June 2:
China is reforming the traditional petition system whereby thousands journey to Beijing every year to seek redress from the central authorities for local problems. Petitioners’ gripes often include housing demolition and relocation, land requisition, judicial injustice, environmental degradation, and local criminal syndicates. The new policy, which is the brainchild of the National People's Congress Legislative Affairs Commission under the State Council, “is to set up permanent offices and ‘letters-and visitors-receiving centers’ in various provinces and cities under the name of State Bureau for Letters and Visits to work with the local officials to dissolve difficulties,” Ta Kung Pao reports. To initiate reform the CCP Central Committee recently hosted more than 20 state and provincial level agencies at its "Joint Conference to Concentrate Efforts in Handling Issues Regarding Petition Letters and Visits and Mass Incidents."
[Editor’s Note: Local officials regard ordinary people's petitions as a threat and obstruct their pilgrimages. Some provinces have established “petitioner interception offices” to detain and prevent citizens from reaching Beijing. Every year new disturbing cases are reviled. “For example, a petitioner from Xintai in Shandong was forcibly sent to a mental hospital. This does not help solving the problem,” wrote the Beijing-leaning Hong Kong daily, “it intensifies the contradiction between the petitioners and the local government.”]
June 8:
All computers sold in China as of July 1 will be shipped with "Green Dam-Youth Escort" software that blocks access to contraband websites. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from "harmful" content such as pornography. But Beijing’s history of censoring a broad range of web content has raised concern among foreign industry officials and in Washington that the new effort could increase government control over Chinese cyberspace. The notice, The Wall Street Journal reports, could force PC manufacturers to choose between refusing a government order in a major market or opening themselves to charges of abetting censorship.
June 12:
The China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has won a milestone battle against its state energy companies. After discovering that Huadian and Huaneng, China's two largest power companies, had started work on two hydroelectric dams without Beijing’s permission the ministry successfully halted the projects and got an order preventing further dams on the Yunnan province’s Jinsha river. The two companies, which generate around a fifth of China's electricity between them, were planning to spend 200 billion yuan on eight dams along the Jinsha. A spokesman for the ministry said without proper designs and environmental protection measures the dams would damage the ecology of the river and hurt the local communities. "The hydropower resources along the Jinsha River are already being over-exploited, which will damage the ecological security in the region," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, in comments carried by London’s Telegraph.
[Editor’s Note: Beijing has publicly admitted grave problems at the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges dam where government officials said there could be a "huge disaster" due to the spread of algae, poor-quality water and soil erosion, which has triggered landslides. Another four million people have now been evacuated from the area. Prime minister Wen Jiabao said solving the environmental issues created by the giant dam should be a "priority." Wen blocked the construction of dams on the Nu River in Yunnan, one of only two undammed Chinese rivers.]
June 16:
Zhejiang Province aims to triple its nuclear power installed capacity to 8,900 megawatts (MW) by 2015, the provincial government announced. The five reactors of the province's Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant (which have total generation capacity of 3,100 MW) currently account for all of the province’s nuclear power capacity. But construction has already begun on the province’s new nuclear power station’s six reactors, which will add 5,800 MW of nuclear power capacity when all are in operation in 2014, according to the Zhejiang branch of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Zhejiang intends for nuclear power to make up 12 percent of its total installed capacity, up from the current level of 6 percent, Russia’s Interfax News Agency reports.
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