THIS WEEK

THIS WEEK

“W e brought in a new generation of players to balance the more experienced ones. Today we went out fast and hard to ensure a w in.Introducing new p layers each gam e helped us stay on top.”

Liu Guoliang, the head coach of the Chinese men’s table tennis team, commenting on the gold medal w inners’ outstanding achievements in the London Olympic Games on August 8

“China’s fi rst aircraft carrier w ill be comm issioned by the end of the year and is very likely to be nam ed after one of China’s provinces.”

Li Jie, a senior researcher of the Chinese Navy M ilitary Academy, revealing when China’s fi rst aircraft carrier w ill be on service in an interview published on thePeople’s Dailywebsite on August 8

“The new road is an achievement of the close relationship between Cambodia and China. It w ill help promote tourism in the Preah Vihear Tem p le and increase the flow of goods in rural areas.”

Cambodian Prime M inister Hun Sen, speaking at an inauguration ceremony on August 8 in Kampong Thom, Cambodia, for a 128-km China-funded national road

“The channel w ill promote a healthy lifestyle and behavior am ong the Chinese public, who have a grow ing need to stay healthy and fi t. The program has to be im partial and scientifically correct.”

China’s Health M inister Chen Zhu, explaining the purpose for the launch of China Health Television in Beijing on August 6, which has already reached more than 200 million people in 70 cities on the mainland

STRUGGLE FORWARD Pedestrians brave a rainstorm from Typhoon Haikui, which hit Shanghai on August 8. Haikui, which landed in the Chinese m ainland on August 8, brought heavy downpours to east China and had killed three peop le as of August 9

M igrant Population

The total number of migrants in China reached 230 m illion last year, or 17 percent of the country’s total population, according to a report issued on August 6 by the National Population and Family Planning Comm ission.

W ith an average age of 28, 80 percent of m igrants are from rural areas and nearly 45 percent of them were born after 1980, the annual report said.

The average monthly pay for those at or below the age of 35 was just 2,513 yuan ($395)in 2011. The figure represented a 29.4-percent increase from that of 2009, but was not nearly enough to cover their housing and health care in light of the increasing cost of living.

For migrants w ith a bachelor’s degree or higher, the average monthly pay amounted to 4,608 yuan ($725).

Generally, only 51.3 percent of m igrants hold fixed-term contracts, the report said, adding that they work an average of 54.6 hours per week, far above the 40-hour legal lim it.

Nature Reserves Alliance

Four major nature reserves covering 550,000 square km in west China jointly announced on August 7 an alliance to protect the environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

SAND ART An artist perform s sand painting during a contest held in Zhoushan, east China’s Zhejiang Province, on August 3

The four reserves are Chiangtang Nature Reserve in Tibet Autonomous Region, Hoh Xil Nature Reserve and Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve in Qinghai Province and A ltun Mountain Nature Reserve in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A t an average altitude of 4,000 meters,they cover 58.3 percent of national nature reserve areas, and together they can be considered the world’s largest nature reserve group.W ith a fragile environment, the areas are the habitat of many of China’s unique animals,such as Tibetan antelopes, w ild yaks and Tibetan wild burrows, among others, and they are the key to the nation’s ecological security.

Officials from the four nature reserves plan to set up a joint w ild animal database to share information and reinforce daily communications.

The information platform w ill also set up a reporting system to crack down on poaching and keep tourists from disrupting w ild animals.

Pharmaceutical Regulation

The Chinese Government on August 2 introduced tougher measures concerning the production of pharmaceutical excipients follow ing a scandal involving contaminated medicine capsules.

According to a new regulation on the management of pharmaceutical excipients, or pharmacologically inactive substances used to carry the active ingredients of medication, the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA)and its branches w ill raise standards for excipients when approving new medicines. The regulation will take effect on February 1, 2013.

Excipients that are new on the market or contain greater safety risks should be registered and approved, and their producers w ill have to obtain production licenses from authorities, the document says. Other excipients and their producers w ill be monitored.

The SFDA w ill set up a national database to monitor the production and application of all pharmaceutical excipients, as well as a credit reporting system for producers, said Zhang Wei, head of the Registration Division under the SFDA.

The regulation says pharmacy firm s should be held responsible for quality control problems resulting from the use of illegal and substandard excipients. The fi rms should also supervise the quality of excipients and regulate their suppliers, the regulation says.

A China Central Television report delivered in April said that several companies had manufactured drug capsules with industrial gelatin,which contains excessive levels of chrom ium and is illegal to use for making drug capsules.

The industrial gelatin was made from leather scraps, according to the report.

