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News » Society » Snow havoc hits road, air travel |
- Snow havoc hits road, air travel
- Snow in northern China has forced more than 100 flights to be canceled and dozens of highways to be closed.
- Cops rescue staff in factory siege over fines
- Privacy rules putting paid to private eyes
- Lanterns fly from low to high
- Mainland treasures for Taiwan exhibition
- Poor man kept alive by own dialysis invention
- Beijing to release inequality index
- Evidence may clear inmates jailed 16 years
- China opposes US comments about Diaoyu Islands
- Have You Heard…
- BlackRock bets on China
- Burma attack breaks Kachin truce near China border
- Japan PM Takes Careful Approach on China
- China plans emergency measures to control Beijing air pollution
- 2 dead, 3 injured in Guangxi road accident
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| Privacy rules putting paid to private eyes Posted: 20 Jan 2013 09:20 AM PST PRIVATE detective agencies, once members of a booming industry, are on the verge of collapse after China passed new rules that outlawed the ways they obtained information. Many agencies have closed down after police launched a nationwide campaign against trading in personal information in December last year. Police said that they had arrested 89 private detectives in Hubei Province during raids last Monday, and 74 in recent raids in Chongqing. The detectives are accused of illegally obtaining or providing personal information after lawmakers passed new rules on December 28 to tighten online security and protect Internet users' privacy. According to the rules, the country should protect digital information that could be used to determine the identity of a user or that concerns a user's privacy. The rules ban organizations and individuals from illegally obtaining personal information, as well as prohibiting them from selling or providing the information to others. Violations can lead to confiscation of illegal gains, the loss of licenses and website closures. In Shanghai, many agencies could not be reached on the phone numbers provided online while others announced that they had quit the business. A Shanghai Daily reporter posing as a client called several companies, asking them to check his father's bank account details, but most said they could not. "It's not that we cannot get the information for you, but we dare not do that at this time point," said an official surnamed Xu with Shanghai Anbang Investigation Co. A manager surnamed Chen with 007 Private Detective Co said it could do the job for a higher fee, about 5,000 yuan compared to the 2,000 yuan stated on its online price list. But Chen said they could only track accounts from several specific banks as some sources had quit the business. Last March, Shanghai Daily reported an increase in the number of detective agencies in the city offering "mistress-hunting" services for suspicious wives or husbands. Those agencies were registered as consulting companies and due to the absence of laws to regulate them at that time, they traded in personal information. An insider told the Wuhan Evening News that detective agencies were collapsing because police had cracked down on their information sources. The man, surnamed Hu, told the newspaper the detectives had an online chat group where they could ask for anyone's private information and where sellers would state price. "Those sellers are usually workers in the industries of telecom, real estate, banking or even government administrations. Some are even senior officials who can provide more detailed information," said Hu. He said police had cracked down on the chat group and arrested some of the information sellers, which had caused the detection business to crash. |
| Posted: 20 Jan 2013 09:12 AM PST People fly sky lanterns, also known as Kongming lanterns, at the Ayding Lake area in the Turpan basin in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to celebrate the upcoming Spring Festival, which falls on February 10. The dry lakebed is about 155 meters below sea level, which makes it the world's second lowest point after the Dead Sea. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Mainland treasures for Taiwan exhibition Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST CHINA'S mainland has agreed to lend exhibits for a major art exhibition in Taipei, the head of Taiwan's top museum said yesterday. Feng Ming-chu, director of Taipei's Palace Museum, is flying to Beijing today, the first such trip since 2009 when the chiefs of the museum and of Beijing's Palace Museum made landmark exchange visits. Feng will meet her mainland counterpart Shan Jixiang to discuss the loan of more than 30 artifacts from the museum, also known as the Forbidden City, for the October exhibition in Taipei. "The Palace Museum in Beijing has agreed to our proposal for loaning artifacts," she said. The exhibition, which will also include items from the Taipei museum, features the artistic tastes of Qianlong (1735-1796), an emperor in China's final Qing Dynasty. "Hopefully the cooperation between the two museums will be further enhanced through the visit, following the 2009 ice-breaking exchange of visits by the curators of the two sides," Feng said. The 2009 visits resulted in the loan of 37 works from the Beijing museum to the Taipei museum later that year. It was the first joint exhibition by the two museums, highlighting warming relations between the mainland and Taiwan. But the Taipei museum still has no plans to lend artifacts which were originally shipped from the mainland, fearing they would not be returned, Feng said. The Taipei museum boasts more than 655,000 Chinese artifacts spanning 7,000 years from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. They were removed from the Beijing museum in the 1930s by the then Nationalist government to prevent them falling into the hands of invading Japanese troops. The collection was transported to Taiwan by the Nationalists more than 60 years ago after they were defeated by communist forces and fled the mainland. Ties have improved markedly since 2008 when Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan's Kuomintang party came to power on a platform of strengthening trade and tourism links. He was re-elected last year for a second four-year term.
