Blast Off for Nigeria’s China Connection

Nigerian officials and space scientists cheer at the successful launch of a China-made communications satellite at Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on May 14.

The communications satellite,

the first of its kind in Africa, will be used to meet Nigeria’s growing demands in the areas of telecommunications, televised broadcasting and broadband multimedia service. Nigeria is the first foreign buyer to purchase both the satellite and its launching

service from China.

The deal is part of ongoing

Sino-African bilateral cooperation and business activities that have seen a big increase in recent years.

The carrier rocket, Long March 3-B booster, carrying the communications satellite into a preset orbit, blasts off at Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

SOCIETY

Space Ambitions

China’s State Council, or the cabinet, has recently approved the country’s 11th five-year (2006-10) plan on space development at a conference. According to the plan, China will establish a space laboratory and conduct spacewalk by 2010.

China will continue to conduct manned space flights and lunar exploration. Other plans include a moon orbit in 2007 to acquire “three-dimensional pictures;” rendezvous and docking of space craft; development of a hard-X ray modulation telescope for China’s first astronomical satellite in 2010 to research black holes; the launch of the Shijian-10 scientific recoverable satellite in 2009 to conduct micro-gravity; and space life experiments.

Weekly Flight Called For

Li Weiyi, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, says the time is right to establish weekend and more regular charter flights between the mainland and Taiwan, in addition to the charter flights offered during major festivals.

Answering questions at a press conference on May 16, Li said so far all technical problems have been solved in running the cross-strait direct charter flights.

Direct transport links between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan were cut off after the civil war in the late 1940s. It took years of negotiations to reestablish direct transportation between the mainland and Taiwan. In 2005, airline companies on the mainland and in Taiwan for the first time in decades operated non-stop charter flights across the Taiwan Strait for major traditional Chinese holidays, which have been dealing with rising passenger traffic.

Arable Land in Red

Experts have warned that China’s arable land might drop below the red line of 120 million hectares in six years due to rampant illegal use. For China, retaining 120 million hectares of arable land until 2020 is the bottom line to guarantee its food safety.

The Ministry of Land and Resources recently announced the land use plan for this year, saying the area of cultivated land to be used for construction will be basically the same as last year.

But official statistics show construction took up 289,000 hectares of farmland last year, slightly more than the planned 267,000 hectares. The area of arable land has shrunk by 307,000 hectares in the past year.

“If arable land shrinks at such a pace, the red line will be breached in six years,” an official was quoted by Shanghai-based China Business News as saying.

New Press Head

China’s State Council has appointed Liu Binjie head of the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), replacing 61-year-old Long Xinmin, who was given a new position as deputy director of the Party History Research Center of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in April.

Liu, 59, former Deputy Director of GAPP, is a native of Changwu, in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

Liu worked at a school and later a state-owned metal company before he began his studies in economics at Beijing Normal University and philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing in 1978.

In 1995 he was appointed assistant to the governor of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, and four years later he became director of the publicity department of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee. Liu was appointed deputy director of the GAPP in 2002.

Trade Unions Boom

The All China Federation of Trade Unions released a bluepaper on its work in 2006 to safeguard the legal interests of the labor force on May 15.

The report demonstrates that the numbers of new trade unions and new union members over the last year have both reached record levels. By the end of September 2006, the total number of China’s trade unions had reached 1.32 million, up by 12.7 percent over the same period of the previous year; the population of union members had reached 170 million; 54.5 percent of overseas companies had trade unions and 55.5 percent of their employees had joined a union.

Rescuing Abducted Sailors

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular press conference on May 17 China is doing everything it can to save crew members on two South Korean fishing vessels hijacked off the Somali coast on May 15.

“For the Chinese Government, the safety of the crew on the hijacked Republic of Korea (ROK) vessels is a priority. The Foreign Ministry is coordinating with various countries to secure the release of all the crew,” said Jiang.

An unidentified armed group, believed to be Somali pirates, seized the Yemen-bound fishing trawlers christened Mavuno I and Mavuno II.

The 22 crew members including 10 Chinese were aboard the Tanzanian-registered ships owned by ROK’s Daechang Fishing Co. when they were seized about 210 nautical miles (about 389 km) off the Somali capital of Mogadishu.