[img]http://www.people.com.cnhttp://english.peopledaily.com.cn/mediafile/pic/20110516/51/10385623438931359491.jpg[/img]
A construction site of affordable apartments is seen in Changsha, central China\’s Hunan Province, March 18, 2011. (Xinhua/Long Hongtao)

The Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has sent inspectors to cities across the country to push local governments to speed up construction of affordable homes for middle- and low-income groups.

At a mobilization meeting over the weekend on the inspection work, Qi Ji, Vice Minister of MOHURD, said the inspection work is aimed to ensure this year\’s target of building 10 million affordable housing units would be met.

\”There\’s an imbalance in the speed of affordable housing construction across different regions and insufficient funding also remains a major problem,\” Qi said, adding the central government won\’t stop its tightening measures on the runaway property market.

He said that local governments could further improve their support for public rental housing.

According to MOHURD, inspectors will carry out field investigations and examine information local governments have made public on the development of affordable housing projects.

The inspections also aim to check whether local governments\’ annual plans to build affordable homes this year have been actioned.

The MOHURD did not say what kind of punishment local governments would face if they fail to carry out their affordable housing plans.

To rein in the real estate market, the Chinese central government has adopted a series of tightening measures to guard against speculation, including higher down payments and the implementation of trial property taxes in the cities of Shanghai and Chongqing.

The Chinese central government also has vowed to build 36 million affordable housing units for low-income families over the next five years to stabilize home prices.

The Chinese central government has earmarked 103 billion yuan (15.8 billion U.S. dollars) for subsidies to support the construction of affordable homes by local governments.

Earlier in March, Qi said it would take 1.3 trillion yuan to 1.4 trillion yuan to build 10 million affordable housing units this year. About 800 billion yuan will have to be raised from private sector and individuals who apply for the affordable housing units, while the rest of funds must be raised by governments at all levels.

[i]Source:Xinhua[/i]

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The quality of the nation\’s fresh milk has improved and testing shows it is now free from melamine, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry, which oversees the production and collection of fresh milk, is responsible for ensuring its safety.

In an online notice issued by the ministry during the weekend, it said random tests conducted last year and during the first part of this year showed it was melamine-free and that quality was good. The ministry said it will carry out another special campaign soon to continue to guard against the use of the illegal additive.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that people have, at times, added to watered-down milk to make it appear to have a normal protein count.

The notice said more than 20,000 batches of fresh milk were tested and all passed the scrutiny during spot checks throughout 2010 and in the first quarter of this year.

\”It shows the safety of fresh milk has significantly improved throughout the country,\” the ministry said.

During the past year, the ministry has taken steps to close sub-standard milk collection stations, which are partly blamed for the melamine scandal in 2008. It said it closed 6,890 milk collection stations nationwide during the campaign.

The 13,503 registered stations that remain and the 7,980 vehicles used to transport fresh milk are all now being operated under supervision.

The ministry has also trained some 5,000 dairy farmers and technicians on the technology used in the modern milk industry and explained the country\’s policies concerning dairy products.

However, experts questioned the thoroughness of the oversight.

\”The government mainly cracks down on dairy farmers and milk collectors but pays little attention to milk\’s circulation, which involves distributors,\” Wang Dingmian, former vice-chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Dairy Association, told China Daily on Sunday.

Wang said milk distributors are in a state of anarchy and claimed no department has been trying to fill that regulatory gap.

Food safety experts also said the authority should make changes in the way it carries out spot checks so tainted milk does not slip through the loopholes.

\”A good sample cannot ensure all the other products from the same batch are also good,\” said Sang Liwei, a food-safety lawyer in Beijing and a representative of the Global Food Safety Forum, a non-governmental organization.

Wang said, most of the time, dairy farms and businesses \”make preparations for\” the inspections. He claimed farms and businesses are warned by the local authorities to \”be prepared\” before the food safety commission swoops to conduct a spot check.

\”The watchdog cannot see the real situation if the shady food processors are hidden and the safety loopholes still exist,\” Wang said.

Nationwide outrage about the safety of milk erupted in 2008 when melamine-tainted baby formula sickened about 300,000 infants and took the lives of six children who had kidney stones and other kidney damage.

