YIWU COUNTY, Xinjinag, July 31 (Xinhua) — A small county in west China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was overwhelmed on Thursday, as thousands of people from around the world swarmed in for the best view of Friday’s total eclipse of the sun.

    Nearly 30,000 tourists, including more than 2,500 foreigners mainly from Europe, Japan, Australia and America have arrived in Yiwu County. The number of visitors was about the size of Wuyi’s population, said a tourist official in Hami Prefecture.

    The county, with its geographical coordinates at 44.34 degrees north and 93.26 degree east was believed by astronomers to give the best view of the phenomenon which will last from 6:09 p.m. to 8:05 p.m., although the total eclipse will be only two minutes.

    The China National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) confirmed on Wednesday that Hami in Xinjiang and Jiuquan in neighboring Gansu Province would be the best places in China to observe the eclipse.

    However, the small pastoral county of Yiwu, 500 kilometers east of Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, lacks hotels. A three-star tourist hotel is the best boarding place in the county.

    ”Yiwu began preparing for the tourist upsurge from a year ago, when some foreigners began to make hotel reservations for the eclipse, but the number of tourists still went beyond our expectations,” said Zhou Jun, the tourist bureau chief in Hami.

    He said the county had opened an observation square covering 10,000 square meters and a camping area.

    All boarding houses in Yiwu were booked out and the county government has been helping visitors book school dormitories, as schools were on summer vacation, said Cao Zhilin, a tourist official in Yiwu.

    ”Yiwu can provide accommodation for a maximum of 3,000 tourists, and the county government will try to limit the total number of visitors to under 10,000 on Friday,” Cao said.

    He said hundreds of tourists would stay in camps provided by the county government and others would be advised to go to Hami City and other neighboring towns, after the eclipse.

    Tourism in the county is still developing as it promotes its attractions of the pastoral life and a desert oasis.

    Professor Paul Doherty, a senior physicist from the San Francisco State University, said he took a 14-hour ride from Urumqi to Yiwu on Thursday.

    He had observed seven total solar eclipses around the world.

    ”It is my first trip to China. The journey to Yiwu along the old Silk Road was exciting,” said Doherty, who was camping near the observation square.

    He was optimistic that the weather would be favorable on Friday.

    The CAS will broadcast the total solar eclipse live on the Internet, and China Central Television and Xinjiang TV will broadcast it live.

    Friday’s spectacle will be the first solar eclipse to be viewed in China in this century. Canada, the Arctic Ocean and central Russia would also be covered by the eclipse.

    Astronomers observed that China was entering a high incidence period for solar eclipses with the next due in January next year.

Special report: Reconstruction After Earthquake

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — About 100 primary and middle-school children from China’s quake zone will recuperate in Hungary and Bulgaria next month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

    The children, from southwest China, would go to the two nations at the invitation of the two governments from Aug. 4 to 25, Liu Jianchao told a regular press conference.

    Hungary and Bulgaria both had long relations with China and the invitations embodied the friendship of the Hungarian and Bulgarian peoples toward the Chinese people, he said.

    ”We are grateful and appreciative,” Liu said.

    The move would help deepen understanding and friendship, especially between the young people, he said.

Special report: Reconstruction After Earthquake

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) –A total of 12 billion yuan (about 1.76 billion U.S. dollars) will be needed to restore the medical system in the quake-hit zone, according to a health official here on Thursday.

    The money would be spent on the rebuilding, renovation and reinforcement of damaged hospitals and medical institutions, said Zhao Zilin, director of Planning and Finance Department under the Ministry of Health.

    The Ministry had worked out a medical system reconstruction plan with medical authorities in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu, three provinces hit hardest by the May 12 magnitude-8.0 earthquake and forwarded to the State Council for approval, he said.

    The 12 billion yuan budget would also cover the expense of buying new medical facilities and maintenance of broken equipment in 51 counties and cities in the three provinces, he said.

    General hospitals, traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, specialist hospitals and clinics at township and village levels would all benefit from the budget, he noted, adding women and children care units, disease prevention center and hygiene monitoring centers were also on the list of beneficiaries.

