HONG KONG, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — Profit-taking in Hong Kong property firms and lingering concerns over possible stagflation in the U.S. sent the Hang Seng Index lower Friday.

    The Hang Seng Index fell 260.02 points, or 1.1 percent, to 24, 331.67 after trading between 24,010.48 and 24,370.69 during the session.

    Turnover reached 80.15 billion HK dollars (10.31 billion U.S. dollars), down from 82.39 billion HK dollars (10.60 billion U.S. dollars) Thursday.

    Traders said the market will likely be cautious Monday ahead of HSBC’s results, which are scheduled to be disclosed after the market closes.

    The Hang Seng Property Sub-index fell 1.9 percent to 31,692.17 after rising 7.4 percent over the last four sessions on expectations of further interest rate cuts in the U.S. and eventually Hong Kong.

    Sino Land slid 4.6 percent to 19.98 HK dollars, Henderson Land fell 3 percent to 61.90 HK dollars, and Sun Hung Kai Properties was 2.1 percent lower at 139.00 HK dollars.

    HSBC fell 1.9 percent to 120.70 HK dollars. Based on data from Thomson One Analytics, the average forecast for its 2007 net profit from 17 analysts is 141.19 billion HK dollars (18.14 billion U.S. dollars), or 15 percent higher than 15.79 billion HK dollars (2.03 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006.

    The finance sub-index dropped 290.08 points, or 0.84 percent, to 34,344.38.

    The commerce and industry sub-index went down 158.50 points or 1.08 percent to 14,521.89.

    The utilities sub-index dropped 313.65 points or 0.73 percent at 42,907.41.

Special Report: NPC, CPPCC Annual Sessions 2008

    BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — China’s National People’s Congress (NPC),the top legislature, published on Friday a list of all its new deputies.

    The Standing Committee of the 10th NPC confirmed the qualifications of all deputies to the 11th NPC at its last session on Thursday, making way for the upcoming election of a new Chinese leadership.

    Among all the 2,987 deputies were Chinese President Hu Jintao, and the other eight members of the current Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, including Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang.

    They were elected respectively from provincial-level areas of Jiangsu, Anhui, Gansu, Beijing, Sichuan, Shanghai, Liaoning, Hunan and Heilongjiang.

    All the deputies will attend the upcoming First Session of the 11th NPC, which is set to open on March 5.

    The deputies were elected from 35 electoral units across China, including all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

10th NPC Standing Committee concludes last session, with law amended, deputies confirmed

Wu Bangguo, chairman of the the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, speaks during the closing meeting of the 32nd session of the 10th NPC Standing Committee in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 28, 2008.(Xinhua Photo)

    BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — The Standing Committee of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature, concluded its 32nd session here on Thursday, with a law amended, newly-elected deputies confirmed and new appointments.

    Wu Bangguo, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

    The top legislature passed an amended water pollution law, getting tough on corporate executives responsible for causing severe pollution by imposing hefty fines on them.   Full story

China legislature confirms validity of new deputies

Photo taken on Feb. 26 , 2008 shows the venue of the 32nd session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing, capital of China. China’s national legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC) has examined and confirmed Tuesday the qualification of 2,987 newly-elected deputies. (Xinhua Photo)

    BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — The Standing Committee of the Tenth National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature, confirmed Thursday the validity of all the 2,987 newly-elected deputies to the First Session of the 11th NPC.

    The qualification of the new deputies was confirmed through a voting at the 32nd session of the tenth NPC Standing Committee.  Full story

    BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) became each other’s fourth-largest trading partners last year, the China-ASEAN Business Council said here on Friday.

    Total bilateral trade surged 25.9 percent year-on-year to 202.5billion U.S. dollars, reaching that level three years ahead of the mutual target.

    Arin Jira, the secretary-general of ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said that they expected further increases and hoped China would lift duties on some export goods, such as semi-processed steel products.

    The current export duties for such goods, including slabs, ranged from 5 percent to 25 percent. Arin said he hoped they could be lifted before 2015.

    Yang Zunqing, secretary-general of the China Iron & Steel Association, said that soaring ore prices and government efforts to reduce steel exports resulted in the declining export volume. He said that China could provide equipment and technology to help ASEAN countries process their own raw materials, such as gas and ore, which were abundant in these countries.

    Arin also called for uniform export quality standards. “I wish we could sit down and talk about specific details soon,” he said.

    ASEAN, which wants to establish a single market and production base, has 10 members, including Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.

Special report:   2008 Olympic Games  

    BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — Kate and Leo did it on the Titanic, so why shouldn’t Chinese? After all, the habit goes back five millenia.

    Because it’s Olympics year, that’s why. And the capital city, which will host the games, is planning its first “No Spitting Day” this year with the goal of eradicating a top etiquette no-no. But the pronouncement by the city’s public health authority on Thursday drew decidedly mixed reactions from local residents.

    ”The latest hygienic drive aims to eradicate the bad habit of spitting and promote a more civilized life style,” said Liu Ying ,a Beijing Municipal Bureau of Health official.

    She noted that spitting was a major cause of the spread of respiratory diseases, especially in spring, echoing a Chinese slogan: “Spitting kills even more than an atomic bomb.”

