3_6_5_PQ365

New pollution reduction targets listed

 

 
China published new targets for the reduction of major pollutants yesterday as it ran into the final year to realize its green goals.
The country will meet its binding targets to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), the major cause of air pollution, and chemical oxygen demand (COD) – the main indicator of water pollution – by 10 percent from 2005 levels in 2010, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said yesterday.
The authorities also aim to reduce another 400,000 tons of SO2 and 200,000 tons of COD beyond the targets, which were set in its 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).
In order to achieve that, the ministry will strive to increase urban wastewater treatment capacity by 10 million cu m, and install sulfur removers for power generators with a total capacity of 50 million kw this year.
Preliminary calculations show that China had already realized its SO2 reduction goal by the end of 2009, one year ahead of the schedule, the ministry said at the annual national conference on environmental protection held in Beijing yesterday.
By the end of 2008, total emissions of sulfur dioxide and COD had dropped by 8.95 percent and 6.61 percent, respectively, from 2005 levels.
The ministry also said it will intensify the fight against heavy-metal pollution and an overall plan for heavy-metal pollution prevention will be released by the end of June.
China has been faced with an increasing number of major heavy-metal pollution incidents. Several lead poisoning cases involving thousands of children across the country sparked protests last year.
As the country is poised to meet its 11th Five-Year Plan targets, a number of policymakers and academics have also started planning for the next five-year period.
The ministry said two new pollution indicators – nitrogen oxide (NOx), which is discharged from vehicles and power plants and causes acid rain; and ammonia nitrogen, another major measure of water quality – were introduced into the emission control list during the 12th five-year plan (2011-15).
The authorities will also need to find new mechanisms to reduce pollutants, as current projects-based measures to curb pollution have reached their limits, reducing the future capacity for emission reduction, said Zhao Hualin, director of the total emission control department from the ministry.
For instance, China required all its coal-fired power plants to install sulfur scrubbers to reduce SO2 emissions. By the end of 2008, more than 60 percent of China’s thermal power generating units had been equipped with such facilities, compared with 12 percent in 2005.
“The remaining capacity is lessening, forcing us to find new battlegrounds for emission reduction. For instance, the sintering process at steel mills is also a major SO2 emitter,” Zhao said.

Shanghai posts 8.2% growth in GDP

Shanghai’s economy secured a year-on-year growth of 8.2 percent in 2009, with faster expansion in the service industry countering a slower pace in manufacturing, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said Friday.
The gross domestic product in Shanghai last year jumped to 1.49 trillion yuan (218 billion U.S. dollars), with annualized rates in the four quarters settling at 3.1 percent, 7.9 percent, 9.8 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively.
“Shanghai’s economic performance has presented a clear trend of recovery,” the bureau’s chief economist Cai Xuchu said Friday. “Weak external demand may remain a drag on the city’s growth this year, but the overall economic conditions have been improved significantly.”
The yearly 8.2-percent growth rate trailed behind an increase of 9.7 percent in 2008 and 13.3 percent in 2007, making last year the second in a row to show a slowdown in growth after Shanghai had run at a double-digit pace for 16 years.
“The financial crisis is an apparent factor to deter the growth. But the slowdown is also a natural response to the city’s efforts of revamping its economic structure,” Cai said.
Benefiting from years of reform, Shanghai’s service industry accounted for 59.4 percent of the city’s total output last year, up 3.4 percentage points from 2008.
Production in the service sector gained 12.6 percent on an annual basis last year. The manufacturing industry edged up 3.1 percent. The agricultural sector contracted 1.1 percent.
Companies in financial, real estate and retail markets were three star performers in Shanghai’s service sector.
Addressing a question on the growing expectation of inflation, Cai said consumer prices in Shanghai will register a mild, controllable growth this year.
He said prices will rise because of higher costs in public services like water, transport and health care. A credit market with ample liquidity may accelerate the pace, he said.
“But it will be mild and within control,” Cai said.
Shanghai’s Consumer Price Index fell 0.4 percent in 2009 from a year earlier because of constant decreases after February. The losing streak ended in November. The CPI gained 1.2 percent last month mainly from price rises in food.
Shanghai’s fixed-asset investment last year expanded 9.2 percent from a year earlier, to 527.3 billion yuan. That included 146.4 million yuan spent on property development.
Retail sales in the city last year gained 14 percent to 517.3 billion yuan. Exports declined 16.2 percent to 141.9 billion dollars.
Disposable income of Shanghai dwellers last year jumped 8.1 percent to 28,838 yuan. The city’s unemployment rate stood at 4.3 percent, virtually unchanged from a year earlier.
Shanghai has set this year’s GDP growth target at over eight percent.

Xi urges change in development mode

Vice-President Xi Jinping (R) talks with parents of a newly born baby at Shiying residential area in Xiangfan city during his visit in central China’s Hubei province on Jan 22, 2010. [Xinhua]
Vice-President Xi Jinping urged more efforts to promote transformation of economic development mode to ensure sound and fast economic and social development during his four-day trip to central China’s Hubei province which concluded on Sunday.
He said that beefing up technology innovation was the fundamental means to transform economic development mode, and also an important way to realize scientific development, Xi said during his visits to a local auto plant, an iron and steel factory, a ship making mill and a university lab.
He said the government should guide enterprises to apply scientific research achievement in production and industrial upgrading.
Xi also called for more efforts to further study and put into practice the Scientific Outlook on Development, which emphasized the well-being of people and comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development.
During his tour to local resident communities, Xi asked local authorities to care about people’s lives and help solve their problems.

