INCREASING COVERAGE Shanghai recently expanded its rules as to who is eligible to receive A/H1N1 flu vaccinations to cover students and professors of institutions of higher learning as well as migrant workers (LIU YING)

Climate Talks

China and a number of other developing nations on December 16 protested an attempt by the Danish presidency of the Copenhagen climate talks to put forward draft agreement texts without consulting other parties.

"This is a party-driven process. You can't just put forward some texts from the sky," China's chief negotiator Su Wei said at the conference after an announcement by the Danish presidency on the drafts.

It has been agreed that the only legitimate basis for discussion on the outcome of the Copenhagen talks will be based on the work of the two major working groups during the conference, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention and Ad Hoc Working Group under the Kyoto Protocol, Su said.

The move by the Danish presidency "would very much endanger a successful outcome in Copenhagen," Su said.

The texts also drew criticism from India, Brazil and other developing nations, as well as some non-governmental organizations.

Credit Tightening

China will increase efforts to prevent and crack down on crimes related to credit cards, the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on December 15.

The announcement came after China's Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced a judicial interpretation on the same day that clarifies several Criminal Law articles concerning credit card fraud.

The central bank said in a statement that it would also closely work with the Ministry of Public Security in a 10-month campaign to fight crimes related to bank cards.

Under the interpretation, offenders could face 10 years to life imprisonment, as well as a fine as high as 500,000 yuan ($73,500), if a case involves more than 25 fake credit cards. Card users could be charged if they intentionally delay payment three months after the second notice of a card-issuing bank arrives.

R&D Budget

Spending on research and development (R&D) saw a year-on-year increase in China in 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on December 15.

R&D spending reached 461.6 billion yuan ($67.9 billion) in 2008, up 24 percent year on year. It accounted for 1.5 percent of the national gross domestic product, 0.1 percentage points higher than in 2007, the NBS figures show.

Companies' R&D expenditures were 338.2 billion yuan ($49.7 billion) in 2008, up 26 percent year on year, which accounted for 73 percent of the total. Other expenditures came from government research institutes and institutions of higher learning, according to the NBS.

New Mobile Era

The number of Chinese users of third-generation mobile technology, or 3G, had hit 9.77 million by the end of October, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on December 15.

China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, the country's top three telecommunications service providers, have invested over 102 billion yuan ($15 billion) in 3G network construction this year, which falls short of the target investment of 143.5 billion yuan ($21.1 billion), according to MIIT figures.

China Mobile, the country's biggest wireless service provider, took 3.94 million of the 9.77 million registered 3G customers.