China ranks as World 6th largest economy
From Max Lee
The Daily Mail’s Special Correspondent in Beijing

BEIJING—China on Tuesday revised its GDP (gross domestic product) for 2004 to 15.9878 trillion yuan (about 2 trillion U.S. dollars), up 2.3 trillion yuan, or 16.8 percent from the preliminary figures. The country’s top statistician Li Deshui made the announcement at a press conference of the Information Office of the State Council, citing the result of a national economic survey. The country has overtaken Italy as the world’s 6th biggest economy.
Li said the gap to catch up with the fourth and fifth economies — Britain and France — is “narrowing.” But Li admitted that China’s per-capita GDP is still very weak, ranking behind the 100th in the world economies. The value-added of the tertiary industry was 6.5018 trillion yuan, 2.1297 trillion more than the annual preliminary estimation announced earlier this year. And the industry’s share in the GDP rose from the earlier estimated 31.9 percent to 40.7 percent, an increase of 8.8 percentage points.
The increase of service sector output accounted for the largest part, or 93 percent, of that of the GDP. Li said China had long been using the Material Product System (MPS) which was developed under the centrally-planned economic system in its national account statistics until the 1980s, resulting in “very weak” statistics for the service sector.
The scope of tertiary industry is turning wide and complex with a large number of units, which have no good means for accounting and statistics, he said. Meanwhile, along with the economic reform, China has seen a diversified economic development in terms of ownership, and in particular, a dynamic development of private and individual-run service activities.
“It is very difficult to conduct statistical surveys as they are very scattered with frequent changes, resulting in a certain degree of under-coverage,” said Li. While many new services are mushrooming, data on their activities are often underestimated, he acknowledged.
Li added that some of the services affiliated to manufacturing or construction enterprises are estimated but classified into the secondary industry, while more others are neglected. The value-added of the secondary industry was 7.3904 trillion yuan in 2004, 151.7 billion more than the original data, while the industry’s share in the GDP shrank from the preliminarily estimated 52.9 percent to 46.2 percent, a drop of 6.7 percentage points.
“Through the survey, we are able to remove the ‘water’ from the statistics of the manufacturing sector, in particular, from small-sized enterprises,” Li said. Analysts say some small firms, including township enterprises in the rural areas, have been exaggerating their output figures to help local governments and officials showcase their “political achievements” and seek promotion.
Li said the share of the primary industry was still based on the figure from the annual preliminary estimation, as the industry was not covered in the survey. The value-added of the primary industry was 2.0956 trillion yuan, and the industry’s share in the GDP was 13.1 percent, 2.1 percentage points lower than the preliminary figures.
Result from the latest survey will not affect the nation’s macro-economic policy, Li said. “The changes in the figures do notmean the traditional statistics have misled China’s policy-making.” The survey’s leading group was set up under the State Council, China’s cabinet, and headed by Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan, with governments at all levels and concerned departments participating in the event.
More than 3 million enumerators and supervisors were recruited,and another 10 million statistician and accountants from government agencies, enterprises and institutions were mobilized to participate in the survey, according to Li. More than 30 million questionnaires were collected in the survey with more than 1.06 billion records of firsthand raw data, Li said, adding that a sample survey showed that the comprehensive reporting error was only 4.9 per thousand, within the 1-percent target.

                                                                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                       
2 new Chinese ports merge as World’s third biggest
Bureau Report

HANGZHOU—China’s two deep-water ports, Ningbo Port and Zhoushan Port in the east Zhejiang Province, officially merged into one on Tuesday in a bid to forge the third biggest port in the world.
The new port will be named “Ningbo-Zhoushan Port” and start formal operation on Jan. 1 of 2006, according to Wang Yongming, vice governor of Zhejiang province.
“The ports integration in Zhejiang will accelerate China’s endeavor of building into a strong country in the field of sea shipping,” said Xu Zuyuan, vice minister of communications.
According to statistics from the provincial ports and shipping bureau, the cargo handling capacity of Ningbo Port is expected to exceed 270 million tons in 2005, ranking second in China, and Zhoushan Port is expected to handle over 80 million tons of cargo.
However, the two ports, though located in the same sea area andsharing a navigation channel, have been operated under different administrations, which has resulted in separation of planning and greatly undermined their competitiveness.
It is estimated that over 100 billion yuan (about 12.6 billion US dollars) will be injected into the project, which is expected to produce the third largest port in the world by 2010.
Currently, the biggest three ports in the world are Shanghai, Singapore and Rotterdam.
Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is located on the converging point of China’s eastern coastline and the mouth of the Yangtze River. There were 591 berths as of the end of 2004, of which, 53 are over 10,000 tons.
After completion, the new port will be an integral part of the Shanghai International Shipping Center, as well as an important logistic and industrial base, said Lu Zushan, governor of Zhejiang Province.
According to Xu, the cargo and container handling capacity of China have both been listed as the top in the world for three years. In 2005, 10 Chinese ports were registered as world-class, with handling capacity over 100 million tons.
The latest statistics show that China’s ports is expected to handle 5 billion tons of cargo in 2005, 19.9 percent higher than that of last year, and 75 million TEU containers, up 21.3 percent from the previous year.

