ICE ART: A Russian sculptor puts the finishing touches on his work at the 27th China (Harbin) International Ice and Snow Sculpture Competition, which closed on January 8 in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province (WANG JIANWEI)

Emissions Reduction

Beijing will continue to lower emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, organic water pollution and ammoniacal nitrogen this year, local authorities said on January 8.

The four pollutants are each expected to be cut by 2 percent from levels recorded last year, according to Qiao Shufang, an official with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

In 2012, Beijing planned to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, organic water pollutants and ammoniacal nitrogen by 2 percent each and that of nitrogen oxides by 3 percent from the previous year.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection is examining Beijing's performance in the emissions cut, but Qiao said that last year's targets had already been met.

In recent years, Beijing's permanent population has been growing by over 400,000 annually, an increment itself comparable to the population of a medium-sized city. The growing population can raise organic water pollution by 15,000 tons and ammoniacal nitrogen levels3 by 1,500 tons each year. The city has to build a new sewage treatment factory every year to keep up, Qiao said.

There are also 400,000 new vehicles on the city's roads each year, increasing the difficulty of treating air pollution, Qiao added.

Lottery Sales

China's welfare lottery sales hit a record 151.03 billion yuan ($24.27 billion) in 2012, up 18 percent year on year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced on January 6, 2013.

Lottery sales raised more than 46.4 billion yuan ($7.46 billion) for public welfare funding last year, according to the ministry's press release.

Half of the country's public welfare funds go to China's treasury, while the other half is distributed to local governments across the country. Funds are then allocated to social welfare programs and charities.

The aggregate sales volume of the welfare lottery has exceeded 787.6 billion yuan ($126.56 billion) since its debut in 1987, and more than 253 billion yuan ($40.65 billion) in public welfare funds have benefited hundreds of millions of people around the country, the press release said.

According to China's Regulations on Lottery Management, money raised through lotteries is divided into three parts: the jackpot, lottery management fees and public lottery funds.

Patent Authorization

The State Intellectual Property Office granted 1.26 million patents in 2012 to domestic and overseas applicants, up 31.25 percent from a year earlier, according to data released by the office on January 8, 2013.

The office received 2.05 million patent applications from home and abroad in 2012, a year-on-year increase of 25.77 percent, Commissioner of the office Tian Lipu said at a conference on intellectual property rights.

The office grants patents in three categories: inventions, utility models and designs.

The number of invention patents granted by the office jumped 26.1 percent to 217,000 cases last year, Tian said.

By the end of 2012, China had 435,000 legitimate invention patents (not including those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), which represent an average of 3.23 invention patents for every 10,000 Chinese.

The government aims to have an average of 3.3 legitimate invention patents per 10,000 people by 2015.