China Chronicles May 31, 2012

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• Leniency for man who aided suicide of his sick mother

  A man who helped his bedridden mother to end her life by giving her a bottle of pesticide was sentenced to three years in prison with a four-year reprieve for murder.
  The Panyu District People's Court in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, gave Deng Mingjian a lenient sentence because Deng had taken care of his paralyzed mother for 18 years.
  His 73-year-old mother had been paralyzed for 20 years due to strokes and complications. She said she wanted to die and insisted on Deng buying her pesticide last May, today's New Express Daily reported.
  Deng handed the pesticide to her and watched her drink in a rented house.
  Relatives, fellow villagers and prosecutors pleaded leniency as Deng is well known for taking good care of his mother for 18 years and never complained even his mother had a bad temper.

• Victim family's appeal rejected in rape-murder case

  PROSECUTORS in Dongguan, a city of southern Guangdong Province, rejected the appeal request by the family of a college student killed by a schoolmate in a murder attempt as they considered the court sentence too lenient.
  Ao Xiang, a senior student of Dongguan University of Technology, was convicted of murder and molest for banging the head of Liang Rongcai against a wall and suffocating her to death after the sophomore put up a fierce fight.
  The Dongguan Intermediate People's Court said Liang's fierce resistance triggered Ao's intention to kill and Ao handed himself to police after the murder, which qualified him for a lenient sentence.
  But the victim's family said they were not present at the May 25 trial and they wanted to appeal the court ruling, the Xiaoxiang Morning Post reported today.
  The verdict also sparked widespread controversy in the society as many people think Ao deserves immediate capital punishment for brutally killing the girl.
  Ao, an academically outstanding student, has poor relationship with other people and always acted alone. He was found to have molested girl students on the campus seven times.

• Scenic library turned into rich men's club

  A public library built in the style of a classic Chinese garden in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, has been accused of changing into a high-end club for rich people.
  The city's park and heritage management bureau told China News Service yesterday that it has ordered the library to suspend its dining service and denied the existence of a luxury club in the library.
  The library was built in 1996 with cash donation of about 14 million yuan (US$2.2 million) from China's bestselling kung fu novelist Louis Cha, better known by his pen name Jin Yong.
  The library is supposed to be a tranquil retreat for writers and scholars, but it was found to have transformed into a luxury club for wealthy businessmen and government officials.
  

• China reiterates low tar cigarettes not better

  CHINA reiterated that low tar cigarette will not reduce the harm caused by smoking, and more than 3 million Chinese will die each year from smoking by 2050, if no measures are taken, according to a report issued by the Ministry of Health yesterday.
  The majority of the public has the misconception that "low tar equals to low harm," the report said.
  The report also said that cigarettes added with Chinese herbal medicine were equally harmful to health as ordinary cigarettes.
  According to the report, three quarters of Chinese are not fully aware of the harm caused by smoking, and two-thirds of people do not know about the danger of being exposed to second-hand smoking.
  China is the largest tobacco producing and consuming country in the world, with more than 300 million smokers and another 740 million people suffering from second-hand smoking, the report said.

• The baby now arriving ...

  A woman surnamed Xiao who had just given birth is carried from a train at about 6:30am at Jiujiang Railway Station in east China's Jiangxi Province yesterday. Just over an hour earlier, Xiao felt her pregnancy was about to come to fruition on the train traveling from Beijing to Jiangxi's Nanchang City. The train staff immediately put an emergency plan into operation by setting up a temporary delivery room and sending for paramedics to deliver the child. At 5:40am, the baby was born.

• China backs Kofi Annan efforts

  CHINA yesterday reiterated its opposition to military intervention in Syria amid outrage over the massacre of 108 people, nearly half of them children, and called again for all sides to support mediation efforts by Kofi Annan.

  "China opposes military intervention and does not support forced regime change," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a daily news briefing. "The fundamental route to resolving (the crisis) is still for all sides to fully support Annan's mediation efforts."

