"Dirt poor" to $ 9.3 billion: meet China's richest man

9:59 AM billion, Chinas, richest No Comments

SHANGHAI - Forbes current rankings of the richest Chinese pits crude industrial muscle against high-tech, pipping his head an Earth company co-founder of the nation largest Internet search engine for the top spot.

Liang Wengen, the Chairman of Sanya heavy industry, came at the top of Forbes Asia magazine China rich list published on Thursday, a day after the rival Hurun rich list the top spot, the magnates was, whose company earth movers, pile drivers, concrete mixer making switching on the country's urban.

Forbes Liang's wealth estimated at $9.3 billion.

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"This is a remarkable story people grow up dirt in Changsha, Hunan province, and by a group of people, seven of which on the Forbes China rich list, including four billionaires, always poorly", said Russell Flannery, a senior editor at Forbes, oversaw the compilation of this year's list.

Along with Liang, three other entrepreneurs Sanya are associated with, on the list: Tang Xiuguo, of Xiang Wenbo Mao Zhongwu. Liang, Mao, and Tang were all founders of the company.

Public jealousy
But Flannery said increasing numbers of China's newly rich asked be kept, from the list public jealousy and official, the prosperity in this country can bring the fears about the, which is still run by a Communist Party.

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Several have members of the formerly rich lists high-flying once in prison, including Huang Guangyu, the founder of Gome Electrical Appliance landed holding Ltd and Shanghai property Tycoon Zhou Zhengyi.

"Think more people from the list are left to this year, as in the last few years, and I a reflection in a bit of a change in Chinese society just now," Flannery said.

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Others the Forbes top ten included Liu Yonghao, an agro industrial magnates and more property investors.

SANY's success reflects in part the rapid growth of China's high-quality added manufacturing over the last decade with exports of manufacturers of expensive engineering products to support faster than low-value goods such as toys and construction. SANY is based in Changsha, the capital of Hunan in the People's Republic of China.

"We have seen a structural change in Chinese exports, which began some years ago." Looking at export annual growth from 2003-2008, you will see, that the low value were not growing rapidly - usually single digit or a maximum low teens. "High-quality grow with 40-50 percent", said David Lee, a China-based partner with Boston Consulting Group, industrial products specialized.

The company says that it has more than 60,000 employees and a turnover of 50 billion yuan last year. Despite the gloomy picture of Earth equipment, which also says companies, it channels at least 5 percent, the revenue in research and development and has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Germany, India, and Brazil.

Forbes gave Robin Li, founder of the dominant search engine Baidu, China second place, who said the magazine had personal assets of around USD 9.2 billion. Li could have taken the top spot, if it is listed for the volatility of the stock markets in the United States, in Baidu.

All in all Forbes estimated that China's crop of billionaires from 126 last year 146 now grew.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

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Gender fair shows China's influence in the bedroom

3:12 AM bedroom, Chinas, gender, influence, shows No Comments

MACAU - sexy lingerie, adult costumes, inflatable dolls, and much more are on display at an adult industry show in the Chinese territory has spread Macau, which shows, such as China's growing influence even to the bedroom.

The fourth annual Asia adult Expo began Friday with companies growing middle class of China's products is sexy. The adult industry is looking to tap mainland China and the Asian markets in the midst of the downturn in the United States and Europe.

Show exhibitors said that many Chinese have sex, now more open-minded views on the demand for their products continues. The Expo organizers said they plan similar exhibitions in other parts of China, which also from almost three-quarters of the worldwide sex toy pitchers, this year to start.

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Estimates of the size of the adult industry in China are difficult to obtain. But the State China daily newspaper said in a report that China produces 70 percent of the world of sex toys, last year, making it the world's largest manufacturer. The industry, with more than 1,000 manufacturers is worth about $2 billion per year, it said.

"The standard of living in China is rising and want to upgrade their lifestyle, so that needs of the market of these products,", said Bo Chen company's main product, when he in addition to samples of his, made a life-size and anatomically correct female sex doll rubbery, flesh-like material that sold for 16,000 yuan ($2,500).