Following the scandal, the government took steps to crack down on illegal practices in the dairy industry but reports about unsafe milk continue to surface from time to time.

Several dairy farms in Sanmen county, Zhejiang province, were recently found to have been adding illegal additives and using syringe bottles that had been discarded by hospitals as milk containers, according to the Oriental Morning Post on Sunday.

Earlier, police in Chongqing municipality confiscated 26,000 kilograms of milk powder that was tainted with melamine and that had been produced before 2009.

[i]Source: China Daily[/i]

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The ticket price of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train that is scheduled to go into commercial service next month is estimated to be twice as much as the average China Railway High-speed (CRH) train, said experts.

Experts pointed that there is no doubt that ordinary trains will make way for high-speed trains because the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will use 90 pairs of bullet trains after it goes into service.

Passengers who frequently travel back and forth between Beijing and Shanghai may wonder if passengers will have no choice but to buy the costly high-speed train tickets.

[b]High-speed may cost 640 yuan, take five hours; normally 179 yuan, 14 hours[/b]

\”A precise ticket price is still under calculation. We will consider passenger\’s financial capacity as well as operation cost,\” said an official of Ministry of Railways.

He added, the designed operating speed of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is 380 kilometers per hour, but in order to keep security and reduce the ticket price, trains on the line will run at two speeds, 300 kilometers per hour and 250 kilometers per hour.

According to the former regulation on ticket price of high-speed trains, the pricing standard of a second-class seat is 0.484 yuan per kilometer. Hence, the second-class seat price of the 1,318-kilometer-long Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway will be 640 yuan or so. The through travel time of the train will be within five hours.

\”Although the high-speed train is nice, the cost performance is too low. The one-way ticket price of the high-speed train is equal to a round-trip ticket price of a CRH train. In that case, I might as well go by plane,\” said a passenger named Lu Xiaodong who works in Beijing and lives in Shanghai.

If the ticket price of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train is more than 600 yuan, she will choose the CRH train. Moreover, if the time is not tight, she prefers to choose the ordinary train with a ticket price of 179 yuan, said Ms Ning who studies in Beijing and lives in Shanghai.

[b]Will ordinary trains make way for high-speed trains?[/b]

What worries experts most is the question of whether the ordinary trains will be taken off in order to make way for high-speed trains between Beijing and Shanghai.

A spokesman of Ministry of Railways explained that 135 ordinary trains will be retained on the existing Beijing-Shanghai rail line after the 90 pairs of bullet trains are put into operation on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.

They will consequentially reduce the schedules of ordinary trains due to the operation of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed trains. Although the reduction of the ordinary trains is not too much, the low-speed rail lines will be adjusted at first. Hence, trains with low ticket prices must be decreased for passengers, said Xu Fengxian, a senior researcher of Institute of Industrial Economics of China Academy of Social Science.

[i]By Ye Xin, People\’s Daily Online[/i]

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Golf, considered to be a luxury sport played by China\’s new rich, is becoming more and more popular throughout the country.

And along with the boom in the business has come a large number of golf courses built in violation of the law.

One country club brought into question lies adjacent to the Stone Forest world heritage site in the Shilin Yi autonomous county, in Southwest China\’s Yunnan province. China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Saturday that the club has been accused of illegally using a large area of land for the construction of golf courses.

The club\’s 4,050 hectares contain three beautifully manicured golf courses in the midst of one of the country\’s most famous karst landscapes. All of it was built after the government had put a halt to the construction of golf courses seven years ago, the report said.

\”We sent a stop-work order to the developers to urge them to stop the project in August 2010,\” Li Yibo, deputy chief of Shilin\’s bureau of land and resources, was quoted in the report as saying.

\”But the company didn\’t heed us.\”

Wang Xiaojian, deputy general manager of Yuantong Investment Company, which initiated the golf club, had a different view of the matter.

He said the project began in 2008 and had already been completed by the time the stop-work order arrived.

\”We had got an approval from the local government before beginning construction,\” Wang told CCTV.

To Gao Yunhua, deputy director of the Stone Forest\’s tourist zone management committee, the construction of the new golf club was not illegal. It promised, Gao explained, to raise tax revenues and employ more people, according to the report.

