介绍:
This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
World-renowned British scientist Stephen Hawking has opened an account on Chinese microblog Weibo.com, attracting 1.3 million followers in 8 hours.
His first entry on April 12 said "Greetings to my friends in China! It has been too long!"
Hawking is very popular in China, especially among young people, for his work developing the Big Bang Theory and perseverance in overcoming the difficulties of his disabilities. Hawking's A Brief History of Time has long been a bestseller in China's bookshops.
Hawking said he can now regularly communicate with Chinese people through social media and that he hopes to share more about his life and work while also learning from his followers.
Hawking's account attracted more than 1.3 million followers only eight hours after his first entry at 10:12 a.m. Beijing Time. He had more than 220,000 comments and 440,000 thumbs-up. It also became a hot topic on Weibo.com, affiliated with China's largest internet company Sina.com, as over 20 million read the entry.
Hawking said his first trip to China was in 1985 when he travelled across the country by train. He last visited China in 2006 for a physics conference in Beijing.
Sina says Hawking's team contacted them earlier this year to verify his application. The account says in the introduction that it is jointly operated by Hawking's team and U.S. social media company Stradella Road.
Sina has more than 220 million live accounts.
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The rich can no longer pay to get an Executive Master of Business Administration, or EMBA diploma. China's Ministry of Education made the statement after raising enrollment credentials to require high scores at national exam and political awareness.
According to the guideline on streamlining the MBA programs issued by the ministry, the 64 institutes of higher learning currently running EMBA programs can no longer organize entrance exams beginning in December this year, and candidates must take a national entrance exam.
Candidates need to score above a required level designated by the ministry in order to be recruited.
The guideline notes that apart from academic credentials, candidates will also be assessed for their personality and capability, particularly in the area of political awareness, during an interview session. Those who fail ideological and political assessment will be disqualified.
Moreover, the guideline prohibits colleges from awarding diplomas to under-performers, or those not attending enough classes, adding that bribery cases which popped up in academic evaluation will be seriously investigated.
The guideline also tightened management over overseas study tours offered by MBA programs, saying colleges running these programs must establish an approval procedure, and study tours can by no means morph into sightseeing tours.
China launched its EMBA programs in 2002.
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An Australian University has embarked on an ambitious push to further strengthen ties with its Chinese tertiary-education partners, as "Australia Week in China" gets underway.
The University of Tasmania has revealed that it will sign agreements with three Chinese institutions this month, the largest of which will lead to the creation of a Sino-Australian college based in both countries.
The university announced a tripartite collaboration between the prestigious Tasmanian institution, the University of Western Australia and the highly regarded Chongqing-based Southwest University to launch the Westa College.
The bi-lateral deal will result in the construction of a purpose-built campus in Chongqing to cater for 200 new Australian and Chinese students.
It is understood that teaching at Westa College will commence in September this year.
The students will come from a range of diverse four-year courses. They will spend their first two years in China before transferring to either Perth or Tasmania, and receive a Bachelor's degree from both the Southwest University and the Australian institution of their choice.
The University of Tasmania has experienced a 50 percent increase in international-student enrollments in the past 12 months. It is set to pull in an extra 80 students under the arrangement.
You are listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China will further deepen reform in healthcare this year with key factors for the reform discussed at a meeting of the central government recently.
The State Council, the country's cabinet, convened a regular executive meeting and determined that healthcare reform should benefit more people.
Key sectors for healthcare reform this year were decided at the meeting.
Plans discussed include increasing the number of cities piloting urban public hospital reform from 100 to 200, implementing a tiered medical care pilot project in 70 percent of the country's prefectural-level areas, and improving the compensation system in a bid to abolish the drug price addition policy of public hospitals in new pilot cities.
Other focuses include implementing the centralized procurement of drugs used by public hospitals, improving the performance-based remuneration system in grassroots health institutions, and building a national network for basic health insurance settlement so that people can have their medical expenses reimbursed in different places.
Critical disease insurance will cover all people within the year, and subsidies per capita for basic health insurance and basic public health services will be raised.
The number of resident physicians receiving standardized training will be increased by 70,000, including 5,000 pediatricians.
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China has strengthened its efforts to crack down on piracy in recent years, culminating in the closure of hundreds of illegal content-sharing websites. However, Internet users still manage to find ways to download content without payment or punishment.
