Society

China's navy is planning major celebrations for its 60th anniversary next month, official media reported Friday, amid rising speculation over a possible announcement of plans to build an aircraft carrier.

A sail-past featuring some of the navy's most modern craft and ships from other nations is being planned, Friday's Global Times newspaper said, citing the commander of the east China fleet, Adm. Xu Hongmeng.

The report did not say exactly where the sail-past would happen or when, although the navy's founding anniversary officially falls on April 23. The east China fleet is based in Shanghai, while many of the navy's most advanced craft are based at the northern fleet headquarters in Qingdao, about 310 miles (500 kilometers) southeast of Beijing.

Global Times quoted Xu as saying that China was in need of a carrier.

"Both technologically and economically, China already has the capacity to build a carrier," Xu said.

Beijing has been researching an aircraft carrier for years, having bought and towed to China a mothballed Russian carrier, the Varyag, in 1998. The PLA is also rumored to have purchased four carrier landing systems and up to 50 Russian Su-33 carrier-based aircraft.

Strategically, a carrier is seen mainly as a deterrent to U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan, although Chinese experts say it would mainly serve to police the 1.16 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of sea claimed by Beijing as its maritime territory.

Long neglected in favor of the army and air force, the 255,000-member People's Liberation Army Navy has taken on an increasingly prominent role in recent years as the country's sea-borne trade expands and Beijing moves to assert its offshore claims and stymie moves by Taiwan toward formal independence.

Despite hopes for economic recovery, China's exporters failed to get much encouragement this week from a major trade fair where deals fell nearly 40 percent from a year earlier, with bigger drops for some industries.

The five-day East China Fair, which draws exporters from seven provinces and Shanghai, as well as some foreign companies ended Thursday with $2.24 billion in deals signed, down 39 percent from a year earlier, organizers said.

Many of the staff in the hundreds of booths at Shanghai's exhibition hall this week were busier talking or playing games on their laptops and mobile phones than trying to sell their products, which included clothing, accessories, housewares, basketware — just about any type of handicraft or knick-knack.

Kees Hol, a Dutch businessman working at a factory in East China, was playing foosball with one of his employees.

"It's not really a good fair. It seems really quiet," Hol said. "But we have to look enthusiastic. If we all look discouraged, our customers will be discouraged, too."

In Chongqing, the largest Tai Chi symbol was made for a vegetable festival. This yellow and green blend Tai Chi symbol,108 meters in diameter, draws more than 10 thousand peoples.

Guo Jian, born in 1968, a law-officer in Jinhua City, is in custody for his sex video tape released recently. This is another case of loosening belt guilt in 2009.

His colleague said, "he is good at photography and won a photography contest before". His case is still under investigation, one official voice is his problem is not only about that sex tape, but also committing bribery. Sex tape is the "last straw".