SHIJIAZHUANG, July 12 (Xinhua) — Chinese police have captured an official accused of taking bribes to allow unqualified people to attend the national college entrance exam this year.

    Police caught suspect Xu Yunfeng, former director of the recruitment office of Dangshan County Educational Bureau, Anhui Province, in a residential area of this capital city of Hebei Province on Monday, after a manhunt lasting 20 days.

    Xu allegedly confessed to police on June 8 that he took bribes worth 24,000 yuan (3,157 U.S. dollars) from teachers and gave 747 unqualified people certificates to attend the national exam on June 7 and 8.

    Xu disappeared when investigators decided to transfer him to judicial authorities for prosecution on June 20.

    The case was discovered when police were investigating an exam scam relating to the national college entrance — university students were organized to sit the exam and then sell their test results to people who had failed, changing candidate identities along the way.

    Police in Dangshan have arrested four people, who were found to have offered 41 college students in Hefei, capital of Anhui, 1,000yuan each to take the exam.

    But most of the college students failed to attend the exam as they had heard that police were alerted to the scam.

    Zhang Hongxue, principal of Chengzhuang Middle School, was removed from his post and expelled from the Communist Party of China because of the scam.

    Xu was sacked and stripped of Party membership on June 23.

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — China’s legal experts and the public consider the execution of former drug chief Zheng Xiaoyu to be fully deserved given his shocking dereliction of duty, but many are also warning that China needs to be cautious in handing out death penalties.

    Cui Min, a professor at the Chinese People’s University of Public Security, said the consequences of Zheng’s dereliction of duty were extremely serious, and the court’s ruling had sound legal justification.

    Zheng, 63, former director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, was executed on Tuesday morning for taking 6.49 million yuan (850,000 U.S. dollars) in bribes and dereliction of duty.

    Whether Zheng’s death sentence was too harsh is being heatedly debated.

    ”Given that bribery alone is punishable by death under Chinese law, Zheng deserved the death sentence,” said Cui.

    Moreover, Zheng’s actions put health and life in danger, and shook trust in the government’s competence.

    Six types of medicine approved by the administration during his tenure were fake, one of which — an antibiotic injection — caused the deaths of at least six people and severe reactions in more than 80 others.

    ”There’s no need to waste bullets on him. Just feed him the fake medicines he approved. That’ll kill him,” said one angry net surfer on sohu.com.

    On the other hand, Chinese criminal law takes a much more hard-nosed attitude to capital punishment than other countries. Over 100 countries have abolished the death penalty. Those that have retained the penalty only have 3 to 5, or at most 7 to 8 crimes that are punishable by death. In China, however, 68 crimes can lead to capital punishment, Cui said.

    ”The international trend is to limit death sentences. China should apply the death penalty less extensively,” Cui said.

    The death sentence for corrupt officials gives rise to difficulties in international cooperation in the fight against crime. Many corrupt officials manage to escape capital punishment by absconding abroad. The countries where they reside often refuse to extradite criminals to China for fear they may be executed.

    ”As a result, only those unable to go abroad are executed, whereas major criminals who escape overseas can evade the just punishment. Justice is not served over such circumstances,” Cui said.

    Furthermore, while it is understandable that angry citizens demand the death penalty for corrupt officials, executing malfeasants needs to be carefully considered, Cui said.

    ”In dealing with matters of life or death, it is the law, not people’s outrage that justifies the death sentence,” Cui said, adding that China should seriously consider reforming the death penalty.

    The anti-corruption battle is complex, requiring sustained and systematic efforts. Killing a bunch of offenders is not the solution, said Cui.

    Cui said China should consider joining the growing world trend toward the abolition of death penalty.

    China should first amend its criminal law and reduce the number of capital crimes from 68 to 8. The court should be extremely cautious in handing out death sentences. Should there be any doubts about whether death is the appropriate penalty, the execution should always be dropped, suggested Cui.

    ”Currently, most Chinese people are unwilling to accept the abolition of the death penalty. But as the country moves forward and becomes more open, people will eventually change their minds,” said Cui.

    In fact, China began reforming laws relating to capital punishment at the beginning of the year.

    On Jan. 1, 2007, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) recovered the right to review all death penalty decisions made by lower courts, ending its 24-year absence in approving China’s execution verdicts.

    The immediate result was a drop of 10 percent in the number of death sentences in the first five months of 2007 compared with the same period last year.

    In June, China further pledged to make its death penalty system more transparent, demanding that more trials that could result in a death sentence be held in public. China’s courts started recruiting more staff for death penalty reviews.

