The results are in for the annual ranking of China's top universities by 21st Century HR Report (21世纪人才报) and once again Yunnan's top universities lag behind much of the rest of the country.

For the third year in a row, Beijing's Peking University topped the list, followed by Tsinghua University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. The top five were rounded out by Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Yunnan, China's ninth-largest province in terms of population, only had two universities make the top 100 this year. Yunnan University slipped two places from its 2009 ranking to number 64 this year and Kunming University of Science and Technology barely made it in at the 100 spot.

Compared to its neighbors in southwest China, Yunnan fared better than Guizhou and Guangxi, who had one university each, with Guizhou University placing 89th and Guangxi University 95th.

Sichuan and Chongqing had much stronger showings, with Sichuan University ranking 12th and Chongqing University 31st. Sichuan was represented by an additional three universities in the top 100 and Chongqing's Southwest University ranked 50th.

The comparatively high quality of university graduates in both Chengdu and Chongqing is one of the main reasons that the two cities have eclipsed the rest of southwest Chinese cities in the race for domestic and foreign investment.

Yunnan University Party Secretary Liu Shaohuai (刘绍怀) told local media that slight ranking fluctuations were a normal phenomenon.

Liu said that one organization's rankings shouldn't be the basis for assessing an academic institution, adding that Yunnan University would do everything it can to be in the top 50 within a decade.

Southwest China rail network to be upgraded
Rail lines linking Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Chongqing will be upgraded "at an early date" according to Yan Hexiang, deputy director of the Ministry of Railways' development planning department.

The ministry plans on adding more than 50,000 kilometers of new rail lines to China's less-developed west by 2020. Lines slated for improvement include the Kunming-Nanning, Chengdu-Guiyang, and Chongqing-Guiyang lines. China's west consists of more than 70 percent of the country's land area and is home to 370 million people.

Myanmar to build rail link to Yunnan
Myanmar will build a railroad connecting the border town of Muse with Yunnan's Jieguo, located near Ruili, according to Chinese media reports. The rail line is expected to boost the already flourishing trade between Myanmar and Yunnan, which is currently conducted with cars and trucks.

Since 1998, Myanmar has established five border trade areas with China, including Muse, Lwejei, Laizar, Chinshwehaw and Kambaiti. The country is planning on adding a sixth in the Kokang region, where in August of this year the Myanmar army overran an ethnic Chinese militia, sending thousands of refugees into Yunnan.

The border trade area at Muse primarily sends agricultural products, seafood, timber and gems into Yunnan, with steel, construction materials, computers, farm machinery and other finished products flowing in from China.

Carbon credits helping Yunnan build wind power infrastructure
Yunnan is using the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to rapidly build up its wind power network with foreign investment, according to an AFP report. The CDM allows industrialized nations to fulfill some greenhouse gas reduction requirements by investing in clean energy technologies in developing nations.

The Zhemoshan wind farm in Dali – located at an altitude of 3,000 meters – is the highest wind farm in China. Carbon credits produced by the project, which has been funded by a US$45 million loan from the French Development Agency, will be purchased by Dutch bank Rabobank, according to a representative from Sinohydro, the Chinese company which manages the farm.

It is hoped that the Dali wind farm and others in Yunnan will make up for the winter dropoff in hydroelectric power generation by the province's extensive network of dams.

China has gone from little installed wind generation capacity five years ago to 12.2 gigawatts of installed capacity last year, making it the world's fourth-largest wind power producer, behind only the US, Germany and Spain.

Kunming to roll out free public bicycles
The Kunming municipal government has announced a plan to provide bicycles for free use by the public, according to a Dushi Shibao report. The report said the plan has been received by the public with approval, tempered with a skepticism that the bikes will all be stolen.

Dali posts record holiday numbers
During this year's eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival 'Golden Week' holiday, Dali set new records for holiday visitors and tourist revenue, according to a Kunming Information Hub report.

Approximately 590,000 domestic and international tourists visited Dali in the first eight days of October, an increase of 44.9 percent over the same holidays one year ago. Revenue from tourism was 355 million yuan (US$52 million).