Three years ago decided to begin sex toys, because he felt that it was an opportunity, but Chen owned a chemical factory in the Chinese province of Jiangsu.

Chen, President who Jurong Outlook toys & gifts manufacturing co., said that he and several friends pooled their money to the company for reasons.

He hopes to meet potential customers among 2,500 visitors and 30,000 members of the general public expected at the Macau fair. It was his first visit to the annual show, attended by 80 companies from 13 countries.

Chen's case is not so unusual, said Kenny Lo, Chief Executive of show organizer vertical Expo. Many Chinese manufacturers realized that they were their product lines to adults with minimal investment reap greater profits could optimize. It is decision-makers to sexy lingerie not as a big step for underwear and it is easy for companies to switch to the regular toys, sex toys, he said.

The United States and Europe have traditionally the biggest markets for the adult industry. But there is prohibition growth and competition and low margins are difficult for business life, said Lo slumping economy.

In Asia the market is so "there is much potential for growth," much more undeveloped Lo said. Adult product manufacturers have told him that in America and Europe, "it is a very hard time now, but in China and Asia, it is good."

Lo has said demand from suppliers his Hong Kong based company start with new exhibitions in other parts of China, starting with a show in October in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong asked branch. It shows in Fuzhou on China's East Coast and Qingdao follows in the Northeast. It is considered also in Taiwan and Singapore.

Other emerging markets are also the sources of growth. Renata Bertacini came from Sao Paulo, Brazil, which source elements for their boutique and online store Mimosexy.

«I have come to import new products from China to Brazil, new things, to find,» she said. Many products were elements, the they already shares, but at half the cost, their intermediaries secure at home for free, they can save money by to buy them directly.

At the Expo, vibrators in all shapes and colors, condoms, lubricants and enlargement were male and female dolls. A company was to sell coffee-tables, the erotic statues from.

"They are the Mainland of Chinese, very open for these sexual things," Lo said. "It is not something a taboo" more.

It is a sign of how new companies drive rapid social change in China. Before some decades men and women were strictly separated in many parts of life and clothing, which reveals little monotonous carried most of the people. There are today, shops, sexual AIDS in many cities and pornography, while officially banned, is often found on the Internet.

Is China is booming, that economy of driving the world's second largest, most part is these changes.

"Many of these people have money of the first generation." Before it was old money, was to show shameful, ", said Zach Goode, sales manager at electric eel, the global license to Hustler lingerie includes."

Now, China's nouveau riche want not only BMW's and Gucci, "they want to express themselves and have sexy shoes and laundry and have fun with him." "You are not so oppressed as the last generation."

Copyright 2011 of the associated press. All rights reserved. This material cannot be published, sent, rewritten or redistributed.

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DUI crackdown helps China's chauffeurs

5:25 AM chauffeurs, Chinas, crackdown, helps No Comments

Business meetings in China traditionally about meals accompanied by much alcohol was carried out be, and the Fiery sorghum-based spirit of Baijiu remains a staple on State banquets and family celebrations. With the number of cars on Chinese roads, tripling in the last five years has the Government raided against drunk driving, imposing stiff prison sentences. Jail time and fines condemned get six months plus lose their license for five years. Benefit services dial-a-Chau.

Beijing Ben AO am da driving service that hires from chauffeurs, said that it expects that sales by 60 percent promote the tougher law this year as a result of what went into force on 1 May. "Drinking with clients part of my job is," says Jack Wang, used a seller for a Beijing telecom company, the replacement drivers about once a week. "Many companies has over dinner and alcohol to be done, but no one knows I is ready, take the chance now to go after drinks."

Police 526,000 drunk drivers caught in the past year to 68 percent from the previous year. The number of accidents in China rose 36 percent to 3.9 million in 2010, resulting in a death every nine minutes after the Ministry of public security. More than half the deaths were caused by drunk driver, according to the Ministry.

China implemented its first road traffic safety law in 2004, mandating helmets for motorcyclists and safety belts of passengers in the front seat. Change this year, the operation of a vehicle with a blood alcohol content of more than 80 mg / 100 ml - equivalent to three caught with beer - face prison terms of up to six months and a five year driving ban.

