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Public security and border defense authorities of northeast Heilongjiang Province officially set up a checkpoint for the new tourism destination of Heixiazi Island on Tuesday, a day before it opens to tourists.

According to local authorities, all persons and vehicles of construction enterprises and tour groups will be inspected at the checkpoint, and persons or vehicles without permission are strictly prohibited from coming to the island.

Travel agencies and construction enterprises must show proper name lists and provide the personal information for every tourist and worker applying for landing permission.

The Fuyuan Border Defense Brigade is responsible for receiving applications for landing and issuing permits.

Luo Yunhong, political commissar of Fuyuan Border Defense Brigade, said that fishing is prohibited on the island, and authorities will be vigilant on crime prevention and illegal exploitation.

The western half of the 335-square-km island of Heixiazi belongs to China while the other half belongs to Russia.

China and Russia unveiled boundary markers on the island in 2008 and agreed to jointly develop the island into an eco-tourism zone in November 2010.

Song Xibin, director of the provincial development and reform commission, said that ecological protection will be the top priority in the island\’s development.

Heixiazi Island will open on Wednesday on a trial basis.

Source: Xinhua

A sudden downpour hit Beijing Tuesday night, disrupting traffic in many parts of the city.

The downpour brought a precipitation of more than 100 millimeters in three hours from 9 p.m. Tuesday, blocking traffic in several artery roads in downtown area.

A car was submerged by rain water under the Lianhua (Lotus) Bridge on the city\’s Third Ring Road, where stagnant water was over one meter deep.

"This round of downpour was concentrated in the downtown area, affecting urban traffic. The suburban districts received little rainfall," said Wang Yi, chief engineer with the Beijing municipal headquarters of flood control and drought relief, Wednesday.

A driver surnamed Cui said he was stranded on the Second Ring Road for two hours at Tuesday midnight.

"The highway has become a big parking lot. Water on ground was half a meter high," he said.

The municipal observatory forecast that the thunderstorms could occur in Beijing from Wednesday through Saturday, as the city has entered its flood season.

Source: Xinhua

The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is seeing its most serious electricity shortage in the past two decades, leaving nearly 30 percent of the region\’s demand for electricity unmet, local power authorities say.

The region can generate about 9 million kilowatts and buys about 1 million kW from other provinces.

That is not enough to provide the 13 million kW of electrical capacity the region needs in total, said Gu Nanfeng, deputy chief engineer of Guangxi Power Grid Corporation.

In Nanning alone, the government began on June 27 to restrict the power use of 1,049 industrial companies. That step will save about 300,000 kW for civil use, said He Jiyuan, deputy director of the Nanning Electricity Supply Bureau.

Guangxi falls about 3.5 million to 4 million kW short of being able to produce what it needs. Every day, the amount of its shortage comes to between 80 million to 90 million kWh, which means 30 percent of its demand for electricity is not being satisfied.

The region\’s troubles have several sources.

In the upper reaches of the local Hongshui River, the water does not stand high enough to be of use in generating hydropower. Making matters worse is a shortage of coal, which has caused the generators at many local power plants to cease running.

Li Shengru, manager of the Shengshan Cement Company in Hengxian county, said he had to resort to using a reserve generator.

"The government told us a month ago the electricity was going to be cut," Li said. "We understand the situation and hope it will become better."

To lower the region\’s demand for electricity, the government has called on residents to run their air conditioners less often.

"And we mandated that the temperature that air conditioners are set at in public places be always higher than 26 C," He Jiyuan said. In other public venues in Nanning, landscape lighting has been turned off.

Still, local residents cannot avoid a blackout from time to time. Some of them complain about inconveniences.

Liu Xiaoqiong, a resident of Jiangnan district in Nanning, said she has seen frequently power cuts since late June.

"We were not informed about the blackout ahead of time, and I am really afraid that the electricity will be cut off when I am in the elevator," Liu said.

Mo Qu, a resident living in Beihulu Road, said that all of his gold fish, most of which are expensive, were killed because the blackout prevented the pump that supplies oxygen to his pets from working.

