Recently, the Government of Ghana carried out a large-scale action against illegal gold mining. As of June 5, Ghana had arrested 124 Chinese citizens suspected of illegal gold mining. Officials from Shanglin County of the Guangxi Autonomous Region said that the vast majority of the 124 people detained in Ghana are from Shanglin.
Beijing Daily reported that 50 retired senior Communist Party cadres have been hired to monitor the Internet as part of the Party’s Internet censorship. They are the first group of retired senior cadres to take on this task.
According to the Beijing municipal Party organization department, “Internet information is constantly changing. [Retired] senior comrades have valuable, rich life experience and work experience. These newly hired monitors will be able to use their strengths. After understanding the Internet information environment, they will be able to spot problems promptly, speak up, and publish articles. They will spread positive energy, resist rumors and bad postings, and make contributions that will help purify cyberspace."
“The retired senior cadre monitors can use their own accounts and passwords to join the blogs and chat rooms and may report on bad postings at any time.”
Source: Beijing Daily reprinted by the Chinese Communist Party website, June 6, 2013 http://renshi.people.com.cn/n/2013/0606/c139617-21759335.html
After a screening of 1,907 of the world’s top technologically innovative, talented people in six fields, including biological and biochemistry, computers, physics, agriculture, mathematics, and chemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that China has the leading edge in physics, mathematics and computer science. However, the number of China’s most talented who have been lost tops the world. An average of 87 percent of those in the science and engineering fields have chosen to stay overseas. An official from the Central Talent Work Coordination Group Office pointed to several problems that China has: a shortage of high-level, innovative, creative talent; a lack of innovation capabilities, and a mismatch between the demand for and the supply of talent.
In this current "war for talent," many developed countries are using immigration reform to attract or retain talented people. In recent years, nearly a million overseas Chinese students have chosen to return to China under the "thousands of people plan," including over twenty thousand with high-level talent.
Source: Xinhua, June 6, 2013
http://news.xinhuanet.com/2013-06/06/c_124820431.htm
People’s Daily reported that pictures of two domestic AWACS (early warning aircraft), the export-oriented ZDK-03 (also known as the "Kunlun Hawk") and a new medium-sized AWACS, were widely exposed on the Internet. The report boasted that China’s AWACS came into being because the U.S. blockage forced China to create it. It will be able to overcome the F-22 stealth fighter jet.
Qiushi published an article written by Li Junru, the former Vice President of the Party School of The Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The article dealt with the relationship between Xi Jinping’s China Dream and the open door reform. “Considering the great cause of China’s open door reform, turning the ‘China Dream’ into a reality is the great objective of deepening that open door reform; the deepening of the open door reform is the powerful driving force to achieve the ‘China Dream.’”
“If we look at the period from the Opium War in 1840 to the year 2050, as we basically achieve modernization, the road to realizing China’s dream is a period of over 200 years.” The first one-hundred year period, according to the article, was to realize the dream of “national independence and the liberation of the people” through the Party leading a people’s revolution. The second one-hundred year period is to realize the dream of “national prosperity, and all people getting rich.” This part depends on the the Party’s leadership of the open door reform.
Source: Qiushi, May 27, 2013
http://www.qstheory.cn/wh/whzl/201305/t20130527_234129.htm
According to the Chinese Luxury Traveler White Paper that the Hurun Report released on June 4, 2013, this is the third consecutive year that Chinese tourists have ranked first in the global shopping market. Chinese tourists’ overseas consumption in 2012 grew rapidly at the rate of 57 percent over 2011, while the global tourists spending rate growth remained at around 30 percent. The average amount that Chinese travelers spend per trip is 71 percent higher than the global average.
Source: Beijing News, June 4th, 2013
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/finance/2013/06/04/266929.html
On June 4, 2013, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) released a report on China’s environment. According to the report, pollution has resulted in the poor quality of the water and air in China. Of a total of 113 environmentally protected cities, only 23.9 percent meet acceptable air quality criteria.
The rural environment, including drinking water and air, suffers different degrees of contamination. Last year, China’s emission of chemical oxygen and its ammonia emissions was 24.2 million tons and 2.54 million tons respectively. Rural pollution has resulted in food safety problems. For example, not long ago, Guangdong Province had to admit that their rice contained heavy metals that had exceeded safety criteria.
Source: BBC Chinese, June 4, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/china/2013/06/130604_china_environment_rural.shtml