Worst Drought in Three Decades

While torrential rains batter south China, northeast China's Liaoning Province is suffering its worst summer drought in 30 years that has left more than 1 million people short of drinking water, the provincial government said.

Nearly all 14 cities in Liaoning have been affected by the drought, though the situation is more serious in the northwestern and central-southern parts of the province, reported Xinhua on June 19.

The drought has affected 1.27 million people, 473,800 cattle and 1.4 million hectares of cropland, it said. The government has managed to transport water from the humid areas in the eastern part of the province, but so far only 88,500 of the affected population have had access to water ferried in by water wagons.

Dust Off Food Standards

China will update food safety standards and strengthen enforcement in order to improve food safety, Liu Pingjun, chief of the National Standardization Management Commission, said recently.

According to Liu, China had 1,965 national food safety standards at the end of 2006, 634 of which were mandatory.

China will speed up revisions to national and industry standards on farm produce and processed food products, Liu said, adding that these standards were on average 12 years old.

He said China will strive to keep its standards up to date, make sure none of them are more than four and a half years old by the end of 2010 and ensure that domestic food safety standards comply with international ones.

Cutting Red Tape for Business

China's authorities have cut through almost half of the red tape restrictions faced by entrepreneurs in establishing and operating businesses, as the government attempts to fight corruption and improve transparency.

The State Council's administrative examination and approval system reform group announced on June 19 that since 2002, the 68 government departments had rescinded or amended 1,806 of their 3,605 administrative approval items, accounting for 50.1 percent of the total.

Provincial-level governments had also cancelled more than half of their items, the group said, citing Zhejiang Province, which slashed the number of approval items from 3,251 to 630 in five years, and Chongqing, which cancelled 312 items last year alone.

More Powerful Carrier Rockets

China plans to develop a new generation of carrier rockets with an increased payload capacity in order to advance its lunar exploration program, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

The payload capacity of China's Long March carrier rockets will be increased from 9.5 tons to 25 tons, an official with the corporation said.

Huang Chunping, a leading Chinese aerospace expert, said the new generation of carrier rockets would have a large enough payload to launch a space station.

China on June 1 launched SinoSat-3, a communications satellite for radio and television broadcasting, from a Long March-3A carrier rocket, marking the 100th flight of the Long March series.

Tightened Measures Against Electronic Pollution

China is expected to issue six more regulations in the second half of 2007 to tighten pollution controls on electronic products, according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The production of electronic devices has caused pollution from toxic substances including lead, mercury and chromium.

The regulations will be issued in response to the European Union's Energy Using Products (EUP) Directive that will officially take effect in August.

The EUP Directive includes eco-friendly standards on the design, production, transportation, application and recycling of electronic products.

Without consideration of the new foreign standards, China's exports of electronics could be adversely affected, Huang Jianzhong, an MII official, said.