The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) has a new president. The last non-publicly traded state-owned lender in China announced on July 6 that Xiang Junbo, former Vice Governor of the People's Bank of China, or the central bank, had been appointed to take over the reins of the ABC.

Xiang, 50, replaces Yang Mingsheng, who had been in the top seat for four years.

Xiang has a tough task ahead. He needs to transform the ABC, plagued by 732 billion yuan (nearly $99 billion) of bad loans, into a financially healthy joint-stock company and take it public.

A bailout of the ABC may cost the state as much as $140 billion to meet the central bank's 8-percent minimum capital adequacy requirement, Standard & Poor's estimates. Earlier, the Chinese Government decided to keep the bank whole rather than break it up, citing a need to preserve financial services for farmers who use its 31,000 branches.

The ABC reported a non-performing loan ratio of 23.44 percent in 2006, 2.73 percentage points lower than in 2005, but still high above the government-required 5 percent for commercial banks. Meanwhile, its reserves can only cover 4.59 percent of possible losses caused by bad loans, far from the 60 percent demanded by regulators.

The bad loans include more than 300 billion yuan ($37.5 billion) of policy credit, according to bank sources. Policy credit refers to loans the bank was required to make by the government to fund its development policies mainly in rural areas.

Despite the arduousness of his mission, Xiang's previous tenures as vice auditor general of the National Audit Office and vice governor of the central bank will stand him in good stead in his efforts to revitalize the ABC. Before transferring to the ABC, Xiang took charge of the central bank's Shanghai Headquarters, which is tasked with regulating the financial market, conducting financial supervision, making financial and trust analysis and coordinating regional financial cooperation. Xiang, who holds a Master's degree in economics and doctorate in law, is known for iron-fisted governance.

"The shareholding restructuring of the Agricultural Bank of China will notsucceed until it can strike a balance between the role as provider of less profitable rural financial services and commercial lender."

Guo Tianyong, Director of the Chinese Banking Research Center in the Central University of Finance and Economics

"Rural businesses are surely to get a gradual boost amid the improvement of China's county economies."

Han Zhongqi, Vice President of the Agricultural Bank of China

"Our country is facing a period with high risks for food safety."

Sun Xianze, Director of the Food Safety Coordination Department under the State Food and Drug Administration, warning on July 7 that food safety problems are impeding Chinese agri-products and food in international trade, and damaging China's national credibility and image

"The officials who take advantage of their posts

to make profits for others but receive money or gifts after their tenures, and who seek profits through family members, relatives or specially related persons should also be as severely punished as bribe takers."

Legal interpretation jointly issued by China's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate on July 8, defining new types of bribe-taking activities. An earlier survey showed that more than 70 percent of investigated bribery cases saw involved officials' families or concubines receive benefits on their behalf

"You are Live Earth."

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and initiator of the Live Earth concerts on July 7, calling on people across the world to reduce their own carbon footprint on the planet

"Wonders are not created by votes."

Nanchang-based Jiangnan City News,joining a nationwide chorus for cool reactions to the inclusion of the Great Wall in the seven new wonders picked up by people around the world, in a controversial poll initiated by the private New7Wonders Foundation

"There will be linguistic conservatives who will turn their nose up at a word like ‘ginormous,' but it's become a part of our language."

John Morse, Merriam-Webster's President, defending the inclusion of seemingly odd new words in the publisher's collegiate dictionary by saying that each of them has the promise of a place in the American vocabulary