On Chinese social networking sites including Baidu, users post messages containing torrent sharing files, most of which are stored in cloud services or online file-hosting services.
In 2012, a court in Beijing heard a case brought by writer Han Han against search engine Baidu, with the novelist suing the website for copyright infringement of his works.
Han accused Baidu of stealing his works by publishing them online and offering his writing as free downloads as part of the site's literary database. He said the website provided a channel for disseminating pirated works, resulting in copyright violations.
Baidu's lawyer said the literary database is simply a place for Internet users to store data, distancing the site from responsibility for copyright protection.
The court awarded Han 80,000 yuan in compensation, but didn't rule in favor of his other demands, including removal of Baidu's cloud storage data.
A judge with the special IPR court in south China's Shenzhen City says such a minor penalty won't do much to a corporation worth tens of billions of U.S. dollars, but an individual writer definitely cannot afford the prolonged legal tussle.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues.
China's ambassador to France, Zhai Jun, suggests adding the Chinese language to billboards and instructions in tourist attractions every time he is consulted by the French about improving tourist services.
According to the ambassador, one of the reasons is that soon China will become the largest source of travelers outside Europe for France.
Outside Europe, China was France's second biggest tourist market in 2013 after the United States, with 1.7 million visitors and 680 million U.S. dollars of revenue.
The ambassador says that previously, the instructions at tourist attractions were full of French, English and Japanese, while the Chinese language was absent.
Currently the major museums in Paris provide instructions in Chinese, and he said the conditions are still being improved.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius said in August last year that the goal is to quickly reach 5 million Chinese tourists.
The Chinese ambassador noted that the French side has responded proactively by offering more convenience to Chinese tourists.
Welcoming 84 million tourists in 2014, France confirmed its position as the world's most visited country. The United States and Japan accounted for a major portion of the travelers, while the number of Chinese tourists has surged rapidly in recent years.
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Hong Kong's embattled Asia Television has shut down, ending its 59 years of broadcasting service.
After broadcasting its final program, a rerun of the 2013 Miss Asia Pageant, ATV bade farewell to its audience by showing a card on the screen at midnight on April 1st.
Local people gathered at ATV's headquarters in Tai Po to take pictures and witness the last moment of the broadcaster. One local resident surnamed Ma said she had been ATV's viewer for decades and would watch it until the end.
ATV's senior public affairs manager Jeff Wong told the media that he believed the station will find alternative ways to operate, by for example, providing internet TV services. However, that will be subject to the decision of the broadcaster's investors.
Last year, the Hong Kong government decided not to renew ATV's free-to-air TV license. The license expired on April 1 according to the law.
The public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong took over ATV's two analogue channels, and launched a television broadcast at noon the following day after ATV ceased its signals.
Launching as Rediffusion Television in 1957, ATV was a pioneer of entertainment in Hong Kong's broadcasting history.
The station experienced its golden era in the 1980s. However, in the late 1990s, it was hit by a financial crisis after experiencing several ownership shifts.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Police in the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong have arrested almost 3,000 illegal immigrants in a joint operation to crack down on growing human smuggling.
According to the Ministry of Public Security, among the detained immigrants, 2,860 were from Southeast Asia and more than 80 from South Asia.
Most of the illegal immigrants were trying to sneak into Hong Kong from the mainland to seek employment.
Since the 17-month campaign started in February, police in the southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have dismantled three cross-border smuggling syndicates with the help of Hong Kong police.
During the first phase of the crackdown, a total of 142 suspects from the three syndicates were apprehended by police, including 29 from countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia.
The cross-border smuggling rings are well organized with clear division of labor.
The smugglers in Southeast and South Asia recruit immigrants, while those on the mainland transfer them to Guangdong and then sneak them into Hong Kong. The smugglers in Hong Kong take control of the whole process.
The Public Security Ministry says the illegal immigrants have also commit crime including thefts, robbery and drug smuggling, which result in seriously harming public security in both Hong Kong and Guangdong.
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Next year's entire harvest from a 410-year-old tea tree has sold for 600,000 yuan, roughly 92,000 U.S. dollars, at an auction in Central China's Hunan province.
The tree is 4-and-a-half meters high and located in a village in Hunan. The village has more than 2,000 ancient tea trees.
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