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Xinhua News Agency
China Telecom Expected to Further Cut Internet Access Fee
China's telecom administration is considering to further lower the country's Internet access fees under the increasing pressure of Internet users, according to today's China Daily Business Weekly.
"It's a trend to cut fees to an affordable level, further price adjustments are being considered," Chen Yin, a division chief of the planning and development department with China Telecom Administration Bureau, was quoted as saying.
However, Chen, who is responsible for Internet-related prices, didn't disclose the exact schedule of the price cut.
The telecom administration had already lowered charges over Internet access by a large margin in March this year. The price cut contributed to the explosive growth of Internet users in the first half of the year.
The number of Chinese Internet users has hit 4 million by the first six months this year, according to the latest statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center.
The figures, showing the number of dial-up users at 2.56 million, have almost doubled last year's 2.1 million users.
"The growth momentum could hit more than 100 percent a year in the coming years," Mao Wei, director of the Center, told China Daily. "But another great leap this year has to do with the stimuli of price cuts."
According to the Center's survey, Chinese Internet users mainly suffer from the low speed of the connection when accessing websites and the relatively high costs. Complaints about speed represent 49.3 percent and complaints about costs account for 36.8 percent.
Xinhua News Agency
Chinese MBA Courses Looking For Better Textbooks
The Guanghua School of Management of the prestigious Beijing University is offering 200,000 yuan (24, 000 US dollars) for the writing and editing of an MBA(Master of Business Administration)-program textbook, today's China Daily Business Weekly reported.
With an offer 10 times more than that for an ordinary textbook, the school hopes to attract top quality writers, Zhang Weiying, vice director of the school, was quoted as saying by the English newspaper.
Zhang said he believed that using good textbooks is a must, a way to improve the quality of China's MBA program, although not the only way.
With MBA education developing rapidly in China, criticism has appeared, targeting the quality of the program as well as the quality of the professors and students, says the China Daily.
Zhang noted that paying a fortune for good textbooks is one of the major measures taken by the school to establish itself as an internationally recognized business school.
"In the past, all textbooks used in MBA training were translations of foreign textbooks and all the cases studies were from foreign companies," Zhang was quoted as saying. "We need textbooks written in Chinese and we need Chinese cases".
The Guanghua School of Management, which was founded in 1994, recruited 240 MBA students this year. Earlier this month, 121 students graduated from the school.
Xinhua News Agency
Chinese Financial Experts Call For More Open B Share Market
Chinese financial experts are calling for the opening of China's hard currency B-share market to domestic investors with foreign exchange deposits, according to today's China Daily Business Weekly.
"I believe this (opening) is the only way for the B-share market to get out of its difficulties," Wang Liangzhong, B-share analyst with Guangfa Securities Co. Ltd., was quoted as saying.
Allowing domestic investors to enter the market, officially reserved for foreigners and people in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, opens another way for the country to use foreign funds held by residents, says the English newspaper.
According to the paper, experts in the sector have called for an opening for years because low liquidity aroused by the narrow scope of investors has been the biggest problem in the market, but the government has not yet taken the step.
The biggest worry is that allowing foreign currency deposits to enter the stock market may lead to a drain of foreign exchanges. Another one is the huge domestic demand for hard currency which could lead to fluctuations on the foreign exchange black market.
"Mutual funds targeting the B-share market could be launched on the domestic capital market," said Tang Hao, vice president of China Securities' international department.
By doing so, the total investment volume could be settled while fluctuations would be avoided on the black market.
Tang said he believes it is possible that the government takes steps to attract funds -- both from overseas and at home -- to further boost market performance.
"If the market remains bearish, it will lose most of its attraction after the second board of the Hong Kong stock market, targeting small high-tech firms, opens in the last quarter of this year," Tang was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
Xinhua News Agency
Soil Erosion in Three Gorges Reservoir Area Under Control
The serious soil erosion problem in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, which covers parts of Chongqing Municipality and Hubei Province, is now basically under control after a ten-year water and soil conservation effort, according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee.
Chongqing and Hubei had reclaimed 12,800 square kilometers. of eroded land by the end of last year, and the forest-cover rate in the reservoir area had been increased from 23 percent to 44 percent.
The Three Gorges Reservoir, China's massive hydro-electric power project now under construction, covers an area 59,300 square kilometers. In the 1950s, the area's forest coverage rate stood at between 30 percent and 50 percent. But the figure dropped to a present 10 percent in some places due to population growth, a deteriorating ecological environment, and soil erosion over the past decades.
