THIS WEEK

THIS WEEK

“What the U.S. side should do now is not to continue confusing public opinion or evading or covering up by all means its responsibility for the incident, nor should it continue its interference in China’s internal affairs. Rather, it should draw a lesson from this incident seriously with a responsible attitude, truly reflect upon its policies and actions, take necessary measures to prevent similar incidents, and maintain the larger interests of China-U.S. relations with concrete actions.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin, on May 2, in response to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public statement on Chen Guangcheng’s entering and leaving the U.S. Embassy in China

“China has maintained that the international community should take an objective, impartial and balanced position on Sudan and South Sudan, avoid taking sides or imposing unbalanced pressure on the parties, and refrain from interfering in the mediation efforts of the African Union and other regional organizations and countries.”

Chinese UN Ambassador Li Baodong, at a UN Security Council meeting where a resolution on Sudan and South Sudan was unanimously adopted on May 2

“My work in the government, all through these years, is really a difficult job, and it is a special test of strength for me and a special period of learning. The next government will be leaning on the people as well.”

Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin, at a government meeting on May 2

COMIC WORLD A visitor looks at a painting at the Exhibition of Comic Artists & Auction, which kicked off in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province, on May 1

Population Urbanization

China’s population urbanization rate, which reached 51 percent last year, will further climb to 60 percent by 2020, bringing the country’s urban population to around 850 million, according to a demographic study released on May 3.

The China Population and Development Research Center said in a report that in the next 20 years, China’s urbanization will maintain a fast speed, with around 300 million people moving from rural to urban areas.

China’s urbanization will enter a stable stage by the middle of the 21st century, with the peak between 70-75 percent, it said.

In 2011, the number of migrant workers in China reached 230 million, the report said, adding that annual growth of the migrant population will be around 10 million in the 2011-15 period.

Social Security Plan

China has approved a five-year plan to speed up the establishment of a social security network that covers both urban and rural citizens by 2015, the State Council, China’s cabinet, said on April 27.

The government will strive to build an essentially complete social security system and a relatively sound management service system by the end of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15), according to a statement released after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The statement said that the country’s social security development is unbalanced, as the system in rural areas obviously lags behind, and the coverage rate of some basic social security systems is still low.

It said the government will speed up the construction of the system, which includes extending its old-age pension scheme to cover all residents, improving insurance systems for healthcare, employment injury, unemployment and maternity, as well as adopting measures to cope with an aging population.

Embracing Buddhism

Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, the 11th Panchen Lama and top ranking figure of Tibetan Buddhism currently in China, attended the third World Buddhist Forum (WBF) held in Hong Kong on April 25-27. This was the first time the 11th Panchen Lama attended activities outside the Chinese mainland.

Born in February 1990 at Lhari County in northern Tibet, he was confirmed and approved by the State Council, China’s cabinet, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in November 1995, after the lot drawing from a sacred golden urn in strict compliance with religious rituals and conventions.

The 22-year-old Panchen Lama is also vice president of the Buddhist Association of China. He attended the first and second WBF held in Zhejiang Province in 2006 and in Jiangsu Province in 2009, respectively.

Oil Spill Compensation

U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips China will pay 1.09 billion yuan ($172.79 million) in compensation for oil spills that occurred in north China’s Bohai Bay starting in June 2011, the State Oceanic Administration said on April 27.

Moreover, China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and the Chinese unit of ConocoPhillips will pay 480 million yuan ($76.09 million) and 113 million yuan ($17.91 million), respectively, for environmental protection efforts in the Bohai Sea, according to the administration.

STAY SMALL A guest stays in a capsule-shaped single room at a newlyopened mini hotel in Xi’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, on May 2

The money will be spent, according to China’s laws and rules, on the ecological construction in, and environmental protection of, the Bohai Sea, cleaning up petroleum pollutants in the sea, fixing damage to the marine ecological environment as well as monitoring and research on the impacts of oil spills to the ecosystem, according to the administration.

The severe oil spills in the Penglai 19-3 Oilfield in the Bohai Bay polluted more than 6,200 square km of water, an area about nine times the size of Singapore, and caused huge losses in the tourism and aquatic farming industries of Liaoning and Hebei provinces.

