China pledged to boost the social and economic development of its remote and poor border regions, under a plan unveiled by the central government on Friday. China will try to "elevate the overall social and economic status of border counties to the average level of the provinces and autonomous regions in which they are located", according to the plan titled "revitalizing the borders and enriching the people". The plan, which will run until 2010, said central and local governments will increase investment in "border issues, welfare and infrastructure construction in border regions". Financial institutions will have to actively respond to legitimate needs for loans in border regions and policy banks will give preferential treatment to these regions in infrastructure construction, the plan said. China will also upgrade straw dwellings and dilapidated buildings in the regions, in a step-up effort to establish a minimum guaranteed living standard. In April, the central government said it would dole out 300 million yuan (38.8 million U.S. dollars) every year for the next four years into the development of 22 ethnic minority groups. Most ethnic minority groups live in impoverished western regions and border areas in 10 provinces or autonomous regions such as southwestern Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet and northwestern Xinjiang and northern Inner Mongolia. They had an annual per-capita net income of 884 yuan at the end of 2003, far below the average of 2,622 yuan for rural residents, according to statistics from the State Ethnic Affairs Commission.
BEIJING - More than 50 people in the Chinese capital have been fined for spitting during the week-long May Day holidays, according to officials in charge of the city's image. Beijing's management department and civilization promotion office have jointly sent five inspection teams to patrol the downtown Wangfujing pedestrian street, Tian'anmen Square, commercial centers and railway stations to stop people from spitting, littering, random posting of advertisements and scrawling. By Sunday, 56 people were fined for spitting and refusing to correct the bad habit, according to the teams. The officials also handed out more than 10,000 bags to tourists, reminding them not to litter. The government is now anxious to correct the embarrassing habits of Chinese travelers ahead of next year's Olympics Games. And there is no better opportunity of doing it than the May Day travel spree, when an estimated 150 million Chinese will be on the road. The China National Tourism Administration has issued a circular, making travel agencies and tour guides responsible for correcting tourists' bad behavior during the holidays. Jumping the line, spitting, littering and clearing one's throat loudly in public are some of the frequently observed practices among Chinese travelers, according to a guideline prepared and released last year by the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee (SCSC) of the Chinese Communist Party, the official etiquette watchdog. "We are supposed to remind people constantly throughout the tour, and also lead an etiquette discussion at the end of the tour," said Huang Xiaohui, a travel guide with a Beijing-based travel agency. "The Olympics are coming, and we don't want to get disgraced," Huang said, summing up the purpose succinctly.
China warmly welcomes French President Nicolas Sarkozy on a state visit next month, which will "be a great event for China-France relations", Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at a joint press conference with his French counterpart Wednesday.Yang and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner discussed the preparations for Sarkozy's visit, and agreed that it would definitely achieve great results.A lot of agreements will be inked between France and China during Sarkozy's visit in areas such as energy, transportation and education, Kouchner said.The French foreign minister is in China to pave the way for Sarkozy's visit, the first since he assumed presidency in May.During their talks, Yang said China is ready to go along with France to deepen strategic dialogue, expand mutually beneficial cooperation and have closer consultation and coordination on major international issues.The two foreign ministers agreed, as two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to strengthen comprehensive strategic partnership for the benefit of both sides. Such a development will be beneficial to global peace, stability and development, too.On the development of ties between China and the European Union (EU), Yang said their relationship had matured after 30 years of cooperation."The two sides share broad common interests in intensifying mutual political trust, expanding economic and trade cooperation, jointly tackling the challenges of climate change and combating traditional and non-traditional security threat," Yang said.Kouchner ensured Yang that France would double its efforts to solve the pending China-EU problems after his country assumed the rotating presidency of the EU in July 2008.On the Taiwan question, Kouchner said France follows the one-China policy. He said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had made a statement on behalf of EU countries opposing Taiwan authorities' attempt to hold a referendum to move the UN for membership. "France supports the position (of Solana)," Kouchner said.Yang and Kouchner also exchanged views on regional and international matters such as the nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula and in Iran, the situation in Myanmar, climate change and the Darfur and other issues in Africa.
