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by Xinhua writer Yan Hao

Chinese military experts Thursday said the country, surrounded by foreign aircraft carriers, must have aircraft carriers to safeguard national security and development.

The Chinese government on Wednesday confirmed that the country was refitting a Soviet-era aircraft carrier.

Military experts interviewed by Xinhua on Thursday said China is surrounded by foreign aircraft carriers and other large-tonnage warships cruising in the waters it faces.

Currently, China is the only nation among five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that does not have an active-service aircraft carrier.

"The U.S. operates 11 carrier battlegroups and has deployed six of them to the Pacific region," said Real Admiral Yin Zhuo, director of the Expert Consultation Committee of the People\’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy.

China\’s neighbors such as India and Russia also have carriers and continue developing their weapon systems, while Japan and the Republic of Korea have acquired large-tonnage warships which could be used as aircraft carriers depending on if they can purchase the vertical landing F-35B jets, Yin said.

"Other countries should not be surprised by China\’s refitting of a carrier for training purposes," said Li Jie, a researcher with the PLA Navy\’s Academic Research Institute.

India, for instance, was the first country in Asia to have a carrier after World War II. It bought the British HMS Hercules in 1957 and renamed the carrier Vikrant. In 1986, India bought another British carrier HMS Hermes and refitted it to its current active-service INS Viraat.

In 2004, India continued its purchase of foreign carriers with the acquisition of the Russian decommissioned Admiral Gorshkov. One year later, the country started building its indigenous carrier scheduled to come into service in 2014, according to Li.

The researcher noted that the USS George Washington, perhaps the closest carrier to China, is now forward-deployed at Yokosuka base in Japan.

In addition, China also faces several large-tonnage warships which have combat effectiveness equivalent to light aircraft carriers, Li said.

Japan\’s Maritime Self-Defense Force currently has two 18,000-metric ton Hyuga-class helicopter carriers, although the warships are classified by Japan as "helicopter destroyers."

Yin said the PLA navy\’s current defense capability could not answer the requirements of its missions.

"The navy\’s aviation forces and ships can not form a coordinated power in the high seas," Yin said, adding that the navy learned from task forces deployed to the Somali waters and Libya that an aircraft carrier is a must to better protect national security and interests.

"China\’s pursuit of an aircraft carrier will not pose a threat to other countries, and the Western nations should accept and be used to the reality that we are developing the carrier."

Du Wenlong, a researcher with the PLA\’s Academy of Military Science, said that refitting an imported carrier for research and training is just like making a draft for an article.

"The draft might be totally deleted in the future, but its value for reference is irreplaceable," Du said, noting that the most valuable treasure of the refitted carrier is help the PLA build a carrier battlegroup and how to use such vessels.

Source: Xinhua

A veritable feast of "red" TV shows and movies has dominated the country\’s airwaves and silver screens this summer, as the Communist Party of China (CPC) seeks to cater to younger tastes in the wake of the 90th anniversary of its founding.

Typically involving young, attractive actors and dramatic love stories, the shows and movies have attracted a younger crowd of patriots.

Jiang Yi, a 17-year-old high school student from Shijiazhuang, the capital city of north China\’s Hebei Province, said that she would rather spend several hundred yuan to purchase a new dress than buy a book about the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which costs only a few dozen yuan.

Jiang is not a special case. Youngsters who have grown up with the development of the Internet and Hollywood blockbusters have little enthusiasm about the history of the CPC. This has posed a challenge for the Party, as it must find a more effective way to encourage young people to be patriotic without coming off as being patronizing or boring.

Young people lined up in droves to see "The Founding of a Party," a film released on June 15 that starred an ensemble cast of 173 well-known Chinese movie stars. The film was centered around the history of the founding of the CPC.

"I was deeply impressed when I saw students in the movie parading around and shouting slogans on the street," said Jiang, "especially since they were played by my favorite stars."

Han Sanping, the director of the film, admitted that he chose extremely popular actors in order to draw more people to the film, even though many of the famous actors only had small cameo roles.

"The first step is to draw attention," Han said. "After that, people may find that they have the patience to follow the plot of the film," he said.

"We read a lot of historical accounts in our textbooks when we were high school students," a 21-year-old college student named Wang Xiaobei said, "but I forget them easily because I only learned them so I could pass my exams."

However, upon mentioning "The Founding of a Party," her eyes lit up with excitement.