GAO Xiaosong, judge of the television's competition of China's got talent, the most high-profile drivers under the new law to be punished. The musician was sentenced to six months in prison in May and fine to authorities, said that he a four car pileup was, which injured four people in the Chinese capital. Police said he was determined that three times the permitted for alcohol.

Have JI "Yi" Feng, owner of driving Beijing Ruiyu Xingchen service, says he has to turn away some reservations, because the more stringent rules entered into force, and demand increased driver pool after his 30. Setting on-demand drivers in Beijing was in April when doubled to 10 yuan per hour in the framework of measures to curb the traffic in the city central parking fees were also popular. Car owners can more pay to let their vehicles and take a taxi home, as if she used a State driver, JI says.

Prices start of 100 Yuan after 11 pm for Ben AO am da service plus additional fees based on distance and time. Customer numbers 3000 Yuan a prepaid account. Fees for individual trips, that must be yellow 40 minutes before picking up that are then deducted as used. The company has 160 drivers until insurance co. (Group) of China, signed outfits like China Everbright Bank, China Minsheng banking, and the people's to provide services to their customers, says founder he Jin. "Some of our customers are so drunk that they may even be," he explains. "they should receive not behind the wheel."

The bottom line: a raid against drunkenness has been services in China, where more than half of the fatalities involve alcohol a boon for Chau.

Copyright © 2011 Bloomberg L.P.All rights reserved.

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Business is booming in China's "snake village"

11:08 PM booming, Business, Chinas, snake, village No Comments

ZISIQIAO village, China - this sleepy village in the middle of the vast farmland in China's Eastern Zhejiang Province hides a deadly secret.

A step into the homes of everyone here the farming families brings visitors eye to eye with thousands of some of the world is the most feared creature-sneaks, many of them toxic.

Cobras, vipers and Pythons are aptly known as snake village, where the reptiles are deliberately raised for use as food and traditional medicine to bring in millions of dollars in a village, which would rely only on agriculture anywhere in Zisiqiao.

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"As the number one snake village in China, it is for us impossible, only one species of snake, increase," said Yang Hongchang, the 60-year-old-year Bauer, snake breeding to the village decades ago introduced.

"We are many species of snakes and the methods of culturing it research."

Yang, snakes, he, caught selling provider around the area to animal began in 1985. He began to make sure that would run the wild snakes out soon and so began to breed researched like snakes at home.

Period of three years, he had decided a capital - and many other villagers, emulate his success.

Today, more than three million lines in the village are bred each year by the 160 farming families.

Snakes are known for their medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine and are often drunk as soup or wine to increase the person immunity.

Yang has now started to make his own company be more formal business and build a brand, as well as to carry out research and development for its products, which range from snake snake wine and snake powder dried.

"Our original breeding method was approved and recognized by the province and the County." "You are working with the farming families Corporation see," said Yang.

"So the company explored on the snakes and they pass it to the farms for the breeding." "You said that this model worked very well."

The original breeding method was to simply compilation is males and females, but now careful research as the snakes grow, how to choose good females, study of their diet and as incubate eggs to increase survival rates.

Increasing demand
With climbing demand halls are used by product of line of restaurants and medicine by both prosperity to rising and a Government push for the breeding of animals in traditional medicine, are Zisiqiao villagers boast an annual income of hundreds of thousands of Yuan per year now.

Yang Xiubang, 46, has snakes in his house for more than twenty years, and said raising his been increased annual income ever.

"The demand for traditional Chinese medicine in China is very high," he said.

"After we produce the dried snake, most of them are sent to medicine factories." The serpent of livers, fish eggs, and snake include gallbladder. "

Yang added snake products from the village in countries like the United States, Germany, Japan and South Korea are currently the world's exported.

Closer to home, snakes from the village sold city of Hangzhou, where the Hangzhou Woai company offers a wide range of goods, including Snake powder in the bustling Zhejiang.

