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News » Society » Guilty pleas over China protest |
- Guilty pleas over China protest
- Carbon monoxide kills 12 in NE China mine
- China's coal conundrum as smog worsens
- Have You Heard…
- NPC cuts back on extravagance
- Woman represents Shanxi for 12th time
- Privacy fears a festival concern
- Xi elected NPC delegate
- Top energy head faces probe for bank fraud
- PLA Navy fleet to conduct open sea exercises
- 'House sister' scandal nets 7, including 4 cops
- Japan urged to create conditions to foster ties
- Debate over restriction on fireworks
- Smog disrupts road, air traffic
- Determined ALS patient gives birth despite risks
- Bounty offered for sex video suspect's photo
- Use caning as deterrent to crime, lawmaker says
- Michelin builds US$1.5bn tire factory in Shenyang
- China to crack down on banks’ Ponzi-style "fund pools"
- Wen Urges Clean-Air Action as China’s Skies Clog Again
| Guilty pleas over China protest Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:50 PM PST Fourteen people plead guilty to "encouraging mass violence" during a high-profile environmental protest in Qidong, Chinese state media say. |
| Carbon monoxide kills 12 in NE China mine Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:10 PM PST CARBON monoxide has been blamed for the Tuesday deaths of 12 workers in a coal mine in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, a local official said today. Three workers entered the Yongsheng mine in Dongning County to pump out water before passing out from carbon monoxide poisoning around 10:30 am Tuesday, said Zhang Fuguang, deputy head of the county government. Zhang said an initial investigation showed that a dense buildup of carbon monoxide in the mine was caused by self-igniting coal in an old mine located adjacent to the Yongsheng mine. The mine's managers organized volunteer rescue efforts to locate the workers, but the rescuers were also poisoned, as they had no equipment to detect the carbon monoxide. More than 30 professional rescuers arrived Tuesday afternoon and pulled 20 people out of the mine, including the trapped workers. Twelve of the people, including the head of the mine, died despite medical treatment. The other eight are being treated at local hospitals, where they are in stable condition. |
| China's coal conundrum as smog worsens Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:41 PM PST The BBC's Martin Patience visits China's "coal capital", Datong, amid growing debate over the pollution choking many cities. |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:38 AM PST Have You Heard…   |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:36 AM PST Flowers, banquets, gifts, welcoming ceremonies and more importantly, useless long-winded speeches will all be a thing of the past as China's top legislature laid out strict instructions for its annual session next month. Xi Jinping has made cutting back on extravagance and waste a key theme of his first few weeks in office since becoming Party chief in November, seeking to assuage anger at corruption. The first annual session of the 12th NPC will start on March 5, during which top state leaders, including the country's president, will be elected. "Deputies will be encouraged to focus on key issues and avoid empty talk," the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress said in a statement. "There will be no flowers in deputies' hotel rooms and no welcoming ceremonies at the airport or railway stations," it added. "All deputies will eat at buffets without expensive food or alcohol, while extravagant galas, gifts and performances will not be arranged," the statement said. Unpopular traffic controls, which often include shutting down busy main roads and worsening already terrible traffic in the capital city, will also be kept to a minimum, according to the statement. Xi has already told officials to end their normal practice of giving stultifying speeches and pre-arranging fawning welcomes from local people and banished alcohol from military functions. Li Jianguo, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, is also pushing for improved working style during the session, the statement said. Li made the remarks after Xi called for the return to the fine tradition of "being diligent and thrifty." The NPC Standing Committee statement said expenditures will be tightened for the session. NPC deputies will be encouraged to focus on key issues and avoid empty talk, while the media will be encouraged to report more on deputies from grassroots areas. The number of session staffers will also be strictly controlled, the statement said. |