M ining Safety

China w ill start a nationw ide campaign to improve safety of m ines, the Work Safety Committee of the State Council, China’s cabinet announced on August 3.

The three-year cam paign is aimed at consolidating the sector, regulating mining activities and shutting down illegal or dangerous mines.

Although the number of m ining-related accidents and deaths has dropped in recent years, the sheer number of mines w ill make improving their safety a challenging task, the comm ittee said.

Ninety-five percent of China’s 100,000 metal and non-metal mines are smaller mines that are prone to accidents, the comm ittee said.

Subsidies for Students

NEW ROUND TALK Chen Yunlin (left), President o f the Chinese m ainland-based Association for Relations Ac ross the Taiwan Straits, and Chiang Pin-kung, Chairm an o f the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation, hold the eighth top-level talks between the two organizations since 2008 in Taipei on August 9

NEW DIRECTIONHo llywood director Jam es Cam eron (left) m eets w ith President Zhou M ingwei of the China International Pub lishing Group (CIPG)in Beijing on August 8,discussing cooperation between Cam eron-Pace Group and CIPG

The government contributed 70 percent of the subsidies, while the rest was contributed by a student loan program, income from school-affi liated sectors and donations, said a statement issued by the m inistry on August 8.

The subsidies were used to guarantee equal access to education for all citizens, especially those of disadvantaged economic status.

Nearly half of the subsidies went to students in higher education institutions, w ith about 14 percent paid in the form of government-subsidized student loans.

Under a government-subsidized student loan scheme, the government pays the interest on bank loans taken out by college students and students pay off the balance in installments after graduation.

In 2011, 2.4 m illion college students received 13.6 billion yuan ($2.14 billion) of loans under the scheme, up 2.3 billion yuan($362 million) from the previous year, according to the statement.

M arrow Donors

Potential donors enlisted in the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) has totaled 1.492 m illion, making the marrow bank the world’s fourth largest in terms of donors.

The CMDP has facilitated about 3,000 hemopoietic stem cells donations for patients at home and abroad and it has uploaded the information of 50,000 donors to the World Marrow Donor Association, said Zhao Baige,Executive Vice President of the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) said August 2.

The CMDP was established in 1992 by the RCSC.

GORGEOUS VIEW A tourist poses by Nam tso,a p lateau lake, in Tibet Autonom ous Region on August 7. Nam tso,m eaning “heavenly lake”in Tibetan, has becom e one of the p references for a grow ing num ber o f tourists to Tibet

Anti-dum ping Review

China on August 8 started to reexam ine antidumping measures it imposed on chloroprene rubber imported from a Japanese supplier,said the M inistry of Commerce.

The move came after the m inistry received complaints that Japan Electric Chemical Co.increased dumping activities and flouted the country’s anti-dumping measures.

Chinese chloroprene rubber producers filed an application for a reexam ination of anti-dumping measures against the Japanese company’s products.

In May 2005 the m inistry imposed antidumping duties ranging from 2 percent to 151 percent on imported chloroprene rubber from Japan, the United States and the EU w ith a term of five years.

In 2011, the ministry extended the antidumping duties for another five years.

Chloroprene rubber, commonly known as Neoprene, is mostly used in manufacturing electrical cables and other types of cables, as well as waterproof products.

CPI Slowdown

The consumer price index (CPI), a key gauge of inflation, increased 1.8 percent year on year in July, the slowest pace since February 2010,the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on August 9.

The rate was 0.4 percentage points lower than in June.

The easing inflation is explained as a result of the base effect. The CPI grow th rate hit a 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July last year.

Food prices, which account for nearly one third of the weighing in the calculation of the CPI,edged up 2.4 percent in July from a year ago,down from an increase of 3.8 percent in June.

Food prices were mainly driven by an 8-percent hike of vegetable prices, as rain and flooding affected vegetable production in many places in a traditionally peak season of supply.

Stabilizing Pork Price

The government w ill purchase frozen pork to stabilize the market, as high hog production has led to falling prices, the National Development and Reform Comm ission(NDRC) said on August 7.

Due to a slow season and continued overproduction, pork prices have shown signs of sliding and w ill likely remain low for a period ahead, said the NDRC.

The NDRC advised farmers to weed out low-yield reproductive pigs and optim ize the production structure to reduce losses.

Pork prices have generally shown a declining trend this year. In April, the hogto-corn price ratio, a major indicator of the sector’s profitability, fell under 6 to 1, the break-even point for farmers.

To avoid drastic price fluctuations, the government then initiated a round of frozen pork purchases. Price drops narrow ed in May and reversed to moderate gains in June and July.

Pork prices are an important component in food prices, which have a one-third weighing in the calculation of the CPI.

