DRILL ON: Chinese and Russian liaison officers collaborate during joint naval drills starting on July 8 near Vladivostok, Russia (ZHANG CHUNMING)

Urbanization Rate

China's urbanization rate had reached 52.57 percent by the end of 2012 but about 200 million new urbanites are without urban permanent resident permits, according to the 2012 City Development Report of China released on July 5.

Although the number of Chinese urbanites has surpassed the number of rural residents, there is still a long way to go for China to become a truly city-based nation due to the current registered permanent residence system, or hukou, said the report.

Chinese living in cities or towns with urban hukou enjoy far more benefits in education, medical service and social security than those without.

The report was created by the China Association of Mayors and has been released annually since 2001.

China had a total of 658 cities and 19,881 towns across the country at the end of 2012, according to the report.

Ex-Minister Verdict

China's former railways minister Liu Zhijun was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on July 8 for bribery and abuse of power.

As well as the suspended death sentence, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court deprived the 60-year-old of his political rights for life and confiscated all his personal property for taking bribes. Liu was also sentenced to 10 years in jail for abuse of power, according to the court verdict.

The court found that from 1986 to 2011, Liu took advantage of his positions as an official of local railway bureaus as well as the former Ministry of Railways, and helped 11 people win promotions, project deals and cargo transportation contracts. He accepted 64.6 million yuan ($10.53 million) in bribes from them during this period.

The court said that although most of economic losses have been recovered, leniency will not be given regarding Liu's crime of power abuse, as it is especially serious in terms of both circumstances and consequences.

Language's Age

Archeologists in China have confirmed that the inscriptions found on artifacts unearthed in east China's Zhejiang Province represent the earliest record of Chinese characters in history, pushing the origins of the written language back another 1,000 years.

The pottery pieces and stone vessels were unearthed at the Zhuangqiaofen archeological site between 2003 and 2006.

Experts concluded that the symbols represented the earliest known Chinese characters, which could be traced to the Liangzhu civilization during the Neolithic Age some 5,000 years ago in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, China Youth Daily reported on July 9.

The inscriptions existed some 1,000 years before oracle bone script, commonly held as the origin of the Chinese language system. Oracular inscriptions on turtle shells date back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 B.C.).

Xu Xinmin, a researcher with the Zhejiang Archeological Institute, said that the repetitive pattern of some of these symbols led archeologists to believe that the inscription, just like the oracle bone script, is a primitive version of a pictographic language.

Data Cooperation

China began providing remote-sensing satellite data to Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO) member states on July 5.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) and APSCO signed an agreement on Earth-observing satellite data-sharing at a meeting on the day.

The data will be used to aid in natural disaster reduction and relief in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the agreement.

CNSA Director Ma Xingrui, was elected president of the APSCO Council during the meeting.

APSCO is an inter-governmental organization established in 2005, with China as its host and one of its nine member states.