BEIJING -- Beijing has seen a 30 percent decrease in residents' complaints about airborne debris around construction sites in the first 11 months of this year compared with a year earlier, the municipal environment authorities said Sunday.The city fined 7,467 construction sites in 2007 for failing to control dust, involving a total of about 10 million yuan (US.3 million), according to the municipal environmental watchdog. The city also fined more than 4,000 illegal outdoor barbeques and rubbish incineration facilities.The city reached its goal of 245 "blue sky" days for 2007 on Sunday, when a cold front helped the city hit an annual air quality improvement target just two days before the year ends.Statistics also show that although the number of "blue-sky" days did not increase dramatically, Beijing recorded only three heavily-polluted days this year, sharply down from last year's 13.The Chinese capital launched a drive, "Defending the Blue Sky," in 1998, when it only had 100 days of fairly good air quality. The Olympic host city aims to make 70 percent of the days in 2008 meet the standard.
The Board of Airport Authority Hong Kong awarded a franchise to building a new cargo terminal at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to a subsidiary of Cathay Pacific Airways Limited here Tuesday. According to the contract, Cathay Pacific Services Limited, a subsidiary of the parent airways, will design, construct and operate the 10-hectare new cargo terminal during the non-exclusive,20-year franchise. The new terminal and recently completed enhancements to the cargo apron, taxiways and aircraft stands will equip HKIA to meet future demand for cargo services and to maintain its position as the region's premier air cargo hub. "The new cargo terminal will reinforce the competitiveness of HKIA as a regional and international air cargo hub." Airport Authority Chief Executive Officer Stanley Hui said, adding "it will provide additional choices for airlines, shippers and freight forwarders. "I believe it will bring substantial economic benefits, in the form of new jobs and business opportunities, to Hong Kong," he said. Scheduled to open in the second half of 2011, the new terminal will have an annual capacity of about 2.6 million tons and increase the airport's total general and express cargo handling capacity to 7.4 million tons per annum. According to Cathay Pacific Services, construction of the new terminal will create over 400 jobs. When it starts operation, the facility will employ more than 1,700 people. The decision to build a new cargo terminal was made after the Airport Authority held extensive consultations with Hong Kong's air cargo and logistics industry. In December 2006, the Airport Authority called for pre- qualification proposals, which was followed by invitation for submission of business plans. The Airport Authority assessed the business plans and decided to award the franchise to Cathay Pacific Services as a result of an open and competitive tender process. The Airport Authority also invited the Independent Commission Against Corruption as an independent advisor to oversee the process. Driven by the rapid expansion of the Chinese mainland's economy and robust global trade, cargo throughput at HKIA rose 4.5 percent in 2007, to 3.74 million tons. The air cargo industry handled over1.9 trillion HK dollars (243.6 billion US dollars) worth of goods in 2007, accounting 35 percent of Hong Kong's total external trade. HKIA has remained the world's busiest international cargo airport for the 11th consecutive year.
SHENZHEN: A student at an IT college in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province, ran amok on Tuesday, stabbing six of his classmates, police said Wednesday.One of the victims suffered a deep gash to the neck, which required intensive care treatment, but he is said to be in a stable condition.The 21-year-old attacker, surnamed Chen, was later arrested and is now in custody. He is believed to be suffering from a mental illness, a spokeswoman for the Zhuhai public security bureau told China Daily yesterday.She refused to give any further information, however, as the case is still under investigation.According to a report by the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, the incident happened at about 10:40 am at the start of a new class.Witnesses said Chen pulled out a 15-cm-long fruit knife and "casually" stabbed the two people sitting next to him and in front of him."I saw blood gushing from one boy's throat and another had been stabbed in the right side of his neck," the newspaper quoted one witness, who asked not to be named, as saying.Chen then attacked four other classmates, as they and their teacher attempted to escape the room, the witness said.After the attack, Chen remained in the classroom.A teacher locked the door from the outside and called police, the Guangzhou Daily reported.Police arrived soon after and arrested him.The victims were taken to a nearby hospital. Three of them had been stabbed in the neck while the others had suffered wounds to their arms and wrists, a source from the hospital said.A spokeswoman for the school, surnamed Cui, said the school authorities will issue a formal statement once the police have concluded their investigation.Students and teachers were receiving counseling to help them deal with the incident, she told China Daily.According to the Guangzhou Daily, Chen, who lives in Zhuhai, attacked a classmate while he was at university in Wuhan, in Central China's Hubei Province. He was later expelled.
