Nuclear Chief

Sun Qin, Deputy Director of the National Energy Administration, has been appointed General Manager of state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC). He replaces Kang Rixin, who was removed after the top disciplinary watchdog of the Communist Party of China began probing into his alleged involvement in corruption cases worth more than 1.8 billion yuan ($260 million).

Sun, 56, is a veteran in the nuclear power industry. He had worked with CNNC for 12 years until August 2005 when he, then deputy general manager of the company, was transferred to the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense as its vice minister. In March 2008, Sun was installed as deputy director of the newly established National Energy Administration, overseeing operations of the entire nuclear power industry.

CNNC, which operates China's first independently built nuclear power plant, Qinshan Nuclear Power Station in east China's Zhejiang Province, generated 4.8 billion yuan ($700 million) in profit in 2008. It is building three new nuclear power plants and preparing for the construction of another four.

Tireless Advocate

When Xu Wenying began to make her presentation at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington, D.C. on August 7, she entered the official history of Sino-U.S. trade relations. Xu is the first representative of the Chinese business world to testify at a U.S. hearing on safeguard measures for Chinese products.

Xu, Deputy Secretary General of the China Rubber Industry Association that represents 20 Chinese tire makers with more than 200,000 workers, had been in the United States to lobby against a petition from the U.S. Steelworkers Union, which speaks for half of U.S. tire workers, to impose import limits on China-made tires to protect their jobs.

Xu made an impressive 30-minute presentation at the August 7 hearing with a frank but aggressive style of speaking. She said that most China-made tires are low-end products that are not rolled out on the other side of the Pacific. If the proposed import limits were imposed, she said they would not only deprive Chinese workers of job opportunities, but also cause job losses in the United States and affect U.S. consumers.

Sailor Circles Globe

Zhai Mo, the first Chinese to successfully conduct a single-handed circumnavigation of the Earth, arrived at his destination, Rizhao, in east China's Shandong Province, on August 16, after having sailed 35,000 nautical miles and visited more than 40 countries and regions.

Zhai, 41, kicked off his global journey from Rizhao on January 6, 2007. Before that, it took Zhai four years to raise money for the plan. He finally bought a $146,000 sailboat from Japan and used the 12-meter-long and 3.85-meter-wide vessel to finish the trip sailing through the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans successively.

Born in Rizhao, Zhai studied the history of Western art and the art of aboriginals in Pacific and African countries in college. He sailed around New Zealand in 2001.

Zhai is planning to write a book about his circumnavigation. He will also join the five-month Vendee-Globe international sailing competition as the first Asian contestant in the event in France.

"The mainlanders care a lot about the situation of their compatriots [in Taiwan]."

Wang Yi, Director of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, when seeing off the mainland's second batch of relief materials to typhoon battered Taiwan on August 18

"It is a message to Iraqi officials that they should stop their exaggerations about the stability of this country."

Saeed Jabar, a 35-year-old Iraqi Government employee, after at least 97 Baghdad residents were killed in truck bombings on August 19

"It saddens me to say this but I don't think the United States will ever be cured of Islamophobia."

Indian director Kabir Khan, responding to the detention of Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan at a New York airport allegedly over suspicion of the actor's Muslim surname "Khan"

"Everyone, the day has come to rewrite history."

Japanese opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, speaking at a campaign rally in Osaka on August 18. Hatoyama will become the next prime minister if his party translates its poll lead over ruling Liberal Democratic Party into a victory in the August 30 national elections

"His accomplishments and aspirations to achieve democratization and inter-Korean reconciliation will long be remembered by the people."

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, mourning late President Kim Dae Jung who died on August 18 at age 85

"We may have to give up building some infrastructure."

Fan Zhiyong, Beijing-based species program director for the World Wildlife Fund. Scientists have warned that highways are posing increasing restrictions on the panda's free movement and inbreeding may extinguish the species in two to three generations