Beijing, Oct 15 : Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari met his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao here on Wednesday as he looked towards inking a series of agreements, including on civilian nuclear cooperation and securing a financial aid package.

During the visit, Beijing and Islamabad are expected to sign a possible deal on civil nuclear power cooperation.

Beijing  - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari held talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday as the two nations signed economic cooperation agreements covering satellites, trade, mining, agriculture and other sectors.

State media quoted Hu as saying that Zardari's family were "all old friends of the Chinese people" and praising Zardari's late wife, Benazir Bhutto, and her father, Ali Bhutto, for their "outstanding contributions to the opening and development of China-Pakistan relations."

London, Oct 15 : China will transform itself into a working democracy in just over a decade, according to one of the country’s most influential reformers.

Zhou Tianyong, an adviser to the Communist Party’s Central Committee and one of its most liberal voices, said that “by 2020, China will basically finish its political and institutional reforms.”

“We have a 12-year plan to establish a democratic platform. There will be public democratic involvement at all government levels,” he added.

Zhou also predicted of “extensive public participation in policy-making, such as drawing up new legislation.”

Melbourne, Oct 15 : Roaming around in Beijing’s Forbidden City would not require people to take a flight to the Communist nation, for now a virtual three dimensional recreation of the vast palace allows people to tour the grand place without leaving their living room.

In fact, the new virtual palace designed by IBM, also allows the visitors to dress up as an imperial eunuch and meet a courtesan.

Online tourists can also watch the Qing dynasty emperor feast at dinner, train fighting crickets and feed them with blood-fattened mosquitoes, or practice archery with the help of a courtesan.

The virtual palace, dubbed "Beyond Space and Time." was unveiled on October 10.

New Delhi, October 15 : China has about 84.5 million people who use their cellular phones to surf the Internet, nearly 30 per cent of the total number of netizens in the country, according to an industry expert.

Yang Zemin, director of the Telecom Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that 68.7 million new cell phone users were registered in the first eight months, bringing the population of mobile users to about 616 million.

He reckoned that the population of Internet users had touched the 275 million mark by the end of September, 85 per cent of whom were broadband users.

He said that the number of fixed-line users was declining, reports the China Daily.

Beijing - Russia on Tuesday formally returned to China half of an island that was seized in 1929 by troops of the former Soviet Union during a border skirmish.

Chinese and Russian diplomats and defence officials held a ceremony to unveil new boundary markerson Heixiazi (Bolshoi Ussuriysky) Island in a border river, the government said.

The two nations signed a final agreement in July on disputed areas along their 4,300-kilometre border, with Russia reportedly conceding 174 square kilometres, including two small islands in the river.