| Woman represents Shanxi for 12th time Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:36 AM PST SHEN Jilan, an 84-year-old villager in north China's Shanxi Province, was elected deputy to China's parliament for the 12th time yesterday. She and 69 other delegates were chosen at the first session of the 12th Shanxi Provincial People's Congress. Shen has a wealth of political experience from six decades. After holding her status as a national model worker from 1952 to 1996, she has now become the only person in China to be consecutively elected 12 times as a deputy to the NPC. "I will try my very best to do practical things for the people," she said after the session, adding that what she cares about most is building China into a moderately prosperous society and helping more people get rich. At the age of 25, Shen broke a millennia-old Chinese convention in the early 1950s by pushing for equal pay for women, although she found it hard to communicate her concerns to the country's leaders at the time. "My heart just beat like a drum when I sat there," recalled Shen of her early experiences as an NPC deputy. "Imagine, I was just one of the only 147 female deputies in the then 1,200-member Congress. "Everything was fresh to me." Shen met Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1954, fulfilling the biggest dream for Chinese people at that time. Over the years, Shen has put forward many proposals related to agriculture, water conservation and tree planting. |
| Privacy fears a festival concern Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:35 AM PST AS though struggling to get a ticket back home for the Spring Festival holiday was not good enough, young Chinese are increasingly complaining about their probing parents and relatives wanting to know their salary and marital status. The festival, which falls on February 10 this year, marks the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, an annual occasion for family get-togethers and reunions. A recent post on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, listed a string of questions that young Chinese are likely to face when they return home to their families - questions that cover everything, including salary and love life, that many are deriding them as too invasive. Nearly 200,000 people have left comments on the post, revealing their own embarrassing experiences. A woman named Geng Lu cited a litany of questions that she faced during previous visits. "How much did you get for the year-end bonus? Do you have a boyfriend yet? When are you going to get married?" she wrote. "The cross-interrogations freak me out. The thought of being embarrassed makes me hesitant to rush home for the festival," the 24-year-old woman said. Geng is just one of the increasing number of young people who say they feel suffocated by their relatives' overwhelming concern about their private lives. The difficulty young people are having in accepting their relatives' well-intended inquiries can be attributed to the fact that the two generations are growing apart in terms of how they believe the former should live their lives, said Xia Xueluan, a sociology professor at Peking University. For centuries, Chinese parents have believed in marrying off their children at an early age, with expectation too for grandchildren. However, youngsters now are more inclined to set their own timetable regarding marriage and kids, Xia said. Salaries, like marital status, are more a matter of privacy that young people would rather their parents did not pry into. Some of them come up with white lies regarding their salaries and marital status, or even rent a partner! "The essence of the Spring Festival should be family reunions and affection, which should not be overshadowed by materialism," said Zhang Taofu, a journalism professor at Fudan University. |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:35 AM PST PARTY General Secretary Xi Jinping and 58 others were elected deputies to the 12th National People's Congress, or China's legislature, in Shanghai yesterday. Shanghai's Party Secretary Han Zheng and Acting Mayor Yang Xiong were also among those elected. The Standing Committee of the NPC will evaluate their qualifications. |
| Top energy head faces probe for bank fraud Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:35 AM PST China has started criminal investigation into its top energy administrator for fraudulently trying to arrange a bank loan for a businessman after a journalist blew the whistle on the scandal on the Internet. "Relevant departments of the central government have launched a criminal investigation in response to my whistleblowing," Luo Changping, deputy managing editor of Caijing magazine, wrote on his twitter-like Sina Weibo yesterday. In a weibo post on December 6, Luo claimed that Liu Tienan, head of the National Energy Administration, helped to arrange US$200 million in bank loan for businessman Ni Ritao. Ni sought the loan from two Chinese banks, claiming that the money would be used for the acquisition of New Skeena, a Canadian pulp mill - which he had already bought. The attempt to get loan nearly succeeded and Liu's family had reportedly received kickbacks from Ni. The National Energy Administration issued denials on December 6, slamming Luo for "pure slander." But the administration was criticized for being quick