Police in China, where most of the 1,3-billion people share just 100 surnames, are considering rules which would combine both parents’ family names to prevent so much duplication, state media said on Tuesday. At least 100 000 people share the name ”Wang Tao”, the China Daily said, citing the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Torrential rain has killed at least 71 people in floods, house collapses and rockslides across southern China with more heavy rain predicted for much of this week, state media said on Monday. About 643 000 people were evacuated and 56 000 houses destroyed and 104 000 damaged, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Torrential rain has killed at least 66 people in floods, house collapses and rockslides across southern China with more heavy rain predicted for much of this week. Flooding had damaged 94 00 houses and destroyed 48 000 in the region and forced the evacuation of about 591 000 people.
A clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified advertisements page of a newspaper in south-west China. An investigation was launched by Chinese authorities to find out how the advertisement slipped its way past censors.
About 180 000 people have been evacuated from their homes in China’s south-west following a powerful earthquake that killed at least three and injured 313, the official Xinhua agency said on Monday. The tremor shook the tea-producing city of Pu’er early on Sunday morning, bringing down over 90 000 rooms and crushing a four-year-old boy.
China sought to defend its role in Africa on Monday ahead of this week’s G8 summit, saying its long friendship with the continent was a force for good. some G8 ministers are worried Beijing is too willing to lend money without strings to African countries.
A strong earthquake hit a tea-making city in south-west China on Sunday, killing at least two people, injuring 200, causing houses to collapse and damaging roads, Xinhua news agency and a local official said. The quake shook the city of Pu’er and the surrounding area in mountainous Yunnan province in the early morning when most people were asleep.
China urged the international community on Thursday to show patience with Sudan and said new sanctions would only complicate efforts to implement a United Nations peace plan for Darfur. The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Sudan earlier this week and sought support for an international arms embargo.
All religious artefacts in places of worship in Tibet belong to the Chinese state, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, in Beijing’s latest attempt to exert control over religion in the restive Himalayan region. Beijing is wary of religious groups and has jailed Tibetan monks and nuns it accused of stoking ”separatism”.
More than 20% of toys made in China for its domestic market are substandard or potentially dangerous, state media said on Tuesday in the latest example of the country’s lax consumer-product controls. At least 10 000 children are hurt by dangerous toys each year, the China Daily newspaper said.
Endangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5Â 000 of the world’s rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China. The pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong.
Landslides triggered by heavy rains in western China buried a village and knocked a bus off a highway, killing a total of 21 people, news reports said on Saturday. A mudslide late on Friday swept through the village of Heba in Garze, an ethnic Tibetan region of Sichuan province, killing 12 people and injuring 18 others.
Rioting has highlighted mounting pressures to change China’s controversial population control policies, observers said on Wednesday, but the government shows no signs of buckling. Security reinforcements had moved into 28 towns in the southern Guangxi region after thousands of residents clashed in recent days with officials enforcing the so-called "one-child" policy.
China’s Three Gorges dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, is retaining huge amounts of sediment and nutrients and causing significant erosion in the downstream reaches of the Yangtze River. Official Chinese press reports say the build-up of silt in the Three Gorges reservoir is under control.
China has signalled during a week of high-level diplomatic wrangling over the Darfur crisis that it is unlikely to bend to global pressure and change its much-criticised policies on Sudan. Beijing has been showered with condemnation over its support for the Khartoum government, accused of shielding Sudan from sanctions and abetting genocide in Darfur.
China’s rapid rise into an economic powerhouse offering aid and soft loans is changing the aid picture in Africa — winning China its share of critics but also the gratitude of governments who say its engagement makes a difference. China has pledged to double development assistance to Africa by 2009 and write off another 10-billion yuan (,3-billion) of debt.
Africa is experiencing unprecedented growth, but the continent will have to sustain that expansion for years to come if it is to lift people out of poverty, the African Development Bank chief said on Thursday. Africa is set to grow about 6,5% this year, marking the fifth straight year of above-trend expansion.
