Population at 1.34b

    China’s population grew to 1.341 billion people last year, the National Bureau of Statistics has announced, marking a modest jump for a massive population.

    The figure shows China added about 6.3 million people last year. The number indicates a slower rate of growth than the previous year and experts said the decline in growth could help convince policymakers to relax the government’s strict family planning limits.

    CPPCC opens

    China must focus on making macro-economic controls more “scientific and foresighted,” Jia Qinglin, the country’s top political adviser, said in Beijing on March 3.

    The government must properly balance maintaining steady and rapid economic development, restructuring the economy and managing inflation expectations, Jia told members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing at the opening of the annual session.

    National Museum

    The National Museum reopened on March 1 with state-of-the-art facilities after nearly four years of renovations.

    The museum was expanded to 191,900 square meters with 49 exhibition rooms, making it one of the largest museums in the world.

    In the past, of more than half a million items available for display, one-third were coins.

    The museum now has a collection of more than 1 million cultural relics.

    Cash for HK people

    Each Hong Kong permanent* resident aged 18 or over will receive HK$6,000 and reductions of 75 percent in income tax while tax assessments would be capped at HK$6,000, Financial Secretary John Tsang said on March 2.

    Announcing the revised measures in the 2011-12 budget after a meeting with legislators*, Tsang said under the new proposal, people could choose to draw the full HK$6,000 depending on their needs, and there would be incentives to encourage them to save.

    (SD-Agencies)