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Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest drugmaker, is doubling its presence in China over the next three years and intends to make its products more accessible to people in rural areas.

The company plans to expand its presence from 180 to over 360 cities by 2012, said E Allan Gabor, president of Pfizer North Asia, in an exclusive interview with China Daily yesterday.

Gabor said China would be one of the top markets for Pfizer next year.

“Ultimately we want to be in 630 cities, and that will take a few more years,” he said. “China is the most important developing market for us. If we put the country’s aging population and urbanization together, it truly makes it a unique market.”

The expansion indicates that Pfizer not only intends to expand its presence in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but also in central and western China.

The Chinese government recently announced its intention to revamp the medical care system in the country over the next three years and said it would invest 850 billion yuan ($124.49 billion). By this, the government intends to add 500 million people to the healthcare system, mostly from rural areas.

According to recent government regulations, farmers are entitled to a maximum medical compensation equivalent to six times their individual income. Healthcare companies saw this an excellent opportunity to tap the market in rural China.

Gabor, however, admits that complexities would increase as Pfizer expands into newer destinations. “When you go from tier-1 cities to tier-2 cities, from tier-2 to tier-3 and from tier-3 to tier-4, it is not the same business model and complexities vary,” he said.

A big explosion was heard Tuesday morning in central Baghdad.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on Saturday had a joint interview with journalists from Japanese and the Republic of Korea (ROK) media ahead of his visit to four Asian nations including the two countries.

Xi will pay an official visit to Japan, the ROK, Cambodia and Myanmar from Dec. 14 to 22, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

The Japanese media include Kyodo News, Asahi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nihon Hoso Kyokai and Fuji TV. The ROK media include Yonhap News, Joong-ang Ilbo, Korean Broadcasting System and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation.

Following are the highlights of the interview:

CHINA-JAPAN RELATIONS

Xi said with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao’s successful meetings with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, relations between China and Japan have had a good start and maintained a good development momentum. The Chinese government always pursues a friendly policy towards Japan from the strategic and long-term point of view.

China is willing to carry out more exchanges and cooperation with Japan based on the guiding principles agreed by the two sides, and promote the bilateral strategic and reciprocal relations, Xi said, adding he hopes his visit will contribute to this end.

ESTABLISHMENT OF EAST ASIA COMMUNITY

Xi said the proposal of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to establish an east Asia community shows the importance Japanese government attaches to and its active stance on east Asia regional cooperation. This idea accords with the trend of Asian integration, and is also the common goal of the countries within this region. It is a systematic project to construct such a community, which should be base on reality and meanwhile take a long-term point of view. The most important thing to do at present is to strengthen dialogue and negotiation between countries so as to form consensus.

CHINA-ROK RELATIONS

Xi said China and the ROK have maintained a sound development of relations, with frequent contacts of state leaders and expanding economic cooperation and trade.

The two nations have designated 2010 as Visit China Year and 2012 as Visit Korea Year. Xi said he hopes the two countries will joint hands to well prepare for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 2012 Yeosu World Expo, and take them as important platforms to further promote cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Xi said to further develop the China-ROK relations is conducive to the two people’s interests and regional peace, stability and prosperity. China will work with ROK to strengthen the friendly cooperation and be good neighbors, good friends and good partners forever.

He expected his visit to consolidate the two countries’ exchanges and cooperation, and promote the China-ROK strategic partnership of cooperation.

CHINA-ROK FREE TRADE ZONE

Xi said to expand trade and economic cooperation is an important part of China-ROK relationship, and a great impetus to promote the ties. He hoped relevant departments of the two countries will speed up their work to create conditions for an early start of official negotiations on the free trade zone.

COOPERATION AMONG CHINA, JAPAN AND ROK

Xi said Asia is one of the most vigorous and promising regions in the world. China, Japan and ROK are major countries in the region. To strengthen cooperation among them not only conforms to their own interests, but also benefits Asia and the world as a whole.

The nations should grasp the historic opportunity to expand cooperation, give play to their cooperation in promoting the east Asia cooperation and contributing to the construction of an east Asia community, Xi said.