to deny the allegations, especially as it targeted an individual and not the agency. The NEA is under the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top planning agency, of which Liu is also a vice director. Luo also alleged that Liu had forged his academic credentials and sent death threats to his mistress after their love went sour when he served in the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo in the late 1990s. Luo said yesterday he had been assisting authorities with the investigation for the past weeks and won't be making any further comments before an official announcement is made. Liu was in Moscow with Vice Premier Wang Qishan for an energy conference when the scandal first broke. He has since carried on with his work, delivering a speech at the annual national energy work conference earlier this month. The National Energy Administration wasn't available for comment yesterday, nor was the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party of China's graft-battling body which is headed by Wang. Liu was appointed director of the NEA at the end of 2010. |
| PLA Navy fleet to conduct open sea exercises Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:33 AM PST A CHINESE People's Liberation Army Navy fleet has set off from a military port in east China's Qingdao City for regular open sea training in the west Pacific, military sources revealed yesterday. The fleet departed on Tuesday morning and comprises three ships - the missile destroyer Qingdao and the missile frigates Yantai and Yancheng - carrying three helicopters, all from the North China Sea Fleet. During the voyage, the fleet is scheduled to conduct multi-program training sessions in an area where China has been carrying out regular patrols, according to the sources. Tian Zhong, the fleet commander, said conducting training in international waters is a normal practice among various navies around the world, as well as part of China's regular efforts to improve the PLA Navy's combat capabilities. The fleet aims to boost its capabilities in carrying out diversified military missions through the open-sea training, according to Tian. The fleet will conduct more than 20 types of exercises, including maritime confrontation, open-sea mobile combat, law enforcement missions and open-sea naval commanding. The training area will include the Yellow, East China and South China seas, the Miyako Strait, the Bashi Channel and in areas east of Taiwan Island. As part of the ongoing open-sea training, the fleet held a four-hour confrontation drill in the Yellow Sea on Tuesday with another PLA Navy fleet set to depart for escort missions in areas off Somalia. The missile destroyer Qingdao and the missile frigates Yantai and Yancheng are all domestically produced ships. The Qingdao, which is among China's second-generation missile destroyers, was commissioned in 1993 and has taken part in more than 50 key missions, including escort missions in the Gulf of Aden. It has a displacement of 4,800 tons. The Yantai was commissioned in 2011 and Yancheng last year. Both have a displacement of 4,050 tons. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'House sister' scandal nets 7, including 4 cops Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:33 AM PST China has detained seven people, including four police officers from three provincial areas, for their roles in a scandal related to a woman who used multiple identities to buy properties. Dubbed the "house sister" by savvy netizens after the scam was uncovered, the woman turned out to be the owner of more than 20 apartments. The arrested will be subject to a criminal investigation for alleged violations, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Public Security yesterday. Police investigation found that Gong Ai'ai, a resident of Shenmu County in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, had at least two identities - Gong Ai'ai and Gong Xianxia - and several hukous, the Chinese household registration record. Gong reportedly owns more than 20 properties worth about 1 billion yuan (US$159 million) in Beijing, some of which were purchased using fake identities. According to an earlier ministry statement, Gong first registered as a resident in Shenmu. Later she registered three identities respectively in two counties in the neighboring Shanxi Province and Beijing between 2004 and 2008. Two police officers in Shanxi Province have been detained for helping Gong obtain fake household registration certificates, local authorities told Xinhua news agency yesterday. Officers Li Youbing and Bai Wenkui are suspected of violating household registration management laws and aiding Gong, a former deputy head of a bank in Shenmu County, Xinhua said. Another officer in Beijing's Fangshan District, surnamed Liu, and a policeman in Shenmu's police department identified only as Zhang were also detained. Two others, an employee and a retired personnel from the Beijing Education Examination Authority, and an executive from a Beijing training company, are also in the dock, the statement said. The ministry said it has launched a special campaign in the identity and hukou administrative system to comb out fake and duplicated identity records. It said 121 police officers were punished for fraud relating to hukou in recent years. The statement said the "house sister" scandal had highlighted loopholes in the household registration system. The certificates are necessary to secure education and medical care, as well as to restrict property purchases. |
