Typhoons and flooding in the south are on many Chinese newspapers front pages today. The Modern Express, a regional paper owned by Xinhua and published in Zhejiang, reports that a five-storey high tree fell over in Nanjing, while in Changzhou a three-storey building collapsed. Other papers cover flooding and heavy rains along the Yangtze on their front pages.
The top headline of the paper is the government announcement of the next big gathering of the Party: the Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee will take place in Beijing in October. The aim of the meeting is to discuss China’s 12th Five-Year Program (2011-2015).
Not a single newspaper has the Dalian oil spill in a prominent place on the front page, although yesterday, the Kunming newspaper New Life Post featured one of the by-now famous photos of two men drowning in the oil slick. One was rescued, the other died.
Most of the Beijing newspapers today front with a story on Beijing’s population reaching the 20 million mark, of whom city officials say 12.4 million have a Beijing residence permit (hukou) while 7.26 million are migrants who have been in the city for more than half a year.
- People’s Daily: CPC Central Committee to convene plenary session on 2011-2015 development program (also report in Chinese)
- The China Daily: Beijing’s population surges near 20 million