Online Business Boom

An increasing number of Chinese enterprises have taken to the Internet to do business in light of the current econom ic downturn, according to data from the country’s Internet regulator.

China had 8.73 million registered domain names at the end of June, and 3.98 million were registered using “.cn” domain names,up 460,000 from the end of 2011, marking the fastest biannual grow th since 2008, the China Internet Network Information Center(CNNIC) said on August 6.

The “.cn” suffix is a so-called Top Level Domain for China, like “.com” or “.net,”and individuals and companies seeking to create a Web address are required to be approved by CNNIC.

Of those new ly added “.cn” websites,about 71 percent were domestic companies,particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“This shows that a number of SMEs are beginning to promote their own brands and services through the Internet,” CNNIC said in a statement.

China has the world’s largest number of Internet users, w ith an online population of 538 million by the end of June, including 210 m illion online shoppers.

China’s e-commerce transactions totaled 5.88 trillion yuan ($933 billion) last year, up 29.2 percent year on year, according to the M inistry of Commerce. Over 40 percent of Chinese SMEs have used e-commerce to maintain rapid grow th,as a worsening external environment, rising labor costs and tightened credit have created difficulties for SMEs.

Effective Boost

The government’s measures encouraging private funds to enter more sectors have worked and helped stabilize investment grow th this year, according to the NDRC’s investment department.

The measures encouraging private capital to enter fields such as oil and gas exploration and education have been playing an active role since the beginning of this year, according to the department. Private investment in the oil and gas exploration, education and health sectors surged 89.2 percent, 40.2 percent and 43.1 percent, respectively, in the fi rst half of this year.

The small quantity of private funds in those sectors also helped yield rapid grow th,since such fields used to be dom inated by state-owned capital.

Earlier in June, the NDRC and the Ministry of Finance issued a joint statement vow ing to treat government funds and private capital equally in order to create a better business environment for private entrepreneurs.

Avan t-garde Direc to r

Rh in o ceros in Lo ve, the m aste rp iece o f Ch in a’s p restig iou s d ram a d irec to r M eng Jinghu i, w ere staged on Au gu st 7-12 a t the Po ly Theater in Beijin g, m a rk in g a ru n th at w ill in c lu de the p lay’s com m em o ra tive th ou san d th pe rfo rm an ce.

Sin ce its debu t in 1999, five version s o f th e trag ic rom an ce have been p er fo rm ed in fron t o f 368,000 peop le in 36 c ities w o r ldw ide.

Rh in o ceros in Lo vesh ow s th e love sto ry o f a rh in o feed er, M a Lu, an d h is p retty n eigh bo r M in g M in g. The rh in o ceros’ poo r v ision se rves as a m etap ho r in th e sto ry,sym bo lizin g th ose w ho a re deep ly in love an d yet b lin ded by th e sadn ess o f un requ ited love.

M en g, 48, is on e o f th e m ost in fluen tia l d ram a d irec to rs in Asia. M en g’s m ost in flu en tia l p lays in c lu deCom rad e Ah Q,W aitin g fo r Go d o t,Acc id en ta l Dea th of An An arch ist,Rh in o ceros in Lo vean dTh e Ba lcon y.

more than 98.6 billion yuan ($15.51 billion)in subsidies in 2011, up 16 percent year on year, according to the M inistry of Education.

SPORTSWEAR CAPITAL A visitor looks at uniform s designed for Olym p ic athletes in Quanzhou in southeast China’s Fujian Province on August 8. Quanzhou has become well-known in China as a m ajor hub o f p rivate enterp rises in industries like shoes and sportswear

NASA's Curiosity m ission m anagers, fl ight contro llers,scientists and adm inistrators speak at a p ress conference in Pasadena, California, on August 5, after the Mars rover successfully landed on the red p lanet. The c raft sent back its first signals as it entered Mars’ atmosphere in the final m om ents o f a d ram atic touchdown

THE PHILIPPINES

A resident pushes an im p rovised inflatab le boat carrying his dog through floodwaters as they head for a safer area in suburban Manila on August 7, after torrential rains d renched m ost o f the capital

JAMAICA

Dancers perform at the National Stadium in Kingston on August 6 in a celeb ration o f the 50th anniversary o f Jam aica’s independence

SPAIN

Fran Calvo (left)and Monica Fraile exchange rings in a wedd ing cerem ony held inside an aquarium in Benalmadena, south Spain, on August 6

AFGHANISTAN

A Buddha statue is disp layed at a m useum in Kabul on August 5. Hund reds o f archaeo logical treasures looted from Afghanistan were returned after being recovered w ith the help o f the British Museum