Shanghai is making government administration more transparent to its citizens, while firmly doing away with formalism and bureaucratism. The municipal government has moved to keep citizens informed of public affairs and to ensure their right to supervise government administration and participate in the lawmaking process. The government bulletin, once a token of supreme authority only for government offices, has been demystified for ordinary citizens, who can get a free copy at newsstands, post offices, bookstores and neighborhood committees. The city government will launch a new website this month to publish administrative information.

Air France's move

AIR France Cargo's China Office was moved from Beijing to Shanghai yesterday through the opening of its third freighter between Shanghai and Paris as a new development activity in the local market. Marc Boudier, executive vice-president of Air France Cargo, said the third freighter from November will be served by a B747 cargo plane with each flight having a capacity of about 95 tons. The airlines will operate three weekly flights on the Shanghai-Paris route.

Videoconference

Regus, the world's largest operator of business centres, is offering a new package for videoconference services to help businesses maintain communications during times of reduced international business travel. Price of videoconference services in Shanghai inside the 88-storey Jin Mao Tower and Beijing is US$150 per hour plus support and call charges. "Considering the world's current political and economic status, the benefits of video conferencing over face-to-face meeting make sense from both a cost savings point of view and a logistical standpoint. This is a reassuring option for today's business people," said a Regus official in China.

Cutting inventory

Shanghai has set up its Real Estate Asset Management Company, the first of the kind in China, to handle real estate assets among commercial banks' non-performing assets. The company will acquire, manage and dispose of the housing assets and consequently reduce the inventories of the city's housing sector. A company source said it will assess the unsold housing assets and minimize the risk for its customers by sales, displacement, restructuring and debt-to-equity swaps. Statistics show that the city's housing inventories have totalled over 12 million square metres since 1984, with some 58 billion yuan (US$7 billion) of bad assets.

Biotech R&D centre

A Sino-British inter-university biotechnology research and development centre was established in Shanghai early this week to promote research on providing better food and more productive crops. Jointly launched by the Shanghai-based Fudan and Jiaotong universities and Nottingham University in Britain, the research centre will have more than 40 scientists working collaboratively in the three universities. The centre will study molecular cloning of functional genes from wild plant resources and will use plants as a bio-reactor to produce pharmaceutical products or functional foods.

(Star-Xinhua)

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