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BEIJING, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Monopolies in China's energy sector are coming to end, with more private capital to be allowed to exploit oil and gas resources. Reforms will no longer stress state-ownership, but will focus on competence and willingness to carry out national industrial policy, said Wang Zhen, deputy director of the institute of energy strategy at the China University of Petroleum. Reform will prioritize the needs of the whole oil refining industry, Wang told Wednesday's China Securities Journal. Zhong Jian, analyst with market information supplier CBI China, expects increased imports of refined oil products, allowing more private investors...

Games are becoming more and more popular. A survey by Information Solutions Group has found that many choose to play games when they should be working. Does it surprise you that people are playing games while at work? How common is it?

China is the world's biggest holder of US sovereign debt. Part of the usefulness of holding US sovereign debt is its perceived reliability. However, despite promises from the US government, US government debt has grown constantly, and earlier this month we saw a US government shutdown during a fierce political debate over the US debt ceiling. Although the US government did not default on its debts, the incident was of great concern to the many countries who own US debt. China owns at least 1.27 trillion dollars worth of US treasury securities, or government bonds. These are packages of US...

A video from Spiegel Online Shows NSA has 80 SCS sites worldwide, including in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. [Photo: haiwainet. cn] US intelligence has been operating a global network of 80 Special Collection Services (SCS), including Asia listening posts in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hong Kong and Taipei, the German magazine Spiegel reports. In an SCS document cited by the magazine, the agency said it had a "not legally registered spying branch" in the US embassy in Berlin, the exposure of which would lead to "grave damage for the relations of the United...

A man with a knife in his head asks to see a doctor in a hospital, seen in this picture published on Tuesday, October 29, 2013. Recently, the news about a man with a knife in his head going to see a doctor has spread widely on Weibo. After verification, the man was treated at Yanji Municipal Hospital in northeast China's Jilin province. Witnesses said the man went to the hospital by himself and calmly walked from the first to the fifth floor. It is reported that he got injured when joking around with his friend. [Photo: dzwww.com]

BEIJING: Divorce rates in China's two wealthiest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, have soared after the announcement of a property tax that includes a loophole for couples who split up, figures show. Nearly 40,000 couples divorced in the Chinese capital in the first nine months of this year, jumping 41 per cent on the same period in 2012, according to figures released by Beijing's civil affairs officials this month. Similarly, divorces in Shanghai -- where concerns over the tax were high -- leaped almost 40 per cent over the same period, data from authorities in the commercial hub showed. But figures...

BEIJING: Chinese police have named two suspects from the restive Xinjiang region after a car crash on Beijing's Tiananmen Square killed five people, Chinese media said on Tuesday, as analysts said the incident looked like a premeditated attack. The crash -- in which a sport utility vehicle drove along the pavement, ploughed into crowds and caught fire at the capital's best-known and most sensitive site -- killed three people in the car and two tourists, according to Beijing police. The square lies next to the Forbidden City, a former imperial palace and top tourist attraction, and was the location of...

(Reuters) - A chronic shortage of natural gas is hurting China's plan to move away from burning coal to heat homes and offices, raising the prospect of more choking air pollution this winter and beyond. The problem is worst in northern China, where air pollution mainly caused by decades of reliance on coal has lowered life expectancy by an estimated 5.5 years compared to the south, Chinese and international researchers said in July. The frigid northeastern city of Harbin, home to 11 million people, virtually ground to a halt last week when airborne contaminants were around 50 times the level...

A business institution recently introduced a new project - "Commercial school for children” in the west China city of Chengdu. The school aims to educate children about money management and endow them with a spirit of entrepreneurship. We have learned that their students are aged between 7 and 11, most of them come from rich families, and the school's tuition fees are about 30,000 yuan a year. Lessons employing British teaching materials, interactive games, and practical courses are their commercial strengths; with the help of advertising stunts, financial literacy for kids is becoming a new talking topic among Chinese parents....

The first nuclear submarine fleet from PLA North China Sea Fleet has just carried out a military drill. According to naval officials, the fleet is now capable of nuclear deterrence and nuclear counterattack. CRI's Wu Yanping has more. The drill is aimed at testing the maneuver capability of the fleet in deep-sea navigation, long-distance operation, submarine communication and coordination with other battleships. Other than nuclear-powered submarines, a wide range of destroyers, frigates, depot ships and military helicopters were also engaged in the drill. Living conditions in the nuclear submarine are extremely harsh. Confined in an enclosed space, the soldiers are...

