Jia Qinglin (L), chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People\’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), awards an attendee during a commendation ceremony awarding individuals and collectives for their outstanding work in Taiwan affairs in Beijing, capital of China, June 27, 2011. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

The Chinese mainland\’s Taiwan affairs authorities honored groups and individuals for their outstanding performance in handling affairs concerning Taiwan at a commendation ceremony held in Beijing on Monday.

The ceremony marked the first time for central authorities to confer awards to those who have achieved in this field.

Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People\’s Political Consultative Conference, the country\’s top political advisory body, was present to confer awards at the ceremony.

Addressing the commendation ceremony, State Councilor Dai Bingguo asked groups and individuals handling Taiwan affairs to stick to the central government policies and push forward the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Dai also urged relevant groups and individuals to consolidate and strengthen the political, economic, cultural and public opinion basis for the development of cross-Strait relations, continue to oppose "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities in any form and continue to implement policies that are conducive to creating benefits for Taiwan compatriots and work to create necessary environment and favorable conditions for the promotion of the reunification of the motherland.

【1】 【2】 【3】 【4】

Source: Xinhua
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2011-06/28/nw.D110000renmrb_20110628_5-01.htm

China on Sunday issued a regulation on drug rehabilitation that encourages drug users to voluntarily undergo rehabilitation programs.

The regulation took effect Sunday as a supplement of the country\’s anti-drug law that was implemented three years ago.

Drug users who voluntarily receive intervention programs "will be exempt from punishment," said the regulation, promulgated on the 24th International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which falls on Sunday.

With seven chapters and 46 articles, it also stipulates the rights and obligations of drug addicts, as well as supporting measures for voluntary, community-based, and government-ordered drug rehabilitation.

Up to date, more than two million Chinese have been receiving compulsive rehabilitation or treatment, statistics show. However, many of them find it difficult to completely give up the addiction.

The regulation, aiming to explore effective ways to curb drug use, calls for boosting "the role of communities and families" in helping reduce drug users\’ dependency on narcotics.

It asks rehabilitation centers to provide addicts with consulting services and education on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other contagious diseases.

Efforts should be made to "boost pharmaceutical management" so as to prevent loss or abuse of psychotropic substances and narcotics, the regulation says.

The regulation also stipulates on the protection of drug addicts\’ personal information, saying "members of the police, judiciary and health departments who cause the leak of personal information must be punished."

The regulation has solicited public comments before it was released.

Transnational drug trafficking remains rampant in China, particularly in southwestern border regions of Yunnan and Guangxi.

A report issued last month by China\’s National Narcotics Control Commission said authorities investigated 89,000 drug-related crimes and arrested 101,000 suspects last year.

Law enforcers confiscated 5.3 metric tonnes of heroin and one metric tonne of opium in 2010, the report said, adding that intervention programs were used to treat and rehabilitate some 175,000 drug addicts last year.

Source:Xinhua

China\’s chief auditor said on Monday that a few state tax departments have been violating rules to give tax cuts or exempts to taxpayers.

Liu Jiayi, head of the National Audit Office, noted that illegal tax reduction and exemptions conducted by tax departments in 12 provinces resulted in the losses of taxes worth 2.578 billion yuan (397 million U.S. dollars) last year.

Liu made the statement in a report submitted to the 21th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People\’s Congress (NPC),the top legislature.

Also, 17 companies were illegally listed as hi-tech enterprises by tax departments. Under favorable polices, these groups enjoyed a tax cut of 2.665 billion yuan in 2010.

Liu noted other problems in tax collection such as lax invoice checks and management and illegal adjustment of tax-collecting standards.

Liu said the State Administration of Taxation and other relevant taxation departments are taking measures to rectify various problems and improve taxation policies.

According to Liu, state tax departments in 18 provincial-level regions collected taxes worth 2.69 trillion yuan in 2010, up 16 percent year-on-year.

