BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index underwent a seesaw on Tuesday morning due to profit taking triggered by the central bank’s decision to raise deposit reserve ratio.

    Bank shares opened lower as investors fear that higher deposit reserve ratios would rein in bank loans and affect their potential earnings. The downward correction led by bank and insurance shares dragged down the Shanghai index to the morning low of 4,380.32 points in one hour.

    The index closed the morning session at 4,444.08 points, up slightly from the previous close of 4,440.77.

    Dealers say that confidence of the market prospect and economy helped lead to a rally in the last hour of the morning session.

    Nearly 200,000 investors opened fund investment accounts last week, a weekly record in July, according to statistics from the China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation.

    The combined turnover of the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses hit 130. 27 billion yuan in the morning, with 382 shares rising, 507 falling and another 110 leveling off on the renminbi-denominated A-shares market.

    The Shenzhen Component Index on China’s smaller market also went through a seesaw to close at 15,124.21 points compared with the previous close of 15,060.86 points.

    HANGZHOU, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) — At least eight people were killed and three are missing after a rising tide swept away more than 30 people in east China’s Zhejiang Province on Thursday.

    Rescuers had retrieved the bodies of five men and three women by Friday afternoon, the public security bureau of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, said at a press conference.

    The victims included a nine-year-old boy. No foreigners have been found among the victims or the missing so far, said Qi Yong, an officer with the maritime team under the bureau.

    Rescue operation was forced to suspend Friday afternoon as strong wind and thunderstorm hit the river, said Qi. Local meteorological station has issued an alarm, forecasting thunderstorm, downpour and hail in the evening.

    The death toll may increase after the search operation resumes and the number of missing will change if more people report missing family members or friends, according to Xie Liewei, a local government official.

    A reception office has been set up to register more reports from family members.

    Twenty-two people were rescued after the tidal bore swept away more than 30 people who were either swimming in the river or walking along a T-shaped levee near the mouth of the Qiantang River on the outskirts of Hangzhou.

    The tides on the Qiantang are a peculiar phenomenon and always attract spectators. Scientists say that the trumpet-shaped mouth of the Qiantang River helps form the tidal change, which can be as high as 3.5 meters.

    The accident took place on Thursday afternoon when the tide was approaching the coast at a normal speed of 15 kmh, which appeared “mild” watching from afar, said Zhou Guangming, a tide expert.

    However, the power of the seemingly gentle tide reached up to four to seven tons per cubic meter, especially when it rushed into the trumpet-shaped levee.

    Most of the victims and the missing were from other parts of China as local residents are fully aware of the danger of the tide and never risk their lives in the river, said Zhou.

    Experts attribute the formation of powerful tidal currents in the river in recent years to the accumulation of silt rushed down by the Yangtze River, the change of the watercourse, the strong wind that always accompanies the tide and the floods upstream.

    The worst tidal accident occurred on Oct. 3, 1993, when the tidewater swept away 86 people from the levee, leaving 19 dead, 40missing and 27 injured.

    The local government has hired a group of local people to patrol the river and warn people of the danger of incoming tides.

    Ren Baojin, an old man who has worked for about 10 years as a “tide shouter,” said he and his workmates shouted out when the tide was approaching, but many people, especially those from other regions, often ignore the warning.

    The local government has ordered round-the-clock patrols along the river and reinforcement of supervision at some dangerous sites. Warning signs will be erected to keep people away. It has also been suggested that all the levees along the river should be closed up, according to the public security bureau.

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — Nearly 10,000 passengers have been stranded at the Beijing Capital International Airport as the heaviest rainstorm to hit Beijing this summer canceled nearly every flights leaving the city on Monday night.

    Airport authorities have to adjust the takeoff schedules on Tuesday to ensure layover flights from Monday take off first.

    But this has postponed even more flights.

    ”I left home at 6:30 a.m. hoping to catch an 8:30 flight to Xining,” says a Beijing office worker surnamed Yi. “But the airport was overcrowded with layovers from last night and there’s no way for my flight to take off any time before 2:00 p.m..”

    The rain began to hit most parts of the city at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, but nearly all flights were canceled after 3:40 p.m. against thunder and lightning alarms from the central and local meteorological bureaus, airport authorities and airline companies confirmed.

    Clerks at the airport’s service desk confirmed at least 40 flights were canceled on Monday night. “It rained in many other northern cities, too. Many flights to Beijing were also canceled.”

    The terminal building had become a mess by 10:00 p.m., with children and elderly people sleeping on the floor and furious passengers protesting with airline companies, which claimed they were unable to provide food and lodging.

