Pollution among issues being addressed

Departments and ministries under the State Council, China's Cabinet, have responded to a wide range of public concerns during the past week, including heavy pollution in northern China and how local governments responded to it, the regulation of e-commerce giants' promotions during the Nov 11 online shopping gala, last year's use of social insurance funds, and a recently uncovered cross-border telecom scam.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce on Nov 7 convened a meeting with the country's 15 e-commerce enterprises, such as Alibaba Group and Amazon China, urging them to avoid using misleading advertisements and fraudulent promotions before and during the Nov 11 online shopping spree.

The administration said it would also adopt scientific, efficient management to fix the credibility rating rules, which were exploited by some online merchants to gain credit points with forged orders and customer comments.

According to a report jointly submitted by the Ministry of Finance, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, China's social insurance fund registered an increase of about 14.6 percent last year in terms of total revenue, which reached 4,635 billion yuan ($681 billion), with its expenditure exceeding 3,911 billion yuan.

On gross revenue, the endowment insurance fund for urban and rural residents witnessed the highest increase (22.9 percent) compared with that in 2014, while the endowment insurance fund for enterprise employees registered the largest amount (2,655 billion yuan). Only unemployment insurance funds failed to fulfill the budget with a decline of 1.1 percent.

Police have arrested 101 suspects who were implicated in cross-border telecom scams involving 20 million yuan starting mid-June, the Ministry of Public Security said on Friday. Of the suspects, 76 were from the Chinese mainland and 25 from Taiwan, and they are linked to 135 cases. Many people in Zhejiang province had fallen victim to the fraudsters.

The ministry pledged to step up its efforts to root out telecom fraud by breaking down the underground network that harbors most of the fraudsters and working closely with other departments concerned. At least 590,000 telecom fraud cases were reported last year, which led to the loss of 22.2 billion yuan in total.

Eight ministries including the National Development and Reform Commission and the People's Bank of China issued a joint action plan on keeping e-commerce operations in check.

In particular, those online merchants who seek to increase their credit points by forging orders for their products will face a series of new punishments from the relevant departments and e-commerce platforms, said the plan.

Violators will be blacklisted and held accountable in accordance with their misdeeds. E-commerce enterprises, too, are encouraged to monitor online merchants and punish those illegally soliciting credit points.