BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — China will speed up the enhancement of its power grid to better prepare against the looming winter, as the specter of devastating snowstorms the country experienced earlier this year still lingers, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said Tuesday.

    Zhang Guobao, vice director of the NDRC, the country’s top economic planner, said faced with increasing natural disasters, such as the severe snowstorms and earthquakes, greater challenges were imposed on the safety and stability of the power system.

    He added various regions must improve power planning and optimize grid structures to improve their ability against disasters, the sooner the better.

    Starting 2009, the anti-disaster ability would be one integral part of grid planning. Reports on new power facility building projects must be made, and with it, necessary protective measures,he said.

    China’s power output hit 2.5909 trillion kwh in the first three quarters, up 11.74 percent year on year, according to the Fuel Association of China Electricity Council.

    But Zhang said despite the quick growth, rescue equipment and operations of the power network were not satisfying enough in event of major natural disasters. The emergency response mechanism was lagging, and the quality of power projects was poor.

    The early winter storms starting in mid January affected the central, south and southwest regions over several weeks, resulting in 151.6 billion yuan (22.19 billion U.S. dollars) of losses.

    During the month long weather chaos that ended in mid February, 36,740 power lines and 2,018 transformer substations broke down.

    The May 12 earthquake also cut power from 110 cities and counties across the nation.

    CHENGDU, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — The death toll from a coal mine gas leak in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has risen to four after rescuers retrieved another body on Tuesday.

    Six other miners were still missing after a coal and gas outburst at the Xingfu Coal Mine in Hongqiao Township, Yibin City,on Sunday afternoon, said a Sichuan Provincial Work Safety Administration spokesman.

    Altogether, 21 miners were underground when the accident happened and 11 escaped, he said.

    ”Rescuers are searching the tunnel for the other missing miners.”

    About 200 tonnes of coal and 5,000 cubic meters of gas erupted in the accident about 12:50 p.m.

    Local authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.

    Elsewhere, a coal and gas eruption in a mine in the central Henan Province on Monday night killed nine people. All the bodies have been retrieved as of Tuesday.

Visitors at the Red Flag Canal in Linzhou. The canal, still in operation, has also become a tourist attraction.(Source: China Daily)

    Once a village of open farmland in Linxian county, Henan province, it has, like many parts of rural China, been transformed in the past three decades into a modern suburb with factories and multi-story housing. Only a few acres of wheat and vegetables at the entrance to the village sit as a reminder of the village’s past.

    Nancy Jervis has been tracking these momentous changes in Linxian county for more than three decades. A New York anthropologist and one of the first American academics to study social and rural life in China, Jervis first visited the village in 1972, and has been coming back since.

    According to Jervis, the relative prosperity of the village today is a result of two things - the accumulation of private wealth brought by the temporary migration of villagers to the cities and the village leadership’s ability to adapt to change.

    Village doctor Shi Cunji, 64, was one of the earliest migrant workers in Central China. In 1980, he left Dacaiyuan and went to the neighboring city of Hanzhong to work in construction.

    ”We were too poor. I earned only a few work points at the clinic,” Shi recalled. In communal days the daily labor of peasants was calculated by work points which became the basis for their cash income at the end of the year, after their ration of grain was deducted.

    The richest villages might be able to pay more than 1 yuan for each work point, while poor villages could only pay 10 fen (1.4 cents). Often the work points a peasant earned was not enough to pay for grain rations.

    ”My family of eight people had only one mu (667 sq m) of land and raised one pig. We earned about 100 yuan ($14.2) a year. There were no other options.”

    Shi worked in Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, the first year, mailing home about 1,000 yuan (143 U.S.dollars).

    The majority of his fellow Dacaiyuan villagers also became migrant workers, building skyscrapers or working in assembly lines at factories. There are about 200 million migrant workers in the cities nationwide today.

    ”The massive migration was possible because of the reform policies after 1978, especially the household responsibility system that took the place of the people’s communes and also the relaxation of the hukou or residency system - both freed farmers from their lands,” Jervis explained.

    Under the household responsibility system, the farming of publicly owned land was entrusted to individual households through long-term contracts.

    Chinese farmers who believed that the harder they worked, the more income they could earn welcomed The introduction of this system in 1978 enthusiastically.

    In the past, the same job earned the same number of work points regardless of how hard they worked.

    Jervis recalled the striking contrast between now and when she first came to the village during her visit in 1972.

    ”There was no tap water. Electricity only ran for an hour a day. People put a portrait of Chairman Mao in the living room,” she said. Today the village is a picture of modern development, with a television and a new refrigerator in living rooms.

    Nationwide, 44.9 percent of the population had been urbanized by 2007; an increase of 30 percent over 1978, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

    HOHHOT, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — A drunk driver in northern China plowed his truck into a crowd trying to rescue an injured motorcyclist, local traffic police said on Tuesday.

    Four people were killed and 13 injured, one critically, in the Hongmiaozi Township in the Chifeng City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

    The accident happened on a downtown street around 8:00 p.m. on Monday.

    Twenty-year-old motorcyclist, Li Xinchun, sustained minor injuries after colliding with a car. While people were helping him in to an ambulance, Li Aimin drove his truck into the crowd.

    Four people, including Li Xinchun, were killed.

    An emergency doctor was among the 13 wounded, police said.

    The drunken driver, Li Aimin, fled the accident scene Monday night but was seized Tuesday afternoon and put into police detention.

    Further investigation is underway.

    ZHENGZHOU, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — The death toll from a coal mine accident in central China’s Henan Province rises to nine after rescuers find another two bodies Tuesday.

    Gas leaked at the No. 6 mine shaft, owned by the state-owned Hebi Coal Industry (Group) Corp. Ltd., in Hebi City Monday night.

    Forty-four miners were working underground when the gas leaked. Thirty-three managed to escape, 11 others were trapped.

    Rescuers found seven bodies early Tuesday and also pulled out two miners who were alive.

    Later in the day, two more bodies were found ending the search.

    Local work safety authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.

    The Hebi Coal Industry (Group) Corp. Ltd. reports an annual coal output capacity of 7 million tons. Its No. 6 mine shaft can produce 1.2 million tons of coal each year.

    BEIJING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — More than 66.74 million Chinese migrant workers, people who come from rural areas and land jobs in cities, became trade union members, said the All-China Federation of Trade Unions on Tuesday.

    The federation estimated there are 210 million migrant workers nationwide with the country’s rural population of 900 million.

    The total number of trade union members increased from 123 million in 2003 to 209 million by the end of June this year, said the federation.

    This means China has the highest number of trade union members in the world. As membership rises, so does the protection of legitimate rights for unionists, said the federation.

    The majority of the mainland’s multinational companies on the Fortune 500 list are unionized. Some 3,768 of their corporate entities, or 82 percent of the total, had established trade unions by the end of September.

    The federation is set to hold its 15th national congress meeting from Oct. 17 to 21 in Beijing.

    A total of 1,800 deputies and 289 special deputies from 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, as well as 29 guests from Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, will participate.