BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Saturday stressed food and heating supply as cold snap has driven up vegetable prices and strained coal and gas supplies in north China. Wen urged local government to pay attention to the produce, transport and storage of vegetables when visiting a produce wholesale market in the suburbs of Beijing. "Only when food supply is enough and the prices are stable, will people feel at ease," said Wen. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, talks with local residents at a supermarket during his inspection in Beijing, Jan. 16, 2010. Accompanied by Beijing's Party chief Liu Qi, Wen also went to a heating plant in Fengtai District and inquired about emergency response heating plan in case of extremely cold weather. He asked local officials to secure the power, gas and coal supply to Beijing and said that energy supply should follow the principle of civil use first and industrial use second. Wen also visited several ordinary Beijing families, who just moved into new houses with government subsidy. Beijing municipal government has rebuilt and repaired nearly 500,000-square-meter old houses for 23,000 households. The municipal government planed to solve housing problems for about 280,000 low-income families in three years.
HAIKOU, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's southern island province of Hainan saw a surge in travelers on Saturday, one day before the Chinese Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, said local officials.A total of 65,397 people arrived in Hainan, a tourist resort, on Saturday, up 30.16 percent from the eve of the Chinese lunar new year of 2009, according to a spokesman with the local holiday and travel coordination bureau.A survey of 10 scenic spots in Hainan showed they received about 41,750 visitors on Saturday and their total ticket income hit 2.07 million yuan (303,000 U.S.dollars), up 7.32 percent and 12.37 percent respectively from the eve of the last Spring Festival, the spokesman said.Another survey of Hainan's 21 hotels showed they accommodated 6,101 travelers on Saturday, and reported an income of 5.04 million yuan, up 26.21 percent, he said.From Feb. 1 to Feb. 13, more than 3,800 foreign travelers arrived in Hainan for a holiday, according to statistics from the Haikou General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection."I am very happy to spend Spring Festival in such a beautiful island. I hope more foreign travelers could experience the Chinese traditional festival here," said Daniel Sanchez, a Spanish traveler.Last month, the central government announced a plan to build the island into a top international tourist destination by 2020.
CHENGDU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Two giant pandas in the United States will fly back home in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan next week, according to local officials.Tai Shan, a 4-and-a-half-year-old male panda born at the National Zoo of Washington D.C., and Mei Lan, a 3-year-old female panda born at Zoo Atlanta, will arrive in Chengdu Feb. 5 after a 14-hour journey from Washington.Experts from the two zoos will escort the two giant pandas back to China.Tai Shan, who was born in July 2005 and raised up in the National Zoo, will return to the Ya'an Bifeng Gorge Breeding Base of Wolong National Nature Reserve.Tai Shan was supposed to get back to China at the age of two. The Chinese government agreed to postpone its return twice in 2007 and 2009 at the request of the National Zoo, where millions of people visited him.Tai Shan's father Tian Tian, 13, and mother Mei Xiang, 12, are also due to return December next year.Mei Lan will return to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.Mei Lan was born in September 2006. Her parents Lun Lun and Yang Yang arrived in Atlanta in November 1999.There are now 13 Chinese giant pandas living in four zoos in the United States.Giant pandas, known for being sexually inactive, are among the world's most endangered animals.There are about 1,600 giant pandas living in China's wild, mostly in Sichuan and the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu. Another 290 are in captive-breeding programs worldwide, mainly in China.
BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 4.3 percent in January from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday.It quickened from 1.7 percent in December 2009 when the figure ended 12 months of decline.Analysts said the domestic price reform of major resource products and rising international commodity prices accelerated the PPI growth.In breakdown, the price of crude oil surged 70 percent, and that of raw coal was up 5.3 percent.Non-ferrous metal price rose by a quarter.
BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Central Government has sent eight inspection working groups to 16 provincial areas nationwide to prevent the melamine-tainted milk powder, which killed at least six in 2008, from being reclaimed illegally in producing milk products.Leftovers of milk powder contaminated by melamine were sealed in 2008 and required to be destroyed, but some might have been used as raw materials for diary products illegally in certain areas, according to local police.Police in Shaanxi Province on Thursday publicized a case on illegal use of leftovers of melamine-tainted milk powder.An initial investigation showed 10 tonnes of tainted milk powder leftovers were sold to a local diary producer Lekang Company in September and October in 2009. Three suspects were arrested.Three suspects from the Shanghai Panda Dairy Company were prosecuted in December 2009 on suspicion of using leftovers of melamine-laced milk powder in milk products. Local police said all the company's products had been recalled and caused no serious harms to the consumers.China's food safety authorities on Feb. 1 launched a 10-day checks for melamine-tainted milk products across the country.However, the string of problems gave another blow to China's efforts to restore confidence in its dairy products.The melamine-laced milk products scandal in 2008 killed at least six infants and sickened 300,000 children across the country.Any illegal practices concerning food safety would be punished severely, an official with the National Food Safety Rectification Office led by Health Minister Chen Zhu said earlier this week.The quality watchdog of Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province, has carried out food safety inspection on 73 batches of different brands of milk products and has not found problems.The northeastern Jilin provincial government kicked off a milk product safety check at the end of January."We must do our best to retrieve and destroy milk products that have quality problems. We can't stand a single pack of such milk powder to appear in market," said Zang Zhongsheng, head of the Jilin provincial administration for industry and commerce.There is no accurate figure on the amount of problematic milk powder that has not been destroyed in the 2008 milk products scandal. But in the bankrupt dairy producer Sanlu alone, more than 2,000 tonnes of melamine-tainted baby formula was sealed in 2008.Sanlu, based in Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, suffered devastating losses and went bankrupt, standing in the spotlight of the melamine-tainted milk products scandal in 2008.How to destruct the melamine-tainted milk powder was still a tough nut to crack for many local authorities and dairy firms, according to industrial insiders.A number of experiments had been conducted to find a way to deal with the melamine-tainted powder in Shijiazhuang, but they all failed, according to a insider who declined be named."If we use the milk powder as fuels, it would cost much more to clean boilers than burning coal; if we use it as ingredients in cement, we could not get qualified products; if we just bury it, we worry someone might dig it out illegally as the volume is huge," the expert said."The milk powder piled like hills and people just don't know what to do," said Zhang Xingkuan, a lawyer who once handle cases on compensation for the scandal victims and frequently visited the dairy firms.It was more difficult to monitor small dairy firms, which were more inclined to use leftovers of tainted milk to cut cost, according to Wang Weimin, secretary-general of Xi'an Dairy Association."They will not do this when milk powder prices are low, but they will do this when milk powder prices soar," he said.To crack down on such practices, the Chinese government had vowed to investigate the case thoroughly and all factories that use prohibited materials in producing dairy products would be shut down with license suspended and punished severely.
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SHANGHAI, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday called on the Chinese people to pool their strength and resources to make sure the Shanghai World Expo a success. With just 106 days to go before the Expo opening on May 1, Hu visited the Expo site Friday during an inspection tour in Shanghai. "Hosting the World Expo is not only a significant event of Shanghai, but also of the whole nation," he said, noting it was both the responsibility of Shanghai and the whole country to hold a successful Expo. Hu Jintao (L front), general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, shakes hands with workers and personnel who work for the construction of the Shanghai World Expo park in Shanghai, east China, Jan. 15, 2010. Hu Jintao paid a visit here to inspect the preparation of Shanghai World Expo on Jan. 15 He urged Shanghai to make "all-out efforts" to efficiently complete the preparations and be a good host. He asked central government departments and local governments to take initiative and make concerted efforts in supporting the event. Hu Jintao (C), general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, inspects the under-construction World Expo park in Shanghai, east China, Jan. 15, 2010. The Expo's organizing committee should enhance its leading role and supervision to push forward relevant preparatory work orderly, he said. Hu put forward six requirements on the Expo's preparatory work: - To ensure the Expo site's infrastructure building and exhibition arrangements be completed on time; - To ensure sound service and logistics; - Security should be fully guaranteed; - Foreign affairs work, including receptions of international guests, must be well handled; - To ensure efficient and effective publicity work; - To create a civilized, happy and peaceful atmosphere. Hu said though the Expo was a big challenge, he believed it would be a "successful, brilliant and memorable" event with the support of the Chinese people, especially the contributions of Shanghai officials and residents. The Shanghai World Expo, which is expected to receive 70 million visitors, will last from May 1 to Oct. 31. So far, 35 of the 42 self-built foreign pavilions have started interior decoration and exhibition arrangement, and 11 joint pavilions have been completed.