Soaring global oil prices have led to small refiners drastically cutting down on production - forcing Sinopec to fill the void.Since the prices of refined oil products are set by the central government, the refiners - private or local-government-owned - find it unprofitable when the price of crude is as high as is now. Crude prices reached a record .80 a barrel at the New York close on Monday."Surging international crude prices are exerting mounting pressure on the local market (by discouraging small refiners). We are already running at full capacity to ensure fuel supply," Mao Jiaxiang, vice-president of Sinopec Economics & Development Research Institute, told China Daily Tuesday.Sinopec is Asia's top refiner, feeding the bulk of fuel consumption in China. But due to capacity limitations at its plants, there is a rising gap between demand and supply.Mao pointed out that fuel shortages are mainly triggered by the production drop at medium- and small-sized refiners scattered around the country, which contribute 5 to 10 percent of the country's supply.The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planner, keeps a tight lid on domestic fuel prices to fend off inflation, only allowing refiners to set prices within an 8 percent band of a government-imposed benchmark.Sinopec will have more refining capacity on stream next year, which will help ease supply pressure, Mao said.This year, it is believed Sinopec may import more oil products from abroad if necessary. The company imported 60,000 tons of gasoline in September and sold it at a lower price.Gasoline retailers raised prices by 2.92 percent in the first nine months after crude costs climbed, the NDRC said in a statement on its website on Monday.However, the NDRC said last month that energy prices will not be raised "in principle" this year after the consumer price index (CPI) hit a 10-year high of 6.5 percent in August."As global crude prices and the CPI stay at high levels, it is possible for the authorities to seek a compromise by not raising fuel prices but giving subsidies to major refiners at the end of the year," said Niu Li, an economist with the State Information Center affiliated to the NDRC.
Conservation efforts appear to be helping China's endangered giant panda expand its habitat in parts of western China, the Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. Panda cubs play at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province, May 24, 2007. [Reuters]The animal's droppings were recently discovered in areas beyond its known habitat in the bamboo forests of the 220,000 hectare (550,000 acre) Baishuijiang Nature Reserve, on the border of Gansu and Sichuan provinces. "This indicates an expansion of the giant panda's habitat -- and probably of its population too," Huang Huali, vice director of the Baishuijiang Nature Reserve Administration, was quoted as saying. The pandas have been helped by efforts to curb insect pests, which have restored the bamboo forests since 2002, Huang said. China's State Forestry Administration has estimated 1,590 pandas live in the wild, mostly in the mountains of Sichuan, although a study by Chinese and British scientists released last year calculated there could be as many as 3,000.
BEIJING - China purchased at least 400 billion yuan (.6 billion) of goods and services in 2007, a new high compared to the 368.1 billion yuan recorded a year earlier, preliminary figures from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) revealed.Assistant Financial Minister Zhang Tong described the expansion as "outstanding" given the procurement stood at only 100 billion yuan in 2002, the first year the mechanism was introduced.The past five years have also witnessed an increasingly diversified government consumption that expanded from solely commodities in the beginning to services and engineering, he said. With 13,000 people engaged in purchasing nationwide, China has twice revised its procurement list to include 18 categories encompassing nearly 4,770 items.Energy-saving products accounted for a large percentage of the newly-added items. To lead by example, the government has pledged to reduce energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan of gross domestic product by 20 percent and pollutant emissions by 10 percent for the 2006-2010 period.This year, student textbooks for primary and junior high schools, medicine, farm machinery and other items to distribute to the needy free of charge or at inexpensive prices will be added to the list, Financial Minister Xie Xuren told a recent work meeting for 2008.Under a MOF directive promulgated last month, government procurement will favor independent innovation products starting this year, a practice, experts said, the United States adopted in the late 1950s to foster domestic high-tech industries, including aeronautic and astronautic technology, computing, semiconductors and integrated circuits.Qinghua University law professor Yu An said the move would provide good incentives for domestic firms to speed up technical innovation.MOF statistics revealed the procurement had spared an aggregate expenditure of at least 180 billion yuan between 2002 and 2007.The benefits, however, didn't drown out grumbles from the Heilongjiang provincial chapter of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, one of the country's eight political parties, beside the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).At a meeting last month, the chapter held transparency in government procurement should be enhanced as some products were found to be overpriced, of unsatisfactory quality or without effective after-sales service.Tendering companies must be subject to real-time supervision to avoid bribery and kickbacks. Perpetrating firms must be blacklisted and banned from the procurement, while governmental departments must submit their accounting ledgers for regular auditing scrutiny, they said.
