Society

North Korea says China and its Red Cross have decided to give Pyongyang relief aid to help recover from recent flooding.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday that Chinese President Hu Jintao also expressed “deep sympathy and sincere consolation” in a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Beijing - Xu Maiyong and Jiang Renjie, former vice-mayors of Hangzhou and Suzhou respectively, were executed on Tuesday morning for taking huge amounts of bribes and abusing their official powers, according to the Supreme People's Court.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Sun Jungong, spokesman for the court, announced the executions and said the Supreme People's Court will continue to battle corruption by meting out harsh punishments to those who are convicted of it.

Pakistan, which is grappling with an energy crisis, is going to seek assistance from China to implement 19 energy projects to meet water and power requirements in a meeting of Pak-China Joint Energy Working Group scheduled to be held on August 1-2 in Beijing.

Pakistan is currently working on Chashma-3 and 4 nuclear power plants and the two sides are also expected to make some progress on cooperation in constructing these projects in the upcoming first meeting of the working group. China is already extending cooperation in meeting Pakistan’s energy demand.

Federal Water and Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, who is chairman of the working group from Pakistani side, will lead a delegation to these important deliberations. He will reach Beijing today (Sunday).

The 19 projects include four power generation projects of about 2,297 megawatts, one coal power project of 405 MW, one project for development of infrastructure and mining and power generation from Thar coal, four projects of small and medium dams, five projects of transmission lines and power distribution, one project of alternative energy and two projects of geological survey.

The four power projects include 840MW Sukhi Kinari plant, 100MW Kotli plant, 157MW Madian plant and 1,200MW AES imported coal-based plant.

The deadly collision of two bullet trains in eastern Zhejiang province on Saturday, in which 39 people were killed and another 192 injured, has raised fears not only over the safety of China's fast expanding high-speed rail network but also over its high-speed development under the so-called "China model".

As Chinese officials have made clear, the core of the China model is its political system, which is in essence autocratic, with decisions and policies made by officials without public consultation. Decisions can be made and implemented quickly, making the China model more efficient than any democratic system and explaining to some extent why China hasachieved such high-speed growth over the past 30 years.

However, speed in implementing decisions may not always be a good thing. While public consultation inevitably slows due processes, if mistakes are made in formulating policy, the quicker it is put into practice the more damage it may cause.