bei jing

The new databank is now the largest for Chinese people in the world, according to Hong Junling, deputy head of CMDP management center.

The databank includes information such as the names and gender of nearly one million donors and information about to which ethnic groups the donors come from, Hong said.

It also covers such medical information as blood types, gene types and health status of the donors.

The CMDP, launched in 2001 by the Red Cross Society of China, aims to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.

But Hong said the blood sample databank could help genetic analysis for major diseases other than blood diseases.

The blood sample databank has collected 970,000 samples and provided more than 1,200 patients with haematogenous stem cells, including 50-odd cases from abroad, according to Hong.

The number of samples is expected to reach one million by 2010.

The plan of channeling water into Beijing via the South-to-North Water Diversion Project has been postponed for five years. The carrying capacity of the capital’s water resources is therefore facing unprecedented pressure as the city’s reservoirs have an insufficient storage of water and the groundwater level is declining, said Cheng Jing, Director of the Beijing Water Authority, on May 10.

Cheng said it was planned that the South-to-North Water Diversion Project would divert one billion cubic meters of Yangtze River water into Beijing next year, which would relieve Beijing’s water shortage to a certain extent. However, according to the latest construction plan, the South-to-North Water Diversion Project to channel water into Beijing will be postponed until 2014, which will further aggravate Beijing’s water shortage problem in the next six years.

Beijing has experienced drought for nine consecutive years, leaving water resources in short supply. Water resources imposing restraints on economic development remain Beijing’s most prominent issue. Cheng said establishing a rigorous water resource management system is the answer to the capital’s water shortage problem. This year, the water affairs department will strictly implement a total volume control and quota management so that the water consumption needed to produce every 10,000 yuan of GDP will decrease by five percent.

Cheng said this year the government will urge 40 enterprises with high water and energy consumption and causing heavy pollution to move out of Beijing so as to develop water-conserving high-end industries.

In addition, Beijing will promote the use of non-conventional water sources. This will be a significant strategy to ease the shortage of water resources. Cheng said that Beijing will expand the scope and utilization of reclaimed water in areas including miscellaneous water consumption by the municipal government, construction site dust settling, environmental and industrial fields. The water used for areas such as golf courses, suburb parks, large-scale green land and agricultural irrigation will be replaced by reclaimed water. Furthermore, the area of green land that is irrigated by reclaimed water will be increased by 2 million square meters, and the amount of annually utilized reclaimed water is targeted to reach 650 million cubic meters.

Reporters learned that Beijing is a city that is severely lacking water, with the average utilizable water resources per capita presently being less than 300 cubic meters. This figure is below one third of the internationally accepted lower limit of water shortage, and only one eighth of China’s average level.

Beijing may soon have a national theater hub, along the lines of New York’s Broadway or London’s West End.

In the first moves toward this, the Theater Season of Urban Youth across the Straits, will present seven theater works by artists from both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan from May 24 through Aug 23. They will be staged in different venues, including Oriental Pioneer Theater, Fengchao Theater and Star Live.

The shows will include National Theater Company director Meng Jinghui’s first musical Murder Case of the Hanging Garden, independent director Huang Ying’s drama To Be Continued and Taiwan folk rock band Hohak’s music theater Rice and Love.

“We hope this three-month long event will facilitate an exchange of theater works across the Strait,” says Yang Qianwu, vice-chairman of the Beijing Dramatists’ Association.

One of the highlights of the event is Meng’s Murder Case of the Hanging Garden. Although music has played an important role in many of his works, Meng - a name popular with Chinese theater-goers - says this is the first time he will be telling a story through music.

“I’m still not sure about the final form of my musical, but it will be something different from Broadway,” says Meng. “It would be stupid for a Chinese director to follow the Broadway model.”