A Sudanese central bank official told China on Thursday its oil investments could exacerbate conflicts in Sudan unless it pressed the government to engage local populations and share revenues. China, which buys much of Sudan’s oil, has been under fire internationally for doing business with a regime condemned in the West for its actions in Darfur.
The African Development Bank must undertake significant internal reforms to become more responsive to the continent’s needs and more effective as a tool for development, the bank’s president and governors said on Wednesday in Shanghai at its annual two-day meeting.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday called on the world community to do more to help Africa as he opened the annual meeting of the African Development Bank in Shanghai. Debt relief and technology transfers were among the tools the wealthier nations could use to help boost growth in Africa, Wen said.
A drought affecting several Chinese provinces has left 4,8-million people short of drinking water, state media reported on Wednesday, citing the state drought-relief headquarters. Eleven million hectares of crops have also been affected by drought in several provinces, the <i>China Daily</i> reported.
China promised on Tuesday to do more to strengthen Africa’s economic sinews even as the continent enjoys its fastest burst of growth in 30 years on the back of booming Chinese demand for oil and minerals. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Beijing would redouble efforts to share the lessons of its economic take-off.
Police in southern China have detained a woman after she admitted killing her four-year-old daughter because the child could not count, according to news reports. Investigators talked the woman, identified only by her surname Du, into confessing and took her into custody last Saturday, four days after her daughter was killed.
When Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett was reporting from the front line of the Vietnam War, the last thing he had to worry about was censorship, but that’s not the case for the Chinese journalism students who are hanging on his every word. As the students to Arnett talk about his experiences as a war correspondent, it is easy to forget that their greatest concern as professional journalists will be ensuring they do not run foul of the communist party that governs their country.
China has appointed a seasoned diplomat as its special Africa envoy, with a brief to focus on Darfur, the government said on Thursday, amid growing criticism of Beijing’s role in Sudan. ”The Chinese government has decided to name Ambassador Liu Guijin as a special representative for African affairs,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said.
China announced a food industry clean-up on Wednesday after exports of a contaminated ingredient in pet food drew global attention to insufficient product controls. It will prioritise the inspection of fertiliser and pesticide use in vegetable planting as well as animal medicines and additives in livestock feed.
China faces a looming baby boom as newly rich couples find they can afford to pay fines incurred from having more than one child, state media reported on Monday. Upward pressure on the birth rate also is coming from millions of Chinese in their 20s and 30s, who are allowed two children under the policy because they themselves were single children.
Casey Stoner won the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday to notch up back-to-back MotoGP victories and firm his hold on the championship lead. The Australian started fourth on the grid, but his Ducati blew past pole-sitter Valentino Rossi at the start of the second lap, forcing the seven-time world champion into second place.
The mildly toxic chemical melamine is commonly added to animal feed in China, a manager of a feed company and one of the chemical’s producers said on Monday, describing a process that fraudulently boosts the feed’s sales value but risks introducing the chemical into meat eaten by humans.
China’s ZTE announced a -million deal with Ethiopia’s state-owned telecoms group just ahead of the release of seven abducted Chinese workers in the African nation, a statement said on Monday. The agreement signed on Saturday with Ethiopia Telecom Corporation proposes to build up the East African nation’s fledgling telecommunications network.
China hit back on Friday at Taiwan’s refusal to admit the Olympic torch, saying the island’s Olympic Committee had reneged on an earlier agreement to let the relay pass through. Beijing, host of the 2008 Summer Games, unveiled the torch relay schedule on Thursday and included self-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own, as the stop before Hong Kong.
China said on Thursday it remained fully committed to investing in Africa, despite a recent spate of violence against Chinese interests there, including the deaths of nine Chinese among the slaughter of 77 people in Ethiopia. ”China supports trans-national trade and investment between China and other countries, including those in Africa,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.