Nuclear power plant embarks on further expansion (China.org.cn)

(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2008)

Workers have started to dig a hole for housing one of the two new generating units planned to add at the first phase of the Qinshan nuclear power plant, the first Chinese facility of its kind.

The excavation work, which began early this month, will be finished by late July, according to a source from China National Nuclear Corp. Two pressurized reactors -- the application of the most-sophisticated and widely-accepted nuclear power technology in the world -- would be installed at Fangjiashan, Haiyan, on the northern coast of Hangzhou Bay, Zhejiang Province, not far from Shanghai. Each generating unit would have an installed capacity of 1 million kilowatts.

The State Environmental Protection Administration, which was promoted to a full ministry known as the Environmental Protection Ministry this year, approved two other reports involving the environmental impact and location safety over the proposed expansion. The two generating units will be in place and be made ready for power generation by 2013 and 2014.

The first phase of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant was the first nuclear power plant on the Chinese mainland built independently by domestic engineers. Construction of the plant began in 1985. It was built with a 300,000 kilowatt prototype reactor with a lifespan of 30 years. It started generating power in 1991. It has so far produced 31 billion kwh of electricity, and generated 9.6 billion yuan (US$1.28 billion) in revenue and paid 1.8 billion yuan in tax. The plant also has second and third phases.

Chinese engineers have installed two generating units in the second phase and have been preparing for adding at least two more generating units there. The third phase houses two Canadian CANDU heavy-water reactors.

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China plays down protests in Tibetan monasteries (The Guardian)

Jonathan Watts in Beijing (Friday March 14 2008)

China is struggling to prevent burgeoning protests in Tibet from overshadowing its Olympic preparations amid reports that monks have gone on hunger strike after the region's biggest demonstrations in almost 20 years. Thousands of armed police have surrounded monasteries outside Lhasa, following marches against Chinese rule this week that took place in more Tibetan communities than previously believed.

"We have heard from more than one source that monks in Sera [a monastery in Lhasa] are on hunger strike, demanding the release of imprisoned monks," said Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet. "We don't know the number, but it seems there are many of them." Other reports said the monks were unable to leave.

The Associated Press quoted a man inside the monastery saying monks had been confined inside its walls and food supplies were dwindling. Sera is "surrounded by many people", the unnamed resident was quoted as saying. About a dozen monks were reportedly detained on Monday, when several hundred from Sera and Drepung monasteries took to the streets to mark the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Beijing. In the boldest action since 1989, some waved the banned Tibetan flag and shouted demands for more freedom. It emerged that a similar protest took place in Lutsang monastery, where hundreds of monks reportedly chanted slogans calling for their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, to return. According to the Free Tibet campaign, 100 monks from Myera monastery also staged a demonstration. Since Monday there have been further demonstrations, including at Lhasa's third big monastery, Ganden. Thousands of police officers are said to have used teargas to break up rallies. There are reports of gunshots, but no casualties.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said supporters of the Dalai Lama were "seeking to spark social turmoil". "This was carefully planned by the Dalai clique in a bid to separate Tibet and sabotage the Tibetan people's normal life of stability and harmony." The situation was now stable, he said.

The Guardian was unable to confirm the reports from Tibet and neighbouring provinces, where the Tibetan communities are tightly controlled by the Chinese government. A source in Lhasa said he had seen more than 20 military vehicles on the street and heard that roads to the monasteries were blocked off.

Exiled Tibetans say the confrontation has been peaceful, particularly compared with clashes when martial law was imposed in 1989. "It seems as though police and military are not using excessive force at present," Saunders said. "This would be unprecedented as a government response. They appear to have been ordered to handle this carefully ahead of the Olympics. "With more demonstrations expected, China has declared a climbing ban on the north face of Mount Everest, in advance of the arrival of the Olympic torch there this summer.

Supporters in several other countries have demonstrated this week. In India, exiled Tibetans marching back to their homeland were stopped yesterday, when Indian police arrested 100 of them.

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Pollution census launched (China Daily)

ZHENGZHOU: A thorough census of pollution sources involving a 30,000-member task force was launched in Henan yesterday to help better address the province's environmental issues.

