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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China has published its first national guideline on organ donation to better regulate the process and further raise public awareness.
The guideline will be handed to organ donation coordinators to help them explain the principles and policies to families of potential donors and to gain their support for organ donations.
It expounds on the ethics involved, the standards by which death is judged and the standards covering the extraction and distribution of organs.
The guideline was announced on the sidelines of a conference held by a national alliance of organ procurement organizations in Guangzhou, the capital of southern China's Guangdong province.
As of Aug 19, China had recorded 4,700 organ donors since 2010, with 12,700 large organs acquired. It continues to be Asia's top nation in the number of organ donations.
The country began a voluntary organ donation trial in 2010 and promoted the practice nationwide in 2013. On Jan 1 this year, China banned the use of executed prisoners' organs for transplants, making donations by citizens the only legitimate source.
This year, 1,600 donors had given 4,400 major organs as of Aug 19, close to the total for all of last year, showing heightened public awareness and understanding of such donations.
However, China still faces a severe shortage of organs for transplants. Around 300,000 patients need transplants annually, but only around 10,000 operations are performed.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China has set goals for more coordinated development of Beijing and its neighboring areas in the next 15 years mainly by transferring non-essential functions of Beijing as the national capital to neighboring areas.
An official document said that by 2017, major breakthroughs in transportation integration, environmental protection and industrial upgrading in the integrated region will be achieved.
The document was issued by the office of a leading group for the coordinated development of Beijing and its neighboring areas, namely Tianjin municipality and Hebei Province. It revealed key information of an outline of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integrated development program. The program was approved by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in April.
The document said Beijing will become the national center of political, cultural, and international exchange activities as well as a technological innovation center.
Tianjin municipality will be a national research and development base for advanced manufacturing industries, a shipping hub for north China, a demonstration area for financial innovation, and an experimental area for further reform and opening up.
Hebei province will be an important national base for trade and logistics, an experimental area for industrial transition and upgrading, a demonstration area of modern urbanization and coordinated development of urban and rural areas, and an ecological buffer zone.
