China Chronicles March 2, 2013
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- China's first solid-fuel rocket to debut before 2016: official
CHINA'S first solid-fuel rocket Long March-11 is expected to make its first launch before 2016, a senior official of the rocket's designing institute said today.
Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, said the rocket will be easy to operate and cost-efficient to launch. It can remain in storage for long period and reliably launch on short notice.
"The development of the Long March-11 will greatly improve China's capabilities to rapidly enter the space and meet the emergency launching demand in case of disasters and emergencies," he told Xinhua.
The Long March-11 rocket system consists of a solid-fuel rocket and a launching support system. It will apply China's largest solid-fuel rocket engine, he said.
China has made more than 160 launching of liquid-fuel rockets successfully but is yet to make breakthrough on the development of the solid-fuel rockets.
- Strong cold front to sweep S China
A strong cold front is moving from north to south over the next couple of days, bringing temperature drops and strong winds to south China, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) forecast today.
Meanwhile, temperatures in most of south China, eastern parts of Yunnan Province in southwest China and north China's Heilongjiang Province will fall by 6 to 10 degrees Celsius, the NMC said in an online statement.
Some of the above regions, especially those close to waters, will also see strong winds, the center added.
Affected by the cold front, from today to tomorrow morning, the Taiwan Strait will be swept by gales of level nine, accompanied by gusts of level 10 to 11. The center has issued a yellow strong winds alert for waters near Taiwan, including parts of East China Sea and South China Sea.
Snow will be expected in the northern part of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region over the next three days, while parts of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan will see moderate rainfall, the center added.
- 7 'frozen' children died from illnesses
AN investigation into a claim that seven children may have frozen to death in an orphanage in central China's Hubei Province last year has found that all were suffering from congenital diseases.
A netizen identified as Yun Tian wrote in a microblog that the children's deaths were revealed during Yun's visit with family members to the orphanage in Shiyan City.
The visit was on February 23 and Yun said the building was not heated. Many children could be seen shivering, Yun wrote, claiming the building had not been heated for 39 days, despite the cold.
Numerous requests were made by staff to the director to heat the building, according to the microblog, but were rejected because the orphanage had no funds for heating.
Yun said the orphanage director punished staff for revealing details about the deaths, claiming they were not being diligent with their work.
Local government authorities confirmed yesterday that seven children died between October 2012 and January but all had died as a result of their illnesses, according to a team comprised of health, civil affairs and judicial authorities organized by the Shiyan municipal government, Xinhua news agency said.
All seven children had been abandoned and were suffering from serious congenital diseases that included heart disease and cerebral palsy, the team said.
The investigation into the case is continuing. There will be an examination of the daily work at the orphanage to ensure there was compliance with regulations and that there was no child abuse.
A local government official surnamed Chen said the orphanage was a newly finished facility, and every room had heating installed. Additionally, there were regulations in place that stipulated it be turned on when temperatures fell below 12 degrees Celsius.
Chen added that Yun's visit was on a day when temperatures reached 17 degrees and there was no need for heating that day.
A staff member surnamed Qu told media website voc.com.cn that th! e children had died from pre-existing medical conditions and not from abuse or bad living conditions.
"They had diseases before being sent here. We have limited funds and could only try our best to cure them. Some did not make it," Qu said.
- Foreigners fighting fires
Fire-control volunteers Lydia (left) and Sarah (center) hand out safety information to a foreign tourist in Yangshuo County, a tourist resort in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, yesterday. Lydia, from the Netherlands, and Sarah, from the United States, are members of a volunteer firefighter team in Yangshuo's West Street, which is known as the foreigners' street, or the "Global Village" as more than 140 people from over 20 countries and regions are longtime residents. The West Street firefighter team was founded in 2011 and its members include firefighters, foreigners like Sarah and Lydia, social workers and local businessmen.
- CCTV broadcasts drug lord's final moments
MYANMAR drug lord Naw Kham and three accomplices, who were convicted of murdering 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in October 2011, were executed yesterday afternoon, following a live nationwide broadcast showing them being led to their deaths.
Naw Kham and Hsang Kham, Yi Lai and Zha Xiha were executed by lethal injection in Yunnan Province's capital of Kunming, according to the Intermediate People's Court of Kunming.
China Central Television showed the four being led from their cells at about 2pm.
They could be seen in shackles and handcuffs, with rope binding their arms behind their backs before being placed into court vans and driven to execution chambers.
Prosecutors with the Kunming People's Procuratorate were present to supervise the executions, verify the convicts' identities and ensure the executions were conducted in accordance with the law.
Their deaths were announced two hours later by the Yunnan provincial police department.
