UNDERGROUND MEDIA: The Beijing Subway Co. announced on May 10 to lift a four-month ban to allow newspaper vendors to sell newspapers and magazines again in Beijing's subway stations starting May 12 (LI WEN)

Detention Opened

The Chinese Government is to open its detention and re-education centers to public visits from July 1 after a number of detainees' deaths.

Places opened to the public will include detainees' rooms, dining halls and rooms for reading, entertainment, inquests and medical treatment, the Ministry of Public Security said on May 12.

Visitors, including journalists and relatives of detainees, must first apply for permission from local police authorities and show their ID cards or reference letters from their employers on entry.

Administrators of the centers are required to arrange regular visiting schedules for relatives of detainees and meet them to explain living conditions and solicit opinions on their management.

Credit Card Fraud

Police in Shanghai vowed to crack down on credit card fraud by foreigners on May 10 as statistics show large-scale international fairs such as the Expo tend to attract card scammers to the host city.

Police arrested six foreigners in the first week of May withdrawing a total of 190,000 yuan ($27,800) from the city's ATMs using phony cards.

Dai Xinfu, Deputy Director of the Economic Crime Investigation Department of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, said on May 10 his department had taken a series of steps to counter any crime wave.

That involves monitoring expats in Shanghai who have committed credit card fraud during the past three years, asking the Ministry of Public Security to provide the department with foreign crime information from across China. The monitoring ATMs and POS payment machines at the Expo site and major commercial areas will also be undertaken.

Pirated Software

About 45 percent of the software installed on computers in China last year was pirated, down by 2 percentage points from the previous year, says Chinalabs.com, a consulting and research company. Operating systems had their lowest piracy rate of 27 percent.

The rates of pirated computer software have been dropping over the past four years: 66 percent in 2005, 63 percent in 2006, 56 percent in 2007 and 47 percent in 2008.

The company, which is authorized by the State Intellectual Property Office, released its annual report on software piracy on May 10, a continuation of a current five-year project.

Checking Corruption

Most people believe the Internet is an effective check on government officials' behavior, says a recent survey conducted by the People's Tribune, a biweekly magazine of the People's Daily.

About 70 percent of the 6,243 people who took part in the poll, 5,943 online users and 300 officials, said they believe government officials fear online public opinion and supervision.

Ninety percent of the respondents also considered such supervision to be good for society.

Only 22 percent of those polled said officials were not afraid of online public opinion, with the remaining 8 percent undecided.