ARTISTIC EYE: Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (center) comments on a child's painting at the home of a local family during a two-day inspection visit to Macao

Anti-corruption Alert

Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) Central Committee, urged the Party's anti-corruption body to "firmly correct official wrongdoings" that harm public interests.

Addressing a plenary session of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the ruling party's internal anti-corruption body, Hu said Party officials should maintain their political integrity and lead the people to overcome difficulties amid hardships.

He called on the Party's discipline organs to focus on abuse of power, bribery and misconduct, pledging that no corrupt officials would be allowed to escape punishment.

Festival Inspection

Food experts from Beijing will step up safety inspections in seven provinces ahead of the Lunar New Year, which falls on January 26, the Ministry of Health said on January 12.

The experts will crack down on non-edible substances and excessive use of additives in food during the busy holiday food sales period, ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an told a press briefing.

The inspection will cover markets, restaurants and additive producers in the provinces, including Hebei, where the melamine-contaminated milk scandal began, Mao said.

According to the ministry, the country had screened 22.4 million babies who had been fed melamine-tainted formula by the end of December and found 296,000 made sick. Hospitals treated 52,898 sick babies nationwide, with 52,582 cured.

Pollution Bills

About 15,000 enterprises were punished for pollution last year and nearly 100 people deemed responsible were disciplined, China's environmental regulator announced on January 13.

Environmental Protection Minister Zhou Shengxian told a meeting that "China made great progress last year in pollution abatement." According to Zhou, 156 projects totaling 473.7 billion yuan ($69.7 billion) were rejected last year because they were deemed to be energy-intensive or highly polluting.

Approved projects, numbering 579, will prevent the emission of 468,600 tons of sulfur dioxide and 38,400 tons of chemical oxygen, he said.

China increased urban sewage treatment capacity by 12.8 million tons daily and installed desulfurized coal-fired generating units with a combined capacity of 86 million kw.

Internet Boom

China's online population grew almost 42 percent last year to 298 million, of whom 91 percent had broadband connections, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) announced on January 13.

The rate of Internet usage reached 22.6 percent, exceeding the 21.9-percent world average for the first time, according to the CNNIC.

There were 13.57 million sites registered using .cn, the Chinese domain name. That figure, like the number of netizens and broadband connections, was first in the world, the center said.

Mobile phone Internet surfers more than doubled last year from 2007 to 117 million in December 2008, reflecting the expansion of the wireless network and lower cell phone prices.

Corporate Responsibility

More than 100 Chinese and foreign business leaders and entrepreneurs gathered in Beijing to share their thoughts on corporate social responsibility (CSR) at an international forum, which was organized by the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of China and the Communication University of China.

"The most basic and fundamental level of CSR for a corporation is to guarantee the quality and safety of their products and services," said construction material company founder Zhou Xinghe, a farmer-turned-inventor of an innovative light partition board, which saved many lives in the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province.

After the forum came a launch ceremony for China's first public-service advertisement project, which aims to promote public-service awareness through various forms of advertising.