China plans to relocate 3.4 million people from poverty-stricken communities to more developed areas this year as part of its poverty reduction drive, according to government sources.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s economic planner, said 2.49 million people living in poverty had been relocated in 2016, meeting the target for the year.

By the end of 2016, there were relocation projects in 22 provinces, which include housing, infrastructure and public services, Yang Qian, an official with the NDRC said.

Local authorities are also exploring supportive industries, employment and social security for the relocated people.

China has vowed to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020. Alleviating poverty through relocation is one aspect of the strategy.

By the end of 2016, there were 45 million people living in poverty, many in areas without roads, clean drinking water or power.

Tiger keepers in a northeastern province in China have found a novel way to keep their cats in shape over the winter — a cat and mouse game, but the mouse in this instance is the keeper’s vehicle.

The staff at the Siberian Tiger Park in Heilongjiang, a world leader in tiger breeding, realized that the tigers always followed the feeding truck around their enclosure, so the keepers turned into coaches and started to drive the vehicle around between meals.

Captive tigers eat about 8kg of meat each day, and the staff at the Siberian Tiger Park feed their big cats 10 percent more in winter because of the cold, said Liu Dan, with the park.

If the cats do not exercise they will gain weight and, like humans, if they are obese they are at risk of high blood pressure, metabolic disorders and could die earlier.

A male adult Siberian tiger normally weighs around 250 kg.

The way vehicle tax is calculated will be changing for new cars and some motorhomes from 1 April 2017. Time is flying by and we’re just 50 days away.

We’ve been busy behind the scenes and blogging regularly about what DVLA is doing to prepare for the changes internally and with our customers.  Here’s a recap of where we are:

Over the past 12 months we’ve been working closely with stakeholders to make sure they’re aware of these changes.  We’re changing the tax rules ready for 1 April and are developing a new service to register new vehicles to launch later in the year. To support the changes we set up and attended industry steering groups to hear the views of stakeholders, update progress and agree the changes.

We launched our public facing communications in November 2016 and have been informing customers about the changes.  This publicity campaign is being run across social media, blogs as well as through messages on DVLA literature. We’ve also updated GOV.UK with the facts about the changes.

DVLA’s contact centre is running an automated telephone service to quickly answer our customer’s questions.

We also hosted a webinar in January for fleet customers with commentary provided by DVLA Service Designers Helen Jones and Rhian Townsend.

We’ve been keeping a close eye on how these communications are performing and what people think.  From this we know that the most popular query amongst the public is whether these changes will affect existing vehicles. The answer?  No they don’t.  The new rates only affect cars and some motorhomes first registered with DVLA on or after 1 April 2017.

So, the countdown is well underway with only 50 days to go until the new vehicle tax rates come into force.

I’m sure this will fly by so please keep up to date with this topic and others by following DVLA on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and subscribing to our Digital Services Blog.

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China Railway Corp. expects 8.2 million trips to be made by rail Saturday as it is Lantern Festival, the end of the lunar new year celebrations.

The company said it had scheduled an additional 598 trains to cope with demand.

On Friday, 8.92 million trips were made by rail.

The Lunar New Year holiday was from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2 this year. The period, which is also known as Spring Festival, is known as the largest human migration in the world, as hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns, putting huge stress on the transportation system.

The first post-festival travel rush started toward the end of the week-long holiday. The second travel rush usually happens around Lantern Festival, when students return to start a new semester and migrant workers return to work.