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The EU-China cooperation project on the protection of Intellectual Property Rights held a closing ceremony Friday, commemorating the successful completion of over 200 technical assistance and training activities across China.

The closing ceremony included a handover of 500 expert materials and information tools developed by the Project from 2007 to 2011 to the Chinese authorities.

Raimund Lutz, vice president of European Patent Office, told reporters at the ceremony that the office received 13,000 applications from China in 2010, up by 96 percent compared with the number in 2008.

The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights Project Phase II (IPR2)was launched in 2007 by the European Union and the Chinese government with 16.275 million euros in joint funding.

IPR2 aimed at improving the reliability, efficiency and accessibility of the Intellectual Property protection system in China, and establishing a sustainable environment of Intellectual Property Right enforcement in China.

The project is a partnership between the European Union and China on the protection of intellectual property rights in China.

Source: Xinhua

Chinese President Hu Jintao (L, front) and Cameroonian President Paul Biya (R, front) inspect the guard of honor during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 20, 2011. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng)

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Wu Bangguo (R), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People\’s Congress of China, shakes hands with Cameroonian President Paul Biya at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 21, 2011. (Xinhua/Ma Zhancheng)

China on Thursday pledged further cooperation with Cameroon in broad fields as top legislator Wu Bangguo and Premier Wen Jiabao met separately with visiting Cameroonian President Paul Biya.

During the meeting between Biya and Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People\’s Congress (NPC), China\’s top legislative body, Wu pledged to carry out closer exchanges and cooperation between the NPC and Cameroonian parliament.

"The NPC is ready for further exchanges and cooperation of all levels and in all fields with the Cameroonian parliament, so as to contribute to the development of bilateral ties," Wu said.

Biya said government, parliament and political parties of Cameroon all hold positive attitude toward its relationship with China and are willing to make further efforts in this regard.

"The international financial crisis brought about great losses to the developing countries and consolidated our resolution to strengthen south-south cooperation and to maintain our common interests," Wen said during his meeting with Biya.

He added that Cameroon and other African countries are important strategic partners of China, and China will continue to provide assistance in funds, technology and specialized personnel and expand bilateral trade and investment cooperation.

Wen also called on the two sides to conduct closer coordination and cooperation in major international organizations including the United Nations, and promote China-Cameroon and China-Africa relations.

Biya thanked the Chinese side for its long-term assistance and support, saying they made important contributions to the country\’s stability and development.

China is Cameroon\’s old friend and reliable strategic partner, said Biya. He said Cameroon is ready to take the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties as an opportunity to further strengthen high-level exchanges and cooperation in all fields, so as to promote bilateral relations.

Prior to meetings with Wu and Wen, President Hu Jintao held talks with Biya on Tuesday afternoon. After his stay in Beijing, Biya will visit Tianjin Municipality.

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Source: Xinhua

China\’s railway authority said Wednesday that recent power failures that have caused delays on the newly built Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway pose no threat to its operational safety.

The trains travelling on the high-speed railway are all "highly protected" and are designed to immediately stop running in case of a power failure, the Ministry of Railways said.

The railway has experienced three delays over the last four days, with the latest taking place on Wednesday. Power failures previously halted 19 trains on Sunday and 29 others on Tuesday.

Sunday\’s incident was blamed on an equipment failure that was triggered by high winds and thunderstorms, while Tuesday\’s breakdown is still under investigation, according to sources with the China CREC Railway Electrification Bureau Group.

The 1,318-km Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway went into operation on June 30. The railway allows passengers to travel between the two cities in less than five hours.

The railway is designed to handle maximum train speeds of 350 km per hour.

Source: Xinhua

The 23-year-old college graduate should have been preparing for her new job, but Ou Jiayang from south Guangdong Province spent the past two months doing something else.

Over the last 51 days, Ou kept asking for the publicity of a feasibility report on a 150-million-yuan renovation of the lighting apparatus along the Pearl River in two areas of Guangzhou, the provincial capital.

"Every citizen needs to be involved in the city\’s development," Ou said.

She submitted a request for the report in early May but got the run-around from Guangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission and Guangzhou urban-rural construction committee.

Yet because of Weibo, a Chinese twitter-like mircroblog, things changed.

Via Weibo, Ou asked users who were concerned about the renovation to send her a photo of their thumb in the thumbs-up position as a sign supporting Ou\’s demand for the disclosure of the feasibility report. So far, she\’s received 359 photos.

Ou\’s concerns were finally addressed by Hou Yongshuan, head of the Guangzhou urban-rural construction committee.

