In Changsha Railway Station, Wen offered early Spring Festival wishes to the stranded passengers. "I am deeply apologetic that you are stranded in the railway station and not able to go home earlier," Wen told the passengers by loudspeaker. "We are now doing our best to fix things and you will all be home for the Spring Festival," he added.

The Premier also visited family members of three electricians who died when cleaning ice from a transmission tower. Zhou Jinghua, Luo Haiwen and Luo Changming of the Hunan Electric Power Transmission and Transformation Co. were thrown to the ground when a 50-meter tower collapsed. Zhou died on the spot and the other two workers died later in hospital.

Concluding his one-day stay in Hunan, Wen took a midnight flight to Guangzhou and appeared at the railway station to comfort stranded passengers on January 30.

In the meantime, President Hu Jintao made an inspection tour on January 31 to coal fields in Datong, Shanxi, and Qinhuangdao Port in Hebei Province, through which much of Shanxi's coal is shipped to the south. The president emphasized that coal production should be increased, and coal transport should be well organized to meet the demand of major electricity plants.

Response system

The CMA issued a red alert for severe snowstorms forecast for central and eastern China on January 28, the highest weather warnings on a scale of four. This was also the first time a red alert had been issued for a climate disaster since the color warning system was adopted.

The CMA warned local governments and departments to prepare for the coming bad weather, and transportation, railway, electricity and communication departments were advised to prepare post-snow clean-up plans. The CMA also suggested that citizens in these areas should avoid unnecessary outdoor activities.

The CMA alerted the State Council of the dangers of snowstorms in early December after blizzards devastated North America and put forward suggestions on dealing with the fallout. On January 25, the CMA alarmed the third degree emergency response of the national climate disaster plan and upgraded it to the second degree on January 27. Provincial governments in Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Guangxi also went onto emergency footing on January 27.

Jiao of the CMA said the snow disaster in south China is caused by the ongoing La Niña, while deeper reasons for it lie in the escalating global warming. She said how to defend against the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events poses a challenge to China's whole society.

Yu Xinwen, a spokesman for the CMA, said improving the efficiency of China's disaster emergency system relies on more input into technical upgrades of weather forecasting equipment to increase its accuracy as well as improving the disaster emergency system, which should further coordinate the work of different departments. He said the State Council had earmarked an investment of 1.96 billion yuan ($272 million) to upgrade weather forecast accuracy for 2008.

Setting inflation soaring

Since food has a weighting of 32.74 percent in China's consumer price index (CPI), the disrupted supply of agriculture products is likely to push China deeper into the abyss of its already simmering inflation. Double-digit increases in food prices for much of 2007 drove a CPI rise in November to 6.9 percent, the highest in 11 years. This January's CPI rise remained at 6.5 percent, equaling the growth rate of the previous month.

The public felt the pressure as vegetable prices escalated across the country. In Changsha, Wuhan and other hard-hit cities in the southern, central and eastern regions, vegetable prices more than doubled. Areas not affected by snow, such as Beijing, were also affected because the vegetables and fruits growing in south China suddenly became gold due to transportation problems.

In Xinfadi Market, Beijing's largest vegetable wholesale market, daily supplies had shrunk by about one third by January 30, which drove the wholesale prices of vegetables up by around 100 percent.

Zhuang Jian, senior economist with the Asian Development Bank mission in China, said rising prices, forced up because of supply disruption caused by the snowstorms, would definitely affect the inflation rate.

"I believe the CPI for January will hit around 7 percent," he said in an interview of Xinhua. "The heavy snow will have a more immediate impact on farm produce and grain production, and the impact will be more apparent in the longer term."

The nation's economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said on January 31 that temporary price controls had been implemented in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland as of January 26. It said that the policy would limit price hikes of daily necessities ranging from meat and eggs to liquefied petroleum gas.

China harvested 500 billion kg of grain in 2007, achieving production growth for the fourth year in a row. But Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai said output still failed to meet domestic demand for the year, and the country was forced to impose duties on grain powder at the start of 2008 to limit exports and ensure domestic supply.