| Japan urged to create conditions to foster ties Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:32 AM PST CHINESE Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei yesterday urged Japan to create conditions for the normal development of bilateral relations. Hong said he noted that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had called for a summit between Japan and China to mend bilateral relations hampered by their recent territorial disputes. China attaches importance to developing relations with Japan, Hong said, stressing that the country hopes that Japan will make joint efforts with China to overcome major difficulties to bring bilateral ties back to the track for normal development. The spokesman confirmed that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met with Tomiichi Murayama, former Japanese prime minister and honorary advisor to the Japan-China Friendship Association, and the body's chief, Koichi Kato, in Beijing on Tuesday. |
| Debate over restriction on fireworks Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:32 AM PST Although firecrackers are a significant part of China's biggest annual holiday, the Spring Festival, air pollution concerns have led some to call for limits on their use. Record levels of smog that have shrouded north China in recent weeks have led policy-makers to work on pollution solutions. However, their ideas are aimed more at cutting vehicle emissions and cleaning up heavily polluting factories, leaving netizens to make their own suggestions to cut down on use of firecrackers. Firecrackers are set off during the Spring Festival to create a jubilant atmosphere and ward off evil spirits, as per Chinese mythology. However, they also cause a dense cloud of smoke that has been the subject of complaints for many years. According to figures released by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center, PM2.5 readings exceeded 200 micrograms per cubic meter during last year's Spring Festival, largely due to firecrackers. Readings of PM2.5, or airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, is used to determine air quality. A reading of 200 micrograms per cubic meter means serious pollution. On Sina Weibo, about 40,000 posts yesterday discussed ways to restrict the use of fireworks during the Spring Festival, which begins from February 10 this year. Some 2,000 bloggers have said that they will set off fewer firecrackers this year because of smog concerns. "Xiaojiudeyeye," a native of Qingdao in east China's Shandong Province, said he hopes the city will ban firecrackers during the seven-day holiday. In an online poll conducted by the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, nearly 70 percent of respondents said they will not set off any fireworks. However, others have argued that an arbitrary ban on the Spring Festival tradition will dilute the holiday atmosphere. "Paradise1212" said China needs to shut down factories that pollute the air instead of restraining cultural customs. Another advocated the use of "electronic firecrackers" that can create laser images in the sky similar to fireworks. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Smog disrupts road, air traffic Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:31 AM PST THE smog shrouding north and east China has not only led to health concerns but has disrupted road and air transport as the annual holiday period got under way. Sections of more than 20 expressways in the northern, eastern and central provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Henan were closed for heavy fog yesterday morning, according to the Ministry of Transport. The situation was better than on Tuesday when sections of more than 30 inter-provincial highways in north China were closed for poor visibility. The roads were reopened by noon yesterday. |