SIX-PARTY TALKS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA NUCLEAR ISSUE

Xi stressed it’s China’s consistent position that the Korean Peninsula should be denuclearized, that the issue should resolved through dialogue and peaceful ways, and that the peace and stability of the Peninsula and northeast Asia should be maintained.

China will continue to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks process, Xi said. He added that China hopes the relevant parties will also work together to resume the six-party talks as early as possible. To continue the nuclear talks process and fully implement the three goals agreed by the Joint Statement of September 2005 is in the common interests of all parties.

CHINA’S MACRO-ECONOMIC SITUATION AND RESPONSE TO FINANCIAL CRISIS

China’s annual central economic conference concluded not long ago, Xi said. Confronted with the severe challenges brought about by the financial crisis and extremely complicated international and domestic situation, China timely introduced and comprehensively implemented a package plan and related policies, which has relatively fast reversed the declining trend of the economic growth.

As a result, the momentum of economic recovery has been gradually enhanced and the domestic demand kept increasing rapidly. Economic structure rebalance and energy saving and emissions cut have been actively pushed forward. The reforms and opening-up in major areas have been deepened and people’s livelihood has been improved, said Xi.

Under the conditions that China’s import and export trade has declined about 20 percent and its external demand contributed minus 3.6 percent to the economic growth rate, China has realized an increase of 11.3 percent in its domestic investment and consumption and an economic growth rate of 7.7 percent in its first three quarters this year.

China’s overall economic situation has rebounded. However, many uncertain factors still exist in its internal and external environment, Xi noted.

He said, the Chinese government will further strengthen and improve its macro-control measures and continue a proactive fiscal policy and moderately easy monetary policy, so as to promote the stable and relatively rapid growth of the economy.

He said China will continue to take a responsible attitude in international cooperation on dealing with the economic downturn and make its due contribution to the economic recovery at an early date.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Xi said the climate change has brought about severe global challenges, which can not be coped with by any country alone but through the cooperation of the international community.

As a developing country, China has adopted a series of active measures in energy saving and emissions cut and made remarkable progress in recent years, said Xi.

China announced on Nov. 26 that it would reduce the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions per GDP unit in 2020 by 40 to 45 percent from the 2005 level, which fully reflected its firm determination in making utmost efforts to tackle the climate change.

Xi said the UN climate change conference being held in Copenhagen could provide an important opportunity for the international community to reach consensus and address the issue together.

Xi called on the international community to adhere to the principles laid out in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali road map, especially that of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and make joint efforts for the positive achievements of the conference. China is willing to enhance coordination with various countries and play a constructive role in this process.

Last week I attended a forum in Guangzhou about the creative industry, a fancy word for things as old as book publishing, as new as e-books and everything in between.

Guangdong province, of which Guangzhou is the capital, is often bypassed when visitors look for culture. It is connected to Shenzhen and Hong Kong and is known as “the world’s factory floor”, not “the world’s drawing board”. Dismayed officials want to change that perception.

“Do you know we have been No 1 in the culture business for six consecutive years?” says Lai Bin, a provincial publicity officer. At 227 billion yuan ($33 billion) for 2008, Guangdong’s cultural industries accounted for 6.4 percent of its GDP and experienced a growth rate of 13.8 percent. But Lai admits that size does not equal weight. “Our businesses are mostly small, financing difficult and brands few.”

One local brand that has made it big is Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf (Xiyangyang Yu Huitailang), also translated as Happy Sheep and Gray Wolf, arguably China’s most popular cartoon series currently being aired. But Liu Manyi, general manager of Creative Power Entertaining Inc, the firm behind the hit show, is not laughing to the bank. Instead she is bitter: “Pirate discs were all over the street before our first movie hit the screen. One character endorses children’s medicine, another plugs contraceptives, and their images appear on all kinds of products. All this without proper licensing.”

The company, which only broke even when the series turned into a runaway hit, is now spending tons of money chasing pirates. It has been guerilla warfare. Bootleggers do not usually register their business. When they are caught, the court generally gives them a slap on the wrist, to the tune of a 10,000-50,000 yuan fine.

“It is such a weak deterrent that in one case we had to retroactively grant a license to the offender,” complains Liu.