• Pink? Wen told to think again

  THE story of a Chinese primary school boy "challenging" Premier Wen Jiabao for offering him a pink schoolbag has become a favorite among Chinese.

  Wen recently visited children of migrant workers who had moved to urban areas to find work, offering them his good wishes ahead of International Children's Day, which is tomorrow.

  Wen was making an inspection tour of the Wuling mountainous area in central China's Hunan province, visiting students' dorms and talking with teachers, students and their parents.

  Wen offered schoolbags to students as gifts during his visit to Maoping Primary School on May 25, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

  He offered an 8-year-old boy, Long Yingjun, a pink schoolbag, which had been handed to Wen by a staff member.

  Long rejected it, saying: "I'm a boy. I don't want the color."

  Wen immediately changed it for a blue schoolbag and gave it to him, saying: "Oh, I forgot you are a man!"

  Long took the schoolbag and saluted Wen. Everyone at the scene was highly amused, Xinhua reported.

  Online, there was much praise for the boy's bravery in speaking out in front of one of the country's top leaders.

  Wen urged local authorities and schools to guarantee food safety for students, particularly those whose parents were not around to supervise their diets.

  Local governments in Hunan are taking part in a national program designed to improve nutrition at rural schools, with the central government offering schools a daily subsidy of 3 yuan (about 47 US cents) per student toward purchasing nutritious food.

  China's rapid industrialization has resulted in a growing number of rural "left behind" children - those whose parents have moved to urban areas to seek work.

  The children are often placed in the care of relatives or friends. Hunan is home to 140,000 such children.

  The premier acknowledged the contributions migrant workers are making toward boosting China's economic growth, reassuring them that their c! hildren will be well taken care of in their absence.

• Rail ministry in products probe

  CHINA'S railway ministry is to investigate equipment produced by a German company after media reports that its products had failed tests.

  However, Halfen Group's Chinese branch told Shanghai Daily yesterday that the company provided quality products for China's high-speed railways and it had not received any complaints about poor quality.

  The People's Daily website reported yesterday that Halfen's cast-in channels, used to support equipment such as wires, signals and electrical devices, fell short of quality standards.

  Earlier this month, Century Weekly magazine raised doubts over whether the products were imported from Germany, as the company claimed, or were made in local factories.

  Both media organizations cited tip-offs from unnamed insiders.

  The website said tests by China's steel material quality testing center and another two institutes showed that the channels failed strength and fire-resistance tests.

  People.com.cn said it acquired channels from two sections of the under-contruction Shanghai-Kunming railway line and sent them for testing.

  Two pictures on the website showed the channels marked with the Halfen name. "There is no so-called high quality or low quality, there is only one quality standard for Halfen that we have in Europe and in China as well," said Stanislas de Ferrieres, general manager with Halfen (Beijing) Construction Accessories Distribution Co Ltd.

  He said the company had documentation to prove the products were from Germany. However, he did not produce it yesterday.

  He said he had visited a section on the Shanghai-Kunming line in central China before the media reports and "no problems were found there."

  However, salespeople with the company hinted that some products might have been replaced by local products but still marked as Halfen.

  Stanislas de Ferrieres said it was questionable whether the channels mentioned in the media reports were actually made by Halfen.

  The company said earlier tha! t Halfen channels "meet all the technical specifications from China's Ministry of Railways."

• Trains to go faster again

  CHINA'S high-speed trains are to speed up again.

  A decision to slow them down that was taken after a fatal crash last July had been "expedient," according to the country's largest train maker.

  Zhao Xiaogang, chairman of China CSR Co, said the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail line would operate at top speeds of up to 380 kilometers per hour, up from 300.

• Top meat firm's sausage tainted with bacteria

  THE country's leading meat products brand, Shuanghui, is stuck in quality scandal again after industrial and commercial authorities in Guangzhou reported that a type of Shuanghui's cumin-flavored sausage contained excessive bacteria, which may cause diarrhea.

  The Guangzhou Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau didn't specify what bacteria was involved.

  Guangzhou officials said the sausage sold in Guangzhou was produced on March 16, and has been removed from shelves and destroyed.