The Penglai 19-3 Oilfield is one of China’s largest offshore oilfields, with daily production of about 160,000 barrels. ConocoPhillips China operates the Penglai 19-3 Oilfield, in which CNOOC, China’s largest offshore oil producer, holds a 51-percent stake, while ConocoPhillips holds 49 percent.

Work Hours

Chinese employees work 8.66 hours daily on average and spend 0.96 hours in transit, according to a newly released survey.

The survey jointly conducted by Peking University and zhaopin.com, one of China’s leading recruitment website, covered more than 30,000 respondents in 28 cities.

The survey shows that on average Chinese workers spend 7.33 hours sleeping, 8.66 hours at work, 0.96 hours on the road and 7.05 hours on other activities.

Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province tops the list in daily working time, with 9.02 hours. Hangzhou in eastern Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong follow with above 8.8 hours. Beijing workers average 8.68 hours.

Nano Technology

China will further industrialize the use of a new material developed with the help of nanotechnology to ensure the safety of its power grids, according to a statement from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNT) on May 2.

The NCNT said the material has undergone strict testing and technical evaluations and will be used to solve the problem of flashover, a phenomenon in which energized conductors inadvertently come into contact with other conductors or a grounded surface. Flashover has been a persistent safety problem in China’s power grids.

Other projects based on the use of the new material are in the research phase and will eventually be applied to China’s power grids on a large scale, the NCNT said.

SETTING OFF Chinese research vessel Dayang Yihao departs from Sanya in south China’s Hainan Province on April 28, kicking off the country’s 26th oceanic expedition mission

HOBBY FOR FUN A man operates a helicopter model atthe Hobby Expo 2012, which kicked off in Beijing on April 30

The material was created in 2009 after three years of research by the NCNT, the Institute of Process Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Electric Power Research Institute.

Back to Nature

A nature reserve in east China’s Anhui Province will release six captive-bred alligators into the wild as part of an experimental program to boost the population of the endangered animal.

The Anhui Yangtze Alligator Nature Reserve is preparing to put the alligators in a natural environment later this month, marking the center’s eighth attempt to do so since the program started in 2002.

So far, the nature reserve has succeeded in releasing 45 Chinese alligators into the wild.

Anhui is home to the majority of the country’s Chinese alligators, which are widely known as the Yangtze alligators because they live along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

The breeding center now has more than 1,000 captive alligators.

Regulating Stock Market

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued new rules for the initial public offering (IPO) system.

The rules issued on April 28 are aimed at improving the accuracy of information disclosures and making initial pricing more reasonable, said the CSRC.

The new IPO rules detail separate responsibilities for issuers, intermediary institutions, law offices, accounting firms and rating agencies, as well as dictate strict punishments for infringement and illegal practices.

The CSRC promised to introduce independent third parties to carry out risk evaluations regarding information disclosures by companies in order to give references to medium- and small-sized investors.

When price earning ratios go 25 percent higher than their listed industry peers, issuers should further analyze possible risks in order to disclose more information to investors.

The CSRC said the new rule gives market participants time to consider whether their pricing is reasonable or not.

CULTURE EXPO A client shows interest in the products displayed at the 7th China Yiwu Cultural Products Trade Fair that opens on April 29 in Yiwu of Zhejiang Province

Cheaper Transactions

China’s stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen on April 30 both said they will cut brokerage fees for A-share transactions by over 25 percent starting June 1 in a bid to alleviate investor burdens.

The brokerage fee at the Shanghai bourse will be lowered from 0.011 percent to 0.0087 percent of the trading volume. The Shenzhen bourse will lower the fee from 0.0122 percent to 0.0087 percent.

China Securities Depository and Clearing Corp. will also lower the registration fee for A-share transactions in the Shanghai bourse from 0.05 percent to 0.0375 percent of the trading volume.

It’s estimated that the cuts in transaction fees will save investors about 3 billion yuan ($477.81 million) annually.

The cuts will markedly lower the transaction cost and investor burden, and thus contribute to the healthy development of the country’s capital market.

Manufacturing Up

China’s purchasing managers index (PMI), a preliminary readout of manufacturing activities, rose in April for the fifth consecutive month.

