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2009 was a boom year for cultural exchange between China and Germany, featuring varied events and the launch of new Chinese culture and language institutes.

With an enhanced political role and economic strength, China is also unleashing its soft power of culture overseas.

China organized hundreds of promotions at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opened on Oct. 13, with China as its Guest of honor.

Some 270 publishers and more than 2,000 traders from the Chinese mainland participated in the fair, the world’s largest and most important of its kind.

“The openness of China is more than we could have expected, and visitors have got their own pictures of China,” said the fair’s director, Juergen Boos.

During the six-day event, thousands of visitors were lured into the China Theme Pavilion, which featured a winding wall made of tens of thousands of books and a huge types matrix.

It integrated typical Chinese culture elements with modern visual art, creating the quintessential Chinese culture space quite different from the European culture familiar to local visitors.

Everyday, visitors poured into the pavilion to experience Chinese culture at their doorstep.

A German receptionist working at the information desk said he could not give an exact figure of the visitors, but it had been much more than at guest country pavilions in previous years.

More than 100 renowned Chinese authors and scholars, including Yu Hua, Lin Yifu and Wang Meng, also attended the book fair.

“China has, for the past eight months, presented for the book fair 612 events, made over 1,000 copyrights deals, and exported 2,417 Chinese book copyrights,” said Wu Shulin, deputy chief of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication.

On the square in front of the China pavilion, a huge tent housed a show of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. Ten masters of Chinese traditional arts and crafts, including paper cuts and Tibetan religious painting known as Tangka, captivated the audience with their exquisite skills.

“The live and vivid show has shortened the distance between local visitors and Chinese culture,” said He Yan, president of China’s Central Compilation & Translation Press, who was in charge of China’s contribution.

Reina, an eight-year-old German girl, watched Chinese Kunqu Opera “Floating Dream” in Berlin with her father on Nov. 27.

Though Reina knew nothing about Kunqu Opera and couldn’t speak Chinese, she still appreciated the wonderful performances of the actors.

“I thought their singing skills are very intriguing and their movements are also very interesting. It’s quite different from what I had imagined before,” she said.

The performers came from Suzhou where Kunqu originated more than 600 years ago. The performance was a hugely popular event, having sold out all 400 tickets two weeks in advance.

Gabriele Minz, the organizer, said: “The Kunqu Opera ‘Floating Dream’ has been staged in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin, and it will then go to Munich. The show was a great success and it impressed local audiences and media quite a lot.”

“People in Germany are becoming more and more interested in China. I hope I can bring more performances with Chinese characteristics to Germany,” she said.

Wu Hongbo, Chinese Ambassador to Germany, said: “The fact that a Chinese opera could generate so much repercussion on distant shores shows that culture is a communication through the mind, and it sometimes does not need language to help.”

Chinese culture institutions also enjoyed rapid development in Germany this year.

In 2006, the first Confucius Institute was established in Germany. Today, there are 10 institutes in the country. Three were set up in 2009 alone.

“The Confucius Institute plays a varied role. It is not only a school that offers Chinese language courses, but also serves as a major platform for candid communications between China and Germany,” said Jiang Feng, Minister-Counselor for Education of the Chinese Embassy to Germany.

Statistics shows the number of Germans now learning Chinese was more than 30,000.

In May 2008, the Chinese Culture Center was inaugurated in Berlin.

As the third Chinese Culture Center in Europe, the center has now become another important platform for cultural exchanges between the two countries.

“Activities held by the Center are becoming more and more popular in Germany,” said Bai Yang, the director of Berlin Chinese Culture Center.

Bai said the Center’s influence over local people was becoming bigger.

“The German people are interested not only in traditional Chinese culture, but also in the current social development of China, people’s lives, as well as some of China’s basic national policies,” he said.

Industrial overcapacity had been a long-standing problem in China’s economic development and set uncertainty in the country’s recovery from the economic slowdown, and the government has repeatedly tried to curb overcapacity in a range of sectors.

The following are major relevant cases, quotes and figures:

— On Oct. 19, China’s 10 departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), jointly made a warning that the country’s economic recovery could be hampered with chaotic expansion in certain industrial sectors, especially in steel making, cement, plate glass, coal chemical, poly-crystaline silicon and wind power equipment sectors.

