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Xiaoli, an orphan whose parents died of AIDS, has become the focus of the first lawsuit in China that accuses a newspaper of invading AIDS orphans’ privacy.

The first hearing at Beijing’s Chaoyang District Court was on April 25, and the second is scheduled for later this month, after which the court will deliberate and issue its ruling.

The plaintiff is Jin Wei, a professor at the Central Party School, and the defendant is Beijing-based China Times newspaper.

Jin filed the lawsuit on March 1 on behalf of Xiaoli, 19, after the paper used the full names of Xiaoli and her young brother, Xiaochuang, 15, along with their photos in a feature story published on December 2, 2005. (Xiaoli and Xiaochuang are not their real names.)

“This article, even with its good intentions, may harm the lives of the two children, who have suffered from prejudice and misery,” Jin told China Daily.

While asking the court to throw out the case, Zhou Yong of Beijing Tianping Law Firm, the defendant’s lawyer, argued at the hearing that the newspaper’s coverage was to arouse public sympathy for Xiaoli and had not caused her any harm.

The China Times’ feature told the story of Xiaoli and Xiaochuang, from a poor village in Henan Province’s Xincai County, where illegal blood selling had caused serious HIV/AIDS infections among the villagers in the mid-1990s.

Their farmer parents contracted HIV and then AIDS a few years later. The mother died in 2000 and the father in August 2001. Xiaoli and Xiaochuang have tested negative for HIV.

Gao Yaojie, a renowned grass-roots HIV/AIDS expert in Zhengzhou, first read about Xiaoli in a feature in Southern Weekend in early 2001 that depicted the serious HIV/AIDS situation in Henan. She sent 300 yuan (US$37.50) in an attempt to help the children and went to meet Xiaoli in May of that year.

What Gao found when she visited was a girl crouched in the kitchen of their home, crying because she had nothing to eat. The money Gao had sent was apparently spent by an uncle.

When Xiaoli and Xiaochuang’s father died three months later, relatives took over the house and other possessions, including 1,000 kilograms of wheat, a buffalo and a pig. Gao and other concerned volunteers, including Jin, took care of the children. Gao said Xiaochuang now lives with his adoptive family in East China’s Shandong Province.

Gao and Jin ultimately adopted Xiaoli, and found a senior middle school for her in a small city in Henan Province, that they declined to reveal.

The events had the potential to bring Xiaoli some stability and even happiness, but that does not seem to be the case.

“Away from her tragic home, Xiaoli is still very depressed,” Jin says. “Even now, five years after the death of her father, the girl said she often sees him in her dreams.

“Last summer, Xiaoli told me she dreamt of entering the dark rooms of her former home and her parents holding her hands, not letting her leave. The dream was full of horror.”

But also last summer, with the help of a friend, Jin arranged for Xiaoli to work temporarily in an electronics factory in Zhejiang Province, where she earned 1,000 yuan (US$125).

The experience greatly reduced her stress. “For the first time since her parents became ill with HIV/AIDS, Xiaoli was happy because she could earn some money for herself,” Jin said. “She now studies very hard and hopes to go to college.”

Lawsuit

Last autumn, Hu Kui, a reporter with China Times, came across Xiaoli’s story and became interested in writing an update. During an interview he had arranged with Jin and Gao, Jin said, Hu had promised not to use Xiaoli’s real name and photo. But Jin maintained the promise was not kept.

In court, Zhou Yong, China Times’ lawyer, said the editor on duty did not know of the reporter’s promise.

In the meantime, the newspaper reprimanded Hu for writing the story and deducted one month’s bonus from his pay. Last month, Hu resigned from the newspaper for unspecified reasons. He was not available to be interviewed.

“Isn’t keeping a promise to honour the privacy of interviewees a basic tenet of ethics for journalists?” Jin asked.

Both China Times and Zhou, its lawyer, declined to be interviewed.

Li Ying, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and Communications in Beijing, said that in reporting sensitive topics, protecting the names and photos of interviewees does not harm a media outlet’s credibility.

The public wants to know the main facts, he said, instead of minor details such as names.

“In addition, the credibility (of a media outlet) is based on the way it honours the rights of interviewees, particularly the disadvantaged,” Li said.

China Times’ article about Xiaoli was posted by many Chinese websites, but so far, Gu Zengwei, a teacher who has the additional duty of supervising the class she is in, said it seemed Xiaoli’s classmates have not read the story.

