Students in China are eager to start businesses and hope that their colleges can provide more opportunities to foster entrepreneurship, according to a survey from a universities alliance Tuesday.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Alliance of China (IEEAC) is a platform for universities to share their experience in entrepreneurship and nurture students’ innovative and entrepreneurship spirit.

The IEEAC surveyed students from 130 colleges, and more than 80 percent of students said they are willing to start businesses.

Nearly half of the students surveyed hoped to receive training and financial support for entrepreneurship from colleges.

Only 17 percent of startup projects in colleges provide overseas exchange and cooperation opportunities, according to the survey.

“We should promote international cooperation in innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as cooperation between colleges and enterprises,” said Sun Hongbin, secretary general of the IEEAC.

According to the Ministry of Education, a total of 7.95 million college students are expected to graduate in 2017.

Around 3 percent of this year’s college graduates are expected to start businesses, up from only 1.6 percent of college graduates who started businesses in 2011, according to a report jointly released by the educational research company MyCOS Institute and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

“It is important for students to learn about the country’s policies and evaluate their skills before starting businesses,” said Zhu Zhuohong from CAS.

Nine people have been confirmed dead, and 19 others are injured after a rain-triggered mudslide swept through part of a village in central China’s Hunan Province.

The mudslide occurred about 4 p.m. Saturday in Zuta Village, Ningxiang County, after continuous heavy rain since Friday, according to the county government.

A four-day search and rescue operation recovered nine bodies, the government said Tuesday.

Southern China has been battered by continuous rain over recent weeks. China’s Finance Ministry on Monday released 1.9 billion yuan (about 280 million U.S. dollars) in emergency funds for flood relief in south China.

The funds will go to 20 provinces and autonomous regions including Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang, where torrential rains in the past week have caused severe floods.

A growing number of the island’s residents are relocating, lured by new policies, financial incentives and a wider range of opportunities.

‘Since I opened my first store in Sichuan province in December, the mainland’s business potential has exceeded my expectations. I now have four stores,” said Ken Huang, an entrepreneur from Taiwan.

The 37-year-old owner of a handbag brand was among 8,000 people from the island who participated in a weeklong trade exhibition at the Ninth Straits Forum in Xiamen, Fujian province, last month. Most of the attendees were seeking opportunities to expand their businesses in the mainland and exploring the possibility of trading internationally.

Last month, communications and exchanges between people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits continued to rise, despite recent setbacks in political ties.

Although tourism and business activity are developing rapidly, high-level communications between the mainland and Taiwan have been at a low point for more than a year. The relationship between the two sides had been developing constructively based on the 1992 Consensus, a formula for relations between Taipei and Beijing rooted in the understanding that there is only one China, and opposed to “Taiwan independence”.

Things changed in May last year, when the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan denied the existence of the 1992 Consensus, consigning dialogue to the deep freeze. That means the Straits Forum – composed of 21 major trade fairs, symposiums and exhibitions – is now the biggest platform for people from both sides of the Straits to seek career opportunities and better lifestyles.

During a speech at the forum, Yu Zhengsheng, China’s top political adviser, announced a series of new policies to be rolled out in the coming months to benefit Taiwan residents in the mainland, and help them enjoy the same status as mainlanders in terms of financial and public services.

A growing presence

The new policies have been formulated as a response to the growing number of people from Taiwan settling in the mainland. According to a report conducted in April by 1111 Job Bank Co in Taiwan, about 700,000 Taiwan residents live and work outside the island, with about 350,000 of them working in the Chinese mainland. Meanwhile, research conducted in March by the Global Views Survey Research Center in Taiwan suggested that nearly 60 percent of Taiwan residents ages 20 to 29 would be willing to work, study or invest in the mainland.

Last year, the number of new businesses in the mainland owned by Taiwan residents rose 32 percent, and by February, nearly 4,000 sole proprietors from the island were operating in the mainland.

More than 20 new policies will be released in the coming months to help Taiwan residents find their feet in mainland cities.

The internet is buzzing about pictures of a 7-year old who is sporting the physique of a world-class athlete.

Local internet site xdkb.net interviewed Chen Yi after he dominated a gymnastics meet in Zhejiang’s capital, Hangzhou, recently.

While Chen Yi won six gold medals and one silver, what have made the headlines are the pictures of him posing!

The boy’s mother, Zhang Hongyu, said that her son was born with innate athletic talent. She claims that when Chen Yi was just 2 years old, he could do a pull-up with just one arm. “He started walking when he was just 11-months old, and he learned to ride a bicycle before kindergarten,” Zhang recalled with a proud smile on her face.

Chen Yi was accepted into the local gymnastics school at the age of five. He now lives at school and only goes home during the weekends. Although his training is tough and intensive, his mother says he never considers giving up.

Asked how he was able to develop his physique, Zhang credits the training her son is going through. “There is nothing special about his diet,” says Zhang “Just like other normal kids, Chen Yi eats around a dozen dumplings for a meal. He also enjoys vegetables, such as cucumber and lettuce.”

Test results now appear to show an attempt at robot-involved pig cloning at a university in Tianjin has been a success, reports the China News.

According to the report, 13 cloned pigs delivered by two separate females in April are unrelated to their “surrogate mothers,” but do have kinship with their DNA donors.

While surrogate cloning is not a new technique, this case involves the entire somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) process being completed robotically, said the research group from Nankai University (NKU).

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), involves taking an enucleated oocyte, or egg cell, and implanting a donor nucleus from the soma, or the body, of another cell. It’s the standard technique used in reproductive cloning.

But because the technique is very precise, the cloning process is considered one of the most complicated in micro-medicine.

Due to the manual failure rates, SCNT done by human hands has led to a bottleneck of the development of cloning technology, according to Nankai University researchers.

To overcome this, the research team from Nankai University has developed the robotic process which it says can significantly reduce the damage done to cells, which should significantly increase the ability of researchers to test new theories in the cloning process.