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China’s top relics protection authority has warned that many historic relics in the country had been erased by modern infrastructure projects.

According to a national survey carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), as many as 23,600 registered cultural sites “disappeared” in last three years, China Daily reported.

“Most of the disappeared historical sites were demolished during infrastructure construction, for example, highway and reservoir building,” Liu Xiaohe, deputy director of the survey was quoted as saying. “The nation will do all it can to preserve as much as it can.”

However, Sun Yuexin, founder of the Chinese Cultural Heritage Protection website, said the number of disappeared relics was as large as it was because there had been false reporting and exaggeration of such sites in the past.

“Some local governments would exaggerate the amount of relics they have, so as to ask for more funds from the central government to protect relics,” he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

SACH has been working on the inventory since 2007 and hopes to have a full list of China’s historical sites, including ancient tombs, temples and architecture, by 2011.

As of the end of October, 776,200 historical sites had been surveyed and added to the list, said Shan Jixiang, director of SACH.

The last national survey was carried out in 1983. It failed to issue a final report.

At 19.00 hrs on Sunday virtually all of Spain will come to a halt to watch the most important club match of year as FC Barcelona entertains Real Madrid in the Camp Nou stadium.

The ‘Classico’ as it has come to be known is the biggest league match in Europe and probably the world as Spain’s top two sides continue their historic rivalry in front of almost 100,000 fans in the Camp Nou Stadium and a worldwide television audience in the tens of millions.

This year’s Classico promises to be more decisive that ever. Real Madrid spent over 250 million euros over the summer after watching how Barcelona won the hearts of football fans last season.

With the backbone of the side made up of players who have progressed through its youth system: players such as Leo Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xabi and Carles Puyol, Barcelona played some of the best football a club side has ever produced. The team is a domestic and European treble, winning the Primera Liga, the King’sCup and the Champions League in style, while Real Madrid fans could only look enviously on.

This season Barcelona has added the Spanish and European Supercups and in December flies to Dubai to play in the World ClubChampionships.

Indications are that it is placing a strain on a squad many think is too thinly spread for the massive amount of matches it will play this season.

Barcelona brought in Zlatan Ibrahimovich over the summer along with left back Maxwell and expensive central defender Chygrynskiy. Ibrahimovich has done well, but Chygrynskiy has struggled.

Indeed the biggest success this season has been young winger Pedro Rodriguez, who has won the fans over with some breathtaking displays of pace and confidence.

Real Madrid has tried to combat that success. Over the summer Florentino Perez returned as club president and spent money as it has never been spent before.

He paid a world record free of 95 million euros for Cristiano Ronaldo and a further 65 million euros to bring Kaka from AC Milan.

Karim Benzema and Xabi Alonso were further multi-million euro signings, while former youth team players Alvaro Arbeloa and Esteban Granero also returned to the club to give the side a more ‘homegrown’ feel than other projects.

Meanwhile players signed under the regime of former president Ramon Calderon, such as Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder, were sold.

Manuel Pellegrini was signed from Villarreal. Perez wanted Arsene Wenger, but the Arsenal coach said he could not join, because what Madrid was doing went against his philosophy of working with youngsters and bringing them on a players.

Pellegrini, whose nickname is the ‘Engineer’ enjoyed five excellent seasons at Villarreal, but has had a difficult time at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Even though his Madrid has registered the club’s best ever start to a season, the football on display has not been good. The side has struggled against lesser sides only to win thanks to moments of individual brilliance from Ronaldo or Gonzalo Higuain.

The fans still look enviously at the flowing football produced by a Barcelona outfit that looks like a true team, rather than a collection of expensive individuals.

When Madrid was humiliated in the King’s Cup by third tier side Alcorcon, losing 4-0, it looked as if Pellegrini would be sacked.

Should Pellegrini’s side be beaten heavily in the Camp Nou, he will probably lose his job. But if Ronaldo, Kaka or Benzema produces a moment of magic, his job will be safe and Madrid will take a big step towards the title.

Sunday’s game has it all: teamwork against talented individuals, faith in the youth system against the big spending side from the capital. At 19.00 hours all of Spain will sit down to watch the outcome.

China’s major energy firms are boosting natural gas production and imports to ease shortages caused by a cold snap this month.

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country’s leading oil and gas producer, on Wednesday night started operating a natural gas pipeline in western China.

The pipeline, which sends natural gas from the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai province to Xining, capital of Qinghai, will increase CNPC’s gas supply in the region by 3 million cu m per day, the company said in a statement yesterday.