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| Poor man kept alive by own dialysis invention Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST THREE times a week, Hu Songwen sits on a small toilet in his home in a rural east China town and fires up his homemade dialysis machine. Hu, who has had kidney disease requiring dialysis for 20 years, built his own dialysis machine with medical equipment, such as a blood pump and plastic tubing. The crude device has sustained his life since he stopped going to the hospital 13 years ago. The machine removes waste products from his blood that aren't removed by his kidneys. Hu was a college junior when he was diagnosed in 1993. After 6 years of treatment, hefty hospital bills depleted his family's savings. "The cost for each home treatment is only 60 yuan (US$9.60), which is 12 percent of the hospital charge for dialysis," Hu said. He mixes potassium chloride, sodium chloride and sodium hydrogen carbonate into purified water to make dialysis fluid before undergoing the procedure. The single man lives with his 81-year-old mother in Qutang township of Jiangsu Province. Hu kept his home treatments a secret until July of last year, when he put a video of his procedure on the Internet. The footage became an online sensation after Hu's story was reported by the Southern Weekly last week. Hu said the video was not intended to showcase his invention, but to get more suitable treatment. Hu said his machine can be dangerous. Two of his friends died after building and using similar machines. Hu made the video after learning a nationwide rural cooperative medical insurance and a medical aid system are covering kidney disease. The local government included him in October and the cost of each treatment should be 60 yuan, the same as his home treatment. Yet he is reluctant to switch, saying the nearest hospital is distant and very crowded.
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| Beijing to release inequality index Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST BEIJING is the first city in China that plans to release its own income inequality index, a figure that for the nation exceeds the warning level set by the United Nations. The city plans to release the figure, called a Gini coefficient, for 2012, a National Bureau of Statistics Beijing survey branch spokesman said yesterday. Gini coefficient, or Gini index, uses a figure of 0 to represent equality and 1 inequality. Xing Zhihong, the Beijing spokesman, said that China's statistics departments used to publish two indexes - the per capita disposable income of urban residents and the per capita net income of rural residents - to reflect income distribution. "However, we will act according to the schedule of relevant departments and carry out a unified investigation into the income of both urban and rural residents, and publish the Gini number in a timely manner," Xing said. According to original indexes, in 2012, per capita disposable income of urban residents in Beijing was 36,469 yuan (US$5,864). Per capita net income of rural residents was 16,476 yuan (US$2,650). On Friday, China released the national index for 2012, saying that the Gini coefficient reached 0.474, higher than the warning level of 0.4 set by the United Nations. The national index has retreated gradually since peaking at 0.491 in 2008, dropping to 0.49 in 2009, 0.481 in 2010 and 0.477 in 2011. "The statistics highlight the urgency for our country to speed up income distribution reforms to narrow the gap," Ma Jiantang, NBS director, said.