Source: Xinhua

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says his government is confident that price rises will be firmly under control this year.

"There is concern as to whether China can rein in inflation and sustain its rapid development. My answer is an emphatic \’yes,\’" Wen wrote in a commentary published Friday in the Financial Times.

Rapid price increases pose a common challenge to many countries, especially to China and other emerging economies, said the premier, who left Beijing on Friday for an official visit to Hungary, Britain and Germany.

"China has made capping price rises the priority of macroeconomic regulation and introduced a host of targeted policies. These have worked," the premier wrote.

"The overall price level is within a controllable range and is expected to drop steadily. The output of grain, of which there is now an abundant supply, has increased for seven years in a row. There is an oversupply of main industrial products. Imports are growing fast," Wen said. "We are confident price rises will be firmly under control this year."

China is now at a new starting point in its drive for development, Wen said. He noted that China will continue to pursue economic structural adjustment, boost research and development, and education, save energy and resources, promote ecological and environmental conservation, and narrow the regional and urban-rural gap.

"China\’s drive for industrialization and urbanization is gathering pace. Its economy is increasingly market-oriented and internationalized," the Chinese premier said, adding that "we are fully capable of sustaining steady and fast economic growth."

Wen emphasized China\’s efforts to fight the global economic crisis, saying "the thrust of China\’s response to the crisis is to expand domestic demand and stimulate the real economy, strengthen the basis for long-term development and make growth domestically driven."

"A notable result of our response to the crisis is that China has maintained steady and fast growth," he said, citing China\’s gross domestic product annual growth rate of 9.6 percent, 9.2 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively, between 2008 and 2010.

The global economy has been recovering since the eruption of the financial crisis three years ago, but many uncertainties remain and the recovery is fragile, Wen said.

"While the shock of the crisis has yet to end, new risks have emerged," Wen wrote, calling on the world to cooperate closely to meet the challenges.

"We should make concerted efforts to strengthen the coordination of macroeconomic policies, fight protectionism, improve the international monetary system and tackle climate change and other challenges," he said.

The world should also welcome the fast development of emerging economies, respect different models of development, increase help to least developed countries, and promote strong, sustainable and balanced growth of the global economy, Wen said.

China\’s top legislature on Monday starts its second reading of an amendment to the country\’s law on individual income tax.

The amendment revealed on Monday kept the tax exemption threshold at 3,000 yuan (461.5 U.S. dollars), the same as in the first reading.

Source: Xinhua

Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said Monday that the rural policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC) have been "greatly successful and practical."

"Issues relating to agriculture, the countryside and farmers have a bearing on the general situation of the undertakings of the Party and the nation," said Hui during a visit to an ongoing exhibition featuring the CPC\’s rural policies over the past 90 years.

He called for a serious summarization of the valuable experiences the Party has accumulated over the decades and an unswerving adherence to the rural policies of the CPC while maintaining consistent improvement on measures beneficial to farmers.

Hui pledged to push forward the innovation of the mechanisms to boost the development of rural economy and society in a sound and rapid manner.

Since the launch of reform and opening up policies in the late 1970s, the CPC has "respected the innovative spirits of the farmers," made the rural areas reform pioneers, and expanded the reforms to the whole nation, said the vice premier.

Hui spoke highly of the rural policies adopted by the new leadership of the Party since 2002, which have further explored and broadened an agricultural and rural development road that is in conformity with the realities of the country.

The exhibition, a retrospection on the rural policies since the founding of the Party, began Sunday at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center in downtown Beijing and will run until the end of July.

Source: Xinhua

A worker inspects mining equipment in Anhui province. HSBC\’s Purchasing Managers\’ Index dropped to an 11-month low of 50.1 in June, compared with the final official reading of 52 in May, indicating a sizable slowdown in the country\’s manufacturing growth. (Photo / China Daily)
China\’s manufacturing activities stagnated in June in response to the 10 months of consecutive tightening measures, HSBC Holdings PLC said on Thursday.