| Determined ALS patient gives birth despite risks Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:02 AM PST A WOMAN with Lou Gehrig's disease gave birth to a baby boy yesterday morning at a hospital in Beijing - ending a highly dangerous pregnancy and marking what is believed to be a medical first in China. The baby, born at 35 weeks, is in intensive care at the Aviation General Hospital in Beijing. Although about two weeks premature, the baby's weight was normal at 2.85 kilograms, said hospital president Gao Guolan, who performed a Caesarean section for the new mother, Lu Yuanfang. Lu, 31, has Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal, incurable neuromuscular disease that progresses rapidly. She had to give birth via Caesarean section before 36 weeks of pregnancy in case her own health problems put the fetus at risk. "The baby's birth marks a big success in our clinical research," said Gao. Lu is believed to be the first ALS sufferer to give birth in China. She was sent to the delivery room at 8:30am and the baby was born about an hour later. "Lu has woken up from the general anesthesia. Her condition is normal, but she is under observation." The couple named the baby Luo Guilong, said Lu's husband, Luo Zhongmu. Most health specialists say it is too risky for ALS patients to become pregnant. But Lu, knowing her disease was fatal, wanted to have a child. |
| Bounty offered for sex video suspect's photo Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:01 AM PST A WHISTLEBLOWER is offering a bounty for a clear photo that he says will help confirm the involvement of a senior official believed to be implicated in a sex video scandal in Chongqing, the Beijing Times reported yesterday. Zhu Ruifeng has called on netizens to help and has promised to pay 1,000 yuan (US$160.80) for each photo used to confirm the identity of Sun Lida, an executive of the state-owned Chongqing City Construction and Investment Corp, the newpaper reported. "Since Sun keeps a low profile, I am now searching his pictures by offering rewards on my microblog,'' Zhu said. Zhu said he believes Sun is pictured on one of the seven sex videos that have led to the downfall of 11 high-level officials in Chongqing. Women in the videos lured the men at the bidding of developers, intending to use them for blackmail to secure construction contracts. Zhu said this week that aside from the 11, there are another five officials implicated, though officials have not confirmed it. It wasn't clear yesterday if Sun was among the five. Li Zhiguang, who was deputy manager of the same company where Sun works, was sacked from his post after he was confirmed to be one of the 11 officials who had relations with the women. The scandal broke in November after a video with one official, later confirmed to be Lei Zhengfu, Party chief of Chongqing's Beibei District, went viral online. Zhu told Beijing Times he got six videos from a source within Chongqing public security bureau, and one from Xu Sheqing, a member of the extortion ring who has been arrested. Zhu said on Weibo that Chongqing police wanted to learn the identity of the police insider. He said Chongqing police visited his Beijing home last Sunday night and questioned him for seven hours on Monday. Zhu said he told police he could offer evidence to confirm the 11 received the sexual bribes, but he refused to turn over the videos. He said police rebuffed his offer and threatened him with prosecution if he didn't cooperate. Zhu said he thinks Chongqing officials would secretly dismiss additional officials involved in the case in an attempt to hush up the facts. Zhu said police had destroyed earlier videos. In November 2009, Wang Lijun, Chongqing's former police chief sentenced last year to 15 years in jail, organized a special team to investigate the scandal. However, officials in the videos were not punished and some even received promotion, Zhu said. |
| Use caning as deterrent to crime, lawmaker says Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:00 AM PST A LAWMAKER in Guangdong Province proposed caning as punishment for male criminals in China, which sparked heated discussion on the Internet. Chen Weicai, deputy to the National People's Congress, proposed in a group discussion among lawmakers to introduce caning from Singapore's legal system to beat men convicted of crime on their backsides as a way to reduce crime, Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. Chen said although Chinese laws may give death sentence to criminals committing serious crimes, other punishment is not enough to be a long-term deterrent, according to the newspaper. "Caning male criminals on their backsides can be a deterrent for them," said Chen. The proposal sparked heated discussion among tens of thousands of netizens. On news website ifeng.com, a poll that drew more than 60,000 participants showed 61 percent agreed the punishment is a deterrent and 58 percent supported using it in China because it is already in use elsewhere. About 36 percent said caning is cruel and unnecessary corporal punishment that should be eliminated as an insult to human dignity. "The punishment of caning should not be introduced as it violates the country's legal spirit by physically harming the criminals," a netizen said. Another said "the country's corrupt government officials and child abusers totally deserve such punishment and should be the first batch to suffer it." |
