Society

China has decided to lower the operating speed for its bullet trains due to safety concerns amid an overhaul of the high-speed rail system.

The decision, made by an executive meeting of the State Council presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday, came after a bullet train crash last month in which 40 people died and nearly 200 were injured.

The decision is a signal that China is slowing its ambitious high-speed rail program, which has put the country in the same league as Japan and Europe in terms of high-speed rail development, experts said.

Tibet Lhasa Economic & Technological Development Area became the first new national industrialization demonstration base in Tibet approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, People's Daily Overseas Edition said.

The newspaper reported the development area performed well and its tax revenue in the first half of 2011 totaled 660 million yuan ($102.5 million), up 94 percent year-on-year.

During the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), Tibet made efforts to cultivate well-known plateau brands by taking advantage of mineral, Tibetan medicine, ethnic handicraft, tourism, and farming and green food industries.

There have been more than 3,300 enterprises in specialty industries with registered capital exceeding 30 billion yuan in total.

Dunhuang 2nd Aug. 2006

China has pledged to conserve water resources in the renowned oasis city of Dunhuang to prevent it from being destroyed by desertification, a top official has said.

Dunhuang of Gansu province in Northwest China, located on the ancient Silk Road, was known for the Mogao Grottoes, China's first World Heritage site, as well as its beautiful scenery.

But over-exploitation of water resources has already caused environmental deterioration, Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei told a conference on water utilization and ecological protection in Dunhuang on Saturday.

The Chinese government will not lower oil prices for the time being, as conditions for price cuts have not yet been met, the nation's economic planning agency told Xinhua Monday.

The remarks were made by the head of the pricing department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in response to claims by the public that China's current domestic prices fail to reflect falling international crude oil prices.

Global oil prices plummeted recently on concerns that the negative impact of a prolonged US debt crisis and fears of a double-dip global recession will sap oil demand.