"Each part of the Serpent is appreciated," said Managing Director Gao Chenchang.

"China has a strong culture of snake, there are a lot of people- as in Guangzhou--snakes who like food."

With such a special product, Zisiqiao million dollar business is the envy of other rural communities. But Hongchang Yang said, that is stiff competition by other breeders, the snakes on a larger scale than his village are growing.

In addition, the breeding of snakes with obvious risks comes.

Snake farmers, she said bitten some by deadly snakes, been, and were saved only by injection of anti-venom medicine.

Yang Wenfu, 55, gave way to breeding species of venomous vipers previously bitten by one of them.

"Then I ventured to increase no more Viper." "Today I still fear," he said and added that his arm grew hugely swollen the bite.

"Life is precious, and making money is secondary."

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

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Arid parches of China's "Land of fish and rice"

12:57 AM Chinas, parches No Comments

The drought access routes of the Middle LAKE HONGHU, China - and Eastern European China Lake Honghu in one wide of boats exposed mud dried, stranded and dying fish farms, threatening the livelihoods of inhabitants in the province of Hubei, which call this their "land of fish and rice".

Dry spells and floods almost every year make different parts of China, and officials are susceptible for each the worst call in 50 years or more.

But many residents around the Lake said, was a fitting label for the months-long drought, which drastically declined the Lake, the surrounding Yangtze River, and many other lakes and tributaries along the mighty river course by the agriculture and industrial heartland.

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"I've never seen, never this bad it." See the rice. It's all go yellow and the legs will die if we some rain soon, "said Ouyang Jinghuang, pepper-haired 66-year-old farmer paddy fields in the vicinity of Lake Honghu tendency."

"We are all well digging and buy our drinking water." "Usually we have so much water here, that we not worry about floods, droughts."

The dry season is a jarring reminder of how China, the world's second largest economy, is based on the increasingly tense water resources feed its people and fast-growing number of hydro stations.

These problems could deepen if rain does not soon come.

"There is water, but it is not enough to share," said Gao Desheng, a farmer his sixties, a break after plowing a field with an ox, centuries old farming method favors still here.

"Before, the sky would send more than enough water." But this year the sky has just stopped sending. "It is as if we offended it."

Stranded in the mud
Lake Honghu is located next to the Yangtze River by a strip of land with dikes and sluices separated.

The lake waters are usually up to five feet deep across much of the area of 348 km2 (134 sq mile) at this time of year, said Pan Cheng's, a Sun rice farmer and crabs breeders who live along its shores.

"Now that it water, is about 40 centimeters deep in most of it," he said. "The farmers are already hart-Up, and when, which dries well, a disaster will be this year."

The Lake is stranded littered with hundreds of fish and houseboats on mud of the receding waters. The remaining muddy water in ponds on nearby farms and marshland is to keep alive fish on the farm way is pumped.

"Almost all fish have died already, and we try to keep those links alive," said Wu Zhaowei, a burly man in his twenties, which was a morning calm on a stranded houseboat to drag from water in a fish-raising housing.

"Many people have already lost all their fish, and that's a lot of money."

Farmers said would have to generous rainfall in coming weeks or the first their two annual rice crops wither and die could, and more of the thousands of fish and crabs could lose farms all their shares.

Millions of farmers in Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and other provinces are facing similar threats of damaged or even lost rice harvest.

On Friday, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said almost 35 million people in five provinces on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River by the drought are affected, to varying degrees. This figure includes 4.2 million, have the difficulty getting drinking water.

Direct economic losses it was almost 15 billion yuan ($ 2.3 billion), said.

China's economy, the world's second largest, the harvest could absorb likely losses so far with only a small bump in food inflation.

But threatens the drought in power production, cut as the Yangtze River and its tributaries feed the three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, as well as thousands of smaller hydro plants.

"Yangtze River has highs and deep, depending on what do heavens, said" Li bin, a fisherman casting networks on the banks of the River.

"But I have not seen it before this low and it was even lower before they let water from the three gorges, a few days ago," said 60-year-old a hrigen.

He pointed about 2 meters a place along the river above where he stood.

