The Communist Party of China (CPC) will convene its 18th national congress in the second half of 2012 in Beijing, the CPC Central Committee announced after concluding a plenum on October 18.

The plenum approved a decision to deepen the reform of China's cultural system and promote the development of cultural industries.

The country will work to improve Chinese citizens' sense of identity and confidence in Chinese culture, according to a statement issued after the plenum. It also said the government will devote more resources to boosting public cultural services.

Cross-Straits Meeting

Chen Yunlin, President of the Chinese mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Chiang Pin-kung, Chairman of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), held their seventh round of talks since June 2008 in north China's Tianjin Municipality on October 20-21.

In addition to signing a cross-Straits nuclear power security cooperation agreement, they exchanged views on the implementation of previously ratified agreements and on the agendas for future talks.

Authorized by both sides to handle cross- Straits affairs, ARATS and SEF have, in previous talks, signed 15 agreements covering multiple fields of cooperation across the Taiwan Straits.

Lawyer Boom

The number of licensed lawyers in China has reached 200,000, a massive increase from just several hundred in 1979 when the legal profession was re-established, according to the latest figures disclosed at the Ninth China Lawyer Forum on October 18.

China currently has more than 250,000 practicing lawyers and more than 17,000 registered law firms.

During the 2006-10 period, the number of litigation, non-litigation and legal aid cases handled by lawyers in China reached around 10 million, 5 million and 1 million, respectively, according to the forum.

Forestry Cooperation

China spent a total of $1.5 billion worth of foreign loans and grants on its forestry sector by the end of 2010, said the State Forestry Administration.

China started international cooperation on forestry development in 1985.

Foreign funds, together with 8.7 billion yuan ($1.37 billion) of domestic funds, have allowed the forestation of a total of 5.82 million hectares of previously bare land and increased the country's standing timber volume by 550 million cubic meters.

By the end of 2010, China had launched 21 forestry projects in 23 provincial regions with assistance from foreign financial organizations. Institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank provided technical assistance on aspects of environmental improvement, bio-diversity protection and poverty reduction.

Millet Discovery

Chinese archaeologists said they had found evidence of the cultivation of glutinous millet in the central province of Hebei that could date back 10,000 years; the earliest evidence of millet cultivation anywhere in the world.

Lab tests showed that the remains of glutinous millet found at archaeological sites in Cishan Village in Wu'an City were harvested during the Neolithic Era between 8,700 to 10,000 years ago, according to sources with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of China Academy of Sciences.

This means Cishan was the birthplace of the crop.

Archaeologists have also found remains of foxtail millet in the pits, which could date back to between 8,700 and 7,500 years. "This would be the earliest evidence of the crop's cultivation, indicating Cishan was the birthplace of foxtail millet, too," said Lu Houyuan, a scientist with the institute, on October 16.