BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — Hua Guofeng, a former leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was cremated at Beijing’s Babaoshan cemetery on Sunday.

    President and Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, sent their condolences on his passing.

Chinese President and Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao (R) condoles with family members of deceased former CPC leader Hua Guofeng during a farewell ceremony held at the Babaoshan cemetary in Beijing, China, Aug. 31, 2008. The remains of Hua Guofeng was cremated at the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing on Sunday. Hu Jintao, Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin and other members of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau showed their condolences at the ceremony.(Xinhua Photo)

    In addition to Hu, the other members of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, also sent condolences.

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin (R) condoles with family members of deceased former CPC leader Hua Guofeng during a farewell ceremony held at the Babaoshan cemetary in Beijing, China, Aug. 31, 2008. The remains of Hua Guofeng was cremated at the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing on Sunday. Chinese President and CPC Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao, Hu’s predecessor Jiang Zemin and other members of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau showed their condolences at the ceremony. .(Xinhua Photo)

    Hua was called in the official obituary “an outstanding CPC member, a long-tested and loyal Communist fighter and a proletarian revolutionary who once held important leading posts in the CPC and the government.”

    Hua died of illness at 12:50 p.m. on Aug. 20 in Beijing at 87.

    Born in 1921 to a tannery worker’s family in Jiaocheng County of northern Shanxi Province, he was originally given the name Shu Zhu. He later changed it to Hua Guofeng after joining the war against Japanese aggression in 1938. The same year, he joined the CPC.

    After being sent back by the Party to his hometown, Hua led the local resistance movement against the Japanese and later the Kuomintang army. In 1949, he moved to central Hunan Province with the People’s Liberation Army and worked as a local official until 1971.

    During his stay in Hunan, Hua performed well in improving local agriculture and rural development. Then Chinese leader Mao Zedong had said he was “an honest man that did not lie.”

    Hua was promoted to the State Council in 1971 and was elected as a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau in 1973, when he was assigned to take charge of agriculture development under the leadership of then Premier Zhou Enlai. Two years later he was appointed vice premier and minister of public security.

    Following Zhou’s death on Jan. 8, 1976, Hua took his place to lead the Cabinet. He had also effectively handled the rescue and relief work in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that leveled Tangshan City in the northern Hebei Province on July 28 the same year.

    On Sept. 9, Mao passed away. In the following months, Hua played a critical role in crushing the “Gang of Four,” a political group that had put the country in chaos during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Its core members, including Mao’s widow Jiang Qing, were arrested and jailed.

    During his four years as the chairman of the CPC Central Committee and Central Military Commission, Hua worked with other senior Party leaders to restore the country’s political and economic life and started correcting cases of officials who were wronged during the Cultural Revolution.

    He resigned from his posts in June 1981 and stayed as the CPC Central Committee vice chairman and a member of the Standing Committee of CPC Central Committee Political Bureau until September 1982.

    Hua was a member of the ninth to 15th CPC Central Committees and a member of the Standing Committees of the 10th and 11th CPC Central Committee Political Bureaus. He was also a special delegate to both the CPC 16th and 17th National Congress.

    ”In his 70 years working for the revolution, Hua had been loyal to Communism, loved the Party and people, always put the Party’s cause first and devoted his whole life to independence and liberation of the Chinese people as well as construction of socialism,” said an official statement.

    ”He never bothered what he personally got or lost … always putting the interests of the Party and people first.” 

    BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — Continuing investment was a major problem in the nation’s telecom sector as much waste had been caused by under-utilized cables and other infrastructure, China Times reported on Saturday.

    The Beijing-based newspaper cited auditor-general Liu Jiayi reporting on Wednesday to the fourth session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature.

    He said the telecom sector had experienced huge growth in both network scale and capacity since the industry’s reform and restructuring that started in 2002; repeated investment had dragged down performance.

    According to the National Audit Office (NAO), more than 1.12 trillion yuan (about 164 billion U.S. dollars) was spent on the construction of basic facilities between 2002 and 2006. However, only one-third of the telecom cables were used.

    In addition, more money was required to maintain all the cables, whether it was those being used at present or those getting laid.

    Amid increasing mobile users and dropping fixed-line subscribers, China Telecom and China Netcom, the country’s main fixed-line service providers, spent a total of 50.8 billion yuan in expanding the fixed-line network in the same period, according to the NAO.