    The Supreme People’s Court is determined to ensure a balanced and standardized approach to the death penalty across the country.

    URUMQI, July 12 (Xinhua) — Researchers in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region said glaciers in the region are shrinking at alarming speeds and called for artificial measures to protect them.

    Wang Feiteng, an assistant researcher with the Tianshan Mountain glacier monitoring station under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the No.1 glacier at Tianshan has lost 20 million cubic meters of ice in the last four decades, and the east and west sections of the glacier are receding by 3.5 meters and 5.9 meters respectively every year.

    The glacier, situated 3,545 meters above sea level in the Tianshan Mountains, the largest glacier area in Xinjiang, separated into two parts in 1993 as the warmer climate melted some of the ice.

    ”Like the hard drive of a computer, glaciers record how the environment has changed. Warm weather has been the major cause of the glacier’s retreat,” Wang said.

    China is home to about 46,000 glaciers, totaling 60,000 square kilometers and mostly distributed in Tibet and Xinjiang. Xinjiang is home to 42 percent of the total glacial areas in the country.

    Aerial surveys show the total glacier acreage in Xinjiang has shrunk by 20 percent and snow lines have receded about 60 meters since 1964. CAS statistics show the internal temperature of the glaciers has risen by 10 percent in the last two decades.

    ”Glaciers are sometimes called ’solid reservoirs’. They are one of the major water resources in an arid region like Xinjiang,” said Hu Wenkang, a researcher with the CAS.

    ”But melting glaciers may cause floods and landslides in some areas, and fail to provide water for rivers,” Hu said, adding thatprompt measures, like creating artificial rain, are needed to protect the glaciers.

    Previous reports say global warming is taking a toll on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in southwest China, and experts say the symptoms include shrinking glaciers, frozen earth melting, grasslands turning yellow and rivers drying up.

    On June 4, China issued its first national plan to address climate change. The plan said the country hopes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 50 million tons by 2010 through the development of hydropower projects. Another 110 million tons of greenhouse gas will be cut by eliminating small thermal power projects.

    Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday again urged local governments to save energy, ordering them to give higher priority to the environment and climate change-related work.

    CHANGSHA, July 12 (Xinhua) — 3,009 people carried out a 3-minute rope skipping exercise on Thursday morning in Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province, making a new Guinness record for rope skipping involving the most people.

    The people aged from five to 68 were arranged in 57 squares, each with a banner for the Beijing Olympic Games.

    The previous Guinness record was set by 2,474 people on January23, 2005, in Hong Kong.

    Participants included the parents of Olympic gymnastic champion Li Xiaoshuang, and Hu Pingshen, who is renowned in China for his rope skipping skills.

    The 3,009 ropes used on Thursday will be sent to 30 elementary schools in rural Hunan to spread the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger” there, sponsors said.

    Guinness officials in China witnessed the mass rope jumping and acknowledged the new record at the site.

    BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) — About 2.86 million members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were working for private enterprises by the end of 2006, according to the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.

    There were also 810,000 CPC members among the ranks of the self-employed, said a document released by the department here Thursday.

    There were a total of 178,000 CPC organs in private firms in 2006; a rise of 79.8 percent over 2002, and 94.2 percent of them had at least three Party members.

    At its 16th National Congress held in Beijing in 2002, the CPC took a significant step forward by including in its constitution provisions relating to party organs in the private sector.

    Early this year the organization department said that about 330,000 Party workers have been sent to private enterprises to help organize party organs and recruit members.

    The CPC now has 70 million members.

    SHANGHAI, July 12 (Xinhua) — Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam on Thursday vowed to boost Mauritius-Shanghai economic ties during his visit to China’s financial hub.

    Speaking at a trade forum, Ramgoolam said Mauritius wants stronger cooperation with Shanghai in trade, manufacturing, tourism and fisheries.

    Shanghai’s sound investment environment and industrial potential appeal to overseas companies, he said.

    Shanghai-Mauritius trade volume hit more than 15 million U.S. dollars in 2006, 30 percent up on the previous year, according to official statistics.

    By the end of May 2007, Mauritius had invested 3 billion U.S. dollars in 432 projects in Shanghai.

    Shanghai was the second leg of Ramgoolam’s six-day visit to China.

    During his stay in the Chinese capital Beijing, Ramgoolam met with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, exchanging views on bilateral relations and cooperation.

    Ramgoolam will also visit east China’s Anhui Province and Zhejiang Province.