China Chronicles July 27, 2012
- 'Buy my book' official is jailed
A FORMER top official with China's drug watchdog has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for taking bribes, fabricating charges against a superior and illegally selling a book he wrote.
Zhang Jingli, former deputy director of the State Food and Drug Administration, asked for 1.17 million yuan (US$183,105) from drug companies and abused his office to facilitate their business between 2005 and 2010, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court heard.
The 57-year-old also made money by having companies buy his"Shou Shi Bu Yuan," a health guide, which he was not licensed to publish or sell, The Beijing News reported yesterday.
Zhang and Liao Hongbing, a Beijing entrepreneur, published a total of 43,000 books, raising more than 16 million yuan.
The court also heard that Zhang instructed Liao, Yang Jun and Pan Jingping, to send more than 1,300 letters to central authorities containing false accusations against his boss at the FDA, in an attempt to gain promotion.
Liao was sentenced to six years while Yang and Pan received jail terms of 20 months.
Zhang became deputy director of the administration in 2003. In a 2010 crackdown against prostitution, gambling and drugs, Beijing police busted the notorious Heaven on Earth nightclub and seized footage showing Zhang's involvement in some steamy scenes.
He was accused of leading an indecent life and placed under investigation before being sacked.
Zhang's downfall led to the arrest of three other officials - Li Bingchun, former township Party secretary in Beijing's Shunyi District, Zhang Bao, former deputy head of the district's Land and Resources Bureau, and Zhang Bo, former head of the Northern Printing Industry Zone.
Meanwhile, it was revealed yesterday that more than 60 officials at ministerial and provincial level were punished for discipline violations since the Party's last national congress.
They were among 600,000 people who faced punishments since the 17th National Congress of Communist Pa! rty of China in 2007, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said.
- 2 charged over Neil Heywood death
Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun were recently charged with murdering a British man by the municipal prosecutors office in the east China city of Hefei, Xinhua news agency learned from authorities yesterday.
The municipal prosecuting body filed the charges with the Hefei Municipal Intermediate People's Court.
Gu is the wife of Bo Xilai, who was dismissed earlier this year as Party chief of Chongqing, and Zhang was their home aide.
The prosecuting body informed the two defendants and family members of the victim of their litigation rights during the investigation period.
The prosecuting body also interrogated the two defendants and heard the opinions of the defense team.
Investigation results showed that Gu and her son, Bo Guagua, had been in conflict with British citizen Neil Heywood over economic interests. Worried about a threat to her son's personal security, Gu, helped by Zhang, is alleged to have poisoned Heywood.
The facts of the two defendants' crime are clear, and the evidence is irrefutable and substantial, prosecutors said. Therefore, the two defendants should be charged with murder.
The court is to hold a trial on a day yet to be decided.
- US software'not used' in China's helicopters
CHINA'S Ministry of Defense yesterday denied that the country's most advanced attack helicopter used pirated US technology.
According to media reports, a Canadian subsidiary of Connecticut-based military contractor United Technologies Corp pleaded guilty in June to federal charges that it helped China develop the Z-10 attack helicopter's engine.
However, Yang Yujun, a defense ministry spokesman, told reporters: "China's attack helicopters and their engines are all self-developed, and have proprietary intellectual property rights."
Yang said the development of China's military equipment had always followed the principle of independent innovation, and relied on its own capabilities in research and production.
The so-called piracy "is far from the truth," he said.
The Canadian subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp, violated the Arms Export Control Act by providing the Chinese with 10 engines to power Z-10 helicopters in 2001 and 2002, according to foreign media, citing an announcement by the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut.
Export violations
Technology for the engines, the US authorities said, had originally been created for US military helicopters.
Pratt & Whitney Canada pleaded guilty on June 28 to illegally exporting to China the American military software used to operate the engines.
It also agreed to pay more than US$75 million in fines in connection with export violations and for providing misleading information to the US government.