    Liu said the idea was inspired by the “Queuing Day” and “Seat Offering Day”, two days newly designated by the Beijing Municipal Government each month to promote better manners.

    Details of how the new day would work were still dribbling in. But it quickly drew reaction from netizens. Some called it a “must” before the Olympic Games, while others said it was “needless and unfeasible”.

    ”I think it’s more healthy to spit rather than to swallow,” said a netizen who called himself Mop Paparazzi on the Mop.com.

    Liu, however, said people didn’t understand the purpose of the drive.

    ”We are calling for stopping the rampant spitting on the pavement, not urging everyone not to spit at all,” she explained. “You can wrap your spit with a napkin and throw it into a trash bin,” she added.

    Spitting, littering and barbecuing in the street were identified by Beijing residents as the most intolerable bad manners to be stamped out ahead of the Olympics, according to a government survey of more than 200,000 people in the capital

    The Olympic host has taken a series of measures to curb spitting, such as the distribution of spit sacks and a 50-yuan (7 U.S. dollars) fine for spitters.

    A recent survey by the Beijing-based Renmin University found that in 2007, 2.54 percent of people surveyed in Beijing still spat in public, down by 2.36 percentage points from 2006. Or at least, that was how many admitted doing so. Many Chinese take the practice for granted.

    Some netizens tried to justify the habit by quoting 5,000-year-old proverbs.

    ”We used to say that China is a so large a country that one spit from every Chinese may drown all people in a small country, which shows we have a long tradition of spitting,” said netizen Songbce in the forum of Sina.com, one of China’s largest portal sites. “Even foreigners like spitting,” he said, basing his argument on the scene in ‘Titanic’ where Leonardo DiCaprio taught Kate Winslet how to spit.

    Some people attributed the spitting to Beijing’s bad air quality and others said, half in jest, that it reflected improved living standards: according to traditional Chinese medicine theories, meat leads to sputum.

    ”To eradicate spitting, Beijing should do more to stop smoking in the public places since smokers are always spitters,” said a doctor surnamed Wang in the respiratory department of Beijing Puren Hospital. “The city should do more to ensure a clean Olympic Games,” he said.

Special Report: China’s war on snow havoc 

    By Xinhua writer Rong Jiaojiao

    BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — Liao Wenjiao felt as if it was the end of the world when she saw her 30 mu (two hectares) of red peppers shriveled and withered on the vine as the temperature dropped to 4 degrees in early January. In her village, temperatures below 10 degrees had been rare over the past 30 years– but not this year.

    ”My life was suddenly put in an icehouse as the entire family income depends on the red peppers,” said the native of Hepu County of Beihai City in China’s subtropical Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. “Luckily, a man came to me and gave me emergency guidance and comfort. Otherwise, I would have suffered more loss and could hardly survive the coldest winter ever.”

    The man who brought a ray of hope to Liao was Chen Xingrui, a technical advisor from the local agriculture development center. Together with Liao, the two worked in the field for days to examine the situation. He told her to cover the pepper roots when the temperature rose gradually, as well as how to prepare early for next winter’s frost.

    ”I told her that she was not alone and everything would be all right amid the climate disaster,” said the forty-something Chen. “It was high time for technical staff like myself to come out of the office and minimize the losses with our knowledge and experience.”

    Chen is also part of the specialized Technical Task Force (TTF)working with six neighboring villages around Beihai, one of the pilot sites of a four-year, 7.4 million U.S. dollar joint project between the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

    When Beihai was severely affected by the recent snowstorms that devastated southern China, the TTF team acted immediately in organizing restoration work and self-aid training, as well as providing online consultation to local farmers according to their situation.

    Through the local Information and Communication Technology (ICT) center equipped with computers supporting an online expert database, the TTF team helped local farmers obtain disaster prevention and relief knowledge online in addition to up-to-date market information.

    BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) — China’s arable land stood at 1.83 billion mu (27.45 billion hectares) as of October 31, 2006, a mere26.6 million mu above the 1.8 billion mu critical mark set by the government, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

    The figure was originally reported by the Ministry of Land Resources in 2006 and subsequently confirmed by the NBS.

    More than one-third of the arable land was in the west, while eastern and central China each had about 22 percent of the total. The northwest had only 17.6 percent, according to the NBS agricultural census.

    More than half of the total area was dry land, the census said. Rice paddy and irrigable land comprised about 26 percent and 18.9 percent of the total, respectively.

    Unremitting urbanization and property development have devoured massive amounts of farmland in China, threatening grain supply and agricultural development.

    The government has implemented a slew of measures to guard the remaining land against commercial use.

    The State Council issued a circular last month saying any construction project that needs to occupy farmland or vacant rural land shall have to apply for official approval. Without land use approval, no other authorities shall give go-ahead to the project, it said.

    ”No water, power and gas shall be provided for these projects, and no financial institutions shall be permitted to offer them loans,” it said.

    Urban dwellers are banned from buying residential land or houses from farmers, nor may they buy apartments developed in rural areas by local authorities in violation of the state regulations, it stressed.

    The State Council also quintupled the tax on the use of arable land for non-farming purposes and charged foreign-invested companies as much as their domestic peers in a bid to protect farmland and control land supply.