FRESH FLOWERS: Rapeseed flowers blossom in Luoping County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, on January 22. The golden beauty will last until late June (MAO HONG)

Gender Imbalance

The gap between the number of boys and girls born in China was reduced slightly in 2012, the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) said on January 22.

The gender ratio stood at 117.7 newborn boys for every 100 baby girls in 2012, a decline of 0.08 from the previous year, according to the census data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The country still faces the arduous task in fixing its gender imbalance, the NPFPC said.

A normal gender ratio at birth should stand from 103 to 107 boys for every 100 girls, according to the commission.

Since fetal ultrasounds became common in China in the 1980s, the country's boy-to-girl birth ratio has been hovering at a high level, reaching a record high of 120.56 in 2008.

Exports Survey

China's drug safety watchdog on January 18, ordered a survey over exports of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) used by the country's chemical pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The State Food and Drug Administration said firms need to report names, license numbers and major export destinations of their API, and whether they have got a European certificate for good manufacturing practice.

China is the world's biggest exporter and second largest producer of API.

In China, chemical engineering enterprises can sell their chemical ingredients products as API without approval from drug safety authorities, which may put drug safety at risk.

High-End Server

The first high-end server independently developed by a Chinese company was officially put on the market on January 22, a step that it is thought will help break the dominance of foreign companies.

The Tiansuo K1 System, a fault-tolerant server developed by the Inspur Group Co. based in east China's Shandong Province, made its debut in Beijing after four years of research and development costing 750 million yuan ($120 million).

The server's debut ends a situation in which core equipment for China's information network has been controlled by foreign companies, Yang Xianwu, Deputy Director of the High and New Technology Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said at the launch ceremony.

China has been dependent on imports of high-end servers for a long time, and the technology and market are monopolized by international giants including IBM and HP.

High-end servers have much higher processing capacity and are the core equipment for financial, telecommunications, energy and other important industries.