JUMPING FOR JOY: A model wearing creations by Tony Wear at the Shanghai Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2014 in Shanghai on October 23, the last day of the weeklong show (ZHUANG YI)

Record Maker

An auction held in Jingdezhen City, central China's Jiangxi Province—sometimes known as the nation's porcelain capital—saw the highest total value of porcelain transactions recorded at a single event on October 20, according to claims by the auction company.

The total transaction value including commission reached nearly 62 million yuan ($10 million), six times as much as last year, said Jiang Weimin, President of Jingdezhen Huayi Auction Co. Ltd.

More than 100 pieces of porcelain, which were mainly created in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, were sold at the 5-hour-long auction, Jiang said.

The auction was part of the 2013 China Jingdezhen International Ceramic Fair held on October 18-22.

Graft Convictions

A total of 32 ministerial-level officials were investigated for corruption between January 2008 and August this year, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP).

Around 13,300 of the 198,781 officials investigated under graft cases during the period were at a county level or above, according to Cao Jianming, Procurator General of the SPP, when delivering a report to a session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, on October 22.

Approximately 167,000 people were prosecuted for embezzlement and bribery, with roughly 150,000 convicted.

The number of individuals convicted for taking bribes between 2008 and 2012 increased by 19.5 percent from that in the 2003-07 period, while the number of those convicted of handing bribes increased by 60.4 percent, Cao said.

Food Security

The Chinese Government has allocated 600 million yuan ($98 million) to encourage food production, the Ministry of Finance announced on October 21.

The funds have been allocated to five major agricultural provinces—Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangxi—to subsidize food production and improve agricultural technology.

China's grain output this summer, mostly wheat, hit a record high of 132 million tons, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

The production of maize, harvested in autumn, is similarly expected to hit a record high, with total yield forecasted to be 215 million tons, according to the State Administration of Grain.

The country's grain output has risen 3.2 percent year on year, hitting 589.57 million tons in 2012, marking the ninth consecutive year of growth, according to NBS data.

Weather Modification

A report submitted to China's top legislature on October 21 said that the country creates about 50 billion tons of artificial rain each year, but extra efforts are required for natural disasters.

The report revealed that a total of 2,266 counties in China use weather modification, with artificial rain used across an area covering 5 million square km, about half of China's total land area.

The State Council, China's cabinet, has actively promoted artificial weather systems, which are operated and coordinated on a large scale, the report said.

At the same time, the country has established a geosynchronous and sun-synchronous satellite system to monitor weather conditions. A total of seven meteorological satellites are in orbit, five of them operating normally.

However, according to the report, present meteorological systems do not meet the demands for disaster prevention and relief, especially in rural areas.