After the execution, the bodies were due to be cremated and the remains handed over to relatives, according to Chinese law.
The decision to broadcast the four's final moments was in response to widespread outrage among the Chinese public over the killings, as well as an attempt to emphasize both the heinous nature of the crime and the efficiency of China's police and courts in doling out justice, professor Yu Guoming of the School of Mass Media at Beijing's Renmin University told The Associated Press.
"The brutality of Naw Kham in the killing really got ordinary Chinese people riled up. It's no wonder that it has attracted such huge attention from the public," Yu said.
The gang was accused of ambushing two flat-bottomed Chinese cargo ships on the upper reaches of the Mekong on October 5, 2011, in Myanmar waters infested with gangs making their living from protection rackets and the production and smuggling of heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs.
Naw Kham and his gang members were found to have! planned and colluded with Thai soldiers in the attack on the Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8 in which 13 Chinese sailors died.
Under Naw Kham's instructions, several of his subordinates also kidnapped Chinese sailors and hijacked cargo ships in exchange for ransom in early April 2011.
"Why were Naw Kham and his subordinates so brutal with innocent people? That is a question I still ask today," the wife of Huang Yong, captain of the Hua Ping, told Xinhua news agency.
The mother of a 13-year-old child said: "I want my kid to remember this day forever.
"The execution gave me some comfort but could not make me happy. My husband will never be back," she said.
- 11 dead, 2 missing after fire at Hebei coal mine
ELEVEN workers are dead and two were missing after a fire at a coal mine in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, on Thursday night, the State Administration of Work Safety said yesterday.
The fire started about 8pm when 13 people were working 750 meters underground in the Aijiagou Coal Mine in Huailai County, the administration said on its website.
The 11 miners died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Rescue workers were still searching for the two missing miners yesterday.
An initial investigation found ventilation fans caught fire and ignited a wooden shed. How the fans caught fire was being investigated.
The mine belongs to Zhangkuang Group, which is a subsidiary of Jizhong Energy Group Co Ltd, Xinhua news agency reported.
China has one of the world's deadliest coal mine industries. Safety improvements have reduced deaths in recent years, but rules often are ignored and accidents still common. Some coal mines ordered to suspend production due to safety problems have illegally resumed production without fixing the problems, Xinhua reported.
In a separate case, six workers were injured when a boiler exploded about 9am yesterday at a plant in Harbin, capital of northeastern China's Heilongjiang Province, People's Daily reported.
The blast occurred in a prefab building. The building was destroyed and the boiler thrown into a warehouse 40 meters away. The warehouse roof partly collapsed and some stored goods were damaged.
- High luxury taxes called counterproductive
NETIZENS are questioning China's high luxury taxes after two people were sentenced to one year in prison with an 18-month reprieve for smuggling goods from overseas and selling them online.
The two vendors were caught in April and May, respectively, at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai when they returned from South Korea with hundreds of watches, handbags and cosmetics without declaring them.
Both planned to sell the goods on Taobao, China's most popular consumer-to-consumer sales platform.
Netizens have blamed high taxes on luxury goods for the increasing number of online vendors taking risks to bring goods into the country illegally.
"China collects a 10 percent customs duty, a 17 percent value-added tax and a 30 percent consumption tax for a European cosmetics product worth US$400," said Wang Weiqing, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
"Baby formula sells for more than 30 percent higher in China than in countries like the Netherlands. That's why I've been buying baby formula from Taobao for the last two years," said an online shopper surnamed Zheng.
Research done by the China Electronic Commerce Research Center showed the market for overseas shopping services reached 48.3 billion yuan (US$7.8 billion) in 2012, which means it increased 82.2 percent year on year.
The figure is expected to reach 70 billion yuan this year.
Some worry that Taobao vendors and customers may get into legal disputes.
"I hope Taobao vendors will learn a lesson from the two people who were sentenced to one year in prison. They should not evade taxation for higher profits," said a netizen called Dajie Mars.
A netizen using the screenname Ayuan said customers risk buying fake products by using overseas purchase agents.
"Where do I return goods of inferior quality? I didn't buy the item in person from a shopping mall. The vendor could say he was not responsible for the item's quality because he only bought it on my behalf," said Ayuan.
"The government should set up more duty-free shops and lower customs duties in order to encourage more people to shop in China," said Lu.
- CCTV broadcasts drug lord's final moments
MYANMAR drug lord Naw Kham and three accomplices, who were convicted of murdering 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in October 2011, were executed yesterday afternoon, following a live nationwide broadcast showing them being led to their deaths.
Naw Kham and Hsang Kham, Yi Lai and Zha Xiha were executed by lethal injection in Yunnan Province's capital of Kunming, according to the Intermediate People's Court of Kunming.