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| Evidence may clear inmates jailed 16 years Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST FIVE people who have been in prison for 16 years will have their convictions reviewed in two robbery cases - one of which resulted in a death - after the discovery of new evidence. The five inmates are serving sentences of life or death with reprieve in the robberies. A taxi driver was killed in 1995 in one of the cases. The Zhejiang Province Higher People's Court said on its website on Saturday that five may have been wrongly convicted, and "the wrongs must be corrected." Four people - Chen Jianyang, Tian Weidong, Wang Jianping and Zhu Youping - were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and the fifth, Tian Xiaoping, was jailed for life under a ruling of the higher court on December 29, 1997. While the court didn't describe the new evidence, a law school deputy dean posted on Weibo that a bloody fingerprint found on the scene in 1995 has been matched to a sixth person who has been caught by police. The information posted on Saturday by He Bing, deputy dean of the Law School of China University of Political Science and Law, sparked heated discussion online and national attention. The court, which has not confirmed He's account, said it decided on January 4 to reinvestigate the cases. It has organized a panel of judges to review the case files, investigate evidence and question the five inmates again. The result will be made public in a timely fashion, the court said. The robbery of the taxi driver occurred in the Xiaoshan area of Hangzhou, capital city of eastern Zhejiang Province. The robberies happened on March 20 and August 12 of 1995. The court said the new clue was related to the robbery case on March 20, 1995. Also, two of them were convicted of stealing properties worth 1,600 yuan (US$257) the same year. Many Internet users said if it turns out the five were wrongly imprisoned, it would be a serious case of injustice. "Who is to pay for the 16 years they were treated unjustly and unfairly," said Chen Yi, a Shanghai college student. |
| China opposes US comments about Diaoyu Islands Posted: 20 Jan 2013 02:04 AM PST China is firmly opposed to comments made by the United States about the Diaoyu Islands, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said today. |
| Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:27 AM PST Have You Heard…   |
| Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:32 AM PST
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is to boost its presence on the ground in China and invest heavily in the country to meet the demands of "discerning" investors who desire more than "beta" exposure to Chinese markets. "Investors are increasingly discerning about how they think about emerging markets, particularly in China and Asia," Mark McCombe, BlackRock's head of Asia, told FTfm. "They want to know they are dealing with a firm that is not simply going to chase beta. Everyone is looking at Asia in a different way." Mr McCombe says that bringing Ms Wang on board as a fixer is critical to developing its business in the country. "It is so important to have a very senior executive to drive our China strategy. The regulatory agenda at the moment in China is very reform-orientated. It offers opportunities that don't come along very often," he said. "There are many parts involved in doing business in China and it is complicated." BlackRock's iShares FTSE A50 China fund, which tracks the country's A-share market, boasts as much as $7.6bn in assets; its actively managed China fund has $1.2bn and its renminbi bond fund $110m. Its new quantitative equity fund offering exclusive exposure to China, which is managed in San Francisco, has also raised its first $100m through the Chinese government's quota system. The institutional and retail money flowing into these funds is split almost evenly between Asian and non-Asian investors, with more money coming recently from Swiss private banks, the British, Italians and Latin Americans, said Mr McCombe. BlackRock also has set up strategic partnerships with Bank of China Investment Management, Citi and HSBC, to work on selling funds within the country. In recent months, Chinese regulators have undertaken a series of initiatives, including making investment quotas more available to foreign investors and urging listed companies to pay out bigger dividends to shareholders.   |
| Burma attack breaks Kachin truce near China border Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:36 AM PST
The Burmese army has launched a fresh attack on rebel Kachin forces in the north of the country, breaking a short-lived government ceasefire. Hundreds of Burmese troops could be seen crawling through the trees up the slopes, says the BBC's Jonathan Head. Kachin fighters are fighting for greater autonomy in Burma. The base was hit by sustained mortar and artillery fire, our correspondent, who is in the area, says. If the base falls, there are few defences left to prevent the fall of Laiza, should the Burmese military decide to take it, he adds, and a Burmese military advance would certainly force the flight of many thousands of civilians. Greater autonomy The government announced a ceasefire on Friday, but the Kachin Independence Army claimed that attacks continued regardless. The Kachin Independence Army is the only major ethnic rebel group not to have agreed a long-standing ceasefire with the government.