The government named the Three Gorges Reservoir area one of the country's key water and soil conservation regions in 1988, and has since launched afforestation projects on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
It is estimated that afforestation in Chongqing and Hubei prevented 99.29 million tons of mud and sand from entering into the Three Gorges Reservoir area between 1989 and 1996.
Officials have called for intensified efforts to further improve the ecological environment of the area.
Xinhua News Agency
Baotou Hosts International Investment Fair
'99 Baotou International Investment Fair opened today in Baotou, a major industrial city of Inner Mongolia in north China, and investors from 14 countries and regions attended.
The participants include more than 50 Chinese entrepreneurs and over 70 investors from the United States, Japan, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, France and Singapore, as well as from Hong Kong and Taiwan regions.
During the five-day fair, more than 150 projects will be introduced to both domestic and foreign investors, and the projects include rare earth development and use, technical renovation of the State-owned enterprises, animal husbandry development, urban construction, as well as light and chemical industries.
According to Cao Zhenghai, deputy mayor of Baotou city, the five-day fair targets at further expanding the city's opening up to the outside world, luring more funds and boosting exports.
China Daily
Author: Cao Min
Network aims to attract tourists
TRIAL operation of China Tourism E-Commerce Trading Network (CTETN) is expected to begin next month. The network is expected to attract more overseas tourists and provide them with better services.
The network, which will initially target tour operators and individual travellers from the United States, Canada and other parts of the world, plans to formally open for business on New Year's Day, 2000.
Sponsored by the INTEC Group, China Information Highway Corporation, Bank of China, Citibank and IBM of the United States, the CTETN will ensure the precise cataloguing of services and products offered to the world from China's star-level hotels, travel agencies and airlines.
Wei Xiao'an, director of Policies and Regulations Department of China National Tourism Administration, said at a weekend briefing that the establishment of the CTETN was a good beginning for international co-operation by the tourism, information and finance industries.
The CTETN provides a network of Internet-based global, national, regional and local trade directories.
The directories are presently available in 12 languages and offer buyers and sellers the ability to find information about goods and services offered by more than 700,000 companies worldwide. All will be able to travel to China.
China's tourism businesses have decided to attract more foreign tourists through a series of promotion campaigns that target major overseas markets.
China Daily
Author: Zhu Baoxia
Population co-operation expanding
THE US Population Institute intends to expand co-operation with China in the next few years to increase world understanding of China's family planning programme.
The co-operation will also introduce China's experiences in managing its economy and its social welfare system to other developing countries, a senior official with the institute told China Daily in Beijing over the weekend.
The institute plans to co-operate with the State Family Planning Commission (SFPC) to publish a Chinese edition of its volume on success stories in population development.
The two bodies will also discuss further personnel exchanges so that more Chinese family planning workers can be trained in delivering information and services and have the chance to observe population programmes in the United States, said Werner Fornos, president of the institute.
Fornos and five other members of the institute are in China on a two-week tour inspecting community-based population programmes in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi'an in Shaanxi Province and Chengdu in Sichuan Province. The visit is scheduled to end tomorrow.
The US Population Institute, launched in 1969, is the largest US non-governmental organization in the population field. It has maintained a close co-operative relationship with the SFPC since 1984.
Fornos said he has witnessed great changes in China including a sharp decline in population growth, improved economic conditions, success in poverty eradication efforts, empowerment of women, community projects, and improvements in sanitation, housing and education.
He added that he was happy to see young couples nowadays choosing to marry late and have few children, and more males assuming responsibility for family planning.
There is a great deal of misinformation about China's family planning policy, he said. People who visit China need to become goodwill ambassadors and reveal the true facts behind the situation, he added.
He said he believed China resolutely opposes coercion in family planning, although he conceded, as the Chinese Government has acknowledged, "there are occasionally abuses in some localities."
Many people in Western countries believe China's family planning policy is coercive, because China is pursuing a policy of encouraging couples to have one child. However, in rural areas couples often have two children and the policy for minorities is more flexible, he said.
"Ignorance needs to be replaced by facts," he added.
"Looking to the year 2000 and beyond, I think China is a valuable partner in international development, especially in south-to-south relations and teaching countries in the developing world to manage their economy and social system," he said.
He highly commended China's Family Planning University in Nanjing, the only one in the world.
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