(Source: Xinhua)BEIJING, Nov. 11 - Chinese police have closed an allegedly illegal newspaper and arrested two of its staff after the paper reported an alleged miscarriage of justice.

The Social News was not licensed for distribution on the Chinese mainland by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and provided false information about its registration in Hong Kong, said a statement from the GAPP on Sunday.

The People’s Court Daily had earlier reported that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Government neither registered the newspaper nor recorded any tax payments from the company.

Investigators also found the address of the newspaper’s Hong Kong office belonged to another unrelated company, said the statement.

Its real office was located in a rent apartment at Chaoyang District,east Beijing.

Police arrested Gao Yang, president and chief correspondent of the newspaper, who held no legal certificate from the GAPP, which registers journalists and issues press cards, it said.

Gao, born in 1968 in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, finished three years in secondary school and went to Beijing to seek work in 2004, said the statement.

He Guiying, the financial controller of the newspaper and “mistress” of Gao, was also arrested, said the statement.

Gao was likely to be charged with fraud, publishing and distributing illegal publications and organizing an unauthorized public gathering, the police said, adding the case was still under investigation.

The Social News had been published for two years when it started to report a case of an alleged “unfair” judgement at the municipal court of Yingkou City in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province in June.

“We became suspicious of the newspaper because its stories on the case were baseless,” Du Linkui, chief judge of the court, was quoted by the People’s Court Daily as saying. The Yingkou court reported the newspaper to the GAPP.

The GAPP statement gave no further details on the case.

The local police said that Gao took a large sum of money from one party of the case in return for publishing stories and organized an illegal gathering outside the court.

The GAPP is to extend a nationwide campaign against false news reports, unauthorized publications and bogus journalists, which started in August, till March next year.

It asked its branches to be aware of serious problems in the publishing market. “Some illegal publishers change the names and place of distribution to avoid inspection; some publications, claiming to be registered abroad, are sold here without legal qualification and some even fake foreign identity; some legal publishers do not manage their publications and even sell the licenses to unqualified individuals or organizations,” the notice said.

(Source: Xinhua)Nov. 9 - Two Chinese media firms have signed an agreement with the Chinese Confucius Foundation to make a cartoon series on the ancient philosopher’s life and teachings.

Shandong Radio and Television General Station, based in the eastern Shandong Province, and Shenzhen Phoenix Star, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed Phoenix Satellite TV, will jointly produce the cartoon on the philosopher’s life and lectures.

“The cartoon aims to make Confucius and his philosophy well known and better understood in a form with popular appeal,” said a spokesman of the Chinese Confucius Foundation.

Confucius, born in 551 B.C., founded Confucianism, a philosophy featuring harmony and peace.

The screenplay, characters’ images three-dimensional backgrounds were expected to be finalized by September next year and the series should be aired in 2009, the 2,560th anniversary of Confucius’ birth, the spokesman said.

At a cost of 40 million yuan (5.3 million U.S. dollars), the series is planned to comprise 100 episodes, each lasting 13 minutes.

(Source: Xinhua)Nov. 8 - Government jobs are still considered plum posts for university graduates and other jobseekers, if the latest official figures are anything to go by.

According to figures published on the Ministry of Personnel’s website Wednesday, regarding the 2008 national civil servant recruitment examination, an average of 60 people applied for each advertised post.

More than 3,500 applied for the most popular position: A job with the Ministry of Agriculture. The deadline for the receipt of applications passed at the weekend.

Although the ministry did not provide a figure for the total number of applications received, a statement on the website said: “More than 800,000 applicants passed the first evaluation and will attend a nationwide examination on December 9.”

Last year, more than 530,000 people applied for 12,700 jobs, an average of 42 per position.

The fiercest competition this year is for jobs with the Communist Party of China’s central bodies, with 162 people competing for each post.

Positions at weather bureaux are the least popular. Forty-nine advertised posts with local weather bureaux in Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Yunnan, among others, failed to attract a single application.

The civil service has become one of the most popular options because it is thought to offer a stable income, social status and good welfare benefits.

The written examination includes two sessions: The administrative aptitude test in the morning and the essay test in the afternoon, before a more competitive interview at the beginning of next year.

(Source: Xinhua)
A U.S.-born panda has been greeted by crowds of well-wishers on its arrival in southwest China on Wednesday.CHENGDU, Nov. 8 - A U.S.-born panda has been greeted by crowds of well-wishers on its arrival in southwest China on Wednesday.

People carrying apples and fresh bamboo shoots turned out at the Wolong Giant Panda Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province to welcome Mei Sheng, who left San Diego Zoo on Monday, to his new home.

A brief medical check for the four-year-old, weighing 85 kg, showed he was in good condition, said Li Desheng, deputy head of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center based in Wolong.

“But he still needs to be quarantined for one or two months, then he can officially enjoy life in his new home,” he said.

The panda had been scheduled to leave the United States at the end of last month, but the departure was postponed due to a flight adjustment, said Li.

