China out after losing 0-3 to Uzbekistan

China failed to reach the knock-out stage after suffering a humiliating 3-0 defeat to Uzbekistan at the Asian Cup here on Wednesday.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 - China failed to reach the knock-out stage after suffering a humiliating 3-0 defeat to Uzbekistan at the Asian Cup here on Wednesday.
China needed a tie to qualify from Group C while Uzbekistan had to win to enter the knock-out stage. This was the first time in 27 years China had failed to qualify from Asian Cup group stage.
The two sides played a balanced game in the first half though Uzbekistan created more opportunities.
Uzbekistan broke the deadlock in the 72th minute when foward Maksim Shatskikh blasted the ball into the net from close range.
Midfielder Timur Kapadze doubled the lead in the 87th minute when he shot the ball home.
Aleksandr Geynrikh sealed the victory for Uzbekistan when he scored in the injury time through a free kick.
Uzbekistan, who trailed Iran to stand the second in Group C, will play against South Korea in the quarter-finals.

Olympic medal "value" report released

Chinanews, Xi'an July 17 - According to the recent report on the values of the gold medals of Chinese Olympic champions, Liu Xiang, the 110-m hurdle race champion, has the most valuable medal, which generated about 461 million yuan of business values.
The report is based on the income champions get from advertisment, and the values generated by such adverstisement, covering 5 champions in the 28th Olympic Games.
However,the "values" of champions shows tremendous differences. For example, Tian Liang, the diving champion, is the face of 30-plus brands, but his partner, Yang Jinghui, seldom show up in any commercial ads at all. Besides, Zhao Ruirui and Feng Kun are perhaps the only two popular ad stars in the national women's volleyball team. Interestingly, Zhang Yinin (table tennis champion) and Guo Jingjing (diving champion) are both pop sports idols in China, but the value of Guo's medal (233 million yuan) is much bigger than Zhang's (29 million yuan).
Gymnasics, diving and table tennis are the favorites of sponsors.
The Olympic sponsors usually only ask champions to be their faces. For example, a sponsor had had Tian Liang as its face for years, but after Tian retired, Liu Xiang has taken his place very soon.
Before the 28th Olympic Games, an enterprise signed contracts with Liu Xiang, Ma Lin and Teng Haibin. After the three became Olympic champions, they brought great profit to the enterprise. Now that the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is drawing nea, many sponsors have started picking new faces.

Shanghai to allocate 500 mln yuan every year to aid poor students

Chinanews, Shanghai, July 19 – Starting from this year, Shanghai municipal government will allocate as much as 500 million yuan every year as a financial aid to poor students so that they can continue their study without having to worrying about their financial difficulties, the Shanghai Morning Post reported.
The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission announced the new funding policy on Tuesday. It said that the new policy has been printed on college admission letters issued to lucky students in Shanghai.
This year, China has set up the national scholarship award, the national award that encourages students to fulfill their aspirations, and the national grant-in-aid award. It is estimated that this year, about 500 students in Shanghai will get the national scholarship award with a sum of 8,000 yuan for each student in a year. In addition, about 11,000 students can get the national award that encourages students to fulfill their aspirations. Apart from this number, Shanghai municipal government will offer such award to another 2,000 students in Shanghai. With this award, every student can get as much as 5,000 yuan a year. Meanwhile, about 49,000 students will get the national grant-in-aid award with a sum of 2,500 yuan for each student in a year.
Local government in Shanghai has also set up the Shanghai governmental scholarship award, whereby recipients can get as much as 8,000 yuan in a year.

37 mln males will not be able to find wives by 2020

Chinanews, Beijing, July 19 - Though China has successfully controlled its population explosion nowadays, the new problem of severely imbalanced sex ratio has started to haunt the country. It is estimated that there will be about 37 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020. That is to say, about 10% of men will not be able to find wives by then.
According to the national census in 2005, the sex ratio of newborns in China was 118.88:100, while the normal figure should be 104:100 - 107:100. China has witnessed imbalanced sex ratio since the 1980s. Now it has become the country with the severest sex imbalance in the world.
Experts believe that the traditional prejudice against women in China has contributed to the sex imbalance, as many parents depend upon B-Ultrasonic make sure that they have male babies. Though the government has issued regulations to ban unnecessary fetus gender identification, some doctors still offer such service.