Besides in Guangxi, electricity shortages have occurred in most of China\’s provinces and cities that do not have large reserves of coal.

During a seminar on June 1, Bai Jianhua, deputy chief economist of the State Grid Energy Research Institute, said North China lacks the capacity to generate 6 million kW of the electricity it needs, East China to generate 16 million kW and Central China to generate 7 million kW, according to a report from Shanghai-based China Business News.

Speaking at a later conference, Liu Tienan, head of the National Energy Administration, said that China\’s electricity supply will be most stretched "when everyone in the country is turning on their air conditioners".

Source: China Daily

Other punishments for these restaurants could include revoking of operating licenses and confiscation of contaminated food and earnings from sales of such food.

Meanwhile, all catering businesses with self-made hotpot seasoning, beverage and flavoring have been ordered to post what food additives they use at a prominent place in their restaurants or on their menus.

"Our kitchen is always open to customers, so that they can have a clear idea of what seasonings are being used," said Sun Zhongshan, hall manager of Huatianmakai, a time-honored restaurant in Beijing.

The practice of disclosing food additives helps consumers to keep informed about what they\’re taking in, said Zhang Shuzhen, manager of a Lanzhou restaurant.

However, there are concerns that to protect their secret recipes, some hotpot restaurants have only disclosed some of their ingredients or just promised that no illegal additives have been used.

"It is still hard to believe them 100 percent," a Lanzhou resident named Li Junru said.

Also, a system of registering the real names of food-additive buyers and sellers has taken shape across the country.

"It aims at ensuring food additives are purchased and used legally," said He Wensheng, an associate professor from the School of Management of Lanzhou University.

"The government has been filling the loopholes, but there\’s a long way to go to win the food safety war," He added.
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Source: Xinhua

The train collision in east China\’s Zhejiang Province has killed 36 people and left 192 others injured as of Sunday night.

The figure was released in a statement on the Ministry of Railways website on Monday after a tele-conference at 9:00 Sunday night.

A total of 132 people are being treated in 11 hospitals and those who suffered slight injuries had been discharged from hospital, said Wang Yongping, spokesman with the ministry at a press conference.

Source: Xinhua

A signal system design company apologized on Thursday for a design flaw in one of its products that allegedly caused Saturday\’s deadly high-speed train collision.

The Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signals and Communication posted an apology letter on its website on Thursday, expressing its condolences and regret to the victims of the accident and their families.

"We feel very sorry" for the deadly train accident that caused so much loss of life, the letter said.

The company promised to cooperate in investigations, take responsibility and shoulder any due punishments that may result from the investigations, the letter said.

Design flaws in railway signal equipment led to Saturday\’s fatal train collision near the city of Wenzhou in east China\’s Zhejiang Province, the Shanghai Railway Bureau said earlier on Thursday.

After being struck by lightning, the signal system at the Wenzhou South Railway Station failed to turn one of its green lights to red, which caused the rear-end collision, said An Lusheng, head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, at an investigatory meeting held by the State Council, or China\’s cabinet, in Wenzhou.

The signal equipment was designed by a Beijing-based research and design institute and was put into use on Sept. 28, 2009, An said.

The accident has revealed the railway sector\’s vulnerabilities in safety infrastructure and management, An said.

The accident has left at least 39 people dead and 192 others injured so far.

The State Council has set up an investigatory panel to work at the site of the crash, the Ministry of Railways (MOR) said in a statement on Tuesday.

Source: Xinhua

A staff member operates the sewage treatment process at the first sewage plant in Lhasa, capital of southwest China\’s Tibet Autonomous Region, July 14, 2011.(Xinhua/Wen Tao)

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Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Friday attended the consultation of East Asia Summit foreign ministers and called for further cooperation for future development.

The minister said the East Asia Summit should closely follow the theme of development and China is willing to work with other parties to promote cooperation in education, finance, energy, public health and disaster management, as well as regional connectivity and food security.

He also proposed further mutual trust and settlement of disputes through negotiations. He said new concept of security should be nurtured and put into practice and that an individual country\’s domestic problems or issues concerning specific disputes between countries should be avoided.