CNPC also plans to start importing natural gas from Turkmenistan through the Central Asia pipeline and the second West-East pipeline in mid-January next year, it said.

“Once the project becomes operational, we will increase natural gas supply by almost 1 billion cu m this winter,” said the statement.

CNPC’s daily supply of gas has reached around 200 million cu m since November. The company’s natural gas production and pipeline transmission are at maximum capacity, said Hou Chuangye, deputy general manager of the company’s gas and pipeline operations.

To ease the shortage, CNPC will buy at least 700 million cu m of gas in the global spot market, Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, said on Dragon TV.

The company will also lease the Shanghai LNG terminal from China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) as part of its strategy to bridge the shortfall. The first imports will equal two cargoes, a company executive said yesterday.

Besides CNPC, the country’s two other major oil and gas producers Sinopec and CNOOC are also boosting production to ease the shortage.

During the fourth quarter, Sinopec’s daily natural gas production touched a record high of 23.8 million cu m, up 1.8 million cu m from the third quarter, the company said.

The company’s Daniudi gas field, a key field in northern China, is now operating at full capacity to meet demand, said Li Deming, an executive at Sinopec’s northern China sales operations.

CNOOC is also raising gas production at some fields to help ease the shortage, said a company executive yesterday.

“With these moves, the gas shortage caused by the cold weather can be solved within a short period,” said Lin Boqiang, a professor at Xiamen University.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa called Tuesday for improving the integration between nations of Latin America’s Pacific coast regions and their cooperation with Asian countries to fight the global economic crisis.

Nations of Latin America’s Pacific coast enjoyed “a strategic advantage, which we must use to boost competitiveness and growth of our economies and to reach the full and just development that our societies aspire to,” said Espinosa during the opening session of the fifth Latin American Pacific Arc Forum in Puerto Vallarta, a coastal resort in Mexico’s west-central state of Jalisco.

The rise of the Asia Pacific Rim economies has offered unprecedented opportunities for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to boost their own growth and to overcome the current economic crisis, Espinosa explained.

Mexico believes that nations of Latin America’s Pacific coast regions can better communicate with their Asian counterparts by strengthening their integration, said Espionosa.

She also called on all participating Latin American countries to enhance competitiveness so as to attract investment from Asian countries.

Representatives attending the forum are from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

China should allow an immediate one-off appreciation in the yuan’s value and widen the currency’s trading band to stem inflows of speculative capital that might fuel inflation, said UBS AG economist Wang Tao.

“China’s economic fundamentals mean that the yuan should strengthen,” Beijing-based Wang told Bloomberg. “The central bank will find it harder to manage liquidity and inflation when a flood of speculative funds returns, betting on the yuan’s appreciation.”

The Chinese economy grew at the fastest pace in a year in the second quarter and export declines slowed in September, fueling speculation that policy makers will let the yuan resume appreciation against the dollar.

China’s cabinet, the State Council, said last month that managing liquidity is increasingly difficult and signaled that inflation concerns will play a greater role in setting policy.

Policy makers should do “the unexpected”, countering perceptions that the currency is a one-way bet, before expectations for gains strengthen, Wang said. She didn’t say how much the currency should immediately appreciate.

Yuan forwards, which rose to a 14-month high late last month, suggest the currency will gain 2.3 percent against the dollar in the coming year. The yuan climbed 21 percent over three years after the government scrapped a fixed exchange rate in July 2005.

Yuan convertibility

Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, recently predicted that China will “ultimately” allow the yuan to be freely convertible to other currencies.

While Chinese officials, including Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, have called this year for an alternative to the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency, they maintain controls on the yuan that prevent it for now from becoming a competitor.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong, Roach added that the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US currency “will relax” after China makes the yuan convertible. The un-pegging of the Hong Kong dollar is out of the question for now, he said.

Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last month that the yuan could become a global reserve currency in about 10 years should China make it convertible. A change in Chinese policy would make the yuan a “notable and weighty” reserve unit, Kudrin said in an interview on the state-run Vesti television channel.

China will likely seek to slow capital inflows by convincing speculators they don’t stand to make large returns, rather than allowing a one-off appreciation, said Mitul Kotecha, head of global foreign exchange strategies at Calyon in Hong Kong.

“China will need to be very careful,” he said. “It needs to communicate to the market that yuan appreciation will be limited to about 5 percent to 6 percent a year. The danger in the past was that expectations of appreciation attracted hot money.”