Jin and Gao still fear that Xiaoli’s now relatively peaceful life might be disrupted again as a result of the China Times’ article. They had already gone a long way to get her into the school.

“When the school leaders of Xiaoli learnt she was an HIV/AIDS orphan, they would not accept her,” Jin said. “But after our repeated persuasion, they accepted her on the condition that her HIV/AIDS orphan status would not be released.”

In a written statement to the court, Gu said if Xiaoli’s status as an orphan of AIDS patients was known, the resulting uproar at the school would disturb the school’s main mission of educating the students.

Jin quoted Xiaoli as saying: “I was frightened upon learning that my name and images were in a newspaper. If my classmates knew of my real status, everyone would shun me.”

Jin added: “Parents of Xiaoli’s schoolmates would not believe she is HIV/AIDS-free, and they would press the school authorities to expel Xiaoli out of fear that she might infect their children.”

On March 1, the same day Jin and Gao filed the suit against China Times, the Regulation on Preventing and Treating HIV/AIDS took effect. The regulation, enacted by the State Council, stipulates that the names and health conditions of HIV/AIDS patients and their relatives not be publicized without written consent.

Fighting prejudice

The suit asks that the newspaper publish a full-page apology and pay Xiaoli 100,000 yuan (US$12,500). Jin said the suit is not to punish the newspaper, but to make the public aware that the right of privacy is crucial for HIV/AIDS patients and their relatives in a time when prejudice against the group remains high.

Even though research has concluded that interaction, such as eating or swimming together and mosquito bites, do not transmit HIV/AIDS - and that the main ways to infect others are through needle-sharing, sexual intercourse and from mother to infant during pregnancy educating the public on those facts is a difficult matter.

Jin said part of her teaching at the Central Party School, whose students are mostly senior leaders of provincial governments and central ministries, is meant to clear up misperceptions regarding HIV/AIDS.

Surveys of her students revealed that up to 50 per cent of the students once believed that HIV/AIDS could be transmitted through handshakes or mosquito bites, Jin said.

Furthermore, Wang Ruotao, director of the bioethics committee at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control, said that in many provinces, people generally believe the children of HIV/AIDS patients can transmit the disease.

But to Jin, the issue is not whether Xiaoli is infected by HIV/AIDS. Even those who have been infected should have the right to live normal lives, she said.

In January, the Chinese Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS jointly reported that China had 650,000 people with HIV/AIDS in 2005. It is estimated that in China, 72,000 children lost at least one of their parents due to HIV/AIDS.

The prejudice against people with HIV/AIDS and their family members is considered a primary obstacle in helping them normalize their lives.

“Laws or regulations cannot force people to give up their prejudices against people with HIV/AIDS and their families,” Wang said. “The best solution now is to maintain their privacy as much as possible.”

Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Wednesday toured Yingxiu Town and Dujiangyan City, in Sichuan Province, two of the areas worst hit areas by last year’s May 12 earthquake, which left more than 80,000 dead and millions homeless.

Chiang, accompanied by Chen Yunlin, president of the mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, and Huang Xiaoxiang, deputy governor of Sichuan, offered condolences to the families of those killed.

They inspected a residential project financed by the Taiwan-funded Enterprises Association and an elementary school built with donations from Taiwan companies.

Chen thanked the Taiwan people for their donations. The mainland association had invited the SEF to visit the earthquake areas to show how their contributions were being spent.

Chiang has ended his tour in Sichuan and is scheduled to visit Chongqing and Shenzhen cities.

Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), arrived in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality Thursday and met with Bo Xilai, secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

“Chongqing and Taiwan had more exchanges in recent years. I believe the economic cooperation will bring benefits to both regions,” said Bo, hoping that Taiwan companies could seize the opportunities to expand their business in Chongqing.

Bo said last year Chongqing’s GDP increased by 14 percent year-on-year, and this year the municipality would possibly keep such growth despite the financial crisis.

“Companies from Taiwan have advantages in technology, management and experiences of world market, while Chongqing has a rapid developing market with rich human resources,” said Chiang Pin-kung, noting the potential for economic cooperation is great.

A 14-member delegation led by Chiang arrived here from a visit in the neighboring Sichuan Province. They are also scheduled to visit Shenzhen City in south China’s Guangdong Province.

Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Wednesday toured Yingxiu Town and Dujiangyan City, in Sichuan Province, two of the areas worst hit areas by last year’s May 12 earthquake, which left more than 80,000 dead and millions homeless.

