Of China’s more than 30 provincial localities, 27 have completed discipline inspections on the agencies they directly administer, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) disciplinary agency announced Friday.

CPC organizations and departments directly administered by the provincial level authorities were inspected, according to a report posted on the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) website.

The inspections focused on the implementation of central authority rules and regulations.

Inspectors in Hubei Province, central China, were despatched to 300 Party organizations and found 12,567 pieces of evidence that led to the investigation of 4,362 officials.

In Jilin Province, northeast China, inspectors reviewed the work of 242 Party organizations and found supporting evidence that linked 1,565 officials to violations.

The current CPC Central Committee will finish inspecting agencies directly under its administration before the end of the first half of the year.

All central and provincial level CPC committees are required to conduct inspections within their tenure of five years.

The remaining provincial regions are expected to complete their inspections before new provincial Party committees are elected, according to the CCDI.

Comparing it to “a physical examination” of the Party, the CCDI said inspection was a powerful weapon in the fight to resolve internal CPC problems.

Finding problems is both a major task and the appraisal standard for inspections, the CCDI said, adding that the inspection was by no means “a gust of wind.”

A dormitory building in Taifu Town Middle School [Photo/Shanghai Daily]

An autopsy is being conducted on a middle school student alleged to have fallen to his death on Saturday, with no evidence having been found so far to suggest he was physically abused, officials in Luzhou, Sichuan province, said at a news conference on Thursday.

He Shaopeng, deputy mayor and public security bureau director of Luzhou, said the chest and belly of the student’s body had been cut open and lacerations were found in his liver and spleen.

The publicity department of Luxian－a county under the administration of Luzhou－said on Wednesday that a 14-year-old male student of Taifu Middle School in Taifu town was found dead outside his dormitory building at about 6 a.m. on Saturday.

The department stated that local police did not think the boy had been murdered after initial investigations, but this caused public outcry, with many people suspecting that the boy was beaten to death by five other students who are children of local officials.

Mao Handong, a police officer with Luzhou public security bureau, said at the conference that none of the officials’ children were proved to have been classmates with, or to have known of, the deceased student.

Lyu Yugang, director of the Ministry of Education’s basic education department, said at a conference in Beijing on Thursday that he felt sorry for the death of the student and had requested education departments in Sichuan to assist local authorities in discovering the cause of the student’s death and reporting to the ministry in a timely manner.

A video obtained by Lyu Qingfu, a reporter at Xinhua News Agency, showed the mother of the deceased student visiting a crematory and cutting clothes off her son’s body to expose a large purple area on his back and wounds on both hands and elbows, suggesting that the boy might have been beaten to death.

People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said in an opinion piece on its WeChat account on Wednesday that local governments should release information in a timely and accurately manner in emergency situations.

“Timely and accurate information, as well as an authoritative and convincing autopsy report, will help clarify facts and dispel rumors,” it said.

Beijing will put a new medical care reform plan into effect on Saturday, which will bring an end to medicine price markups, according to local officials.

More than 3,600 medical institutions are involved in the reform and all of them will abolish the medicine price markups, according to Fang Laiying, head of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.

It is estimated that the cost of treatment per outpatient will be reduced by about 5 percent on average thanks to cuts in medicine prices, while there will be an average cost increase of 2.5 percent for inpatient treatment due to the growth of certain service charges, according to Fang.

Community hospitals and medical institutions will be given the same access to the medicines usually prescribed in higher-level hospitals, so that patients will have more choices, Fang said.

Marking up medicine prices is a practice that has been adopted by most public hospitals in China since the 1950s. It allows hospitals to sell drugs with markups usually at a rate of 15 percent above the drugs’ tag prices.

Its purpose was to make up for the shortage in healthcare funding from the government, and it became part of doctors’ salaries, creating incentive for doctors to over-prescribe.

In 2015, incomes from checkups, tests and medical treatment materials accounted for about 66 percent of the city’s medical services revenue, while the incomes from the intelligence and labor of medical personnel, such as diagnosis, surgery, treatment and nursing, which are closely related to the quality of medical services, only accounted for 34 percent, according to Fang.

“The core of this new reform is to separate the functions of medical services and drug sales so as to shut down the markup mechanism in public medical institutions in Beijing,” Fang said.

“The separation will cut off the channel for making money through over-prescription and help medical practitioners provide better treatments and other services,” Fang said.

“The reform will effectively motivate the medical staff to pay more attention to the medical service they are providing, and further improve the doctor-patient relationship,” said Li Ruifeng, a medical reform expert from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.

A giant panda has been filmed for the first time breastfeeding her cub in the wild, according to CCTV.

The rare footage was captured by local journalists in Foping county in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, CCTV said.

The mother and cub were first sighted resting on the upper branches of a big fir tree.

The cub, about two years old, then appeared to be hungry and wanted to feed, and her mother climbed down from the tree and suckled her cub lying on a slope.

The footage was filmed in Qinling Mountains which is home to China’s largest giant panda population living in the wild.

There were about 345 giant pandas living in Qinling Mountains according to China’s Fourth National Survey on Giant Pandas conducted two years ago. Area of the animals’ habitat had increased from 347,000 hectares to 360,000 hectares over the past decade.

A dormitory building in Taifu Town Middle School [Photo/Shanghai Daily]

Police in Luxian County in southwest China’s Sichuan Province are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy and will conduct autopsy as soon as possible, said a statement by local authorities Wednesday evening following a spate of speculation that he was beaten to death by bullies.

The student surnamed Zhao was found dead outside his dormitory building in Taifu Town Middle School at 6 a.m. on April 1, local police said on that day. One day later it said preliminary investigation has ruled out homicide and the injuries he sustained suggested he fell from high places.

However, Xinhua news agency reported that a video showed the mother of the boy stormed into the funeral parlor, cut the boy’s shirt off and found large area of bruises on his back. Meanwhile claims that the boy was beaten up by a gang of bullies were widely circulated online, Xinhua said.

In an interview with Xinhua, school headmaster Chen Liang and local education bureau director Zhu Daqing didn’t answer if there was bully in the school, only saying the incident was being probed by police.

“All I can say is we will tighten up management,” Chen was quoted by Xinhua.

Although local police said on April 3 the online allegations were not true and several people were caught fabricating rumors such as the boy was beaten up by five others and his arms and legs were broken in the assault, it failed to appease local residents.

The Xinhua report said checkpoints were set up several kilometers away from the county to stop any cars from entering. After the reporter detoured and walked into the town, large crowds of people were found standing in front of the school and hundreds of police officers wearing helmets were separating them apart.

While conducting the interview, the Xinhua reporter claimed he was constantly harassed by phone calls and the family of the student was badgered by local government officials and were afraid from telling the truth.