China Chronicles September 27, 2012
- Five give selves up in Changsha for protest riots
FIVE people turned themselves in to police just one day after authorities in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province published the photos of 20 suspects smashing cars and vandalizing properties in an anti-Japanese protest on September 15.
The photos were taken by surveillance cameras and were published online by the police.
The 20 suspects were seen in the photos smashing Japanese-made cars and damaging stores during the mass protest against Japan's illegal purchase of China's Diaoyu Islands.
Changsha police detained dozens of rioters on September 16. Most of them were unemployed or had criminal records for fighting or gambling.
Protests erupted in many cities in China on September 15 and 16 after the Japanese government announced its purchase of the disputed islands in the East China Sea.
- iPad photo on The Bund
- Islands claim stressed as foreign ministers meet
FOREIGN Minister Yang Jiechi stressed China's claim to the Diaoyu Islands when he met Japanese counterpart Koichiro Gemba in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
During a meeting requested by Gemba, Yang said Japan's so-called "nationalization" of the Diaoyu Islands was a gross violation of China's territorial integrity and sovereignty, and a grave challenge to the post-war international order.
"The Chinese side will by no means tolerate any unilateral actions by the Japanese side on the Diaoyu Islands," Yang said. "China will continue to take firm measures to safeguard its territorial integrity and sovereignty."
Both sides promised to maintain consultations on the issue.
- Plane down on Yangtze but it's only a drill ...
A drill simulating a plane making an emergency landing on water took place at the mouth of Yangtze River yesterday.
A model plane, the same size as a Boeing 757 but not capable of flight, was used for the drill, with 150 volunteers acting as passengers stranded on the aircraft, maritime officials said.
The exercise was similar to the incident where an American plane successfully ditched in the Hudson River minutes after takeoff in early 2009, officials said.
The drill was to "put our rescue abilities from the water and air to the test," said Xu Zuyuan, vice transport minister and head of China's Maritime Search and Rescue Center.
During the drill, which lasted around 45 minutes, "passengers" were first evacuated to the plane's wings, waiting to be rescued. They were then taken on board boats and ships, as well as helicopters.
Some played the part of wounded passengers airlifted to helicopters hovering above the scene for transfer to hospital.
The rescue center said it had conducted more than 1,290 actual sea rescue missions this year, saving more than 950 ships and vessels and the lives of more than 11,000 people.
- Anger over oil firm's 'threats'
SLAPPING his hands repeatedly on a table, a local government official yesterday angrily accused Sinopec, China's biggest oil company, of threatening provincial government departments and brazenly discharging pollutants into the sea off south China's Guangdong Province.
Zhou Quan, director of the province's Environment Inspection Bureau, shouted at a meeting: "It always threatens the government by claiming what it does is for the national economy and the people's livelihood .... The environment is people's true livelihood."
The meeting, held to announce the conclusion of an inspection campaign launched by the province's environmental protection authority, was broadcast on China Central Television.
Zhou said some government departments did not dare inspect or supervise Sinopec even after they found the company was discharging excessive pollutants.
The inspection campaign found that three subsidiaries of the oil company in Guangdong had been illegally discharging pollutants into rivers or were putting the environment at serious risk.
The Sinopec Dongxing petrochemical company in Zhanjiang City illegally discharged sewage through rain drainage system, and the environmental protection authority of Guangdong ordered it to suspend its production in May. However, the company later resumed production without permission, officials told the meeting.
Another subsidiary - New Sino-US - illegally dismantled its sewer system. Then it diluted the waste before discharging it into rain tunnels.
Meanwhile, officials said that Sinopec Guangzhou had stored a large amount of unidentified liquid in two of its emergency tanks, which could cause severe environmental pollution in the event of an accident.
"District departments have been inspecting the three companies many times but why had they never found any problem?" Zhang Zhimin, a leader of one of the campaign's inspection teams, said, implying that Sinopec had managed to make district-level governments stay silent on! the iss ue.
"I think these issues should never happen to a major state-owned enterprise like Sinopec," Zhang told the meeting.
Sinopec topped an annual ranking of the biggest-earning Chinese enterprises for the eighth straight year with 2.55 trillion yuan (US$402 billion) revenue in 2011. It was followed in second place by another oil company, China National Petroleum Corp, which also reported revenue over 2 trillion yuan.
The CCTV broadcast of the meeting triggered anger among viewers, and Sinopec's stock price dropped by 1.5 percent on the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection has reported 26 pollution cases in the first half this year with nine of them related to Sinopec or its subsidiaries, CCTV said yesterday.
In Shanghai, Sinopec Shanghai Gaoqiao Petrochemical Corp was fined 200,000 yuan in April 2011 for causing a toxic gas leak that affected many parts of the city.
The ministry has asked Sinopec to launch an overhaul of its plants and suspended the three Guangdong companies, CCTV said. District governments who failed to oversee the illegal actions of the plants will also be punished, it was reported.
