KMT leader visit

    The visit of Hung Hsiu-chu, chairwoman of Taiwan’s Kuomintang party, to the mainland this week will be significant for improving the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations, according to academics*.

    Hung arrived in Beijing on Monday. She was received at Beijing Capital International Airport by Zhang Zhijun, head of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. She is expected to join a forum on the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations today.

    Target range closure urged

    Residents in Jiangning District, eastern China’s Nanjing, have appealed for an open-air target range* to be closed after a young mother was hit by a stray bullet*.

    Qin Haixia, mother of a 9-month-old baby, had surgery and stayed in hospital for about a month. She was hit by a bullet while walking in the community with her family. The bullet that hit her waist was later proved to be from an open-air target range near Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

    Telecom fraud rampant

    China is rife* with telecom fraud, with criminals carrying out a successful or nearly successful scam every 5.4 days on average so far, the Beijing News reported on Friday, citing a new study.

    Media reports show that China’s telecom scams have increased at an annual rate of 20 to 30 percent in the past 10 years, said the report released by a mobile phone anti-harassment* and anti-fraud alliance during its 2016 summit on Thursday, as part of the effort to help the country’s fight against telecom scams. Last year, China’s public security authorities registered 590,000 telecom scam cases, up 32.5 percent from 2014, resulting in economic losses worth 22.2 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion), it said.

    Number of license plates

    Beijing is to slash* the number of license plates it hands out for new cars by one-third in an effort to ease traffic congestion* and pollution.

    The announcement came as it emerged that people are buying struggling small businesses that hold vehicle registrations to avoid having to enter the capital’s license plate lottery. (SD-Agencies)