IN BRIEF (Page 2)

Charity

Moves to promote transparency

The government will no longer appoint individual charitable organizations as the exclusive recipients of donations for disaster relief operations after natural catastrophes.

Speaking at a meeting in Shenzhen, Civil Affairs Minister Li Liguo said the government will instead publish the ratings of charitable organizations as guidance for the public.

The new measures will include publishing the donation requirements of disaster-hit areas and updating the information at different stages of the disaster-relief process, he said.

The government will also promote public supervision of the fundraising and spending processes of the organizations to improve transparency levels.

Tourism

Overseas travel on the rise

Outbound travel by mainland residents surged 19.75 percent, with as many as 38.56 million people making overseas trips during the first six months of the year, compared with the same period last year.

According to information provided by the Ministry of Public Security, mainland border crossings during the period grew 6 percent to 208 million.

The top five destinations visited by mainland residents were Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and Japan.

Heritage

Protection for Great Wall urged

Historians have called for greater efforts to protect the western sections of the Great Wall after a recent survey of the historic structure.

The National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body, arranged for experts to check the condition of the Great Wall in Gansu province, where an estimated 3,600 kilometers of the total length of 21,196 km of the Great Wall is located. The team visited 10 major sites in five cities between July 6 and 12.

The committee said it was alarmed by the condition of the Wall, built during the dynasties of Qin (221-206 BC), Han (206BC-220) and Ming (1368-1644).

Unlike the eastern parts of the Great Wall in Beijing, Hebei and Liaoning, which were mostly built with stones and bricks, the sections in Gansu were built with tamped earth.

After centuries of erosion from fierce wind and frequent sandstorms, these structures have become extremely fragile.

Culture

Internet words in new lexicon

The sixth edition of the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, published by the Commercial Press on July 15, reflects the major changes in the Chinese language over the past seven years and also includes 3,000 new phrases.

Most of the new additions reflect the current social life and also cover online words like geili (awesome), leiren (shocking), zhainan (indoorsy man) and zhainu (indoorsy woman).

The dictionary is considered to be the most authoritative Chinese language dictionary and a major reference work on modern standard Chinese.

The new edition contains about 69,000 entries, including characters, words and expressions, idiomatic phrases and idioms. The new words in the dictionary are more like the cultural symbols that reflect the changes in the society, said Yu Dianli, manager of Commercial Press.

Science

Return from the ocean deep

The manned submersible Jiaolong is expected to dive in the South China Sea between April and May next year to study the seabed's changing environment and its influence on the climate, Liu Feng, project commander, said in Qingdao, Shandong province.

The submersible completed a six-week mission on July 16, during which it dived to a record depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

The feat, which was achieved in June, proved that China now has the technical capability to explore 99 percent of the ocean floor.

Education

Academic fraud to be curbed

China has begun seeking public opinion on draft regulations aimed at punishing those who obtain academic degrees by fraudulent means. The rules are expected to curb fraud and plagiarism in higher education institutions.

The Ministry of Education said in the draft regulation that colleges must disqualify an applicant for a graduate, postgraduate, or doctoral degree if he or she commits plagiarism or fraud in the academic-degree thesis. The student would also be banned from applying for further degrees for three years.

Under the proposals, degrees already awarded would be revoked if such misconduct is found. Tutors of students who commit fraud could also be suspended or removed from their posts.

China Daily

(China Daily 07/20/2012 page2)