Royalty Rule

China issued a regulation to start charging copyright fees for playing movies in Internet cafes and on long-distance buses on October 14.

The National Copyright Administration issued the regulation "in a bid to improve films' copyright protection," said Zhu Yongde, President of the China Film Copyright Association (CFCA).

Zhu said the regulation would be first carried out in eight municipalities and provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai and eastern Jiangsu Province.

Officials said the CFCA would begin collecting copyright royalties on January 1, 2011.

Precious Farmland

The country's summer grain output inched down 0.3 percent from one year earlier to 123.1 million tons in the first half of this year after a prolonged drought in southwest China. It was the first decline in seven years for China's summer grain output.

To ensure grain security, China set a "red line" to guarantee its arable land never shrinks to less than 120 million hectares.

According to statistics from China's Ministry of Land and Resources, the country is already edging dangerously close to its "red line," with just 121.7 million hectares available as of the end of last year.

China lost 8.2 million hectares of arable land from 1997 to 2009.

Analysts believed several major factors contributed to the arable land loss, such as increasing use of arable land for construction purposes, forest or grassland replanting programs as well as damage caused by natural disasters.

Caring Diabetics

China began a three-year project to train 100,000 community-level doctors in diabetes prevention and treatment on October 20.

The Ministry of Health and the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association are the program's sponsors.

China has 94 million diabetics aged over 20 years, accounting for 9.7 percent of the total population above that age, according to a survey by the Society of Diabetes of the China Medical Association released earlier this year.

Under the project, diabetes experts will give lectures at grassroots hospitals and coach local doctors.

The project also features a web-based learning platform, which is expected to deliver diabetes training to over 400,000 subscribers each year.

The project will also raise public awareness of diabetes prevention and treatment.

Energetic Efforts

China has become a leader in clean energy efforts, outstripping the United States and Japan, a study commissioned by Australia's Climate Institute showed on October 19.

Global research unveiled countries including Britain, China and the United States already have set up a higher direct and indirect carbon pricing.

The Vivid Economics report, commissioned by Australia's Climate Institute think-tank, showed China's incentives to encourage low-carbon generation, such as solar and wind power, are almost triple those in the United States.

Measures to encourage renewable energy, as well as imposing taxes on dirtier forms of generation, like burning coal, has placed China above the United States, Japan, Australia and South Korea in a six-country study, while only second to Britain.

The report indicated that the main driver of China's performance was its commitment to shutting down more than 100 small coal-fired power plants for cleaner coal stations by 2011, which would reduce emissions by 15 percent.