China’s financial system is already flooded with cash from a record $1.27 trillion in new lending this year, the trade surplus, foreign direct investment, and inflows of speculative capital, or so-called hot money, adding to the risk of bubbles in stocks and property.

The nation’s foreign exchange reserves rose $141 billion in the third quarter to a record $2.273 trillion, following an unprecedented $178 billion increase in the previous three months.

Central bank

“Foreign exchange inflows will force more liquidity into the financial system, making it more difficult for the central bank to manage inflation and control asset bubbles,” Wang said.

The yuan is allowed to trade 0.5 percent on either side of a daily reference rate against the dollar set by the central bank, a limit that could be raised to 1 percent or 3 percent to increase uncertainty, the economist said.

China’s currency has stayed at about 6.83 per dollar for the past 15 months as the government shields exporters from a slump in world trade. In September, exports fell by the least in nine months, suggesting that demand is starting to revive.

Wang said she doesn’t expect policy makers to take her advice. She sees the yuan staying pegged to the US currency for six to nine months as the government continues to protect exporters, then rising to as much as 6.4 per dollar by the end of 2010.

US treasury

A more flexible Chinese currency is needed for “a stronger, more balanced global economy,” the US Treasury said in a report to Congress, released Oct 15. That report called the yuan “undervalued”.

Asian Development Bank economist Yolanda Fernandez Lommen cautioned last month that excessive gains by the currency could lead to instability in the world’s most populous nation.

The Ministry of Commerce said recently that the government would stick to a “gradual” approach to currency reform.

Central Bank Vice-Governor Ma Delun warned on Oct 20 that policy challenges will increase as expectations for a stronger yuan boost inflows of capital.

The State Council said on Oct 21 that the policy focus in coming months will need to “balance” the need to aid growth with “the need to better manage inflationary expectations”.

Consumer prices gained for a second month in September from August, rising 0.4 percent. Year-on-year, prices slid for an eighth month.

China is a dynamo of the world economy and is playing a central role in helping a global economic recovery, said Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for the Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), on Friday.

“China is part of the world trade of wheat, rice, soya, sugar and others, playing a very important role in the increase of those product exports. The same happens in the case of the minerals and oil,” Barcena told Xinhua in an interview.

He said China is one of the most important market for Latin American and the Caribbean products.

“China is being a blessing for the exports of raw materials from Latin America and the Caribbean. But it is also a great exporter (to the region). So, it competes with the countries of this region, mainly with Mexico and the Central American nations,” said Barcena.

Trade between China and Latin America has grown tremendously, he noted.

He said Mexico, for example, is beginning to see China as a partner rather than a competitor.

Mexico has given priority to trade relations with China. As a result, the Asian country is now the fifth largest overseas market for Mexican products.

Meanwhile, South America has also improved ties with China.

“All producers see the opportunity of reaching the Chinese market,” said Barcena.

Senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Zhou Yongkang arrived in Johannesburg Wednesday afternoon on an official goodwill visit to South Africa.

Zhou, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, visits South Africa at the invitation of South Africa’s ruling party African National Congress (ANC).

Upon his arrival at Johannesburg airport, Zhou said in a written statement that the CPC has close relations with the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa, and that the two countries have also conducted sound cooperation and coordination in areas like politics, trade and international affairs in the past years.

“I am expecting to meet with South African President Jacob Zuma and other government and party leaders to discuss bilateral relations and major issues of mutual concern,” said Zhou.

“I believes that my visit will help deepen China-South Africa friendship, strengthen bilateral strategic partnership and lift party-to-party relations to a new height,” Zhao said.

South Africa is the second stop of Zhou’s African trip. He arrived after concluding his visit to Sudan.

The Chinese government has approved a border development zone in the Tumen River Delta to boost cross-border cooperation in the Northeast Asian region, the provincial government of Jilin announced on Monday.

The information office of the government said the pilot zone covering 73,000 square kilometers involved the cities of Changchun and Jilin as well as the Tumen River area.

Han Changbin, governor of Jilin, said the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen pilot zone was China’s first border development zone.

It is expected to push forward cross-border cooperation in the Tumen River Delta.

The delta, a 516-kilometer-long river straddling the borders of China, Russia and North Korea, was set up as an economic development zone in 1991 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to promote trade.

In 1995, five countries – China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia – ratified the agreement on the Establishment of the Cooperation Commission for the Tumen River Economic Development Area. Japan participated in the program as an observer.