Chiang, accompanied by Chen Yunlin, president of the mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, and Huang Xiaoxiang, deputy governor of Sichuan, offered condolences to the families of those killed.

They inspected a residential project financed by the Taiwan-funded Enterprises Association and an elementary school built with donations from Taiwan companies.

Chen thanked the Taiwan people for their donations. The mainland association had invited the SEF to visit the earthquake areas to show how their contributions were being spent.

Chiang has ended his tour in Sichuan and is scheduled to visit Chongqing and Shenzhen cities.

The most powerful — and least understood — computer known to science is the brain, and recently scientists designed a machine just a few molecules large that mimics how the brain works.

Currently, the device can simultaneously carry out 16 times more operations than a normal computer transistor. Researchers suggest the invention might eventually prove able to perform roughly 1,000 times more operations than a transistor.

This machine could not only serve as the foundation of a powerful computer, but also serve as the controlling element of complex gadgets such as microscopic doctors or factories, scientists added.

The device is made of a compound known as duroquinone. This molecule resembles a hexagonal plate with four cones linked to it, “like a small car,” explained researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, an artificial intelligence and molecular electronics scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan.

Duroquinone is less than a nanometer, or a billionth of a meter large. This makes it hundreds of times smaller than a wavelength of visible light. The machine is made of 17 duroquinone molecules. One molecule sits at the center of a ring formed by the remaining 16. The entire invention sits on a surface of gold.

Scientists operate the device by tweaking the center duroquinone with electrical pulses from an extremely sharp electrically conductive needle. The molecule and its four cones can shift around in a variety of ways depending on different properties of the pulse ?w say, the pulse’s strength.

Since weak chemical bonds link the center duroquinone with the surrounding 16 duroquinones, each of those shifts too.

In this way, a pulse to the central duroquinone can simultaneously transmit different instructions to each of the surrounding 16 duroquinones. The researchers say this design was inspired by that of brain cells, which can radiate branches out like a tree, with each branch used to communicate with another brain cell.

“All those connections are why the brain is so powerful,” Bandyopadhyay said.

Since duroquinone possesses four cones, each molecule essentially has four different settings. Since the central molecule can simultaneously control 16 other duroquinones, mathematically this means a single pulse at the machine can have 4″16 ?w or nearly 4.3 billion ?w different outcomes.

In comparison, a normal computer transistor can only carry out just one instruction at once, and only has two settings ?w 0 and 1. This means a single pulse at it can only have two different outcomes.

Scientists are still trying to explain the September 2007 meteorite that careened through Earth’s atmosphere and smashed into the ground in Peru while awestruck witnesses actually watched.

The witnesses’ reports and the crater formed by the impact puzzled scientists. This meteorite seemed to have flown in much faster than scientists thought possible for an object of this kind, and it apparently survived entering Earth’s atmosphere intact, rather than breaking apart as experts thought it should have.

“Many people thought this was a fake,” said Peter Schultz, a Brown University planetary geologist who traveled to Peru to analyze the crater. “It just didn’t make sense with what we understand of collisions with this type of fragile rock. Coming through the atmosphere they get stressed so highly that they typically break apart. But this one didn’t do that.”

Schultz went to investigate the crater along with Peruvian scientists and government officials a few months later. He found fractured lines in sand grains and compressed mixtures of earth and meteorite around the 49-foot-wide crater near the village of Carancas. These, along with widespread debris from the meteorite’s crash landing, told him it landed at high speed, likely around 15,000 miles per hour at the moment of impact.

The meteorite was a common type, a chunk of silicate rock called a stony meteorite. Usually a projectile such as this would be slowed down by the drag of Earth’s atmosphere. By the time it landed, it would be traveling at the normal terminal speed of any object falling from the sky, and would probably make a dent in the ground, not a crater.

“Essentially Carancas threw us this high-speed curveball,” Schultz told SPACE.com. “The mystery is why it didn’t slow down and how did it make it all the way to the Earth intact to form a crater? These are questions we have to resolve.”

Scientists have several hypotheses about what might have happened. Perhaps as the meteorite hurtled through the atmosphere it melted and morphed, becoming more of an aerodynamic needle-shape that could resist stress and survive in one piece. Plus, this shape would help it hold on to its speed, since the surface area exposed to atmospheric drag forces would be reduced.