In response to the criticism, Duan Mingzong, an official at the county\’s development and reform commission, and Gao were dismissed from their duties and brought under investigation on Sunday, Xinhua News Agency reported.

To protect the country\’s shrinking land resources, the central government imposed a ban in 2004 on the construction of new golf courses. Illegal courses, such as the one in Shilin, have become common ever since.

The number of golf courses in China has more than tripled, going from 170 in 2004 to nearly 600 now, according to statistics from the golf education and research center at Beijing Forestry University.

In Beijing alone, there are more than 170 golf courses and practice courts in operation. At least 70 of them are suspected to be illegally occupying arable lands, according to an earlier report by Southern Weekly.

The report said the construction of golf courses has long been blamed for an excessive occupation of arable land; a standard 18-hole course normally takes up more than 607 hectares. Maintaining the courses is also known to require the use of large amounts of water. Experts said a course containing from 40 to 50 hectares needs at least 3,000 cubic meters of water every day.

Industry insiders said that when most of the new golf courses were built, they were called country clubs, sports parks or greenbelts, and continued to run golf businesses even though they weren\’t licensed to do so.

In response to the increasing demand for places to play golf in, the Ministry of Land and Resources has authorized Hainan province as the only province allowed to build golf courses, helping it pursue its goal of becoming an island resort.

Li Jianqin, director of the law enforcement and supervision department of the Ministry of Land and Resources, warned last year that the existence of plans calling for the construction of golf courses in Hainan does not indicate that other provinces can ignore the ban.

The senior land administrator also pledged previously this year to take tough measures to curb the use of land for illegal purposes, especially for the construction of luxurious villas and golf courses. About 11,000 hectares of arable land were used illegally in 2010.

[i]Source: China Daily[/i]

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A lingering drought in central China\’s Hubei Province has rendered 1,392 reservoirs virtually useless as only dead water remains in them, said the local water authority Monday.

Known as the \”land of a thousand lakes,\” Hubei is suffering from a drought that has lasted for five months.

As of Sunday, water in four medium-sized and 1,388 small-sized reservoirs had dropped below the allowable discharge level for irrigation and other purposes, said Yuan Junguang, director with the reservoir management office of Hubei Provincial Water Resources Department.

One fourth of all small-sized reservoirs in Hubei were unusable with just dead water remaining in them which could only be pumped for use in an emergency, he said.

The water level of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is part of China\’s massive south-to-north water diversion project, was also extremely low, measuring 134.77 meters on Saturday, 4.23 meters below its dead water level.

Also as of Saturday, the drought had left about 315,000 people and 97,300 livestock in the province short of drinking water. About 12.45 million mu (about 830,000 hectares) of farmland have been affected by the drought, according to a survey conducted by the Hubei provincial agricultural department.

[i]Source:Xinhua[/i]

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May 06[/td]
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Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway to launch 10-day trial run[/td]
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May 14[/td]
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The week in pictures[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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2000-year-old wine unearthed in Henan province[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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Scientist: China plans to build lunar research base[/td]
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May 09[/td]
 [/td]
Apple employee, customer reach settlement after Beijing iPad brawl[/td]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
Wenchuan Reconstruction: \’Chinese miracle\’ impresses world[/td]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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Beijing is now in a state of emergency, with per capita water resources at about 100 cubic meters, far less than the international alarm level of 1,000 cubic meters per head. It is reported that this drought, starting from 1999, has been the longest-lasting and most severe since New China was founded.

Yesterday, on the occasion of the National Week of Water Conservation, the Beijing Water Authority published the current water situation and announced it would carry out a series of activities on a theme of \”Improving Water Ecological Environment and Promoting the Use of Recycled Water in Beijing.\”

Facing the shortage of water resources, the authority has taken a variety of measures to encourage residents to use recycled water, such as keeping the current low price of reclaimed water unchanged at one yuan per cubic meter. In addition, the households that use recycled water will be free of water resource and sewage charges.

The authority said that as of now more than 100 residential communities have been using reclaimed water in toilet flushing. New communities with an annual use of 150 tons of water must be equipped with supply and recycling facilities of reclaimed water.

