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You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Liu Yan in Beijing.
Almost 100 Tsinghua University students have signed a pledge to advocate gender equality at an event held at the university to launch United Nations-backed solidarity campaign "He-For-She" in China.
Roberta Clarke, regional director of UN Women Asia Pacific, said at the event while the pledge is symbolic, specific action is encouraged to contribute to social change.
Clarke called on those who sign up to define what they will do to make a difference. She distinctly referred to the issues of gender inequality including a preference for boys which has led to a skewed sex ration in China.
The campaign is aimed mainly at males, engaging men and boys in removing the social and cultural barriers that prevent women and girls from achieving their full potential.
The organizers of HeForShe claim to have received gender equality commitments from hundreds of thousands of men around the world, including Heads of State, CEOs and global luminaries, since it was launched in September.
23-year-old graduate student at Tsinghua, Long Yifan, said girls and women are still disadvantaged in China, particularly in the job market.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Massive crop failure was reported in rice fields where strains developed by China's "father of hybrid rice" Yuan Longping were cultivated.
Significant crop loss caused by rice blast, a deadly disease affecting cultivated rice, hit almost 700 hectares of rice fields last year in Anhui province, a major rice producer in East China.
In the worst-hit areas, the yield of rice plummeted from 7,500 kilograms per hectare in average years to 750 kilograms per hectare last year, or even to none.
Local farmers blamed misleading advertisements for their loss.
On the package of seeds sold to farmers, the ad claims the strains have high disease-resistance levels, with an incidence rate of 25 percent. But inside the package, a piece of paper is attached, which says the seeds are of level-9 disease-resistance, suggesting the possibility of catching a disease is as high as 100 percent.
In response, the Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Company says the poor yield in the autumn harvest season last year was mainly a result of a natural disaster which affected not only rice fields of the hybrid-rice strains developed by the company, but also other varieties.
The Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture Company was founded in 1999 to promote super high-yield hybrid rice.