Burma's new military-backed civilian government has pledged to resolve conflicts in border areas with ethnic minority groups. But the Burmese army began a new offensive last month, after a 17-year truce with the rebels ended in mid-2011. The latest fighting flared after the Kachin rebels refused to stop attacking Burmese army convoys delivering supplies to a base near Laiza. On Sunday the Burmese president Thein Sein repeated his call for dialogue with rebels to resolve the long-running conflict.   |
| Japan PM Takes Careful Approach on China Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:41 AM PST
TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed during a three-nation tour of Southeast Asia last week that while he seeks a more assertive Japanese presence in the region, he isn't about to provoke China or risk worsening already strained relations between Tokyo and Beijing. The trip, cut short Friday by the crisis in Algeria where Japanese were among those killed, took him to a region that, like Japan, has territorial disputes with China. Tokyo is facing intensifying pressure from Beijing over islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, while Southeast Asian nations are increasingly concerned about China's ambitions in the oil-rich South China Sea, one of the world's most important shipping lanes. "China's rise is definitely a plus, economically, for Japan, but it also needs to act responsibly as a member of the international community," Mr. Abe said Friday following a meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta, where he listed the principles for his new administration's Asia diplomacy. The principles call for expanding "universal values" such as freedom, democracy and human rights, and keeping sea lanes in the region free and open in line with international law. Mr. Abe used the bilateral meetings to enhance economic and strategic ties with his Southeast Asian counterparts in an apparent bid to counter China's increasing clout in the area's sea lanes, pledging increased aid to the nations while stressing Japan's resolve to play a larger role to ensure "peace and stability" in the region. "The trip turned out as expected—forging multilateral partnerships with nations in the region is central for Mr. Abe's strategy in dealing with China's growing maritime presence," said Mineo Nakajima, president of Akita International University. But Mr. Abe was also careful not to increase tension with China. During his trip he stressed that relations between the two nations remain among Japan's "most important bilateral ties" and that any issues will be dealt with "calmly." His efforts to ease the friction also appeared evident when Japanese media on Saturday reported that he had asked a political ally to tell Chinese leaders he is seeking a bilateral summit to improve diplomatic ties. Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of junior coalition party New Komeito, is scheduled to visit China from Tuesday with Mr. Abe's message. Mr. Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party swept to power last month on a nationalist platform calling for beefing up military spending and revising the nation's pacifist constitution. Those policies have alarmed some of Japan's neighbors, such as China and South Korea, which hold bitter memories of Japan's past militarism and wartime aggression. Beijing was quick to react to Mr. Abe's calls to expand "universal values," with the People's Daily saying in a commentary Saturday that "under the mask of 'values,'" Mr. Abe's policies attempt to pull in Southeast Asian countries and "encircle China." "Sadly, this whimsical idea has no market in Southeast Asia," it said. After taking office last month, Mr. Abe had intended to go first to Washington to boost the security alliance with Japan's main ally. But with the trip postponed because of President Barack Obama's busy schedule, he chose Southeast Asia instead as Japan looks to the region for new sources of growth for its own stagnant economy, and as an alternative to investment in China, where anti-Japanese riots triggered by the territorial row have damaged trade. "Energizing Japan's regional diplomacy will be welcomed here in Washington as many have felt Tokyo has been a quieter partner of late because of its domestic challenges," said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.   |
| China plans emergency measures to control Beijing air pollution Posted: 20 Jan 2013 08:43 AM PST
(Reuters) – Beijing is to unveil unprecedented new rules governing how China's capital reacts to hazardous air pollution, the official Xinhua news agency said, as deteriorating air quality threatens to become a rallying point for wider political dissatisfaction. Air quality in Beijing, on many days degrees of magnitude below minimum international health standards for breathability, is of increasing concern to China's leadership because it plays into popular resentment over political privilege and rising inequality in the world's second-largest economy. Domestic media have run stories describing the expensive air purifiers government officials enjoy in their homes and offices, alongside reports of special organic farms so cadres need not risk suffering from recurring food safety scandals. Smog blanketed most of the city from late Friday, prompting the government to warn people to reduce outdoor activities. On Saturday, an index measuring PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), rose as high as 400 in some parts in the city. A level above 300 is considered hazardous, while the World Health Organization recommends a daily level of no more than 20. The reading was still lower than last weekend, when it hit a staggering 755. Lung cancer rates in the city have shot upward by 60 percent in the last decade, according to a report by the state-run China Daily in 2011, even as smoking rates have flattened out. The pollution has also deterred foreigners from living and working in "Greyjing". Now it appears that the government has adopted a more transparent approach to addressing the problem than in the past. Officials once tried to spin the city's poor air quality by not including PM2.5 readings in reports and referring to smog as "fog" in weather reports. One official accused the U.S. embassy in Beijing of meddling in China's internal affairs for publishing its own PM2.5 readings online. But this time around, state media appears to have been cleared to cover pollution as a major problem. Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who is expected to take over as premier in March, said earlier this week that tackling pollution would be a long-term process.   |
| 2 dead, 3 injured in Guangxi road accident Posted: 19 Jan 2013 08:33 PM PST TWO people were killed and another three injured in a seven-vehicle pileup this morning in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, local police said. At about 4:30am, a truck carrying bananas turned over on a section of Guangkun (Guangzhou-Kunming) Expressway in Baise City in Guangxi and caused a pileup on the road, killing two. Medical workers have been dispatched to the site to rescue the injured, according to local traffic police. The accident caused a traffic jam on the section, and police has sent a crane to move away the truck. The cause of the accident is under further investigation. |
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