China approves FTA with Pakistan
From Javed Akhtar (APP)

BEIJING—Chinese government has approved all necessary arrangements to honor its free trade commitments with Pakistan, offering special preferential tariff rates from next month, said Finance Minister Jin Renqing.
In a statement, Jin hoped that the free trade arrangements will boost their bilateral trade. “We are moving towards free trade arrangements in all areas of common interest, under the Early Harvest programme (EHP), finalized by the two countries here last week”.
According to the EHP agreement, some 486 categories of Chinese goods exported to Pakistan will enjoy the zero-tariff treatment, mainly vegetables, fruit, stone materials, textile machinery and organic chemical products.
Meanwhile, China will give zero-tariff treatment to 769 categories of goods imported from Pakistan, mainly vegetables, fruit, stone materials, cotton fabrics and man-made fabrics.
For those products with lower tariffs, China will cut its tariffs by 27 per cent on 1,671 kinds of products from Pakistan, and Pakistan will cut tariffs by an average range of 22 per cent on 575 kinds of products from China.
A senior official of the Chinese Commerce Ministry said the EHP is a significant step towards the free trade agreement (FTA), to be finalized by the end of next year. It will help address the imbalanced trade between them, in which China has a big surplus, he said in an interview with APP.
The bilateral trade between the two countries has been expanding quickly this year. In the first 10 months, the total exports and imports reached US$3.4 billion, soaring 44 per cent year-on-year. But the trade is severely imbalanced, and, for example, China had a trade surplus of US$1.9 billion last year compared to a total trade volume of US$3.1 billion.
Bo Xilai, the Minister of Commerce, said China has noted the situation and he believed the FTA, which have many contents in favour of Pakistan, will help to ease the problem.
“And we also encourage Pakistani companies to engage in more market promotion in China, and the Chinese Government will give as much support as possible,” Bo said at a news conference.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                       
China hospital fire leaves 39 dead
Bureau Report

BEIJING—Patients leapt from the windows of a burning four-story hospital to escape a blaze that killed at least 39 people in China’s northeast, the government said Friday.
Thousands of local residents watched helplessly as patients jumped from windows on the third and fourth floors in subfreezing weather after rescuers failed to reach them, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A hospital official said that a father caught his 15-day-old child after a nurse threw the baby from a window.
Witnesses said firefighters struggled for five hours to put out the blaze that broke out Thursday at the City Central Hospital, the largest hospital in Liaoyuan, 600 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of Beijing in Jilin province.
Investigators believe the fire started in a power distribution room, Xinhua said.
The remains of 24 people were found at the scene and 15 others died after being transferred to other hospitals, Xinhua said.
Rescuers on Friday were still searching for other victims, it said. Overnight temperatures in the city were reported as low as -17 degrees centigrade (1 degree Fahrenheit).
A woman who answered the telephone at the maternity ward of the Liaoyuan Women’s and Children’s Hospital said a newborn baby boy was thrown from the window of the City Central Hospital by a nurse and was caught by his father, Wang Xuzhi.
The boy, who has not yet been named, was not hurt but was under observation at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, said the woman, who declined to give her name. She did not say which floor he was thrown from. It was not immediately known if the boy’s mother or the nurse who saved him survived.
Some 183 patients, 20 of them in critical condition, were moved to seven other hospitals in Liaoyuan, Xinhua said. It wasn’t clear whether the patients were in critical condition before the incident or were injured by the fire or attempts to escape.
Ten hospital staff were among the injured, Xinhua said.
Xinhua quoted 43-year-old patient Wang Mingwen as saying that he saved himself and his wife by tying a quilt to a heating pipe and throwing the other end out the window to climb down from the third floor.
However, his wife Ni Shuping lost her grip and fell from the second floor, seriously injuring herself, Wang said.
Some 100 people jumped or climbed down knotted bed sheets to escape the flames, the Huaxi Metropolitan News, a newspaper in the southwestern province of Sichuan, said on its Web site.
Another patient, Chen Zhifu, who was hospitalized for an eye injury, broke both legs jumping from the third floor, Huaxi said.
“I was really desperate. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. I had to jump or I would have burned to death,” Chen was quoted as saying.
State television showed about a dozen fire trucks and ambulances in front of the hospital as the last of the fire was extinguished Thursday night. Water used to put out the flames had turned into icy patches on the concrete.
Also Thursday, China’s Ministry of Public Security reported that China suffered more than 2,000 deaths in more than 222,000 accidental fires from January to November, Xinhua said.
In recent weeks, China has experienced a number of high-profile accidents, including a series of coal mining disasters that claimed several hundred lives and a major chemical spill that poisoned a river and shut down water supplies to the northern city of Harbin.

                                                                                                                                                                           
China positive on trade facilitation negotiations
From Max Lee
The Daily Mail’s Special Correspondent in Beijing

