BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China seized 4.12 billion counterfeit brand cigarettes in the first half of 2007, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration announced here Thursday.

    Law enforcement agencies raided 1,557 counterfeit brand cigarette warehouses and arrested 2,995 people in connection with falsely branded cigarettes with 1,160 prosecuted, said administration spokesman Zhang Xiulian.

    Zhang said law enforcement agencies also solved 178 cases, each of which involved more than one million yuan, and seriously dented the sales network of counterfeit brand cigarettes.

    From January to June, China’s tobacco industry registered more than 200 billion yuan in pre-tax profits, up 26 percent on a year earlier, according to ministry figures.

    Zhang was upbeat about China’s tobacco production, saying it would grow steadily in the next consecutive ten years, but made no comment about the health issues related to smoking.

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China has solved 76 commercial bribery cases related to large state-owned enterprises in an intensive inspection campaign, with about 18 million yuan (2.4 million U.S. dollars) involved, according to the country’s state-owned assets watchdog.

    Sixty-six people have been given criminal punishments and 28 administrative penalties, said the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.

    The cases came to light after the commission ordered large state-owned enterprises to carry out self-inspection of commercial bribery between April and December last year.

    Commercial bribery usually refers to bribes offered by companies to government officials or state-owned enterprises in exchange for special favors.

    The campaign mainly targeted property right transfer, construction projects and material and equipment procurement, the commission said.

    Property right transfer has been a major target in the fight against commercial bribery among state-owned enterprises in China.

    ”The self-inspection campaign reviewed all the 1,198 property transfers from the beginning of 2005 till the end of last year,” said an official with the commission.

    Last year, the commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued a notice to further regulate the approval of state-owned property right transfer and bottom prices.

    In addition, regional state-owned assets watchdogs have sanctioned 65 property right trading centers in a bid to regulate property right transactions.

    A monitoring system linking these trading centers with state-owned assets watchdogs in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin has been established to enable the watchdogs monitor all the transactions and unified release of property right transfer information in the future.

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — More than 1,500 acupuncturists from nearly 30 countries and regions will gather in Beijing this October, to discuss the future of traditional Chinese medicine.

    From Oct. 20 to 22, the acupuncturists will attend an academic forum for the 20th anniversary of the World Association of Acupuncture. The forum, with the theme of “acupuncture: looking back and looking forward”, will have eight sub-forums on topics like education, the evolution of acupuncture and needle therapy practice and assessment.

    An exhibition of new methods and technologies in the field willalso be held.

    Deng Liangyue, chairman of the World Association of Acupuncture, said the association had successfully held six forums on acupuncture in China, Japan, the United States, France and the Republic of Korea over the past 20 years. With efforts from acupuncturists worldwide, needle therapy has spread to the four corners of the earth.

    So far, more than 140 countries and regions have adopted acupuncture treatment. Traditional Chinese medicine represented by needle therapy is accepted and welcomed by mainstream society in many countries.

    Statistics from the World Association of Acupuncture show there are about 100,000 people engaged in acupuncture services in Japan.29 percent of Tokyo’s residents have received acupuncture treatment at least once. More than five million European patients choose needle therapy every year.

    Acupuncture, one of the oldest traditional Chinese therapies, can not only help people give up smoking, but also cure sterility and even drug addiction. For poor people, it is a low-cost and easily accessible medical resource.

¡¤China’s central government allocated another 95 million yuan to fund disaster relief work.
¡¤The people in flood-stricken areas have been properly relocated.
¡¤The government sent working teams to flood-hit areas to guide disaster relief work.

A local boy carries a bag of wheat flour delivered by rescue workers at the Houhu Village of Fengtai County in east China’s Anhui Province, July 12, 2007. (Xinhua Photo/Wang Lei)

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China’s central government allocated another 95 million yuan (12.5 million U.S. dollars) on Thursday to fund disaster relief work in flood-hit Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Sichuan and Shanxi provinces, a spokesman of the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

    The government set aside 232 million yuan on Wednesday for these areas.

    The people in flood-stricken areas have been properly relocated, according to the spokesman.

    The central government also sent several working teams to flood-stricken areas to guide disaster relief work. One of the working teams, headed by civil affairs minister Li Xueju, arrived in Anhui on Wednesday.

    Torrential rain began lashing the Huaihe River valley, the eastern area of Sichuan Province and the southern area of Shaanxi Province on June 28.

    More than 66.3 million Chinese have been affected by floods this summer, with 360 people killed and direct economic losses of 24.3 billion yuan, according to latest figures from the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.

China allocates relief fund to flood-hit provinces

    BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhua) — China’s central government set aside 232 million yuan (about 31.35 million U.S. dollars) on Wednesday to finance the ongoing battle against floods in Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Hubei and Sichuan provinces.

    Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao urged local governments to try to improve weather monitoring, give priority to safety and properly relocate people in flood-hit areas.  Full story

Floods cause more deaths, economic losses in China

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — A total of 403 Chinese have died, 105 are missing and 3.17 million people have been relocated as the rainy season coupled with ferocious flood waters continues to batter central and southern China.

    Millions of people strung across 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have been lashed by torrential rains and floods.  Full story

Sluices on Huaihe River closed to prepare for bigger floods

    WANGJIABA, Anhui, July 12 (Xinhua) — Authorities on China’s Huaihe River closed one of the major flood diversion channels on Thursday in anticipation of further flood peaks to come.

    Thirteen sluices at Wangjiaba, a key hydrological station, were closed almost two days after they were opened in a move to reserve capacity in flood zones, said an official from the Huaihe River Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. Full story

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China Southern Airlines, the country’s biggest airline, opened direct flights from Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong Province, to Siem Reap in Cambodia on Thursday.

    The company also runs direct flights from Guangzhou to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

    Earlier in July, China Southern set up three new routes linking Guangzhou with Myanmar’s capital Yangon, Phuket in Thailand and Laos’ capital city Vientiane.

    The airline intends to open direct flights from Guangzhou to Delhi in September.

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) grew 12 percent to 31.9 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of the year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Thursday.

    A total of 18,683 foreign-funded ventures were approved by the ministry from January to June, down 5.4 percent year-on-year.

    China used 6.63 billion U.S. dollars of FDI in June, a year-on-year increase of 22 percent, compared with 8.6 percent in May and 5.5 percent in April.

    ”The country is still a popular destination for overseas capital,” said ministry spokesman Yao Shenhong.

    Manufacturing, real estate and commercial service sectors all attract FDI. Analysts predicted FDI would exceed 60 billion U.S. dollars in 2007.

    The top ten sources of investment to the Chinese mainland are Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United States, Cayman Islands, Samoa, Taiwan and Mauritius. They accounted for 86 percent of the total FDI.

    China used 63 billion U.S. dollars in FDI last year, up five percent from 2005’s 60.3 billion U.S. dollars, according to MOC figures.