1.     Shanghai Morning Post: I have three questions. The first two go to the spokeswoman, and the third goes to director Chen (Chen Zhixing, director of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Administration). The day before yesterday, the Information Office of the State Council held a press conference on preparations for the World Expo, revealing much information. Many new venues will be built for the event, which will bring rebuilding to some old areas. Citizens are concerning about if these historic buildings and areas will be preserved during the preparations for the World Expo. The second question is about the science and technology innovation of university students. Because university students are likely to fail in innovations, have the government authorities got some measures to encourage innovation and tolerate failure? Thirdly, the shutdown of the Xiangyang Road market has been announced. As we know, those vendors who used to sell counterfeits at the market are busy moving their business to other markets, such as Qipu Road market. I am not sure that if the government has learnt of this information, and what steps the government will take to manage and supervise these markets in the next stage.

Jiao Yang: Recently, some media have been worried that the construction for the World Expo will damage Shanghai’s historic buildings. It’s unnecessary. Shanghai has all along been paying much attention to the preservation of the historic buildings and historic scenic area. The city government leaders have stressed many times that the preservation of excellent historic buildings and the development of the city’s historical culture are a key issue under consideration. Especially, at the city planning meeting in 2003, Shanghai pledged to build up a most strict system to preserve historic scenic areas and excellent historic buildings, highlighting its importance to an unprecedented extent. These years, Shanghai is establishing and improving the system, effectively protecting the city’s historic scenes.

Now I make a brief introduction of the status quo and history of Shanghai’s historical cultural heritage preservation.

In 1986, Shanghai was listed among the second batch of the country’s historical and cultural famous city by the State Council. Since 1989, Shanghai has listed four batches of a total of 2,138 excellent historic buildings in 632 areas, having about 4 million square meters. Sixty-one of them are cultural relics. Besides the protection of individual buildings, Shanghai also launched preservation of historic scenic areas quite early. Based on the original preservation management rules, Shanghai People’s Congress issued the regulation on the preservation of city’s historic scenic areas and excellent historic buildings in 2002, introducing a law safeguard to the issue.

According to the regulation, Shanghai listed 12 historic scenic areas in downtown in 2003, covering 27 square kilometers in all – accounting for a third of Shanghai’s old city area. In 2005, Shanghai listed 32 another historic scenic areas, a total of 14 square kilometers, in suburb districts and Pudong New Area.

In 2005, the city government set up a committee of historic scenic areas and excellent historic buildings preservation. The city planning bureau, the housing and land resources bureau and the cultural relic management committee are jointly taking charge of the committee’s work, basically forming a management mechanism of the city’s historical and cultural heritage protection.

Next, I will elaborate the planning and management. According to the preservation regulation, authorities wrapped up the preservation planning of the historic scenic areas in downtown last year. The city government has approved the scenarios, which employed a new pattern, including some innovative methods:

1) While emphasizing a comprehensive preservation, detail the requirements. Besides buildings, layout of roads, streets and lanes, street dimension and scenes, city space, horticultural environment, materials and colors all become factors to be considered.

2) To ensure the most effective protection of the entire scene through planning, which categorize the buildings in a scenic area into “building to be protected,” “historic building to be preserved,” “ordinary historical building,” “building should be demolished” and “other buildings.” Different requirement will be introduced to different category.

3) In each scenic area’s scenario, every block has a single page to illustrate its planning, in which detailed requirements are displayed clearly, facilitating the daily management.

4) Set up a discussion system, preventing any self-assertive change to the planning. Changes need a discussion between experts, which is a legal procedure prepared for a necessary change.

Here, I also want to briefly introduce some plans in the near future to preserve Shanghai’s historic buildings and areas.

While implementing the preservation measures, the city is also planning to expand the preservation coverage and further step up the protection efforts. First, we will focus on the study of those valuable historic buildings in the suburban historical cultural scenic areas and in the industrial and commercial sectors, preparing for the recommendation and application of the fifth batch of excellent historic buildings. Second, we will pick those natural villages in suburb having some ecological scene to preserve and renovate. The third is to upgrade a group of historical and cultural sites to the city level or the district and county level cultural relics, and to register unmovable cultural relics. The fourth is to develop a categorized historic building preservation system.

Meanwhile, the city will revise the regulation, according to its effect, to better the protection of historic buildings and areas.

This year, China decided June’s second Saturday of each year to be the “Day of Cultural Heritage.” The Day of this year will be June 10. Taking advantage of it, Shanghai will hold a series of activities to promote the city’s historical and cultural scenic areas and excellent historic buildings, which will last nearly two months.