  Meanwhile, a netizen from central China's Henan Province said when he washed Shuanghui frozen pork ribs, many maggots emerged from the meat. The Henan-based company, however, denied the accusation, calling it a local media plot.

  The netizen, whose screen name was joe-cn317, said on Weibo.com that he bought a pack of Shuanghui frozen pork ribs from the company's chain store in Zhengzhou, Henan's capital city, on Sunday. When he washed the ribs with hot water at home, he was shocked to see dozens of white maggots emerge on the surface of the water, he said.

  The post received wide concern around the country, as Shuanghui was embroiled in a food-safety scandal last year.

  Shuanghui Group issued a statement, saying that Liu asked for compensation of 1,500 yuan (US$236) and refused to cooperate with the group's investigation of the affair. Later the company found out that Liu was working for a local media, it said.

  The company said it double-checked the production of the complained batch of pork ribs and found no problem.

  Liu denied that he was blackmailing the company. "What I want is only a sincere apology," he said. "I don't blackmail anyone."

  In March last year, China Central Television reported the group purchased pig feed containing clenbuterol, a chemical that can prevent pigs from accumulating fat. It is banned as an additive in pig feed in China because it can end up in the flesh of pigs and is poisonous to humans if ingested. The company later apologiz! ed.

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• Police assign blame for fatal crash

  PROSECUTORS in the southern city of Shenzhen are investigating a deadly car crash after people speculated that the owner of the luxurious car at fault conspired with police to shift responsibility for the accident to a scapegoat.

  On Saurday, a GTR sports car worth more than 1.5 million yuan (US$235,000) was speeding at more than 150 kilometers per hour hit a taxi, which caught fire and burned three people inside to death, police said.

  A man surnamed Hou turned himself in to police seven hours after the accident, and police say he is in fact the drunk driver who caused the crash.

  Deng Zhaokai, an official with the Shenzhen police, said Hou, a native of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is a friend of Xu Chuhui, the businessman who owns the luxurious car. Hou was driving the car borrowed from Xu when the accident happened.

  Xu Wei, spokesman for the Shenzhen police, said that no one shirked responsibility in the case.

  Police revealed video footage that showed Hou, wearing a shirt and a pair of flip-flops, walked out of a private club with three women about 2:50am and unlocked the car around 3am, while surveillance footage from Xu's home showed he didn't leave his house until 4:23 am.

  To prove Xu's innocence, police released pictures showing him with no injuries. They also disclosed DNA test results that show Hou's blood was found in the vehicle.

  But the public remained suspicious because police didn't provide complete video footage of the accident.

  
  

• Cost of a second child: Pair fined 1.3m yuan

  A couple in eastern China's Zhejiang Province who violated China's family planning rules has been fined 1.3 million yuan (US$205,000), the biggest such penalty levied by authorities in the city of Ruian.

  The couple gave birth to a daughter in February after having a son in 1995, Modern Express reported yesterday. Couples may have a second child under a few conditions, such as both spouses being from one-child families, or the first child has a non-inherited disease. In some provinces, rural couples are allowed to have a second child if their first child is a girl.

  The couple did not qualify. They are wealthy operators of several companies across the nation, the paper said. Local regulations say the fine should be four to eight times the average annual income of local residents, and family planning authorities have flexibility in meting out penalties.

  Since many violators are rich families in Ruian, they are given the maximum fines, local authorities said. Ruian is in the jurisdiction of Wenzhou, which boasts many wealthy entrepreneurs. Nearly half of Wenzhou's families have two kids, and more than a dozen couples have been fined more than 1 million yuan.

  The previous record fine, 1.25 million yuan, was imposed in April.

  The Chinese government adopted the family-planning policy in 1979 to rein in the growth rate of the world's largest population. China's large population imposes pressure on the nation's sustainable development and has become a bottleneck for China's competitiveness.

  The gender imbalance, with many more boys born than girls, poses a big social problem. Changes in family structure, including smaller families and family members not living together, also challenge social management and public service.

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