If Liu’s company is suffering, just imagine what the remaining 6,000 firms in the Guangdong creative industry are going through.

In case you don’t know, China produces the largest amount of animated programming in the world. But quantity is not quality. Behind every Pleasant Goat there are tens of thousands of flops.

This year China is expected to amass a total of 130,000 minutes of domestically produced animation programs, but it’s doubtful whether this is worth one Kungfu Panda, the animated movie released by DreamWorks.

Rolf Gesen, a Berlin-based film archivist who teaches at Beijing Communication University, attributes the failure to students who are too obsessed with technology and influenced by Japanese anime.

“(The animations) are just like junk food,” he laments, “without roots in their own culture or emotional exchange … the roles tend to be wooden, which makes it difficult for audiences, domestic or international, to identify with.”

Stella Chou, managing director of China business development for Harper Collins, is more lenient. She says China’s cartoons and animated works are “more suitable for children, while on the international market the target audience is mostly adults.”

I don’t know when the explosion in animation started in China, but I look around and there are festivals and conferences galore. Can you call it a “boom”? On the surface it appears to be. But like many things in China, it is artificially inflated. Sometime in the past decade, people, including the government, realized that animation is big business. Central government launched drives, local governments dangled incentives and capital flowed like red wine at a party.

The only caveat is, nobody is buying. Most TV stations do not pay for such programs. If the major companies do pay, the fees are so minimal it’s not even worth the producers flying to Beijing to make a deal.

This leaves just one way forward. Use television exposure as a promotional tool, like Hasbro did in the late 1980s when it offloaded without charge some Transformer series to Chinese TV channels. It recouped its investment by selling toys at astronomical prices. But those who follow this route are ambushed by bandits, who snatch earnings by illegally associating their names with a hit show, or selling pirate products.

My daughter is a big fan of Pleasant Goat and we have bought her boxes of toys. We don’t deal with sidewalk vendors because we know the goods are not genuine. But there is a spectrum to counterfeiting, ranging from the shoddiest products to identical goods. One of my counterfeiter friends says sometimes they use better materials than the real thing, thus confusing buyers.

The best way for the government to promote the country’s creative industries is to crack down on piracy. Hollywood often raises its voice about being victimized in China. Truth be told, Hollywood is probably the least affected since there is a quota system for China’s importation of Hollywood films.

Many Chinese producers are taking baby steps and the domestic market is all they have. If their rights in the home market are not protected, they will never see the day their products find a foreign audience.

The sudden closure of BT websites where copyrighted materials used to flow freely suggests a determination on the part of the government to take intellectual property rights seriously. Unfortunately it still tends to lump unlicensed material with pornography. The underlying logic goes, this kind of stuff is bad for us, so we should ban it.

The right reasoning should be, it does not matter whether the material is beneficial or detrimental, as long as it is not legally obtained, it should be outlawed.

Much of the news coming out of the 2009 International Cultural Industries Forum was encouraging. China’s film industry is expected to reap 6 billion yuan ($879 million) in box office receipts this year. A decade from now, this number may go up to 30 billion, according to some forecasts.

Movie tickets in China are not cheap and people pay the price of a good restaurant meal to get a movie-theater experience, which cannot be replicated with a pirated disc. If the government kicks serious ass in dealing with online and offline pirates, China’s creative industries may well have a future that’s worth the feel-good ending of a typical blockbuster.

A man hacked to death three members of his ex-wife’s family, including two children, and injured another two after his former wife refused to resume relations with him in Chengde, Hebei province.

The 39-year-old accused, surnamed Shi, a former taxi driver, killed his former wife’s mother and two nephews, both younger than 10 at a rented apartment in the Shaanxiying residential community in downtown Chengde, at about 5 pm on Monday, a witness, surnamed Chen, told China Daily yesterday.

Shi then broke into a ward of the Chengde Central Hospital, where two of his wife’s sisters were lodged, and attacked them with a kitchen knife, injuring them seriously, Chen said.

Police finally cornered Shi on the fifth floor of the hospital, even as he “repeatedly tried to injure himself with the weapon”.

The suspect and the two injured are undergoing treatment at the hospital.

According to the police, the suspect is a resident of Zhoutaizi village in Luanping county.

