Progressivechina

Man detained for unhooking bra of woman in subway.[Photo/weibo.com]

The Shanghai subway system is increasingly becoming a ride for mild transgressions.

Local police reported yesterday that they detained a man who allegedly unfastened the brassiere of a woman on a crowded subway train following a dispute last week.

The man, surnamed Yang, told police that he acted “out of retaliation in the over crowded carriage.” The 29-year-old faces detention for five to 10 days, police said.

The incident once again raised concerns about female riders on the city’s Metro network after previous acts of sexual assaults whipped up a storm of protest among the netizens.

In the latest incident, which happened on July 22, Yang had a quarrel with a woman on Metro Line 6 about 8:20am.

The woman, surnamed Xu, accused Yang in public of trying to unbutton her bra, which he denied. The two were taken away by police at the Pudian Road Station.

Yang told police he was pushed toward Xu by the crowd. After the duo argued, Yang “retaliated” by doing what he was being accused of.

Police have promised to crack down on molestations on the subway, especially during the summer season.

“Any moment in the crowded subway can lead to trouble and cause misunderstandings,” said an officer, surnamed Zhou, of the Metro police.

“We hope people remain calm and do not escalate the disputes.”

The case was not treated as a molestation incident on the Metro but female riders are being warned to be careful during the rides.

Women tend to remain silent or use the anonymity of the Internet to deal with incidents of molestation on the Shanghai Metro.

Two days before the July 22 incident a person was caught for taking candid pictures of a woman’s underwear on an escalator on Metro Line 1.

On July 3, a 25-year-old man was arrested for touching a woman’s butt on Metro Line 2.

In all, police said they have handled 19 molestation cases so far this year and detained an equal number of men.

The death toll has climbed to 94, with 887 injured and one still unaccounted for, in an earthquake that hit northwest China’s Gansu Province Monday morning, local authorities said.

As of 6 p.m. Monday, 422 aftershocks had been recorded in the quake-hit region, with the strongest measuring 5.6 in magnitude, Chang Zhengguo, spokesman for the provincial government, said at a press conference held in the provincial capital of Lanzhou.

An initial investigation showed that the quake had caused the collapse of more than 1,200 houses and severely damaged another 21,000 homes, he added.

Two helicopters and about 3,000 armed police, firefighters, local militiamen and local government staff have been sent to the quake-hit region to help with rescue efforts.

Xinhua reporters who arrived at villages in Meichuan Township in Minxian said many rural buildings had been reduced to ruins and others had cracks in the walls.

Zhu Wenqing, a 40-year-old farmer from Meichuan’s village of Majiagou, said his house survived the initial quake but eventually collapsed following seven or eight aftershocks.

Villagers said the victims were mainly elderly and children.

In Meichuan’s village of Yongguang, the quake toppled wood and earthen structures and unleashed a landslide that buried 12 residents.

Two bodies have been found and one person has been pulled out alive, but rescue efforts have been slow due to a lack of heavy digging machinery, rescuers said.

Chu Xiaoyi, a 20-year-old villager, said the landslide completely destroyed his house. His family of three narrowly escaped by holding on to a utility pole.

“We were sleeping when it happened, so we ran out almost naked. Now we have nothing left and even our clothes are borrowed from neighbors,” Chu said.

Many residents in Yongguan said they are concerned about the lack of food, shelter, electricity and unstable mobile phone signals after the quake damaged the county’s infrastructure.

Communication in many villages in Meichuan and in 13 townships in Zhangxian has been cut off. Power has been cut off in five towns in the eastern part of Minxian.

The epicenter of the quake was monitored at 34.5 degrees north latitude and 104.2 degrees east longitude, the China Earthquake Networks Center said.

The earthquake happened in a fault zone that has seen 25 earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater throughout history, the China Earthquake Administration said.

The strongest quake recorded in the fault zone had a magnitude of 8.0 and occurred on July 21, 1654. That quake happened about 121 km from the site of the latest quake, the administration said.

Locals in Minxian said the quake lasted for about one minute. The county government said most of its townships have been affected by the quake.

Wang Sanyun, secretary of the Gansu provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and Liu Weiping, governor of Gansu, have arrived at Meichuan to oversee rescue efforts.

The Lanzhou Railway Bureau has initiated an emergency response to guarantee the safety of railway bridges and communication facilities in the province.

Light to heavy rain has been forecast in Dingxi, according to the provincial meteorological station. The rain will likely affect rescue efforts.

The earthquake was also felt in Gansu’s cities of Tianshui and Lanzhou, as well as the cities of Xi’an, Baoji and Xianyang in neighboring Shaanxi Province.

The two new lawyers for a suspect involved in a gang rape case that has attracted nationwide attention said they would plea for innocence for their client, Beijing News reported on Thursday.

Li Tianyi(L) and his father Li Shuangjiang.[File photo]

Xue Zhenyuan, the former lawyer for the suspect, surnamed Li, quit last month but declined to give a specific reason.

Xu quit because the suspect’s mother asked him to release a statement saying Li was not involved in the rape, according to a source close to the case.

Li, the son of Li Shuangjiang, was accused of gang raping a girl with four other males at a hotel in Beijing in February and was detained days later.

