| Embracing Buddhism
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(XINHUA) |
Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, the 11th Panchen Lama and top ranking figure of Tibetan Buddhism currently in China, attended the third World Buddhist Forum (WBF) held in Hong Kong on April 25-27. This was the first time the 11th Panchen Lama attended activities outside the Chinese mainland.
Born in February 1990 at Lhari County in northern Tibet, he was confirmed and approved by the State Council, China's cabinet, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in November 1995, after the lot drawing from a sacred golden urn in strict compliance with religious rituals and conventions.
The 22-year-old Panchen Lama is also vice president of the Buddhist Association of China. He attended the first and second WBF held in Zhejiang Province in 2006 and in Jiangsu Province in 2009, respectively.
China's population urbanization rate, which reached 51 percent last year, will further climb to 60 percent by 2020, bringing the country's urban population to around 850 million, according to a demographic study released on May 3.
The China Population and Development Research Center said in a report that in the next 20 years, China's urbanization will maintain a fast speed, with around 300 million people moving from rural to urban areas.
China's urbanization will enter a stable stage by the middle of the 21st century, with the peak between 70-75 percent, it said.
In 2011, the number of migrant workers in China reached 230 million, the report said, adding that annual growth of the migrant population will be around 10 million in the 2011-15 period.
China has approved a five-year plan to speed up the establishment of a social security network that covers both urban and rural citizens by 2015, the State Council, China's cabinet, said on April 27.
The government will strive to build an essentially complete social security system and a relatively sound management service system by the end of China's 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15), according to a statement released after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.
The statement said that the country's social security development is unbalanced, as the system in rural areas obviously lags behind, and the coverage rate of some basic social security systems is still low.
It said the government will speed up the construction of the system, which includes extending its old-age pension scheme to cover all residents, improving insurance systems for healthcare, employment injury, unemployment and maternity, as well as adopting measures to cope with an aging population.
U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips China will pay 1.09 billion yuan ($172.79 million) in compensation for oil spills that occurred in north China's Bohai Bay starting in June 2011, the State Oceanic Administration said on April 27.
Moreover, China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and the Chinese unit of ConocoPhillips will pay 480 million yuan ($76.09 million) and 113 million yuan ($17.91 million), respectively, for environmental protection efforts in the Bohai Sea, according to the administration.
The money will be spent, according to China's laws and rules, on the ecological construction in, and environmental protection of, the Bohai Sea, cleaning up petroleum pollutants in the sea, fixing damage to the marine ecological environment as well as monitoring and research on the impacts of oil spills to the ecosystem, according to the administration.
The severe oil spills in the Penglai 19-3 Oilfield in the Bohai Bay polluted more than 6,200 square km of water, an area about nine times the size of Singapore, and caused huge losses in the tourism and aquatic farming industries of Liaoning and Hebei provinces.
The Penglai 19-3 Oilfield is one of China's largest offshore oilfields, with daily production of about 160,000 barrels. ConocoPhillips China operates the Penglai 19-3 Oilfield, in which CNOOC, China's largest offshore oil producer, holds a 51-percent stake, while ConocoPhillips holds 49 percent.
Chinese employees work 8.66 hours daily on average and spend 0.96 hours in transit, according to a newly released survey.
The survey jointly conducted by Peking University and zhaopin.com, one of China's leading recruitment website, covered more than 30,000 respondents in 28 cities.
The survey shows that on average Chinese workers spend 7.33 hours sleeping, 8.66 hours at work, 0.96 hours on the road and 7.05 hours on other activities.
Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province tops the list in daily working time, with 9.02 hours. Hangzhou in eastern Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong follow with above 8.8 hours. Beijing workers average 8.68 hours.
China will further industrialize the use of a new material developed with the help of nanotechnology to ensure the safety of its power grids, according to a statement from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNT) on May 2.
The NCNT said the material has undergone strict testing and technical evaluations and will be used to solve the problem of flashover, a phenomenon in which energized conductors inadvertently come into contact with other conductors or a grounded surface. Flashover has been a persistent safety problem in China's power grids.
Other projects based on the use of the new material are in the research phase and will eventually be applied to China's power grids on a large scale, the NCNT said.
The material was created in 2009 after three years of research by the NCNT, the Institute of Process Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Electric Power Research Institute.
A nature reserve in east China's Anhui Province will release six captive-bred alligators into the wild as part of an experimental program to boost the population of the endangered animal.
The Anhui Yangtze Alligator Nature Reserve is preparing to put the alligators in a natural environment later this month, marking the center's eighth attempt to do so since the program started in 2002.
So far, the nature reserve has succeeded in releasing 45 Chinese alligators into the wild.
Anhui is home to the majority of the country's Chinese alligators, which are widely known as the Yangtze alligators because they live along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The breeding center now has more than 1,000 captive alligators. | 
