Society

The top official of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has ordered a harsh crackdown on religious extremists in the latest clampdown on outbursts of violence.

Zhang Chunxian, secretary of Xinjiang regional committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), made the pledge at a regional government meeting in the wake of a trio of deadly attacks in the region.

Zhang ordered cadres and officials to rely on the public to unswervingly curb illegal religious activities and crack down on the use of the religion to incite violence or organize terrorist attacks, local media reported Monday.

21th Feb 2006, Wang Meng won her gold medal of Winter Olympics in Turin.

Four-time Winter Olympic champion Wang Meng was expelled from the Chinese national short track speed skating team after a drunken brawl with team manager, announced the country's sports governing body on Thursday evening.

"Wang Meng is expelled from the national team and is banned from international competitions as her conduct has violated the team's disciplines and jeopardized the sport's image," read a statement released late Thursday by China's General Administration of Sport.

Wang, 26, had been earlier suspended under an interim castigation following an incident at a training camp based in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao on July 24.

A strike by Chinese cab drivers in the eastern tourist city of Hangzhou stretched into a third day on Wednesday, highlighting frustration by migrant workers nationwide struggling with high costs.

More than 100 drivers, mostly from heavily rural central Henan province, as well as their families, gathered under a bridge in the suburbs of the scenic city about 190 km (120 miles) southwest of Shanghai, demanding higher wages.

About 1,500 disgruntled taxi drivers started the strike at rush hour on Monday morning, according to state media. Cabbies said many thousands more have since joined, but more taxis were seen on roads in the city centre, a popular tourist destination with the famed West Lake, on Wednesday compared with the previous day when they had all but deserted the area.

Partly because of a string of malfunctions and the July 23 train crash in Wenzhou, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway was not as popular in its first month of operation as many had expected.

In a news release on Monday, the Ministry of Railways said the railway had transported 5.26 million passengers from July 1 to July 31, or 170,000 passengers a day on average.

And an average of 179 trains - including both those that run at 200 km/h and at 300 km/h trains - were on the line every day, and the trains had an occupancy rate of 107 percent, the ministry said.