China Chronicles July 31, 2012
- 7 dead, 12 injured in truck, pick-up crash in Qinghai
SEVEN people died and 12 others were injured when a heavy truck collided with a pick-up truck head-on early today in northwest China's Qinghai province.
The accident happened at 4 am when the two vehicles crashed near Da Qaidam township, Haixi Mongol-Tibetan autonomous prefecture, on National Highway No. 315 which runs from the provincial capital Xining to Kashgar of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, according to a traffic police officer under the provincial public security department.
When the accident happened, four people were in the cab of the large truck and the pick-up was carrying 18 people, with five in the crew cab and 13 others on the truck bed, said the police officer.
Seven people died at the scene, and the 12 seriously injured people were rushed to hospital, he said.
Further information was not known yet, and the cause of the accident is under investigation.
- Beijing police crack prostitution ring
BEIJING police have busted a major prostitution racket run in a renowned pub, the Beijing News reported today.
Eight prostitutes, including four foreign women, and seven employees from the Seven Star Island Club have been taken away to receive police investigation.
The foreign prostitutes can enter the pub free of charge while male customers have to pay 80 yuan (US$12.5) admission fee, and the two sides talk to each other directly about the sex trade.
Once they get a deal, the bar would drive them to the women's rented house or a nearby hotel where they have sex.
The Chaoyang District police raided the place on July 18.
The pub manager surnamed Liang has been detained for housing prostitutes.
- 2 dead, 26 missing in Xinjiang mudslide
Two people died and 26 others have been reported missing after a mudslide hit northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region this morning, the local government said.
The mudslide occurred at an iron ore mine in the township of Araltobe, Xinyuan county, Kazak Autonomous Prefecture of Ili, said a spokesman with the prefecture's fire brigade, adding that the brigade received an emergency call at around 1 am.
The mud and debris buried 28 people, initially identified as 22 mine workers and six local residents, said the spokesman.
The bodies of two victims have been recovered from the debris, which covers an area about 500 meters long, 60 meters wide and five to six meters deep, he said.
More than 50 rescuers are searching for the missing people. - Parents urged to take care in choosing study trips
AUTHORITIES are warning Chinese parents planning to send their children on an "overseas study tour" to give it more thought as many such trips are little more than tourist attractions.
Although many Chinese parents don't hesitate before spending lavishly on their children, the mother of Xiang Miao, a high school sophomore who took part in a 16-day summer study tour abroad last year, regrets her careless spending.
Xiang's mother paid 30,000 yuan (US$4,700) for the so-called "overseas study tour," which boasted of homestay accommodation, collective learning and sight-seeing activities in a foreign country.
"I would rather have taken him abroad myself if I had known about this kind of study tour. It is an eye-opener at best, rather than a way of truly enhancing his English skills or making preparations for future overseas study," she said.
However, the number of applicants for such programs still saw "explosive" growth this year, according to Zhou Xiaolan, marketing director of the New Oriental Education & Technology Group. More than 10,000 students in Beijing alone will travel abroad for the group's summer study tour.
"Tour packages to popular destinations such as the US and Britain were booked up three months in advance and less costly tours were also nearly packed," she said.
A three-week trip may cost anywhere from 20,000 yuan to 43,000 yuan, depending on the destination. Most of the applicants are middle school students.
Parents generally expect their children to gain a great deal from their overseas experience, and some have purposefully put their children in such programs as a warm-up before future overseas study.
However, observers have warned students and their parents against profiteering and other shady practices.
Parents are said to have complained about too many sight-seeing and shopping activities instead of programs that help their children improve language and communication skills.
Jiang Nan, an adviser f! or "global study tour" programs, advised parents to make sure they are clear about the purpose of any trip they choose to sign their children up for.
"When checking the itinerary and credentials of the program's organizer, parents have to make sure at the same time that their children are really interested in exploring the place they are going," he said.
- Film probe uncovers kickback scheme
A CORRUPTION investigation into two officials is said to have uncovered a kickback scheme which inflated the cost of a widely panned video made for China's Ministry of Railways.
The revelation has again put renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou at the center of the storm of criticism as he is said to have benefited from the huge 18.5 million yuan investment in the project.
The Beijing New Times Film Cultural Development Co Ltd, acting as a middleman between the ministry and Zhang, paid Zhang 2.5 million yuan and another 1.178 million yuan in tax, an anonymous company employee told the Economic Information Daily yesterday.