China Central Television showed the four being led from their cells at about 2pm.
They could be seen in shackles and handcuffs, with rope binding their arms behind their backs before being placed into court vans and driven to execution chambers.
Prosecutors with the Kunming People's Procuratorate were present to supervise the executions, verify the convicts' identities and ensure the executions were conducted in accordance with the law.
Their deaths were announced two hours later by the Yunnan provincial police department.
After the execution, the bodies were due to be cremated and the remains handed over to relatives, according to Chinese law.
The decision to broadcast the four's final moments was in response to widespread outrage among the Chinese public over the killings, as well as an attempt to emphasize both the heinous nature of the crime and the efficiency of China's police and courts in doling out justice, professor Yu Guoming of the School of Mass Media at Beijing's Renmin University told The Associated Press.
"The brutality of Naw Kham in the killing really got ordinary Chinese people riled up. It's no wonder that it has attracted such huge attention from the public," Yu said.
The gang was accused of ambushing two flat-bottomed Chinese cargo ships on the upper reaches of the Mekong on October 5, 2011, in Myanmar waters infested with gangs making their living from protection rackets and the production and smuggling of heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs.
Naw Kham and his gang members were found to have! planned and colluded with Thai soldiers in the attack on the Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8 in which 13 Chinese sailors died.
Under Naw Kham's instructions, several of his subordinates also kidnapped Chinese sailors and hijacked cargo ships in exchange for ransom in early April 2011.
"Why were Naw Kham and his subordinates so brutal with innocent people? That is a question I still ask today," the wife of Huang Yong, captain of the Hua Ping, told Xinhua news agency.
The mother of a 13-year-old child said: "I want my kid to remember this day forever.
"The execution gave me some comfort but could not make me happy. My husband will never be back," she said.
- Bomber executed over killing 2 in robbery try
A 26-YEAR-OLD man who set off a homemade bomb in a bank robbery attempt, killing two people and injuring 15, was executed yesterday morning in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, court officials said.
Wang Haijian and two accomplices plotted to blow up an armored truck outside a China Construction Bank branch on December 1, 2011, the Wuhan Intermediate People's Court said.
While the accomplices backed out, Wang detonated the bomb with a remote control device. The truck was not destroyed and Wang fled after getting no money, Xinhua news agency reported.
The explosion killed a 16-year-old and a 20-year-old, and slightly injured 15 others.
Wang was apprehended at a Wuhan hospital after a 15-day manhunt when two nurses reported seeing a man matching his description, police said.
Wang was sentenced to death for homicide in May 2012. He appealed the ruling to a higher people's court in June 2012.
His lawyer insisted he neither robbed the bank nor intended to kill and requested a psychological test for him.
Wang told the court he had decided not to carry out the robbery but felt so nervous he "accidentally" pressed the button on a remote control.
The higher people's court rejected his appeal. Wang's accomplices Wang Wei (no relation) and Wan An'an who were sentenced to 10 years and six years, respectively, also failed to win more lenient sentences in their appeals.
Wang Haijian began learning to make bombs in October 2010 and tested them with his accomplices.
- 10 caught flouting Hong Kong's new infant formula rule
TEN people were detained in Hong Kong yesterday for violating the city's new limit on infant formula on the first day the rule took effect. In the 10 cases, people were trying to bring 53 cans of formula through customs, officials said.
Among those detained were eight Hong Kong residents. The other two were from the Chinese mainland, Xinhua news agency said.
One man was found to be carrying 15 cans.
Under the new rule, travelers face fines of up to HK$500,000 (US$64,500) and up to two years in jail if they are found carrying more than two cans, or 1.8 kilograms, of milk powder for infants under the age of 3.
Parents on the mainland have long been purchasing formula from Hong Kong, after losing faith in powder produced on the mainland following baby milk scandals in recent years.
Now they fear formula from the city will be hard to find.
On Thursday, the day before the ban was imposed, many mainland parents were seen traveling to the city to stock up, according to the Guangzhou-based New Express Daily newspaper.
With supermarkets or stores in Hong Kong imposing their own restrictions on the amount of formula they could buy, parents were seen traveling across the city, purchasing as many cans as they could from a number of different stores, the newspaper said.
"We don't care about the restrictions in the supermarkets. We purchased as many as the stores may offer," one parent said.
One woman who bought eight cans of milk power said that when she was passing through customs to head home, she saw that many people were carrying cans of milk powder.
"Some were carrying eight cans and some were carrying 10. One man was even carrying three boxes," she said.
Many retail outlets have said their prices for milk powder from Hong Kong will have to rise.