"It was a brand-new feeling to see my idols dressed in historical clothing," she said.

Patriotic dramas also invaded the country\’s TV screens this July. "My Youth in Yan\’an," "China in 1921" and "Chinese Women Soldiers on the Long March" have all become popular "red" dramas since hitting airwaves.

Xia Xueluan, a social psychology expert from Peking University, said that the country needs to find a new way to educate young people and give them a sense of patriotism.

However, some people, particularly parents of the youth who are being targeted by the new shows and films, have argued that the shows may misrepresent history and mislead young people who don\’t have a solid understanding of actual historical events.

Xia suggested that the producers of the shows and films should keep their responsibilities to their audiences in mind when writing the plots of their works.

"Young people should know that TV shows are a type of art. They should have their own judgment," Xia said.

Source: Xinhua

In late July, the seminar on logistics support for flight in the plateau and frigid areas of the army aviation troops of the Chinese People\’s Liberation Army (PLA) was held at the Sichuan-Tibet Military Service Station Department of the PLA Chengdu Military Area Command (MAC). A total of 100-odd representatives from 12 units of PLA army aviation troops attended the seminar.

According to the introduction of a leader of the Army Aviation Department of the General Staff Headquarters (GSH) of the PLA, the central topic of this seminar is the logistics support for the flight tasks that the army aviation troops carry out in the plateau and frigid areas.

The plateau and frigid areas in China take up 2.4 million square kilometers. Because of the severe natural conditions and underdevelopment economy, the logistics support for flight of army aviation has long been confronted with urgent problems such as weather forecast, air traffic control, material raising, POL support and medical service support.

At a place on the Western Sichuan Plateau at an altitude of more than 3,500 meters, an army aviation field and station of the Sichuan-Tibet Military Service Station Department of the PLA Chengdu MAC organized an actual-troop drill of logistics support for army aviation flight in the plateau and frigid areas, drilling in subjects such as emergency medical aid and disposal of special situations on plateau.

By Yang Biao and Cheng Bijie Source: PLA Daily

A car moves on a flooded road in Beijing, capital of China, July 25, 2011. Following Sunday\’s rainstorm, Beijing received another heavy rainfall on Monday morning. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

Two people found dead on a rain-soaked road in Beijing Sunday night are suspected to have been killed by lightning, as the heaviest rainstorm in 13 years pounded the city from Sunday through Monday morning and is expected to linger into Monday evening.

The victims, a man and a woman, were found dead on a road outside a plant in Nancai Industrial Park in Shunyi District at 9 p.m. Sunday, said a spokesman with the district government on Monday.

The northern district of Miyun recorded precipitation of 243 mm in 22 hours before 6 a.m. Monday, said Wei Jianmin, chief forecaster of the Beijing Observatory.

He said the rain is important to replenish Beijing\’s primary water source of the Miyun Reservoir, which has received 17 million cubic meters of water during the rain so far.

Although the rain had little effect on traffic Monday, it caused a disturbance in the city\’s busy air traffic. According to Beijing Capital International Airport\’s website, 329 flights were canceled due to the rainstorm.

Meanwhile, traffic on a rail link between Beijing and Chengde City in neighboring Hebei Province was suspended after several sections of the track were submerged in rainwater Sunday night.

Workers are still rushing to clear the railway.

The city mobilized Sunday evening to take precautions against rainstorm-triggered disasters.

More than 6,000 residents living in the hilly regions of Miyun and Pinggu districts in Beijing\’s outskirts were evacuated to safe grounds Sunday evening before floods inundated more than 10 villages and triggered four landslides there.

The China National Meteorological Center on Monday morning continued a rainstorm alert, forecasting rains to hit Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Liaoning and Hebei provinces in the north, as well as eastern Shandong and Jiangsu provinces in the next 24 hours.

A sudden rainstorm in Xingshan County, central Hubei Province, on Sunday night injured nine people and caused a blackout and disrupted traffic. The rainstorm only lasted 12 minutes but damaged 649 houses as well as roads, bridges and power facilities.

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A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday called for strengthened exchanges and cooperation with Mexico\’s major political parties.

Liu Yunshan, head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while meeting with Alberto Anaya Gutierrez, chairman of the Labor Party (PT) of Mexico.

Liu said Mexico is an emerging power with great development potential, and China highly values the friendly relations with the country.

