【专题】慢速英语（英音）2016-08-22

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China is planning an overhaul of the Communist Youth League to reinforce youth belief in the Communist Party of China and pump vigor into the cause of national rejuvenation.
The Party Central Committee has published a document outlining plans for the reform. The league committees will be downsized, with more staff assigned to the grassroots level to serve the youth, with bureaucratic procedures streamlined.
Positions in the League should be filled by talented Party members and League workers who "understand and love young people".
The document said League delegates should pay more attention to the opinions of Party members and ordinary young people. It should also take responsibility for serving and protecting teenagers' lawful rights.
The League was founded in 1922, the following year after the founding of the Party. It was designed to be a bridge linking youth with the Party and a talent reserve for the Party.
As of last year, the League had around 88 million members and almost 4 million organizations across the country.
There have been worries that the league has lost its connection with young people and formed undesirable work styles, including formalism and a focus on entertainment.
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The journal Nature Biotechnology has said it will investigate criticisms of what was thought to be a breakthrough gene-editing technique developed by Chinese scientist Han Chunyu.
The journal published Han's research findings online in May. But a scientist from Australia has said his lab was not able to replicate Han's results.
Forty-two-year-old Han is a geneticist at Hebei University of Science and Technology. He rose to prominence with the publication of his cutting-edge gene editing technique known as NgAgo, and was perceived as a contender for a Nobel Prize.
The journal said it had been contacted by several researchers who said they had not been able to reproduce Han's published results. The journal said it takes seriously any concerns raised about any paper, and considers them carefully, adding that it is now following an established process to investigate the issues.
Han was quoted in a Beijing-based newspaper as saying that he will repeat the experiment and share his original data if the journal requests.
Before NgAgo, efforts and investments were directed heavily towards the widely recognized genome-editing technique known as CRSPR. It allows researchers to clip a specific DNA sequence and replace it with a new one, offering the potential to cure diseases caused by faulty genes.
The NgAgo technique for editing DNA was initially believed to surpass CRISPR in precision and efficiency.
You are listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
A new guideline says China must shut down outmoded facilities, consolidate production and reduce pollution to increase the competitiveness of its petrochemical industry.
According to the guideline issued by the State Council, China's cabinet, the development of the petrochemical industry is hindered by overcapacity along with security and environmental constraints. Foreign companies are to be allowed to participate in mergers and acquisitions in the sector.
Seven planned coastal petrochemical production bases will be built to consolidate the sector.
By 2020, energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of output, roughly 1,500 U.S. dollars, will be cut by 8 percent from the 2015 level, with cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption of 10 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
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A new judicial interpretation has been issued by the top court to regulate online judicial auctions.
The Regulations on Online Auctions for Judicial Sales were mapped out by the Supreme People's Court, and will take effect on Jan 1 next year.
A law enforcement official from the Supreme People's Court said online auctions will lower the cost of judicial sales and allow people from anywhere to take part. They are expected to help increase transparency of law enforcement and better protect creditors' interests.
Each e-auction organized by a court requires a deposit, even in auctions for small items, which is different to the practice in auction houses.
The regulations stipulate that the deposit should not exceed 20 percent of the starting bidding price and each online auction is required to last at least 24 hours to better enable all parties to take part.
More than 1,400 courts have organized online auctions since 2010, when such practices were allowed for judicial sales. Deals worth more than 150 billion yuan, roughly 23 billion U.S. dollars, have been reached.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
An 8-year-old boy from central China's Hunan Province has sued three hospitals, seeking compensation after being infected with AIDS.
The boy was confirmed HIV positive in July last year. He received treatment in the hospitals for serious traffic accident injuries obtained in 2014. His HIV screening tests were negative before the initial treatment which included a blood transfusion.
The local health authority says it is difficult to determine the exact source of the infection.
During a period of 18 months following the traffic accident, the child was hospitalized eight times in three different hospitals in the local area, the provincial capital Changsha and Shanghai. He also spent considerable time outside the hospitals, which makes ascertaining the precise source of the infection difficult.
In addition to the three hospitals, the co-defendants also include a blood supplier organization and a biological produt company.
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Chinese experts are expected to arrive in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire to reinforce agricultural cooperation between the two countries, and help modernize the agricultural sector of the African country.
