Pianist's New Post

(XINHUA)

China's piano prodigy Li Yundi was hired on May 25 as deputy director of the newly-founded Piano Research Institute at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, his alma mater. The director will be Dan Zhaoyi, Li's piano teacher. Li was also enrolled as a visiting associate professor of the college on the same day. Li will set up a studio so that piano students can learn from him face to face.

Li, 30, was crowned the champion of the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in 2000, the youngest and first Chinese winner in the history of the competition. Dubbed as the "prince of the piano," he is considered one of the best of today's interpreters of Chopin's music in China and is also regarded as sharing a similar temperament to Chopin.

Li has delivered lectures on the piano and Chinese culture at world famous universities, such as the University of Cambridge and Royal College of Music in London.

Urbanization Rate

China's urbanization rate reached 51.3 percent at the end of 2011, according to a report released on May 29 by the China Association of Mayors (CAM).

The China Urban Development Report 2011 shows at the end of last year the country had 30 cities with a permanent population exceeding 8 million, and 13 cities with a population of more than 10 million.

With over half of China's population now living in cities, experts said that the country should still improve conditions in its urban centers by paying more attention to people's quality of life, the balance of urban and rural development, benefits for migrant workers and protection of natural and cultural resources.

CAM was established in 1991 as approved by the State Council. It has organized experts and scholars to compile the annual China Urban Development Report since 2001.

'.cn' Domain Name

Individuals have been allowed to register the ".cn" domain name, according to a recently amended regulation on domain name registration of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the administrator of Chinese domain name.

The new regulation, which came into effect on May 29, states that any person or organization bearing civil liabilities independently can apply to register the domain.

"Individuals will become an important drive for the development of websites," said Qi Lin, Assistant Director of the CNNIC. "Opening the .cn domain name to individuals will boost the openness and diversity of the Internet."

Individual online shops can possess their own .cn domains that will help their brand operation, according to Qi.

Statistics from the CNNIC show China had around 2.3 million websites as of the end of 2011, up 20 percent year on year.

Compensation Standard

The amount of state compensation payable for infringement of citizens' personal freedom is to be upped by 20.32 yuan ($3.19) to 162.65 yuan ($25.50) for each day of wrongful imprisonment or detention, said the Supreme People's Court (SPC) on May 29.

The sum is equal to the average daily income of Chinese urbanites in 2011, according to a SPC statement.

The SPC made the adjustment based on figures released the same day by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The State Compensation Law stipulates, "If freedom of a citizen is infringed, compensatory payment for each day shall be assessed in accordance with the state average daily pay of staff and workers in the previous year."

China's 'Green Cards'

A total of 852 foreigners have applied for "green cards" in Beijing since 2004, and 721 had been approved for the permits that grant them permanent resident status as of May 26, 2012, said Beijing's police authorities.

Foreigners who obtain the permanent residence permits can freely enter and exit China without any additional visa procedures, according to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

The Ministry of Public Security said that 4,752 foreigners had received permanent residence permits in China by the end of 2011.

Water Pollution

Underground water in 57 percent of monitoring sites across Chinese cities has been found to be polluted or extremely polluted, reported the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper run by Xinhua News Agency, on May 28, quoting figures from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP).

The MEP statistics also suggest that 298 million rural residents do not have access to safe drinking water.

In the first half of last year, of the seven main water systems in China, only Yangtze and Pearl rivers had good water quality, and the Haihe River in north China was heavily polluted, with the others all moderately polluted, according to the MEP.

To address poor water quality, the MEP has decided to beef up protection of water sources. According to the MEP, no construction projects will be allowed in water source regions unless they had set aside specific protection areas subject to the ministry's monitoring, or they had passed water quality examinations.

For the Children

The Ministry of Health will speed up the establishment of a nationwide monitoring system for child injuries, said a senior official on May 29.

The system will collect and release information including child deaths and disabilities due to traffic accidents, drowning, poisoning or other kinds of injuries, said Yan Jun, a division director with the ministry's Disease Prevention and Control Bureau.

Yan said that the ministry has run a pilot project in 127 hospitals across the country since 2005 that records patients' injuries.

The system will also be part of the ministry's measures to protect children from injuries, she added.

The World Health Organization estimated that in China about 365,000 children under the age of 5 die annually, among which 10 percent die from injuries.

Electrical Waste Processing

The Ministry of Finance said on May 30 that China would start amassing a special fund from July this year to subsidize the cost of dealing with waste electrical and electronic appliances.

The fund will be paid by domestic producers and importers of electrical and electronic appliances, according to a regulation jointly issued by the ministry and five other departments.

The fund's establishment aims to promote comprehensive utilization of resources and encourage energy conservation and environ-mental protection, it said.

Under the regulation, the collection and subsidy criteria vary for different appliances. For example, it will collect 13 yuan ($2.04) from producers for each TV set, but offer a subsidy of 85 yuan ($13.33) for the treatment of each abandoned TV set.

As a major manufacturer and consumer of electrical and electronic appliances, at the end of 2011, Chinese people owned around 520 million TV sets, 300 million fridges, 330 million air-conditioners, 320 million washing machines and 300 million computers. Tens of millions of the items are disposed of each year and require processing, according to the ministry.