China, Mongolia pledge to build closer ties
From Max Lee
The Daily Mail’s Special
Correspondent in Beijing

BEIJING—China and Mongolia issued a joint statement on Tuesday, pledging to build closer ties.
The statement was issued while Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar was in Beijing for a seven-day visit, his first state visit since taking presidency in June.
Since arriving in Beijing on Sunday, Enkhbayar has held talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and met with other Chinese leaders including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and top political advisor Jia Qinglin.
Leaders of the two countries agreed to expand bilateral ties and be good neighbors, friends and partners to each other, according to the statement.
The two sides believed that Mongolia’s nonnuclear status is conducive to maintaining regional security. China said it supports Mongolia’s efforts in enhancing its status.
Mongolia reiterated that the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affairs and Mongolia abides by the one-China policy and supports China’s efforts in national reunification, according to the statement.
The two sides also highlighted bilateral economic cooperation.
“Both sides agreed that economic and trade cooperation is a key part of the China-Mongolia good-neighborly partnership of mutual trust,” the statement says, adding that the two sides agreed to promote reciprocal cooperation with priority on resource exploitation and infrastructure construction.
The two sides said they would continue to encourage local governments and companies to expand economic and trade cooperation and enhance cooperation in energy, transportation and telecommunication sectors, the statement says.
Ten cooperation agreements were signed by the two countries on Monday, including one in which China agreed to provide Mongolia with 300 million US dollars of export credit with favorable terms. Other agreements covered mining, infrastructure construction, transportation, intellectual property right cooperation and education.
China and Mongolia also planed to enhance exchanges and cooperation in the arts and cultural areas, according to the statement.
Both sides expressed satisfaction with the success of the Chinese Culture Week in Mongolia and Mongolian Culture Week in China and agreed to hold more such activities in the future.
The statement says the two sides were satisfied with the smooth operation of the second joint inspection of the China-Mongolia borderlines and agreed to expand trade relations and personnel exchanges between the border areas of the two countries.
On international affairs, the two countries agreed to join hands in promoting the important role of the United Nations in safeguarding world peace and security.
They agreed that the UN reform should be conducive to enhancing multi-lateralism and improving the United Nations’ authority and efficiency as well as its capability of handling traditional and non-traditional threats.
The statement says that the two sides agreed that the reform of the UN Security Council should take full consideration of the interests of developing countries and small and medium sized nations.
The two sides also pointed out that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) played an important role in promoting friendship and cooperation between the countries in the region and they will further cooperate with other countries within the SCO framework, according to the statement.
China also promised that it would support Mongolia’s participation in regional cooperation process. It would also support Mongolia’s access to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Asia-Europe Meeting, the statement says.

China to launch HIV/AIDS awareness campaign
From Max Lee

BEIJING—China is going to launch a nationwide publicity campaign among its 120 million migrant workers to raise their awareness of HIV/AIDS and take measures to protect themselves.
On Tuesday, the State Council, the Ministry of Health and several other government departments jointly initiated a program which is to start in December aiming to ensure that 65 percent of migrant workers have access to HIV/AIDS knowledge by the end of 2006 and 85 percent by the end of 2010. China has had 120 million rural laborers working in urban areas, and a large number of surplus rural labor forces will flow into cities and towns. Most of them are sexually-active and some of them are prone to drug addiction in some areas, but they have a poor understanding of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
Under the program, governments at all levels are required to allocate sufficient funds to publicity of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, while strengthening coordination and supervision for the smooth proceeding of the program. Vice Health Minister Wang Longde said Monday that migrant workers should be regarded as an HIV/AIDS high-risk group and the government should pay more attention to them.
He criticized many local governments for providing HIV/AIDS prevention services only to people with residential registration. By the end of September, China had had 135,630 reported cases of HIV infection, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Health, but the number is estimated at 840,000.
WHO says AIDS may Infect 10 Mln in China by 2010: Some 10 million people in China may be infected with the AIDS virus by 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, as it called for stronger political will by Asian governments to stop the spread of the disease. About 5 million people worldwide were infected last year, bringing to 45 million the number living with the virus despite measures designed to prevent AIDS from spreading, said Shigeru Omi, WHO director for the Western Pacific region.
“We know what works and what doesn’t. So why has the necessary action to prevent the virus from spreading not been taken?” Omi said in a statement ahead of the World AIDS Day on Thursday. “Why is the epidemic still growing and not reversing”? In China, the virus has spread to all 31 provinces and autonomous regions with injected drug use the main route of transmission. A similar situation exists in Malaysia and Vietnam.
If nothing was done to promote HIV prevention, the WHO said, some 10 million Chinese may be infected in the next five years. Omi called on governments in the region to review progress on the targets set under the Millennium Development Goals and the U.N. General Assembly Declaration in 2001 to cut the prevalence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and reverse the epidemic by 2015.
“These promises need to be translated into effective action,” he said. Based on WHO data, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981, the leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 49 worldwide.
More than 13,000 people contract the virus every day, with drug use and the sex trade as the drivers of the epidemic across the Western Pacific region. In Asia, Cambodia has the highest HIV prevalence rate at 1.9 percent of the population, with nearly 21 percent of sex workers infected.
Omi said there was still enough time to meet the goals, noting a dramatic 20-fold increase in donor funding for HIV/AIDS since 1996 to $6 billion last year. He said almost 1 million people in developing countries worldwide were receiving anti-retroviral therapy but that was still short of the target of 3 million by the end of 2005.

