Εμφάνιση αναρτήσεων με ετικέτα China. Εμφάνιση όλων των αναρτήσεων
Εμφάνιση αναρτήσεων με ετικέτα China. Εμφάνιση όλων των αναρτήσεων
Παρασκευή 11 Αυγούστου 2017
China should not back US in case of war with North Korea, Global Times says
Τετάρτη 9 Αυγούστου 2017
India Continues to Violate China’s Sovereignty in Donglang : FM
Τρίτη 8 Αυγούστου 2017
China stages navy drills after North Korea launch
Δευτέρα 7 Αυγούστου 2017
North Korea, Russia foreign ministers agree to resolve issues 'diplomatically'
North Korea Condemns UN Sanctions
Σάββατο 5 Αυγούστου 2017
UN Security Council imposes new sanctions on North Korea
Τρίτη 25 Αυγούστου 2015
China extends its Black Monday stocks selloff
Δευτέρα 24 Αυγούστου 2015
Asian, European Markets Tumble
Τρίτη 3 Φεβρουαρίου 2015
China warns of festival air pollution caused by fireworks
Local governments should limit fireworks displays, expand restricted areas and reinforce check-ups if weather conditions are not suitable for pollutants to disperse, said the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Setting off fireworks is a Chinese New Year tradition, but pollutants generated by fireworks such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, worsened air quality in many Chinese cities last year.
The ministry asked local governments to designate time and area for firework display, review retailers' qualifications and promote environmentally-friendly fireworks.
Fireworks are not the only tradition the Chinese have to give up for better air quality. The government has also urged people to burn less incense in the temples.
Source:Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
3/2/15
--
Κυριακή 25 Ιανουαρίου 2015
China to ban use of Tibetan sky burial for tourism. (Some travel agents have shown disrespect to the tradition)
"It will be the first time for Tibet to regulate sky burials using legislation, which shows respect and offers protection to the millennium-old tradition," the official media quoted Samdrup, an official with the standing committee of the regional People's Congress.
The Regional People's Congress of Tibet, the local legislature, recently passed a bill to better regulate sky burials, covering issues like management of the site, environmental protection and qualification of ritual hosts. The purpose is to "better protect sky burials".
Chinese government has stopped the use of burial sites for tourism on several occasions in the past three decades, but the local officials have allowed it from time to time for developing tourism, sources said.
State media said that the traditional ritual has become controversial after tourists guides began leading tour groups to view the ceremony. There have been complaints that some travel agents have shown disrespect to the tradition. Tibetans and Mongolians cut bodies of the dead, and feed them to vultures and other predatory birds. It is regarded an act of generosity and a ritual that allows the soul to ascend to heaven.
The Tibetan government issued a provisional rule in 2005 that banned sightseeing, photographing and video recording at such burial sites, or publishing reports and pictures describing the rituals.
The law has been violated extensively as thousands of tourists crowd around the burial sites to watch the traditional practice. Even some monks are known to be involved in guiding tourists to the burial sites for collecting donations for their shrines.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/China-to-ban-use-of-Tibetan-sky-burial-for-tourism/articleshow/46004209.cms
24/1/15---
Related:
Παρασκευή 23 Ιανουαρίου 2015
Beijing: Pollution goals missed
A total of 30 industrial relief and cooperation platforms and 53 related programs were launched to pull the polluting companies out of Beijing in the past year, mayor of Beijing Wang Anshun said in a government work report.
Another 300 factories are expected to be closed in 2015.
Although efforts have been taken in 2014, Beijing failed to meet a key pollution reduction target last year with annual average density of PM2.5 down 4 percent, less than the 5 percent target, Wang said.
Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
23- 24/1/15
--
-
Related:
---
Πέμπτη 22 Ιανουαρίου 2015
China's air quality dire but improving (Greenpeace)
China's cities are often hit by heavy pollution, blamed on coal-burning by power stations and industry, as well as vehicle use, and it has become a major source of discontent with the ruling Communist Party. Retired senior officials have acknowledged that it may kill as many as half a million people a year.
Levels of PM2.5 - airborne particulates with a diameter small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs - fell year-on-year in 71 of the 74 cities monitored by the ministry of environmental protection, the figures showed.
But in China's most polluted city, Xingtai, they still averaged 131.4 microgrammes per cubic metre. In Beijing, they were 83.2 microgrammes per cubic metre, and 52.2 in Shanghai, the country's financial centre. By comparison, New York's PM2.5 level averaged 11.2 last year and Tokyo's was 15.8 for the fiscal year ending in March 2014, the most recent figures available.