“Shi seemed like a good man. We never thought he could murder anyone,” an official of the Zhoutaizi village committee said.

Shi worked as a taxi driver in Chengde for several years. His wife had recently divorced him.

All efforts to get a comment from the police and staff at the hospital failed.

The incident follows a number of similar cases of mass killings in the country recently.

On Nov 23, Beijinger Li Lei hacked his parents, two children, wife and sister to death at their Daxing district home. Li later told police the killings were a result of long-time family conflicts.

On Nov 15, a man broke into his girlfriend’s home in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and killed five people and seriously injured two others as the family disapproved his relationship with their daughter.

“I think all the suspects in these cases suffer from psychological problems and their paranoia took them to such violent extremes,” said Julie Ge, a senior counselor and CEO of the marriage counseling website Juedui100.com.

Some suspects might undergo certain experiences, which later generate hatred, she said.

Ge added: “Westerners pay as much attention to their mental health as to their physical health. But in China very few people seek psychological counseling. That’s probably because of the stigma attached to seeing a psychological counselor,” she said.

Around 20,000 people have marched through central London to demand action on climate change, police said, as rallies took place in other cities.

Indian security forces have launched a major offensive, dubbed “Operation Green Hunt”, against the extreme left-wing Naxal rebels in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, a senior police official said Friday.

“We are handling the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ in a more decisive way. And as on today the operation is on in districts like Bijapurand Dantewada. According to the information that we have, the police are not facing any resistance in the interior areas of the rebel strongholds. It may be an operational tactics of them. We are still discussing this issue with our officers,” Deputy Inspector General of Polic S.R.P. Killuri told the media.

The operation came days after Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said that the proposed offensive against the Naxalites would be largely “intelligence based” and the security forces will adopt tactics used to tackle militancy in the operations.

According to official estimates, Naxals control about 165 of India’s 602 districts. It is estimated that the Naxalites have 9,000 to 10,000 armed fighters, 6,500 firearms and 40,000 full-time cadres.

The stock market struggled but held its ground Wednesday as an upbeat assessment of the economy from the Federal Reserve offset drops in banks and energy companies.

Most stocks finished higher after the Fed said regional economic activity has generally improved since its last snapshot in October. The central bank said consumers have increased spending even as employment and commercial real estate remain weak.

The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 19 points after gaining 162 points in the first two days of the week. Reports of analysts’ warnings about bank stocks hurt financial shares, while a steep drop in oil weighed on energy companies.

Bank stocks could get a boost Thursday from Bank of America Corp.’s announcement after the closing bell that it plans to repay $45 billion in government bailout funds.

A mixed reading on the labor market kept trading subdued. The ADP National Employment Report said private companies cut 169,000 jobs in November, fewer than in October but worse than the 160,000 cuts expected by economists polled by Thomson Reuters. It was the eighth monthly drop.

Investors are focused on the job market, which remains weak despite signs of life in manufacturing, housing and other parts of the economy.

“It all falls apart if you don’t get jobs to come around,” said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management.

The ADP report doesn’t represent the entire economy but is often seen as a good indicator of what will emerge in the government’s monthly employment report, which is due on Friday. Economists are expecting the unemployment rate remained flat at 10.2 percent in November.

A rising dollar also cooled the market’s advance.

Investors are struggling to determine whether the big gains in the stock market since early March are justified by an improving economy or if they’re overdone. The S&P 500 index is up 64 percent in nine months.

Analysts have been worried that the nascent recovery could be threatened by economic problems overseas or missteps by the government and the resulting gyrations in the dollar. Concerns over a potential debt crisis in the Middle Eastern city-state of Dubai pushed stock markets lower last week.

The Dow fell 18.90, or 0.2 percent, to 10,452.68, pulling off of a 14-month high reached Tuesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up 0.38, or less than 0.1 percent, to 1,109.24, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 9.22, or 0.4 percent, to 2,185.03.

Two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 4 billion shares compared with 4.4 billion Tuesday.

The listless trading followed modest gains Monday and a surge Tuesday driven by a weaker dollar and higher commodities prices. A months-long slide in the dollar, the result of rock-bottom interest rates, has encouraged investors to buy riskier assets that have the potential to earn better returns.