It is too early to say whether the world\’s second-largest economy will suffer a hard landing, analysts said.

HSBC\’s Purchasing Managers\’ Index (PMI) dropped to an 11-month low of 50.1 in June, compared with the final official reading of 52 in May, indicating a sizable slowdown in the country\’s manufacturing growth, according to the HSBC report.

The HSBC\’s PMI is published monthly by HSBC, approximately one week before the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) releases the final PMI. A reading above 50 means an expansion in the manufacturing sector, while a reading below 50 indicates contraction.

A sub-index of manufacturing output released by HSBC decreased from 51.6 in May to 50 in June.

Qu Hongbin, HSBC chief economist of China and co-head of Asian Economic Research, said that the government\’s tightening measures and the decreasing demand from external markets led to a decline in the Chinese manufacturing sector.

"The ongoing inventory de-stocking also slowed the output growth," said Qu.

China\’s consumer price index (CPI), a key indicator of inflation, jumped to 5.5 percent year-on-year in May, a new peak in almost three years, and the central bank raised the required reserve ratio for commercial banks, the sixth time this year, on June 20.

Under the tight policies, the country\’s economic growth showed a continuous slowdown since April. The official PMI was 52.9 in April and 53.4 in March.

This continued drop in the HSBC PMI indicates that the government\’s measures to tame high inflation have taken effect, said Wang Jun, an economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a government think tank.

Wang said the tightening monetary policies may not ease in the short term because the nation\’s inflation is likely to climb higher in the future. He predicted the CPI figure to exceed 6 percent year-on-year in June.

Although the HSBC PMI declined, it still showed an expansion in the manufacturing sector but at a slower rate, according to Wang.

"I don\’t worry about a hard landing. The second quarter GDP is likely to stay above 9 percent," he said.

"Hard-landing worries are unwarranted," said the HSBC economist Qu. "The good news is that inflationary pressures started to ease in June amid slowing demand."

Ding Shuang, an economist with Citibank, said in a research note that slower growth is necessary to keep inflation under control, given China\’s current economic structure and investment-driven growth model.

Source:China Daily

China\’s lawmakers on Monday considered for the fifth time the draft administrative mandatory law, the first of its kind to prevent abuse of administrative power.

The draft law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People\’s Congress(NPC), China\’s top legislature, for its fifth reading. Once adopted, it would mark the completion of China\’s legal framework regarding the administrative authority of government agencies.

Source: Xinhua

China\’s economic planner is mulling policies that would boost the development of seawater desalination facilities in order to supplement the country\’s supply of freshwater.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), together with 11 other departments, are working on guidelines to accelerate the development of the country\’s seawater desalination facilities, said Li Jing, deputy director of the Environment and Resources Department under the NDRC.

The NDRC is creating a layout for the development of new seawater desalination facilities over the coming five years, as well as a layout relating to patents for water desalination technologies, Li said.

The policies will give preferential treatment to companies that independently develop desalination equipment.

China often suffers from shortages of freshwater. Its freshwater resources per capita are just one-fourth of the global average.

Source: Xinhua

China\’s Ministry of Finance said Friday that the country will cut or completely eliminate tariffs on 33 commodities, ranging from fuel to textiles.

Import tariffs on gasoline and fuel oil will both be lowered to 1 percent from the previous 5 percent and 6 percent, respectively, while tariffs for diesel and aircraft fuel will be cut to zero, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The tariff reductions, effective from July, aim to ease the country\’s trade imbalance and boost imports of advanced technological equipment and raw materials, the statement said.

In an effort to restructure the country\’s economy, the Chinese government has vowed to expand imports while stabilizing exports over the coming five years.

During the first five months of this year, the country\’s trade surplus dropped 35.1 percent year-on-year to reach 22.97 billion U.S. dollars.

Source: Xinhua