Better City, Better Life

Better City, Better Life

The Pavilion of the Future, one of the five themed pavilions of the Shanghai Expo 2010, stands on the western bank of the Huangpu River. The pavilion was converted from an old industrial building.March 11 marked the 50-day countdown to the Shanghai Expo—the first World Expo with a low-carbon theme in the event’s 160-year history.The 5.8-square km exposition site will become the venue for China’s largest ever solar energy application project, when 4.5-megawatt solar power generators are put into operation. In four landmark pavilions along the Central Axis of the Expo site, LED lamps will account for more than 80 percent of lighting systems.

SOCIETY Built in China

The maiden fight of the AC313, China’s first independently developed civilian helicopter, is scheduled for mid-March in the eastern province of Jiangxi, a company offcial said on March 6.

Sun Cong, Deputy Chief Engineer of Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC), told Xinhua that the AC313, designed and manufactured by AVIC, has a maximum takeoff weight of 13.8 tons and can carry 27 passengers or 15 wounded personnel.

The new helicopter was designed for a variety of uses, including search and rescue, fighting forest fires, and even assisting in fghting fres in cities, Sun said.

Foreign Technology

China spends billions of dollars importing high-end scientific instruments every year, and its global competitiveness in this regard is dwindling, a survey has found.

Conducted by Peking University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology and the National Science Library, the survey found in some sectors scientists rely 100 percent on imported highend instruments.

Importing the instruments, including DNA sequencers and particle colliders, cost several billion dollars in 2009, an increase of 30 percent on the previous year, the report found, without specifying an exact fgure.

The instruments are widely used for testing and analysis in areas such as genetic engineering, space projects, energy-saving technologies, food safety and military services.

A Historic Park

China’s northeast Heilongjiang Province will build a park in 2010 to mark the Japanese Unit 731’s notorious experiments during its aggression of China from 1937 to 1945, said local authorities.

The park will be based on the zone of the unit’s ruins in Pingfang District, Harbin City, capital of Heilongjiang, the Harbin Municipal Government said.

Unit 731 was a covert biological warfare research and development center operated by Japanese invaders during its war of aggression. It conducted vivisections and other inhumane atrocities on Chinese prisoners of war.

A museum built on the ruins opened to the public on August 15, 1985. The museum includes a hall of evidence of Japan’s crimes and 23 ruins.

Relocation of companies and residents for construction of the park began in November 2009.

TAKING ON A NEW LOOK Drepung Temple, located in Lhasa, capital city of Tibet Autonomous Region, is under renovation on March 10. The renovation work started in June 2009

New Subway

The landscape of Beijing looks set to keep sprawling as a new subway line linking the southeast up-and-coming Tongzhou District will add into the capital’s labyrinthine underground traffc network this year.

“The subway Line 6 project will definitely start within this year,” said the district Party head Wang Yunfeng on March 10, adding that at least eight subway lines will stretch into his jurisdiction in the future.

The new king-sized line, extending 42 km underground and longer than any of the nine subways so far in Beijing, will be separated into two parts for construction.

To be built this year is the eastern part, starting from the dazzling World Trade Center in Beijing’s central business district and whizzing across 15 stations to its terminal in Tongzhou.

AIRING TO BOMB Chinese air force planes fly over the floating ice that jams a section of the Yellow River, the second longest in China, in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on March 9. Six air force planes dropped 48 bombs during a firing trial to blast apart ice flow

NEW FAVORITE A visitor shows his interest in Ego of China’s Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. during the Belgrade Auto Fair in Belgrade, capital of Serbia, on March 9

ECONOMY Tightening Financing

China will step up work to monitor nonbanking financing, said the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) in a statement on its website on March 9.

More focus will be placed on businesses in connection with trust companies and the real estate sector to prevent banks from using non-banking financing to circumvent policies, said CBRC Chairman Liu Mingkang.

Non-banking fnancial institutions under the CBRC supervision include trust companies, fnance companies, fnancial leasing companies, auto financing companies and money brokers.