China’s total fixed-asset investments up 30.1% in 2009

China’s total fixed-asset investments rose 30.1 percent year-on-year to 22.48 trillion yuan ($3.29 trillion) in 2009, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday.
The rate of increase was 4.6 percentage points higher than the same period of 2008.
Urban fixed-asset investment rose 30.5 percent from a year earlier to 19.41 trillion yuan. The growth rate was 4.4 percentage points higher than that for 2008.
Fixed-asset investment in rural areas totaled 3.07 trillion yuan, up 27.5 percent from a year ago, and 6 percentage points higher than the growth rate in 2008.
Among urban fixed-asset investment, the growth rate in the primary sector (farming, fishing and forestry, among others) climbed 49.9 percent from a year earlier.
The industrial sector saw investment up 26.8 percent and the tertiary sector, or the service sector, which covers commerce, finance and services, posted a 33.0 percent growth.
China unveiled a 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package in November of 2008 to accelerate the economic growth which slowed to 6.1 percent in the first quarter of last year due to tumble in exports. The 4 trillion yuan stimulus plan included 1.8 trillion yuan which was scheduled to be used to build more railroads, highways, airports and other infrastructures.
The record bank lending and government spending had boosted the growth of the fixed-asset investment, Jing Ulrich, managing director and chairman of China Equities and Commodities of J.P. Morgan, said in a report.
She expected the growth would slow in 2010 as the government put restrictions on new projects investment. The investment would focus on projects that have began, she added.
Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong said in December that the government would intensify management over projects approval and reject expansion projects of docks, slipways from existing shipbuilding enterprises, and new capacity building and expansion projects in aluminum electrolysis and steel sectors in three years.

China’s GDP grows 8.7% in 2009

China’s economy expanded 8.7 percent in 2009 from a year earlier, indicating that China has achieved its full-year growth target of 8 percent for 2009, which the government believes is essential to generate more jobs for the country’s 1.3 billion population.
The gross domestic product (GDP) reached 33.54 trillion yuan (4.91 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2009, Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), told a press conference Thursday.

China’s CPI up 1.9% in Dec. 2009

China’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.9 percent year on year in December last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Thursday.

China’s PPI up 1.7% in Dec. 2009

The producer price index (PPI), a major measure of inflation at the wholesale level, rose 1.7 percent in December from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday.
It was the first monthly rise since December 2008. The full year figure was down 5.4 percent, it said.

China 2009 Q4 GDP rises 10.7%

China’s economy rose 10.7 percent year on year in the fourth quarter last year, and 8.7 percent year on year for the whole year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Thursday.
This compared with a quarterly growth of 6.2 percent in the first quarter, 7.9 percent in the second quarter, and 9.1 percent in the third quarter.
Policies adopted by the Chinese government to fight the global financial crisis had produced significant results and the Chinese economic growth was on a consolidated recovery.
The figures showed that China has achieved the full-year growth target of 8 percent, which the government believes is essential to generate more jobs for its 1.3 billion population.

Govt helps college graduates get employment

A college diploma is still the ticket to a good job in China, even under the deepest economic slump in decades, the latest official graduate employment rate shows.

“Last year, we made all efforts to help the college seniors find jobs and the employment rate reached 87 percent by the end of last year,” Yin Chengji, spokesman with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said at a press conference on Friday.
The data with the ministry showed that the number of college grads is more than 6.1 million last year and will reach 6.3 million this year.
Helping graduates find employment in 2010 is still at the top of the government’s agenda, Yin said, adding they will provide employment information and government-funded posts in communities for those unemployed grads.
But the large number of graduates this year is posing a great challenge to the authorities in how to help them get employed, he added.
Last year alone, in order to increase the graduate employment rate, about half a million government-funded positions were provided to grads, Chen Jianhui, deputy-director of the Chinese Talents Society told China Daily on Friday.
“With the efforts taken by the authorities, getting a job for a college grad is not that difficult. For the rest of the unemployed, some of them have impractical expectations for their first jobs,” Chen said.
Wang Boqing, manager of MyCOS HR Digital Information Co Ltd, said the rate is reasonable, and that many students landed work in the last half of the year.
As a senior student majoring in information engineering at Communication University of China, Ai Zeng believes the employment rate among his fellow students who graduated last year could be even higher than 87 percent.
“None of my classmates failed to find their bread last year,” Ai said.
But some education experts and college grads are questioning the credibility of the graduate employment rate.
Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of 21st Century Education Research Institute, a non-governmental organization committed to public education policy, said in a speech last year that the employment rate reached the level of saturation before March last year, so a surge in late 2009 was impossible.
“It means that many problems exist in the statistical process,” Xiong said, adding that many universities did not try to adjust to job market demands, but instead faked work contracts to increase the employment rate.
According to the current statistics methods, many universities regard those students who receive further education domestic and abroad, and those who start private businesses, like opening e-stores, are counted as employed, Xiong said.
According to unwritten rules at many universities, students cannot graduate if they do not find a job, Southern Metropolis Daily reported in July last year.
Yan Yiqi, a senior English major at Nanjing University, is surprised by the employment rate released recently and said that 87 percent is much higher than she expected because of the harsh job market under the economic downturn.
“The so-called employment rate doesn’t reflect the truth to me since I overheard the rumor that those who flunked the postgraduate test and intend for another shot next year were grouped among those who got employment,” Yan said.
Facing such fierce competition in the job market, many college seniors last year chose postgraduate entrance exams and civil servant exams as their way out.
More than 1.4 million students applied for 2010 postgraduate entrance exams, a year-on-year increase of 13 percent, according to figures from the Ministry of Education. About 5 million people took the civil servant recruitment exam last year, according to Xinhua.

Industrial output increases 11% in ‘09

China’s industrial output rose 11 percent in 2009 from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.