According to Wang Guoping, director of the Henan Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau and head of the provincial pollution source census office, the large-scale campaign is a response to the first nationwide survey encouraged by China's environmental watchdog on tracing sources of industrial, agricultural and residential pollution.

Wang appealed on Monday to all staff in the environmental field to put the census at the top of this year's agenda. "The result of the survey will be serving as basic data to analyze the pollution distribution in different industries and places," he said. "It will provide evidence for mulling more effective pollution control measures."

Preparation work found that Henan has roughly 240,000 sites of pollution sources including 54,000 industrial, 63,000 residential and 125,000 agricultural sources.

According to Jiao Wanyi, official of the provincial environmental bureau, residential pollution is currently the most severe source in the province. It includes kitchen trash, recycled paper, metal, plastic, glass, hazardous trash and sewage. "However, it's a different story to before 2005 when industrial pollution as a major source plagued the province," Jiao told China Daily.

All papermaking factories that failed to meet clean production standards between 2003 and 2005 have been renovated or banned from operating as part of an effort to clean up the industry notorious for polluting.

By 2007 the province had taken a lead in launching sewage plants in all 108 counties and 18 cities, which has greatly enlarged the industrial treatment capacity. Meanwhile, solid waste disposal plants for related industry were also built.

A big agricultural province, Henan suffers from a high usage of fertilizer, pesticide and a large amount of animal waste. "The amount is unknown but farmers are getting to know the risk and danger caused by overusing them we will be evaluating the risk by this survey," Jiao said.

The provincial government dedicated 5 million yuan ($690,000) to the census project of provincial level polluters.

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[Enviro] Performance figures 'coming soon'(China Daily)

The performance of major companies and provincial governments last year against their environmental targets will be made public very soon, Xie Zhenhua, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said Tuesday.

Details of how companies performed will be made known this month, while reports on the performance of provincial governments will follow in May or June, he said. "Officials and businesses leaders will be assessed in line with the accountability system announced in November," Xie told a press conference on the sidelines of the NPC session.

Late last year, the government announced a new system for measuring performance, which ties career advancement to success in achieving environmental targets. Under the new rules, if company bosses or government officials fail to meet half the national goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 4 percent every year, they will lose the opportunity to be promoted. Also, the central government will not approve any major new projects in provinces that fail to meet their targets, until their performance improves.

The government has set a target to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010. But the fall in 2006 was just 1.23 percent, far below the 4 percent annual target. However, the situation improved last year, with the figure reaching 3.27 percent, as announced by Premier Wen Jiabao last week in his work report to the legislative body. The central government has already signed contracts with provincial governments to implement the green accountability system and governors have agreed to accept punishment if they fail. In addition, 1,000 energy-intensive companies have signed similar contracts with their local governments.

Last year, China's legislative body voted for the Energy Efficiency Law, which says the ability of local governments and their chief officials to meet energy-efficiency goals should be a key measure when higher-level governments examine their performance. Hu Guangbao, deputy director of the NPC's Law Committee, said the law will create a better legal environment for achieving sustainable development in China.

Xie said China still faces many challenges when it comes to energy conservation and it will take tangible measures to meet them. The country will continue eliminating outdated production facilities, including small thermal power generating units, cement facilities, steel and iron plants, Xie said.

Zhang Lijun, vice-minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), said the government will make full use of tax, fiscal and financial policies to push forward energy-saving and pollution-cutting goals. The country's top five banks offered loans of more than 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) last year to support companies' environmental plans, while the government is levying a full consumption tax on refined fuel oil and three other oil products retroactively from January.

Xie said the government will continue to require the country's 1,000 largest firms in iron and steel, petrochemicals and other sectors to meet global energy efficiency requirements and save 100 million tons of coal by 2010. The government has also pledged that within the next two years, wastewater from all of the country's 36 biggest cities will be purified before being discharged. "We need to mobilize companies and the general public to join the green campaign," Xie said.

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China to set up five new 'super ministries' (China Daily)

China will set up five new "super ministries" in the current round of government institutional restructuring, and a plan for the reshuffle will be submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC), or parliament, for deliberation on Tuesday afternoon. According to the plan, which was distributed to journalists before the parliament meeting, the five new "super ministries" are the ministry of industry and information, the ministry of human resources and social security, the ministry of environmental protection, the ministry of housing and urban-rural construction, and the ministry of transport.

