IN BRIEF (Page 2)

China donates drugs to treat malaria to Ghana

The Chinese government has donated to Ghana 600,000 vials of artesunate, an anti-malaria drug.

Chinese Ambassador to Ghana Sun Baohong and Ghanaian Health Minister Alex Segbefia attended a handover ceremony on Nov 17.

The drugs are worth about $1.3 million, and are produced by a Chinese company. China has been donating anti-malaria drugs to Ghana since 2006, Sun said, and has been supporting Ghana's health sector through construction of hospitals and personnel training.

Segbefia expressed gratitude to the Chinese government and people for their support to Ghana's health sector.

"It is a demonstration of the continuing relationship that we've had with China," he said, describing China as "a significant global player in the health of the people of the world".

Nation sponsors new farm in Botswana

An agriculture project sponsored by China-Africa People-to-People Friendship Action on Nov 17 was handed over to Kangwe village, southern Botswana.

The Chinese Enterprises Association in Botswana has been helping Kangwe village level soil by employing specialized company workers and local villagers since August. The project was completed on time, and a newly developed 40-hectare farm will be given to 20 Kangwe villagers to grow crops.

"It is known that agriculture development is one of the key priorities for Botswana's development strategy. So after careful evaluation and consideration, Action chose to sponsor Kangwe village and the Chinese Enterprises Association in Botswana for this agriculture project," said Chinese Ambassador to Botswana Zheng Zhuqiang at the ceremony. Since 2013, the Action organization has supported five local projects in Botswana.

Botswana Assistant Minister of Agriculture Kgotla Autlwetse thanked the Chinese side and local villagers for their efforts to deliver the project and encouraged the villagers to use the farm well.

China honors guard killed in Somalia attack

China's Armed Police Force held a ceremony on Nov 17 honoring Zhang Nan, a guard killed in a July attack targeting embassies in Somalia.

More than 1,000 people from the Armed Police Force, the Foreign Ministry and Zhang's family attended the commemoration for Zhang in his hometown of Jinan, in East China's Shandong province.

Militant group al-Shabaab launched a suicide attack on Jazeera Palace Hotel in Mogadishu on July 26, killing at least 15 people including 28-year-old Zhang. His remains were buried in Jinan on Aug 2.

Zhang served with the force for 11 years. He was named a security officer for the Chinese embassy in Somalia in February, and chose to stay there after surviving a gunshot wound during another terrorist attack in April.

Inbound tourism falling short of goal

The number of overseas tourists in China has fallen over the past three years and is unlikely to meet the goal set by the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), industry insiders have warned.

The plan calls for the number of foreign tourists to rise 4.5 percent a year and the number of overseas tourists to rise 3 percent a year. (The term foreign tourists means visitors other than from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan; the term overseas tourists means visitors from anywhere outside the mainland.)

To meet the targets, 31.1 million foreign tourists and 153 million overseas tourists will need to have come to China by the end of the year.

In the first nine months of this year, visits by foreign tourists fell 1.1 percent compared with the corresponding period last year to 19 million, and the number of overseas tourists rose 4.4 percent to 99 million.

Li welcomes nuclear teamwork with US

Premier Li Keqiang said China supports joint research with the United States on nuclear power projects to integrate China's industrial capacity with overseas advanced energy technologies.

He made the remarks while meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is chairman of Terra Power, a nuclear energy technology company based in Bellevue, Washington.

Li said the Chinese government encourages combining domestic industrial capacity and advanced technologies and design from the US. Safety, low cost and sustainability are the keys to such an effort, he said.

"China is taking a greener, more sustainable path, during which we welcome cooperation on clean energy development and to fight against climate change," Li said.

Gates was in Beijing to promote the design of a traveling wave reactor, a new nuclear design using fourth-generation technology.

China to seek growth advice from foreigners

China's top economic regulator is seeking advice from overseas experts on the country's new five-year development plan.

The National Development and Reform Commission wants the advice to guide annual growth of no less than 6.5 percent.

Such advice from abroad is important to improving the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), especially as the country's opening-up is deepening, said Hu Zucai, deputy head of the commission.

Various channels will be opened for foreigners to offer their advice from now until January, Hu said, including columns in various media and seminars with foreign chambers of commerce.

Threats to biodiversity spelled out in report

A report by the World Wild Fund for Nature has sounded a warning on the state of China's biodiversity - the different types of species found in the country and variations within them.

An official of the fund says habitat loss and degradation of nature caused by humans and development are the most significant threats to the country's biodiversity.

The report found that just two regions, Qinghai province and the Tibet autonomous region, have a so-called ecological surplus.

This means their regional biocapacity exceeds their ecological impact, which means regional biocapacity can meet the consumption demands of the local population.

The biocapacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Central bank issues new 100-yuan bill

China's central bank, which issued a new 100-yuan bill on Nov 12, has been transporting increasing quantities of renminbi to foreign countries via Hong Kong to meet a growing demand for the currency.

The People's Bank of China transported 50 billion yuan ($7.83 billion; 7.36 billion euros) in cash to Hong Kong, the country's offshore renminbi center, during the first nine months of this year, an increase of more than 46 percent year-on-year, said Zhang Jianjun, director of the central bank's sub-central branch in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Buddha statue dispute sent to Dutch court

One of the lawyers representing a village in Fujian province in its quest to win custody of a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue they say was stolen in 1995 said an appeal would be submitted to a court in the Netherlands later this month.

The statue contains the remains of a mummified monk.

"We have finished the primary investigation and collection of evidence in Yangchun, Fujian province, in preparation for an appeal to the court in the Netherlands later this month," said Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer specializing in ancient relics.

One key hurdle is proving that the statue is the same one that was stolen, Liu said.

The lawyers, seven from China and the Netherlands, are seeking to reclaim the Buddha statue from its Dutch owner, architect Oscar van Overeem.

Pig gene technology promises big benefits

Chinese scientists have successfully modified a gene in pigs that enables the pigs to produce human serum albumin, a protein made by the liver.

The breakthrough was published recently by Scientific Reports, an online open-access journal from the publishers of Nature.

The scientists used a precise genome modification tool called CRISPR/Cas9 to insert a human albumin coding sequence into the pig gene.

Human serum albumin plays a critical role in keeping people healthy. It is used to treat a number of conditions, including liver diseases and traumatic shock.

Movie to contain anti-graft message

A movie based on a corruption case in the 1950s has entered production as China seeks to raise awareness of corruption amid a sweeping anti-graft campaign. The movie is based on the story of Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, two senior Party officials who were among the country's earliest examples of modern corruption. Both were executed in 1952. Movie director Shen Yue said he hopes the 2016 film can serve as a warning to members of the Communist Party of China.

Portraits may include Confucius' image

Chinese archaeologists claimed to have unearthed a portrait of Confucius from a tomb that is at least 2,000 years old.

After they pieced together a broken lacquer screen found in the main chamber of the tomb, the archaeologists said, they restored two portraits, one of which is believed to be of Confucius.

"The Chinese characters on the screen include the names of Confucius; his father, Shu Lianghe; and one of his favorite disciples, Yan Hui," said Zhang Zhongli, deputy chief of the excavation team in Jiangxi province.

Many seniors have poor diet, survey finds

A survey of 3,885 elderly people across six provinces showed high rates of seniors who are overweight or malnourished, the China Development Research Foundation said on Nov 15. According to the survey, 31.8 percent of the respondents were overweight and 11.4 percent qualified as obese.

China Daily-Xinhua

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/20/2015 page2)