers are more tolerant of UGC because they don't have any other choice in China where few of the young people spend much time watching TV," he said.
On being asked whether he would sell Tudou, he replied firmly it was "not possible at least in the foreseeable future."