The World Health Organization recommends a maximum average exposure of 25 microgrammes per cubic metre in a 24-hour period, and 10 microgrammes per cubic metre over a year. China's own standard is 35 microgrammes per cubic metre over a year.
The statistics released by Greenpeace were based on official data from China's ministry of environmental protection. It makes current levels available online but does not publicly release historical data or averages. The figures were compiled by Fresh-Ideas Studio, the operator of a popular pollution monitoring app.
The numbers showed that Xingtai, in the northern province of Hebei, enjoyed a 15.3 per cent improvement, with Beijing levels falling 7.7 per cent and Shanghai dropping 14.0 per cent. Xian, home to the Terracotta Warriors, saw the most dramatic decline at more than 27 per cent.
But despite the drops none of the 74 cities achieved the WHO recommended annual mark, with the least polluted, Haikou on the island of Hainan, averaging 22.4.
A TOUCH OF SMOG
The environmental campaign group also released a short film on the subject by renowned director Jia Zhangke, whose award-winning 2013 movie A Touch of Sin was denied a Chinese release by the country's censors.
Smog Journeys tells the story of two families, one in China's coal belt and the other in Beijing, showing how neither wealth nor education can defend against smog. It closes with a child in Beijing drawing pictures on dust-covered cars of a world he hopes to live in, complete with a radiant sun.
"The character setting is meant to point out that no one gets to be different when it comes to smog," Jia said in an interview posted by Greenpeace on YouTube. "One thing that fascinated and shocked me the most was the fact that even on smoggy days, people still live their lives as usual."
Public discontent about the environment has grown in China, leading the government to declare a "war on pollution" and vow to reduce the proportion of energy derived from fossil fuels. But it has shied away from pledging to cut total national coal use.
One factor contributing to the decline in parts of northern China is likely to have been the car use restrictions, factory closures and public-sector holidays imposed during a November meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing.
The result was stunning skies popularly dubbed "APEC blue" by online commentators mocking their temporary nature, and even Chinese President Xi Jinping himself used the phrase in a speech.
Pollution is a perennial issue on Chinese social networks, with users on Thursday poking fun at efforts by officials in the southwestern city of Chongqing to clean up dirty air by banning residents from smoking bacon, a traditional method of preserving pork - the latest scientifically dubious theory about its cause.
Environmental activists called for further steps to reduce pollution, cutting coal use and shifting towards renewables.
"Clean air is a basic necessity for healthy living," said Yan Li, Greenpeace East Asia's head of climate and energy. "It's sad if children grow up with more smog than clean air and blue skies, as depicted in Jia's film. Bringing back clean air needs to be a priority and it requires urgent action."
In a commentary piece for the Lancet, a leading medical journal, China's former health minister Chen Zhu and environmental officials said "that between 350,000 and 500,000 people die prematurely each year as a result of outdoor air pollution in China".
- AFP/xq
[channelnewsasia.com]
22/1/15
--
-
Related:
Κυριακή 11 Ιανουαρίου 2015
Service module of China's lunar orbiter enters moon's orbit
Following instructions from the center, the service module conducted the braking at around 3 a.m. and entered the 8-hour elliptical moon orbit with a perilune of about 200 km and an apolune of about 5,300 km.
The spacecraft has sustained balanced energy and is in a sound condition, according to the center, adding that the center exercised timely and stable control and tracing of the service module and relevant tests had been carried out smoothly.
The module will make its second and third braking in the early hours of Jan. 12 and 13 respectively to enable it to enter the target 127-minute orbit for tests to prepare for the next lunar probe mission, Chang'e-5, said center's chief engineer Zhou Jianliang.
"The first braking is the most crucial," Zhou said. "Precise braking must be performed at perilune to prevent it from flying away from the moon."
The lunar orbiter was launched on Oct. 24. The service module was separated from the orbiter's return capsule on Nov. 1, which returned to Earth on Nov. 1 after circling the moon during its eight-day mission.
The service module reached the Earth-Moon second Lagrange Point (L2) in late November and left the L2 point on Jan. 4 after completing all preset scientific detection tasks.
The orbiter is a test run for the final chapter of China's three step lunar program -- orbiting, landing and returning.
The obtaining data and validating re-entry technology will inform the development of Chang'e-5, which is slated for launch around 2017.
[xinhuanet.com]
11/1/15
--
-
Related:
Τρίτη 6 Ιανουαρίου 2015
Beijing city raises subsidies for scrapping polluting vehicles
According to the new plan, owners who used their vehicles for more than six years and disposed of the vehicles at least one year earlier can receive an average of 8,000 yuan subsidies. The highest subsidies for cars will reach 8,500 yuan, and 21,500 yuan for heavy duty diesel vehicles.
