Film Director Awarded

(XINHUA)

A documentary titled Three Sisters , directed by Chinese film director Wang Bing, won the Best Picture Award in the Horizon section of this year's Venice Film Festival on September 9.

The film faithfully records the lives of three sisters in a village of southwest China's Yunnan Province, whose parents went to make a living in cities and left them at home. Wang came across the three girls in Yunnan, and asked if they could offer him anything to eat. The girls welcomed him to their home and served potatoes they had cooked. Impressed with the children's happy attitudes despite a poor and difficult life in a rural area, Wang decided to make a film about the sisters.

Wang is known for making documentaries using digital film technology. He said he was encouraged by the prestigious honor, which he had never imagined winning.

Protected Sea Zones

China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA) on September 11 released a series of measures to select and protect areas as the base points of the country's territorial sea, a move to "ensure the country's maritime interests."

According to the measures, which were revealed in a statement posted on the SOA's official website on September 12, the administration is responsible for supervising and guiding the selection and protection of the areas for territorial sea base points, while detailed selecting and marking work should be carried out by provincial-level governments that have jurisdiction over the area where the base points are located.

The measures came after the Chinese Government announced on September 10 the base points and baselines of the territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands and their affiliated islets, as well as the names and coordinates of 17 base points.

The SOA statement said that a country has the same sovereignty over its territorial sea as it does over territorial land, and such sovereignty extends to the seabed and subsoil as well as the air space above it.

Student Village Officials

China has developed nearly 300,000 students into village officials, with roughly two thirds of them incumbent, according to the latest data.

The figures, released at a working conference of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, also showed that 5,000 of them have served as village heads.

Li Yuanchao, head of the organization department, urged organization officials to review the work on students-turned-officials and to improve the system, so that they can serve as the backbones in building a new so-cialist countryside.

According to a statement issued after the conference, these officials are supposed to offer information, technology, policy education and law services to farmers.

Besides, greater efforts will be made to improve their employment, on-job education and promotion opportunities, and tougher tasks should be assigned to these young people, it was suggested.

Higher-Educated Soldiers

China will recruit more well-educated young people into the army, according to a national recruitment tele-conference held on September 12.

According to the conference, China aims to recruit more young people with high-school diplomas and above. Priority will be given to recruitment of college graduates and students. Young people with advanced degrees and fresh college graduates will be given preference.

Winter recruitment will last from November 1 to December 31. Online application has already been opened to the public.

Hybrid Cars

On September 12, Chinese experts called for the development of the hybrid auto industry in the country for the purpose of reducing emissions.

"Fully electric cars will not be widely used in China in the short-term due to high production costs and a lack of core technology and accompanying infrastructure," Dong Yang, Executive Vice President of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said at a symposium in Beijing.

The country should first popularize hybrid cars, as hybrid technology can effectively reduce fuel consumption and its development will accelerate the industrialization of purely electric vehicles, Dong said.

Sales of fully electric cars and hybrid autos reached 5,579 units and 2,580 units, respectively, last year, dwarfed by the country's total sales of 18.55 million vehicles.

Aid for the Disabled

The Chinese Government has vowed to increase financial support for, as well as encourage public investment in, disability care services, according to the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF).

Such services are designed to provide all-around support, including rehabilitation, medical treatment, education, training and employment, for both mentally and physically handicapped adults.

According to a circular jointly released on September 12 by eight government departments that include the CDPF and the ministries of finance and civil affairs, more funds will be spent on improving care center infrastructure and boosting general public service centers' abilities to host the disabled.

The document came two weeks after a survey conducted by the country's legislators revealed that about 80 percent of disabled respondents said they are in dire need of medical and rehabilitation services, as more than half of the 547,000 communities or villages surveyed do not provide rehabilitation services for the disabled.

China has more than 85 million disabled people, and their living conditions could involve about 260 million people if their family members are taken into account, according to the survey.

Investment in Housing

China invested 820 billion yuan ($129.4 billion) in building affordable housing units for low-income groups in the first eight months of this year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) said on September 10.

Local governments across the country started building 6.5 million governmentsubsidized housing units from January to August, up from 5.8 million units in the first seven months of the year, according to the MOHURD.

The construction of affordable housing in August brought the government one step closer to achieving its goal of starting construction on over 7 million units this year as part of its five-year plan to build 36 million such units by 2015.

Construction on 4.2 million affordable housing units was basically completed from January to August after pooling a total investment of 820 billion yuan ($130.2 billion).

Foreigners' Insurance

More than 120,000 foreigners have subscribed to China's social security system so far, Hu Xiaoyi, Vice Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said on September 10.

Hu said at a press conference that local governments have been actively promoting the work since China offered to cover foreign employees by its social safety net last year.

The social insurance scheme that took effect on October 15 last year allows foreigners with work permits in China to receive the same retirement, unemployment, medical, work injury and maternity benefits as Chinese citizens.

There are more than 200,000 foreigners with work permits living in China, according to the ministry.