The Z-10 is China's first modern military attack helicopter and considered its most advanced attack helicopter. It seats two people and is designed mainly to attack tanks, armored vehicles and other ground forces.
The helicopter can be equipped with weaponry including machine guns, cannons, rockets and missiles, according to pictures released by Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, Yang said China's refitted aircraft carrier won't be commissioned on Ch! ina's Army Day, August 1.
But he said that the carrier had "attained the anticipated objectives" during its nine sea trials and would be carrying out more scientific experiments as scheduled.
- Beijing toll now 77 after days-old figure updated
Authorities in Beijing yesterday updated the death toll from its heaviest rain in six decades to 77 after questions were raised over the days-old tally of 37.
Beijing's flood control headquarters said last night that 66 of the victims had been identified.
Five of them had died while carrying out rescue work, Pan Anjun, a spokesman for the headquarters, said.
Of the other 61 - 36 men and 25 women - 46 drowned, five were electrocuted, three died in housing collapses, two in mudslides, two from traumatic shock, two after they were hit by falling objects and one was struck by lightning, Pan said.
He said a further sharp increase in the death toll was unlikely because the search for missing persons was drawing to an end.
Most of the bodies were found in suburban districts, including 38 recovered in the hardest-hit Fangshan District, he said.
The list of the victims includes an eight-month-old girl who drowned.
In explaining why it had taken several days for the authorities to update the death toll, Pan said mudslides triggered by the heavy rains hindered rescuers' searches for bodies.
Identifying victims required repeated investigation and verification, he said, adding that search efforts were ongoing.
On behalf of the flood control headquarters, Pan expressed deep condolences to the deceased and their families and promised to draw lessons from the tragedy and improve the capacity to handle similar disasters in the future.
An article in yesterday's People's Daily, flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said that though the city government had pledged no cover-up of the rainstorm death toll, public concern would remain until the final figure was released.
A swift release of authoritative information was the way to crush untrue rumors, the article said.
"Information disclosure is a dynamic process rather than a static product," it said. "Only by responding to public concerns through various channels in a timely manne! r, can we better guarantee people's right to know and to a larger extent win the recognition and support of people from all walks of life."
The Beijing government raised the death toll to 37 on Sunday night, a day after the torrential rain battered the Chinese capital.
But no updates were released until last night despite online speculation that the figure could be much higher.
At a press briefing on Wednesday night, city officials said the rainstorm had inflicted direct economic losses of 11.6 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion). But they did not provide any update on the death toll.
On Weibo.com, microbloggers raised the point that it should have been easier to count the number of dead than it was to estimate economic losses.
City authorities had pledged not to repeat their opaque handling of the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003.
The then health minister and Beijing's mayor were sacked due to the lack of information and even deliberate cover-ups during the epidemic.
It was claimed that the city's response then led to more deaths and the public's trust in the government had been eroded.
- Journalist in dramatic submerged car tests
A JOURNALIST and a diver tested tactics to escape from a flooded car yesterday amid widespread fears triggered by the death of a Beijing driver on Saturday in the heaviest rains to hit the capital in decades.
Luo Yanyan, formerly a professional swimmer and now a journalist with Information Daily, a newspaper in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, had planned to conduct the test alone, but local authorities insisted she be accompanied by a diver.
The survival test began at 9am in the Ganjiang River, witnessed by a crowd of reporters and curious residents.
Luo, 28, sat in the front passenger seat of a Volkswagen Santana, and Cao Dongjun, a diver with the local fire brigade, took the driver's seat.
They had life vests, emergency hammers, a cell phone, a pair of high-heel shoes and a can of oxygen.
Two other divers stood by on a speedboat as a crane lowered the car into the water.
Kicked door open
When the lower half of the car was underwater, Luo and Cao could still easily open the doors. However, when the car was three-quarters submerged, Luo could not open the door using only her hands.
"I tried, and eventually kicked it open," she said.
In the final test, the whole car was submerged.