The PMI climbed to 53.3 percent in April 2012, 0.2 percentage points higher than that of March, according to figures from the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP). A reading of 50 percent demarcates expansion from contraction.

“The continuous rebound of PMI shows that China’s economic growth is stable,” said Cai Jin, Vice Chairman of the CFLP.

Free Trade Talk

China and South Korea on May 2 announced the beginning of negotiations for setting up a free trade area (FTA), according to a press conference attended by Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce, and Park Tae Ho, South Korean Trade Minister.

Chen said the first round of negotiations will be held in May, adding that he hopes the negotiations will be concluded within two years.

Park Tae Ho said the two countries will start by finalizing modalities for trade in goods, services, investment and other areas, which will be an integral part of the agreement.

Both ministers agreed that the level of liberalization for trade in goods and services should go beyond each country’s commitment to the WTO.

Bilateral trade between the two countries has witnessed strong growth during the past two decades, with bilateral trade volume rising 18.6 percent year-on-year to $245.6 billion last year.

China has become South Korea’s largest trading partner, while South Korea ranks as China’s third largest trading partner.

Rubber Acquisition

Sinopec Group, China’s top oil refiner, said it will buy a 25-percent stake in a nitrile butadiene rubber plant belonging to leading Russian petrochemical company Sibur.

Sinopec signed an agreement with Sibur on April 29 to expand the annual output capacity of the rubber plant in Krasnoyarsk to 56,000 tons from the current 42,000 tons.

It said the two firms plan to establish a joint venture at the end of this year.

An oil-resistant synthetic rubber, nitrile butadiene rubber is widely used in aeronautics and astronautics, as well as in the oil, petrochemical and textile industries.

People.cn’s Debut

On April 27, the first trading day ofPeople’s Daily’s website, People.cn, on the Shanghai bourse, its shares surged 73.6 percent to 34.72 yuan ($5.51) per share.

The company started trading at 31.01 yuan ($4.92) per share on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, 55.05 percent higher than its initial public offering (IPO) price of 20 yuan ($3.17).

Education Reformer

Zhu Qingshi, President of South University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTC), has attracted attention of the public again as the university received approval from the Chinese Ministry of Education in April to recruit students.

Zhu, 66, former President of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), was appointed president of SUSTC in 2009.

A graduate from USTC in 1968, Zhu started research work at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1974 and was sent to study abroad in 1979. He returned to China in 1982 and became an academician of the CAS in 1991. In 1994, Zhu started teaching and researching at USTC and became its president in June 1998. After retiring from the post in September 2008, Zhu was chosen as the president of SUSTC because of his efforts and spirit in reforming higher education in China, which is in line with the spirit of the new university.

Zhu holds that universities should recruit students and issue diplomas independently, which could be a direction of the education reform in China.

The IPO, which has attracted a great deal of market attention as it marks the first-ever listing of a state-owned media website, is expected to raise up to 1.38 billion yuan ($219.4 million) through the sale of 69.11 million shares on the Shanghai market.

The company’s IPO prospectus showed the major source of the company’s profits come from advertisements, and information and wireless services.

The company said it plans to use 527 million yuan ($83.65 million) from the IPO proceeds to improve its wireless services, make tech upgrades and bolster its editorial team.

INTO SPACE A Long March-3B rocket carrying two satellites for China’s global navigation and positioning network known as Beidou, or Compass system, blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on April 30

Visitors board a Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental airliner delivered to Lufthansa at the Paine Field airport on May 1 in Everett, Washington. The German carrier is the first commercial airline to deploy the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental, the largest 747 model

FRANCE

The Great Roman Games show on April 28 in the amphitheater in Nimes, southern France. The event is a historical evocation of the games as they could have taken place in A.D.122

A boy holds an Iraqi flag during a march in Baghdad celebrating International Workers’ Day on May 1

IRAQ

Participants get their hot air balloons ready during the Torres Ballooning Festival in Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, on April 28. More than 50 teams from eight countries participated in the annual festival

BRAZIL

Policemen escort a minivan carrying the family members of slain Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in Islamabad on April 26, as they leave for the airport before their departure to Saudi Arabia. Pakistan deported Bin Laden's family, nearly a year after he was killed in a U.S. raid