Hou explained that the feasibility report had not been finished, but promised that the committee would release the report after its completion. He welcomed Ou\’s advice and considered netizens\’s concerns on urban construction "progress of society."

Ou also found the meeting with hou meaningful, dubbing it as "good interaction between the government and the public." She said she would continue applying for the disclosure of the report and advocate for young people to care about public affairs and take actions beneficial for the society.

Ou is not the only person that attracts pubic attention to public affairs through her own action.

Chen Yihua, a 16-year-old high school student from Guangzhou queried Guangzhou Metro soon after the company announced its plan to spend over 90 million yuan renovating 16 stations of line one.

He first posted his objection on Weibo and an online forum called " Metro Fan," before filing his complaint to the company. But Guangzhou Metro has not yet responded.

Undeterred and standing at the metro exit, Chen held a pasteboard to solicit signitures from local residents to support his objection to the "standardized renovation" of line one. In three days, Chen got the signature of more than 300 residents.

His action aroused even more attention on Weibo. Thousands endorsed Chen\’s complaint with a flood of objections to the metro renovation project, pushing the Guangzhou Metro company to make a change. It assured the public that the company would economize the renovation and maintain each station\’s overall decoration.

"The response is affirming," Chen said.

The two young citizens were generally applauded throughout major web portals, popular online forums, and famous microblogs. Netizens praised them as "growing into pillars of society" and said "well-done, youngmen."

Netizen "Adong" commented: "Young people no longer confine their horizons within daily trivialities… but are more aware of their rights and keep a watchful eye on public matters and are more direct to express their opinions."

Experts said that young people\’s concerns on public affairs play an unneglectable role in pushing for urban development and publicity of government information. They also regarded this as a new channle for the government to hear public voices in policy-making.

Guo Weiqing, a professor with the School of Government of Sun Yat-Sen University, said "One\’s opinion should be heard and understood, but might not be on the agenda, or be accepted, but the initiator\’s proposal will be discussed as long as he gets the public\’s endorsement," Guo said.

He said the young citizen\’s voice relies on the Internet to spread, and this generation lives with the Internet, so they can use it effectively. Guo believes it sheds a new light on absorbing public ideas for policy-making.

Local party committees and governments of various levels should be openhearted and wide-field to accept critism and monitoring, and pool the wisdom of the people and find out the feelings of the people via the Internet, and solve problems for the people and improve work, said Wang Yang, party chief of Guangdong Province, in a recent on-line chat with local netizens.

One hundred and fifty Chinese tourists landed on the Chinese part of Heixiazi Island, a Sino-Russian border island in northeast China\’s Heilongjiang Province, on Wednesday morning.

The 335-square-km island was the last disputed area on the Sino-Russian border, and Chinese were not allowed on the island for more than 80 years.

However, as the result of a recent border settlement agreement between China and Russia, half of the island now belongs to China, with the other half going to Russia.

A border redrawing ceremony was held on the island on Oct. 14, 2008, with 171 square km of the island\’s territory and nearby waters going to China.

By then, the whole of 4,300-km-long Sino-Russian border was finally clarified.

The peaceful solution was achieved via bilateral concessions after 40 years of negotiations. The peaceful, fair and equal negotiations set a positive example for how to solve international disputes.

The two sides have agreed to cooperatively develop the island into an eco-tourism zone, according to a joint statement issued after a meeting between the Chinese and Russian prime ministers in November 2010.

There are two tours designed for the island, a six-hour ship trip and a land tour.

The ship tour brings visitors from the Chinese and Russian sides to the waters around the island, while the land tour includes major attractions such as a former Russian military camp and a commemorative area for the signing of the 2008 Sino-Russia agreement. Tourists can also visit China\’s easternmost border guardpost in Wusu County and watch the early sunrise.

"I\’m so lucky to be part of the first patch of tourists to visit Heixiazi," said Yu Zaifu from Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, who was the very first one to jump off the bus.

"I have been longing for the moment for quite a long time and today I finally made it," said the man.

"I saw the forests, bush, meadows, marshes and grass ponds here, as well as the border stone and the Russian Church. I will definitely bring my family here," Yu said.

"The island is pretty beautiful. I\’m proud to witness its return to China," said Liuliping, 73, the oldest in the tour, and a retired teacher, who is also from Harbin.

"It took me two days to get here by bus. The bumpy journey actually exhausted me. But it was worth it," she said.