In 2005, the five signatories agreed to extend the agreement for another 10 years.

They also agreed to expand the area to the Greater Tumen Region and to further strengthen cooperation for economic growth and sustainable development for the peoples of Northeast Asia.

“Before the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen pilot zone was initiated, the Chinese part of the Tumen River area was mainly Huichun, a port city in Jilin, that has involved in the cross-border cooperation,” said Zhu Xianping, director of the Northeast Asia Research Institute of Jilin University in Changchun.

The 5,145-square-kilometer port city with a 250,000 population had limited industrial development capacity to develop infrastructure projects that will match the cross-border cooperation, he said.

Du Ying, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that by bringing the two cities of Changchun and Jilin into the border zone, the zone could serve as a strategic platform to support the cross-border cooperation in the Greater Tumen Region.

Zhao Zhenqi, an assistant to the Jilin governor, said the central government has allowed the pilot zone to try new land use and foreign financing methods, such as sharing ports and sea routes with other countries in the region and setting up free trade zones.

Under the initiative of the pilot zone, local governments in the region could bet-ter interact to tackle development bottlenecks, he said.

The Northeast China region, rich in natural resources including coal and oil, is China’s traditional heavy industry base and granary. However, it also faces the chal-lenges of industrial upgrading, resource depletion and financing bottlenecks.

Myanmar official media on Sunday expected that the remaining peace groups will follow suit after two former anti-government ethnic armed groups, which have ceased fire with the government, were transformed into border guard forces under the command of the central government.

The two ethnic peace groups — New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K) in Kachin State Special Region-1 and Kayinni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF) in Kayah State Special Region-2 — were transformed into frontier forces by the government on Nov. 8, becoming the first two such organizations out of 17 to do so.

Myanamr official media described the move as being enabling them to hold arms legally under the command of the government armed forces.

“Transforming national race armed groups into border guard forces is also an important part in the drive for ensuring national solidarity and national unity, which is much needed for the new nation,” the New Light of Myanmar said in its editorial.

“The Tatmadaw (government armed forces) is the force of all national races and the entire people, not the Tatmadaw of a single race and tribe,” it said, adding that “in every sovereignty country, all the armed forces are under the control of the central government”.

The NDA-K, led by Sakhone Ting Ying, ceased fire with the government in December 1989, while the KNPLF did so in May 1994.

Since the present government came to power in late 1988, 17 anti-government major ethnic armed groups and over 20 small groups were claimed to have returned to the legal fold by signing respective ceasefire agreements with the government.

Some of the armed groups were resettled with special regions with arms retained, conditionally enjoying self-administration.

Under the government’s fifth step of its seven-step roadmap announced in 2003, a multi-party democracy general election is to be held in 2010 in accordance with the 2008 new state constitution to produce parliament representatives and form a new civilian government.

The 2008 new state constitution prescribes that all the armed forces in the union shall be under the command of the Defense Services.

Meanwhile, the government urged ethnic peace groups in the country to adhere to the provisions of the approved new state constitution in the light of upcoming general election next year, advising them to reconsider formation of their political parties in the event of wishing to work for their regional development within the framework of the constitution.

There also remains 10 legal political parties in Myanmar.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, on Thursday played down the Palestinian Central Elections Committee’s (CEC) announcement that it could not hold polls as scheduled in January 2010.

“The elections are impossible without national understanding and would not have succeeded and this is what the CEC has practically understood,” said Mahmoud Zahar, a member of Hamas politburo.

He told Xinhua over the phone that the CEC’s recommendation to put off the elections “was part of unveiled, unappreciated political maneuver.”

The CEC said it is unable to organize the polls which President Mahmoud Abbas has set on January 24, 2010, a date to hold presidential and parliamentary elections.

“We have informed the president that we can’t hold the elections on their scheduled time,” said Hanna Nasser, the CEC director.

In a press conference held in Ramallah, Nasser accused Islamic Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, of putting obstacles to prevent the elections from taking place.

“Hamas has rejected to receive the CEC in its official capacity in Gaza to prepare for holding the elections,” Nasser said.

Abbas’s call for elections came in a bid to end internal split and restore Palestinian unity after Hamas rejected an Egyptian proposal to settle the differences.

The political split in the Palestinian territories resulted after Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007. Since then, Abbas has been based in the West Bank.

Hamas, which won the parliamentary elections in 2006, says it can not allow voting to take place unless the national and political unity is restored.