Society

At 11:45 the 14th of April, in Kunming city, a car crash between a sedan and a bus shows that sedan can be much powerful than a huge bus.

This accident cause 11 injuries including bus driver, and local police is conducting an investigation into the causes of the accident.

 

    Two officials who were disciplined in the tainted milk scandal that sickened hundreds of thousands of children have been reappointed to new posts, sources said yesterday.

    Bao Junkai, former deputy director general of the food production supervision department of General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) was among the latest eight senior officials fired or demoted for slack supervision with regard to the Sanlu scam, uncovered last September. At least six infants died and almost 300,000 fell ill after consuming tainted milk.

    Liu Daqun, former director of the agricultural department in Hebei province, where the dairy at the center of the contamination was based, is now the mayor and deputy party secretary of Xingtai, a city in Hebei, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Li was also severely reprimanded in March.

    Bao has been appointed the Party secretary and head of AQSIQ's Anhui provincial bureau since last December, when the milk power scandal was still in focus, the website of Anhui Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine shows.

    AQSIQ yesterday said the appointment of Bao is in line with legal procedure.

    The website published a number of news releases containing news about Bao - his visiting retired officials, going on business study and inspection tours in the province.

    The 52-year-old Jiangsu native has had a long tenure in AQSIQ. When the milk scam broke out, he was serving as both deputy chief of food security bureau and deputy director general of food production supervision department.

    Some Internet users said his comeback was strange and "trampled public feelings".

    Several officials found partially responsible for major accidents or scandals have mysteriously come back to new posts.

    Deputy county chief Wang Zhenjun of Hongdong county, Shanxi province, who was in office during the fatal mud-rock flow causing 254 deaths last year, returned as assistant county chief recently.

    "It is unthinkable for a senior qualification inspection official to be secretly promoted to another post when the whole country was still outraged and the central government still investigating the case," a netizen named Wanlai wrote on Xinhuanet.com, adding that such 'tainted' officials could be reused again if they corrected their mistakes and were proved eligible for new posts.

    Ren Jin, a professor with National School of Administration, said the absence of an officials' accountability mechanism allowed the easy return of questionable officials.

Chinese fireworks producers are ready to illuminate the 2012 London Olympics, said mayor of the country's most famous fireworks manufacturing city on Thursday.

More than 200 new products and 60 of the most up-to-date fireworks technologies would debut in May at the 9th China International Fireworks Festival in Liuyang City, Hunan Province, said Liang Zhong, mayor of Liuyang.

"Many of them are especially designed in hope of being selected for the 2012 London Olympics fireworks show," he said.

Liuyang, where fireworks production provides jobs to 300,000 people, is acknowledged as the cradle and the largest manufacturing base of fireworks.

The city was the main provider for the dazzling fireworks displays at the Beijing Olympics.

"We went to London in March, at the invitation of the mayor, to meet officials with the Organizing Committee of the London Games," said Zhao Weiping, head of the fireworks team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games opening and closing ceremonies and chairman of the Liuyang-based Panda Fireworks Group. "They were very interested in our panda-shaped fireworks."

Zhao said they had prepared to provide fireworks for the London event and were working to make their products more environment-friendly.

Five major trading cities have got the nod from the central government to use the yuan in overseas trade settlement - seen as one more step in China's recent moves to expand the use of its currency globally.

Shanghai and four cities in the Pearl River Delta - Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhuhai - have been designated for the purpose, said a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday. The Pearl River Delta boasts the country's largest cluster of export-oriented manufacturing operations.

The move is aimed at reducing the risk from exchange rate fluctuations and giving impetus to declining overseas trade, according to a statement posted on the government website.

Analysts said the experimental use of the yuan in trade settlement also reflects policymakers' rising concern over the shaky prospects of the US currency, of which China has large reserves from previous trade growth, and their willingness to gradually expand the yuan's use globally.

"The trial is the latest move toward making the yuan an international currency," Huang Weiping, professor of economics at Renmin University of China, said. "The prospect of a weaker US dollar is making the transition more imperative for China."

The mainland is trying to promote the use of the yuan among trade partners and, in the past four months, has signed 650 billion yuan (US95 billion) worth of swap agreements with Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The agreements allow them to use their yuan reserves to directly trade with the Chinese mainland within a set limit in volume.

Stephen Green, head of China Research of Standard Chartered Bank, said the swap deals would help encourage the use of the yuan as the currency of choice for international trade.