THIS WEEK

THIS WEEK

“ China’s economic exchanges with Iran do not go against the UN Security Council resolutions and should not be affected. China opposes placing domestic law above international law and does not favor unilateral sanctions against other countries.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, speaking at a regular press briefing in Beijing on January 4, in response to a question regarding possible U.S. sanctions against Iran

“If this basis does not last in the future, cross-Straits relations could be thrown into uncertainty.”

Lai Shin-yuan, head of the “Mainland Affairs Council” under Taiwanese authorities, saying at a press conference in Taipei on January 4 that the “1992 Consensus” is an “important basis” for negotiations between Taiwan and the mainland

“If we implement all the decisions taken at the Brussels summit we will emerge stronger. In 10 years, maybe the euro will be the world’s number one currency.”

French central bank governor Christain Noyer, in an interview with the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche in Paris, France, on January 1

“I want to state clearly that there are some people who seek a regional cold war. We are determined to prevent it. A regional sectarian tension would be suicide for the region.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, during an interview with Turkish semiofficial Anatolia news agency in Ankara on January 4 before his visit to Iran

Grassroots Philanthropist

Gong Xueming, a citizen in the city of Cixi, east China’s Zhejiang Province, has moved many people with his continuous altruism over the past 15 years.

Gong, 40, has donated more than 700,000 yuan ($111,160) to more than 100 poor students although he himself is not a rich man. Before making donations, Gong would go to those students’ homes for careful investigation.

Gong also leads volunteers to plead for more donations for poor students. With his help as a bridge for connecting poor students and donors, 5,758 students received help. After many media reports, Gong was widely praised for his kindness and perserverance in his city and then in the country.

Compensation Claims

On December 30, a maritime court in Tianjin in north China agreed to hear the case of 29 aquaculture farmers who are demanding compensation for the losses they incurred following the country’s worst offshore oil spill.

The Penglai 19-3 Oilfield, where the leak was first reported in June 2011, is in the Bohai Sea. It is being operated by ConocoPhillips China, a subsidiary of the U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips, under a development agreement with the China National Offshore Oil Corp., the oilfield’s owner.

The court said that another 107 aquafarmers had also filed a lawsuit seeking compensation from ConocoPhillips China and it was conducting routine checks over the plaintiffs’ identities.

The court did not give details of the amount of compensation claimed in both lawsuits.

In their previous lawsuit, the 107 aquafarmers said the oil spill killed or stunted the growth of most of their clams and sea cucumbers, and sought 490 million yuan ($77.78 million) in damages.

Social Safety

China created more than 12 million new jobs in cities and towns in 2011 and kept the registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 percent, said the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

The country’s pension insurance system had been extended to cover 300 million people in rural and urban areas by the end of the year, with about 85 million senior citizens claiming their pensions every month.

According to the ministry, China’s social security funds that insure pension, medical service, unemployment, work-related injury compensation and maternity pay collected 2.35 trillion yuan ($372 billion) in revenues last year, up 24.7 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, spending by social security funds rose 21.5 percent from a year ago to 1.8 trillion yuan ($285 billion).

3D TV

China’s first three-dimensional TV channel began trial broadcasts on January 1.

The channel, China 3D TV Trial Channel, is jointly operated by national broadcaster CCTV and five local TV stations. Viewers with 3D TV sets and wired high-definition digital TV set-top-boxes are able to watch the channel’s 3D-effect programs.

The channel will be formally launched during the upcoming Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, starting on January 23.

China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said that the launch of 3D TV services would boost the country’s consumer spending, as consumers would begin to replace China’s 500 million TV sets with new 3D ones.

Eye-catching Driver

Zhou Yuande has drawn much public attention at the 2012 Dakar Car Rally, a major international automobile rally. The race this year started on January 1, in Mar Del Plata, on Argentina’s Atlantic coast. The rally will have five stages and will end on the Pacific coast at Lima, Peru, on January 15.

This is Zhou’s second appearance in the rally. Zhou and his partner finished 31st last year. As an amateur, Zhou aims to finish higher than 19th, the previous record for Chinese drivers at the competition.

DIFFICULT INTERVIEW A reporter visits two penguins who are set to appear at a carnival in Beijing’s Taoranting Park during the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year that starts on January 23

Bird Flu Probe

The Disease Control Center of Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, said on January 2 that it had identified the virus that led to the death of a local bus driver, although the source of the virus remains unclear.

Genetic analysis of the virus indicated that it is similar to the H5N1 virus found in dead migrant birds during a 2011 avian influenza outbreak in Hong Kong. The source of the man’s infection, however, has not been determined and it is not known if the case in Guangdong is related to migrant birds, the center said.

Poultry and migrant birds are the only known vectors for the human H5N1 infection, according to He Jianfeng, Director of the Epidemics Studies Institute of the Guangdong Disease Control Center.

However, He said that there was no clear evidence that the deceased man had close contact with poultry or migrant birds, and health authorities were still trying to understand how he contracted the virus.

Space Ambition

China will focus on space transportation systems, Earth satellites, human spaceflight and deep-space exploration in the next five years, said a government white paper released on December 29, 2011.

