The media might have hyped or even presented Jiang's bows and salutes in a different light. But such incidents can as well be another reminder on how important it is for officials to be media savvy.

As China's new leaders take the helm this week, they will inherit a job as challenging as it is enviable.

China's new leadership should prioritize Europe as an economic partner as it is more open than the US, said veteran European politician Romano Prodi.

"If China has made such great progress, it is because the CPC rejected copying Western commercial institutions, creating instead a model that had a natural fit with Chinese experience and needs."

"Dysfunction of the current world financial system is so deep that the classic recipes do not work. The West cannot conduct strategies to resolve the economic crisis without the Chinese. "

The current family-planning policy did not create the current demographic trends, but it has amplified them. That is why some of China's leading demographers now argue for an adjustment to the policy.

It is noticeable that the new crop of deputies to the National People's Congress and new members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee are younger, better educated and from more diverse career backgrounds, and that fewer of them are government officials.

All of us should keep a kitchen diary, showing how much food leaves our home uneaten, as garbage. We all waste food, you and me, every day, millions of tons of it. In China, enough food is wasted in restaurants every year to feed 200 million people. In the United States, 40 percent of food is wasted from farm to fork. Each year, the amount of food thrown away in rich countries is almost the same as that produced in sub-Saharan Africa. This raises some important questions.

Recent statistics published by the National Bureau of Statistics indicate that China's working-age population decreased by 3.45 million during 2012. This was the first decline in decades, and it has caused widespread concern that the country's demographic dividend is coming to an end.

As we commemorate International Women's Day, we must look back on a year of shocking crimes of violence against women and girls and ask ourselves how to usher in a better future.

China's anti-smoking campaign has become a drag after a deputy to National People's Congress said she felt powerless to act as little progress has been made in seven years.

Many of the policy elements are part of the 12th Five-Year Plan and were reconfirmed at the recent 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The Chinese People's Political Consulta-tive Conference is already in session and the National People's Congress will convene on Tuesday.

The annual session of the National People's Congress will mark the official transfer of power from China's fourth generation leadership to the fifth. The NPC session will also see Premier Wen Jiabao present his last government work report.

China has transformed from a borderline to a middle-income country thanks to its 30 years of reform and opening-up, and is striving to build an all-round well-off society.