A court in east China’s Shandong Province has accepted a telecom fraud case involving the death of a teenager, which sparked a national outcry last year.

The trial against seven defendants will be held at the intermediate people’s court of Linyi City for the lawsuit filed Monday by the city’s procuratorate.

Xu Yuyu, a high school graduate in Linyi, died of cardiac arrest in August last year after losing 9,900 yuan (1,440 U.S. dollars) of her university tuition fees to telecom fraudsters.

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate has issued a circular urging procuratorates at all levels to tighten crackdowns on telecom and Internet fraud.

Chinese police caught 19,345 telecom fraud suspects last year.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative has been widely echoed and accepted by the international community since it was put forward three years ago, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while visiting the Tieshangang Yard in Beihai city of South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Before inspecting the yard, Xi paid a visit to the Hepu Han Dynasty Museum, where there are collections of relics related to the ancient trade of the maritime route.

Xi held talks with the workers at the yard and told them that both the museum and the yard he had visited had important links with the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, put forward by Xi in 2013, aims to revive the ancient trade routes and boost the interconnection between the regions.

Mentioning that Beihai played a role in the ancient maritime silk road, Xi told the workers to be dedicated to the implementation of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

China will boost openness and development under the Belt and Road framework, to achieve the goal of great rejuvenation of the nation and fulfill the Chinese dream, he added.

Heavy smog hits Beijing. [Photo/China.org.cn]

In a show of anti-pollution resolve, China has begun shaming rogue firms that had allegedly polluted environment and even blocked government inspections.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection made details of the first case public over the weekend and later listed others. Obstruction of law enforcement was found to be common.

In the update, three more cases were reported in provinces of Hebei, Henan and Shandong where the central government had dispatched the largest air pollution inspection team in history, involving 5,600 people.

In Liaocheng city, inspectors were locked out of a steel company that had allegedly discharged excessive waste water.

In Xingtai, a city with one of the worst air quality records, the inspection team’s credentials were taken away by force.

In Puyang city, a textile factory halted operations and ignored inspectors when they came knocking.

Altogether, six people were detained for allegedly obstructing inspectors in these cases.

“It is not just to warn offenders. The action shows inspectors will leave no stone unturned,” said Fu Qiang, an environmental lawyer.

China is fighting an uphill battle against pollution. Air pollution, particularly smog, often occurs in north China in winter. A high concentration of heavy industry, use of coal, growth of private car use and climate change are all cited as causes. The battle will not be won without enforcing emission limits on factories.

In early April, 28 teams were sent to cities around Beijing to find polluters. In less than three weeks, the teams checked 405 firms and found 286 of them did not comply with national environmental standards.

The current furor only emerged after the manager of a clean energy firm in Shandong locked up inspectors for an hour. Lyujie Environmental Protection and Energy Saving Technology was accused of using an obsolete boiler and lacking proper emission treatment facilities, resulting in dust and noise.

When inspectors visited last Saturday, the company’s general manager Wang Kaisheng refused to allow them to look at the plant, claiming that their credentials were fake. He later refused to allow them to leave the premises. The firm was founded by retired Shandong provincial official Xue Hongmin in 2005 to produce energy-saving boilers, coolers and other environmentally friendly products.

Ma Jijiang, a local environmental protection official, said the firm has not obtained permit for its boiler. The boiler has since been removed. Further investigation is underway to decide if there was any collusion between government officials and the company.

Jinan-based lawyer Cui Lianwei advises enforcers to beware of local protectionism. “Protectionism in some areas is the key cause of poor enforcement in environmental protection, and joint inspection efforts will help improve the effect and efficiency of enforcement,” he said.

Students from a primary school in An County in southeast China’s Jiangxi Province hold books donated to them by China’s Publishers Association on April 14, 2017.[Photo/people.com.cn]

The average Chinese read 7.86 books last year, including 4.65 printed books and 3.21 eBooks, according to an annual poll released by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication on Tuesday.

79.9% of China’s population was identified as readers in 2016, which remained fairly similar compared to the 79.6% from the previous year, the 14th National Reading Survey shows.

The poll shows that the Chinese still preferred printed books to eBooks, as 51.6 % of the surveyed said they preferred to “hold a printed book” in their hands, while 33.8 % said they liked reading via mobile phones better. 9.8 % said they preferred to read online, and 3.8 % said they loved reading via e-book readers.

Xu Shengguo, Director of China Academy of Press and Publication Research Institute, said going back to hard-copy books is a worldwide trend, which has appeared in countries such as the U.S., the UK and France.

“Although digital reading is quick and convenient, it’s only suitable for fragmented reading practices, while reading hard-copy books are conducive to in-depth reading,” Xu said.

68.2 % of the surveyed said they had read on digital devices (including online, mobile phones and electronic readers) last year, up 4.2 % from the figure of 2015.

66.1 % read on mobile phones last year, a sharp increase of 6.1 % compared to 2015. The figure has been growing for eight consecutive years.

7.8 % said they read on an e-book reader, and 10.6 % said they had read on an iPad.

62.4 % of the adults surveyed said they read through WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app, in 2016, a 10.5-percentage-point rise compared to the year earlier.

The annual survey was conducted nationwide, covering a sample size of 22,415 people from 52 cities.

Globally, French people read 15 books a year on average in 2013, according to figures released by the Paris Book Fair. Their U.S. counterparts read 12 books a year on average, according to pewinternet.org.

People read books in a public library at Gongshu District of Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, Dec. 28, 2016. [Photo/ Xinhua]

China approved a draft law on public libraries at a State Council executive meeting on Wednesday, which will be forwarded to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress for deliberation.

The draft law illustrates the government’s role in strengthening the library functions, and encourages more social support in the responsibilities of libraries.

The new functions of libraries, such as digital resources and online services, are also included in the draft.

“It’s an important step to further institutionalize public cultural services in China,” said Li Guoxin, member of the national panel for the public cultural service system.

“It will better combine guidance of the government and the support of the public,” he added.

According to the Ministry of Culture, a network of libraries covering both urban and rural areas had 838 million books around the country at the end of 2015.

Also, a total of 404 million yuan (59 million U.S. dollars) were earmarked by the central government to support free public libraries in 2015.

China has been improving public cultural services, with a law on public cultural services taking effect on March 1.