To strengthen the government management on the energy sector, a high-level inter-ministerial coordinator, the national energy commission, is also to be established, with a national bureau of energy to be set up as its working office under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The new bureau will integrate the NDRC's functions relating to energy management, the functions of the National Energy Leading Group and the functions of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense on nuclear power management. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health will be empowered with the function to oversee food and drug safety.

The State Council will have 27 ministries and commissions apart from the General Office after the reshuffle, compared with the present 28. President Hu Jintao vowed to accelerate the reform of the administrative system and build a service-oriented government at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) last year. "We must lose no time in working out a master plan for it," Hu said in October. At the beginning of the NPC session, Premier Wen Jiabao labeled reform of the administrative system as "an important link in deepening reform, an important part of the reform of political institutions, and an essential step in improving the socialist market economy."

State Councilor Hua Jianmin, also secretary general of the Cabinet, made explanations of the plan to the NPC. On the necessity of the reform, Hua said in the report that functions of government have not been completely transformed, with public administration and public services being still weak; Structure of government institutions is not rational enough; Powers in some regards were too concentrated and lack due oversight and checks.

Hua lists the reasons for the government reshuffle as follows:
-- The functions of government have not been completely transformed, and the intervention in microeconomy is still more than needed. Public administration and public services are still weak. -- Structure of government institutions is not rational enough. The problems including overlapping responsibilities, powers and responsibilities being not well matched and low efficiency are quite serious. -- Powers in some regards were too concentrated and lack due oversight and checks. The phenomena of misuse of authority, abusing power for personal gains and corruption still exist.

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Housing, ecology top people's concerns (China Daily)

Housing, bridging the income gap between the rich and poor, environmental protection and social security are on top of people's wish list before the country's parliament and highest political advisory body begin their annual sessions.

The National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference will begin their meetings on Wednesday and today, respectively.

Environmental Protection

"I hope the 'two sessions' will continue to emphasize on awareness for environmental protection and speed up eco-conservation efforts," Taihu Lake fisherman Zhang Jinwen says. Water supply to about 2 million residents in Wuxi, Jiangsu province had to be cut for several days last summer after an algae outbreak in the lake.

The lake's ecology has worsened over the past few years, Zhang says , because his catch from the freshwater lake has been falling constantly.

"Residents around the lake support the closure of nearby chemical companies, the major source of pollution, because our and our children's livelihood revolves around the water body," he says.

Ma Yongsheng, a resident of a village in the mountains of southwestern Yunnan province, has a different story. He hopes the government would compensate people like him for the crops destroyed by wild animals, such as black bears and monkeys. The number of such animals has grown after the government banned hunting a few years ago.

Urban residents have yet another tale to tell. Take Beijing Olympics volunteer Zhang Baozhong for example. He hopes the central government would ask big cities to pass laws to prevent noise pollution.

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The Connection Has Been Reset (The Atlantic)

China’s Great Firewall is crude, slapdash, and surprisingly easy to breach. Here’s why it’s so effective anyway.

March 2008, by James Fallows

Many foreigners who come to China for the Olympics will use the Internet to tell people back home what they have seen and to check what else has happened in the world. The first thing they’ll probably notice is that China’s Internet seems slow. Partly this is because of congestion in China’s internal networks, which affects domestic and international transmissions alike. Partly it is because even electrons take a detectable period of time to travel beneath the Pacific Ocean to servers in America and back again; the trip to and from Europe is even longer, because that goes through America, too. And partly it is because of the delaying cycles imposed by China’s system that monitors what people are looking for on the Internet, especially when they’re looking overseas. That’s what foreigners have heard about.

They’ll likely be surprised, then, to notice that China’s Internet seems surprisingly free and uncontrolled. Can they search for information about “Tibet independence” or “Tiananmen shooting” or other terms they have heard are taboo? Probably—and they’ll be able to click right through to the controversial sites. Even if they enter the Chinese-language term for “democracy in China,” they’ll probably get results. What about Wikipedia, famously off-limits to users in China? They will probably be able to reach it. Naturally the visitors will wonder: What’s all this I’ve heard about the “Great Firewall” and China’s tight limits on the Internet?