Source: Xinhua

The new edition of the Language Atlas of China, independently produced by Chinese linguists, will likely be published within 2011, according to information from a national advanced-level course in Chinese dialectology on July 11. It marks a major breakthrough in the study of Chinese dialects.

The dialectology course was offered by the Institute of Linguistics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese Dialect Society, and the Guangxi Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. It was held in Guangxi Normal University in Guilin.

The Language Atlas of China was compiled by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and was published by the Longman Group (Far East) in 1987. It covers over 80 kinds of Chinese dialects, and contains 36 colored maps and more than 600,000 words. Scholars at home and abroad spoke highly of the 1987 edition and considered it a monumental compilation of Chinese linguistic studies.

More than 80 Chinese scholars started working on the new edition of the atlas in 2002.

Zhang Zhenxing, a researcher from the Institute of Linguistics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the overall framework of the new atlas is basically the same as the 1987 version, and the content is further enriched and refined, including the following aspects:

First, the new atlas added maps of linguistic sub-provinces in China on a large scale, including the minority language map of sub-provinces and the map of Chinese dialects, which were not included in the 1987 version atlas.

Second, the new atlas significantly increased textual description to make new explanations for each map, especially for maps of sub-provinces. Compared with the more than 600,000 words of textual description in the 1987 version, the new "Language Atlas of China" has more than 1.5 million words of textual description, which allows readers to more clearly understand the distribution of various languages and main features of various dialects.

Third, the book was compiled based on in-depth analysis on 30 years of language development in China, particularly the development of the Mandarin language. The compilation team spent 10 years since 2002 on detailed research, collection and studies of language and dialect development across China. It has sorted out China\’s languages in a scientific, systematic and standardized manner by means of audio and video recording, classifying related information, and writing specialized theoretical minority language books and magazines. It has specified 30 years of development and trends for the languages of China\’s various minority ethnic groups as well as Mandarin dialects.

Fourth, Chinese scholars independently compiled it. Compared to the "Language Atlas of China" jointly compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the new version of two-volume "Language Atlas of China" was independently compiled by Chinese linguists including Mandarin dialect experts and minority language experts and will be published by China\’s publishing house, marking significant progress in China\’s language research field.

The new version of the "Language Atlas of China" will be jointly compiled by the Institute of Linguistics and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, both under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and will be published by the Commercial Press at the end of 2011.

By People\’s Daily Online

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

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China and the ASEAN nations reached a series of important consensuses in Bali on Wednesday on implementing the 2002 Declaration of the Conduct in the South China Sea (DOC), laying a solid foundation for practical cooperation in the area.

The agreements were made at a meeting of senior officials from China and ASEAN nations aimed at promoting the implementation of the DOC.

Participants at the meeting shared the view that bringing consultations on the guidelines to an early conclusion, implementing the DOC in real earnest and enhancing practical cooperation will help maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, promote China-ASEAN relations and serve the common interests of the parties concerned.

They agreed that the next such meeting will be held in due time and that the seventh joint working group meeting will be convened in China.

Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin reiterated China\’s active support for cooperation in the South China Sea.

He proposed that the parties concerned shift their focus to conducting practical cooperation within the framework of the DOC.

The Chinese side has made a number of proposals for further cooperation, including the convening of a symposium on free navigation in the South China Sea, and the establishment of three special committees on marine scientific research and environmental protection, navigation safety and search and rescue operations, and combating transnational crimes on the sea.

China has also reaffirmed its commitment to continuing the three cooperation projects it has promised. China\’s proposals have got positive response from participants at the meeting.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue partnership and the next year will be the 10th anniversary of the DOC.

Participants at the meeting agreed to take this opportunity to make cooperation the theme in the South China Sea and make joint efforts to turn it into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation.

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

It is a political document aimed at safeguarding the stability in the South China Sea, promoting political mutual trust, advancing cooperation and creating favorable conditions and atmosphere for the interested countries to ultimately settle their disputes by peaceful means.

Signatories to the DOC agreed to settle disputes in the South China Sea through friendly coordination and negotiation, and refrain from activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability in the region.

Source: Xinhua

A rain-triggered landslide in southwestern Sichuan Province blocked a national road and stranded four people Wednesday morning, local authorities said.

The landslide hit the Yajiang section of National Highway 318 in Yajiang County at around 6 a.m., witnesses said.

Wang Qi, chief of fire brigade in the county, said he sent a rescue team to the area at 7 a.m. and the four stranded people were rescued around noon.

More than 20 cars were hit by the landslide, but no casualties had been reported.

Downpours have battered Yajiang since Tuesday.

Source: Xinhua