HKSAR’s LegCo elected

All the 90 members of the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) had been elected by Monday morning.

The members were elected by the Election Committee constituency (40 seats), functional constituencies (30 seats), and geographical constituencies (20 seats) after over 1.35 million people voted on Sunday.

The Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR on Monday hailed the successful election in an online statement released after election results were unveiled.

Livestreamer fined

The leading livestreamer Huang Wei, better known as Viya, was fined 1.34 billion yuan (US$210 million) for tax evasion, said China’s taxation authority on Monday.

Between 2019 and 2020, Huang evaded 643 million yuan in tax by concealing her personal income and falsely declaring the nature of her income while failing to pay 60 million yuan in other taxes, said a statement on the website of the State Taxation Administration.

Festival travel

Travel policies for this year’s Spring Festival, which will fall in early February, should be devised based on COVID-19 risk appraisals of different regions and groups, health officials and experts said on Saturday.

“Whether or not it is necessary to stay put for the Spring Festival should be based on risk evaluations and should not be uniform across the country,” said Liang Wannian, a national-level disease control expert, during a news briefing.

Square dancers

People who take part in square dancing and other activities in public spaces may face fines for the violation of China’s law on the prevention and control of noise pollution, a government spokesperson said on Friday.

According to a draft amendment to the law, individuals or organizations who violate the law and refuse to rectify their misconducts after being warned shall be liable for fines of up to 1,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan, respectively, said Yue Zhongming, spokesperson for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

Nucleic acid test prices

Guangdong Province has further lowered the prices of nucleic acid tests in public hospitals as part of the Central authorities’ efforts to reduce people’s expenses amid a recent resurgence of COVID-19 cases in some regions in the country.

Guangdong has cut the price for a single test to 33.2 yuan from 58 yuan per person and the price for a five- or 10-sample group test was cut to 8 yuan from the previous 10 yuan per person. On average, the individual antibody test was lowered to 23.5 yuan and the IgG and IgM tests were lowered to 33.5 yuan. (SD-Agencies)