China’s Education Minister Yuan Guiren warned recently that the country’s record number of 6.3 million college graduates next year would pose “severe challenges” to the job market.

Children from remote mountain villages in Chongqing municipality struggle against the cold weather during long walks to get to school – proof of their desire to go to school and learn [...]

Some 300 million Chinese now living in rural areas — the equivalent of the entire population of the United States — will move into cities in the coming 15 to 20 years, said a senior Chinese official recently [...]

1,000 new energy vehicles will be put into operation in public transportation and sanitation sectors this year, according to Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission (BMSTC) [...]

More than half of nearly 800 wealthy Chinese recently polled believe the widening gap between the rich and poor is also creating an emerging upper class in China [...]

China’s emerging middle-class buyers were set to generate significant spending power in coming years as more people wanted to buy “affordable luxuries,” according to marketing advisers in Hong Kong. The trend would be seen in not only first-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but also their satellite towns and second-tier cities, the advisers told a recent business forum [...]

Online Chinese shoppers spent 16.2 billion yuan (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 19 major cities in the first half of 2008, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said on recently. The findings were based on a survey carried out in four municipalities directly under the central government — Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing — and 15 developed cities such as Changchun, Dalian, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou, among others [...]

According to a recent report by the Ministry of Information Industry, at the end of November/2007, the number of China’s mobile phone users had increased by 78.3 million compared with the number at the end of last year. There are 7.1 million more users each month and now a total of 539 million mobile phone users. One-way phone charges are being carried out nationwide, and the mobile phone fees are dropping. As a result, there has been a drastic increase in mobile phone use

The cost of living in Shanghai is catching up with more expensive locations in the region such as Hong Kong and Taipei, according to the latest global cost of living survey. The ECA cost of living survey listed Shanghai in 100th place among the top 300-plus most expensive cities in the world, up 23 spots from last year. Shanghai was also one position higher than Singapore among Asian cities, which ranked at 122nd place globally, according to the report.