He spoke highly of the productive bilateral cooperation in the areas of economy and trade, culture and international affairs, as well as increased mutual political trust since the two nations forged diplomatic ties in 1972.

The CPC is willing to enhance cooperation with major political parties in Mexico, including the Labor Party, to constantly enrich the bilateral strategic partnership and push forward the sustained and sound development of bilateral ties, he added.

Anaya congratulated China on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the CPC, saying the Labor Party admires the great achievements made by the Chinese people under the lead of the CPC.

The Labor Party is ready to beef up friendly exchanges with the CPC in an effort to jointly advance the bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation in such areas as economy, trade and culture, Anaya said.

Source: Xinhua

A fifth-grade student from Urumqi\’s No. 90 Middle School experienced several short-lived fevers in April after drinking some of the school milk. Hu Yuling, the student\’s parent, said that she received a short message from her student\’s teacher asking all of the students to return the milk to the school due to "problems with the milk."

Schools have felt the squeeze between local educational authorities and parents because of the milk program. The headmaster of Urumqi\’s No. 9 Primary School said that school officials can do nothing to resolve the issue.

"The schools are only responsible for giving out the coupons to the students," he said. "Schools cannot bear responsibility for the students\’ health if there is a safety issue with the milk."

The milk program covered about 793,000 students as of the end of 2010, including 849 schools and 17 children\’s welfare association. The number represents about a quarter of Xinjiang\’s entire student population.

According to Qi Xinlin, director of the Xinjiang Dairy Office, the whole autonomous region will eventually be covered by the program over the course of the 12th Five-year Plan period (2011-2015). "The dairy industry\’s productivity will be increased and dairy subsidies will be acquired through various channels," Qi said.

The region\’s students and parents hope that there will be more choices for them in the future. A parent surnamed Jin, whose child studies at Urumqi\’s No. 16 Middle School, said that he hopes the dairy companies can provide the students with higher-quality milk.

Source: Xinhua

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China should provide more policy support for the construction of a "green" economy, a Chinese expert said at a UN press conference held in Beijing on Friday afternoon.

Experts and scholars were invited to the conference to discuss The "World Economic and Social Survey 2011" report, which was released in Geneva on July 5 by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA).

The report mainly discussed the inevitable need for sustainable development and called for immediate global action to create more green economies.

The report said that major investment will be needed for the development of clean energy technologies, sustainable farming and forestry techniques, and the development of technologies that will reduce the production of non-biodegradable waste.

"China already has plenty of available technologies, but the problem is how to improve and expand the application of these technologies," said Zhang Xiao from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), noting that preferential policies and financial support are still needed.

Technological transformation efforts must occur at a national level and build upon local conditions and resources, the report said.

Cai Yuezhou, another CASS academic, said the government plays an essential role in the process of boosting technological transformation in China.

He also proposed creating a global public green technology-sharing system, which would feature networks linking up international technological research and application centers.

The report also praised China\’s scientific research input and personnel training efforts.

"As a developing country, China faces some serious problems in its realization of sustainable development," said Zhang Youguo, also from the CASS.

Source: Xinhua

Driving through China\’s countryside a decade ago, it was not uncommon to see harsh-sounding family planning slogans painted on the sides of buildings.

Frightening phrases like "one more baby means one more tomb" and "first baby delivered, litigation imposed after the second, and the third and fourth killed!" were used to deter parents from having additional children after the adoption of China\’s one-child policy.

However, these slogans are about to go the way of the buffalo, as the government is working to replace the phrases with kinder, gentler suggestions.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission launched a one-year campaign in June to substitute coarsely-worded and insensitive family planning slogans with more pleasant-sounding alternatives.

The campaign targets slogans that are "incorrect or obsolete in content, uncouth in wording, or improperly placed," according to a notice posted on the commission\’s website.

The new slogans will appeal to people\’s positive emotions and express humanity while using concise, standardized language, the notice said.

Zhang Jian, the commission\’s publicity official, described the campaign as a "face-changing project."

Fear of family planning policies

When the one-child policy was implemented in 1979, the slogans were "relatively mild" and designed specifically to inform the public about the policy, said Qin Tao, a government official from the city of Shangqiu in central China\’s Henan Province, one of the country\’s most populated regions.

Slogans like "one child is fairly adequate, two are just enough and three are excessive" were quite common, said Qin, who has years of experience in promoting family planning in rural areas.

Although the slogans allowed rural residents to become familiar with the policy, family planning efforts encountered great obstacles in the countryside during the 1980s and 1990s.