                                                                                                                                                                           
Happiness key to success, says study

HAPPINESS, rather than working hard, is the key to success, according to research published yesterday. Cheerful people are more likely to try new things and challenge themselves, which reinforces positive emotion and leads to success in work, good relationships and strong health, say psychologists.
The findings suggest that happiness is not a “feel-good” luxury, but is essential to people’s well-being. What is more, happiness can also extend across an entire nation, with people in “happy” nations being more likely to help others.
The link between happiness and success was investigated by a team from the University of California Riverside, led by Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky.
First, they analyzed questionnaires that ask people about multiple aspects of their lives. “For example, they show that happy people tend to earn higher incomes,” said Lyubomirsky. Having established the link, they wanted to discover the cause.
“Almost always it has been assumed that things that correlate with happiness are the causes of happiness, but it could be just the opposite that those things tend to be caused by happiness,” said Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, another author on the paper.
Other studies revealed that having a sunny outlook on life appeared to precede good fortune.
“There was strong evidence that happiness leads people to be more sociable and more generous, more productive at work, to make more money, and to have stronger immune systems,” said Lyubomirsky.
Meanwhile, experimental studies showed that an instant injection of high-spirits could generate success. “Inducing a happy effect leads people to make more money in a computer simulation”.
The research shows that while success can put a spring in someone’s step, people need happiness in the first place to achieve success.
According to the study, around 4 out of 5 people in modern industrialized nations are happy at any one time.
Success was not just about earning lots of money. “We define success as obtaining the things that culture or society values, whether it be friends, close family, money and income, or longevity,” said Diener.
However, sorrowful people are not condemned to a life of failure.
“Our work suggests that sad people should try to increase the frequency of positive emotions in their lives by doing things that make them feel happy, even temporarily,” said Lyubomirsky, whose research is published in the Psychological Bulletin.
But there is a caveat: your happiness boosters should not be dangerous, like driving fast, or counter-productive, like eating lots of chocolate.

(The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item)

Great Wall to be renovated after ravages of modern hordes

BEIJING—The popular Badaling section of China’s Great Wall, which has suffered more at the hands of modern visitors than the barbarian invaders it was meant to keep out, may soon get a face lift, state media said Tuesday. About four million Chinese and foreign tourists visit the Badaling section near Beijing each year and many have carved their names and other graffiti such as “I have toured the Great Wall,” on its bricks, the Xinhua news agency said.
“The wall looks like a newspaper in the sun. Nearly every piece of brick on the Badaling section of the Great Wall has carvings,” said Zheng Yan of the China Great Wall Society. The society and administrators of the section in November began soliciting suggestions from the public on how to clean the wall without damaging it. They received hundreds of suggestions, with some coming from abroad, but still have not come up with a proper solution. Most marks, mainly names and expressions of love, were written or carved between the 1960s and 1990s, according to the society.
There were fewer recent marks due to better management and protection. Volunteers are also helping to protect the Great Wall, including Sun Jing, a 72-year-old farmer who lives in a village near the wall. She volunteers to collect rubbish and warn tourists against carving on the wall. “Protecting the Great Wall is something the same as safeguarding my home,” he said. The World Monument Fund has included the Great Wall in its 2004 list of the “World’s 100 Most Endangered Sites”.
China’s most famous cultural relic has also come under other harm. Sections of the wall have been knocked down to make way for freeways while other parts have undergone a tacky refurbishment to lure tourists. Farmers have also seen the wall as a ready source of construction materials and taken apart portions to build homes, schools and reservoirs. Tourists were also climbing sections that have not been approved for commercial activities or visitors. Less than 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) remain of the original 6,300-kilometer structure that was first built in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).—APP



Chinese schools owe teachers over $1b
DM Monitoring

ISLAMABAD—Rural schools across China owe their teachers more than 10 billion yuan ($1.24 billion) in back pay, leading the central government to consider paying teachers itself, a leading Chinese newspaper the China Daily reported on Tuesday.
Failure to pay teachers’ already low salaries, in many cases because the money was lost to corruption, had resulted in a severe shortage of qualified teachers in schools in China’s vast, impoverished countryside, the newspaper said.
“If the wages of the more than six million rural teachers was allocated from the budget of the central government, their income would be stable and their worries about their basic living conditions dispelled,” it said in a commentary. “Then more qualified teachers would be retained by rural schools.” With licensed teachers wary of leaving cities, rural schools had to staff classrooms with unqualified teachers who received as little as $5 or $6 a month, the China Daily said. More than 500,000 uncertified teachers work at rural schools in 12 western provinces. “Many have their pay in arrears,” it said. The government’s current investment in education was equal to only three percent of the country’s GDP, below the world average of five percent, a government statistician has said.
And arbitrary school fees have made even primary education, part of the nine years of schooling considered compulsory in China, beyond the means of many rural families. The costs of higher education, all but free 20 years ago, have also skyrocketed past what many millions of Chinese can bear since the government ended full subsidies. In a widely reported case, a Chinese mother committed suicide in September because she could not afford her child’s college tuition. China has pledged to increasing funding for rural education to make compulsory education completely free by 2010.