Yang said the East Asia Summit should put the emphasis of political security dialogue and cooperation on non-traditional security issues.

The East Asia Summit is expected to follow ASEAN\’s leading role, and stick to consultation and making progress at a proper pace, while taking every party\’s comfort into consideration, he said. The summit should also maintain openness and realize coordinated development with other cooperation mechanisms to provide guidance for regional cooperation, Yang said.

This year, the United States and Russia will officially join the East Asia Summit. Yang said the addition of the two countries will provide the summit with broader strategic significance and that the Chinese side hopes the enlarged summit will stick to its nature of "leaders-led" strategic forum to contribute more to peace, stability and prosperity of East Asia.

The minister said Asia has become the area which enjoys the fastest and most energetic economic development in the world, bringing confidence for other countries to overcome the financial crisis and speed up recovery. In 2010, Asia contributed 50 percent to the world\’s economic growth. And China made its due contribution to Asia\’s development.

As to the situation in the Korean Peninsula, Yang stressed that China has been committed to maintaining peace and stability of the peninsula as well as realizing denuclearization on the peninsula through dialogue and negotiation.

China welcomes every related party\’s effort to promote the dialogue and also welcomes the Democratic People\’s Republic of Korea and South Korea to carry out dialogue, he said, adding that China is willing to work with related parties and the international community to promote the resumption of six-party talks as soon as possible.

The foreign ministers attending the consultation welcomed the first participation of the United States and Russia. They said the summit needs to continue consolidating and expanding the cooperation on the basis of the leadership of ASEAN.

Source:Xinhua

A court in northern China\’s Hebei Province Friday sentenced Zhang Chunjiang, former deputy general manager of China Mobile, the world\’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, to death with a two-year reprieve for taking bribes.

The Intermediate People\’s Court of Cangzhou City also ordered the confiscation of Zhang\’s personal assets and stripped him of his political rights.

The court found that Zhang, 53, took 7.46 million yuan (1.15 million U.S. dollars) in bribes between 1994 and 2009 when he served as deputy director of Liaoning Provincial Postal Administration, general manager of China Netcom Group Corporation Ltd., and Party chief as well as deputy general manager of China Mobile.

Zhang was given a suspended death sentence, meaning the sentence could be commuted to life after two years of good behavior, because he confessed his crimes and all the bribe money had been recovered, according to the court.

Zhang had previous been removed from his official post and expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) for "severe violations of the discipline and the law."

Source: Xinhua

In order to alleviate the "tide phenomenon" traffic jams caused by too many vehicles entering Beijing in the morning and exiting from Beijing in the evening, Beijing will study the feasibility of establishing "tide lanes" in major arteries for vehicles entering and exiting from Beijing.

Afterward, the driving direction of the vehicles in the lanes of the major roads could be controlled and the signal lights could also adjust the number of lanes so that the efficiency of the roads would be improved.

In the 26th session of the 13th Standing Committee of the Municipal People\’s Congress of Beijing held on the morning of July 21, Liu Xiaoming, director of the Municipal Transportation Committee, made a report on the further work planned for alleviating traffic jams.

Liu said that Beijing will prioritize perfecting the signal system of the driveway stations among the next round of actions and will study the feasibility of setting tide driveways in the major radiating roads for vehicles entering and exiting from Beijing.

\”Tidal flow lanes\” to ease traffic pressure in Beijing

"Tidal flow lanes" refer to control the run direction of main lanes in conditional roads through changing the giving directions of traffic lights to adjust the number of lanes and increase the service efficiency of lanes in accordance with different situations of traffic flow in morning and evening.

For example, as there is relatively high traffic flow to downtown in the morning, related departments can ease the traffic pressure through increasing the number of lanes downtown and adopt the reverse lane deployment in the evening peak.

The so-called "traffic tidal phenomenon" refers to the traffic phenomenon of high traffic flow to downtown and low traffic flow to suburb every morning, and high traffic flow to suburb and low traffic flow to downtown every evening.

By People\’s Daily Online