Cao tried to break the window, first with the cell phone and then with the shoes, but failed. "I was suffocating and had to take the oxygen bottle," he said.
He tried the hammers and broke one window.
In a further test, he removed the headrest from the car seat to break open another window using the two pins underneath - a "golden rule" that has spread quickly on the Internet recently but which many drivers had not known about.
The two escaped from the broken windows and swam to the bank to loud applause.
"Without the oxygen bottle, breathing would have been difficult when three-quarters of the car was underwater," said Cao. "In such cases, one would be too weak to force the window open."
In case of flooding, he ! said drivers should force open the door as soon as possible. "If the door doesn't open, you need to break open the window with sharp objects instead of waiting to be rescued."
On Taobao.com, nearly 1,600 orders have poured in for an emergency hammer that costs 32 yuan (US$5).
- Rains avoid capital city but batter its neighbor
A DOWNPOUR expected to hit Beijing yesterday bypassed the capital but battered neighboring Tianjin, flooding many downtown streets and vehicles.
By 11am yesterday, the maximum precipitation had exceeded 300 millimeters, Tianjin's meteorological center said.
It said the city proper received an average rainfall of 147mm, while the outer Xiqing District, one of the worst-hit areas, received 309.8mm.
There were no deaths reported as of yesterday afternoon but four people suffered from electric shocks due to the flood and were receiving treatment in hospital, according to the Tianjin Emergency Medical Center.
The local fire prevention bureau sent 190 fire engines and 1,140 personnel to help rescue vehicles and pedestrians stranded by flooding.
The rain had largely stopped by noon, but the center was warning residents of another rainstorm expected to hit Tianjin last night.
Torrential rain is also expected to hit the city tonight, bringing an estimated precipitation of 40 to 70mm, said Zhao Gang, the city meteorological bureau's chief forecaster.
Yesterday morning's downpour flooded many roads, paralyzing traffic in the downtown area. Dozens of vehicles were stranded after their engines died in the flood.
Many pedestrians complained they had to wade through knee-deep water. In some sections of Xianyang Street, floodwater was waist deep.
On the badly flooded Friendship Road in Hexi District, five workers kept watch next to sewage wells where manholes had been removed to allow faster drainage.
The rain disrupted air traffic but railway services were largely unaffected, including the express railway linking Tianjin with Beijing, the city's railway authorities confirmed.
Vegetable prices rose at the city's major wholesale markets yesterday.
"Each kilo is at least 0.4 yuan - about 30 percent - more expensive than yesterday," Cui Hongqing, a wholesaler at Hongqi Market, said yesterday.
Cui predicted further price rises today as t! he rain devastated crops and increased transport costs.
Beijing had been on guard against heavy rain, fearing a repeat of Saturday's disaster.
Saturday's downpour, which the weather bureau described as the "heaviest in 61 years," killed 77 people, including some who drowned in private cars.
Many office workers were allowed to go home early on Wednesday out of concern for their safety, and city authorities bombarded mobile phone subscribers with text message warnings of an imminent downpour.
The much expected rain, however, did not fall in the capital.
The central weather bureau has forecast rain in seven northern China provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, over the next few days.
- Heavy rainfall hits Tianjin
Bus and cars wade through a flooded street in Tianjin, north China, yesterday. Heavy rainfall hit the municipality from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday.
- Professor quits, credentials turn out to be faked
A RENOWNED university in southeastern Xiamen City has fired a full-time professor who fabricated her study experience in a US Ivy League school after the fraud was publicized by Fang Zhouzi, a self-proclaimed fighter against pseudoscience and academic fraud.
Xiamen University in the coastal city confirmed Fang's accusations against Fu Jin, saying "she never studied for a doctorate degree in Columbia University," describing it as "a malicious fraud."
Fu has admitted faking the degree and has been ordered to make a public apology while the university has also apologized for an error for damaging the school's reputation, Xiamen Daily reported yesterday.
