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SOCIETY
More Grass-Root Delegates
The Communist Party of China (CPC) will include more delegates from the grass-roots level, including migrant workers, at the Party’s 18th National Congress slated for 2012.
The minimum proportion of grass-roots delegates attending the event will be 32 percent, 2 percentage points higher than at the previous congress in 2007, said a statement released by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee on November 2.
The maximum proportion of leaders and cadres will be 68 percent. Worker delegates must take up 10 percent of the total delegates and they should be made up of those from public and private enterprises in industrial and service sectors, the statement said.
Among the worker delegates, migrant workers will take a proper proportion, according to the statement.
The 18th CPC National Congress will be held in Beijing in the second half of 2012. The congress typically convenes once every five years.
Fingerprints for ID cards
China’s top legislature adopted an amendment to the Resident Identity Card Law on October 29 in a bid to better protect the personal information stored in citizens’identity cards.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved a proposal which will make it compulsory for citizens to submit fingerprints when they apply for or change ID cards.
Lawmakers held that including fingerprints in ID cards would help identify people in a faster and more precise manner and would effectively curb the counterfeiting and altering of the cards.
The amendment also increased the punishment for those found guilty of leaking citizens’ personal information.
The amendment will take effect on January 1, 2012.
Extending Compulsory Education
Shenzhen is considering extending its nine years of compulsory education to 15.
The extension would comprise three more years of both preschool and senior high school.
The draft proposal was submitted to the Shenzhen People’s Congress Standing Committee for discussion on October 26.
Hu Xintian, Director of the Policy and Regulation Department of the Shenzhen Education Bureau, said extended compulsory education would require more government investment.
Last year, the city’s kindergartens enrolled 111,000 children and senior high schools 58,583 students, bureau statistics showed. That means if compulsory education is extended, it will cover an extra 170,000 students each year.
Statistics also show the city’s budget for education in 2011 was 9.06 billion yuan($1.33 billion), accounting for 6 percent of the total government expenditure, up 35.4 percent year on year.
Biofuel Test Flight
Air China became the first Chinese carrier to conduct a demonstration flight powered in part by biofuel, demonstrating the alternative fuel’s possible use in future commercial flights in the country, Xinhua News Agency reported on October 28.
The Beijing-based airline company, also China’s flag carrier, made the flight with a Boeing 747-400. The jumbo jet took off at 8:30 a.m. and landed successfully at the Beijing Capital International Airport at 9:30 a.m. after the one-hour test flight.
One engine of the plane ran on a mixture of half biofuel and half traditional jet fuel. The other three ran solely on jet fuel. The test flight consumed more than 10 tons of biofuel, according to Xinhua’s report.
During the flight, the aircraft reached an altitude of 11,000 meters. The flight crew conducted various tests to analyze the technical aspects of using biofuel.
The alternative fuel used in this flight was derived from jatropha seeds, which contain about 40 percent oil. It was developed and produced by China National Petroleum Corp. after 10 years of research and development.
ECONOMY
Tax Adjustments
China raised thresholds for levying value-added and business taxes on November 1.
The value-added tax threshold will be increased to between 5,000 yuan ($790) and 20,000 yuan ($3,150), in terms of monthly sales revenues, from the previous threshold of 2,000 to 5,000 yuan ($315-790), said the Ministry of Finance.
Meanwhile, the threshold for levying the business tax will be raised to 5,000-20,000 yuan from the previous 1,000-5,000 yuan($158-790).
The adjustments came after a decision made by the State Council to enhance financial support for the country’s cash-strapped small and micro enterprises.
Reduced Ship Orders
The Chinese shipbuilding industry suffered drastic declines in new orders in September, as the growth of the global ocean shipping market almost stalled amid economic slowdown.
New shipbuilding orders in September fell to 940,000 deadweight tons, the lowest monthly figure since June 2009, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
About 30 percent of China’s 1,526 shipbuilding enterprises received no new orders in September, forcing some of the small and medium-sized ones to shut or stop production.
As a result of shrinking orders and rising costs, 249 enterprises suffered losses in the first eight months of 2011, 37.9 percent more than a year ago. Their total loses stood at 2.66 billion yuan ($420 million) at the end of August, said the NDRC.
Train Payment
CSR Corp. Ltd., China’s major train manufacturer, said it received payment of trade receivables of nearly 6 billion yuan($923 million) from the Ministry of Railways(MOR) on November 1.
The company is expected to receive most of the total account of receivables in November and December.
Zhao Xiaogang, Chairman of CSR, attributed the MOR’s weak payment capacity to the sluggish global economic environment.
Chinese authorities have agreed to take steps to secure financial support for major cash-strapped railway projects in the country’s latest move to help the crippled sector.
The MOR will get more than 200 billion yuan ($31.5 billion) of financial support to ensure payment and improve liquidity, according to sources with the ministry.
Banking in Shanghai
Bank Mandiri, Indonesia’s largest stateowned bank, plans to open a branch office in Shanghai on November 17, in a bid to facilitate transactions, local media in Jakarta reported on November 1.
Mandiri President Director Zulkifli Zaini was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying that transactions using yuan would start in 2014.
With the establishment of the Mandiri Shanghai branch, which has been planned since 2006, Zulkifli said that as of 2014 Indonesians could directly transfer an amount of money from yuan to rupiah with no need of converting first into U.S. dollars.