In September, China will send 30 agricultural experts with different expertise to evaluate national needs in domains including cocoa, cashew nuts, rice, pineapples and mangoes.
Cote d'Ivoire's agricultural ministry said in a statement that five Cote d'Ivoire villages will benefit from the program dubbed "one village, one company". It was initiated by China to increase incomes for farmers. The project will be carried out in 100 African villages.
China currently provides support for Cote d'Ivoire's agricultural sector through a hydro-agricultural project, 180 km south of Abidjan. The project is for rice farming.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at [e-mail]. That's [e-mail]. Now the news continues.
When China opened its arms to international universities, foreign educators saw the jointly founded institutions as transforming Chinese higher education.
Denis Simon is an executive vice-chancellor of Duke University's campus in Kunshan in eastern China. Simon says the idea of allowing seven foreign universities to have campuses in China is something people wouldn't have thought would happen 20 years ago. He says the number will soon grow to nine.
Simon told China Daily that he sees it as a watershed moment in Chinese higher education.
Located in Kunshan in Jiangsu province, Duke Kunshan University was jointly founded in 2013 by two prestigious universities, Duke University in the United States and China's Wuhan University. It was designed as a new model to advance China's higher learning system.
Simon said Duke came specifically to deliver a liberal arts education to China, and to provide an innovative educational platform.
Since 2004, the Chinese government has approved the establishment of independent Sino-foreign universities across the country in the hope that these joint-ventures will help to facilitate the transfer of international educational experiences and import advanced management, teaching methods as well as curriculum systems.
Duke Kunshan received its first class in 2014 and currently offers four master's programs, namely global health, environmental policy, medical physics and management studies. In addition, there's an undergraduate program called the Global Learning Semester.
The campus has seen its first graduates in global health and medical physics. Its management program has already had graduates for two years.
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After its successful Shanghai debut, the stage drama, "Three Body Problem", has begun its performance in Beijing. The drama is based on Chinese author Liu Cixin's first book of a trilogy entitled "Remembrance of Earth's Past", also known as the "Three Body Problem".
The story features human's first but frustrating contact with an alien civilization. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel last year.
Along with the storyline of ups and downs, the drama invites multimedia technology to showcase magnificent 3D scenes, bringing audience a visual feast.
The scene of "three suns" particularly impressed many viewers. Audience members saw flaring suns being swept from the stage into the auditorium. In fact, the "suns" were controlled by several unmanned aerial vehicles, with motion trails calculated accurately.
The lighting is another highlight. Hundreds of beams went around back and forth or were projected on semitransparent curtains, creating a vivid 3D world.
The director of the show Liu Fangqi says this is a new form of drama combined with stage art and special-effects in a theater with great surround sound. It might be the best way for science fiction novels to be showcased on stage.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Fifteen people from seven countries in the European Union have finally wrapped up their tour of China.
Members of the group were winners of an EU-wide contest where they had to submit articles, pictures, videos and paintings on the theme of China-EU friendship. The event was jointly sponsored by the Confucius Institute and the Mission of China to the EU.
The winners include a former ambassador to China and a corporate consultant, as well as an artist and a college student.
They visited museums and traveled to communities and villages in Beijing and northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. During their trip, they learned about China's economic and social development. They also witnessed local governments' poverty relief efforts.
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The number of tourists from the Chinese mainland visiting Taiwan decreased by 12 percent in May and June, compared with the same period last year. Nevertheless, the mainland has remained the largest source of visitors in Taiwan so far this year.
More than 2 million visitors from the Chinese mainland visited the island in the first half of the year, accounting for almost 40 percent of all visitors to Taiwan.
Despite the marked drop in May and June, visitor numbers still grew by 3 percent in the first six month.
However, tourism experts in Taiwan worried that the number of mainland tourists will continue to drop in the months to come.
Taiwan-based Ezfly International Travel says people in the tourism industry want a change. Around 90 percent of the company's clients are from the mainland. The company says the number of mainland tourists began to decline sharply after Taiwan's new leader took office in May.
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A new song has become popular among Internet users in China, who feel it is a vivid description of their lives as workaholics who always work overtime.
The song is entitled My Body is Hollowed Out.
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