Chinese, Russian police to hold first joint anti-terror drill

Beijing (China): Chinese and Russian police are to hold a joint anti-terror drill in the Far East area of Russia next year, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Nikolai Ovchinnikov has announced in Moscow.
Preparations for the drill, the first ever between the police of the two countries, were already underway, said Ovchinnikov, without giving details.
The fight against terrorism was an important part of China-Russia police cooperation and a priority in the bilateral cooperation plan of Russia's Interior Ministry and China's Ministry of Public Security.
China and Russia began to conduct police cooperation in 1993 and signed an official cooperation agreement in 2003.
The two countries were carrying out "substantial cooperation on police affairs", including the fight against cross-border organized crime and smuggling, as well as personnel training and exchanges of information, he added.

—People’s Daily, Daily Mail news exchange item

China to spend 100m yuan on farmer training

Beijing (China)—China has allocated 100 million yuan this year to train farmers in agricultural technology and knowledge, according to the Ministry of Agriculture here Saturday.
The program has chosen 10,000 villages nationwide and given them 10,000 yuan each as subsidy for training, said Wei Chao'an, vice minister of agriculture.
Chinese farmers received merely 7.3 years of education on the average and 92 percent of the country's illiterate and semiliterate people are in rural areas, said Wei.
Nearly half of China's 490 million rural laborers merely received preliminary education and 7.6 percent of them are illiterate or semiliterate, said Wei.
Most of them have never received any professional training and can hardly meet the requirement in construction of new countryside, the official said.
China has focused on developing its industries and cities in the past 20-plus years. Sluggish rural development provides a stark contrast to booming urban economy.
China set the goal of building new countryside last year, hoping to achieve balanced development in the country.
A report with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said that up to 300 million Chinese farmers will move into cities over the next 20 years. They all need to find jobs in cities.
Last week, China's Ministry of Science and Technology published the first volume of books in a series to teach farmers practical agricultural technology. (one dollar = 7.95 yuan)

—People’s Daily, Daily Mail news exchange item

Chance of economic crisis in China 'very low'

WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a letter obtained on Friday that chances of an economic crisis in China were low, but that the possibility of a "hard landing" for the economy could not be dismissed.
"We believe that the chance of a Chinese economic crisis is very low for the foreseeable future," Bernanke wrote in a August 30 letter to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby.
"Although the banking sector is burdened with an enormous and probably growing stock of problematic loans, the government possesses sizable resources and is unlikely to allow the banking system to fail," Bernanke told the Alabama Republican. He also said Beijing's large foreign exchange reserves made a currency crisis unlikely.
"However, we do not entirely discount the possibility of a 'hard landing,' in the form of significantly slower growth, as authorities attempt to reduce investment growth from its current rapid pace," he wrote.
The Fed chief said the rapid pace of investment in China was leading to overcapacity in some industries and likely adding to bad loans already on bank books.
"However, there is less evidence of widespread overheating. Inflation is still quite low," he added.
Bernanke said Beijing had indicated it wanted to rein in the pace of investment spending and reduce its reliance on export-led growth.
"They have taken some steps to try to encourage consumption. However, they still have not allowed a substantial appreciation of the renminbi (currency), a step that many analysts argue would be the most effective way to address the imbalances in the economy," he said.
U.S. manufacturers complain an undervalued renminbi, or yuan, gives Chinese producers an unfair advantage in global markets and the Bush administration has pressed China to rely more on market forces to determine the value of the currency.
Bernanke's letter, which came in response to written questions Shelby submitted in conjunction with a July 19 Senate Banking Committee hearing on the U.S. economy, was made available by the senator's office.