“But the mystery is, why wouldn’t all objects reshape?” Schultz said. “Maybe it requires special circumstances, like the angle of entry.”

As Sgt. Joe Higgins patrolled the streets of Saba al-Bor, a tough town north of Baghdad, he was armed with bullets that had a lot more firepower than those of his 4th Infantry Division buddies.

As an Army sniper, Higgins was one of the select few toting an M14. The long-barreled rifle, an imposing weapon built for wars long past, spits out bullets larger and more deadly than the rounds that fit into the M4 carbines and M16 rifles that most soldiers carry.

“Having a heavy cartridge in an urban environment like that was definitely a good choice,” says Higgins, who did two tours in Iraq and left the service last year. “It just has more stopping power.”

Strange as it sounds, nearly seven years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bullets are a controversial subject for the US.

The smaller, steel-penetrating M855 rounds continue to be a weak spot in the American arsenal. They are not lethal enough to bring down an enemy decisively, and that puts troops at risk, according to Associated Press interviews.

Designed decades ago to puncture a Soviet soldier’s helmet hundreds of yards away, the M855 rounds are being used for very different targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of today’s fighting takes place in close quarters; narrow streets, stairways and rooftops are today’s battlefield. Legions of armor-clad Russians marching through the Fulda Gap in Germany have given way to insurgents and terrorists who hit and run.

Fired at short range, the M855 round is prone to pass through a body like a needle through fabric. That does not mean being shot is a pain-free experience. But unless the bullet strikes a vital organ or the spine, the adrenaline-fueled enemy may have the strength to keep on fighting and even live to fight another day.

In 2006, the Army asked a private research organization to survey 2,600 soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly one-fifth of those who used the M4 and M16 rifles wanted larger caliber bullets.

Yet the Army is not changing. The answer is better aim, not bigger bullets, officials say.

“If you hit a guy in the right spot, it doesn’t matter what you shoot him with,” said Maj. Thomas Henthorn, chief of the small arms division at Fort Benning, Ga., home to the Army’s infantry school.

At about 33 cents each, bullets do not get a lot of public attention in Washington, where the size of the debate is usually measured by how much a piece of equipment costs. But billions of M855 rounds have been produced, and Congress is preparing to pay for many more. The defense request for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 seeks $88 million for 267 million M855s, each one about the size of a AAA battery.

None of the M855’s shortcomings is surprising, said Don Alexander, a retired Army chief warrant officer with combat tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Somalia.

“The bullet does exactly what it was designed to do. It just doesn’t do very well at close ranges against smaller-statured people that are lightly equipped and clothed,” says Alexander, who spent most of his 26-year military career with the 5th Special Forces Group.

Paul Howe was part of a U.S. military task force 15 years ago in Mogadishu, Somalia’s slum-choked capital, when he saw a Somali fighter hit in the back from about a dozen feet away with an M855 round.

“I saw it poof out the other side through his shirt,” says Howe, a retired master sergeant and a former member of the Army’s elite Delta Force. “The guy just spun around and looked at where the round came from. He got shot a couple more times, but the first round didn’t faze him.”

With the M855, troops have to hit their targets with more rounds, said Howe, who owns a combat shooting school in Texas. That can be tough to do under high-stress conditions when one shot is all a soldier might get.

“The bullet is just not big enough,” he says. “If I’m going into a room against somebody that’s determined to kill me, I want to put him down as fast as possible.”

Dr. Martin Fackler, a former combat surgeon and a leading authority on bullet injuries, said the problem is the gun, not the bullet. The M4 rifle has a 14.5 inch barrel — too short to create the velocity needed for an M855 bullet to do maximum damage to the body.

“The faster a bullet hits the tissue, the more it’s going to fragment,” says Fackler. “Bullets that go faster cause more damage. It’s that simple.”

Rules of war limit the type of ammunition conventional military units can shoot. The Hague Convention of 1899 bars hollow point bullets that expand in the body and cause injuries that someone is less likely to survive. The United States was not a party to that agreement. Yet, as most countries do, it adheres to the treaty, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Hague restrictions do not apply to law enforcement agencies, however. Ballistics expert Gary Roberts said that is an inconsistency that needs to be remedied, particularly at a time when so many other types of destructive ordnance are allowed in combat.

“It is time to update this antiquated idea and allow US military personnel to use the same proven ammunition,” Roberts says.