Tibet: income of the people more important than GDP

Chinanews, Lhasa, July 19 - With the help of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, Tibet has witnessed an economic boom since last year. In the first 6 months of 2007, the GDP growth of Tibet was 14.1%, a new high. However, according to Deng Xiaogang, vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, GDP growth has never been the top concern of the Tibetan regional government, but the income of the people.
"The operation of the railway has offered Tibet many possibilities, including the possibility of industrial development," said Deng. "Our goal is to make sure that the average net income of farmers and herdspeople in Tibet reaches the middle level in the country before 2010"
Hot tourism has contributed a lot to the booming economy of Tibet. The number of visitors and income from tourism has both leaped by some 80% last year. Deng is confident of protecting the fragile ecoenvrionment from tourism. "Today, Tibet can be called one of the cleanest places in the world. There is no acid rain or water pollution here at all, and I believe anyone who has been to Tibet is impressed by the crystal clear water here," said Deng.
Tibet even issued regulations on June 1, 2006, on banning the development of gold mines, fearing that it might ruin the ecoenvironment. "Before we have pollution-free technologies, we won't start to develop the mines," said Deng proudly.
These days, many businesspeople have come to Tibet to investigate investment possibilities, but Tibet has set very strict rules for them. Among all the rules, environmental protection is always the first.
"We will try our best to make our development sustainable," concluded Deng.

Rats in C.China lake areas to cause no epidemic

July 19 - Central China's Hunan Province said it has taken effective measures to prevent epidemics after about 2 billion rats chomped their way through cropland around the Dongting Lake, the country's second largest freshwater lake.
"It's not possible for rodent-borne diseases to break out in the lake area," said Chen Xiaochun, vice director of the provincial health department.
Local health authorities have been watching closely over the rodent situation after the rats fled their flooded island homes and invaded 22 counties around the Dongting Lake last week, he told a press conference on Wednesday.
Results of their observation are reported daily to the provincial health department and the public, he said.
Meanwhile, local health and disease prevention and control authorities have intensified management of raticide and pesticide, for fear they might contaminate food and water, Chen added.
No human infection of any rat-borne disease has been reported in the central Chinese province since 1944.
The provincial government also ruled out widespread suspicions that rats flooded the area because one of their natural enemies --snakes -- had been served at dinner tables.
"The Dongting Lake area is not an ideal habitat for snakes," said Deng Sanlong, a top forestry official in the province, "and the only two species that inhabit the region feed largely on fish and frogs."
He said the top enemy of the rats is hawk that spends winter in the wetland around the lake but fly away in spring.
China's Ministry of Agriculture and the Hunan provincial government have allocated 900,000 yuan in total to eradicate the rats.

6,500 villages in Hainan turned into gardens

Chinanews, Haikou, Jul. 19 – Li Cai, a villager in Sanya, Hainan Province asked our reporter whether his village look like a garden.
Our reporter found that the village was clean and orderly, and the houses were built amidst trees and flowers. Currently Hainan has 6,500 villages like this particular one, accounting for 30 percent of the total in that island province.
The local government in Hainan is building ecological villages in the rural areas, and before that, the villages in Hainan just like many others in the Chinese mainland, had poor infrastructure, and bad environment.
Dahu Village has renovated its villagers’ houses and improved its roads, turning it into an “ecological village”. Soldiers, enterprises and the local government of Hainan have tried their best to build ecological villages. Overseas Chinese people healing from Hainan’s Wenchang and Qionghai counties have contributed 40 million yuan to help give their villages there complete facelifts.
Villagers have also endeavored to cultivate in themselves new healthy living habits. More and more visitors enjoy living there.