In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of China’s electronic control but its new refinement—and a special Potemkin-style unfettered access that will be set up just for them, and just for the length of their stay. According to engineers I have spoken with at two tech organizations in China, the government bodies in charge of censoring the Internet have told them to get ready to unblock access from a list of specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—certain Internet cafés, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners are expected to work or stay during the Olympic Games. (I am not giving names or identifying details of any Chinese citizens with whom I have discussed this topic, because they risk financial or criminal punishment for criticizing the system or even disclosing how it works. Also, I have not gone to Chinese government agencies for their side of the story, because the very existence of Internet controls is almost never discussed in public here, apart from vague statements about the importance of keeping online information “wholesome.”)

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government’s attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government’s approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people’s daily lives.

Disappointingly, “Great Firewall” is not really the right term for the Chinese government’s overall control strategy. China has indeed erected a firewall—a barrier to keep its Internet users from dealing easily with the outside world—but that is only one part of a larger, complex structure of monitoring and censorship. The official name for the entire approach, which is ostensibly a way to keep hackers and other rogue elements from harming Chinese Internet users, is the “Golden Shield Project.” Since that term is too creepy to bear repeating, I’ll use “the control system” for the overall strategy, which includes the “Great Firewall of China,” or GFW, as the means of screening contact with other countries.

In America, the Internet was originally designed to be free of choke points, so that each packet of information could be routed quickly around any temporary obstruction. In China, the Internet came with choke points built in. Even now, virtually all Internet contact between China and the rest of the world is routed through a very small number of fiber-optic cables that enter the country at one of three points: the Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin area in the north, where cables come in from Japan; Shanghai on the central coast, where they also come from Japan; and Guangzhou in the south, where they come from Hong Kong. (A few places in China have Internet service via satellite, but that is both expensive and slow. Other lines run across Central Asia to Russia but carry little traffic.) In late 2006, Internet users in China were reminded just how important these choke points are when a seabed earthquake near Taiwan cut some major cables serving the country. It took months before international transmissions to and from most of China regained even their pre-quake speed, such as it was.

Thus Chinese authorities can easily do something that would be harder in most developed countries: physically monitor all traffic into or out of the country. They do so by installing at each of these few “international gateways” a device called a “tapper” or “network sniffer,” which can mirror every packet of data going in or out. This involves mirroring in both a figurative and a literal sense. “Mirroring” is the term for normal copying or backup operations, and in this case real though extremely small mirrors are employed. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as these travel through the Chinese gateway routers, numerous tiny mirrors bounce reflections of them to a separate set of “Golden Shield” computers.Here the term’s creepiness is appropriate. As the other routers and servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers) that make up the Internet do their best to get the packet where it’s supposed to go, China’s own surveillance computers are looking over the same information to see whether it should be stopped.

The mirroring routers were first designed and supplied to the Chinese authorities by the U.S. tech firm Cisco, which is why Cisco took such heat from human-rights organizations. Cisco has always denied that it tailored its equipment to the authorities’ surveillance needs, and said it merely sold them what it would sell anyone else. The issue is now moot, since similar routers are made by companies around the world, notably including China’s own electronics giant, Huawei. The ongoing refinements are mainly in surveillance software, which the Chinese are developing themselves. Many of the surveillance engineers are thought to come from the military’s own technology institutions. Their work is good and getting better, I was told by Chinese and foreign engineers who do “oppo research” on the evolving GFW so as to design better ways to get around it.

Andrew Lih, a former journalism professor and software engineer now based in Beijing (and author of the forthcoming book The Wikipedia Story), laid out for me the ways in which the GFW can keep a Chinese Internet user from finding desired material on a foreign site. In the few seconds after a user enters a request at the browser, and before something new shows up on the screen, at least four things can go wrong—or be made to go wrong...

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Animal rights in China:The stirrings of a new protest movement (The Economist)

Feb 28th 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

HUMAN rights, or the lack of them, have long been a focus of China's critics at home and abroad. But a new rights movement—complete with idealistic local and foreign campaigners—is stirring: animal rights.

Animals are treated dreadfully in Chinese farms, laboratories, zoos and elsewhere. There are grim factories where thousands of live bears in tiny cages are tapped for medicinal bile. At safari parks, live sheep and poultry are fed to lions as spectators cheer. At farms and in slaughterhouses, animals are killed with little concern for their suffering.