"That's about where it should be at this time of year, so we will catch up too much rain need." "I see in the near future."

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

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China's food created inflation, hungry gourmets

4:44 PM Chinas, created, gourmets, Hungry, inflation No Comments

BEIJING - hunger what such a constant companion in Yao Qizhong's childhood that even now, at age 40, he'll stoop down to salvage a single clove of garlic that if from his table at the Beijing market where he hawks fresh produce.

Life is less harsh these days, but China's fast-rising food prices have hit his family hard, making it increasingly difficult to save for his three kids' education - Yao's main goal.

Across town, Zhong Sheng rinses a still-twitching Mandarin fish and picks the system from a handful of greens as he expounds on his philosophy of grocery shopping. Health and safety are his top concerns, ever since the architect became a father five years ago. Cost is a secondary consideration.

"You can buy cheap stuff," says Zhong as he and his wife cooked together and the smells of soy and scallion filled their cozy kitchen, "but if it makes you sick, you're going to end up paying more anyway in hospital fees."

The starkly contrasting fortunes of the Zhong and Yao families offer a glimpse into how soaring food prices are playing out in the developing world - home to more than three quarters of the globe's 6.9 billion people.

Prosperity and a nearly-growing middle class have cultivated more sophisticated and exotic tastes. Such luxuries as blueberries, avocado, asparagus, and endive, recently unattainable to all but the wealthiest, are now widely available in China's big cities.

But rising affluence has taxed the ability of farmers to meet growing demand while the rural labor pool dwindles. The result: rising food prices hit every level of society, not just those who can afford imported South American bananas or pricey mushrooms and herbs from China's remote Yunnan province. People on low or fixed incomes feel the pinch most.

"We do not dare to try and eat good stuff because we can't afford it," says Yao, whose four grandparents starved to death during China's 1960 famine. Hey what so poor growing up in rural Anhui province that his neighbors assumed he would end up a beggar on the streets.

"If I go to a supermarket," he says, "it's a novelty, like sightseeing."

In China, farm workers have flocked by the millions to factory and service jobs in coastal cities. Luring them back to till and weed by hand is proving a tough sell. The resulting supply pinch helped send food prices up 11.7 percent in March from the year before, adding to months of steep increases.

"You can't find (farm) workers and they're expensive, over a dollar (7 yuan) an hour," said Liu Li, a wholesaler hawking NAPA cabbage and coriander at Beijing's Xinfadi, north China's biggest agricultural distribution center.

People in the countryside want factory work or a job in the service industry, where they'd get to stay indoors and have a warm place to sleep, said Liu. Farm work, she said, is "too dirty and too hard."

Even with sharply higher food prices, Zhong, who runs his own business and has a master's degree from a prestigious Beijing university, can afford to be picky. Besides he sees good reason to favor more expensive organically grown and imported foods after infant formula tainted with an industrial chemical killed six children and sickened 300,000 in China in 2008.

Zhong, his wife and daughter sit down to a typical dinner of steamed fish, two types of greens, mushrooms, pork, rice and sliced apples. Total cost, about 80 yuan ($12). Each month the family spends some 2,000 yuan ($307) on food - about 10 percent of their income.

Yao, who left the countryside more ago, eats like a peasant, filling up on cheap still steamed buns and noodles than two decades and pinching every penny so that he can put his kids through school. For him, meat is a once-a-week treat, though he tries to make sure his children eat it more often.

As a migrant laborer, Yao has been able to skirt China's strict birth limits, having three kids instead of the two most rural families are limited to. But his migrant status means he must pay school fees himself.

A recent and routine lunch Yao and his for wife and children what a bowl of simple noodles with greens. Stall a Yao's ginger and garlic earns him about 2,000 yuan ($307) a month, of which about 600 yuan ($92) goes on food for his five-person family.

"I need to save money but I feel like I am already scraping the bottom of the barrel," he said. "At the same time, I know we have to feed ourselves and eat enough, otherwise our health is going to be affected."