In addition to the traditional draws of Dali's old town and Three Pagodas, tourist visits to nearby Eryuan (洱源), Heqing (鹤庆) and Bingchuan (宾川) also reached new highs. Tourists driving their own vehicles – primarily from Kunming as well as Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi – accounted for more than 90,000 of the visitors to the Dali area over the holiday, the report said.

Yunnan banana joins Millennium Seed Bank
The Yunnan banana, aka Musa itinerans aka bajiao (芭蕉), has been added to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the UK. The bajiao seeds were provided to the seed bank by the Kunming Institute of Botany.

The addition of bajiao seeds from Yunnan also marked the 10 percent mark for the seed bank, which now has seeds of 24,200 species in its possession, with a goal of ultimately collecting seeds of 242,000 species. The seed bank is aiming to mitigate the possibility of extinction for the world's flowering plants, 70 percent of which are under threat.

The bajiao plant, which exists in an area spanning from Yunnan into Southeast Asia and India, is threatened by the increased clearing of jungle for agriculture. Despite not being a major crop for human consumption, it can be used to breed disease-resistant hybrid banana varieties. It is also a staple for the endangered Asian elephant and other animals in the region.

The bajiao seeds have been dried and are now being stored at -20 degrees Celsius in a US$131 million facility, located in Sussex. The seed bank estimates that as many as one quarter of the world's flowering plant species may be on the brink of extinction by the middle of this century.

Yunnan and neighboring Guangxi will soon be allowed to use the yuan to settle transactions with Southeast Asia, according to a government official speaking at the China-ASEAN Expo yesterday.

China-ASEAN Expo vice secretary general Nong Rong told reporters at the trade fair in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, that conducting business with Southeast Asian countries in yuan would lower the foreign exchange risks posed by currency fluctuations.

"Preparation work for the pilot programs are progressing smoothly," Nong said. "Some companies that were deterred by foreign-exchange risk may now seek to expand overseas as the risks have been reduced."

China's State Council initially announced its plans to let Yunnan and Guangxi conduct yuan settlement in Southeast Asia last December. Since then it has also announced its intentions to launch similar programs in Shanghai and four cities in Guangdong.

Should China launch the Yunnan/Guangxi yuan settlement scheme, it will be a significant step in the development of the yuan into an increasingly important global currency. Chinese President Hu Jintao and other officials have called for the yuan to eventually become a global reserve currency alternative to the US dollar.

An attempted robbery on a passenger bus traveling from Pu'er to Kunming was repelled by bus passengers resulting in the death of one of the two thieves while the other clings to life in a hospital, according to local media reports.

At 5:53 am on Sunday, the bus was on the Anchu expressway near Lufeng when two men on board the bus suddenly produced knives and attempted to rob the vehicle's passengers.

According to Kunming police, two bus drivers and the passengers engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the men in which the two drivers and two passengers were injured. The injured drivers and passengers have been released from hospitalization.

The two would-be robbers, both men from Guangxi Autonomous Region, were armed with a 20 centimeter knife and a large pair of scissors. Initially one of the men threatened a female passenger with the knife while the other man used the scissors to force the driver to stop the bus.

Two male passengers engaged the man with the knife while the driver and another driver on the bus fought the man with the scissors. After both men had been subdued – during which both of them were seriously injured – the bus drove to Kunming's Nanyao Bus Station, where one of the men was pronounced dead.

The other man is currently in the intensive care unit of a Kunming hospital in critical condition.

The foiled robbery was the second deadly bus incident in southwestern China in a two-day span. On Friday, a bus heading into Chengdu burst into flames, killing 27 passengers and hospitalizing 72. It has not been determined if the fire was accidental or intentional.

China's Ministry of Health reported two new cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in southwest China in recent days, including the country's fifth death from the illness this year, according to a Reuters report.

An 18-year-old man died at a hospital in Yulin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday. The Ministry of Health said he had come into contact with dead poultry prior to exhibiting symptoms of bird flu.

The Ministry also announced that a 29-year old man in had fallen ill with bird flu in Guizhou province. The man was reported to be in stable condition.

