ONE OF A KIND Construction of the cloud-shaped China Aviation Pavilion for the World Expo 2010 Shanghai continues six months after the project began (XINHUA)

Prolonged Drought

A drought in China's southern provinces has caused 2.47 million people to face a water shortage, according to a November 4 statement on the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters website.

As of November 4, the drought had affected 1.26 million hectares of farmland in the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian, Hubei and Jiangsu and in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

About 224,700 hectares of farmland have suffered serious drought and 610,000 head of livestock lack adequate drinking water, said the statement.

Dongting Lake, China's second largest freshwater lake that spans the central provinces of Hubei and Hunan, has shrunk in area by almost two thirds in just a month.

Mainland Disney

Plans for a Disney theme park in Shanghai were given preliminary approval by China's Central Government, the Walt Disney Co. announced November 3.

Approval of the Project Application Report enables Disney and its Shanghai partners to move toward a final agreement for construction and operation of the park and to begin preliminary development work in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, the company said.

Upon completion of the final agreement, the project's initial phase will include a Magic Kingdom-style theme park tailored to the Shanghai region, along with other amenities consistent with other Disney parks.

Restricting Pesticide Pollution

The number of China's pesticide companies will be cut by 30 percent by 2015 in an effort to reduce pollution, according to the draft of the Industrial Policy for the Pesticide Industry that was released November 3 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The ministry said the country's 20 largest pesticide companies should account for 50 percent of the industry's total revenue by 2015, and 70 percent by 2020.

By 2015, the pesticide industry should have decreased waste gas, water and industrial residues by 30 percent, and increased byproduct recycling by the same percentage, the draft stated. By 2020 both figures should rise to 50 percent.

War Over Warcraft

In a rare turf war between regulatory agencies, the Ministry of Culture (MOC) opened fire on the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), saying its decision to pull the plug on a popular online game was an act out of bounds.

The MOC called an emergency press briefing November 3 in Beijing to respond to GAPP's decision to suspend its approval of the World of Warcraft, an online game with more than 1 million players on the Chinese mainland.

Xinhua News Agency said the GAPP decision ran against a State Council circular issued last July that declared the MOC was in charge of regulating the multi-billion-dollar online gaming industry.

GAPP, which had previously overseen the industry, ordered NetEase.com, China's second largest Internet games operator and the company holding the license to run World of Warcraft in China, to power off its servers and refuse new account registrations on November 2.