A host of other factors are also blamed for food prices hikes in China and elsewhere in Asia, including too much money sloshing about the economy after stimulus policies that warded off the global recession, rising oil prices and shrinking land for cultivation because of pollution and encroachment by industry.

The U.N. food and Agriculture Office's index of global prices for meat, cereals and dairy foods has surged 37 percent in the first three months of 2011. In many Asian countries, that has translated into a 10 percent increase in local food prices, which the Asian Development Bank estimates is enough to drag people another 64 million below the $1.25 a day poverty line.

Yet the changes in food and work preferences aren't all bad because they reflect the human and economic development taking place in China, said Scott Rozelle, an agricultural economist at Stanford University and an expert on China's food markets.

Rozelle says that China's scattered and small scale farms are becoming more conolidated and mechanized, which could eventualy raise productivity, but the changes probably won't stop food prices from rising. Economic development involves both increases in prices and incomes, he says.

Higher food prices have in fact lifted lagging rural incomes. The per capita net income for rural Chinese grew faster than urban incomes last year, jumping 10 percent to 5,919 yuan ($902).

Rural Chinese are "going from grinding poor to poor," said Rozelle, describing villages he's seen with new brick homes and gravel roads, where all the girls go to school and every family has a mobile phone.

But the changes feel painful for many urban dwellers, particularly retirees, civil servants and migrants, like Yao, whose incomes haven't kept pace. And the discontent that a widening gap between privileged and poor can generate deeply worries China's communist leaders, who are mindful that the anti-government protests that toppled Egypt's government earlier this year were triggered in part by discontent over climbing food costs.

Yao says he envies people who can eat what they like without concern for cost, but tries not to dwell on it.

"Yes, it's unfair," he said. "But I know I just have to keep going." "I have to work hard and it will get better."

Even those benefiting from China's rising prosperity such as Zhong, the Beijing architect, are concerned.

"Their incomes are not rising as of nearly so for them this is difficult," he said. "I think the government needs to find a way to help them raise that sector's incomes too, and take care of them."

Copyright 2011 the associated press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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China's nuclear policy: 'Build, Build, Baby!'

2:28 AM Build, Chinas, nuclear, policy No Comments

Watching Japan?s nuclear drama unfold across the East China Sea, China is glued to the edge of its front-row seat.

There is a good reason for the rapt attention: In addition to fears that radiation from Japan could somehow reach its shores, China has more ongoing and planned nuclear construction than any other country ? about half of the world?s total.

While it has joined governments in Europe and the United States in announcing a safety review of its nuclear power sector, the pressure to complete its nuclear projects ? both those under way and on the drawing board ? is intense.

And its record in keeping corruption and mismanagement at bay in construction projects is checkered, to say the least.

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?One wonders how long a pause Chinese officials and businesses will feel they can actually take in examining the nuclear power issue,? says Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. ?China?s demand for energy ? if policy planners are correct about economic projections ? is like a freight train that is accelerating, and the demand is only growing.?

China?s power consumption grew 14 percent in 2010, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. At the same time, China?s leadership is aggressively trying to wean the country off coal, a huge source of air pollution and associated health issues in China.

In the last decade, Beijing has made nuclear power a central component in its energy strategy. China has 13 operating nuclear reactors producing nearly 2 percent of its total power output, but there are another 27 reactors under construction, 50 more planned and more than 100 proposed. With new reactors coming every year, China is aiming for a tenfold increase in its nuclear generating capacity by 2020, with rapid growth projected to continue until 2050.

Reason for pause
As the struggle to contain radiation was beginning at damaged nuclear reactors in Fukushima, in neighboring Japan, Beijing called for a comprehensive safety check and revision of safety standards for all nuclear plants in China.

"Safety is our top priority in developing nuclear power plants," the State Council, the power core of China?s central government, announced on March 16.

Coming from the State Council the edict carries weight.

?The Fukushima tragedy really gave the Chinese a serious wake-up call on the importance of nuclear safety,? said Zhou Yun, a Chinese nuclear security expert from China doing post-doctoral research at Harvard University?s Belfer Center.

