China to launch its Chang’e-5 lunar probe

China is scheduled to launch its Chang’e-5 lunar probe in 2017 and the mission will bring back samples collected from the moon, a senior scientist said Monday.

The development of Chang’e 5 is proceeding smoothly, said the administration’s spokesman Wu Zhijian at a press conference on Monday.

The just-concluded Chang’e 3 mission, the third-phase project of China’s lunar probe established in 2011, marked completion of the second phase of the program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth.

China’s first lunar rover and the lander took pictures of each other near mid-night on Sunday, marking the complete success of Chang’e-3 lunar probe mission.

The lunar program will enter the next stage of unmanned sampling and returning, which will include Chang’e 5 and 6 missions, according to Wu.

China Daily via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/8AbCJQ3dKpE/

China’s Tianjin to curb car ownership in anti-smog drive

China’s northern municipality of Tianjin will restrict traffic and issue new car license plates via bidding and lottery in a drive to fight traffic jam and air pollution.

The city will impose quota on its new car plates starting next Monday, requiring buyers to join lottery or bid in auctions to win a plate, according to a notice issued by the city government on Sunday evening.

The notice did not give details on the quota or how many plates will go for lottery compared with auction.

Tianjin will also follow Beijing’s step in adopting a similar traffic restriction scheme, which blocks cars from streets depending on the last digit of their plates, with two numbers banned each workday, said Miao Hongwei, head of the city’s traffic management bureau.

The ban, which will take effect on March 1, is expected to take one fifth of the city’s private cars off the road on workdays.

Moreover, the city will ban vehicles with non-local plates from driving into the city’s outer ring road during morning and evening rush hours on workdays, Miao said.

A statement by the municipal government said the move was part of the city’s effort to curb its ballooning car ownership, reduce traffic jams and fight smog.

Tianjin has registered 2.36 million motor vehicles by 2012, up from 1.2 mln in 2006, while the average driving speed on downtown roads during rush hours dropped to 19.5 kilometers per hour in 2011, indicating severe traffic gridlock in the city of 14 mln permanent residents.

Meanwhile, vehicle emissions have been held as a key source of the persistent smog plaguing Tianjin, its neighbor Beijing and other cities in the northern region.

Previously, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have limited the number of vehicles registered each year.

Shanghai uses a bidding scheme, while Beijing issues plates through a lottery. Guangzhou adopts both systems, half issued through bidding, the other half through a lottery.

Xinhua News via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/VqP5f4EVaV0/

Guess What? The U.S. and China Don’t Trust Each Other Much

And the Chinese trust Americans even less. That’s the conclusion of the U.S.-China Security Perceptions Survey (PDF) released on Dec. 11 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Beijing-based research organization China Strategic Culture Promotion Association (CSCPA). “There is a low level of strategic trust between the United States and China, which could make bilateral relations more turbulent,” warns the survey.

Working with the Pew Research Center and the Research Center for Contemporary China at Peking University, as well as the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Carnegie-CSCPA survey canvassed the general public and elites in government, business, academia, the military, and the media last year. In the U.S., it surveyed 1,004 adults among the general public and 305 elites. In China, it canvassed 2,597 adults in urban areas and 358 elites.

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Dexter Roberts, Bloomberg News via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/h4XS40K1x2g/

China Economic Conference Balances Reform, Stable Growth

China closed a key economic conference on its policies for 2014, with the government suggesting a need to press ahead with reforms while maintaining stable economic growth.

After a four-day meeting known as the Central Economic Work Conference that ended Friday, China’s policy makers faced the “core task” of ensuring stable growth amid continuing economic headwinds and troubles with domestic security, according to a statement carried by state media.

The annual conference normally maps out key objectives for the economy in the coming year, though the official statement made no mention of any hard economic targets.

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Wiliam Kazer, Wall Street Journal via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/qiXhkVYInJw/

China’s first lunar probe to land on the moon this weekend

China’s first lunar rover is expected to land on the moon on Saturday, less than two weeks after it blasted off from Earth, according to Chinese media reports.

The landing will make China one of only three nations — after the United States and the former Soviet Union — to “soft-land” on the moon’s surface, and the first to do so in more than three decades.

Chang’e-3, the unmanned spacecraft carrying the rover, is due to touch down on a lava plain named Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows, shortly after 3 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. ET) on December 14, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

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Sophie Brown, CNN via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/048jayNiHBg/

China-Japan Rift Triggers Charm Offensive for Southeast Asia

China’s growing assertiveness with Japan and the U.S. is helping bring a level of attention to Southeast Asia unseen since the Vietnam War, ushering billions of dollars of investment, wider access to trade and stepped-up military assistance.

A summit starting today between Southeast Asian leaders and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, coupled with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Vietnam and the Philippines from tomorrow, underscore the strategic and increasingly economic attraction of an area poised to benefit as the world’s top three economies — the U.S., Japan and China — vie for economic and political influence.

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Chris Blake and Isabel Reynolds, Bloomberg News via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/9Z8-51S5cSA/

KPMG: Turned Over China Documents to U.S. Regulators

KPMG International has handed over audit documents on Chinese companies to U.S. regulators, the firm’s chairman said Thursday, a move that is expected to allow the U.S. government to investigate potential accounting irregularities by U.S.-listed Chinese firms.

The handover is part of a U.S.-China deal reached in May that allows the U.S. access to audit firms’ documents about their Chinese clients, conveyed to the U.S. through Chinese regulators. The agreement was a step toward resolving a standoff over how much China will cooperate with U.S. efforts to oversee Chinese companies, though the pact was nonbinding and didn’t give the U.S. broader access to information it wanted.

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Kathy Chu and Michael Rapoport, Wall Street Journal via CHINA US Focus http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChinaUsFocus/~3/KMLI2YlF4NA/