Hill: Six-Party talks go smoothly

BEIJING, July 19 - Chief U.S. negotiator to the Six-Party talks Christopher Hill said on Wednesday the chief delegates meeting on the same day had "very open and substantive discussions" and there would be a chairman's statement released on Thursday.
"We've discussed the work plan, getting the working groups together and technical issues of sequencing the elements of the next phase, especially the issue of fuel oil," Hill told reporters when he arrived at his hotel in downtown Beijing after finishing discussions with Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in the morning and all the other chief negotiators in the afternoon.
"We are not avoiding any topics," Hill said.
Although considering "the mood on the table is quite positive," Hill said it was a tough process to get things moving on.
He reiterated that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) should declare all its nuclear programs and disable all existing nuclear facilities.
The declaration should be "complete," with no flexibility, according to Hill.
"All means all," he said.
He also said the disabling of nuclear facilities should be verified by experts to see "how you (the DPRK) disable the facilities," whether it would be "difficult or easily to be brought back".
"The peace process on the Korean Peninsula needs to be done after, or certainly not before the denuclearization," Hill said, adding that the process would be in parallel with the Six-Party talks continuing the primary job of denuclearization.
He said the meeting would set schedules for all five working groups, to help implement the second phase, for example, bilateral working groups verifying the disablement of nuclear facilities and an energy working group discussing the fuel oil equivalent.
"The statement will be a time frame, covering the conversations we had today and tomorrow," Hill said, adding that an overall timeframe should be completed.
Thursday's meeting would begin at 10 am, said Hill.

China's CPI rises 4.4% in June

July 19 - According to Xinhua News Agency, China's consumer price index (CPI) rose 4.4 percent in June compared with a year ago, Li Xiaochao, spokesman with the National Bureau of Statistics, said on Thursday.
CPI in the first half of this year increased 3.2 percent year on year.

China to consume 25% of global electronic products in the next two years

Chinanews, Beijing, Jul. 19 – According to statistics from McKinsey & Company, the China’s electronic market is increasing by 12% annually, and the market volume in 2010 will reach 125 billion yuan. According to Consumer Electronics Association, China will consume 25% of global electronic products in the next two years.
Currently more than 60% of white goods that comprise major household appliances like air conditioner and dishwasher are made in China, and experts hope Chinese producers can make more white goods on their own and increase the export of these goods.

China might overtake Germany to rank 3rd in GDP

Chinanews, Beijing, July 19 – Based on the current GDP in China and Germany, some experts predict that China might overtake Germany to rank third in GDP in the world this year, only next to the United States and Japan, the China Securities Journal reported.
According to information released by the National Statistics Bureau last week, in 2006 China’s GDP reached 21.087 trillion yuan, or 2.70 trillion US dollars, which was very close to Germany, whose GDP stood at 2.30 trillion euros (2.86 trillion US dollars).
The National Statistics Bureau has released a set of information about China's macro economy during the first half of this year on Thursday morning. China's GDP totaled 10.68 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, a growth of 11.5% year on year, according to latest figures. However, analysts point out that GDP growth rate of Germany might reach at most 2.8%.
If China can maintain the current GDP growth rate, by the end of 2007, its GDP for the whole year will reach at least 23.428 trillion yuan, while the GDP of Germany might reach 2.364 trillion euros at most. If converted by the official exchange rate ratio released on July 17 (on that day, the exchange rate ratio of euro against yuan was 1: 10.4198), then the GDP in Germany will be more than that of China. However, it should be considered that during the first half of this year, the yuan exchange rate against the euro was at an unusually low level. So, it is still probable that China’s GDP might exceed Germany by the end of this year.
Recently, Nobel Prize winner for economics Robert William Fogel wrote an article, in which he predicts that by 2040, China's GDP might reach 123.675 trillion US dollars, which will account for 40% of the global GDP and more than the combined GDP total of the United States, India, the European Union, and Japan