A draft drawn up by Liang Huxing, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Law Institute, was given a preliminary review by the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee. Observers say that such a law would be a great step forward by the government in protecting private property and would be the materialization of the new constitutional ruling guaranteeing the development of the private sector.

In a new amendment to the Constitution in March, private businesses were promoted to the status of "important components" of the socialist market economy from being mere "supplements".

The goal of the new draft is to give equal protection to all legally-obtained properties, both state and private, without regard.The NPC source says that it is the result of six years of research.

According to Civil Affairs Ministry statistics, the average number of family members went from 4.79 in 1985 to 3.64 in 1997, and the number of households with anywhere from 1 to 3 people has been steadily increasing.

The divorce rate in 1997 was 2.3 times that in 1985, the Daily reported, and digamies are on the rise too. People who retied knots jumped from 500,000 in 1985 to 788,000 in 1990, and to 922, 000 in 1997, it said.

The average ages for first marriage was 22 in 1985, and 24 in 1997. In the past two decades there has also been a sharp increase in the number of marriages with people who are not Chinese, from 14,193 couples in 1982, to 23,769 in 1990 and to 50,773 in 1997. Ninety percent of those who married non-Chinese were women. These changes are related to people's more open perspective. Studies have shown that people are basing their choice of spouse on many more factors, from character and education to income.

Before the 1980s, a successful marriage was solely based on the "revolutionary family background" but later that changed to the "academic degree".

In the home, things have changed too, with equality and democracy being introduced. Surveys show that 70 percent of the couples consult each other on major expenditures and the willingness of the younger generation to submit to the older is being greatly weakened and sometimes even eroded completely.

Before marriage, some people consult lawyers to make a prenuptial agreement.

Experts on marriage and the family predict several trends in the next century:

-- Families will get smaller, but not too much;

-- The family structure will become more diverse;

-- The divorce rate will rise steadily;

-- International marriages will be on the rise also, as will divorces of this kind; and

-- Marriage problems will increase.

The three seniors in the electronics information college developed a sound data output system that can help small and medium-sized enterprises use their own phone systems to connect with the Internet without computers.

The development last year won them the "Challenge Cup", a state- level award for college students, and also caught the eye of several enterprises, leading to a contract with the Shenzhen company and an agreement that it will provide more funds for their research. So, in addition to holding shares in the company, these students will take part in company affairs.

An official at Jiaotong University says that his university will continue to encourage students to participate in scientific research.

Explaining the rapid market growth, Frost & Sullivan, a U.S. market research firm that conducted the study, said the Internet caused an explosion of data in terms of Web content.

In the future, many business practices, including business-to- business electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce and e- business, will utilize Internet technologies, compounding the need for efficient storage and management software, according to the study.

The EDI market is expected to grow from 937 million U.S. dollars in 1996 to two billion dollars by 2000, according to an earlier forecast by Dataquest, also a U.S. market research firm. This segment embraces the electronic communication of business transactions, such as orders, confirmations and invoices between organizations.

The DBMS controls the organization, storage, retrieval, security and integrity of the data in a database. The software accepts requests from the application and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the majority of DBMS revenues are generated in North America and Europe. The Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world are much smaller markets, but they are expected to comprise larger shares of the world market by the end of 2005.

The total database market is split into relational database and object-oriented database. In a relational database, relationships between files are created by comparing data, while the latter is suited for data with complex relationships that are difficult to model and process in a relational manner and also capable of handling multimedia data types like images, audio and video.

The research firm said that relational database comprised almost 98 percent of the DBMS market in 1998. Factors that will drive the relational database software market include the growth of the Internet, explosive interest in e-business and demand for improved customer information.

The training is part of the cooperative program signed between the regional commission of science and technology and the New Generation Fund of the United States in 1997.

Under the program, the American fund provides one million U.S. dollars to this southwest China autonomous region for cooperation in eco-environmental protection, mainly helping train Tibetan environmentalists. So far, over 100 Tibetan environmentalists have been trained.

An official from the regional commission said China should learn from the United States in the environmental field and the program is helpful to environmental protection in Tibet.

Up to now, the commission has sent three groups of local scientists to the United States.

Tibetan scientists are now conducting field research along major rivers in Tibet to study the possibility of setting up several nature reserves in these river bases.

China is abundant in plant resources for medicine with 12,807 varieties, and the reserves of only 320 types of widely used medicinal plants stand at roughly 8.5 million tons.

However, participants at the symposium, which opened Monday, agree that the traditional Chinese medicine sector has developed slowly due to a relatively low level of scientific research and industrialization.