| Michelin builds US$1.5bn tire factory in Shenyang Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:44 AM PST  Source: Want China Times French tire manufacturing giant Michelin is shifting its focus to the high-end and replacement tire segments of China's tire market with a new US$1.5 billion production base in the northeast of the country, reports Shanghai's First Financial Daily. The company's production bases in Shanghai and Shenyang currently produce around 80 million tires a year. When the new Shenyang factory becomes fully operational by 2015, it is expected to raise Michelin's total tire production in China to nearly 200 million a year, meaning that at least 60% of the company's products will be targeted at the high-end market. Other international tire companies in China are also moving from manufacturing generic tires to the narrower and more specific high-performance market as Chinese consumers grow more knowledgeable about how tires affect the performance of their vehicles. Last year, South Korea's Kumho Tire announced it would be entering the high-end tire market in China with the aim of securing a 15% market share. Italy's Pirelli Tires, which remains focused on China's high-end tire market, has already invested US$400 million in China and will inject another US$200 million within the next two years to boost its production capacity. China's car market is slowing down but there are still certain segments with room for growth, according to Philippe Verneuil, president of Michelin China. There is still very strong demand for all-round high-performance tires that save energy and provide safety, comfort and durability, he added. China produced approximately 483 million tires last year, an increase of 5%-7% from the year before. The annual global tire growth rate has remained steady at around 4%, though the high-end segment of the market has enjoyed higher growth at 9%-10% per year. Experts predict that between 2011 and 2015 the annual global growth rate for high-end cars will be 4.7%, while rate for the Asia Pacific region will be significantly higher at 19.1%. Similarly, global demand for high-end tires is expected to grow annually by 9.6% compared to 17% in the Asia-Pacific during the same period. Michelin believes that the number of cars in China could double in as little as five years, with the replacement tire market growing just as fast, if not faster. Based on this view, Michelin's strategy for China in the foreseeable future is to produce 30% of its tires for new vehicles and 70% for the replacement tire industry.   |
| China to crack down on banks’ Ponzi-style "fund pools" Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:47 AM PST  Source: Reuters (Reuters) – China's banking regulator will strengthen regulation of banks that use faulty accounting practices to disguise losses on the high-yield investment products that are increasingly replacing traditional deposits as banks' key sources of funding. This practice prevents banks from admitting losses, or possibly even learning about them internally, because inflows from the sale of new products can be used to deliver the promised returns on previously issued products. The swift rise of WMPs in recent years is generally positive for China's financial system, said Yan Qingmin, assistant to the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC). Yan's remarks from an industry forum on Tuesday were posted on the commission's website. "The banking industry's wealth management business has channeled funds that might otherwise flow into high-interest underground loans, illegal fundraising, and commodity speculation and has upheld financial stability," Yan said. But he said CBRC would remain vigilant against fund pools and other risks. "Individual banks have problems such as insufficient disclosures, inadequate risk warnings, non-standard sales practices, and improper 'asset pool' wealth management business, which has blurred risk awareness," he said. Total WMPs outstanding reached 7.4 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion) by late January, up from 7.1 trillion yuan at the end of 2012 and only 500 billion yuan in 2007, the director of CBRC's innovative regulation department, Wang Yanxiu, said at the forum, China Business News reported on Wednesday. The end-2012 total amounts to 7.3 percent of total bank deposits at that time. The estimates do not include WMPs issued by trust companies. The rise of WMPs has been fueled by Chinese depositors' hunger for yields above the central bank's benchmark deposit rate, currently set at 3.0 percent for one year. WMPs, which are not subject to the cap on traditional bank deposit rates, are typically backed by money-market instruments, bonds, corporate bills, or high-interest loans to risky borrowers such as real-estate developers and local governments. WMPs that carry bank guarantees typically promise interest rates between three and five percent, while non-guaranteed products sometimes promise 8 percent or higher. But regulators and bankers themselves have expressed concern about the lack of transparency about the underlying assets of WMPs. In a widely-noted opinion column published late last year, Bank of China chairman Xiao Gang called for increased regulation of shadow banking and highlighted the risk of the asset pool model. "When faced with a liquidity problem, a simple way to avoid the problem could be through using new issuance of WMPs to repay maturing products. To some extent, this is fundamentally a Ponzi scheme," Xiao wrote. ($1 = 6.2243 Chinese yuan)   |