The medical professor was found on July 20 to have lied about her educational background, and Fang, China's famous science cop, soon confirmed it after his investigation.
According to a letter from the National Student Clearing House, the US system for degree verification, Columbia University was unable to locate either a degree or enrollment record for Fu.
Xiamen University remained silent at first, saying it needed time to check the authenticity of the allegations.
Records showed Fu was invited to lecture at the university between 2004 and 2008, and she applied to be a full-time professor in 2009.
"She severely violated academic morality and was dishonest," the university said.
Fang is well known for unmasking bogus research and academic frauds in China, including the cases of Li Yi, a Taoist priest in Chongqing Municipality, and Tang Jun, former president of Microsoft China.
Tang, once dubbed "the emperor of wage-earners," was found in July 2010 to have fabricated his American study experience when he was the president and chief executive officer of the Newhuadu Industrial Group Co.
Tang claimed he had a degree in computer science from the California Institute of Technology.
However, he later admitted he did not have a degree from Caltech, and asserted he had never claimed to have! received a degree there, but only conducted research at the university. He also admitted he had not been awarded a degree by Japan's Nagoya University.
Tang was discredited in media reports since then and apologized last month over the degree scandal.
- Heroes get priority for houses
GOOD Samaritans recognized by the government who have poor housing will be granted priority in applying for budget homes, according to a new regulation announced by the State Council yesterday.
The Cabinet has released the new rules for local governments to boost assistance as a reward for the bravery of good Samaritans who struggle financially.
Local governments in China officially acknowledge people who risk their own lives helping others through fighting crimes or saving others from danger and harm. Cities nationwide also reward heroes in different ways, such as with cash prizes or providing government subsidies to support their families in cases when such heroes are killed or disabled during their brave deeds.
The State Council called on local governments to improve assistance to this group and specified in the regulation that their housing difficulties should be addressed.
It ruled that needy families of acknowledged good Samaritans should be put atop waiting lists to get an affordable house as long as they meet standards.
The country is building budget housing to sell or rent to needy families at lower-than-market prices to improve their living conditions.
Shanghai government has officially acknowledged and honored more than 1,500 good Samaritans, aged from 14 to 86 years old, in the past decade. The city has been rewarding these heroes mainly through monetary prizes. The government said it had offered local good Samaritans cash prizes up to 40 million yuan (US$626,458) over the decade.
- Massive wooden bridge dates back 2,000 years
CHINESE archaeologists said they believe a 2,000-year-old wooden bridge unearthed in Shaanxi Province, home of the Terracotta Army, could have been the world's biggest at that time.
The bridge, whose pier remnants were found in a suburb of Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi, is estimated to have been 300 meters long and 20 meters wide, said Li Yufang, a researcher at the China Academy of Social Sciences.
Li said the bridge could date back to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), when it spanned the Wei River, the largest tributary of the Yellow River, to link two imperial palaces in the ancient capital of Xianyang.
The Qin Dynasty was among the most powerful in early Chinese history, which saw many major projects, including the Great Wall and the Mausoleum of the first Emperor of Qin Dynasty. Its capital was near the modern-day city of Xi'an.
The bridge site was first discovered in April, when sand-digging farmers reported finding huge wooden piles in their farms.
An initial probe revealed the longest wooden pile to be 9 meters long, and one pier measured 18.5 meters in width. Archaeologists also found chunks of stone that had been used to strengthen the wooden piers.
"It's the first time a wooden bridge of this size and age has been found, and it is of great value to the study of ancient bridge architecture and transportation," Li said.
Researchers also found a smaller "twin bridge" west of the large one. The two bridges continued to operate in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), with the bigger one a key line to the then capital of Chang'an.
- weaving
- one small step for man
- Lupu Sunset
Shanghai 2007 has added a photo to the pool:
- Red Panda
etherflyer has added a photo to the pool:
Not as cuddly-looking as their giant cousins, you have to admit that red pandas are more colourful, and have cuter tails! :-)
Location: Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
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