The white paper, China’s Space Activities in 2011, was the third on the country’s space activities issued by the State Council Information Office, following releases in 2000 and 2006.

In 2012, the country will launch theShenzhou 9andShenzhou 10spaceships and achieve unmanned and manned rendezvous and docking with the currently orbitingTiangong-1vehicle, the white paper said.

China also plans to launch space laboratories, manned spaceships and space freighters, and will start research on the preliminary plan for a human landing on the moon.

In addition, China will build a space infrastructure frame composed of Earth observation satellites, communications and broadcasting satellites, plus navigation and positioning satellites.

BETTER TRAFFIC The seventh bridge across the Yangtze River in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province opened on December 31, 2011. Total investment in the bridge was 7.28 billion yuan ($1.11 billion)

Land Sales

Land sales in 130 major Chinese cities dropped 13 percent year on year in 2011, according to the China Index Academy.

Land premiums, which are major sources of financial revenues for many local governments, reached 1.86 trillion yuan ($295.2 billion) in 130 Chinese cities last year, the private real estate research agency said in a report on January 2.

The declines were attributed to squeezed liquidity conditions of developers and a bleak market in the midst of the government’s tightening measures, including prohibiting purchases of third homes and raising down payment requirements.

SAIC Booms

SAIC Motor Corp. Ltd., China’s largest listed automaker, said in a statement that it sold 4.01 million vehicles this year, up 11.9 percent from a year ago.

The growth was much higher than the average 3 percent growth for the whole industry in China, the largest auto market in the world.

Top three best selling cars in 2011—Excelle, Lavida and Cruze—were all made by SAIC.

It is expected to unveil a plug-in hybrid car and electric car next year.

The Shanghai-based company has set up R&D centers in Shanghai, Nanjing of Jiangsu Province and Britain’s Birmingham with a 2,000-member-strong R&D team.

Oil Exploration

CNOOC Ltd., China’s largest offshore oil explorer, said its Lufeng 13-2 oil field in the South China Sea has begun operation.

The field is located in the Pearl River Estuary basin, with an average water depth of 132 meters. The project currently has three wells and the company plans to build five more to bring the project’s production capacity to 33,000 barrels per day in the second half of 2012, said the CNOOC.

The project’s operations will help cut the company’s production costs as neighboring oil fields can share production facilities, said Chen Bi, Executive Vice President of CNOOC.

Steel Output

China’s crude steel output stood at 49.88 million tones in November 2011, the first yearon-year decline of 0.6 percent, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The NDRC projected China’s crude steel output would be around 680 million tons in 2011, and will continue to be the world’s top steel producer.

BUSY PORT The cargo handling capacity of Qinhuangdao Port, Hebei Province, reached 280 million tons in 2011, a record high

HAPPY NEW YEAR A large number of tourists go shopping on Nanjing Road in Shanghai during the New Year holiday (January 1-3)

As steel prices remained low amid weak demand, it is unlikely for crude steel output to rebound sharply in the short run, said the NDRC.

Textile Performance

Textile enterprises with annual sales revenue of more than 20 million yuan ($3.17 million) posted a combined industrial output value of 4.95 trillion yuan ($785.6 billion) in the first 11 months of 2011, up 27.5 percent year on year, according to the NDRC.

The growth rate of the period was 2.5 percentage points lower than that in the first half of last year.

Profits of those textile enterprises totaled 215.56 billion yuan ($32.91 billion) in the first 10 months of 2011, up 29 percent year on year, which was 12.3 percentage points lower than those in the first half of 2011, according to the NDRC.

The whole textile industry had an average profit margin of 5 percent during 10 months.

Forest Thrives

The output of China’s forestry industry rose 24.1 percent year on year to 2.83 trillion yuan ($448.09 billion), the State Forestry Administration said on January 4.

The country produced 165 million cubic meters of wood-based panels and 490 million square meters of wood and bamboo flooring this year, up 7.7 percent and 2.2 percent year on year, respectively.

China’s forestry imports and exports stood at $116 billion in 2011, up 23.6 percent from a year earlier.

The output value of forest tourism increased over 10 percent year on year to 240 billion yuan ($36.64 billion).

Controversial Director

The new TV version of Journey to the West directed by China's renowed director and producer Zhang Jizhong started on January 5.

The TV series is based on the classic Chinese novel with the same name, one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. Before the TV series was aired, stills of the series were posted on the Internet, resulting in disputes and hot debates among netizens for their distance from people’s imagination about the roles in the novel. THIS WEEKWORLD

SYRIA

Supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gather in Damascus on December 29, 2011, as Arab League observers visited the city

THE UNITED STATES

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (center) delivers a speech in Des Moines on January 3, 2012, after beating Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania, by only eight votes in the Iowa caucus

GERMANY

Visitors stand around a 25-meter-long snow church made of 1,400 cubic meters of snow just after its opening on December 28, 2011, in Mitterfirmiansreut

JORDAN

Israeli and Palestinian envoys meet in Amman on January 3, 2012, alongside Middle East Quartet representative Tony Blair. It was their first face-to-face meeting in nearly 16 months