The plan is to be effective throughout 2015 and 2016.
Owners who trade in their old vehicles for new ones will receive another subsidy for purchasing new cars.
Old-vehicles used for more than 10 years with high pollutant emissions are still running on the road, said Li Kunsheng, with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
"They are the target of our pollution monitoring work," he said.
The new plan is to be announced in detail soon, according to Li, and all vehicle-owners who scrapped their vehicles after Jan. 1 are qualified to apply for the new plan.
Beijing's average PM2.5 density in 2014 dropped by four percent compared with 2013, but some pollutants rebounded, said the municipal environmental protection bureau earlier this week.
The average density of PM2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, was 85.9 micrograms per cubic meter in 2014, compared with 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter in 2013, the bureau said in a statement Sunday.
The reading was still 1.5 times higher than the national standard of 35, which was set by the State Council in 2012.
As part of efforts to curb pollution, Beijing reduced coal use by 2.6 million tonnes to keep it below 19 million tonnes. The capital also removed 476,000 outdated vehicles from roads and shut down about 375 factories in 2014.
In 2015, Beijing aims to cut PM2.5 index by around five percent and reduce the emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by six percent.
Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
6/1/15
--
-
Related:
Κυριακή 4 Ιανουαρίου 2015
Three Gorges sets hydropower record
Though it has a much smaller installed capacity, Brazil's Itaipu hydroelectric plant has long been the champion of world hydropower generation. It generated 98.6 billion kwh of electricity in 2013.
The Three Gorges Power Plant has an installed capacity of 22.5 million kw.
Source:Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
4/1/15
--
-
Related:
Παρασκευή 2 Ιανουαρίου 2015
China builds world's largest coal mine waste gas recovering project.
The facility was completed by the Lu'an Group, which owns the Gaohe Coal Mine in the coal-rich province.
The company announced on Tuesday it would soon start operating the generator with a capacity of 30 megawatts, capable of utilizing 99 percent of methane gas discharged from the coal mine.
The poisonous gas is a common emission during underground mining. Normally, mines will liquify the gas into methyl alcohol if it has a concentration higher than 30 percent, for concentrations between 10 percent and 20 percent it is captured and used to fuel internal combustion engines.
However, methane concentrations lower than 10 percent, which qualifies 81 percent of the gas released during mining, can not be consumed through direct combustion.
Jia Jian, deputy head of the Methane Gas Research Institute of the company, said the new technology has helped tackle the problem of how to dispose of the waste.
He said the project can decompose the gas into carbon dioxide and water under temperatures more than 950 Celsius, and use the heat and steam for power generation.
He said by recovering and utilizing the gas, the project can help reduce 1.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases and produce 200 million kwh of electricity a year.
China's coal mines produce more than 10 billion cubic meters of low-concentration methane gas each year, which causes greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Jia said the project of making waste profitable has a good market potential. The demonstration facility installed at Gaohe Coal Mine has drawn interest from a number of coal mining firms, which have signed agreements predicted to reduce 15.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
Coal mining firms in China are under greater pressure than ever to control carbon emissions as the government continues to step up efforts to cut emissions.
China has set an ambitious goal of reducing carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 40 to 45 percent from the level in 2005.
By 2013, carbon emissions per unit of GDP dropped by 28.56 percent from 2005. In the first three quarters of this year, energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 4.6 percent from a year earlier and carbon emissions were down by 5 percent, data showed.
Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
2/1/15
--
*** Photo: www.gidynamics.nl
Τρίτη 23 Δεκεμβρίου 2014
China confirms its southern glaciers are disappearing
BEIJING—Glaciers in China that are a critical source of water for drinking and irrigation in India are receding fast, according to a new comprehensive inventory. In the short term, retreating glaciers may release greater meltwater, “but it will be exhausted when glaciers disappear under a continuous warming,” says Liu Shiyin, who led the survey for the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou.
In 2002, Chinese scientists released the first full inventory of the country’s glaciers, the largest glacial area outside of Antarctica and Greenland. The data came from topographical maps and aerial photographs of western China’s Tibet and Xinjiang regions taken from the 1950s through the 1980s. That record showed a total glacial area of 59,425 square kilometers. The Second Glacier Inventory of China, unveiled here last week, is derived from high-resolution satellite images taken between 2006 and 2010. The data set is freely available online.
Liu and his colleagues calculated China’s total glacial area to be 51,840 square kilometers—13% less than in 2002. That figure is somewhat uncertain because the previous inventory used coarser resolution images that may have mistaken extensive snow cover for permanent ice, says Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved in the project.
