It’s the summer of highway traffic jam

HUAIAN COUNTY, CHINA—So you think struggling home from Ontario’s cottage country was tough?

Think again.

And consider, if you will, the case of Chinese trucker Pang Laisuo.

On Sunday his coal-laden transport truck was caught in a traffic jam near here, about 240 kilometres north of Beijing.

Pang knew he’d have something of a wait.

What he didn’t know was that it would last 18 hours.

“Everyone who pulled up at 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon ended up being stuck there until 10 o’clock Monday morning,” says Pang, a lean and grizzled man in his 50s speaking at a roadside stop amid the low roar of slow passing trucks. “No one budged.”

Under normal circumstances, in that elapsed time, Pang says he could have hauled his coal from the city of Hohhot, in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, all the way to the mega city of Tianjin — about 700 kilometres.

But circumstances here are anything but normal.

This is the season of traffic hell in this part of China, a summer that brought what has been described as the world’s biggest traffic jam: a monstrosity of traffic that slowed to a crawl in recent weeks and even extended, at one point, to more than 100 kilometres.

The situation was so bad that even China’s state broadcaster CCTV declared last week that the highway from Hohhot to Beijing had morphed into one huge “parking lot.”

That jam paralyzed more than 10,000 trucks, almost all of them carrying coal.

Truckers along this route say that what used to take a day and a half can now take four, five or even six days of travel.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/china/article/857316–it-s-the-summer-of-highway-traffic-jam-hell-in-china?bn=1

China pilots faked CVs

More than 200 commercial pilots working for Chinese airlines faked their CVs, it has been reported.

More than half of them worked for the parent company of an airline involved in China’s worst plane crash in several years, the head of the civil aviation administration was quoted as saying.

The results of investigations in 2008-2009 showed that airlines desperate for staff were hiring pilots whose CVs had been faked, the newspaper China Business News cited Li Jiaxiang, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), as telling a teleconference.

The report comes as the agency investigates safety measures nationwide following a crash on August 24 that killed 42 people at a small airport in the north-east, in China’s worst commercial airline disaster in nearly six years.

Another 54 people were injured in the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer 190 plane belonging to Henan Airlines during a night landing in Heilongjiang province.

A worker who answered the phone at Shenzhen Airlines, which reportedly had 103 of the pilots with faked work histories on the payroll, said he had no idea about the report.

Shenzhen Airlines is the parent company of Henan Airlines.

China’s aviation industry has expanded rapidly in recent years and regulators have struggled to keep up.

Airports have proliferated as have small regional airlines, reaching into remote cities such as Yichun, 90 miles from the Russian border, that are eager to develop tourism and other industries.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5i9Xp3ti0d2HR8eoH_pXCO1QjAFSg

China to have 200 million vehicles by 2020

SHANGHAI — The number of vehicles on China’s roads will more than double to at least 200 million by 2020, a top official was quoted Monday as saying, further straining the nation’s environment and energy supply.

China must make it a top priority to develop fuel-efficient and alternative energy cars, the China Securities Journal said, citing Wang Fuchang, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

China’s auto sales hit 13.64 million units last year, overtaking the United States as the world’s top car market, while sales this year are forecast to hit 15 million units.

As of the end of 2009, there were 76.2 million vehicles in the country, according to government figures.

China’s auto sales have slowed in recent months, partially due to seasonal factors, but August saw a surprising 55.7 percent year on year jump, boosted by Beijing’s new subsidies for energy-saving vehicles.

The surging car use has brought mounting concerns over pollution, soaring energy demand, and traffic gridlock.

A top official with the country’s environment minister, Liu Ziquan, was quoted Monday as saying vehicle exhausts had overtaken other major sources as the top cause of air pollution in cities.

Road congestion has also worsened, highlighted by a recurring traffic jam dozens of kilometres (miles) long on a major highway leading into Beijing from the northwest.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipb4JxRdfujTxpIG-huAJFO–Ysw

China vows to increase foreign imports

BEIJING — China has vowed to make it easier to import goods into its huge market as Beijing seeks to address controversial trade surpluses with its trading partners, a report said Monday.

Beijing will “loosen its regulation of imports, cut import costs and make import financing easier for domestic companies,” among other measures, said Chong Quan, a top trade official, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

Chong, who is the commerce ministry’s deputy China International Trade Representative, added that the government will encourage imports from nations with which it is running a trade surplus, the report said.

China also will actively import energy, advanced technology and other equipment, Chong said at a trade forum in the capital.

The report did not mention any further details of measures China would take.

China overtook Germany last year to become the world’s top exporter. Its foreign exchange reserves stood at 2.45 trillion dollars at the end of June — also the largest in the world.

China’s export success has consistently drawn criticism from major trading partners such as the United States, with which it runs a large trade surplus. Washington has long pushed China to import more foreign goods.

Foreign pressure for a stronger Chinese currency has also mounted, with critics including US lawmakers claiming the yuan is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, giving China’s exporters an unfair advantage.

The People’s Bank of China pledged in June to let the yuan trade more freely against the dollar, but the currency has changed less than 0.7 percent since then.

The yuan had been effectively pegged at about 6.8 to the dollar from mid-2008, when the global financial crisis started to bite.

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Citigroup to Hire up to 7,500 in China

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc plans to almost triple its workforce in China by hiring up to 7,500 people in the next three years, an executive told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday.

Citigroup, which has 4,500 employees in China, will hire more in that country that in any other Asia-Pacific market, according to Bloomberg’s interview with Stephen Bird, Citigroup’s co-chief executive officer for the region.

