REBIRTH CEREMONY: Residents of Beichuan County, southwest China's Sichuan Province, hold a grand celebration for the newly built county site on February 1, two and half years after their homes were destroyed during an 8.0-magnitude earthquake on May 12, 2008 (LI QIAOQIAO)

Drought Tolls

The Ministry of Agriculture on February 9 urged more measures be taken to minimize the impact of a lasting drought in central and north China.

The country's winter wheat-producing regions had suffered a severe drought since October 2010, and the possibility of a spring drought is growing, Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

As of February 9, the drought had affected about 7.73 million hectares of winter wheat in eight provinces, including Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Jiangsu.

Drought-affected areas accounted for 42.4 percent of the total winter wheat-growing areas in the eight provinces, said the statement of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Online Whistle-Blowing

Chinese people can now tip the country's courts off online if they think a judge or court official has acted in a corrupt manner, and can also see how their tip-offs develop online.

All provincial courts on China's mainland have launched websites to collect tips against corrupt judges, following the launch of a tip-off website by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said a SPC statement on February 9.

"This is an important move to facilitate public supervision and intensify a crackdown on corruption in the court system," the statement said.

The SPC website, jubao.court.gov.cn, opened in May 2009, and provincial courts have begun to launch similar websites this month.

All provincial courts' websites would be linked to the SPC website when they went online, the statement said.

The courts' disciplinary watchdogs are required to respond to the tip-offs and information on the websites within 10 working days and detail how they have responded to them online.

Justice Aid

The funds for legal aid in China surged by 32.8 percent to 1 billion yuan ($152 million) in 2010, as central and provincial governments stepped up support, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The Central Government allocated 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) last year to help with legal aid in localities, while another 50 million yuan ($7.6 million) was raised via lotteries.

Currently, there are 3,374 legal aid organizations in China. Nearly 200,000 lawyers, 80,000 grassroots law workers and tens of thousands of volunteers have taken part in legal aid.

More than 700,000 cases were handled with legal aid last year, statistics from the Ministry of Justice show.

Revitalizing Waterways

China will establish a smooth, efficient, safe and environment-friendly inland water transport network by 2020, said a statement posted on the Central Government's website on January 30.

After 10 years of development, China will have 19,000 km of navigable waterways and national waterway freight traffic is expected to rise to more than 3 billion tons, according to the statement.

Also, the country will continue to harness and develop the Yangtze River, a major artery for transporting commodities, such as coal and steel, as well as other inland waterways.