| Wen Urges Clean-Air Action as China’s Skies Clog Again Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:52 AM PST  Source: Wall Street Journal By Aaron Back and Josh Chin BEIJING—Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called Tuesday for action to alleviate pollution, representing the highest-level acknowledgment to date of hazardous air-quality levels across much of China in recent weeks. "Recent smoggy weather is affecting people's production and their health," Mr. Wen said during a meeting with industry leaders and other private citizens, according to a statement posted on the central government's website. "We should take certain and effective measures to accelerate industrial restructuring, and push forward energy conservation and emissions reduction," Mr. Wen said. His call to address the issue also was broadcast on China's nationally televised evening-news program on Tuesday. Mr. Wen's comments follow a similar call two weeks ago from Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who is widely expected to succeed Mr. Wen as premier in March. "We should strengthen efforts to enforce environmental protection laws and remind people to protect themselves," Mr. Li said, according to state-run Xinhua news agency. The comments came on the third straight day of gray, choked skies over Beijing. Levels of fine particulate pollution, known as PM2.5, have been at "hazardous" levels in the city since early Sunday morning, according to pollution monitors at the U.S. Embassy in eastern Beijing. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection said the smog was part of a cloud covering much of eastern and central China with an area totaling 1.3 million square kilometers, or more than three times the size of California.  Tuesday's air-pollution levels marked the fourth bout of heavy smog to hit the region this month. Two weeks ago the city of Beijing for the first time activated a new plan restricting construction and industrial activity, curbing vehicle use by government officials and ordering schools to limit outside activity. The move was prompted when levels of PM2.5 hit more than 25 times the top recommended standard in the U.S. Beijing has since said it plans to tighten vehicle emissions standards, among other measures. The pollution levels have spurred critical coverage in China's normally docile state-run media, with TV news broadcasts showing pollution so intense it limits visibility to a few meters in some places. Xinhua on Tuesday reported that a pediatric hospital in downtown Beijing has treated a record 9,000 children this month, mostly for flu, pneumonia, tracheitis, bronchitis and asthma. In one incident two weeks ago covered by state-run media, low visibility conditions in the eastern province of Zhejiang prevented locals from noticing that a furniture factory had been on fire for four hours. The issue puts China's new leaders—including Mr. Li and Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to succeed Hu Jintao as president in March—in a tight spot. Surveys and conversation on China's vibrant social-networking services show increased public concerns over pollution. Mr. Xi noted the issue in a national address in November when he was named the Chinese Communist Party's new top leader. At the same time, Chinese leaders are leery of making moves that could hinder economic growth, and any attempt to impose meaningful restrictions on polluters would face opposition from powerful state-owned enterprises and local governments that depend on them for employment and revenue. In one sign of public dissatisfaction, Chinese real-estate mogul Pan Shiyi on Tuesday used his widely read account on Sina Corp.'s Weibo microblogging service to call for action from the National People's Congress. The body is China's legislature, though in practice it rubber-stamps the decisions made by senior Communist Party leaders. "Controlling air pollution requires the participation of every citizen. Most important is implementing laws," wrote Mr. Pan, himself a member of the NPC. "I will use my position as an NPC delegate to submit the results of this vote to the NPC and the government." Mr. Pan also held a vote on his account on the popularity of such a move. The unscientific poll showed nearly 32,000 microbloggers said they agreed, while about 250 said they were opposed and just over 120 said they weren't sure. Still, some questioned whether the law would have an impact in a country where enforcement is often lax. "Can you get a law passed? Once it's passed, can you enforce it? Will there be supervision?" one Sina Weibo user wrote in response to Mr. Pan's poll.   |
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