Society

The 21 dancers who perform the One Thousand Hands Buddha are admired across China because of their success in spite of their deafness. Few people who watch them move to music they cannot hear know that 18 of the dancers lost their hearing because of the inappropriate use of antibiotics.

The 18 are just the tip of the iceberg. In China, more than 1 million children are deaf because of the misuse of antibiotics that include streptomycin, kanamycin and gentamicin, according to the Chinese Medical Association.

Now, a gene detector that can identify children with genes that will make them susceptible to deafness is expected to turn the tide and ensure vulnerable children are no longer exposed to antibiotics that could harm them.

China's State Food and Drug Administration has approved the detector for clinical use. The device will be made available to hospitals throughout the country, said Cheng Jing, chief technology officer with the national engineering research center of Beijing Biochip Technology.

Like a college student emerging battered and bleary-eyed from an usually vigorous Spring Break bender, China has come through its latest Lunar New Year holiday wondering whether or not it might be time to consider abstinence.

The intoxicant in question isn’t alcohol—although plenty of that gets consumed over the holiday—but fireworks.

China’s traditional New Year fireworks frenzy is among the most visually and aurally stunning experiences on Earth. It is also, however, extremely destructive. Between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8, the country saw nearly 12,000 fires, which led to 40 deaths and more than 56 million yuan, or roughly $8.5 million, in economic losses, China Daily reports citing statistics from the Ministry of Public Security. Those figures, the paper says, have “reignited” debates in a number of Chinese cities about whether fireworks should be banned.

A Lunar New Year without fireworks is a sobering thought indeed. Prior to the lifting of a previous fireworks ban in 2005, Beijing during the holiday was like the set of a post-Apocalyptic movie: stores shuttered, restaurants closed, streets empty except for the occasional stray cat or stranded foreigner lost in a haze of loneliness and boredom. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, virtually the only sound was the muffled echo of TV sets tuned to the annual Spring Festival gala on CCTV, also virtually the only source of light.

The emotional meeting of a man in southern China and a young boy believed to be his missing son has drawn fresh attention to the country's problems with child abductions and to new efforts to use the Internet to find lost children.

Peng Gaofeng had been searching for his son Wenle since 2008, when the boy, then three years old, disappeared from a public square near Mr. Peng's small payphone shop. Earlier this month, his family got a tip from an Internet user saying he saw a boy resembling Wenle in photos posted online, and on Tuesday Mr. Peng was united with the child—who had been in the care of a supposedly adoptive father who died last year. "I knew it was him immediately, though he didn't recognize me at first," a jubilant Mr. Peng said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Details of the case remain unclear and a DNA test is pending. Local police couldn't be reached for comment. But video of Mr. Peng's tearful meeting with the boy, filmed by a Chinese journalist, has become a nationwide sensation on China's Internet and in local media.

The incident has put a spotlight on widespread problems with child abductions in China, where state media reports have said there are thousands of human-trafficking gangs and where many kidnapped children have been sold to other families or forced to participate in organized begging rings in big cities, a phenomenon also relatively common in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere in Asia.

ZTE Corp.'s finance chief said Washington should promote a fair business environment with less government interference, expressing frustration at the Chinese telecommunications-equipment maker's efforts to expand in the U.S.

ZTE and rival Huawei Technologies Co. have faced concerns in the U.S., Europe and India about potential Chinese government influence over the companies. ZTE encountered political obstacles when trying to supply network equipment to U.S. operator Sprint Nextel Corp.

Meanwhile, officials in China and the U.S. have called on each other to open their markets further.

"For Sprint last year, we should have had the qualifications to become their key partner. The government should promote a fair, equitable, normal and free commercial environment and it shouldn't interfere," Chief Financial Officer Wei Zaisheng said in an interview Wednesday.