H5N1 is still primarily a threat to birds, but some experts warn of mutant strains which could become easily transmissible among humans – especially in urban areas in which people are raising poultry or 'wet markets' in which the birds are kept and slaughtered prior to or upon sale.

According to the Reuters report, concern is growing over the role of vaccines among China's poultry:


Of the 34 cases of bird flu reported among humans in China to date, 23 of them have been fatal, according to statistics by the World Health Organization.

The Yunnan segment of the land border between China and Vietnam has been completely demarcated, according to an official at Yunnan's foreign affairs office quoted by Xinhua.

Over the last eight years, government-appointed teams from China and Vietnam worked together to decide on the locations of 665 boundary tablets. Demarcation work on the Yunnan portion of the two countries' land border finished on December 20 of last year.

China and Vietnam normalized relations in 1990 after going to war in 1979 and engaging in open hostilities into the late 1980s. Yunnan is one of two administrative regions in China to share a land border with Vietnam, the other being Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. China and Vietnam also have a disputed sea border in the Gulf of Tonkin, known in China as the Beibu Gulf.

A key part of the demarcation work has been minesweeping work along the border – it is estimated that as many as two million mines may have been laid along China's border with Vietnam during the years of conflict. Since the end of hostilities, thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese have been killed or injured by these leftovers of war.

Relations between the former enemies have improved greatly since 1990, with bilateral trade totaling US$16.6 billion in the first 10 months of 2008, as well as cross border cooperation in the form of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and preparations for the upcoming free trade area between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Images: Xinhua, China Surveying and Mapping Yearbook

Despite marked progress in recent years, the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases remains a major challenge for China - especially in Yunnan, which is just north of the Golden Triangle and where China's first AIDS case was discovered. In an effort to combat the disease and other problems such as malaria, the Chinese government cooperates with several international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) who work towards reducing the prevalence and spread of these illnesses.

One such Population Services International (PSI), has its Chinese headquarters in Kunming. Funded by US AID and The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, PSI uses targeted behavior change intervention, social marketing and evidence-based research in their work toward improving the health of the most vulnerable people in China.

GoKunming spoke with Clare Ye Sheng, a Shanghai-born American who works as PSI's China Communication Officer, to find out more about what PSI is doing in Yunnan and elsewhere in China:

GoKunming: What projects is PSI currently managing?

Clare Ye Sheng: PSI primarily works to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria in Yunnan and Guangxi. We work on HIV prevention through the promotion of healthy behavior and social marketing of condoms and lubricants geared towards high risk groups. We also provide health services and outreach within the community through our drop-in-centers for injection drug users in Kunming and for female sex workers in Mengzi, Honghe. For malaria prevention, we engage in social marketing of long-lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets as well as malaria prevention education in villages throughout Yunnan.

GK: Have PSI programs met with any resistance from its target population on a cultural basis?

CYS: Although PSI is an international NGO based in the US, we strongly believe in local engagement as one of our primary working principles. PSI/China's role is to support the government of China in combating HIV/AIDS and malaria. In addition, most of our staff are locally hired Chinese, so there are very few communication or cultural conflicts to deal with.

Obstacles that we do face derive mainly from a lack of awareness and correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS prevention and social norms regarding relationships amongst the vulnerable population that our programs aim to help. For example, many female sex workers believe that they can prevent the transmission of disease through hygiene alone, and many villagers view mosquito nets as a source of warmth in winter rather than a method of preventing mosquito-borne diseases. We work to correct these misconceptions through targeted intervention based on extensive research to understand the barriers for them to adopt healthy behavior.

GK: Does PSI hope to expand? If so, what are some future projects that the organization would like to engage in?

CSY: We would like to continue our work in Yunnan and Guangxi and expand our HIV prevention services to other at-risk populations such as migrant youth and are also working to promote our social marketing approach with local partners and organizations.

GK: What do you personally consider the most gratifying aspect of your work with PSI?

CSY: During my tenure with PSI I've had the opportunity to travel to villages in remote locations in Yunnan. Being able to talk to villagers about pertinent health issues, understand their lives, and make these personal connections has been immensely gratifying.