    ”The wasted investment in telecommunications could have built several Three Gorges Dams,” said Yang Xianzu, the former chairman of the board of China Unicom, the country’s distant number two mobile service provider to China Mobile.

    The country is in the process of an industry-wide restructuring in which China Telecom, China Mobile and New Unicom (a proposed merger between China Unicom and China Netcom) would compete against each other, each with fixed line and mobile services.

    But some experts warned repeated investment was not less likely to happen as statistics showed the restructured China Mobile and China Telecom would each spend between 50 billion yuan to 60 billion yuan in infrastructure building in the next three years.

    In answer to such a problem, some experts suggested the country should separate the network and infrastructure building and as sign it to an independent organization, while telecom services would be open for competition.

    BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — A delegation of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China left Beijing on Sunday for a goodwill visit to Switzerland and Denmark from Aug. 31 to Sept. 12.

    The delegation, headed by Wang Zhaoguo, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, China’s top legislature, is visiting at the invitation of the parliaments of the two countries.

    The delegation, at the invitation of the Russian Federation Council, the upper house of the parliament, will also attend the fifth Baikal Economic Forum (BEF), which will be held in Russia from Sept. 8-11.

    ISLAMABAD, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — Two Chinese engineers had been missing since Friday in northwestern Pakistan and search and rescue work was under way, an official from the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad said on Sunday.

    The two Chinese engineers from Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Company (ZTE) in Pakistan were found missing on Friday when they went to check the company’s equipment in Lower Dir district of North West Frontier Province.

    The ZTE has lost contact with the engineers since Friday and there is no clue about their whereabouts. A Pakistani driver and a Pakistani security guard, who were traveling with the two engineers, were also missing, said the official.

Photo taken on Aug. 26, 2008 shows a spectacular view of downtown Shanghai and the Huangpu River from the Shanghai World Financial Center in Shanghai, east China. The 101-storey, 492-meter-tall building will be opened to the public on Aug. 30. (Xinhua Photo)
Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — A total of 4, 000 visitors, natives and foreigners, flocked to the Shanghai World Financial Center on its first opening day to have a sightseeing on Saturday, the Oriental Morning Post reported.

    The Thursday-inaugurated Center stands aloof at 492 meters in the city’s Pudong District, and is so far the biggest skyscraper in Chinese mainland and the third-tallest in the world after Burj Dubai and Taipei 101.

    Chen Yin, a 46-year-old local man, said he was the first one to arrive at the Center at 6 in the morning, though the open time started at 2 p.m.

    This middle-aged man said he had heard of the opening news and was fully prepared.

    As a local, Chen had many firsts in his life in Shanghai. He was the first to visit the city-iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower Revolving Restaurant, the first passenger of the city’s No.1 Subway Line, and the first to visit the Shanghai Museum after it was open free to the public.

    Around 800 people were already waiting in the hugely long queue at around 2 p.m when the museum was open, but only 88 people were allowed in once at a time.

    The people were taken by elevators to the observatory at a daunting height of around 500 meters in the air.

    The building had 101 floors above ground and three floors underground. The 94th to 100th floors were an observatory for sightseeing, according to its builder, the Shanghai Construction Group.

    According to the Post report, the first 2, 008 visitors were given badge souvenirs.

Photo taken on Aug. 26, 2008 shows a view of the Shanghai World Financial Center in Shanghai, east China. The 101-storey, 492-meter-tall building will be opened to the public on Aug. 30. (Xinhua Photo)

    BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) — Wu Jing Lian, a Chinese economist and senior researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council(DRC) told in an interview with China News Agency that some reports of him working as U.S. spy was pure rumor.

    DRC, which Wu is working for, on Friday had also publicly issued a notice on its website www.drc.gov.cn, saying reports of Wu’s espionage was not justified and that Wu’s life and work was normal, in response to some people’s care and concerns for him.

    Previously, some overseas media had reported Wu was arrested on suspicious spying work, reported the China News Agency on Friday.

    Wu had returned to his Beijing apartment from a meeting in northern city Tianjin on Aug. 29, and said he was shocked at such windy rumors, the agency reported.

    As a well-known economist and academic heavyweight in the eyes of the media, Wu was as much recognized as he was talked about for his often bold and sharp argumentations.

    The 78-year-old economist had been visiting scholars in prestigious universities such as Yale, Standford and MIT in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.