RURAL ARTISTS: A visitor looks at paintings on display during an exhibition of Chinese painters at the UN headquarters in New York City on May 27. The two-day event, showing dozens of masterpieces selected from all regions across China, attracted senior UN officials, ambassadors as well as journalists from different countries (NIU XIAOLEI)

Environmental Court

A special court for environmental cases was opened on May 23 in southeast China's Fujian Province. It is the country's first such specialized judiciary organ.

The court affiliated to the Fujian Provincial Higher People's Court has recruited 12 environmental, agricultural, marine and mineral experts as technical consultants.

Entrusted by the court, the consultants can appear in court to provide technical consultation and interpretation.

Fujian was approved as China's first "ecological progress demonstration zone" in April to explore and pilot judicial protection of the environment.

Since 2009, several county- and city-level courts in the province have experimented in setting up divisions specializing in forestry, mining, water and resources, atmosphere and water pollution cases.

Drought Delay

A planned test run of the middle route of China's ambitious South-North Water Diversion Project on June 1 is likely to be postponed due to a drought in the area from which the water is sourced.

Liu Song, deputy head of the Control Center of the Danjiangkou Reservoir Management Bureau, said that the water level in the reservoir was measured at only 140.1 meters on May 23, far from the required 170 meters.

The plan was for water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China's Hubei Province to feed into the pipeline between June 1 and August 20 on a trial basis.

After 10 years of construction, the middle route water diversion system has linked the reservoir with 19 arid cities including Beijing and Tianjin and more than 100 smaller towns in north China.

However, drought affecting the Hanjiang River since winter has led to a decrease in the level of water stored in the reservoir, according to the bureau.

The Hanjiang River is the largest tributary of China's longest river, the Yangtze. Hydrological experts believe its current drought does not suggest a long-term trend.

Overseas Patents

The growth in filings of Chinese patents abroad has increased significantly since 2000, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

A WIPO report released on May 23 noted that between 2000 and 2005, the average annual growth rate of overseas patent filings by applicants from China reached 40 percent, and has continued to grow by 23 percent since 2005.

WIPO spokesperson Edward Harris attributed the increase to improved quality of innovations and inventions in China.

In terms of absolute numbers, the United States is the largest recipient of Chinese foreign-oriented patent filings, with close to 50,000 applications between 1970 and 2012, followed by Europe, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Canada.

Statistics also showed that almost 70 percent of Chinese patent families filed overseas were owned by firms, while the share of universities and research institutes claimed around 6 percent.

The report said that digital communication, computer technology, nanotechnology, semiconductors as well as telecommunications were the fastest growing fields among Chinese foreign-oriented patent families between 2000 and 2009.