BEIJING - Taxation will play a larger role in China's drive to conserve more water as a water resource tax program is expanded. Starting Friday, nine provincial regions, including Beijing, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia will begin using a new water resource tax, following trials in north China's Hebei Province. Water conservation is important in a nation where per capita water resources are only 28 percent of the global average. The tax is levied on the use of surface and ground water, with higher rates on enterprises that consume a lot of water. Water use exceeding quotas or in overexploited areas will be met with tax rates up to four times more, while use for agricultural purposes will see a reduction or exemption. The use of water that has come from sewage treatment facilities will also have favorable rates. The taxation will prevent unreasonable use by consumers like ski resorts and car washes, said Wang Jianfan, an official with the Ministry of Finance (MOF). In Hebei, where water shortages are a perennial issue, total water consumption dropped by 460 million tonnes in 2016, after the first tax trial was launched 18 months ago. To cut production costs and save water, high water-consuming enterprises like steel, cement and chemical companies have installed water-saving devices and replaced groundwater with desalinated sea water and recycled wastewater. "The main purpose of the tax is not to increase fiscal revenue," said Cai Zili of the State Administration of Taxation. In the nine regions, a total of 13.3 billion yuan (about 2 billion U.S. dollars) of water resource fees were collected last year, only a small fraction of a local fiscal revenue that was calculated in trillions. The tax has a great ecological significance and will help water management, said Cai. Improvements have been made under new water management measures introduced in 2012 to address water shortages and pollution. In 2016, China's water consumption dropped from 610 billion cubic meters to 604 billion cubic meters, and consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP was down by 7.2 percent. The expansion of the tax trials is a step forward in overall reform of the resource tax system, which is more the 30 years old. Nearly 800 billion yuan of resource taxes were collected from 1994 to 2016, an annual average growth of 14.8 percent, with 95 billion yuan collected last year, according to MOF data. A draft law on resource tax was released earlier this month for public comment and covers resources like crude oil, natural gas and coal. The reform has brought huge tax reductions to resource-saving and environment-friendly businesses, with taxes reduced by 4.2 billion yuan in the year ending June 2017. personalized silicone braceletssilicone keychain24hourwristbandscustom wristbands no minimum
Fugitive turns himself in after being named in international 'red notice' A fugitive suspected of contract fraud returned to China on Monday and turned himself in, according to the country's top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Xu Xuewei, who was No 91 in the list of China's top 100 overseas fugitives, is the 46th to return. Xu was the controller of a science and technology company and a chemical fiber company based in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province. He fled to the United States in November 2012, the CCDI said. Xu is the latest fugitive so far whose return is partly due to the red notice system of the International Criminal Police Organization, commonly known as Interpol. Chiefs of police and security experts from around the world will gather at Interpol's 86th General Assembly in Beijing from Tuesday to Friday. Key topics during the annual event include ensuring that real-time data is in the hands of front-line officers and that cooperation is achieved across various agencies to combat terrorism and cybercrime and to catch international fugitives. Interpol enables police in 190 member countries to work together to fight international crime. Each of the member countries maintains a national central bureau staffed by local law enforcement officials who carry out investigations and make arrests. As an Interpol member country, China has stepped up efforts to help the organization collect information on foreign terrorist fighters. Last year, it placed 2 million pieces of information on stolen and lost Chinese identification documents into Interpol's database. The data are updated monthly, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, uses a notice system to issue international requests for cooperation or alerts allowing police in member countries to share critical crime-related information. It issues red notices - the most serious of its eight types of notices - when a subject is wanted by national jurisdictions for prosecution or to serve a sentence based on an arrest warrant or court decision. Interpol will assist national police forces in identifying and locating such fugitives with a view toward their arrest and extradition, or similar lawful action. The notice is not itself an international arrest warrant. In 2016, China submitted 612 red notice requests to Interpol. Of those, 230 were published, the ministry said. The Chinese police handled 2,542 investigative requests from foreign police forces that were transmitted via Interpol in 2016, an increase of 140 percent over 2015. At the organization's annual general assembly in 2016, Meng Hongwei, deputy director of the ministry, was elected as the president of the organization, which is headquartered in Lyon, France. [email protected]