— On Dec. 7, China’s Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC), the annual economic planning meeting, agreed at its conclusion to advance economic structure adjustment and focus on overcapacity elimination with strictly controlled lending to industries that were energy-intensive, polluting and had overcapacity.

— On Dec. 21, Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said China would stop approving new projects in some industries involving excessive production capacities and duplicate constructions in the coming three years so as to guide healthy industrial development in the country.

Li noted that the government will raise the access thresholds for steel, cement, flat glass, and coal chemical industries for the purposes of efficient energy consumption, environmental protection, and integrated utilization of resources.

— Wang Jian, secretary general of China Society of Macroeconomics, said in an article in the state-run magazine Liao Wang (Outlook), that China is facing more industries with overcapacity, rising from 11 industries in 2005 to 17 currently.

— On Dec. 23, China had again asked its financial institutions to help curb overcapacity in some industries with credit control last week, according to a joint statement issued by the People’s Bank of China, China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission and China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

— In 2008, China’s crude steel production capacity reached 660 million tonnes with 58 million tonnes still under construction, while actual demand stood at only around 500 million tonnes.

The cement sector also saw huge excess capacity. Total capacity in the sector was 1.87 billion tonnes by the end of last year, but only 1.4 billion tonnes of cement was produced in 2008. By the end of September this year, another 600 million tonnes of capacity were put to use or under construction, MIIT figures show.

The Governor of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has got entangled in an alleged sex scandal, after a local TV channel Friday aired footage purportedly of the veteran Congress party leader with some women in compromising position.

However, the office of the Governor N.D. Tewari has rejected the footage as fabricated and a “tissue of lies”.

“The Governor is 86 years old and in the evening of his life. It is sad and unfortunate that constitutional functionaries are dragged in to needless controversies,” a statement by the Andhra Pradesh Raj Bhawan, the official residence of the state Governor, said.

The development amid the crisis in the state over the Telangana statehood issue triggered demands that the governor resign or be immediately dismissed by the central government, and also led to protests by women activists outside the Raj Bhavan, or governor’s house, where security was beefed up, after the private Telugu channel aired the footage for nearly an hour before the state High Court ordered to stop airing it.

In fact, it was the Raj Bhavan which had approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court, filed a public interest litigation against the TV channel and got an order to restrain it from further airing the visual, which was allegedly taken inside Raj Bhavan during the night.

The Legal Counsel for the Raj Bhavan Ravishanker Jandhyala told the media: “There is absolutely no truth in the alleged news story which is nothing but sensation mongering. The alleged news story is nothing but a ’tissue of lies’ and is denied. We will definitely file a defamation case. Already I have issued a notice in the afternoon (to the channel).”

The Leader of Opposition in Andhra Pradesh and Telugu Desam Party chief N. Chandrababu Naidu has demanded the sacking of Tiwari for his alleged involvement in the “scandal”.

“The only way for him (Tiwari) is to resign or the Centre should sack him,” he told the media, terming the incident as “a shocking incident”.

Andre Birotte Jr., inspector general of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), was nominated by President Barack Obama on Thursday to be U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.

If confirmed by the Senate, the 43-year-old son of Haitian immigrants will be the first black U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the nation’s most populous, with responsibility for all federal litigation in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

Obama said Birotte and the six other U.S. Attorney nominees announced on Thursday “have not only the legal experience and aptitude, but the commitment to public service to make exemplary United States Attorneys.”

“I am honored to nominate them and look forward to their continued service on behalf of the American people,” the President said in a statement released by the White House.

Birotte was recommended to Obama by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat after being selected by a bipartisan advisory committee she established.

“Andre Birotte Jr. is an outstanding candidate with strong support in the local community,” Feinstein said.

The U.S. Attorney’s position has been vacant since the September resignation of Thomas P. O’Brien, a career prosecutor who helped increase criminal filings in the office and a wave of new hirings.

Birotte, who works for the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian panel that oversees the LAPD, has been inspector general since 2003 and served as assistant inspector general from 2001 to 2003.

He heads a staff of about 30 attorneys, auditors and former law enforcement officials that oversee Police Department investigations. From 1995 to 1999, he was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Birotte graduated from Tufts University in 1987 and Pepperdine University School of Law in 1991. He started his legal career as a deputy public defender for Los Angeles County, a job he held from 1991 to 1995.