The hiring plans will support Citigroup’s efforts to expand in the region and compete with HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC .

Bird told Reuters last week that Citigroup planned to open two branches a month on average in China for the foreseeable future, the maximum allowed by regulators.

The company’s strategy “is progressively more weighted to emerging markets,” Bird told Reuters. “Greater China is the future.”

Citigroup plans to double its number of branches in Hong Kong to 50 by the end of the year and increase the number of branches on the mainland to 38 by the end of the year, from 29 currently.

A Citigroup spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The company’s shares were trading up less than one percent, at $3.70, by mid-afternoon.

 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6801EC20100901

Mobile users must show ID to get number

BEIJING — Cellphone customers in China must provide identification from Wednesday to purchase a new number, state media said — the latest step by Beijing to tighten curbs over the world’s largest mobile market.

The new regulations also apply to foreigners and those wishing to purchase a pre-paid SIM card, the China Daily and Global Times reported, citing sources at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Those with existing mobile subscriptions will be asked to register with their carriers before 2013, or their plans could be cancelled, the Global Times said, citing MIIT official Chen Jinqiao.

Street newspaper stands will be banned from selling SIM cards until the owners are trained on how to register customers, the reports said.

The new rules are part of the government’s efforts to prevent spam, pornographic messages and rampant fraud through the country’s vast mobile network, MIIT spokesman Wang Lijian told the China Daily.

Officials at the ministry declined immediate comment.

The government planned to carry out nationwide registration of mobile phone users as early as 2006, but the plan did not come to fruition as telecoms operators and users showed little interest, the report said.

China had 814 million mobile phone users at the end of July, official data showed.

But as many as 320 million users have not provided identification, Chen told the China Daily.

A report issued by a government-linked body in April said about 75 percent of China’s roughly 200 million web users under the age of 25 use their mobile phones to access the Internet.

Beijing blocks access to any web content that the government deems unacceptable, ranging from pornography to political dissent, under a vast system of censorship known as the “Great Firewall of China”.

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Monster traffic jam rears country’s head again

BEIJING — China’s monster traffic jam has reared its head again, with trucks and cars backed up for up to 18 miles (30 kilometers) Saturday on a highway north of Beijing, although that is a third the size of what it was.

The traffic jam came four days after the break-up of an even bigger one — stretching to 60 miles (100 kilometers) at one point.

State media said the latest jam on the Beijing-Tibet highway was caused by an accident and road maintenance.

The worst of the jam started in Zhangjiakou, a city about 90 miles (150 kilometers) northwest of Beijing, and stretched into Inner Mongolia in northern China, with traffic creeping along in fits and starts.

A woman who answered the phone at the Beijing traffic management office said drivers should not take the highway. “The traffic flow is very slow,” said the woman, who refused to give her name.

Traffic jams are part of daily life in China’s major cities, with vehicles moving at a crawl in parts of Beijing for most of the day.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPxX7xLgeu-0gKTjLyU_TY1f7TtgD9HS9F6O0

Special task force to investigate air crash

BEIJING — China has set up a special task force bringing together officials from six different government agencies to investigate a plane crash last week that killed 42 people, state media reported Monday.

The team, which includes personnel from the work safety and civil aviation administrations, will probe the cause of the crash in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the China Daily said.

It will establish responsibility for the accident and advise the government on how to revamp the industry to avert future disasters, the report quoted Liang Jiakun, deputy head of the country’s work safety board, as saying.

“The probe involves every aspect of the jet — its manufacturer, operator, pilot, crew, maintenance record, and the air traffic management and airport authorities,” said Li Jian, deputy head of the civil aviation administration.

On August 24, a Brazilian-made Henan Airlines jet crashed in heavy fog while attempting to land at an airport in Yichun city near the Russian border. Fifty-four passengers and crew survived the disaster.

An initial investigation and survivors’ accounts indicate the plane — made by Embraer — missed the runway and crashed, cracking the cabin and triggering a subsequent explosion and fire, according to previous state media reports.

Authorities in China’s central province of Henan have ordered the airline to change its name following the crash to prevent it tarnishing the province’s image. The company had previously been known as Kunpeng Airlines.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gwnYcp3CdXJ7yCYPIvpX2gNRIk7A

54 survivors, 42 dead in China plane crash

(AFP) – A Chinese airliner smashed in two while attempting to land in heavy fog, leaving at least 42 people dead but 54 survivors in the country’s first major air disaster in nearly six years.

The Henan Airlines domestic flight was carrying 96 people including five crew when it slammed into the ground late Tuesday near the airport in the northeastern city of Yichun, in remote Heilongjiang province, state media said.

Forty-two people were killed, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC), which reportedly had highlighted past technical problems with the model of plane involved — an ERJ-190 jet made by Brazilian company Embraer.

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Floods halt shipping at China’s Three Gorges dam

Authorities have halted shipping through China’s massive Three Gorges Dam on the upper reaches of the Yangtze river because the dam will experience another flood peak Tuesday.

Water levels at the world’s largest hydroelectric project have been at high levels for weeks from record rains, which have also lashed other parts of the country, triggering landslides and flooding, and causing deaths and billions in damage.

The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said that late Monday the water level in the dam was about 500 feet (152 meters), 24 feet (7 meters) above the flood alarm level but still below a peak of about 518 feet (158 meters) reached earlier this summer. The reservoir’s maximum capacity is 574 feet (175 meters).

The statement posted on the organization’s website said shipping services through the dam were suspended twice in July because of heavy water flows into the dam, a $23 billion project that was built to end centuries of floods along the Yangtze River basin.

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