An artwork of the Mona Lisa made of precious stones makes its debut on Monday at a shopping mall in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province in Northeast China. The owner employed a European artist and spent 30 years collecting more than 100,000 carats of stones to use in this extravagant piece. Zhang Wenkui / Xinhua

Homemade CPUs on the way

By the end of 2011 China-made supercomputers will bid farewell to foreign microchips and start using their own "Chinese core", according to one of the country's leading scientists, Hu Weiwu.

Hu, the chief developer of the Loongson series of microchips at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the "Dawning 6000" supercomputer, jointly developed by the Institute of Computing Technology of CAS and the Dawning Information Industry Company, will adopt Loongson microchips for the first time as its core component.

It will have a computing speed of more than 1,000 trillion operations a second.

"Our information industry was using foreign technology. However, just like a country's industry cannot always depend on foreign steel and oil, China's information industry needs its own CPU (central processing unit)," Hu said.

Culture

New chapter for book exports

Chinese books in foreign markets during the coming five years is set to swell, thanks to a sharp rise in interest among international bookworms.

Liu Binjie, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said he is confident the country will strike a balance between imports and exports of books and publications during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).

If that happens, it will be in stark contrast to the situation 10 years ago when one book was exported for every 17 that were imported.

He said that the ratio now stands at 3.3 imports for every export.

The rise in interest in Chinese books is due to growing curiosity about China's development mode and its economic achievements, along with the country's efforts to promote itself, Liu said.

Employment

Labor crunch set to spread

China's labor shortage is expected to spread to central and western regions, from eastern coastal areas, amid a rising demand for workers, the human resources minister said on March 8.

"It is a structural problem which mainly affected the labor-intensive manufacturing and service industries in eastern coastal areas.

"Now it seems to be spreading to central and western China," said Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security.

Xu Shousheng, governor of Central China's Hunan province, traditionally a major source of migrant workers, echoed his comments.

"It is not only difficult for eastern coastal areas to recruit workers, we are also facing the same problem," Xu said.

Agriculture

Grain prices to remain stable

Ample reserves will ensure stable grain prices, Zhang Ping, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planning agency, said on March 6.

About 100 million tons of wheat in storage, and stockpiles of other grains, account for 40 percent of the country's annual consumption, Zhang said.

"Sufficient grain reserves help prevent price fluctuation. We have the confidence and capability to keep prices stable."

Since 2007, the annual grain output has surpassed 500 million tons and increased 2.9 percent year-on-year to 546 million tons in 2010.

Policy

Education reform for migrant kids

The children of migrant families will no longer have to go return home to take the national university entrance exams if a proposed policy for Beijing and Shanghai comes into force, according to the Ministry of Education.

"We are researching the possibility of adopting such a policy, and we might gradually promote reforms in these two cities, which have large numbers in their migrant populations," Beijing News quoted the Minister of Education Yuan Guiren on March 7.

The proposed reform will affect many people and it will not be easy to implement, Yuan said.

It will also not be adopted throughout the country, since the characteristics of migrant populations vary from region to region, he said.

China Daily