Society

China's top legislature approved the Food Safety Law on Saturday, providing a legal basis for the government to strengthen food safety control "from the production line to the dining table."

The law, which goes into effect on June 1, 2009, will enhance monitoring and supervision, toughen-up safety standards, recall substandard products and severely punish offenders.

The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee gave the green light to the intensively-debated draft law at a four-day session, following a spate of food scandals which triggered vehement calls for overhauling China's current monitoring system.

Winning 158 out of the 165 votes, the law said the State Council, or Cabinet, would set up a state-level food safety commission to oversee the entire food monitoring system, whose lack of efficiency has long been blamed for repeated scandals.

Departments of health, agriculture, quality supervision, industry and commerce administration will shoulder different responsibilities.

These would include risk evaluation, the making and implementation of safety standards, and the monitoring of the food production and circulation sectors.

The law stipulated a ban on all chemicals and materials other than authorized additives in food production, saying that "only those items proved to be safe and necessary in food production are allowed to be listed as food additives."

Health authorities are responsible for assessing and approving food additives and regulating their usage.

Food producers must only use food additives and their usage previously approved by authorities, on penalty of closure or revocation of production licenses in serious cases, according to the law.

Producers of edible farm products are required to abide by food safety standards when using pesticide, fertilizer, growth regulators, veterinary drugs, feedstuff and feed additives. They must also keep farming or breeding records.

Offenders could face maximum fines which would be 10 times the value of sold products. If businesses are found producing or selling a substandard foodstuff, consumers can ask for financial compensation which is 10 times the price of the product. That's in addition to compensation for the harm the product causes to the consumer.

To better protect consumer rights, the law bans food safety supervision and inspection agencies, food industry associations and consumers' associations from advertising food products.

Individuals or organizations are prohibited from advertising substandard food products. Those advertising such products would face joint liability for damages incurred.

The law has been revised several times since it was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for the first reading in December 2007. In April 2008, it was opened to public scrutiny and more than 11,000 comments were made to the lawmaking body.

The Chinese word "Shanzhai" literally means small mountain village, but it's now used to describe products that have names similar to famous brands or people who imitate celebrities.

It became an accepted name for fake goods after "Shanzhai Cellphones" produced by small individual workshops in southern China became popular in the mainland market over the past two years.

Besides Shanzhai electronic products, of which there are many, there are "Shanzhai" movies, "Shanzhai" stars and even a "Shanzhai" Spring Festival Gala, a copy of the 25-year-old traditional show presented by CCTV on Chinese Lunar New Year's eve.

This article is going to show you the funny and developing of Shanzhai product in car tunning.

This 3-wheeled electric powered vehicle - french 206 - with moon-roof.

This 3-wheeled electric powered vehicle - Japanese Swift.

This 3-wheeled electric powered vehicle - Shanzhai QQ

VW Soft-roof beetle's Shanzhan version.

Can you tell which is the real porsche and which is the Shanzhai version of it?

BMW 5 front-end

Brilliance's back-end

Below you will find another well tunned SUV with BMW front-end, Hover chasis and Mitsubishi rear lamps.

In the global financial crisis, each government and shop owner definitely like those shopaholics, but it's not a good news for the families have a shopaholic as their member.

In Guangzhou, China, a lady, MS. Jiang, was sent into madhouse by her husband as she is a shopholic.

Unlike other chinese ladies who still work after marriage, she is a full-time housewife. That means her husband supports the whole family by working hard. The fact is that she goes shopping after she sends her son to school, then keeps on purchasing things never use ,everyday, from last year.

During the spring festival (Chinese new year) , she spent half of her husband's monthly salary within one day, that was the last straw and lighted the fuse of anger - her husband sent her into a madhouse.

“I really regret it. Most of the things I brought in shop are still there in package without being open" MS. Jiang said.

On the 17th of February, twenty rural workers worked as carpenters for China Huaxi Ltd, Co. on a construction site. 4 days later, the manager in charge of woodwork fired them for slow work and bad quanlity, of course, he promised to paid them salary.

At 15:00 yesterday, they came back in Zhang's office, after few words, the door was closed and the light was turned off. Zhang and his hatchet man beat those rural workers with stick. During the 10 minutes before the police came, they were suffering from whopping, in the end, 5 of them was sent to Fengcheng Hospital for serious injury.

The lady, in the photo above, said,"Zhang don't wanna paid us for the 4-day-work, and it's merely 4000RMB (584.94 USD)".