Experts from both the San Diego Zoo and the Chinese research center have escorted the panda on his journey.

Mei Sheng, which means “born in America” or “beautiful life” in Chinese, was born on Aug. 19, 2003 at the San Diego Zoo in southern California. His parents were Bai Yun and Gao Gao, a couple lent to the zoo by China under a giant panda conservation and research program.

According to the cooperation agreement, cubs born overseas to pandas on loan belong to China and must be sent to China after they become sexually mature.

The first overseas-born panda, Hua Mei, Mei Sheng’s sister, came back to China from the United States in 2004 when she was five years old. Hua Mei gave birth to a twins in autumn that year.

Hua Mei was artificially conceived while Mei Sheng was the first overseas-born panda conceived through natural mating.

“Mei Sheng is sexually mature, and his first job in China is to adapt to the environment here and look for a mate,” said Zhang Hemin, head of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center.

“If he can come into heat smoothly in spring, he can join the reproduction program,” he said.

China sent 24 giant pandas to nine countries as gifts from 1957 to 1982 and five of their offspring are still alive.

The government stopped the program in 1985 and launched long-term cooperation on giant panda breeding with Japan, the United States and Spain in 1994, since when, 25 pandas have been leased.

Giant pandas are one of the most endangered species in the world. Just 1,590 giant pandas are estimated to live in the wild, most of them in southwest China’s mountainous regions.

By the end of 2006, about 210 giant pandas lived in captivity in China.

Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 7 ¨C For most young female white collars in China, France meant perfumes and fashions. Now, however, it is more than that: France has become the favorite choice of Chinese female white collars when they consider studying abroad.

Last year, about 600,000 Chinese people went to France, most of them being students and their relatives, said an official at the French Tourism Bureau.

Recently, the Women’s Foreign Language Publications of China and the Huakun Women’s Life Survey Center jointly carried out a survey to see how female white collars see Europe. The survey covered 100 female white collars in Beijing. It finds that apart from sightseeing purpose, 18.8% of the women choose France for study, while Britain, a country that has rich educational resources and lots of famed universities, actually falls behind France.

A reporter from the Beijing Morning Post then interviewed five young women. All of them said they were attracted most by the artistic and romantic atmosphere in France. Under this artistic environment, they won’t meet much pressure in their study.

From the information submitted by the French Ambassy, it can be seen that last year, the number of overseas Chinese students in France had risen from the annual several hundred to several thousand a year now. Last year, there were about 8,000 Chinese people who went to France to study and the number was still climbing this year, said Ms. Yin, who works in a company that deals with international education exchanges.

In addition to the artistic atmosphere in France, many Chinese students like to go to France for study because tuition fees there are rather cheap. France makes the world’s famous perfume brands and cosmetic products. In France, the arts and designing courses offered by its colleges are quite good. Its management course on cosmetics and luxury goods also enjoys world fame. Since the management courses provided by French colleges are mostly related to liberal arts, they are therefore more suitable for women.

Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 7 ¨C In recent years, a trend has occurred in the Chinese political circle ¨C officials resorting to every means to get a diploma to improve their educational background. Some officials might work hard to achieve this goal. Some, however, abuse their power to seek personal gains. These unscrupulous officials use public money to bribe college teachers into granting them the diplomas they want. The Liao Wang Weekly recently carried an article to discuss this phenomenon.

In order to create a contingent of cadres who are younger, better educated and professionally more competent, since the 1990s the central government has raised higher requirements for Chinese officials’ educational background. It has even set some detailed rules in this aspect.

Some officials do not have a diploma as required by the government. In order to keep their current post or even get further promotion in their political career, they try to use some dishonest means to get a diploma. Sometimes they abuse their power and public money to bribe college teachers.

¡°In fact, some officials have tried by hook or by crook to get a diploma,¡± a teacher in charge of teaching affairs in a Beijing college told this reporter. ¡°In most cases, such officials will be present only during the registration process, or when they need to take exams or attend the graduation ceremony. Apart from these occasions, they seldom go to class, they even send their secretaries to attend the class. Sometimes, the classroom might be full of their secretaries, rather than the officials themselves.¡±

¡°In order to get a diploma easily, some officials send their secretaries to sign in the class for them on usual days and they will abuse their power and public money to bribe the college teachers to get the diploma they want. This has already become a ¡®secret¡¯ that everybody knows in society,¡± said Li Chengyan, a professor at the School of Government at Peking University.

Hu Changqing, former deputy governor of Jiangxi Province who had received capital punishment several years ago, was a case in point. The corrupt official once asked one of his friends to use money to get a Peking University’s bachelor of law degree. With this diploma, Hu boasted that he graduated from Peking University. He even called himself a professor of law.

Another case was Ma Xiangdong, former vice mayor of Shenyang city who had also received capital punishment several years ago. During his term of office, he also got a master’s degree. However, people around him all knew that when he studied in the Central Party School of the of CPC, all the theses he presented to the school were actually written by his secretaries.