China's trade union organizations provided 9.28 million people with free employment assistance last year, according to a statement by Chen Hao, Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), on December 24, 2013.

Chen also revealed that the ACFTU and its subsidiaries offered vocational training for 1.3 million people and helped 85,300 university graduates find jobs in 2013.

Founded on May 1, 1925, the ACFTU has 290 million members, 110 million of whom are migrant workers from rural areas working in cities.

Investing in Air

An environmental expert estimated that China needs to come up with 1.75 trillion yuan ($290 billion) for its air pollution treatment plan that will be carried out from 2013 to 2017.

While at the Fourth Caixin Summit in Beijing, Wang Jinnan, deputy head of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, said that the investment would increase China's GDP by nearly 2 trillion yuan ($329 billion) and create more than 2 million jobs.

According to Wang, 640 billion yuan ($105 billion) should go to industries focused on cleaning the air, followed by 490 billion yuan ($81 billion) on cleaner energy sources. Cleaning up motor vehicles will take up a further 210 billion yuan ($35 billion).

The State Council, China's cabinet, issued an air pollution treatment plan in September to control PM2.5, which are airborne particles of less than 2.5 microns diameter and small enough to pass into the gas exchange regions of the lungs.

The action plan requires PM2.5 in populated regions to be reduced significantly by 2017. Average PM2.5 levels in Beijing are expected to drop to 60 micrograms per cubic meter.

Suspicious Vaccines

The China Food and Drug Administration on December 20, 2013, ordered suspension of hepatitis B vaccines made by a company in south China after seven children died.

To date, four infants in Guangdong Province have died after hepatitis B vaccinations with products made by Biokangtai, a drug manufacturer in Shenzhen City in the same province, according to a statement made by the local disease control and prevention center on December 23, 2013.

The four deaths in Guangdong occurred in Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Shenzhen and Meizhou, but the Zhongshan case has been determined as unrelated to the vaccine, as the child had died of pneumonia, according to the center.

Autopsy results have not yet been released for the other three cases. The cause of the death can only be confirmed after autopsies, which normally take 30 working days.

Two babies in neighboring Hunan Province and another in southwest China's Sichuan Province died under similar circumstances, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Biokangtai is a major supplier of free hepatitis B vaccines, accounting for 60 percent of the market share in China. The company released a statement on December 16 claiming that "coincidental events are commonplace and easy to misinterpret."