In response to complaints from troops about the M855, the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey assigned a team of soldiers, scientists, doctors and engineers to examine the round’s effectiveness. The team’s findings, announced in May 2006, concluded there were no commercially available rounds of similar size better than the M855.

But Anthony Milavic, a retired Marine Corps major, said the Army buried the study’s most important conclusion: that larger-caliber bullets are more potent.

“It was manipulated,” says Milavic, a Vietnam veteran who manages an online military affairs forum called MILINET. “Everybody knows there are bullets out there that are better.”

Officials at Picatinny Arsenal declined to be interviewed. In an e-mailed response to questions, they called the M855 “an overall good performer.” Studies are being conducted to see if it can be made more lethal without violating the Hague Convention, they said.

Larger rounds are not necessarily better, they also said. Other factors such as the weather, the amount of light and the bullet’s angle of entry also figure into how lethal a single shot may be.

Heavier rounds also mean more weight for soldiers to carry, as well as more recoil — the backward kick created when a round is fired. That long has been a serious issue for the military, which has troops of varied size and strength.

The M14 rifle used by Joe Higgins was once destined to be the weapon of choice for all US military personnel. When switched to the automatic fire mode, the M14 could shoot several hundred rounds a minute. But most soldiers could not control the gun, and in the mid-1960s it gave way to the M16 and its smaller cartridge. The few remaining M14s are used by snipers and marksman.

US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., is buying a carbine called the SCAR Heavy for its commandos, and it shoots the same round as the M14. The regular Army, though, has invested heavily in M4 and M16 rifles and has no plans to get rid of them.

A change in expectations is needed more than a change in gear, said Col. Robert Radcliffe, chief of combat developments at Fort Benning. Soldiers go through training believing that simply hitting a part of their target is enough to kill it. On a training range, getting close to the bulls-eye counts. But in actual combat, nicking the edges isn’t enough.

“Where you hit is essential to the equation,” Radcliffe says. “I think the expectations are a little bit off in terms of combat performance against target range performance. And part of that is our fault for allowing that expectation to grow when it’s really not there at all.”

The arguments over larger calibers, Radcliffe says, are normal in military circles where emotions over guns and bullets can run high.

“One of the things I’ve discovered in guns is that damned near everyone is an expert,” he says. “And they all have opinions.”

When eight 2-year-old pandas arrived at Beijing Zoo on Saturday after a long journey from their quake-damaged home Wolong reserve center, both the keepers and tourists cheered.

As the “national treasures”, the eight cubs, flown to Beijing by a special charted plane, had narrowly escaped death in the recent 8.0-magnitude quake that rocked southwest China’s Sichuan and has claimed more than 65,000 lives, including six staff members at Wolong Nature Reserve.

The eight pandas will spend the next six months in the capital as planned to add festivity to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Shortly after they arrived, the pandas were moved into an 800-square-meter glass house composed of seven pens, with air-conditioning and round-the-clock monitoring devices. Also provided for the pandas are four play grounds, including a pond, a lawn, a ladder and a terrace.

“We keep the indoor temperature at 25 degrees centigrade, so the pandas are ensured conditions similar to their natural habitat,” said Zhang Jin’guo, vice director of Beijing Zoo.

In the meantime, the zoo managed to procure 240 kg of fresh bamboo and bamboo shoots from central China’s Henan Province, as well as apples, carrots, milk powder, corn bread and mineral supplements, said Zhang.

Pandas are very picky and normally eat only fresh high-altitude bamboo shoots.

While the eight lucky ones get used to their new residency in Beijing, their fellow pandas back home are still in the quake trauma.

“Psychological counseling” for the rare animals was put in place, said Wang Pengyan, director of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong, 30 km away from the epicenter of Wenchuan County.

To comfort the pandas, the keepers greeted them by names, touched their heads gently and maintained eye contact with them. “These methods prove to be useful, and most of them are mentally stable now,” Wang said.

Panda keeper Gao Qiang still shivers when recollecting how the pandas survived the quake.

“Before we realized what was going on, a whole mountain had collapsed and rumbled, like a cyclone of huge rocks. The pandas were roaring with horror I never heard before.”

Instinctively, the panda keepers ran to the open ground, but they returned to the building when they remembered the pandas.

“We treat the pandas like our own children. Do parents abandon their children when the disaster strikes? ” said Gao emotionally.

