A TRADITIONAL DELICACY: A chef is making yuanxiao (glutinous rice flour dumpling with sweetened stuffing) in a food shop in Beijing. Yuanxiao is a special treat for the Lantern Festival on February 17, the 15th day of the first lunar month (ZHANG YU)

Public Concerns

Livelihood issues, including social security and affordable housing remain Chinese people's top concerns, say online polls before this year's full sessions of the country's top legislature and political advisory body in March.

Among the 25 listed topics, "affordable housing" had received the most votes as of February 12 in a survey on Xinhua News Agency's website.

The topic earned some 5.92 percent of the 362,126 votes cast and was followed by concerns about inflation, employment and income.

In their postings, netizens express hope the government could increase the supplies of affordable homes for low-income earners and tighten measures to rein in property prices.

Language Diversity

China is expected to launch its first examination to test proficiency in a language spoken by the Zhuang, the country's largest ethnic minority.

The State Ethnic Affairs Commission said the policy is a bid to promote the use of the tongue, which, unlike many languages belonging to ethnic groups, is still widely used.

The new test is to be held this May in Beijing and south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, home to the country's largest population of the Zhuang ethnic group, the commission said on February 11.

China has some 17 million Zhuang people, who mostly live in south China.

The Zhuang language has many dialects and another 12 linguistic subdivisions. Aiming to encourage the use of the language, officials said the test would push for the standardization of the many different dialects.

Curbing Smoking

Health experts have called on the government to strictly enforce rules meant to demand TV and film producers to show fewer scenes in which characters are seen smoking.

The call came after the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a circular on February 12, ordering makers of TV series and films to stub out smoking as much as possible from their future offerings. The circular stipulates TV and movie characters under the age of 18 may not be shown smoking or buying cigarettes. What's more, the characters in those productions are not to be smoking in public places where lighting up is banned.

China has the world's largest population of smokers, totaling 356 million in 2010.

Civil Service Threshold

China's central and provincial governments will only be allowed to recruit new civil servants, except in some special posts, from applicants with at least two years of grassroots work experience by 2012, said a senior official on February 16.

Yang Shiqiu, deputy head of the State Administration of Civil Service, told Xinhua News Agency, not offering details about what the special posts cover.

In a move to reform the civil service exam, the governments would improve the system to reserve vacancies for college graduates with experience as village officials. Workers and farmers will also be covered.

Last December, the highly competitive annual National Public Service Exam registered 1.03 million candidates for 16,000 vacancies.