BEIJING, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world's largest lender by market value, said Monday it extended 110 billion yuan (16.1 billion U.S. dollars) of new loans in January, less than the amount in the same period of 2009."The lending growth in January was stable and moderate, which has well satisfied the real economic demand," the bank said.The ICBC statistics showed lendings of the bank totaled 117.1 billion yuan in January 2009.The bank said it would focus on financing ongoing government projects and continue to extend more loans to small businesses, while strictly controlling loans to new projects and high energy-consuming and polluting industries.ICBC last Wednesday said its loan growth in early and mid-January was "a little fast" as many ongoing projects needed funds, but the lending pace had stabilized since, as a concentrated volume of existing loans had come due and some credit card debts had been repaid.It also announced it would maintain a "reasonable and balanced" lending rate in a move to ease mounting public concerns about possible credit cuts.To prevent economic overheating, the government last month announced it would restrict its overall credit growth to 7.5 trillion yuan in 2010, compared with last year's 9.59 trillion yuan.However, a report from Monday's Economic Information Daily said that as of Jan. 29, Chinese banks had already extended nearly 1.6 trillion yuan new loans this year.
BEIJING, March 2 (Xinhua) -- The cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) would be open to opinions of business people on both sides before formal negotiations on details, a political advisory body spokesman said here Tuesday.Zhao Qizheng, spokesman of the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks at a press conference of the top political advisory body's annual full session, which will open Wednesday.Zhao also said CPPCC members attending the session would call for "more generous" concessions from the mainland in the ECFA since Premier Wen Jiabao had pledged to make concessions."The reason is very simple -- Taiwan compatriots are our brothers," Wen said Saturday in an online chat with Internet users.Formal negotiations of the pact would be held at the fifth round of talks between the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the island' s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), two organizations authorized to handle cross-Strait issues.The basic content of the agreement would cover major economic activities across the Strait, including market access for commodity trade and service trade, rules of origin, early harvest program, trade remedy, dispute settlement, investment and economic cooperation.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a recent bold speech here, criticized China's policies on Internet administration and insinuated that China restricts Internet freedom.Clinton's statement, which were inconsistent with the facts, is clearly yet another example of the double standards that the United States applies.As is widely recognized, freedom is always relative, and such is also the case with Internet freedom. Through years of development, the Internet has been closely connected with people, bringing both convenience and threats. The threats include Internet-based crimes and pornography.It is common practice for countries, including the United States, to take necessary measures to administer the Internet according to their own laws and regulations.The Internet is also restricted in the United States when it comes to information concerning terrorism, porn, racial discrimination and other threats to society.Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Congress approved the Patriot Act to grant its security agencies the right to search telephone and e-mail communications in the name of anti-terrorism. The move aroused a great deal of controversy far and wide.U.S. authorities have also taken measures, such as installing supervision software and imposing grave punishments, to curb Internet child porn, a serious crime in the country.The United States often gossips about other countries' policies on administering the Internet, but at the same time it takes similar measures to minimize the spread of illegal information. That shows that the United States takes a strict line with other countries, but not with itself.Clinton in her speech also talked of Google's threat to quit China due to what the company said were "cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis."As a matter of fact, the U.S. was the first country to introduce the concept of cyber warfare and then put it into practice. The country also developed a new type of troops -- cyber troops.The Pentagon has adopted several measures to beef up the military's cyber warfare capacity, according to American media reports last year. In June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued an order to establish a new military cyber command dedicated to coordinating the Pentagon's efforts to defend its networks and conduct cyber warfare. The command was expected to be fully operational by October this year.So, it is quite hypocritical to point one's finger at others without proper justification while managing to strengthen one's own cyber warfare capacity.Necessary regulation of the Internet is a consensus of the entire international community for the sake of healthy development of the Internet. No responsible country takes a laissez-faire attitude towards the use of the Internet.It is an operational norm observable by all foreign-funded enterprises to respect and comply with laws and regulations as well as public interests and the cultural tradition of the host country.Noting that most countries exert some sort of control over information,Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Friday his company must comply with the laws and customs of any country where it does business.The U.S. move to make Internet freedom an issue just indicates its continued application of double standards. People just wish that the United States will respect facts and treat others equally. It is not acceptable for someone to assume for themselves the high moral ground and arbitrarily make baseless charges against others.