| Devoted Village Teacher
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(XINHUA) |
The story of Zeng Zhaofu, who has been a teacher in a mountainous area for 33 years, touches many Chinese.
Zeng, 51, gave up the chance of being a village head after graduating from senior high school in 1978 and has been a teacher at a primary school in a village of central China's Jiangxi Province since then.
Besides teaching, Zeng takes good care of his students. Many of his students live far away from the school, and Zeng has voluntarily picked them up everyday for 33 years. In 2001, one of his students was about to drop out of school due to poverty. Zeng persuaded the student's family to give up the idea and has helped to pay all the school fees for the student.
Among his students, 15 of them were admitted to universities and two are post-graduate students, an outstanding accomplishment for the poverty-stricken area. Zeng was conferred with the National Outstanding Teacher Award by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2009.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a plan on March 2 to recycle 7 billion tons of industrial solid waste during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), in an effort to help ease the country's environmental deterioration. The amount is nearly double that of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).
By 2015, around 1.6 billion tons of industrial waste will be recycled annually, with a utilization ratio of 50 percent, according to the plan.
In addition, the country will reclaim a total of 350,000 mu (23,333 hectares) of land previously occupied by industrial waste, a move expected to significantly improve the country's ecological environment, during the 2011-15 period.
Passenger vehicle sales in China totaled 2.26 million units in the first two months of 2011, a decline of 1.4 percent from a year ago, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association.
Passenger vehicles include cars, sport-utility vehicles, multi-purpose vehicles and minivans.
"The market demand weakened as policymakers rolled back some incentives," said Rao Da, secretary general of the association. "The continued increase in fuel prices also mounted pressures on potential buyers."
The Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd. and Boeing on March 6 signed an agreement to jointly promote energy saving and emission reduction in the civil aviation industry.
According to the deal the two sides will together establish a technology center in Beijing to focus on research of improving fuel burning efficiency and cutting down greenhouse gas emissions in the global airline industry.
The two companies will also cooperate with China's research institutes and universities in fields including sustainable bio-fuel and telecommunication infrastructure for the airline industry.
China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) is building the nation's first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal to help handle the increasing imports of the cleaner-burning fuel.
The project, located in north China's Tianjin Municipality, costs 5.7 billion yuan ($905 million). The first phase of the project will be capable of receiving 2.2 million tons of LNG a year when operation starts next year, said CNOOC in a statement.
The second phase will be land-based, with an annual capacity of no less than 6 million tons, and is scheduled to be operational by 2015.
Five Chinese businessmen, including four from Hong Kong and one from the mainland, ranked on the Hurun Global Rich List 2012, which listed 83 global wealthy individuals with personal fortunes of at least $10 billion.
Li Ka-Shing, President of Hong Kong Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., ranked the 13th on the list, making him the richest Chinese individual with a personal fortune of $24 billion.
Zong Qinghou, General Manager of Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. Ltd., ranked 78th with a personal fortune of $10.5 billion, making him the richest man on the Chinese mainland.
Globally, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim topped the list with wealth of $55 billion.
Lin Chunping, a Chinese businessman in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, came under scrutiny for his alleged $60-million acquisition of the Atlantic Bank of America. Lin said his bank had commenced trial operation in November 2011, and had taken deposits of around $180 million.
But the news has proven untrue. According to a recent report of Xinhua News Agency, Lin registered a company in the state of Delaware of the United States in December 2011, but the company was not allowed to conduct banking businesses.
Lin admitted to his lies.
Retail property rentals and prices will see double-digit growth this year in major Chinese cities, fuelled by a burgeoning retail sector, according to a latest report jointly released by the U.S. real estate agents network Knight Frank and Beijing Holdways Information & Technology Co. Ltd.
"Tightening measures to rein in housing speculation have prompted investors to shift to the retail property sector, which is expected to outperform the office and residential segments," said Thomas Lam, head of China research at Knight Frank. "Meanwhile, international brands are continuing to expand their presence across the country, in both first- and second-tier cities."
Clothing chain H&M, for instance, will open most of its new global stores this year in China and its store portfolio on the Chinese mainland is expected to triple over the next three years. | 