The economic and urban construction development has made more and more people aware of the significance and hardness in the protection of historical and cultural heritage. Construction is development, and preservation is also development. The concept has increasingly become a common understanding among people in Shanghai. We believe the increasing sense, a developing law system and an improving mechanism will lead Shanghai to do a better job while protecting historical and cultural heritage.

The second question of the reporter is about the science and technology innovation of university students. They will encounter many difficulties for certain in the early stage when they are trying to carve out their business through science and technology innovations. So they need support and direction from the society in capital, skills, management and other aspects. They worse need an environment to encourage innovation and tolerate failure.

The related departments of the city government always adhere to two principles: The business startup funds only give the business development team a support in capital, and not affect the ownership of their original intellectual property or study results they achieve later; The funds should be returned after the project succeeds during the startup period (about two years), but the funds will be written off after review once the project fails.

These measures not only embodied the efforts to uphold university students to carve out their own business, but boost an encouraging and loose ambience. The government creates a favorable environment for innovation-oriented talents, and colleges cultivate ambitious students who are willing to carve out their own business. These have formed a mechanism to discover talents in practice, and to train and unite talents during business development.

Then, let’s welcome director Chen to respond the third question, please.

Chen Zhixing: Xiangyang Road market is a very sensitive or a hot issue. So the announcement of the market’s close did cause a strong response. Actually, after the Xuhui District government posted the notice on March 16, it had a short-term turbulence. But the scalpers have calmed down recently, paving the way for a smooth shutdown on June 30. The city industrial and commercial bureau is the government agent in charge of the issue. As I learnt from the bureau, they took five major steps.

First, they installed barriers in the markets around Xiangyang Road, especially those on the Huaihai Road M., and increased monitoring cameras to trace the scalpers. Second, they increased security guards from 81 to 181 in the market. Thirdly, there are many lanes near the Xiangyang Road market, as we know. Now the exits of the 18 lanes have been equipped with iron gates, and security employees will keep an eye on them, ensuring no disorder before June 30. Another problem is the Xiangyang Road market locates on the border of three districts. Though the authority of Xuhui District used to be in charge of the market, now the three districts are jointly battle selling counterfeits. As for the problem where the vendors will go, the study is ongoing. Many stall owners are asking for resolution, which has brought us an issue worth attention and study. We are studying if they will flow to other places or Qipu Road. The city industrial and commercial bureau revealed the key is the entry of a market. In future if you want to move to another market, there will be an entry system, including document commitment. The market supervision and the punishment will be stronger.

In a word, there must be some disorder before the shutdown of the Xiangyang Road market, but these measures will not have big changes. We don’t want to see the second version of the “Xiangyang Road market” appear in the city.

2.     News Times: I have two questions. The May Day golden week is forthcoming. Tourism authority forecast 3.9 million tourists will come to Shanghai in the golden week. How the government departments will cope with the increase of the tourist volume, and what about other preparations for the holiday? The second one goes to director Chen. You mentioned just now Shanghai selected 20 model enterprises for intellectual property this morning. Could you reveal their names?

Jiao Yang: Director Chen will give an answer first.

Chen Zhixing: The city’s six authorities -- the economic commission, the financial bureau, the industrial and commercial bureau, the copyright bureau and the intellectual property bureau – handled the online applications and reviewed the applicants for more than a year. A special committee finally picked the 20 companies from the nearly 130 applicants. I haven’t the name list right now, but I can give it to you later. It has also been published in today’s Jiefang Daily. These 20 companies include state-owned enterprises, private companies, foreign companies, science and technology companies, and prestigious companies such as Alcatel Shanghai Bell Co, Baoshan Iron and Steel Co and Heng Yuan Xiang (Group) Co. We plan to have a selection every year, and to choose 100 model IP companies in five years. We expect the 100 companies to share their experience with 1,000 and even 10,000 other companies in the intellectual property protection, boosting original innovations.

Jiao Yang: Lots of citizens are considering their travel plans or how to spend the holidays in the upcoming May Day golden week. The reporter is very concerning about how the city will do a good job. The related government departments are busy preparing commodity supply, improving service and organizing activities to help people spend a happy and comfortable holiday.

In the golden week of this year’s May Day holiday, the city is expected to receive 3.9 million travelers, a little more than the same period of last year. Travel agencies will organize 1,227 outbound travel groups of 23,483 people in all during the holiday. The number of groups is 975 or 25.85 percent more than last year, and the number of travelers rises 18,490 or 27 percent.