Within seconds, the pandas climbed into the trees, not daring to move. Gao and his colleagues ran back amid aftershocks and crashing stones. They climbed up and held the pandas in their arms, before bringing them to the ground. “It was no easy job: they weigh 150 kg each, twice our size,” he said.

More worrying were 14 cubs. When Wu Daifu, another panda keeper, rushed back, the rising river was approaching the six-month-old cubs, who were clinging together in such a big fear that “they were biting or scratching us violently,” Wu said.

Rescue of the adult pandas was much more difficult. They scattered everywhere. For those who would not return willingly, anesthetic was the only solution.

“It was heart-breaking to use anesthetic on them,” Wu recalled.” We patted their heads, gave them comfort, and inserted the needle as slowly as possible.”

The quake left two pandas injured and six others missing. Fortunately, five of them have been recovered safe and sound by Monday, he said.

The last panda at large is an adult, so it is more likely to avoid danger than the younger ones, said Xiong Beirong, an official with the Sichuan provincial forestry bureau. “We keep our fingers crossed for him.”

To ensure their safety, the Center shipped six pandas the past Friday to the adjacent Ya’an, another panda breeding base, which was less affected by the quake.

Given the conditions in Wolong remain bad, the Center is considering moving more pandas to other safe habitats. 14 of 32 panda shelters were destroyed. A few were repaired, but collapsed again in strong aftershocks.

Food supply is another big challenge in Wolong, said Xiong. A panda spends 10 hours a day eating, and consumes 10 to 18 kilograms of fresh bamboo every day.

The supply of bamboo was suspended for a couple of days as locals were struggling to cope with their own losses, and stopped providing for the pandas. So the panda keepers had to go into the mountains to collect fresh bamboos, despite the risk of landslides or mudslides.

And the Center’s food reserves lasted only two days and poor pandas lived on rice porridge for days.

On May 18, the State Forestry Administration ordered an emergency shipment of 1,500 kg of bamboo and other food, such as apples, soybeans, eggs and milk powder.

Following that, fresh bamboo began to arrive from Baoxing County, another giant panda habitat about 50 km southwest of Wolong.

“The road conditions are very poor and it takes much longer than normal to transport the supply. Thank goodness, the food crisis is almost over,” said Zhou Xiaoping, an official with the Center.

Apart from Wolong, almost all 20 reserves for wild pandas at the Minshan Mountains in Sichuan were badly damaged in the quake, according to the Sichuan provincial forestry bureau.

China has 1,590 pandas living in the wild, 75 percent of them are in Sichuan, 17 percent in Shaanxi, and 7 percent in Gansu.

Among the pandas at Wolong rescued from the quake are Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, who have been offered to Taiwai as a goodwill gesture.

“The two pandas are mentally disturbed in the quake, and they need some time to recover,” said Wang Pengyan.

Since 1972, China has lent out 18 pandas to the United States, Japan and UK and other countries.

In an announcement on its website on May 25, the Management Bureau of Wolong Nature Reserve has committed itself to rebuilding the Center as quickly as possible. “We will do our best to protect the giant pandas and preserve their core species,” it says.

I set up Mummy Tattoo in 1999, but I’ve been tattooing for years. I trained in Japan, but my focus has always been on Chinese styles.

Throughout school and college I studied drawing, and tattooing was just the next step. I like to fuse old traditions with modern design – I follow the work of international artists that inspire me, but I feel more of a connection to my history and culture.

My overall style incorporates gongbi and xieyi traditional painting styles, with the deep shading and line definition of some of the international artists I follow.

Whenever I’m at conventions, I keep my eyes peeled for any artists I’d like to work with – we’ve had artists from France, Germany and Brazil at Mummy Tattoo for a few months at a time.

My clients come from all over the world, but my wife speaks perfect English and can translate exactly what you want. In my studio, it’s really important that clients feel relaxed and at ease.

The ideal client will come with their own designs and ideas, and we will work through them to create the perfect image. If I don’t feel I can execute the design, Hua Yi, the other resident Chinese artist in my studio, specialises in Western styles, and does everything from old school classic designs to portraits and beyond.

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He designs unique patterns for each client, often using classic Chinese graphics and sketching techniques, and is one of the few artists in the country to use the traditional hand needle technique.

China’s leadership recently decided to assess the performance of government officials not just by how fast they managed to spur economic growth but also by the environmental soundness of that growth.

This was a continuation of measures China rolled out during recent months highlighting its commitment to turn financial risk into a green recovery.