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BEIJING - The world's most populous nation began its week-long Lunar New Year holiday on Wednesday, but hundreds of thousands of people will probably spend the biggest festival of the year in the cold and dark.Currently, more than 3,000 people, including electricians, soldiers and armed police are struggling to repair power lines damaged by prolonged snow, rain and sleet to restore the power supply for Chenzhou, a city of about 4 million in central China's Hunan Province, which started its 12th day of power blackouts and water cuts on Wednesday.Staff workers of Hunan Grid repair the collapsed high-voltage power transmission tower in Changsha, capital of South China's Hunan Province, Feb. 3, 2008. [Xinhua] Wednesday marks the eve of Lunar New Year, known as Spring Festival, the most important festival for family gatherings in China with a population of 1.3 billion."Parts of the power lines have been recovered, and power supply will restore gradually for citizens in Chenzhou starting today," said Huang Qiang, vice general manager of the Hunan Electric Power Company under the State Grid Corporation of China.But power service is not expected to be resumed by 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, in eight counties, including Guiyang, Jiahe in Hunan Province, Zixi, Lichuan, Yihuang and Le'an in Jiangxi Province, Pingtang in Guizhou Province and Ziyuan in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the disaster relief and emergency command center under the State Council, China's cabinet, said in a statement late Tuesday.Freak winter weather featuring prolonged snow, rain and sleet since mid-January in China's eastern, central and southern regions has downed power lines, covered roads with thick ice, brought trains, buses and planes to standstill and stranded millions of people.The snow havoc, the worst in five decades, and even in a century in few areas, has led to deaths, structural collapses, blackouts, accidents, transport problems and livestock and crop losses in 19 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.More than 100 million people have been affected, and at least 60 people have died in the freezing weather.
WASHINGTON - Senior officials from the United States and China are scheduled to hold a twice-yearly dialogue in Washington this week on bilateral and multilateral issues, AFP reported Monday, citing a statement by the US State Department. US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte and China's Executive Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo will lead their teams to the two-day US-China "senior dialogue" beginning Wednesday, said the statement. The dialogue is expected to cover the countries' bilateral relations as well as a range of key global issues, including security in Northeast Asia, energy and the environment, Iran and the conflict in Sudan's Darfur. The dialogue "is an important forum for both countries to discuss issues of strategic and political importance, including how to achieve our common goals," according to the statement. US President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed in 2004 during a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC) forum to hold the talks among their officials as part of efforts to improve ties. US-China ties are clouded by a variety of issues, including US accusations that China is keeping its currency undervalued. Currency concerns dominated a US-China "strategic" economic dialogue last month led by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson even as unveiled measures to boost trade and investment ties.Despite criticism from the US in particular, Chinese officials contend that currency reforms are moving as quickly as the developing economy and financial system will allow.
BEIJING -- As the world marked International Human Rights Day on Monday, a Chinese expert in the field has documented his country's work in the area through a new article chronicling achievements that have been made over the past five years.Dong Yunhu, vice president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, the largest nongovernmental organization in the human rights field in China, listed in his article some major facts outlining the fruits that have been reaped.In the newly-amended constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted at October's 17th Party Congress, one of the landmark changes was that in the paragraph of "promoting socialist democracy", it said the Party "respects and safeguards human rights".It was the first time the CPC considered the development of human rights as an important aspect of national development.In November 1991, the Information Office under the State Council published its first-ever white paper entitled "Human Rights in China", stressing that full access of human rights was socialist China's "sublime goal".In March 2004, parliament adopted an amendment to the constitution that inserted the clause declaring "the state respects and safeguards human rights", putting human rights protection under the legal umbrella of the state.In March 2006, China for the first time wrote "human rights protection" in the country's national economic and social development plan as a part of the modernization drive.In his article Dong wrote: "Over the past five years, the most prominent progress in China's human rights protection is the 'mainstreamlization' and entry of human rights into the country's political life."The public's right to know, right to supervise has been constantly expanded. How state organs operate, how legislators work becomes increasingly transparent, Dong said.He pointed out that as a developing country with 1.3 billion population, China was still confined by historic, economic and social conditions. It had met many obstacles in the development of human rights."The economic, social and legal systems in China are far from mature and unbalanced development occurs between the rural and urban areas and among different regions," Dong said. He noted that "thorny issues in such aspects as employment, social security, income distribution, education, medicine, housing and safe production, had all effected public interests.However, he was confident that "human rights conditions in China would gradually improve along with the modernization process" as long as the country "unswervingly implements human rights protection principles and actively promotes democratic and legal construction".
China's production of natural gas rose 23.1 percent last year, faster than in 2006, to 69.31 billion cubic meters as the country used more "clean" energy, an industry association said.In 2006, output jumped 19.2 percent to 58.55 billion cubic meters, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association (CPCIA) said. It also said that output would likely hit 76 billion cubic meters this year. China used 55.6 billion cubic meters of gas in 2006, an increase of 21.6 percent from a year earlier, according to statistics from BP.China has set a target of raising the proportion of natural gas in its total energy consumption to 5.3 percent in 2010 from 2.8 percent in 2005, amid efforts to curb pollution. Coal now accounts for about 70 percent of total energy consumption.The expansion of the natural gas infrastructure, including pipelines, reflected the rapid increases in output and consumption, the CPCIA said.China plans to start building a second east-west gas pipeline this year. The first such pipeline went into commercial operation in 2004.The new pipeline is scheduled to become operational in 2010 and will have a designed annual transport capacity of 30 billion cubic meters. It will mainly move natural gas from Central Asia to the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas, the country's two most developed regions.Construction on another pipeline, which will link the Puguang Gas Field in the southwestern province of Sichuan, one of the country's largest, with the Yangtze River Delta, started last August.