The police refused to disclose details of the case, including the names of the suspects, saying four of them were minors.

Li Shuangjiang, who is the dean of the music department of the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Arts, is most known for his renditions of patriotic songs.

His son, however, has created controversy in recent years due to his unruly behavior.

The 17-year-old and another teenager attacked a couple who allegedly blocked their driveway near the entrance of a residential community in Beijing two years ago. He was later sent to a government correctional facility for one year.

The Chinese mainland on Sunday announced a total of 31 policies in the areas of legal rights, education, culture, tourism and other aspects of economic and social life to further boost cross-Strait ties, during the fifth Straits Forum in southeast China’s Xiamen City.

Yu Zhengsheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, addresses the conference of the 5th Straits Forum in Xiamen of southeast China’s Fujian Province, June 16, 2013.[Photo/Xinhua]

The Supreme People’s Court will unveil judicial interpretation for recognizing and implementing the paper of civil mediation followed by Taiwan authorities at village, township and city levels, announced Zhang Zhijun, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.

To offer more convenience for Taiwanese visitors, an additional 11 provincial entry-exit administrative departments on the mainland will accept applications from Taiwanese compatriots who reside on the mainland for renewal of their entry permits, Zhang added.

Nine such departments already offered the service.

The mainland will also open 10 more categories of professional qualification examinations to Taiwan residents, support Taiwanese graduates from mainland colleges to start their own businesses, and provide subsidies for entrepreneurship training to students from Taiwan.

According to Zhang, 10 cultural exchanges bases will be set up on the mainland in Henan, Fujian and Beijing.

He said that another 11 historical sites will also play the role of cross-Strait communication bases, including the Confucius Temple in east China’s Shandong Province, and some revolutionary relic sites in central Hubei Province and southwest Chongqing Municipality.

The official, who did not specify when any of these new policies would take effect, added that a cross-Strait copyright trade center as well as a digital publication base working across the Strait will be established in Fujian.

In order to boost cross-Strait tourism, residents of 13 more mainland cities will be eligible to visit Taiwan as individual tourists under a new cross-Strait agreement, according to Shao Qiwei, head of the National Tourism Administration.

The 13 cities, including Shenyang, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Suzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shijiazhuang, Changchun, Hefei, Changsha, Nanning, Kunming and Quanzhou, will extend the list of such mainland cities to 26.

The fifth Straits Forum opened on Sunday and is scheduled to wrap up on June 21 in Xiamen, a port city at the western side of Taiwan Strait.

It features an array of activities on grassroots exchanges between Taiwan and the mainland, including a main conference in Xiamen as well as sub-forums and seminars in cities across the province.

Mainland-Taiwan relations entered a tense era after the Kuomintang (KMT) lost a civil war with the Communist Party of China and fled to Taiwan in the late 1940s.

But relations between the two warmed up after the KMT, led by a new generation of leaders, returned to power in the 2008 Taiwan election, ending eight years of rule by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.

SOURCE OF EXCITEMENT

The preferential policies announced on Sunday have drawn wide attentions from both sides of the strait.

Many delegates from Taiwan said the decision to allow residents in 13 mainland cities to apply for individual tourism to Taiwan would send ripples of excitement across the island.

Chang His-tsung, a spokesman for Taiwan tourism authority, called the 13 cities “top choices” in an interview with Xinhua.

The cities are located in different regions of the mainland and the choice fully considered the convenience of cross-Strait flights, Chang said.

Wang Hongyuan, head of China Quanzhou International Techno-Economic Cooperation (group) Taiwan branch, was glad to see Quanzhou on the list as more than seven million Taiwan compatriots have their ancestral homes as well as relatives in the city in Fujian Province.

“I have often been asked when people from Quanzhou could visit Taiwan independently, and now it comes true,” he said.

Syu Kuen-chin, a Taiwan expert on trade and employment market, said the over-crowded job market on the island had prompted many graduates there to consider “going west” and seeking a job on the mainland.

“The mainland’s favorable policy will certainly attract more Taiwanese students to the mainland for education and career,” Syu said.

PEOPLE ORIENTATION

Experts on Taiwan affairs said the latest policy package focuses on improving the wellbeing of ordinary Taiwanese, including those having settled down on the mainland or local Taiwanese who have close ties with the mainland.

“The most salient feature of this year’s preferential policies is touching down to the grassroots and focusing on the livelihood issues,” said Zhang Wensheng, professor at the Taiwan Research Institute of Xiamen University.

Zhang praised the policies of being “subtle and considerate” and comprehensive, covering areas from educational cooperation to copyright trading to direct flights.

“The new policies will make cross-Strait communication more convenient and promote cultural integration, reflecting the people-orientated mentality of the cross-Strait exchanges,” he said.

The latest policy package add to the total 124 such Taiwan-friendly policies released at the Straits Forum since it was initiated in 2008 as a major platform to further grassroots exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan.

As direct beneficiaries of the improving mainland-Taiwan relations, the ordinary Taiwanese are becoming supporters of this trend, according to Zhang.

“Taiwanese at the grassroots level are realizing their interests are closely tied to the cross-Strait relations and thus becoming the social foundation of the cross-Strait peaceful development,” Zhang said.