Methodological quibbles aside, the latest inventory flags a marked retreat of glaciers in the southern and eastern fringes of the Tibetan Plateau. “We found the fastest shrinking glaciers are those in the central upper reach of the Brahmaputra River, between the central north Himalaya [and] the source region of the tributary of the Indus River,” Liu says.
Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, applauds the openness in sharing data, which hasn’t always been the norm in China. “It is highly useful that the colleagues from China have made their data set available to the community. It will feed directly into global efforts to compile a worldwide glacier inventory and is a major improvement,” he says. “It will, for example, greatly support the effort of global glacier modeling to improve our understanding of glaciers’ response to climate change.” [tibet.net]
23/12/14
Κυριακή 21 Δεκεμβρίου 2014
China builds first high-speed railway through karst region
The 857-km railway linking Guiyang, capital of landlocked mountainous province of Guizhou, with south China's economic powerhouse Guangzhou, is expected to become operational on Friday.
Guizhou has the world's most typical karst plateau landscape, which was inducted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Karst topography is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone.
Stretching through the complicated karst clusters, the railway had half of its length run through 238 tunnels, two of which are more than 14 km long, said Zhang Jianbo, general manager of the Guiyang-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway Co.
It took builders four years to drill through the two longest tunnels. Construction was often disrupted by breaking rocks, rupture of strata and water infiltration, Zhang said.
The construction company applied for six national patents covering their shockproof technology which was adopted to reduce the vibration that occurs when a train travelling at 250 km/hour runs through mountain tunnels.
Wang Mengshu, a tunnel expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the technology and machinery engineering developed for building the Guiyang-Guangzhou high-speed railway represents the country's new-generation innovation in tunnel engineering.
Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
21/12/14
--
-
Related:
Πέμπτη 18 Δεκεμβρίου 2014
Beijing's thirsty neighbor receives water from the south
The middle route's first-stage project supplies more than three billion cubic meters of water annually to the province, said Yuan Fu, chief of Hebei's office of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project.
It will alleviate water shortage in Hebei and help promote sustainable development in local society and economy, provincial governor Zhang Qingwei said.
The middle route's first-stage project starts at Danjiangkou reservoir in the central province of Hubei. It was officially put into operation on Dec. 12..
It will supply 9.5 billion cubic meters of water per year to the northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and provinces of Henan and Hebei.
Sources: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
18/12/14
--
-
Related:
South-north canal starts flowing to ease water woes. (video: South to North Water Diversion Project)
Παρασκευή 12 Δεκεμβρίου 2014
South-north canal starts flowing to ease water woes. (video: South to North Water Diversion Project)
About 9.5 billion cubic meters of water will pass through the newly-built canal each year from Danjiangkou reservoir in Central China's Hubei Province to cities like Beijing and Tianjin, as well as more than 100 cities in Henan and Hebei provinces, according to a report by China Central Television.
The water will arrive in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan in three days, and reach Beijing in 15 days. More than 60 million people along the water channel will be able to drink the high-quality water from Danjiangkou, which is part of the Hanjiang river that flows into China's largest river, the Yangtze.
The project is expected to largely alleviate the pressure of water shortages in the northern regions, where annual precipitation is much lower than the southern areas and years of excessive use have caused underground water to dwindle to a dangerous level.
According to the plan, more than 1.2 billion cubic meters of water will go to Beijing each year.
The water, after being mixed with local above-ground and underground water at treatment plants, will cover more than 50 percent of Beijing people's daily needs and part of industrial usage.
But experts warned that the situation is still far from optimistic considering the population and the huge gap between the supply of water and North China's needs.
In Beijing, some 2.1 billion cubic meters of natural water is formed each year, but last year more than 3.6 billion were used. Beijing pumps about 500 million cubic meters of underground water more than is sustainable each year, China National Radio (CNR) Friday quoted the Beijing Water Authority as saying.
It will be impossible for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to fix the water crisis "unless they make the best use of every drop of water," Li Yuanyuan, vice director of the Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design General Institute, told the CNR.
Sun Guosheng, chief of Beijing's Office of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, hinted there might be a slight price rise soon to encourage people to save water, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Source: Global Times
12/12/14
--
-
Related:
VIDEO: China, Sending Water North
The Chinese government has embarked on a massive engineering project to transfer water from the wet south to the dry north.
Εγγραφή σε:
Αναρτήσεις (Atom)
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EUΟι νεκροί Έλληνες στα μακεδονικά χώματα σάς κοιτούν με οργή
«Παριστάνετε τα "καλά παιδιά" ελπίζοντας στη στήριξη του διεθνή παράγοντα για να παραμείνετε στην εξουσία», ήταν η κατηγορία πο...