Analysts say trading likely will remain choppy through the rest of the year as some investors look to lock in the gains they’ve amassed in the rally since March.

Trading in foreign exchange, commodities and debt markets was mixed as traders remained cautious.

“People don’t know where to go,” Stone said. “That wait-and-see attitude has kicked in.”

The ICE Futures US dollar index, which measures the dollar against other major currencies, edged up 0.3 percent.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 3.32 percent from 3.29 percent late Tuesday.

Gold surged to a record $1,218.40 an ounce before settling at $1,213.

Oil fell $1.77 to settle at $76.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the Energy Department said demand for gasoline fell during the Thanksgiving week, when gas sales usually rise because of holiday travel.

Among financial stocks, Bank of America fell 24 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $15.65. In after-hours trading the stock rose 39 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $16.04.

Wells Fargo & Co. slid 54 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $27.45 on reports that some analysts voiced concerns about industry profits next year.

Meanwhile, Chesapeake Energy Corp. fell 70 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $23.40 as oil fell. Occidental Petroleum Corp. slid 97 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $81.21.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 6.89, or 1.2 percent, to 596.09.

Overseas, Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.3 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 0.1 percent, and France’s CAC-40 added 0.5 percent. Japan’s Nikkei stock average rose 0.4 percent.

Two 46-year-old officials Monday became China’s youngest provincial-level Party chiefs as the country announced major leadership reshuffles ahead of the 18th Party Congress in 2012.

Former Hebei governor Hu Chunhua and ex-minister of agriculture Sun Zhengcai, both born in 1963, took the Party chief posts in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Jilin province respectively.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) also announced that Sun Chunlan, deputy chairwoman and Party secretary of All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), replaced Lu Zhangong, 57, as secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee.

Lu, who was Fujian’s Party chief for nearly six years, was named Party chief in Henan, the most populous province.

Former Jilin provincial Party chief Wang Min, 59, was appointed to the same post in Liaoning province.

Three of the five officials who were succeeded by the younger leaders - namely, Zhang Wenyue, Chu Bo and Xu Guangchun - were 65 this year, the standard age at which minister-level cadres must retire.

Appointments have not yet been made to the posts left vacant by the Suns - ACFTU deputy chairperson and minister of agriculture.

Hu Chunhua was governor of Hebei for a year. He had previously studied at Peking University, worked in Tibet and served as the First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China.

Sun Zhengcai had worked in the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and was head of the capital’s Shunyi district. He holds a doctorate degree in agriculture and was minister of agriculture for three years.

“Hu and Sun’s appointments as provincial Party secretaries are important steps toward selections of Party officials at younger ages,” said Wang Yukai, a professor with the National School of Administration. “It was rare in the past for such younger officials to be named provincial-level Party chiefs.”

Vice-President Xi Jinping said the training and selection of young cadres was “of great importance for the lasting stability of the Party and the state”.

Wang said all five newly appointed Party chiefs will be younger than 65 when the CPC holds its 18th plenary congress in 2012.

“They will have more promotion chances.”

Wang also noted that Hu has governing experience in regions populated by ethnic minorities.

As to Sun, he has experience related to agriculture, and Jilin is a big agricultural province.

In a related development, the Central Committee of the CPC yesterday removed Wang Hongju from his post as mayor of Chongqing, China’s largest municipality.

The widely influential 64-year-old had been mayor for six years.

Huang Qifan, a vice mayor for eight years, has been nominated as a candidate for Chongqing mayor.

Huang, 57, had three decades of studying and working in Shanghai.

A senior leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has urged officials and governments at all levels to serve the people by addressing their concerns.

He Guoqiang, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks during his visit in Chibi City of central China’s Hubei Province on Saturday.

He said officials and governments must solve well the problems that concern people’s immediate interests to ensure social harmony and stability.

When visiting a local village and urban community of the city, He urged local officials to help residents increase their incomes and answer the needs required by the people.

He asked the officials to improve their ability of resolving practical problems to bring about more tangible benefits to local people.

He, also secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC, also called on local Party organs to improve their organizational construction, promote intra-party democracy and strengthen the struggle against corruption.