In 2010, the use of reclaimed water reached 680 million cubic meters, accounting for 19 percent of the city\’s water supply, up 11 percentage points compared to that of 2005. By 2015, the total volume of reclaimed water is planned to be 1 billion cubic meters.

[i]By Zheng Qingting, People\’s Daily Online[/i]

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April 23[/td]
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Pictures catch ancient & cultural heritage of a Sichuan town[/td]
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April 28[/td]
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Will China\’s rise lead to the decline of U.S.?[/td]
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April 25[/td]
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Kunming-Singapore High-Speed Railway begins construction[/td]
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April 25[/td]
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Chinese path — a marvel of world\’s economic growth[/td]
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April 23[/td]
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The week in pictures[/td]
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April 26[/td]
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Second excavation to sunken \’Nan\’ao No 1\’ finished[/td]
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April 27[/td]
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Guizhou girl designs tea set for Prince William\’s wedding[/td]
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April 26[/td]
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PLA reserve force Type 07 uniform makes debut in Beijing[/td]
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April 28[/td]
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Old friends eye for new & higher levels of cooperation[/td]
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April 29[/td]
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Shanghai auto show closes[/td]
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An earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale jolted the juncture region of Sichuan and Gansu in west China at 15:05 Beijing Time on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter, with a depth of 15.50 km, was initially determined to be at 32.5 degrees north latitude and 105.5 degrees east longitude.

[i]Source:Xinhua[/i]

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May 12[/td]
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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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China should view livelihood issues from strategic perspective[/td]
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May 11[/td]
 [/td]
Syria will not be another Libya[/td]
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May 06[/td]
 [/td]
Beijing- Shanghai high-speed railway to launch 10-day trial run[/td]
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May 14[/td]
 [/td]
The week in pictures[/td]
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May 11[/td]
 [/td]
2000-year- old wine unearthed in Henan province[/td]
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May 11[/td]
 [/td]
Scientist: China plans to build lunar research base[/td]
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[td][table]
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May 09[/td]
 [/td]
Apple employee, customer reach settlement after Beijing iPad brawl[/td]
[/tr]
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[td][table]
[tr]

May 12[/td]
 [/td]
Wenchuan Reconstruction: \’Chinese miracle\’ impresses world[/td]
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[td][table]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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With the issue of \”Beijing Volunteering Administration (Trial).\” people who engage in volunteer activities in Beijing are required to make a formal registration for identification. Yesterday, an official at the Beijing Social Work Committee said so far there have been more than 1 million volunteers registered in Beijing, among which 49,800 people have unique volunteer ID numbers conferred by the Public Security Department.

[b]Most current volunteers will pass through certification [/b]

This year, most of the rest of the volunteers will pass through the certification and obtain Beijing Volunteer Cards, which is linked to their personal ID numbers.

This identification would bring a variety of advantages to volunteers, such as keeping count of volunteering time and standing as a proof of community service.

[b]Beijing volunteers likely to get offered insurance[/b]

\”Beijing Volunteering Administration (Trial)\” also provides that voluntary organizations or units that receive volunteer service offer personal accident insurance. In addition, it is planned by Beijing Social Work Committee to release information on volunteer activities on the website of \”Beijing Volunteers\’ Forum\” (http://www.bv2008.cn).

[i]By People\’s Daily Online[/i]

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May 12[/td]
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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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China should view livelihood issues from strategic perspective[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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Syria will not be another Libya[/td]
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May 06[/td]
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Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway to launch 10-day trial run[/td]
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May 14[/td]
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The week in pictures[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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2000-year-old wine unearthed in Henan province[/td]
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May 11[/td]
 [/td]
Scientist: China plans to build lunar research base[/td]
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May 09[/td]
 [/td]
Apple employee, customer reach settlement after Beijing iPad brawl[/td]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
Wenchuan Reconstruction: \’Chinese miracle\’ impresses world[/td]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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China\’s Three Gorges Dam, the world\’s largest hydropower project, increased water discharge for a second time Monday to help ease a severe drought in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

The dam in the central city of Yichang accelerated its discharge rate to 9,500 cubic meters per second, about 2,900 cubic meters faster than its inflow speed, according to Zhao Yunfa, an engineer at the dam.

The discharge increase starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m. each day until Wednesday, he said.