According to Zhou Ping, of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, few Chinese accept that animals have any rights at all. She thinks it is time they did, and in 2006 put forward China's first national animal-welfare law. Her proposal got nowhere, and there is no sign of progress since. “There is so far”, she says, “only a small voice calling for change.”

Louder voices get short shrift from China's rulers. Even People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an activist group based in America, known for its robust approach, treads lightly in China. Its advertisements, featuring Chinese stars, are more playful than shocking. It is also working quietly with local officials, for example advising police in Nanjing on handling stray dogs—a growing problem in many Chinese cities where the keeping of pets, once rare, is becoming widespread.

Some Chinese animal-rights activists hope this trend heralds greater benevolence toward animals. One vegan activist and rock musician in Beijing, Xie Zheng, has adopted the slogan “Don't Eat Friends” to persuade people not to eat meat. That may be harder than getting them to forgo furs or bear-bile medicines. Vegetarian restaurants are spreading, but many patronise them to be trendy rather than ethical.

Campaigners are not discouraged. Jill Robinson, a Briton, spends most of her time in Sichuan province, caring for bears rescued from bile farmers, who are compensated in return for shutting down their operations. She says support from local young people is rising fast, and attitudes are starting to change. If China can stop binding women's feet, she asks, why should it not abandon cruelty to animals?

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No spit: Beijing's latest etiquette campaign draws mixed reaction (China Daily)

BEIJING - Kate and Leo did it on the Titanic, so why shouldn't Chinese? After all, the habit goes back five millenia.

Because it's Olympics year, that's why. And the capital city, which will host the games, is planning its first "No Spitting Day" this year with the goal of eradicating a top etiquette no-no. But the pronouncement by the city's public health authority on Thursday drew decidedly mixed reactions from local residents.

"The latest hygienic drive aims to eradicate the bad habit of spitting and promote a more civilized life style," said Liu Ying, a Beijing Municipal Bureau of Health official. She noted that spitting was a major cause of the spread of respiratory diseases, especially in spring, echoing a Chinese slogan: "Spitting kills even more than an atomic bomb."

Liu said the idea was inspired by the "Queuing Day" and "Seat Offering Day", two days newly designated by the Beijing Municipal Government each month to promote better manners. Details of how the new day would work were still dribbling in. But it quickly drew reaction from netizens. Some called it a "must" before the Olympic Games, while others said it was "needless and unfeasible". "I think it's healthier to spit rather than to swallow," said a netizen who called himself Mop Paparazzi on the Mop.com.

Liu, however, said people didn't understand the purpose of the drive. "We are calling for stopping the rampant spitting on the pavement, not urging everyone not to spit at all," she explained. "You can wrap your spit with a napkin and throw it into a trash bin," she added.

Spitting, littering and barbecuing in the street were identified by Beijing residents as the most intolerable bad manners to be stamped out ahead of the Olympics, according to a government survey of more than 200,000 people in the capital. The Olympic host has taken a series of measures to curb spitting, such as the distribution of spit sacks and a 50-yuan (US$7) fine for spitters.

A recent survey by the Beijing-based Renmin University found that in 2007, 2.54 percent of people surveyed in Beijing still spat in public, down by 2.36 percentage points from 2006. Or at least, that was how many admitted doing so. Many Chinese take the practice for granted.

Some netizens tried to justify the habit by quoting 5,000-year-old proverbs. "We used to say that China is a so large a country that one spit from every Chinese may drown all people in a small country, which shows we have a long tradition of spitting," said netizen Songbce in the forum of Sina.com, one of China's largest portal sites. "Even foreigners like spitting," he said, basing his argument on the scene in 'Titanic' where Leonardo DiCaprio taught Kate Winslet how to spit.

Some people attributed the spitting to Beijing's bad air quality and others said, half in jest, that it reflected improved living standards: according to traditional Chinese medicine theories, meat leads to sputum. "To eradicate spitting, Beijing should do more to stop smoking in the public places since smokers are always spitters," said a doctor surnamed Wang in the respiratory department of Beijing Puren Hospital. "The city should do more to ensure a clean Olympic Games," he said.

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