But the accident in Japan does not mean China will move away from nuclear power, analysts agree. And it seems unlikely to significantly slow nuclear plant building.

Regulatory body needs bodies, teeth
Under the State Council's order, power plants and other nuclear facilities that are operational or under construction will be inspected, said Zhou. But the new standards will be imposed only on plants that have either not yet been approved or have not advanced beyond site preparation.

Significantly, the nuclear oversight body also is limited both in technical capacity and clout in the Chinese government hierarchy, she said.

The National Nuclear Safety Administration is a division of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in China, several steps removed from the State Council. On the other hand, the state-owned nuclear power companies ? China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group and China National Nuclear Corp. ? report directly to the council.

?In a country like China ? or more generally in Asia ? you have to show respect to people with higher titles,? said Zhou. ?That?s why people argue that the NNSA should have a higher level, directly under the State Council, not just a group or division or subdivision under Environmental Protection.?

The elevation of the nuclear safety agency, ?making it an independent regulatory body with authority,? was one of several recommendations made in a January 2011 report by the State Council Research Office to keep pace with safety issues in the nuclear industry.

The research office also warned that safety could be compromised by a growing shortage of technical expertise ? particularly among regulators because their salaries are not keeping pace with those of workers in the plants.

The challenge to technical inspectors is complicated by the variety of power plant designs China has in operation?with technology imported from France, Canada and Russia and the United States, as well as a domestic nuclear reactor design based largely on the French technology.

Finally, there is concern that this rapid growth in nuclear facilities presents not only a potential danger from the plants, but from the stress the growth puts on the nuclear supply chain, including nuclear fuel suppliers, transport systems and waste disposal sites.

Growing awareness, anxiety
Until now, government and business advocates of nuclear power in China have been largely untroubled by public opposition to nuclear power.

The only exception has been in Hong Kong, which operates with greater freedoms than China?s mainland, under a democratically elected local government.

When the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station was built about 30 miles from Hong Kong, and opened in 1994, it did so over vocal opposition in Hong Kong, where more than 1 million people signed a petition to halt the project.

Two minor radiation leaks in the plant within the past year ? which management said were contained within the plant ? have revived unease and debate among Hong Kong legislators, but there has been no such open discussion in mainland China.

?For the most part, people did not pay much attention before the Fukushima nuclear incident,? said Zhou, the Harvard researcher.

But that is rapidly changing, she said. Chinese cyberspace is filled with discussion about Japan and nuclear safety. Anxiety about a possible impact from the leaked radiation prompted many Chinese to hoard salt and wear paper masks in misguided attempts to protect themselves.

Even so, China?s citizenry is more informed than in the past ? in part because of government reforms and more recently because of an explosion in access to information technology.

They are increasingly aware of corner cutting in construction that has had deadly effects ? such as in Sichuan, where dozens of schools collapsed in the 2008 earthquake there due to shoddy materials and construction, killing thousands of children.

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And in a major corruption crackdown in the railway ministry that is still unfolding, it emerged that one of the guilty parties had allowed use of a cheap chemical hardening agents for its high-speed rail system, calling into question their safety for trains moving up to 250 mph. The Chinese rail network has been accused of pushing the trains beyond the recommended speeds.

Corruption and greed also were cited as key reasons behind the melamine-tainted baby formula scandal that hit Chinese consumers in 2008.

The potential for catastrophic consequences offers some hope that the Chinese government will see its nuclear power industry as an area where it has too much at stake to allow scandal, said Eberstadt, of the American Enterprise Institute.

?There is huge capital investment,? in nuclear power, he said. ?The central government is inescapably responsible for their performance in a way that they arguably are not for dispersed and decentralized problems with the food chain supply.?

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Nonetheless, Fukushima has put nuclear power on the radar for a populace that was previously focused on enjoying its benefits.

?Internet users spent a lot of time blogging and in group forums discussing the Fukushima incident and its consequences,? said Zhou.

?People suddenly realize that China is building a lot of nuclear power plants. They check the map and find 27 or 28 under construction,? she said. ?So they start questioning the government:? Do we really have a nuclear safety culture???

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