    To cope with the need of post-quake construction, the ministry had also planned to send 2 billion yuan worth of facilities to general hospitals at county level, women and children care units at county level and clinics at both village and township levels, the official said.

    Electrocardiographs (ECG), automated external defibrillators (AED), ambulances, biological microscopes and X-ray machines were listed as the newly-added facilities.

Special report: 2008 Olympic Games

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — Two bus rapid transit (BRT) routes began operation here Thursday, one of which linked the city’s downtown area with Olympic venues.

    With the two new routes, the city now has three routes of BRT, a public transport system that carries more passengers, runs faster than ordinary buses and cost less than rail systems.

    The BRT Line 2 links the city’s downtown to the eastern suburb, Tongzhou district, while the Line 3 connects the downtown with the northern suburb, Changping district, and passes the Bird’s Nest, Water Cube and Olympic Media Village.

    And Line 1, linking the downtown with the southern suburb, started operation in December 2005.

    Buses running along the BRT lines are much larger than ordinary buses. Each of them can carry 220 passengers, about 3.9 times more than ordinary ones, according to the Beijing Public Transport Holdings. Ltd. (BPTH)

    It costs the same as ordinary buses, 1 yuan (14 cents) per person and 0.4 yuan if using a bus smart card.

    The new BRT routes will operate from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. There is one bus every one to two minutes in rush hours and every three to four minutes in other hours.

    The bus company expected that the two new routes would handle 50,000 to 60,000 passengers daily each.

    According to the city government, Beijing planned to start six BRT routes to ease mounting traffic congestion between the downtown and suburbs during rush hours when more and more residents moved to live in suburbs.

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — China paid out 372.4 billion yuan (54.52 billion U.S. dollars) in old age pensions in the first half, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) announced on Thursday.

    The figure was up 33.9 percent from the 278.2 billion yuan for the same period last year, said ministry spokesman Yin Chengji.

    More Chinese were benefiting from the country’s social security service and the government’s expansion of its social security coverage, said Yin.

    By June, 210.29 million people were covered by basic urban pension insurance, up from 201.37 million at the same time last year.

    Basic urban health insurance coverage stood at 249.07 million and unemployment coverage at 120.1 million in the first half, up from 223.11 million and 116.45 million respectively.

    Meanwhile, the number of people covered by work injury insurance was 130.25 million, up by 8.52 million, and maternity insurance 84.52 million, a rise of 6.77 million.

    The ministry reported an increase in social security funds in the first half, with the basic pension insurance fund at 440.3 billion yuan, up 30.5 percent, and the basic medical insurance fund up 34.2 percent to 129.6 billion yuan.

    The unemployment insurance fund rose 26 percent to 25.8 billion yuan and the work security insurance fund rose 35.3 percent to 9.7 billion yuan.

    Maternity insurance soared to 5.1 billion yuan, up 44.4 percent.

    ”The ministry will continue strengthening fund collection and supervision,” said Yin.

    BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — Profits of China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. Ltd. (SNPTC) totaled 150 million yuan (21.9 million U.S. dollars) in the first half, 71 percent of the year’s target.

    This was compared with the 2007 profit of 58.78 million yuan –292 percent of its target profit — after it was founded in May last year.

    Total assets hit 6.79 billion yuan by the end of June after one year of sound development, up from a registered capital of 4 billion yuan when it was established, an SNPTC official told Xinhua on Thursday.

    The company was co-funded by the State Council, the cabinet, and four state-owned enterprises — China National Nuclear Corp., China Power Investment Corp., China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp. and China National Technical Import and Export Corp.. It is in charge of using advanced foreign technology and indigenous development.

    The establishment of the company was considered “a strategic step in improving national nuclear power system construction and promoting technology independence”.

    According to the government plan, the country would have an installed nuclear power capacity of 40 million kilowatts by 2020, accounting for 4 percent of the world’s total.

    In 2007, the company turned over 1.1 billion yuan, accounting for 169 percent of its target.