- Students finding it difficult on their own
A COLLEGE student in east China has been thrust into the media spotlight after she sent her dirty clothes home to be washed.
Her 74-year-old grandmother in the northeastern city of Dalian was asked to return the clothes once they'd been washed, according to a local newspaper.
The granddaughter recently enrolled in a university in Qingdao.
Newspapers and online news services quickly picked up the story and the student was suddenly at the center of much comment and criticism.
Since the beginning of the autumn semester, there have been many reports of new students, often from one-child families, finding it hard to cope on their own.
The reports gave rise to the question of whether indulgent parents should be to blame for their children's inability to take care of themselves.
"They should have basic operating abilities, and they surely need to know how to tend to their clothes," was one comment on Weibo. "They can't depend on their families their whole lives."
Another comment claimed: "Nowadays, many children are fragile," adding that parents were failing to give their children responsibilities at home, such as doing the household chores.
Xu Yafei, a junior at Nanchang University, said he had never washed clothes prior to gong to university and once took a month's worth of dirty socks home for his mother to wash.
"Later, I realized that I should live independently and, therefore, started making attempts to change," he said.
"College campus life is half like a society. After graduation, we need to live more independently," Xu added.
Freshman Liu Hao started doing his own laundry this summer, and now has no problems with campus life. "During the summer vacation, my parents arranged for me to do household chores to prepare for university life," Liu said.
Some experts say that the current education system, where students learn mechanically from textbooks, doesn't instill a sense of responsibility and self-sufficiency.
Stud! ents hav e been trained to study hard in school, and mastering the abilities that would make them self-sufficient and independent was not a priority, said Yin Xiaojian, a researcher at the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences.
- School sorry for face stamping
A primary school in Shenzhen has apologized for the misconduct of a young teacher who stamped blue and red marks on the faces of her students according to their performance.
Online pictures showed red marks on the foreheads of pupils who performed well while naughty ones had blue marks on their cheeks. The pupils said they could not rub off the marks until school was over, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.
''I felt humiliated and my classmates all laughed at me,'' said a child with a blue mark on his face. ''I begged my teacher to stamp it on my arm but she refused.''
A parent said it's like ''tattooing an inmate in ancient times to show the man was a criminal.''
Shangfen Primary School in Guangdong Province said a newly recruited teacher surnamed Guo used the method on grade three pupils as she wanted to motivate them to perform well in school.
Other teachers gave marks on students' exercise books.
Guo admitted it was inconsiderate to stamp the faces of the pupils. ''I will examine my wrongdoings and I won't do it again,'' she said.
Li Yu, the school's deputy head, said the school would give further training for young teachers, but didn't say if Guo would be punished, the paper reported.
News of Guo's action circulated online and triggered a public outcry.
''She must be fired and local education officials are required to make a public apology,'' wrote a microblogger on Weibo.com.
- Need to declare personal assets gets thumbs up
THERE has not been any negative response or tip-off about the 14 candidates applying for official posts in a county in Zhejiang Province who have been required to declare their personal assets.
The details of their personal assets have been publicized for a week by yesterday and the Pan'an County's organization committee said it has not received any adverse report or tip-off from the public about their declaration.
The public and the media have applauded the committee's endeavor on mandating personal asset declaration. Some lauded it as a most thorough initiative.
The candidates' data on the county government's website include their educational and work background, annual salary, the number of homes and cars owned, share holdings and other sources of family income.
Hu Yuxian, who is running for township head, reported an annual salary of 62,123 yuan (US$9,847) as secretary of the Pan'an county committee of the Communist Youth League of China. She also disclosed she owns two homes - one measuring 143.95 square meters bought by her family while another of 304.17 square meters was a gift.
"It (declaration) is a strong constrain to ensure civil servants are self-disciplined," Hu, a 30-year-old college graduate.
Those who are found to have concealed their personal assets will be dismissed from the official nomination procedure under discipline regulations set by the committee.
The organization committee of Jinhua City, which administers Pan'an, is working to introduce Pan'an's practice into the official appointment system in the city to check corruption and build a "transparent" government.
Officials bearing luxurious personal assets have become a new form of corruption in China.
Yang Dacai, a senior official in Shaanxi Province, was sacked after being exposed online wearing 11 pricey watches on various occasions.
- 1 passenger hurt as bus gets stuck in road cave-in
THE rear wheel of a bus carrying more than 20 passengers got stuck in a hole when a road in Harbin suddenly caved in yesterday.
A 40-year-old female passenger on the bus, which was damaged, was injured and has been sent to hospital, China National Radio reported.
The accident occurred around noon at the crossroads of Daqingfu Road and Xusheng Street in the city's Xiangfang District, the report said. Police have cordoned off the surrounding area and authorities are investigating the cause.
Several shoddy urban infrastructure accidents have cast a bad light on Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
Over nine days in August, seven reported road cave-ins killed two people and injured two others after two vehicles fell in.
Netizens have been mocking the frequent cave-ins, which they say "may trap anyone.'
- Tourist View 4
- Night at The Bund
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