BEIJING—Recognized as the most effective approach to the global trade growth, trade facilitation, once again, becomes the focus of the ongoing Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference.
All delegates of the WTO members have shown their concerns over this issue, to different extents, in their plenary meeting speeches and bilateral or multilateral consultations on Friday.
Since the WTO General Council passed the July framework agreement in 2004, which initiated trade facilitation negotiations, the 150-member organization has held twelve meetings on this issue.
The negotiation report on trade facilitation at the Hong Kong meeting is the only one submitted in the name of almost all the negotiators, whereas reports on other issues are only submitted in the name of the facilitators due to great divergencies, said Yin Liqun, director of the China General Administration of Customs’s WTO affairs office.
“This demonstrates that the importance of this issue is widely recognized by the members”.
In the Hong Kong Conference, China’s proposals on this issue, including intensifying the transparency of customs and simplifying clearance procedures, win wide acclaim from the delegates, Yin said.
As the world’s third largest trade nation, China’s attitude toward trade facilitation is quite positive, the official said, not only because it enables more domestic companies to step into the world market, but also complies with China’s effort to improve customs efficiency and infrastructure.
As a matter of fact, China has already exhibited sincerity in boosting trade facilitation, and its customs have tried their best to provide round-the-clock services.
Currently, most customs have set up task forces to deal with some emergencies and give counseling when necessary.
Meanwhile, China is in full swing computerizing its ports. As of December, more than 200,000 enterprises have been linked with the port network, a sign that an early uniform information platform has been established to cover different sectors and places.
Yin said China will continue simplifying the customs procedures while enhancing its transparency in the future.
In the long run, trade facilitation will be undoubtedly embraced by all the developing and least developed countries because it helps expand the scale of foreign trade, said Gong Baihua, director of the Shanghai WTO Affairs Consultation Center’s information division.
However, the developing members will shoulder great pressures and challenges in the process because trade facilitation needs a remarkable amount of funds and great technological supports, Gong said.
The expert held that the goals of the negotiation concerning trade facilitation should be set by fully considering the economic development situation of these countries.

India, China to speed up border dispute talks

KUALA LUMPUR—India and China have agreed to speed up the process of resolving their long-standing border dispute, a report quoted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as saying.
“I had very good discussions with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao,” Singh told reporters travelling with him from an East Asia summit in the Malayasian capital Kuala Lumpur.
“We feel the negotiations should be expedited... We are dealing with difficult issues. Without setting any deadline, I do think it is possible to move forward at a faster pace...” he said according to the Hindu newspaper on Thursday.
In another development, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular news conference in Beijing that the two countries will hold friendly discussions to find an appropriate solution to the border issue.
China and India account for more than 1/3 of the world’s total population, Qin pointed out, saying that Sino-Indian friendship not only conforms to the interests of the two neighbours, but also benefits the peace and stability of Asia and the world.
Singh, who met Wen during his four day stay in Kuala Lumpur, described it as his “most important meeting”.
Giant neighbours India and China fought a brief, bitter border war in 1962.
A formal ceasefire line has yet to be established since the war but the unsettled border has remained largely peaceful following agreements signed in 1993 and 1996.
India says China occupies 38,000 square kilometres (14,670 square miles) of Indian territory in Kashmir while Beijing claims that the 90,000-square-kilometre Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to China.
Ties have been warming in recent years with an exchange of high-level visits and joint military exercises. Trade reached 13.6 billion dollars in 2004 and is targeted to hit 30 billion dollars by 2010.
Work is under way to reopen a section of the traditional Silk Road next month at Nathu La pass on the border between India’s Sikkim and China’s Tibet. It would be the first direct trade link since the 1962 border conflict.
In April, both sides signed an agreement aimed at helping special representatives — named by India and China in 2003 — to negotiate territorial claims as experts delineated the boundary on a map and on the ground. The special envoys — India’s National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan and China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo — held talks in Beijing in September but without any apparent progress on the dispute.
Singh said another round of talks is scheduled to take place in New Delhi next month.
“Another meeting is planned in January. Both of us (Wen and Singh) agreed that these... negotiations should be expedited and both of us expressed our commitment to find a mutually satisfactory solution to the border issue,” he said.

(The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item)


Work at indigenous Chinese N-plant begins
Bureau Report

BEIJING—China today began the construction of country’s first indigenously-built 1000 MW nuclear power plant in Shenzhen, a booming hi-tech city in south China’s Guangdong Province. Ling’ao II, one of the key projects included into China’s 10th five-year plan period (2001-2005), will have two generating units, each with an installed capacity of 1000 megawatts. The first unit is scheduled to start operation in December 2010 and the second in August 2011, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co Ltd (CGNPC) sources said. On completion, the two generating units will generate a total of 150 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year. Ling’ao II is based on pressurised water reactor technology with improvement from Chinese scientists. CGNPC spent over 20 years to develop the technology imported from France. It is the third commercial nuke power plant in Guangdong, where the country’s first nuke power plant, Daya Bay nuclear power plant, began construction in 1991. The new plant will be adjacent to the site of Daya Bay nuclear power plant. Ling’ao I project began commercial operation in 2003, with two 990 MW generating units. Guangdong is also expediting preparation for construction of another nuke power plant in Yangjiang, a coastal city. Construction of the nuclear reactor of that plant will officially begin by the end of 2006, Xinhua news agency reported.

Pak delegation to visit China to explore rice export

BEIJING—A 14-member delegation of Pakistani traders arrived here Friday on a weeklong visit to explore local market for export of rice.
The visit was arranged by the Export Promotion Bureau in collaboration with the Pakistan Embassy. It aimed at finding potential buyers for Pakistani rice.
“We will try to compete with rice exporters from other countries by presenting better quality long-grain rice on relatively less price”, said a member of the delegation while talking to APP.
The delegation is scheduled to visit Chinese major cities Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzen. China is the world’s biggest rice consumer and it is likely to import 5.32 million tons of rice next year. It includes 2.66 million tons long grain rice.
Pakistan’s rice growers and exporters have a bright prospect to get a reasonable profit, since tariff on the agriculture products will come to zero from January, 1, 2006 under the Early Harvest Programme, recently signed by the two countries.
According to Commercial Counsellor Shahid Mahmood, the marketing scope of Pakistan rice in the local market this time could be around 40 to 50 million tons and it could be further increased with concerted efforts by the Pakistani exporters.—APP