POWERED BY NATURE: On June 23, a businessman examines a solar-powered bicycle at the first Cross-Straits Fair on Electric Motors and Home Appliances held in Ningde City, Fujian Province (LAI JIANQIANG)

Clearer Sky

Chinese cities will need to coordinate efforts to clear the sky while a new mechanism to improve regional air quality is set up. According to the latest plan released by the State Council, the system will be established by 2015.

Besides the existing pollution control program for sulfur dioxide, regional emission caps for nitrogen oxides will be established in the three "key air polluting areas"—the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province region.

Coal-consumption caps will also be piloted in some areas, according to the plan.

Powerful Informants

Whistleblowers in China have helped uncover more than 70 percent of all registered cases of work-related crimes committed by officials, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said on June 21.

Figures from the SPP show the country's prosecutors, at all levels, receive an average of more than 100,000 reports every year from whistleblowers regarding work-related crimes by government officials. SPP Deputy Chief Procurator, Ke Hanmin, said the country's various prosecutorial agencies have also established more convenient channels to collect evidence through phones, the Internet and faxes in addition to traditional written reports and personal visits.

Last year, prosecutors across the country received a total of 315,770 phone calls through special public hotlines from which they received 30,811 pieces of useful information on various cases.

Real Name

Chinese online video game players will soon need to register their real names before playing games in the virtual world, said the Ministry of Culture in a tentative regulation on the administration of online games.

The regulation, to be effective on August 1, marked China's first official document targeting the country's thriving online gaming industry. It applies to all domestic and imported multiplayer role-playing games as well as social networking games.

Online game companies are required to establish a self-censorship mechanism and ensure the lawfulness of their game contents and their operations. The regulation also protects minors from online game addition by forbidding game providers from offering them unsuitable games.

Concerned Parents

According to a blue paper on Internet use by minors in China released on June 18, many Chinese parents do not like their children using the Internet and a majority of them worry that surfing it could negatively affect school work.

The blue paper says 43 percent of parents surveyed "strongly oppose" or "relatively oppose" their child's use of the Internet while as much as 78 percent say they worry Internet use could adversely affect studying. Another 45 percent worry about their children's exposure to pornography online.

The blue paper, the first of its kind in China, was jointly published by the Career Development Center for Chinese Young Pioneers, the Center for Humanities and Social Science Studies by Young Scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Science Academic Press.

According to the blue paper, 47 percent of online community users are under 25 years old.