The Ministry of Science and Technology has decided to launch very soon a project to modernize the traditional Chinese medicine sector for industrialization. Major objectives of the project include selecting some medicines with proven cures for scientific research for future entry into developed countries, setting up a clinical experimental base for traditional medicine and a number of herb planting and medicine production bases, establishing a research and development system in line with internationally recognized standards, and forming a number of industry groups with sharp competitive edge.

Given the smooth implementation of the projects, the participants believe that the share of traditional Chinese medicine at the international herbal medicine market will increase from the present five percent to some 15 percent in the next few years.

The ministry will cooperate with the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the State Drug Administration and other departments concerned to implement the ambitious project.

"Undergraduate education should help train all-round legal personnel with a certain depth of knowledge of particular laws," said Zhao Xianglin, vice-president of China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) during an international conference on legal education for the 21st century.

"Students' ability in analysis, reasoning and the application of laws should be strengthened," said Chen Xiaoxia, president of the School of Law of Zhejiang University.

A major reform of the curricula of law schools in China was undertaken last year. All specialities were abolished with the result that every student had to study basic courses for all major branches of law.

The reform also means more emphasis will be put on practical programmes instead of the former concentration on book knowledge to enable students to get hands-on experience in the profession.

"The changes have already taken place," said Chen Minghua, president of Northwest University of Politics and Law in Xi'an.

"The students following the new curricula have a greater ability to solve practical problems and are more motivated to innovate."

The three-day conference, hosted by CUPL, which began yesterday, is being attended by nearly 90 law school deans and experts on legal education from 13 countries and Hong Kong.

It is the first official classification of the country's jobs and represents the national standard, said Zhang Zuoji, minister of Labour and Social Security.

The compiling team is composed of over 1,000 experts from 50 government departments, including Ministry of Labour and Social Security, State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, and National Bureau of Statistics.

The work started in 1995, when books existing then on occupational classification fell far behind the needs of human resources management in China, Zhang said.

The new dictionary is based on the Occupational Classification and Code formulated in 1986 and the Occupational Classification Catalogue published in 1992.

The 1,838 jobs fall into eight categories.

The Municipal News Office, the Municipal Office of Foreign Affairs and the World Overseas Chinese Photography Society jointly sponsor the activity. It aims to introduce the vigorous Shanghai and the peace-loving, friendly and warmhearted Shanghai people to the world.

City leaders have paid a lot of attention to the activity. Mayor Xu Kuangdi gave an interview to the photographers responsible for preparations, and also signed commemorative certificates designed for the special event.

Chinese and foreign photographers have gotten a warm response to the activity. A total of 68 photographers will take part in it. They come from 19 countries and regions, including Belorussia, Bengal, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, Britain, the United States, China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Many of them enjoy fame in international photography circles and have won all kinds of awards.

Since 1992, Beijing's rate of private auto ownership has skyrocketed. At the end of 1992, Beijing had 8,000 privately owned automobiles, and by 1995, that number had increased eight-fold to 63,262. By 1998, the number of privately owned vehicles in Beijing had almost tripled again, reaching 183,166, making the capital city the leading private car market in China.

By contrast, Shanghai had only 8,760 private cars in 1998. The city is the production base for Volkswagon's Santana, one of China's most popular cars, yet even an open bidding scheme used to stimulate private car sales at the end of last year failed to increase private car sales. Twenty-nine auctions between June and December only produced sales of 3,159 licenses, an average of 109 per week. Beijing's auto market, on the other hand, chugs along with monthly sales of 1,200 Santanas. The primary reason for the discrepancy is cost. Total initial expenses, before putting the vehicle on the road, is RMB128,705 for Beijing customers, while Shanghai customers must pay RMB149,451. Tolls, parking, road maintenance and other fees are also much higher in Shanghai. Based on surveys of private car owners, average annual cost of use for users of a Santana in Shanghai is RMB 16,768, while it is RMB 12,529 for private auto customers in Beijing.

Shanghai residents can afford as many cars per capita as Beijing; annual incomes in Shanghai average higher than Beijing's, with an average per capita of RMB 20,900 per person, while in Beijing the average is RMB 7,862. However, in addition to higher costs in car ownership, Shanghai also lacks proper roads in residential areas. A lack of parking and high parking fees, especially in the city center, also discourages private car ownership.

In addition to these factors, a lower overall level of education in Shanghai, a preference for home purchases over cars, and traffic problems such as bicycle and moped congestion were sited as possible contributors to Shanghai's lower proportion of car owners.

A primary vocational qualification certificate system has now formed its shape since it was implemented in 1993. The vocational qualification appraisal covers 104 kinds of jobs, with secretary and other careers as new ones. Up to now, cumulative 150 thousand persons have been given the certificate, accounting for 20 per cent of the whole technical workers.

15 million yuan it said will be used to train those laid-off or unemployed workers.