A new campaign calling for civilised travel was launched in Beijing on April 15. Sponsored by the National Tourism Administration, the effort aims to encourage more tourists to exhibit civilised behaviour during their travels.

Roughly 10,000 tourists gathered at nine tourist attractions during the campaign’s launching ceremony.

Every tourist’s action and word represents their country’s image and civilisation development, says Xu Zhijun, deputy secretary general of the Beijing government.

“Tourists shouldn’t forget their behaviour when enjoy themselves and happiness,” Xu adds.

Chinese tourists paid 120 million visits abroad in 2015, the National Tourism Administration reports. Bad behaviour by some Chinese travellers has been frequently made news headlines.

Beijing police have placed a 57-year-old man in 10-day administrative detention after he was identified as the driver who allegedly beat a delivery courier in the city’s Dongcheng district on Sunday. The courier’s electric tricycle had struck the man’s car.

Video of the incident was posted to social media sites.

In the video, the driver－identified by police only by his surname, Li－is seen charging the courier and slapping his face at least six times as the car stands in the middle of the road. The courier makes no attempt to evade the attack or to hit back at the driver. Two other witnesses are shown in the video trying unsuccessfully to calm the driver down.

The video evoked widespread outrage after it was posted to Sina Weibo and WeChat Moments.

The courier, surnamed Feng, apologised and offered compensation of 400 yuan (S$83.39) to the driver, China Central Television reported.

The Weibo post that first exposed the video was forwarded more than 45,000 times and received 16,000 comments.

The courier’s employer, SF Express, said it reported the incident and will seek full justice for its employee.

“Given the fact that the other party hit the courier repeatedly in an extremely violent act, we have declined his request for mediation. We will press charges and demand criminal sanctions,” the company said.

It added that the courier was later diagnosed with soft tissue injuries and has received medical attention. It also urged its couriers to take measures to protect themselves when faced with such threats.

The driver had shut down his cellphone service as of Monday.

Beijing Evening News quoted a relative of his as saying Li regrets his behaviour deeply and is willing to co-operate with the police investigation.

The incident came after a number of violent public encounters that sparked anger on social media.

Earlier this month, a video showing a man assaulting a woman in the Beijing Wangjing 798 Yitel Hotel in the capital’s Chaoyang district was also spread on social media, drawing criticism of the hotel for its lack of security and of the failure of witnesses to intervene.

China’s courier service sector has seen major employment growth. More than 1.5 million people work in the industry, the head of the State Post Bureau, Ma Junsheng, said at a conference last year.

The sector is adding more than 200,000 jobs annually, he said.

In Ecuador and in China’s neighbours Japan, Myanmar and Afghanistan, a series of strong quakes have recently caused casualties and damage. But are they a bad omen for China?

Pan Huaiwen, director of the China Earthquake Networks Center, said he doesn’t believe the quakes indicate that China faces a strong earthquake soon as well. He made the remark on Monday in a news conference organised by the State Council Information Office. Since April 10, when a magnitude-7.1 quake hit Afghanistan, three strong earthquakes above magnitude-7 have hit China’s neighbours, including the magnitude-7.2 quake that struck Myanmar on April 13 and the magnitude-7.3 quake in Japan on Saturday.

In addition, a quake of magnitude-6.1 also hit Tonga on Sunday.

The Chinese have been particularly sensitive about earthquakes since a mega-quake in 1976 killed about 240,000 people and injured 160,000 in Tangshan, Hebei province.

Pan said serial quakes have occurred 37 times since 1900, and only three times did China have quakes above magnitude-7 in the following three months.

7.8 earthquake rocks Ecuador

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AFP

“It doesn’t demonstrate that an extremely active seismic period has come,” said Pan. “And less than 10 per cent of those situations were followed by a massive earthquake in China. So statistically, the probability of China having a strong earthquake is not connected with recent frequent quakes.”

He added, however, that if the frequency of major earthquakes worldwide so far this year continues, the average annual number of quakes since 1900 above magnitude-7, which is 18, could be surpassed.

“The possibility of an earthquake depends on the situation of the tectonic plate on which China sits, but motions of the crustal structure around China could affect the strength of pressure on the Chinese mainland and have an impact on the country’s earthquake situation,” said Jiang Haikun, senior researcher at the China Earthquake Networks Center.

So far this year, China has had five earthquakes above magnitude-5, including a magnitude-6.7 quake that rocked Taiwan on Feb 6, killing more than 100 people.

According to the quake networks centre, the Chinese mainland reports an average of 20 earthquakes each year above magnitude-5.

Since 2004, when a magnitude-8.7 quake hit Sumatra in Indonesia, Jiang said, the world has been in a relatively active seismic period, compared with a quiet period between 1964 and 2004.

“Earthquake prediction is still a global scientific challenge, but our centre will keep a close eye on the crustal motion in China, especially the western regions, where more than 90 per cent of China’s massive earthquake have occurred,” said Jiang. “There is a lot of work to do to reduce casualties from earthquakes, including building stronger infrastructures.”

Officials who commit severe corruption crimes, such as taking a huge amount of bribes, may face a new sentence now – life imprisonment without parole, according to an interpretation issued on Monday by the top judiciary authorities.

“The life sentence without parole is a new category of penalty for corruption, which means convicts given such punishment will spend the rest of their life in prison, no matter how well they behave while serving their sentences,” said Pei Xianding, chief judge of the criminal tribunal under the Supreme People’s Court.

In the past, a death sentence with a two-year reprieve could be commuted to a life sentence if the person convicted behaved well during the two years, and the sentence might be further cut if they continue to behave in prison, according to Pei.

But under the new interpretation, effective on Monday, convicts will not have a chance to leave prison if they are given the sentence, he said.

Life in prison without parole will be handed down in conjunction with a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, according to the interpretation by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.

“For some defendants, the death penalty is too heavy and a suspended death sentence too light, so we made the new sentence after research and discussion, in a move to ensure punishments will be in line with offences,” he said.

Pei stressed it does not mean there will be no death penalty in corruption cases.

“For those whose offences meet the requirements of the death penalty, the courts will sentence them to death without hesitation,” he added.

Zhou Guangquan, a criminal law professor at Tsinghua University, said: “The new sentence is an alternative form of death penalty for corruption, and it must be enforced unconditionally. Defendants given such a penalty will not be released or have their sentence commuted.”

The new interpretation also raises the threshold of corruption cases to 30,000 yuan (S$6,263), “because the 5,000 yuan standard in the 1997 version could not keep pace with economic development,” said Chen Xingliang, a law professor at Peking University.

But Miao Youshui, deputy chief judge of the criminal tribunal, said that those engaged in a small amount of bribes will still be punished if they refuse to return illicitly obtained money, have been sentenced on other charges or have been given disciplinary punishment for embezzlement or bribery.

In addition, the definition of property in corruption cases has been extended, Miao said. “For example, house decoration, paying debts or trips will also be defined as bribery,” he added.

The new interpretation is intended to give judges and prosecutors more teeth in their fight against corruption.

From 2013 to last year, China’s courts accepted 81,805 cases of corruption, of which 69,017 were concluded, according to the top court.

Prosecutors dealt with 4,490 cases involving 1 million yuan or more in corruption, bribery and embezzlement last year, and they also began investigating several ministerial-level officials, including Ling Jihua, former head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee.

caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn