Society

At least 51 children in East China's Jiangsu province were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood, the latest lead poisoning scandal after a string of such cases last year, sounding new alarms for heavy metal pollution in China.

Medical checks for 110 children younger than 16 in Dafeng, Jiangsu, showed 51 tested positive for high lead levels, said Dafeng's municipal government on its website yesterday. 

Dafeng Shengxiang Power Supply Co Ltd, a lead-acid battery manufacturer, was held responsible for the poisoning. The company is located less than 100 meters away from the Hekou village where residents started to complain of anorexia and vomiting among their children since August last year. The company has been ordered to stop production and relocate.

Local authorities said they will step up screening and launch free health checks for all children younger than 16, send those diagnosed with high lead levels to Shanghai for medical treatment, and provide guidance for the nutrition of children with lower lead levels to remove the toxin.

But such promises failed to appease angry villagers.

A villager cries over his grandchild's suffering from lead poisoning in this recent photo.

A 50-year-old journalist has been sentenced to 16 years in jail for taking bribes to cover up a mine disaster in Hebei province in July 2008.

Li Junqi, former director of the Hebei bureau of Farmers' Daily, is believed to be the first of the 10 reporters involved in the scandal to receive criminal punishment.

Thirty-four miners and a rescuer died after a blast ripped through the Lijiawa mine in Yuxian county on July 14, 2008, three weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

According to local media reports, mine bosses relocated bodies, destroyed evidence and paid the journalists 2.6 million yuan ($380,000) to cover up the disaster, keeping the tragedy from appearing in newspapers for 85 days.

Following a State Council probe into the accident, the 10 journalists confessed to taking bribes, resulting in the prosecution of 48 local officials.

The identities of the 10 journalists have not been made public, but reports claim Guan Jian, a Beijing journalist from China Internet Weekly, and Li were among them.

While pundits pondered whether President Barack Obama, on his first trip to China, had been out maneuvered by President Hu Jintao or whether he had achieved his objectives with quiet diplomacy, a bigger, underreported, story was developing. China's leaders have recognized that for the Communist Party to retain its status as China's ruling party it must elevate its commitment to learning and innovation. Although previous generations of China’s senior leaders have emphasized learning, it now has been made prime Party policy--which will likely present a significant challenge to America's economic competitiveness.

Recently I sat down with Politburo Member and rising star in Chinese politics, Li Yuanchao, a champion of the learning-minded policy. A longtime colleague of China’s President Hu Jintao, Li is currently head of the Party's powerful Organization Department, which appoints and trains senior officials in government and executives in state-owned enterprises, a critical function in government and the economy. Li has pioneered new mechanisms for training and oversight of officials and executives, and has enhanced transparency in the process of governance in order to better serve the public interest.

Eight steel workers were confirmed dead on arrival to hospital Monday in Dalian, a coastal city in northeastern China's Liaoning province, local work safety watchdog said Tuesday morning.

According to Yang Jikui, head of the city's work safety bureau, the eight workers fainted suddenly at around 4:45 p.m. Monday when they were repairing an electrical device in a small underground pump workshop in the No. 1 steel plant of Dalian Special Steel Co. Ltd., affiliated to the Dongbei Special Steel Group.