China launches free health programs for poor, rural population

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) -- China has started health and construction programs to improve rural residents' health, part of a drive to improve the grassroots medical care system, a health official said Thursday.

Zhang Mao, vice minister of health, said the programs, part of the country's ambitious 850-billion-yuan (124 billion U.S. dollars) health care reform plan, ranged from vaccination drives to improved cooking and sanitary facilities in rural areas.

Over three years, Hepatitis B vaccinations will be provided for those who were born between 1994 and 2001 but not inoculated. About 23.3 million people, or 31 percent of the target population, would be given shots, it said.

Also, rural women will get free exams for cervical and breast cancer.

Two million women in 200 counties will be checked for cervical cancer while another 400,000 will benefit from government-sponsored breast cancer examinations, according to the ministry.

The ministry also would strive to get prompt sight-restoration treatment for rural and impoverished cataract patients. About 200,000 operations are expected to be carried out this year, it said.

The ministry will support the upgrading of stoves in 870,000 poor rural households in provinces such as Yunnan and Guizhou to help local residents avoid poisoning from coal fumes. Toilet facilities will be renovated in more than 4.1 million households.

China unveiled a three-year plan on health care reform in April. Under the plan (2009-2011), the government will provide universal access to basic health insurance, introduction of an essential drug system, improve primary health care facilities, equitable access to basic public health services and pilot reform of state-run hospitals.

Children forced into China pickpocket gang return home, some after 4 years

URUMQI, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Police said 20 children who had been abducted and forced into pickpocket gangs in southern China, where some had been held as long as four years, returned home to China's northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Thursday.

The children were freed after police broke up the child-abduction gang last month.

Police in the coastal province of Guangdong escorted 17 boys and three girls, aged eight to 16, to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, by train.

The children, wearing new clothes and carrying bags of food, appeared healthy and relaxed at the Urumqi Railway Station. Some parents came to the station, but many children will stay in a local care facility until police locate their families.

Guangdong police broke up a 22-member gang on May 14 in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, said Yaksengyang Ibrayim, commissar of a police detachment of the public security bureau of Guangzhou.

The kidnappers, who have been detained by police, confessed that they promised jobs to the children in impoverished regions in Xinjiang and took them to Guangzhou.

Instead, they trained the children how to steal and forced them to hand in 2,000 yuan (292 U.S. dollars) to 5,000 yuan a day. Those who couldn't bring in that much faced abuse, such as cigarette burns or whippings.

Police have set up ID files for each child and were trying to contact their parents, said Ibrayim.

Chinese police launched a nationwide campaign against the trafficking of children and women in early April, which will run through this year.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, police rescued 196 children and 214 women and broke up 72 human trafficking rings from April 9 to May 4.

Most of these crimes occurred in Guizhou, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Henan and Shanxi provinces.

Tropical storm Linfa forms in South China Sea

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Tropical storm Linfa formed in the South China Sea Thursday afternoon and was forecast to bring heavy rain to parts of Taiwan starting Friday, said China's Central Meteorological Station.

The storm, the third of this year in the area, was 290 kilometers south of the Dongsha Islands at 3 p.m. Thursday with winds of up to 64.8 km per hour at the center, said the station.

It was forecast to linger at its current location for about 12 hours and then move northeast to approach the sea south of Taiwan while gaining strength with maximum winds of up to 82.8 km per hour, the station said.

Strong gales were forecast to sweep the sea east of Taiwan, and rain would hit the south and east areas of Taiwan Friday and Saturday, it said.

The station and the China Maritime Search and Rescue Center have issued a maritime alert.

China maintains official training drive for social stability

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) -- About 1,000 of China's county-level chief judges will undergo training from September to improve their performance and deal with the public, according to the Supreme People's Court.

The training is part of a nationwide campaign to ensure grassroots officials dealing with the public can tackle problems before they lead to social unrest.

The drive involves hundreds of thousands of county-level chief procurators, court presidents, police chiefs, prison wardens, and county Communist Party secretaries, who have received or will receive training in provincial capitals and Beijing.

"The campaign, both in scale and in form, is almost unprecedented under the Communist Party of China's administration," said Ye Duchu, a professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The training programs were aimed at improving capabilities of grassroots officials and maintaining long-term stability, said Ye.

"As China is experiencing a transition leading to both opportunities and challenges, the leaders are becoming more concerned about how well their policies are carried out, because, in the end, it's a question of whether the Party can survive better and longer," Ye said.

"The direct training could make the central government's orders reach the grassroots more effectively while the grassroots voice could be heard more clearly," Ye said.

On June 10, the Ministry of Justice started a 10-day training course for 325 prison wardens to improve prison safety and stability, and prevent recidivism. They will be joined by another 356 wardens later this month.

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) organized courses for almost 3,000county-level police chiefs from February to May, to improve "professional skills such as on-line working, standardizing law-enforcement procedures and enhancing relations with the public."

Controversial cases such as the unrest involving 30,000 people in the southwestern Weng'an County in Guizhou Province last year triggered by the death of a schoolgirl were included in the courses for open discussion.

Meanwhile, about 3,500 grassroots prosecutors will undergo training in Beijing by the end of 2010, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP).

In each training session, a senior SPP leader would sit in the class and participate in group discussions on topics of interest to the prosecutors.

"County-level procuratorates handle social disputes directly, giving us a bigger stage to protect social stability and unity, and help maintain smooth economic development," said an SPP spokesman.

Earlier this year, the Party discipline watchdog, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), gathered 2,000 county-level CCDI heads to study in Beijing. The action was regarded by observers as a signal the government would root out corruption at grassroots levels.

In addition, the People's Daily reported in May that more than 600,000 village-level Party secretaries had finished training sessions.

"This training mainly focused on enabling local officials to use a scientific way of thinking for development, to control complicated situations and communicate with the masses effectively," said Xie Chuntao, deputy director of the Party history division of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

"Thus they can better handle disputes, problems and emergencies," he said.

China has about 16 million grassroots officials, who have daily contact with the public.

E China's Fujian to turn buses, ships "green"

FUZHOU, June 18 (Xinhua) -- East China's Fujian Province is to substitute gasoline and diesel oil with liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuel for 2,000 inter-city buses running on its expressways, to make its public transport greener.

According to a contract signed Thursday between Fujian Investment and Development Group Ltd. and Fujian Expressway LLC, the former will invest 320 million yuan (46.85 million U.S. dollars) in building 30 gas filling stations to supply 133,000 tonnes of LNG for the 2,000 inter-city buses.

The move will replace 180,000 tonnes of gasoline and diesel a year, the investment and development company said.

Wang Dongping, general manager of Zhongmin Logistics Company under the investment and development company, said Thursday that as a sort of clean energy, liquefied natural gas could help slash motor vehicle's carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon and sulphur dioxide emissions by 97 percent, 72 percent, and 90 percent respectively.

The "green" energy could also help reduce vehicle noise by 40 percent, Wang added.

The plan will include substituting diesel fuel with liquefied natural gas for more than 1,000 sand-, coal- and cement-carrying vessels on the waterways in the province and along its coast.

Under a related accord, Fujian will buy 2.6 million tonnes of LNG from Indonesia annually in a 25-year period from 2009 to fuel the plan, the local government said.