Malaysia urged to probe into Chinese women abuse
From Max Lee

BEIJING—China on Tuesday urged Malaysia to punish those responsible for a degrading video of a female detainee who appears to be Chinese and protect the safety of Chinese visitors. China has lodged a formal protest over the videotaped incident, in which a naked woman is forced to perform squats in front of a female police officer. The video has made its way to Web sites and triggered a national outcry in Malaysia, where human rights activists frequently accuse police of mistreating detainees.
It isn’t clear if the detainee in the video is a Chinese citizen or perhaps an ethnic Chinese Malaysian. The policewoman appears to be ethnic Malay.
Malaysia apologized in response to Beijing’s protest and promised to investigate.
“We require that the Malaysian side take effective measures,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao at a regular news briefing. “On the one hand to punish the perpetrators and find out the truth, and on the other hand to protect the personal safety and dignity of Chinese citizens in Malaysia so as to prevent such incidents from occurring again”.
Liu said a planned trip to China by Malaysia’s Home Affairs Minister was still being arranged, sidestepping a question over whether Beijing planned to delay the visit over the controversy.
“The timing of the visit will be set at an appropriate time for both sides,” Liu said. “We think the visit by the Malaysian minister will play a positive role in promoting cooperation”.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is scheduled to travel to Malaysia next month for a regional summit.

 

Pak, China agree to increase eductional co-op
From Javed Akhtar ( APP)

BEIJING—Federal Education Minster Lt. Gen. (Retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi met his Chinese counterpart Zhou JI and decided to increase bilateral cooperation in education sector. The meeting held on the sidelines the fifth Group Meeting of the Ministers and other top officials of the regional countries, being held here. They noted that there has been tremendous increase in bilateral cooperation at the level of higher education in the recent years. They agreed to further expand this cooperation as well as sharing their experience and expertise, combat illiteracy and upgrade overall educational standard. Meanwhile, Javed Ashraf Qazi reiterated his country’s commitment to raise literacy level to around 85 percent by the year 2015, by utilizing domestic and international financial resources. “We are trying to meet the UNESCO’s target, ‘Education for ALL’ at the earliest,” he added. He told APP that he briefed the conference’s participants about the Pakistan’s efforts to overcome illiteracy and ensure gender equality in its educational pursuits.
The government of Pakistan has decided to increase its annual educational budget from 2.7 to 4 percent of its GDP within next two years, he said adding, more emphasize would be laid on primary education, ensuring availability of at least one school in every village. It has been decided to set up 2,40,000 literacy centers throughout the country to provide non-formal education, he added.
Javed Ashraf Qazi said the government is providing free education up to the high-school level, besides providing books. “We are also giving stipends around Rs. 200 per month to each girl student to enhance female’s enrolment at the primary level in the rural areas. About the existing national literacy rate, the Minister said it is about 54 percent out of which 66.25 percent male and 41.75 percent female are literate. The increase in the literacy rate has been about 2 percent per year. But, now the government has geared up its efforts meet the UNESCO’s targets within the stipulated period.
Pakistan to attend Bird Flu Conference: Pakistan will attend a two-day conference of the regional countries on bird flu, being held in Kunming, capital of Southwest China’s Yunnan province on December 6-7. Federal Secretary Food and Agriculture Ismail Qureshi is likely to represent the country at the conference, that aims at setting up a joint mechanism to prevent spread of bird flu at border areas.
Sources told APP here that the conference will also work out an action plan to exchange techniques and information in the fight against the bird flu epidemic. Pakistan is already vigilant over bird flu and authorities are stockpiling anti-viral drugs and vaccinating poultry to prevent its outbreak. It has also imposed a ban on poultry imports from 13 countries as a precautionary measure against any outbreak of avian flu in the country, an official said.
The 13 countries whose poultry products have been banned are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Laos, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Greece and Romania. Each of these countries has detected strains of the bird flu virus. So far, China has reported three confirmed human cases of bird flu, including two fatalities and one recovered case, according to the Ministry of Health. Meanwhile, as a precautionary measure, Shanghai, Chinese major city Monday began screening international passengers for bird flu prevention. All passengers leaving or entering China are being asked to fill in a health declaration form, specifying whether they have had “close contact with poultry, birds, bird flu patient or suspect over the past week” and whether they have “such symptoms as fever, coughing and being short of breath”.
 

Annan to discuss UN reform with China

BEIJING—UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will discuss a plan to reform the United Nations Security Council during a visit to China from Dec 4 to 7, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday. “It will be Annan’s seventh visit to China since he took office, and the two sides will exchange views on international and regional issues of common interest,” Liu Jianchao told a news conference. Annan and Chinese leaders would also discuss proposals to reform the Security Council to make it more representative, Liu said, sidestepping a question on whether China and Japan would hold talks on the issue next month. “China supports reform of the U.N. Security Council ... but priority should be given to increasing the representation of developing countries, especially African countries,” he said.
Annan has pushed hard for reform by the end of the year, arguing that the council still reflects the balance of power at the end of World War Two — China along with the United States, Russia, Britain and France are permanent members with veto power. The council currently has 10 non-permanent seats that rotate for two-year terms, in addition to the five permanent members. In August, China threatened to veto a plan to enlarge the Security Council if the reform measure went to a vote. China suggested the so-called Group of Four nations — Japan, India, Germany and Brazil — withdraw a proposal to add 10 new seats to the body.

(The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item)