—The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item

China eyes coalmine killer gas for new energy source

BEIJING—Having his car filled with compressed coal-bed methane in a bustling gas station at a coal production base of north China's Shanxi Province, a 23 year-old taxi driver says he is excited about the savings.
"I can save on half my expenses for fuel each day because my car started to have a new 'drink' early this year," says Li Gang, with a broad smile on the face.
Li does the maths -- one cubic meter of coal-bed methane is equivalent to 1.13 liters of gasoline, but retails at a less than half the price of gasoline. About 90 percent of Jincheng City's 1,300 taxis have been refit to burn compressed coal-bed methane and gasoline.
Day and night, coal-bed methane wells are operating in full gear in Qinshui Basin, the country's largest coal-bed methane exploitation base, some 50 kilometers from downtown Jincheng City. Tankers haul compressed coal-bed methane in an endless stream to gas stations, factories and local resident families across the province.
As China speeds up exploitation of coal mines to satisfy increasingly thirsty demand for energy, the country's gas emissions keep growing. In 2004, China's coal mines pumped out 14 billion cubic meters of gas and experts say that will increase to 17 billion by 2020.
Coal-bed methane, more commonly known as "coalmine gas", can be deadly. China has the highest number of coalmine accident fatalities in the world, with about 80 percent of casualties attributable to gas explosions, causing direct losses of 93 million U.S. dollars a year, said Sun Maoyuan, general manager of China United Coal-bed Methane Corp.
However, the No.1 "coalmine killer" is also a sort of clean energy. Industry experts believe coal-bed methane will become a practical and reliable substitute energy resource for natural gas as the global shortage of energy resources worsens and conventional natural gas supply falls short of market demand.
China boasts 37 trillion cubic-meter reserves of coal-bed methane, the third-largest in the world, next only to Russia and Canada, according to the latest statistics from the China Coal Information Research Institute. They are equivalent to 45 billion tons of standard coal. Sixty percent of the gas is stored in coal beds over 1,500 meters deep, easily mined and developed.
China's methane resources are distributed in 24 provinces, with Shanxi Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region accounting for more than half of the country's total reserves.
"Coal-bed methane is not only an effective alternative energy source for China, the mining and use of it could also be helpful in avoiding coal mine accidents as well as reducing methane emissions, a major type of greenhouse gas," said Liu Wenge, deputy director of the coal-bed methane information center at the China Coal Information Research Institute.
China started to explore and utilize coal-bed methane in the 1990s. Although over 46 percent of China's coalmines are rich in gas, China's coal-bed methane still remains underdeveloped, due to factors such as a lack of technology and inadequate investment.
China utilized 1 billion cubic meters of coal-bed methane in 2005 and expects to make use of 1.4 billion cubic meters this year. In sharp contrast, more than 1.3 billion cubic meters of such gas is being emitted each year without getting effective use.
So far, more than 600 coal-bed methane wells have been sunk across the country, most of which are still in the prospecting and experimental stage and far away from commercial operation, with the daily methane output record being 16,000 cubic meters.
In the face of tightening pressures on promoting coalmine safety, alleviating air pollution and supplying more clean energy, the Chinese government is attaching more attention to the development of coal-bed gas.
In February 2005, the State Council, China's cabinet, put forward seven measures to harness gas, prevent gas accidents in coalmines and to develop coal-bed methane.
On May 31, 2006, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's industrial watchdog, approved a five-year plan on the exploitation of coal-bed methane. Under the four-point blueprint, China is to increase annual coal-bed gas output to 10 billion cubic meters in 2010, utilizing 80 percent. China will investigate and confirm that the country has an additional 300 billion cubic meters of coal-bed methane reserves availably by 2010. And China will gradually set up an industrial system to develop and utilize coal-bed methane.
On June 19, 2006, the State Council promulgated a 16-clause guideline on accelerating the exploitation of coal-bed methane, offering a series of preferential policies on land use, taxation, loans and access of methane-generated electricity to local power grids.
On Aug. 28, 2006, senior officials with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said detailed measures are under preparation by financial, taxation and land resources authorities to put the 16-clause guideline into practice.
NDRC calls upon local governments to follow the practice of east China's Jiangxi Province in earmarking special financial funds to encourage exploitation of coal-bed methane. Jiangxi awards enterprises 0.05 yuan per cubic meter in the exploitation of coal-bed methane.

—The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item

Chinese army urged to learn from veteran surgeon 

Beijing—The Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Saturday called on the entire military force and armed police to learn from a veteran military surgeon who died of cancer recently.
The commission said that Hua should be learned from because he was always loyal to the Party and stictly observed the commands of the commission and its chief.
Hua Yiwei, former chief surgeon of the General Military Hospital in Beijing, died of stomach cancer on Aug. 12 in Beijing at age of 73.
The commission urged the medical personnel in the army to learn Hua's professional skills and lofty medical ethics, so as to provide better service to the military and the people.
During his illness, Hua was visited by Chinese President Hu Jintao and senior military officers.
Hu, also Chairman of the Central Military Commission, gave an instruction that a campaign should be launched for the nation as well as the military to learn from Hua.
Born in 1933, Hua joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1953, and joined the CPC in 1956. He practiced medicine in the military for more than 50 years.
Hua was awarded a number of honorary titles including the "Norman Bethune Medal" issued by health and military authorities.
Hua was held in great esteem by his patients and other people for his good clinical skills and high professional ethics, who was said to have saved thousands of lives.

—People’s Daily, Daily Mail news exchange item