Some have already added 10-20 yuan per can. At one online store, a can of a popular brand that was 290 yuan last week is now 320 yuan.
"The price is raised because now it's mu! ch harder to bring milk powder out of Hong Kong due to the rule," said a vendor surnamed Wu. "As each traveler can only take two cans when passing through customs, we have to hire more people to do the job."
Another vendor selling milk powder products from Europe said his prices were expected to go up as demand grew from parents.
Xia Wei, a 29-year-old Shanghai mother, said the new rule was "understandable" as she had heard about infant formula shortages in Hong Kong caused by mainland visitors.
She said she didn't care about traders charging more for formula from Hong Kong.
"I'm only worried that one day they will stop selling the formula," she added.
- Another woman set for space mission
A WOMAN is expected to be one of the three Chinese astronauts onboard the Shenzhou-10, the country's new manned spacecraft which is due for launch sometime between June and August, Zhou Jianping, head designer of China's manned space program, said yesterday.
The Shenzhou-10 is to dock with the orbiting lab module Tiangong-1.
"The three astronauts will stay in orbit for 15 days, including 12 days when they will work inside the coupled complex of the Shenzhou-10 and Tiangong-1," Zhou said.
Meanwhile, China's indigenous Long March-7 rocket is expected to launch next year, a senior official at the rocket's design institute said. Liang Xiaohong, Party chief of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, said researchers had made key technological breakthroughs, including in the design and production of a liquid oxygen and kerosene engine which can produce a thrust of 180 kilonewtons.
For the Long March-5, which is due to make its debut launch within three years, researchers had grasped key technologies for producing and testing of most of the rocket structure, he said.
Both rockets are expected to rank among the backbone carrier rockets for China's future space missions.
Liang also said China has developed a modified model of the Long March-3B carrier rocket for a moon landing mission to be completed by the Chang'e-3 moon orbiter later this year.
The orbiter's structure and size are considerably different from those of its predecessors, requiring some modifications to its carrier rocket, Liang said.
Liang said the new design will allow the Chang'e-3 to take advantage of more launch windows in comparison to the Chang'e-2.
The new model also features combined guidance technology and real-time video feeds that allow for monitoring of the rocket's key operations, Liang said.
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Film wide : 9.30mm - Central China bank blast killer executed
THE man behind a botched robbery's fatal bombing in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in 2011 was executed this morning, a local court said.
Wang Haijian and two accomplices attempted to rob a cash truck using homemade explosives in Wuhan on December 1, 2011, said the People's Intermediate Court in Wuhan.
Wang detonated the explosives with a remote control device and fled the crime scene after the robbery failed.
The explosion killed a 16 year old and a 20 year old, slightly injuring 15 other people.
Wang Haijian's two accomplices, Wang Wei and Wang An'an, were jailed for 10 years and six years, respectively, for jointly plotting the bank robbery.
- Families of stampede victims to get compensation
THE families of four students who died in a school stampede in Hubei Province on Wednesday will each receive 480,000 yuan (US$77,000) in compensation, officials said.
Du Guiqiang, headmaster of Laohekou City Qinji Primary School, and another teacher didn't open the dormitory gate as usual on Wednesday morning, causing students to crowd on stairs, an initial investigation found.
Police have detained six people, including two school officials and a dormitory superintendent, according to Vice Mayor Guo Fangfang.Guo dismissed the allegations that the school officials didn't open the gate on time because they got drunk the night before, today's Beijing News reported.
A team of experts are also checking for safety hazards in the school's shabby dormitory building, Guo said.
Reports said 50 to 60 children shared one large room in the dormitory, which was converted from a four-story teaching building. There is only one exit on the first floor and the stairway is very narrow.
Teachers said poor management is the cause of the deadly stampede.
- 11 dead, 2 missing in Hebei coal mine fire
ELEVEN workers have been confirmed dead and two are still missing after a coal mine in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province caught fire last night, China News Service reported.
The fire started around 8pm when 13 people were working 750 meters underground in the Aijiagou Coal Mine in Huailai County, the State Administration of Work Safety said on its website.
Initial investigation found ventilation fans caught fire first and ignited a wooden shed.
The 11 miners died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Rescue workers are still searching for the two missing miners.
- 11 dead, 2 missing in Hebei coal mine fire
ELEVEN workers have been confirmed dead and two are still missing after a coal mine in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province caught fire last night, China News Service reported.
The fire started around 8pm when 13 people were working 750 meters underground in the Aijiagou Coal Mine in Huailai County, the State Administration of Work Safety said on its website.
Initial investigation found ventilation fans caught fire first and ignited a wooden shed.
The 11 miners died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Rescue workers are still searching for the two missing miners.
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