View of a steel-making factory on the outskirts of Shanghai February 1, 2007. [Reuters] New export taxes on polluting and energy intensive industries will help reshape how China's economy grows, but alone are not enough to resolve its trade imbalances with the United States, a top Commerce official said on Sunday. Beijing said last week it would impose or increase taxes on a range of metal exports in an effort to control shipments of high-energy products and ease its huge trade surplus. "You cannot expect to resolve the trade balance by simply curbing export patterns," Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said on the sidelines of a conference when asked about the changes. "These products make up a relatively small portion of exports. But the point is that this reflects changes in trade and economic growth, which will have advantages in the short term and even greater significance in the long term." The announcement of the tax changes came ahead of a "strategic economic dialogue" in Washington between high-level U.S. and Chinese officials at which China's huge trade surplus was a major bone of contention. But the high-level economic talks failed to ease trade rifts between the two economic giants, risking rising tensions ahead of the race for the U.S. presidency. Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and a delegation of ministers left the U.S. capital on Friday, after days of talks that made modest advances but were overshadowed by a lack of concrete progress on the key issue of China's currency. From June 1, China will impose a tax of between 5 and 10 percent on exports of over 80 types of steel products, a bone of contention with both the United States and Europe. Exports would not slow down much this year since most contracts had been signed already, but next year could see a big fall-off, said Li Xinchuang, vice-president of the China Metallurgical Industry and Research Institute.
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.
沈阳专业扁平疣需要多少钱
BEIJING -- Chinese investors should be suspicious of phone calls, online messages and websites touting highly profitable stocks, the Ministry of Public Security warned on Tuesday. "As China's stock prices are soaring constantly, there has been a rise in the number of cases of illegal activities in the stock market, which has undermined the normal market order and threatened investor security," the ministry said in a notice on its official website. The government has repeatedly warned investors of illegal securities companies that swindle clients of funds with claims of high returns. The ministry said scam artists used Internet and phone calls to illegally tout stocks, funds or stock ownership to investors. The swindlers charged unwary investors high fees for fake stock tips and then quickly disappeared after having collected a huge sum of money. The funds or stock ownership, which were touted online or by phone, were often nonexistent, the ministry said. Investors were also hoodwinked into buying fake "initial offerings" of stocks that were not listed on the exchanges. Other scams include cases in which investors' shares were stolen and sold by criminals, who had stolen investors' account numbers and codes. The ministry urged investors to be alert and not to trust promoters who touted unrealistic high returns, or accept stock tips from unidentified persons online or on the phone. It also urged investors to be aware of computer security and to stop trading immediately when discovering a computer virus. The China Securities Regulatory Commission has pledged to curb illegal trading and fraud in the stock market. In February, the State Council approved the China Securities Regulatory Commission to lead a cross departmental team to crack down on illegal securities business.
China on Friday issued its first regulation on human organ transplants, banning organizations and individuals from trading human organs in any form.The regulation, issued by the State Council, or China's cabinet, will go into effect on May 1.The regulation does not apply to transplants of human tissue, such as cells, cornea and marrow.Human organ transplants are defined as the process of taking a human organ or part of a human organ - such as the heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas - from a donor and transplanting it into a patient's body to replace his or her sick or damaged organ.The regulation stipulates that human organ transplants should respect the principle of being voluntary and free donation.The regulation comprises 32 articles in five chapters, including human organ donations, human organ transplants, legal responsibilities and supplementary points. It covers transplant quality and aims to safeguard citizen's lawful rights.
Almost 85 percent of Chinese people share just 100 surnames, with Wang, which literally means "king", being the most popular, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. There are 93 million Wangs in China, followed closely by 92 million people with the family name Li and 88 million called Zhang, Xinhua said, citing newly-announced calculations by the Ministry of Public Security. Another seven common names -- including Chen, Zhou and Lin -- have at last 20 million members each, it added. Chinese family names can be traced back thousands of years and people generally feel a closeness to those with the same surname. But there are also some family names which are only used by a very few people, such as Guo, meaning to "cross over", and Mu, which means "mother".
FUZHOU - Seven people are missing after a fishing vessel collided with a cargo ship in the sea near Keelung Islet, Taiwan, in the early hours of Saturday, said an official with the Taiwan Affairs Office of East China's Fujian Province.A cargo ship, registered in Singapore, collided with a fishing boat, which was carrying 71 people - two from Taiwan and 69 from the mainland, said the official.All the fishermen plunged into the sea but 64 people were later rescued. The seven missing people were confirmed to be residents on the mainland.The rescue operation is ongoing.