With the rather low cost of raising a child largely overlooked, rural families tended to have more children. An absence of a sound legal system in many rural areas led to authorities resorting to harsh and illicit means to crack down on excess births. Teams of anonymous thugs were hired to confiscate livestock and food from families who violated the policy, with some of the families even held in detention from time to time, Qin said.

Some of the families threatened to commit suicide in protest, according to Qin.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission in 1995 banned the practice of detaining and torturing families with excess children, as well as the practices of confiscating their property and levying nonexistent fines.

In recent years, authorities in Henan\’s Anyang County have created a series of preferential measures to reward families that have strictly followed population control policies, according to Zhao Zigang, an Anyang County family planning official.

According to Zhao, households with a single child or two female children in Anyang are eligible to receive cash grants, with their children entitled to receive free insurance and education.

"People benefit directly from having fewer children. This is the best way to describe the family planning policies," he said.

Family planning authorities in some areas of northeast China\’s Heilongjiang Province provide free services such as premarital counseling, reproductive risk assessments, parental training classes for parents-to-be and early education for children under three years of age.

Coverage for the free services will be extended to the entire province before 2015, said Jia Yumei, a family planning official in Heilongjiang.

Softening slogans

China has seen frequent changes in its family planning slogans, concurrent with the adjustments made to its population control policies over the years.

In 2007, the National Population and Family Planning Commission recommended 190 slogans selected through a national campaign. The slogans included warmer-sounding sentiments such as "the Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "both boys and girls are in their parents\’ hearts."

The slogans are now distributed to rural families through brochures that are sent out to households, and are no longer painted on the sides of buildings, Jia said.

The commission\’s notice said it hopes to fully implement "softened and standardized" slogans in both rural and urban areas by 2012. It also said that the promotion of family planning should be localized, taking into account regional economic and social conditions, as well as local customs.

Family planning policies as they existed in the 1980s restricted urban couples to just one child, while ethnic minority families were permitted to have more children. However, these policies have loosened over the years. In many parts of the country, couples made up of people from one-child families are permitted to have two children.

In rural areas, couples are permitted to have a second child if their first child is female, in accordance with a Chinese tradition that states that males are responsible for ensuring that their families\’ bloodlines are preserved.

South China\’s Guangdong Province, the country\’s most populated province by population, has already gone one step further. It recently submitted a proposal to the central government that will allow couples to have two children if even just one of the parents is a single child, said Zhang Feng, the province\’s family planning official.

Source: China Daily

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) recently adopted an agreement on the guidelines of implementing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which enables them to take a more defined road for cooperation in this region, analysts said.

The guidelines, which were released Wednesday by senior officials from China and the 10-member ASEAN, are formally endorsed by Chinese and ASEAN foreign ministers on Thursday.

Although brief in content, the guidelines include some principles that offer directions for implementing the DOC and map out procedural rules for cooperation in the future, China\’s Ambassador to ASEAN Tong Xiaoling told Xinhua in an interview.

Because the consultation on the guidelines had been deadlocked for a long time, some possible cooperative projects were not able to move forward, Tong said.

Now that China and the ASEAN have finally churned out the document, the parties can shift their focus to exploring practical cooperation in the South China Sea, instead of trading empty talk, she said.

According to Tong, China and the ASEAN can set up working groups or committees in the next stage, aiming to carry out cooperation in areas with low sensitivity, such as marine research and maritime safety.

The DOC was signed in November 2002 as the first code of conduct for all parties involved in diplomatic issues in the South China Sea.

In order to drive forward the cooperative projects stated in the DOC, China and the ASEAN conducted consultations on rolling out the guidelines to implement the DOC. The two sides witnessed two senior officials\’ meetings and set up a relevant joint working group.

Signatories to the DOC agree to explore cooperation in such areas as marine sciences research, marine safety and combating transnational crimes.

Although uncertainty lingers ahead of the convening of a series of foreign ministers\’ meetings from July 21 to 23 at Indonesia\’s resort island of Bali, the endorsement of the guidelines displays China and the ASEAN\’s common aspiration to deepen cooperation and mutual trust, said Zhang Jiuhuan, former Chinese Ambassador to Thailand and Singapore.