The inflow rate fell to 6,600 cubic meters per second at one point on Monday, the lowest rate in 16 years, Zhao said.

The inflow speed in the first ten days of May was only about 60 percent of average levels as the upper reaches received less rainfall since last winter, he said.

With the help of the first discharge increase between May 7 and 10, the dam released a total of 400 million cubic meters of water, one third more than that in normal periods.

The severe drought has reduced the water levels in the middle section of the Yangtze River, China\’s largest, to a near record low.

The water levels in the section between Yichang in Hubei Province and Jiujiang in the eastern province of Jiangxi were 2.5 to 5.6 meters lower than average levels, the Hubei provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters said in a statement Saturday.

The drought has plagued provinces along the river, including Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. It has affected 20.2 million mu (1.35 million hectares) of crops mainly in provinces of Hubei, Hunan and Gansu as of Sunday, the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said in a statement Monday.

During the January-April period, the Yangtze River basin had received 40 percent less rainfall than the average amount over 50 years.

[i]Source: Xinhua[/i]

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May 12[/td]
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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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China should view livelihood issues from strategic perspective[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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Syria will not be another Libya[/td]
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May 06[/td]
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Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway to launch 10-day trial run[/td]
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May 14[/td]
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The week in pictures[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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2000-year-old wine unearthed in Henan province[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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Scientist: China plans to build lunar research base[/td]
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May 09[/td]
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Apple employee, customer reach settlement after Beijing iPad brawl[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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Wenchuan Reconstruction: \’Chinese miracle\’ impresses world[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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The Party\’s top member-managing and discipline-inspecting departments have jointly sent supervisory teams to 14 provinces and autonomous regions to ensure there is no misconduct during the local leadership reshuffles as officials at various levels finish their five-year terms.

The teams, comprising officials from the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection, will supervise, examine and instruct those involved in local elections and leadership reshuffles in the provinces and autonomous regions of Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Henan, Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Tibet and Xinjiang, according to a statement by the Organization Department on Sunday.

Throughout the year, local governments will select new leading officials at the village, township, county, city and province level.

The teams will be available by telephone and the Internet to receive tip-offs.

Misconduct during the selections is not rare on the part of officials at various administrative levels, according to Chinese media reports.

Zhang Bingsheng, the former mayor of Taiyuan, the capital of North China\’s Shanxi province, was removed from his post and reprimanded by the Party for directing his secretary to disrupt voting with text messages in January, the Organization Department said in early April.

Zhang was said to have been unhappy at not having been selected as a candidate for position of deputy governor of Shanxi province.

In Central China\’s Hunan province, a township official surnamed Yan was stripped of his Party membership for bribing five representatives in a bid to get elected as deputy governor of the township in December 2010, according to the statement.

In addition, the central government will introduce new measures this year to enhance the regulation of city-level officials – such as Party secretaries and city mayors – according to the latest issue of Outlook weekly magazine.

The new moves will come in the wake of discussions held by the Party\’s Central Political Bureau in late March about how to reinforce the regulation of city-level leading officials in cities, regions, prefectures and leagues.The changes will add to the central government\’s efforts to better regulate local officials, experts said.

In 2010, the country introduced 20 rules to improve the fostering of Party secretaries of counties that fall under the control of cities.

\”The city level plays a transitional role and is a middle layer in the work of the Party and the country,\” said Ye Duchu, a professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC.

China has a total of 333 cities, regions, prefectures and leagues, said Ye. City-level leaders are usually involved with complicated issues concerning the adjustment, allocation and balance of interests, he added.

[i]Source:China Daily[/i]

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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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Syria will not be another Libya[/td]
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May 06[/td]
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Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway to launch 10-day trial run[/td]
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May 14[/td]
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The week in pictures[/td]
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May 11[/td]
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2000-year-old wine unearthed in Henan province[/td]
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May 11[/td]
 [/td]
Scientist: China plans to build lunar research base[/td]
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May 09[/td]
 [/td]
Apple employee, customer reach settlement after Beijing iPad brawl[/td]
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May 12[/td]
 [/td]
Wenchuan Reconstruction: \’Chinese miracle\’ impresses world[/td]
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May 12[/td]
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No winners in U.S. hi-tech export controls[/td]
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