Mobile Phone-Bank Deal

China’s largest mobile phone service provider became a strategic investor in a mid-sized bank based in Shanghai after a multi-billion dollar stock purchasing deal announced on March 10.

Guangdong Mobile, China Mobile’s branch in Guangdong Province, bought 2.2 billion shares of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank at the cost of 39.8 billion yuan ($5.83 billion), claiming 20 percent of the bank and becoming its second largest shareholder.

Money from the state-controlled telecom operator will provide a sizable cushion to the bank’s capital adequacy ratio at a time when the Chinese Government is encouraging the country’s major banks to boost their capital in view of rapid loan growth, said Moody’s Investors Service in a report.

Mining Deals

The privately owned conglomerate Sichuan Hanlong Group recently signed a series of agreements with the U.S. Amex-listed General Moly Inc. (GMO) for the purchase of a 25 percent stake in the latter through Hanlong (USA) Mining Investment Inc. to become the controlling shareholder.

As part of the deal, Sichuan Hanlong will provide a loan guarantee to GMO for a $665-million bank loan.

GMO has an 80-percent stake in the world’s largest molybdenum mine, whose reserves in Mountain Hope, Eureka, Nevada, total 1.3 billion pounds. The remaining 20 percent is owned by Pohang Iron and Steel Co. (POSCO), a South Korean frm.

In February, Sichuan Hanlong was approved to purchase a 55.3-percent stake in Moly Mines Ltd., a molybdenum company based in Australia.

Rural Insurance

PICC Group, a leading insurer in China, said on March 10 it would continue to expand into the rural market in 2010, drawing on government policies for rural development.

The new rural pension scheme and reform of forestry tenure will provide great opportunities for tapping the rural insurance market, Wu said.

By the end of 2009, PICC had covered crops and poultry worth 257.6 billion yuan ($37.7 billion), and paid 4.86 billion yuan ($711 million) in claims to 10.5 million rural households, said PICC Chairman Wu Yan.

Automaker to Viet Nam

Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co. Ltd. (JAC), an auto producer based in Anhui Province, will start building its first overseas plant to produce trucks in Viet Nam in April this year, according to reports from China Daily.

The plant, a joint venture with Vietnamese partners, will mainly produce medium and light-duty trucks, JAC Chairman Zuo Yan’an told China Daily.

Construction of the plant is part of the company’s overseas development, said Zuo. The company plans to export 15 percent of its products to overseas markets by the end of 2015.

JAC produced 322,000 automobiles in 2009 with only 6-7 percent exported to its main overseas markets in the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia.

LOW-CARBON EXPO Workers pass by the solar powered roof of a themed pavilion covering more than 30,000 square meters at the Shanghai Expo. The roof is capable of generating 2.8 million kwh of electricity a year

TENDER ARTS A citizen appreciates painting works in an art gallery in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on March 7. A women-themed art exhibition opened that day to celebrate the International Women’s Day on March 8

WEDDING SHOW Models show wedding dresses at a wedding expo in Shanghai on March 5. The expo showcased 100,000 weddingrelated products

1. BELGIUMLeo Delcroix, Belgium’s Commissioner General for the Shanghai World Expo, introduces Smurfs, representations of the comic book character that will serve as the mascot of the Belgium and EU Pavilion, to the media in Brussels on March 10

2. IRANA surface-to-surface missile is test-fired off Iran’s first domestically made destroyer, Jamaran, in its southern waters on March 9

3. AFGHANISTANBritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown (third left) greets a soldier while inspecting a military base in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on March 6

4. BRAZILWaves crash against a building near a beach in Rio Grande do Sul on March 9. Strong winds with a speed of up to 70 km/h swept across parts of southern Brazil

5. NORTH KOREANorth Korean officials announce the establishment of their country’s State Development Bank in Pyongyang on March 10. The bank will make investments in major projects in accordance with government policies, while functioning as a commercial bank