Local tourism authorities have launched a market inspection to strike at illegal travel agency services and to boost the transparency of price, tourism and shopping polices. They will also establish a long-term management mechanism in an attempt to increase honesty in tourism. Before the golden week, the city’s tourism authorities and travel companies have been designing diverse travel programs to provide locals and travelers with more options and services.

The economic and agricultural commissions will prepare a rich supply in the market. The sanitation, public security, food and drug supervisory, quality supervisory and industrial and commercial management authorities are carrying out inspections to ensure there will be a well-managed market during holidays. The Shanghai Food and Drug Admission focuses on the super- and hypermarkets, meat suppliers and restaurants. The city’s work safety commission has issued circulars to the district and county authorities as well as companies, urging them to conduct checks to prevent work safety accidents.

Culture authorities will also offer a sumptuous cultural feast in the holiday, including art performances brought by Chinese and foreign professional teams and rich folk cultural activities. According to statistics, there will be 87 professional performances of 49 events and more than 790 folk entertainment activities during holidays. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival will kick off in the golden week, enriching the holiday life in the city. It is certain that the concerted efforts will give Shanghai citizens and domestic and foreign travelers a happy, comfortable and safe golden week.

3.     Shanghai Business: I want to ask director Chen a question. In the information you announced just now, you mentioned that the government will issue some detailed rules to encourage innovation. Could you please elaborate on the principles of invention contract between the inventor and the organization or company he works for, and explain the policy to support governments to purchase intellectual property?

Chen Zhixing: There is a background about the principles of invention contracts. It is a problem of innovation source which needs to be solved, if we want to propel innovation. In another word, it is how to excite the enthusiasm of inventors. The ownership of intellectual property is the key to the issue. The sixth clause of our patent law talks about the invention in work. The inventor has the right to apply for a patent, but the intellectual property belongs to the organization or company he works for. So our management should also have some innovation, but not offending the law. Actually the sixth clause also has a sentence saying that if there is a contract, it will be another story. To make full use of it, here we will allow organization and inventor to decide the invention ownership through a contract. It means the inventor can own the 60 percent of the invention patent and the organization takes the 40 percent, as long as they have reached a contract. They can also apply for a patent together. Of course, they should take obligations and risks together. The use of the patent or the transfer of the patent should also be conducted, according to the contract. We didn’t pay much attention to the contract in the past. Then, many inventors also didn’t care about the practice of their inventions very much, as the patent belongs to the organization. They would not get the reward, even though their inventions had been put into practice. That’s why we hope there will be a breakthrough in this aspect, and hope the third revision of the patent law will have some changes.

The second question is about the government purchase. Learning from the national policy, Shanghai has developed its own policy. The government can purchase the products with self-developed intellectual property. It means you are the patent owner. Besides, 60 percent of the products the government purchased should come from domestic companies. What I said is just a part, and the government purchase is quite complicated. I believe the policy to be issued next month will contain the contents special for this issue.

4.     Phoenix Satellite TV: This morning, the maglev line passed the state inspection. When will it go into an official operation? What difference will lie between official and trial operations?

Jiao Yang: The reporter is very well-informed. After a nearly two years’ trial run, the maglev line has passed the state inspection.

The line was built and put into operation in 2004. It is the first commercially operational maglev in the world. By the end of March, 2006, its safe mileage had exceeded 2.4 million kilometers, and 6.23 million passengers had taken the maglev. It also experienced many challenges from bad weather such as snow and gale. Its successful construction and operation signifies the safety and feasibility of maglev transport system, having a great influence on the world. Meanwhile, it also showed China’s engineering techniques, and created an example which made technology introduction and scientific research simultaneously. Through practice, international cooperation, and introducing and learning from foreign sophisticated technology, we now have a better grip on the maglev system and command of track technology, and also have accumulated much experience in scientific research and construction, propelling self-innovation.

On April 25 and 26, an inspection committee jointly formed by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Sciences and local authorities checked the maglev line and appraise its safety. The committee thought the project met the national standard and requirement, and trial operation went well. It agreed the project to pass the inspection.

After the state inspection, Shanghai’s maglev line will launch the official service. Before the inspection, it was a trial run. Now the phase of official operation has come.

5.     Kyodo News: After April 15 of last year, those people causing damages and fights have been punished. It said the person who saw the strongest punishment will be jailed for three years. Could you the spokeswoman please confirm the information?

Jiao Yang: I have answered the question that those lawbreakers have been punished. You can ask judiciary authorities for more information.