Compensation Claims

On December 30, a maritime court in Tianjin in north China agreed to hear the case of 29 aquaculture farmers who are demanding compensation for the losses they incurred following the country's worst offshore oil spill.

The Penglai 19-3 Oilfield, where the leak was first reported in June 2011, is in the Bohai Sea. It is being operated by ConocoPhillips China, a subsidiary of the U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips, under a development agreement with the China National Offshore Oil Corp., the oilfield's owner.

The court said that another 107 aquafarmers had also filed a lawsuit seeking compensation from ConocoPhillips China and it was conducting routine checks over the plaintiffs' identities.

The court did not give details of the amount of compensation claimed in both lawsuits.

In their previous lawsuit, the 107 aquafarmers said the oil spill killed or stunted the growth of most of their clams and sea cucumbers, and sought 490 million yuan ($77.78 million) in damages.

Social Safety

China created more than 12 million new jobs in cities and towns in 2011 and kept the registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 percent, said the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

The country's pension insurance system had been extended to cover 300 million people in rural and urban areas by the end of the year, with about 85 million senior citizens claiming their pensions every month.

According to the ministry, China's social security funds that insure pension, medical service, unemployment, work-related injury compensation and maternity pay collected 2.35 trillion yuan ($372 billion) in revenues last year, up 24.7 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, spending by social security funds rose 21.5 percent from a year ago to 1.8 trillion yuan ($285 billion).

3D TV

China's first three-dimensional TV channel began trial broadcasts on January 1.

The channel, China 3D TV Trial Channel, is jointly operated by national broadcaster CCTV and five local TV stations. Viewers with 3D TV sets and wired high-definition digital TV set-top-boxes are able to watch the channel's 3D-effect programs.

The channel will be formally launched during the upcoming Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, starting on January 23.

China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said that the launch of 3D TV services would boost the country's consumer spending, as consumers would begin to replace China's 500 million TV sets with new 3D ones.

Bird Flu Probe

The Disease Control Center of Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, said on January 2 that it had identified the virus that led to the death of a local bus driver, although the source of the virus remains unclear.

Genetic analysis of the virus indicated that it is similar to the H5N1 virus found in dead migrant birds during a 2011 avian influenza outbreak in Hong Kong. The source of the man's infection, however, has not been determined and it is not known if the case in Guangdong is related to migrant birds, the center said.

Poultry and migrant birds are the only known vectors for the human H5N1 infection, according to He Jianfeng, Director of the Epidemics Studies Institute of the Guangdong Disease Control Center.

However, He said that there was no clear evidence that the deceased man had close contact with poultry or migrant birds, and health authorities were still trying to understand how he contracted the virus.

Space Ambition

China will focus on space transportation systems, Earth satellites, human spaceflight and deep-space exploration in the next five years, said a government white paper released on December 29, 2011.

The white paper, China's Space Activities in 2011, was the third on the country's space activities issued by the State Council Information Office, following releases in 2000 and 2006.

In 2012, the country will launch the Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10 spaceships and achieve unmanned and manned rendezvous and docking with the currently orbiting Tiangong-1 vehicle, the white paper said.

China also plans to launch space laboratories, manned spaceships and space freighters, and will start research on the preliminary plan for a human landing on the moon.

In addition, China will build a space infrastructure frame composed of Earth observation satellites, communications and broadcasting satellites, plus navigation and positioning satellites.