The five-minute video, "Chinese Railways," cost just under 7 million yuan and the other 11.5 million yuan went to corrupt officials and Zhang, the employee told the newspaper.
An initial probe into the case showed that the ministry's audio and video department gave more than 14 million yuan to New Times instead of the contracted 18.5 million yuan, leaving 4 million yuan missing, Xinhua news agency reported.
However, it has not yet been determined whether the missing money was taken by New Times employees or ministry staff.
The company is said to have won the project without going through a public bidding process because it promised it could persuade Zhang to film the video, an unnamed official with the ministry's publicity department told the newspaper.
"We will sure file a lawsuit against the company," the official said, adding that the ministry would also launch an investigation into corrupt officials.
According to an agreement between the ministry and the company, Zhang was entrusted to film and edit the video. The finished video includes the credit "Zhang Yimou Works."
However, its contract with Zhang showed the director had just offered suggestions and specifically banned the company from using his name on the video, the paper said.
Zhang told the paper that he didn't know about the huge investment until th! e video gained notoriety. He said he just offered suggestions in the project's early stages and only commented on the first version.
He said that although he didn't know that the project had not gone through a public bidding process, he still felt responsible and welcomed any investigation.
The video was played at the opening of the 7th World Congress on High-Speed Rail in Beijing in December 2010 as well as in high-speed trains. It showed China's railway development by simply showing running trains.
People who saw it called it boring and wondered how so much money could have been spent on such a poor video.
That led to suspicion of violations or corruption, and triggered an investigation early this month into Chen Yihan, deputy general secretary of the ministry's literal and arts department, and her husband Liu Ruiyang, deputy director of the vehicle department. Chen used to work at the ministry's publicity department.
Inspectors seized more than 10 million yuan in cash and at least nine property ownership certificates from their home, an anonymous insider said.
On the same day, they discovered "a large number of" bank deposit books and shopping cards in Liu's office.
- Green-tea urine stirs up debate
SOME privately owned hospitals in China have been accused of overprescribing patients in a TV program where a reporter who used green tea as a sample in a urine test was diagnosed with various diseases.
But some doctors questioned the reporter's method of using green tea to judge the accuracy of medical tests. They told Shanghai Daily it was very "unprofessional" for the reporter to use green tea as sample.
In the China Central Television program, an undercover reporter went to a major public hospital in Beijing for a health check and his results all turned out to be fine.
Then he went to several private men's health hospitals and, during the urine test, gave a small cup of green tea as a sample.
He was stunned when doctors at a hospital in Shijiazhuang, in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province, told him they found an excessive level of white blood cells in his "urine," indicating that he was suffering prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate gland, and orchitis, swelling in the testicles.
A doctor told him that he would need to undergo seven days of treatment, with each day costing him 546 yuan (US$86).
At another private hospital in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, a doctor checked the same green tea sample and diagnosed that he had spermatoceles, or cysts near his reproductive organs, and needed immediate surgery, costing 5,000 yuan.
A third hospital in Changchun, capital of Jilin Province, told him he needed to pay 8,000 yuan for a health check.
The program sparked a public outcry online.
Some people said they wouldn't know where to seek medical help after watching the program.
"He could have just used his own urine sample to go through the test to see whether the doctors were diagnosing him randomly," said a netizen on Weibo.com.
"Oh, no! Did his investigation show that we'd better not drink green tea anymore?" was another comment on the microblog.
"The same thing happened to me when two doctors in a Shijiazh! uang hospital told me that I had lung cancer and needed to be treated immediately, but then a Beijing hospital said I'm just having a cold," Jiang Yu posted.
"This shows that you will sure be diagnosed with some disease once you're in hospital, whether you're ill or not," Pan Xueyan wrote.
However, others said the journalist shouldn't have set up such a trap for hospitals because a doctor should believe the sample was from the patient, without having to check its authenticity. Otherwise, they said, it would be a waste of medical resources to verify samples or complaints by the patients.
"Equipment is designed to check biochemical indicators like white cell counts in blood or urine for medical purpose, not checking whether it is urine or green tea," said Dr Wang Guisong from Shanghai's Renji Hospital.
- Man spread false rumor to inflame pipeline foes
A MAN has been detained for attempting to escalate the public outcry by spreading false rumors of police killing two youngsters in a street protest against the construction of a Japanese paper mill's pipeline to the sea in Qidong, a costal city of Jiangsu Province, local police said.
An Internet user surnamed Sun fabricated the story that on July 28, police trampled a nine-year-old girl to death and then beat an 18-year-old university student to death, Qidong police said on its website yesterday.