Djang San is a French musician that has been living in China for over a decade. He plays in several bands, but the focus of this episode is his "Djang San" persona, a folk artist playing traditional Chinese instruments, singing in Chinese language, and mixing in Western influences such as experimental and jazz. See what Chinese music is, and can become, in the eyes of a talented outsider.

(Reuters) - Faster isn't necessarily better for China's telecom carriers as they prepare to roll out high-speed 4G mobile phone networks at the expense of their profitability for years to come. China Mobile Ltd, which has the most subscribers in the world, is investing billions of dollars to upgrade its infrastructure so clients can enjoy speedier Internet and data access once the government awards 4G telecom licenses before the end of the year. Its rivals China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd and China Telecom Corp Ltd are being forced to follow suit, especially as China Mobile is in talks with Apple...

LAUNCESTON: Asian oil refiners are facing slumping profits as China is expected to ramp up exports of diesel and gasoline this quarter. The margin from refining diesel in Asia has fallen almost 10% in the last 10 trading days, although it would have to drop another 13% to plumb the levels reached just after the first quarter, when the Chinese were last major exporters. While Chinese refiners are likely to add significant volumes to the product markets, they are also likely to buy more crude in order to boost runs rates, and as new refining units come on stream. This...

Reality and economic analysis in China seem to have grown far apart. But, given confusion even within the Chinese government between economic data and investment promotion, ideological polarization over simple questions like “Is the economy growing?” may be inevitable. To some of us, it is almost unfathomable that the Wall Street Journal, in a recent report, could write: “There is currently a supply crunch of homes in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which is in turn leading to fast-rising property prices” or that Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters could ink the sentence: “China needs more housing.” The reality of eyes...

"I was so stunned, angry and distressed." It is rare to hear such words from a senior Chinese official uttered publicly. China's science minister even repeated the word "angry" early this month to express his anxiety over academic corruption. What shocked Wan Gang, minister of Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), were two major graft cases that he revealed authorities were now working on at a press conference on October 11. Although Wan didn't give details, he said the cases involved abuse of power and the embezzlement of huge amounts of funds by a well-known environmental scientist and a senior...

Chimneys and blast furnaces spew out gray, white and dark yellow smog smelling of sulfur, a common scene in Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province, a city known for iron and steel manufacturing. There seems to be no end in sight to their numbers, and blackened skies have become the norm, an outcome of over-expansion in China's iron and steel industry. In recent years, excess production capacity has been spreading, greatly hindering China's economy and posing a severe challenge to its natural environment. On October 15, the State Council issued the Guidelines to Tackle Serious Production Overcapacity, which listed five sectors...

TURPAN - He is a civil engineer and project manager. Once graduated, he applied for a good job in a state-owned firm in Urumqi, but his application was rejected since the employment officer told him that they did not plan to hire ethnic Uyghurs. Then he went to Beijing with a kind of depression and anger, but was fortunately hired by one of the biggest engineering firms in China and is now working as a project manager. Ironically, he was later sent to Urumqi for a big project and once there met the same employment officer who rejected his job...

Beijing's intensifying campaign to snuff out any form of coordinated opposition will enter a new phase on Monday as three Chinese activists go on trial in what rights groups fear will be the first in a wave of politically-motivated cases against Communist Party critics. Liu Ping, Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua – three civil rights campaigners from the southeastern province of Jiangxi – will go on trial in the city of Xinyu, at around 8.30am, according to Zhang Xuezhong, a rights lawyer involved in the case. All three activists are expected to face charges of "illegal assembly" while Ms Liu...

BEIJING -- China Construction Bank Corp. reported third-quarter net-profit results that missed market expectations, as the state-run bank and other lenders grapple with China's slowing economy and Beijing's efforts to liberalize financial markets. The country's second-largest bank by assets reported Sunday that net profit for the quarter rose 9.4% to 56.8 billion yuan ($9.34 billion), lower than the average forecast of 57.69 billion yuan among four analysts polled by Thomson One Analytics. The third-quarter profit growth for China Construction Bank, the first of the state-run banks to report quarterly earnings, marked a slowdown from its 13% growth in the first...

Researchers from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) have developed a naked-eye 3D tablet computer, which should be in the shops by the end of this year. Naked-eye 3D technology has put 3D lens onto the screen, allowing viewers to watch 3D images without glasses, Fang Yong, deputy director of the spectrum modulation technology center at the SJTU Wuxi Research Institute, said on Tuesday. Users will not suffer from eye strain or dizziness. According to Fang, the research team has filed a patent and the televisions and computers with the technology are on the way.