02/10/2009 Source: www.chinaview.cn

Steel giants from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan signed a strategic cooperation pact Tuesday.

Beijing-based Sinosteel Corp. President Huang Tianwen and Lin I-shou, chairman of Taiwan’s E-United Group, signed the agreement.

Sinosteel will set up a branch in Taipei for better coordination and cooperation with E-United.

Sinosteel is the largest steel service provider on the mainland. It is involved in trading, developing and processing, while E-United is one of Taiwan’s largest steel makers. It also has medical, education and estate development operations.

Sinosteel will offer E-United service in providing raw material, fuel and equipment and add it to its steel sales network, said the agreement. The companies will also step up cooperation in marketing and technology.

During a meeting with the two executives, also on Tuesday, Chen Yunlin, president of the mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, said their cooperation amid the economic crisis reflected forward-looking strategies and would promote cross-Straits economic cooperation.

02/06/2009   Source: Xinhua

Thousands of Chinese wrote to the Ministry of Education in the past month to offer advice on the education plans for the next decade, according to a ministry official on Friday.

The Ministry of Education received about 1.1 million pieces of proposals in the past month, said Tian Huisheng, said a ministry official in charge of processing the public opinions.

People sent e-mails, letters and left posts on the ministry’s Web site since the draft of the long-term plan on education reform and development was announced to solicit public opinions on Jan. 7.

The plan will be the country’s first education development plan in the 21st century. It will include major guidelines and policies about education before 2020.

People from various backgrounds wrote to the ministry, including teenage students, retired teachers and pedagogy experts, said Han Jin, director of the education development planning division under the ministry in charge of drafting the plan. “The ministry has never ever received so many proposals.”

Han recalled a letter from a 91-year-old retired teacher. He suggested the schools to improve training on students’ handwriting as more and more young people are using computers.

“The proposals were about a wide range of topics but many focused on the biggest challenges in today’s education service,” Tian said.

Based on the proposals, the ministry made a list of top 20 problems people cared most about education service.
The top ten problems were: How to improve the number and quality of teachers in rural areas; how to realize quality education; how to reform the administration of educational institutions; how to reform the enrollment exams of all levels; how to improve preschool education; how to reduce the homework of primary and middle school students; how to fully implement the nine-year compulsory education program; how to reform higher education; how to improve the education service to rural residents and children of migrant workers; and to enable people to enjoy equal access to education.

“We will not leave out any valuable proposals. A team made up of dozens of education experts were processing the proposals round the clock,” Tian said.

Education has long been one of the most talked about and controversial social problems among Chinese.
A survey by the National Bureau of Statistics issued in early 2008 showed that education was the fourth most important issue to the Chinese people, following health care service, social morality and social security.

“Education is relevant to every citizen. Students are from different backgrounds and interest groups. That’s why an education development plan must be discussed widely in the society to reach a common understanding,” said Prof. Yang Dongping, a pedagogy expert with the Beijing Institute of Technology.

The agenda of the public education policy should be set through such discussions, he said.

“We hope more people continue offering their ideas about the top 20 problems we announced today, especially practical proposals,” Han said.

The proceeding to solicit public opinions will end by the end of this month.

02/02/2009 Source: www.chinaview.cn

About 20 million of China’s migrant workers have returned home after losing their jobs as the global financial crisis takes a toll on the economy, said a senior official in Beijing on Monday.

Chen Xiwen, director of the office of the central leading group on rural work, said about 15.3 percent of the 130 million migrant workers had returned jobless from cities to the countryside.

The figures were based on a survey by the Ministry of Agriculture in 150 villages in 15 provinces, carried out before the week-long Lunar New Year holiday which began on Jan. 25.

His remarks came a day after the central government issued its first document this year, which warned 2009 will be “possibly the toughest year” since the turn of the century in terms of securing economic development and consolidating the “sound development momentum” in agriculture and rural areas.

The country’s economic growth slowed to 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, dragging down the annual rate to a seven-year low of 9 percent.

The document urged local and central government departments to adopt measures to create jobs and increase rural incomes.

Companies were asked to take on more social responsibilities and give rural migrant workers more favorable employment treatment. Flexible employment policies and more training chances were also encouraged.
Meanwhile, local government departments should increase investment to provide favorable tax and fee policies to those who lost jobs in cities and expect to find new work in their hometowns.

The government also urged departments to map out basic pension insurance measures suitable for rural conditions and migrant workers to ensure their rights.

01/19/2009   Source: China Daily

Local authorities in Shanghai and the Walt Disney Company have reached an agreement on major issues behind the building of the first Disneyland theme park on the Chinese mainland, Shanghai mayor Han Zheng said over the weekend.

“The municipal government started thinking of a Shanghai Disneyland more than a decade ago,” Han said at a press conference after the closing ceremony of the annual session of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress on Saturday.

“A team from Shanghai has been in contact with Disney since then and constant and pragmatic discussions have been held,” he said.

“An agreement was reached recently. But the State Council has the final say on the project and we will make arrangements according to its decision,” Han said.

Rumors of a Disney theme park in Shanghai have been circulating for years but neither of the two sides had confirmed it until recently.

On Jan 9, Disney told The Wall Street Journal in an e-mail it had worked on a joint application report with the Shanghai government, which would soon be submitted to the central government for review.

The $3.59 billion park is slated to be built by 2014 and will be sited on the east bank of Shanghai’s Huangpu River, bordering Pudong district’s Chuansha town and Nanhui district, the journal cited unidentified sources close to the project as saying.

Previous reports said 10 sq km of land has been set aside for the park. Its first phase will reportedly include a theme park, a hotel and a shopping center, covering an area of 1.5 sq km.