With headquarters in Los Angeles, the local U.S. Attorney’s Office has an authorized staff of about 265 assistant U.S. attorneys, making it the nation’s biggest after the District of Columbia office, which handles both federal and non-federal crimes in Washington.

China is considering using more of its $2.3 trillion foreign exchange reserves to buy assets overseas, but it is not likely that the country will diversify away from buying US Treasury bills, experts said.

Jiang Jianqing, chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank by market value, said Tuesday that China should give a chunk of its bulging foreign currency reserves to its commercial banks so that they have more financing power to support firms going abroad.

“If we could make a small step forward, Chinese companies would take a big step in going abroad,” he told a forum in Beijing organized by a research institution under the central bank.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce said in a press release on its website Tuesday that it will actively support qualified enterprises looking to go abroad next year, keeping a brisk and steady outbound investment pace.

From January to September, aggregate non-financial outbound direct investments (ODI) totaled $32.9 billion, up 0.5 percent over the same period last year, with overseas mergers and acquisitions making up 43.5 percent of the total investments, according to the ministry.

The ministry expects the ODI to reach $42 billion by the end of the year.

China, the largest buyer of US T-bills, kept its holdings in October flat at September’s level of $798.9 billion, and Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said Thursday that it is getting harder for foreign governments to buy US Treasury bills because of the shrinking supply of US dollars.

However, the country is not likely to use ODI or other methods to replace its investment in American bonds, as ODI is insignificant compared with the accumulated funds in Chinese foreign exchange reserves, said Lu Ting, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

In the first nine months, Chinese foreign exchange reserves increased $326.6 billion to stand at $2.3 trillion in September, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

On an annualized basis, the accumulation is close to the 2007 peak of $461.9 billion.

Yu Yongding, a member at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said selling off the T-bills in a big way is not a realistic option because it would hurt China itself.

Yu said the root cause for the rapid foreign exchange reserve increase is the so-called twin surpluses, which refers to capital account and current account surpluses.

He suggested the country make its foreign exchange rate more in line with market conditions and increase outbound investments so as to reduce the accumulation of foreign exchange rerserves.

Participants at a summit of African cities called on developed countries and international institutions to support Africa’s efforts to minimize the effects of the world economic crisis, local channel reported 2M Sunday.

They stressed the need for industrialized countries and regional and international financial institutions to back up African countries to carry on the development process in an economic situation characterized by recession and difficulties to have access to loans.

The participants made the remarks at a meeting on the margins of the fifth summit of African cities, which began on Wednesday in the third largest Moroccan city of Marrakech.

The participants called on developed countries to adopt new eco-friendly production and consuming methods, and stressed the need for a new partnership between the private and public sectors, and to foster the principle of local governance.

The five-day summit at the west-central Moroccan city brought together the mayors of the major cities and towns in African countries.

Real Madrid looks to close the gap on Spanish Primera Liga leaders FC Barcelona when Zaragoza visits the Santiago Bernabeu stadium for the last game of 2009 on Saturday night.

Barcelona is in Abu Dhabi to contest the World Club Championship and has already played its match day-15 game, beating Xerez 2-0 away from home.

That has given the Catalan side a five point lead at the top of the table, which Real Madrid aims to reduce to just two.

Real Madrid welcomes back Cristiano Ronaldo after his suspension for the 3-2 triumph in Valencia, but Manuel Pellegrini’s side is still without Kaka, who is struggling from a groin problem.

Real also has to start getting used to life without central defender Pepe, who is out for the season after damaging the ligaments in his right knee last weekend,

Ezequiel Garay, who replaced Pepe in Valencia and scored the winning goal in the game, is the favorite to fill the gap in the Madrid defense.

Zaragoza meanwhile is in crisis after slipping into the relegation zone and sacking coach Marcelino after losing at home to Athletic Club Bilbao last weekend.

Reserve team coach Jose Aurelio Gay has taken first team training all week as the club has looked for a replacement coach and Gay will be in the Zaragoza dugout in the Bernabeu.

Should his side spring a surprise, he will have a good chance of being confirmed as first team coach until the end of the current season.

Saturday’s matches kick off in Athletic Club Bilbao’s San Mames Stadium with a derby between Athletic and Osasuna.