Sun was sentenced to 10 days under the administrative detention for disturbing the social order by disseminating rumors and was fined 500 yuan (US$78.40), the announcement said.
Qidong residents were highly irritated after the Oji Paper Group's factory in Nantong City, which administers Qidong, was approved to establish a pipeline leading to the sea for industrial waste discharges.
They petitioned against the construction on the grounds that it would pollute the nearby Lusi Fishery, a major fishery in China.
The Qidong government announced on Saturday that the project has been canceled, and residents, who had taken to the streets, dispersed.
The Japanese company insisted the pipeline "is just a supporting project item" and wastewater would be discharged only after being processed properly, it said on its website.
Records showed the paper manufacturer invested US$2 billion on its Nantong plant, with annual production of 800,000 tons of high quality paper and 714,000 tons of pulp.
Oji Paper's Nepia tissue has become one of the top-selling brands in the Chinese market.
- Global warming threatens highest railway
CHINA'S Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest rail system, is being threatened by desertification on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as a result of global warming, experts concluded after conducting a probe.
About 443 kilometers of the 1,956-kilometer railway are in areas affected by desertification, including 103km that lie in seriously desertified areas, Wang Jinchang, a senior engineer with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company, said yesterday.
Wang cited research showing that the threat of soil erosion has grown very fast in recent years, mostly near rivers and wetlands from Golmud and Lhasa, and the amount of affected rail tracks almost doubled from 2003 to 2009.
Touted the "Road to Heaven," half of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was built on areas at an elevation of about 4,000 meters, crossing mountains, ravines, the Gobi Desert, frozen earth, and other hostile environments.
An Fengjie of China's State Forestry Administration and an expert in soil erosion, said the plateau region suffered from desertification long before the railway arrived. "The railway did not cause the problem, but it gives us an opportunity to witness the severity and scale of soil erosion on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," An said.
Sands buried rail racks and disrupted train services over 1,362 times from 1984 to 2002 on the Xining-Golmud section of the railway, in operation since 1984. The main part, the Golmud-Lhasa section, went into operation in 2006.
Since becoming fully operational, the railway has transported 52.76 million passengers, according to the railway company's estimate in July. Work has begun to expand the railway from Lhasa to Xigaze, a historical Tibetan city and home to Panchen Lamas.
Engineers set up walls or simply lay big rocks along the tracks to prevent sands from encroaching on the rail tracks.
"These emergency control measures have been effective, but we still need to address the root problems of desertification," An said.
One of the most prevalent theo! ries blames global warming for the ecological deterioration in the plateau region.
Sun Zhizhong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau rose over 2 degrees Celsius on average over the past three years, leaving large chunks of frozen earth to thaw. The moisture is soon lost, however, as water quickly evaporates under the plateau's blazing sun. The soil begins to dry up and eventually becomes desert, Sun explained.
- Lanzhou witnesses biggest flood peak since 1986
Residents overlook the Lanzhou section of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, yesterday. Up to yesterday, the water flow in the Lanzhou section of the Yellow River reached 3,780 cubic meters per second, close to the 4th warning criteria for flood prevention which is 4,500 cubic meters per second. Lanzhou witnessed its biggest flood peak since 1986, according to the local authority.
- Chan named Hong Kong development secretary
HONG Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said yesterday in a statement that Paul Chan was "devoted to serving the public and has been involved in various public duties for many years" and he was pleased to have Chan join his political team.
Earlier in the day, China's State Council, or Cabinet, appointed Paul Chan as secretary for development of the Hong Kong government. Paul Chan replaced Mak Chai-kwong, who resigned on July 12 for being suspected of abusing a civil service rent-reimbursement system.
"He has outstanding leadership and coordination abilities. He is also familiar with the operation of the Legislative Council. I am pleased to have him join my political team," Leung said in the statement.
Aged 57, Chan has just finished his term of office as the Legislative Council member of the Functional Constituency (Accountancy) and was the president of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants in 2006. He was a non-official member of the Commission on Strategic Development from 2005.
On Saturday, Hong Kong-listed Wharf Holdings, owners of HK's two major shopping centers and the city's cable TV operator, said Chan has resigned as an independent non-executive director.
"He has decided to resign because he wishes to pursue other career interests," it said in the statement filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
- concrete - nong tang # 114
china.sixty4 has added a photo to the pool:
nong tang - (alley) central Shangqiu - Shangqiu, Henan, China
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- 6-031
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