【专题】慢速英语（美音）2016-06-21

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. Here is the news.
The employment rate for Chinese college graduates remains stable, with more graduates employed by private enterprises.
A recent survey shows that the employment rate of college graduates last year was 92 percent, basically flat compared with that in 2014 and 2013.
The survey was conducted by education research company MyCOS Institute.
Breaking the numbers down, 92 percent of university graduates and 91 percent of graduates from junior colleges and higher vocational schools found jobs.
Some 250,000 college graduates in 30 provincial-level regions on the mainland were interviewed six months after they graduated last year.
Of that number, 60 percent were employed by private firms, up 5 percentage points than two years before, while the employment rates in state-owned enterprises, foreign-owned companies and joint ventures dropped.
More graduates are starting their own businesses, with 3 percent registering as self-employed last year. Most graduates secured start-up funding from their parents, relatives, friends or personal savings.
Industries including education, medicare, media, information and communications hired more graduates, while construction and hardware manufacturing sectors employed less.
The survey also covered some 41,000 employees who graduated from college in 2012. Their average monthly income was 5,700 yuan, roughly 870 U.S. dollars. That is an 87 percent more than what they earned three years ago.
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A survey shows that Chinese parents are having their children learn English earlier than before.
English has been introduced in primary schools, but more and more parents are starting their children on the second language before the age of five.
Almost 70 percent of the 2,000 respondents said their own children or children they know started learning English before the age of five. A major reason is that most Chinese parents have the fixation on giving children an early advantage.
Another reason is that parents believe it is more effective to cultivate children's language skills at an early age.
Many parents send their kids to early childhood English-language learning institutions, though they can be pricey. Some 39 percent of respondents said parents pay between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan annually to such institutions. That's roughly 1,500 to 3,000 US dollars.
Learning institutions with native English-speaking teachers can charge higher prices.
Yet not all parents have faith in such institutions, as more than 20 percent of the total said they have seen little effect on children's learning. An education expert at Southwest University said it is more important for children to have the freedom to develop their own interest.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
China is set to invest 6.6 trillion yuan, roughly one trillion U.S. dollars, on developing low-carbon cities in the next five years.
The money will be mainly spent on developing low-carbon buildings, green transportation system and clean energy to meet China's low-carbon ambitions outlined in the Five-Year Plan.
The majority of the investment, around 4.5 trillion yuan, will go to build or upgrade energy-efficient and environmentally friendly railways, buses and other infrastructures.
Around 1.7 trillion yuan is needed to finance construction of green buildings or reconstruction of existing residential and commercial properties so that they conserve more energy.
A chief economist with the Chinese central bank said the sums of money needed for this work are too great to be covered by the government alone. China needs to turn to specialist financing like issuing green bonds to introduce more private support.
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China has released a remote sensing report, detailing ecological information related to land cover, vegetation, agricultural conditions and marine environment on a global scale.
The report has been compiled by the National Remote Sensing Center under the Ministry of Science and Technology. It has covered a land area of more than 56 million square kilometers and more than 22 million square kilometers in sea area.
In particular, the report included environmental data of countries covered by the China-proposed "Belt and Road" initiative.
The report highlighted the China-Central Asia-West Asia economic corridor. It showed that the arid environment in China's Xinjiang and Kazakhstan is extremely fragile and water resource must be a top consideration when formulating economic and urbanization policies.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
An exhibition of Chinese technological wonders including the world's fastest computer is China's latest move to make science and technology seem less remote from people's lives.
The showcase of domestic achievements in the past five years has concluded in Beijing after wowing crowds since June 1.
The event featured more than 800 items in such fields including intelligent driving, deep-sea diving and robot surgeons.
A science enthusiast said he used to see moon landings in foreign blockbusters only. The exhibition shows that China has grasped cutting-edge technology as well. Another visitor and his 8-year-old son were overwhelmed by the return capsule of an unmanned lunar orbiter retrieved from Inner Mongolia in November 2014.
In the other corner of the exhibition, the Tianhe-2 supercomputer attracted a large crowd. The Tianhe-2, or literally, the "Milky Way-2", can operate at almost 34 petaflops per second. That is an equivalent of almost 34,000 trillion calculations per second.
The supercomputer can handle high levels of analyzing, computing and processing. It has been used in national priority projects covering energy, bioscience, pollution control and high-speed railway design.
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China has published information of eight typical cases solved during a special campaign to crack down on piracy and online pornography to ensure the healthy development of young people.
The National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications launched the campaign in February. The campaign targets the production, sale and distribution of illegal publications and online content that could affect juveniles.
In one of the eight cases, police in east China's Zhejiang Province found 27 suspects who spread pornography for profit in online chat groups. Some of the suspects were minors. The groups on chat service QQ had more than 600 members, the majority of whom were minors.
In another case, police uncovered suspects selling obscene videos via cloud storage services. The primary suspect in the case was a juvenile.
In other cases, police cracked down the illegal printing and sale of pirated books for children. Production and storage sites and illegal bookstores have been shut down.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price 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 David Gulasi decided to leave Sydney for a teaching position in China more than five years ago, he never imagined that he would become an online celebrity.
More than 730,000 followers track his Weibo account, and his videos have accrued thousands upon thousands of likes.
Thirty-three-year-old Gulasi accepted a teaching role in Hohhot in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region in 2010, and hasn't looked back since. He said he was supposed to be there for only three months.
He is now the managing director of the New World Language School in the region, and while he is popular with his own students, his viral videos on social media platform Weibo have attracted attention from across China.
Gulasi has always tried to do something to make people laugh. He used to do stand-up comedy in Australia at the Sydney Comedy Club.
Gulasi says he uses a lot of comedy and humor to teach his students because in China, education is way too serious.
He was tipped off about Weibo by a friend in China. His first video that attracted immense Chinese attention was posted in January. After he uploaded the video in the evening, he had around 50 followers; and by the following morning, he had 120,000 followers.
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On June 1 Children's Day, the Shanghai Children's Hospital received a special festival gift, a payment of 6,600 yuan, roughly 1,000 US dollars, for an overdue medical bill dating back to the 1960s.
Zheng Bin was two years old when he was admitted to the hospital for a hernia.
The treatment cost 220 yuan and a coupon worth 2.5 kilograms of grain. But like most Chinese families at the time, Zheng's parents could not afford the fees. The bill was left unpaid when he was discharged from the hospital.
For decades, the medical bill has never been brought up.
It wasn't until recently when Zheng and his brothers sifted through their late mother's belongings and stumbled across the reminder note. Zheng decided to pay the overdue bill.
While the hospital said they would accept only the original sum, Zheng and his brothers insisted on repaying the debt plus interest, as much as 30 times the original cost. In addition, the brothers each donated 2,000 yuan to help sick children in the hospital.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
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