BEIJING – The greatest risk China faces in its historic modernization is the massive imbalance between urban and rural areas, according to the country’s top agriculture official. “The most important and difficult task is to resolve issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers … to realize the agricultural modernization and the urbanization of most farmers,” said Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu […]
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Beijing The cloud of pollution over Beijing grew so dense this week that much of the city was rendered invisible. Hundreds of flights were grounded, auto traffic was stalled for scores of miles, and residents rushed to buy masks and air filters. Chinese officials downplayed the air-quality crisis, as usual, saying their readings showed that air pollution was “moderate.” But […]
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According to China’s Ministry of Public Security news portal website, new laws implemented in 2015 citing criminal punishment for people buying trafficked women or children have proven effective. The new laws took effect on 10/1/15 and remains in effect today. The laws outlines the prosecution for buyers of trafficked persons, whereas previous provisions said they were exempt if they did […]
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“None of my business” is the motto of most Chinese and it is costing lives. A school bus full of South Korean children was traveling through a tunnel near Weihai, China when it caught on fire. No one stopped to help these children and the eleven kindergartners died. Back in 2011 a toddler was run over a couple of times […]
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China’s wealth gap has widened so much that the country now one of the most unequal outside of sub-Saharan Africa. A respected Chinese institute found this week that China’s Gini coefficient, a number that represents income inequality, has soared from 0.41 a decade ago to 0.61 today. Anything over 0.5 is considered to be destabilizing, and South Africa, where opulent […]
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A young girl not from China was forced into a marriage to a man that she didn’t know. She also didn’t know the language, so she was not totally aware that she was married and because her husband forced himself on her she was also pregnant. Since the girl was only 16 she didn’t know that she was going to […]
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China will further step up the supervision of genetically modified food technologies to prevent commercial cultivation of unauthorized varieties, a senior rural affairs official said. The call follows several suspected cases of farmers illegally growing genetically modified crops in the country. “We need to work to prevent unauthorized varieties from entering markets illegally, starting from the very beginning of the […]
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Thousands of pigs were found dead in rivers supplying Shanghai’s water, a grisly discovery that has drawn attention again to China’s toxic pollution, which contributes to some 700,000 deaths each year. Here are some points of concern: WASTE Tai Lake—a massive basin that holds China’s third largest body of freshwater, providing water for 30 million people—has been classified as a […]
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Beijing Mass arrests: In one of the biggest crackdowns on civil society groups in decades, Chinese authorities have detained and questioned at least 238 lawyers and human rights activists over the past two weeks. At least 20 activists remain incarcerated, and the whereabouts of six of them are unclear. Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights. Watch, said those still […]
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On the mountainous outskirts of Shenzhen, a fast-growing mega-city in China, the largest waste-to-energy plant in the world is on the horizon. You can bet that this disk-shaped trash-burning plant isn’t going to do any wonders for China’s notoriously bad air quality. It’s projected to burn 5,500 tons of trash per day — one-third of the waste Shenzhen produces. But the alternative […]
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