The mayor also said at the press conference that an ongoing project to extend the city’s maglev rail was making headway.

“The project is expected to connect the city’s two airports and will serve not only Shanghai, but also the whole Yangtze River Delta region and the country,” Han said.

“We have been listening to opinions from experts. Professionals from around the country are still comparing the available plans once they reach a conclusion, we will focus on feedback from the public,” he said.

01/15/2009  Source: Xin Hua

Chinese President Hu Jintao has ordered the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to “brainstorm for measures” to help travelers over the annual Spring Festival travel peak.

The ministry’s website on Thursday reported a message from Hu, saying, “This year’s Spring festival is facing a tougher supply-demand imbalance and the ministry has to brainstorm for measures to promote passenger convenience and open the measures to public. The ministry has to ensure a smooth and safe transportation during the peak season.”

Senior officials Zhou Yongkang and Zhang Dejiang have also urged the ministry to investigate ticket shortage problems and take actions to guarantee tickets.

In response to the instructions, Vice Minister of Railways Wang Zhiguo said the ministry had ordered to suspend cargo services to allow more passenger trains in the busiest southern and eastern regions. Short-distance passenger trains would be suspended for more long-distance trains. Hard sleepers would be changed to seats.

The ministry will also transfer passenger trains serving northeast and northwest areas to south and east China and improve schedules of temporary trains, especially those for students and migrant workers.

Meanwhile, tickets will be sold only in the railway ticket sales network, except for group tickets for students and migrant workers. Hotels, restaurants and travel agencies are ordered to halt ticket booking services, and major stations will adopt 24-hour sales.

Stations have to set up counters for students and send staff to sell tickets in schools and places where migrant workers gather.

Sales staff are prohibited from buying tickets for others, from carrying cash and mobile phones during work hours, from keeping personal belongings on the sales desk.

Wang also apologized to passengers who had reacted angrily to a video posted online, which showed a sales lady in Beijing Railway Station printing 130 tickets for trains running to cities in the northeast.

Passengers had accused the station of scalping tickets.

“On behalf of the ministry, I have to apologize to passengers for their unpleasant feelings and misunderstandings the incident has caused,” Wang said. “The action was immediately investigated and turned out it was part of advance preparations to save time for passengers. There was no rumored collusion between railway staff and ticket scalpers.”

He said the ministry pledged to crack down on scalpers and exert strict supervision on booking systems, including sales outlets and online booking.

Last December a nationwide campaign was launched to tackle ticket counterfeiting and scalping. As of Thursday, the authorities had detained 2,393 people in 2,009 scalping investigations and seized 78,237 tickets, of which 60,000 were counterfeit.

MOR spokesman Wang Yongping said insufficient transport capacity resulted in the short supply and scalpers made it worse.

Almost 188 million people are expected to travel by train in the holiday season, up 8 percent or 13.73 million from last year. The daily rail traffic will grow by 340,000 people to a record average high of 4.7 million.

From Jan. 1 to 10, the number of passengers leaving Beijing increased 29.4 percent year on year. The figure for Shanghai was 22.7 percent and Guangzhou 25.8 percent.

The Spring Festival rush started on Jan. 11. The first four days saw 18.15 million travelers nationwide, 4.538 million a day, up 8.5 percent from a year earlier.

Wang said the ministry had arranged a record 2,208 temporary trains, 253 more than the same period last year, and more were yet to come into service, but the supply was still far from enough, he added.
Wang Zhiguo said the ministry would start construction on up to 30,000 kilometers of new lines with investment of more than 2 trillion yuan (292.5 billion U.S. dollars) in two years.

Operational railways would stretch 110,000 kilometers by 2012 when the difficulty of obtaining a ticket would be much eased, he added.

By Wang Bo (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-02 16:00

The Renminbi yesterday registered the largest one-day fall since it was de-pegged from the US currency in July 2005.

The daily benchmark, or the central parity rate for the US dollar, dropped 156 basis points to close at 6.8505, the lowest level since August.

Experts say the sign of Renminbi depreciation appeared last week. Last Thursday its value against the US dollar dipped 20 basis points and fell another 57 basis points on Friday.

Luo Rui, an official with China’s Central Bank, told Hong Kong-based media last Friday that the Renminbi will remain stable against the US dollar in the short run, but its future trend will largely depend on market demands and the value of other currencies.

The governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan said earlier that he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of the Renminbi depreciating.

“The moderate depreciation of the Chinese currency is conducive to the domestic economy,” said Guo Tianyong, director of the Research Center of the Chinese Banking Industry, Central University of Finance and Economics.

But he also pointed out that as overseas demand has declined substantially, Renminbi depreciation is not “quite an effective tool” to spur export growth.

December 31, 2008:  Source: www.chinaview.cn

Credit Suisse and Founder Securities announced in Beijing Tuesday that their joint venture in China has received a business permit from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to provide services to clients in China’s domestic market.

The joint venture, Credit Suisse Founder Securities Limited, will focus on sponsoring and underwriting of A-shares, as well as government and corporate bonds in China.

Swiss bank Credit Suisse takes a 33.3 percent stake in the joint venture. The other 66.7 percent is in partner Founder Securities’ hand.

“Many international banks are longing for a share of the investment banking services in emerging markets including China”, said Kai Nargolwala, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Officer in Asia Pacific.

He added the company would not change its intention to invest in China despite the world economy slipping into recession.

Credit Suisse won approval from the securities regulator to establish the joint venture with Founder Securities in June, the first such approval after the new regulations relating to the establishment of Sino-foreign securities companies were issued in December 2007.