    An Air China spokesman said passengers had to arrange for their own food and lodging when flights were laid over by bad weather.

    ”The flight was canceled at 3:40 p.m. but the airline company never explained,” said a passenger surnamed Su, who was planning to take a China Eastern flight to Shanghai. “The airport and airline companies should have been more prepared for the bad weather and provided better service.”

    A group of 120 teenage students heading home to Wenzhou in the eastern Zhejiang Province had to huddle together in the terminal building for the night. Their teacher complained one of them caught cold and had a fever on Tuesday. “We don’t have the budget for hotel rooms,” said their teacher on condition of anonymity. “Besides, we have to wait here for the first flight in the morning.”

    Some passengers complained all nearby hotels were fully booked on Monday night. “We couldn’t go anywhere even if we wished to.”

    As several flights to Beijing were canceled, nearly 1,000 passengers were stranded for 20 hours at Hangzhou airport in Zhejiang Province.

    The first flight from Hangzhou to Beijing took off at 8:10 a.m. on Tuesday.

The Elong Travel Website(File Photo)

    BEIJING, July 31 — China’s online travel services are taking off, with even greater growth forecast for the next few years.

    Last year, at least 2.75 million Chinese booked hotel rooms, air tickets and other travel services on the Internet, up 72 percent from the previous year, according to a report recently released by Shanghai-based in Research Consulting Group.

    China’s online travel market was worth some 1.54 billion yuan (204 million U.S. dollars) last year, a growth of 82 percent from 2005, the report said.

    The findings are based on a month-long survey in November with responses from 60,000 Internet users across China.

    Analysts with the consulting company are optimistic about China’s online travel market, saying the number of users would more than double to 5.7 million in 2008, and hit 9 million by 2010.

    The online sector is expected to be worth 6.5 billion yuan by 2010, analysts said.

    Their optimism is based on three factors - the overall bloom of tourism and the soaring amount of money netizens spend on tourism, and improved online marketing systems.

    Compared with the U.S. online travel market, with revenues of 83 billion dollars in 2006, China’s market is still small.

    In the US, online sales of travel services accounted for 30 percent of total tourism industry revenue in 2005 according to Merrill Lynch & Co. The percentage in China is less than 1 percent, Dai Bin, professor at Beijing International Studies University, told China Daily.

    ”Looking at it from the good side, this means there is still huge potential for developing this market,” he said.

    But he warned that the current boom is mostly due to a few companies.

    The biggest success so far in China’s online travel market is the NASDAQ-listed Ctrip.com, accounting for 54.2 percent of the market last year. In second place was another listed company, eLong.com, with 17.8 percent of the market.

    The rest of China’s travel websites, mostly for traditional travel agencies, work as “a platform to release information, a substitute for traditional marketing and communication”, Dai said. Actual payment is completed offline in traditional ways.

    Explaining why travel agencies prefer traditional means of payment, Hu Guodong, manager of the Internet department of Beijing UTS International Travel Service Co Ltd, said: “If a customer uses an online payment service, our agency has to hand 1 percent of our revenue to the bank, which is too much to bear for travel agencies with a thin profit margin.”

    In contrast, if the customer pays by swiping a credit card, the agency only pays a 0.1 percent fee to the bank, he said.

    ”We need the banks to give us better conditions to make online payment more feasible,” he said.

    (Source: China Daily)

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — A total of 158 countries, regions and international organizations have confirmed their participation in the 2010 World Expo to be held in Shanghai, China, by Tuesday.

    Yang Xiong, deputy mayor of Shanghai and member of the organizing committee for the World Expo 2010 Shanghai China, told a news conference here Tuesday.

    The organizing committee forecast that more than 200 countries, regions and international organizations are expected to attend the 184-day event.

(Source: Xinhua)July 31 - A shopping website for licensed products of the Beijing Olympic Games started operation on Monday, as Olympic organizers predict a booming market demand.

“The website was aimed at that domestic consumers can buy Olympic souvenirs anywhere anytime,” said Yuan Bin, director of marketing development of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG).

The website www.2008eshop.cn was exclusively authorized by BOCOG to sell licensed products of the Beijing Olympics.

Yuan said a sales boom was coming as it was only a year from the Olympic Games.

Items of 11 categories including clothes, trappings, badges, artware, toys are on sale on the website.

There are 820 authorized shops across China selling licensed products of the Olympic games, among whom 231 are in Beijing, 35 in Shanghai and eight in Guangzhou.