In early June, Premier Wen Jiabao affirmed that China would put in place carbon emissions reduction targets in national development programs. In other words, China would assess its economic performance by how much less carbon it would emit per unit of GDP growth.

Experts believed the decision and announcement had “ample policy implications”. They said that once commitment was translated into action, China would accelerate the pace of restructuring its energy mix and economic structure, and seek a “green recovery path” out of a worsening financial crisis.

“These are vital decisions and pledges. The implications will largely go beyond China’s stated commitment to fight global warming,” He Jiankun, deputy head of the State Council’s Expert Panel on Climate Change Policy told China Business Weekly during an exclusive interview recently.

He said China might be considering reduction of carbon emissions per unit of GDP as early as the start of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), and that it would decide the career path of bureaucrats by their performance in carbon reduction.

If that were the case, China would enter a new era in terms of climate change policy compared with its 20-percent energy saving target for the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).

“To reduce carbon intensity, we should focus on low-carbon technologies and clean solutions,” He said. “That will be the new economic engine for China’s further growth.”

China is expected to witness steady economic recovery when its GDP likely climbs to 8 percent after the current economic downturn.

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang has repeatedly voiced the central government’s desire to find new growth points to sustain economic development.

Li has pinned high hopes on efforts to tackle climate change, develop clean energy and strengthen environmental protection. “If we take action on all these fronts, then it can help us shake off the negative impact of the global recession,” he has said.

Liu Qi, the deputy director of the National Energy Administration, said his colleagues were working on a new energy development draft following instructions from the State Council, the nation’s Cabinet. This would be ready for approval as soon as possible, he said.

Liu said that new energy programs would involve investment of trillions and that new energy output was likely to exceed the targets set by the nation’s overall energy and renewable energy plans.

The first phase of the program would see a strategic shift in three years to nuclear, solar, wind, biomass power and clean coal technologies - with investment opportunities worth as much as 3 trillion yuan ($438.9 billion), Liu said. Phase two encompasses the period up to 2020 and would entail far more investments, he pointed out.

The research panel of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the nations’ top planner, has predicted that China’s clean energy development strategy would create huge investment opportunities for private and State investors.

China needs to spend at least 40 trillion yuan by 2050 to go ‘green’, according to the expert panel of the NDRC’s Energy Research Institute.

“Roughly, we need to spend an extra 1 trillion yuan every year to raise energy efficiency,” Bai Quan, a senior member of the panel, said. The panel will publish its research findings on China’s low-carbon roadmap this month.

Explaining the mathematical model that his colleagues had built, Bai said the money would be mainly used to introduce technologies that raise the energy efficiency of end-users in industry, construction and transportation.

If the investment showed results, it would mean the country’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions would increase by only 50 percent during the 2010-50 period - to 6 tons from the present 4 tons. Per capita emissions stood at 3.58 tons in 2004.

The target could be made a national goal, given that per capita income is expected to increase 10-fold to 200,000 yuan by 2050 from 20,000 yuan in 2010.

Jiang Kejun, another researcher at the NDRC institute, said the project would offer a low-carbon alternative for the consideration of top policymakers.

Low-carbon emissions should be made standard State policy, at least in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) if not in the 12th plan period itself, Jiang said.

He Jiankun said the country’s carbon dioxide emissions were likely to peak in 2035, at 8.8 billion tons, when industrialization and urbanization would be in an advanced stage, compared with around 5.5 billion tons in 2010.

Spending on climate increased nearly 100%

But from 2035 to 2050, emissions would remain stable or decline marginally if the proper technological route was followed, He said. “This is our ideal carbon map,” He said.

The government’s stimulus effort has already won international recognition. The Washington-based World Resources Institute said recently that about 38 percent of China’s stimulus package investment was “directly or indirectly” related to environmental protection.

The Ministry of Finance said that, between January and May, spending on environmental protection rose 93.5 percent over the corresponding period last year.

Despite the low-carbon roadmap and the central government’s commitment to sustainable development, some regions in China had yet to make progress in “green recovery.”

Li Ganjie, the vice-minister of environmental protection, said the central government would continue to pump enough investments into environmental protection. “But, I doubt whether the local governments would be able to fully implement these environmental standards,” said Li.

To change the situation, He said the solution was to alter the assessment system of officials. “If we fire them when they fail in environmental protection and carbon reduction goals, our economy will see more sustainable development.”