Society

According to the Shenzhen traffic management department, the total number of cars in Shenzhen reached 1.7 million on December 8th, 2010. Shenzhen has become the number one city in China with high car density. The Shenzhen traffic management department estimates that Shenzhen’s maximum volume of motor vehicles will be 2.1 million according to the present number of roads in the city. That is to say that it is estimated that Shenzhen’s car number will reach its limitation in the next two years and it will be very difficult to drive.

China's pledge to ban smoking indoors looks set to go up in smoke as the Jan 9 deadline set five years ago approaches.

Despite the promise on entering the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2006, The Beijing Times reported Tuesday that China has witnessed no decline in smoking, but has 200 million more people suffering from the effects of second hand smoke over the past three years.

A report named Tobacco Control and China's Future, which will be issued on Thursday, said 3 million deaths in China will be caused by smoking in 2030, accounting for 25 percent of the total, compared with 2 to 3 percent for AIDS.

The social welfare effect of the tobacco industry has also declined sharply from 150 million yuan ($23 million) in 1998 to minus 60 billion yuan in 2010, considering the high costs including medical and labor which far outnumbered its contribution of tax and employment, the report said.

The annual death toll from tobacco-related illnesses in China could triple over the next two decades, health experts warned ahead of a deadline for the country to implement international commitments to curb smoking that activists say Beijing has failed to meet.

Chart revenue from taxes and sales by China's state-owned tobacco monopoly, and compare cigarette market sizes by retail value in China and the U.S.

In a report issued Thursday, a group of 60 Chinese public-health experts, officials and economists argued that state ownership of the tobacco industry continues to stymie real progress in fighting tobacco—despite the mounting health and financial costs.

"While the national government may know it has a problem, it still doesn't understand that the long-term costs of this problem outweigh the revenue pulled in from tobacco sales," said Zhao Ping, deputy director general of the Cancer Foundation of China, who contributed to the report. The report's authors also include Hu Angang, an economist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and Yang Gonghuan, a deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

he US envoy for policy on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) arrived in Beijing on Wednesday as part of a flurry of diplomatic activity to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Stephen Bosworth met Republic of Korea (ROK) officials in Seoul before heading to China. He is expected to meet with China's top nuclear negotiator Wu Dawei on Thursday and wrap up his Asian tour with a visit to Tokyo the same day.

While in Seoul, he expressed hopes that serious negotiations on the DPRK will start soon, AP reported. He didn't elaborate and it wasn't clear if he was referring to the stalled Six-Party Talks on nuclear disarmament or something else.

He said he would continue to coordinate closely with China.