Disputes still remain on issues such as the sovereignty of some islands in the South China Sea, and some countries in the region are accused of violating the spirit of the DOC on many occasions in recent years. In such circumstances, the endorsement of the guidelines enhances the principles in the DOC and exert great significance, said Li Guoqiang, an expert with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The oil- and gas-rich South China Sea is partially claimed by several southeast Asian states, including the Philippines and Vietnam. However, China interprets history as giving it indisputable sovereignty over the sea\’s islands and their surrounding waters.

During the ASEAN Plus China Foreign Ministers\’ meeting held in Indonesia on Thursday, the foreign ministers of ASEAN said the agreement on the guidelines demonstrates that both China and ASEAN are able and willing to resolve the toughest issue.

It is conducive to promoting mutual trust and safeguarding regional peace, stability and prosperity, they added.

Analysts also see the guidelines providing a positive impetus in safeguarding peace and solidarity in the South China Sea, but they don\’t regard the guidelines as a panacea in solving territorial disputes in the region.

"The disputing parties are not China and the ASEAN, so a document reached by the two sides cannot solve the disputes," Tong said, stressing the disputes can only be handled within a bilateral framework.

Parties having no direct links with the disputes, should not intervene in this issue, she added.

Concerning the China-ASEAN cooperation in the area, countries related should share the view that "extreme means are not acceptable in solving territorial disputes," and take concrete actions to push forward maritime cooperation in the meantime, said Qin Yaqing, deputy director of the Chinese Foreign Affairs University.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the China-ASEAN dialogue relationship. China now is the ASEAN\’s largest trading partner, and ASEAN exceed Japan to become the third largest trading partner of China in April.

Source:Xinhua

To fight corruption at the grassroots, China\’s central authorities have issued the first regulations forbidding township and village officials from appropriation of land, embezzlement and vote buying.

The regulation applies to millions of officials at the lowest administrative level in China\’s 600,000 villages. Experts said many such officials are key decision-makers but have been under "lax supervision" and have "poor understanding" of the law.

The general offices of the Central Party Committee and the State Council published the regulations on village officials\’ code of duty recently.

"Although many regional governments have come up with their own codes, we need a unified institutional one that can be applied nationwide," a senior official with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Party told Xinhua News Agency.

Liu Ting, the commission\’s inspector, said the regulation covers most major issues that stir rural residents\’ dissatisfaction with grassroots officials.

It forbids 41 acts of misconduct, including appropriating lands, embezzling subsidies to farmers, taking advantage of local businesses and spending unnecessarily on events.

It also prohibits officials from abusing their power or influence to gain benefits for their relatives. Using the power of religious groups, clans or organized gangs to interfere with or sabotage elections is also banned.

Although online polls on the website of the People\’s Daily last year showed that 71 percent of the participants thought corruption was most severe at county level, many also said that corruption at grassroots level cannot be ignored.

According to the Supreme People\’s Procuratorate, prosecutors investigated 8,806 officials at village and township level for possible bribery as well as 1,946 for dereliction in the first 10 months of 2008. While 7,175 grassroots officials were investigated for job-related crimes in 2009.

Lin Zhe, an anti-corruption expert, said although the public recently noticed a trend for more senior officials to be involved in corruption cases involving larger amounts of money, corruption was also infiltrating the grassroots level.

In one case, a former Party secretary, surnamed Liu, of Zidong village, Nanzhuang township in Guangdong province, embezzled 23.7 million yuan ($3.68 million) of public funds, according to local prosecutors.

"Why do we become officials? Isn\’t it for the money?" Jin Xinhua, former head of Huoyutang village in Zhejiang province, once asked the village accountant after making a false report of construction costs. Jin has been accused of accepting 300,000 yuan in bribes in 2009.

According to a published case study by the Procuratorate of the Aksay Kazak autonomous county, Gansu province, the officials\’ poor understanding of the law is the fundamental reason behind job-related crime.

The absence of an effective supervision system triggers crime and disorder in local financial management, the essay, published in May, said.

Professor Shi Hexing, of the Chinese Academy of Governance, told China Daily that, although corruption could not be eliminated quickly, the regulation that clearly forbids 41 acts of misconduct should increase awareness of good governance among local officials.

"It defines what are public interests, and how officials at village and township level should handle conflicts between individuals and the public a key step in avoiding corruption."

Officials who violate the regulations will be reprimanded, suspended or removed from posts or have legal proceedings taken against them. Financial penalties, including deduction of allowances and compensating costs, can also be applied.

Source: China Daily