Siberian tiger footprints found in NE China

A set of clear and well-preserved footprints suspected to have been left by a wild Siberian tiger were discovered in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, local forestry authorities said Sunday.

The footprints were found by workers on a tree farm in Raohe County on Friday. Experts said such clear and complete footprints were rare, and they likely belong to a young male tiger.

Zhang Minghai of the Northeast Forestry University said the tiger was probably walking toward the Wusuli River on the China-Russia border.

Siberian tigers are one of the world’s most endangered species. They predominantly live in northeast China and eastern Russia.

Heilongjiang has reported frequent activity by wild Siberian tigers in recent years. Footprints of another tiger were found in March in Raohe County.

Local authorities said the province has witnessed a rise both in the population of wild tigers and their prey.




Youth organization to help more singles tie the knot

A blind dating activity is held in a shopping mall. [File Photo]

Youth organizations including the Communist Youth League have vowed to help young people find love as the Chinese government puts the marriage issue on its agenda.

“Marriage is a big issue in the development of youth,” He Junke, a senior official with CYL Central Committee, said on Wednesday.

More young people are marrying at a later age due to changes in life and work patterns, he said, and youth organizations including the CYL will work to solve the issue.

The announcement came after the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council jointly issued the Medium and Long-term Youth Development Plan (2016-25) last month, listing marriage as one of the top 10 youth issues.

The plan calls for more dating activities to be organized for young people, with priority given to older singles, and approaches taken to regulate the dating and matchmaking services market.

Chinese governments once advocated later marriages in order to control population growth. But the tide has turned.

In 2015, the country abolished the three-decades-old one-child policy and delaying marriage is no longer encouraged.

And more people are marrying at a later age. A report by the All-China Woman’s Federation in 2015 showed that the marriage age for Chinese was 26 on average, which is older in developed areas.

According to data published by the Shanghai statistics bureau, the average age of marriage for Shanghai women was 26.5 in 2010. That had risen to 28.2 in 2013.

In 2015, the number of single people in China reached nearly 200 million. The proportion of the population made up by unmarried people more than doubled from 6 percent in 1990 to 14.6 percent in 2013.

He Junke said that the CYL Central Committee will work to cultivate a good environment for youth to find their loved ones, but the matter was essentially a private one, so singles should concentrate on making their own efforts.

As a bond linking the nation’s youth with the Party, the CYL included about 88 million members and more than 3.87 million organizations across the country by the end of 2015. Its Central Committee exercises leadership covering the work of the CYL.




Wu Den-yih elected Kuomintang leader

Wu Den-yih was elected Kuomintang’s chairperson on Saturday. [File Photo]

Wu Den-yih was elected Kuomintang’s chairperson on Saturday by garnering more than 52 percent of all valid votes, the KMT announced.

The polls opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 4 p.m Saturday. Over 58 percent of the KMT members with voting right cast their votes.

Wu Den-yih secured the lion’s share of 144,408 votes, or 52.24 percent, to beat the other five candidates – the incumbent KMT chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu, vice chairman Hau Lung-bin, former legislator Han Kuo-yu, former KMT vice chairman Steve Chan, as well as former legislator Pan Wei-kang, who garnered 53,063, 44,301, 16,141, 12,332 and 2,437 votes, respectively.

As per the party charter, a candidate wins the election with more than half the votes; otherwise, the top two candidates contest a second round.




One more Chinese city restricts home purchases

Authorities in central China’s Hunan province rolled out more measures Saturday to restrict housing purchases and cool the property market.

From Saturday, Changsha residents will only be allowed to own two homes in the city and non-local people will be restricted to one, so long as the buyers provide evidence of at least 12 months of income tax and social security payments in the city.

Property may not be re-sold within two years.

The price of second-hand housing in the city rose 4.3 percent in April.

In March, about 30 Chinese cities limited housing purchases.

In the first two months this year, investment in China’s real estate market rose 8.9 percent year on year to more than 985 billion yuan (US$140 billion), and housing sales jumped 26 percent from the same period in 2016 to over one trillion yuan.




Chinese courts file more cases

The number of cases filed in Chinese courts from May 2015 to March 2017 hit 31 million, up 33.9 percent, said the Supreme People’s Court (SPC).

Courts changed their filing procedure from accreditation to registration in May 2015, which greatly lowered the barriers for filing a case.

Unlike the previous practice of examining cases before they are filed, cases are now accepted by courts on the spot as long as they meet basic requirements.

During the past two years, the number of state compensation cases increased the most, 102 percent, and private prosecutions of criminal cases rose by 60 percent. Administrative cases were up 54 percent while civil cases up 25 percent in the same period.

The problems of refusing or delaying filing cases by courts had been basically eradicated, said Gan Wen with the SPC.

So far, 2,605 courts have provided online case filing services. Seven high courts and seven intermediate courts are required to accept trans-regional cases.

Meanwhile, the SPC is studying abuse of litigation rights and plans to regulate such behavior.