Athletic lost its Europa League match against Werder Bremen on Wednesday, but coach Joaquin Caparros rested key players and should be close to full strength.

The Basque side is currently seventh in the standings and a win would be the perfect end to a successful 2009. Osasuna meanwhile is without injured strikers Walter Pandiani and Carlos Aranda.

Sevilla plays at home to Getafe. Sevilla kicks the game off in third place in the table, just four points behind Real Madrid following last weekend’s efficient win away to Sporting Gijon.

Striker Luis Fabiano is still out of action with a muscle injury, but Freddy Kanoute has been in excellent form recently, while Alvaro Negredo is looking for his first goal in seven weeks.

Entrepreneurs from central China’s Henan Province and southeast China’s Taiwan communicate at an economic and trade cooperation and exchange conference, in Taipei of southeast China’s Taiwan, on Dec. 16, 2009.

A team of 12 Chinese food safety officials have just finished a two-week food safety study program in New Zealand, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) said on Tuesday.

It was the first comprehensive food safety study program looking at the complete system in New Zealand by a Chinese delegation, the NZFSA said in a press release.

The visit followed on from New Zealand Food Safety Minister Kate Wilkinson’s visit to China in October and other ministerial and prime ministerial contacts with China in which cooperation activities have featured.

During their visit, the delegation of 12 Chinese central government officials participated in technical workshops to discuss and further understand New Zealand’s respected food regulatory system. They also visited seafood, meat and dairy businesses and farms to see how food safety standards are applied here.

NZFSA senior deputy director Bill Jolly said the study visit has been a great example of how China and New Zealand have worked closely together on food safety culminating in the provisions on food trade in the free trade agreement signed in 2008.

He said the Chinese delegation has been keen to understand more about New Zealand’s science and risk-based regulatory approach to managing health and food safety.

“They have shown an in-depth base knowledge which indicates the level of commitment China is putting into food safety. They have also posed searching questions in order to fully understand how we manage risks in our food supply and they will share their insights with central government in China,” he added.

Next year, officials from NZFSA and New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) will visit Beijing to conduct seminars on New Zealand’s experiences with the World Trade Organization concept of regionalisation and equivalence and how the appropriate use of these concepts can provide the necessary assurances in a more targeted and efficient way.

NZFSA will also continue to work with the Chinese authorities on their implementation of the NZFSA-developed electronic certification (E-cert) system for managing secure assurances on foods exported by New Zealand to China.

Nobody has ever expected that Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which was founded 22 years ago, would promote from being a radical Islamic movement, listed among the world’s organizations of terrorism, to become a worldwide popular movement.

Hamas, which is an extension of the worldwide Brotherhood Moslem movement, was launched at Gaza mosques by several dozens of people in the Gaza Strip, then it established its armed wing, better known as al-Qassam Brigade at the beginning of the Palestinian Uprising, or Intifada in 1987.

On Monday, tens of thousands of Hamas supporters in the Gaza Strip, that has been ruled by the movement since June 2007, would join a popular rally to mark 22 years for establishing the movement, which was founded in Gaza by late spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yass in on Dec. 14, 1987.

“Hamas has become a regional and a worldwide movement within a short period of time,” said Abdel Rahman al-Jamal, a Hamas lawmaker, during a preparatory rally held in Central Gaza Strip on Friday, where demonstrators burnt two coffins wrapped with Israeli and U.S. flags.

Several months before the movement was officially founded, its founders and leaders depended on the principles of “al-Da’wa” or religious mission by publishing and spreading the principles of Islam among the population to build up a popular base of support for the movement.

When the movement was founded right after the Palestinian Intifada, or Uprising, erupted against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, it said that its mission is to resist the Israeli military occupation by all means of arms, and also to challenge any peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Although Hamas has become so popular and became an important part of the Palestinian political arena, the movement would keep considering (Jihad) holy war and armed resistance as its strategic choice to liberate the occupied land of Palestine,” said Khalil al-Hayah, a senior leading Hamas figure.

Hamas which opposed joining the world’s sponsored peace process and violently opposed Oslo peace accords signed with Israel in 1993, refused to join the first ever legislative elections held in the Palestinian territories in 1996. It armed wing had violently attempted to thwart Oslo peace accords.