China's new media regulations, concerning the press cards, will go into effect on March 1, the General Administration of Press and Publication, the country's press watchdog, said in Beijing Wednesday.

Nearly 150,000 journalists throughout the country have so far received the newly designed press cards.
   
According to the relevant stipulations, Chinese reporters should change their press cards every five years. The work for current press card change began in November 2003. By January 2005,the General Administration of Press and Publication had issued 146,541 new press cards.
   
Taking advantage of the reissuing of the cards, the government launched a series of reforms on the making, issuance, checking and management of press cards.
   
The old cards were marked according to the type of media. Reporters from newspapers, magazines, news agencies, broadcasting stations and TV stations used to carry different style press cards.
   
The practice made it difficult to distinguish phony cards and made it easy to impersonate a reporter, said an official with the administration.
   
The new cards have nine new counterfeit-proof technologies.
   
The cards are all registered in the administration's official website, press.gapp.gov.cn, allowing interviewees to check the authenticity of the cards. The new regulations also order reporters to carry and show press cards on their own initiative in interviews.
   
The regulations also stipulate that government officials should not hold concurrent posts in local offices of newspapers. The law also forbids newspaper offices from engaging in commercial activities.
   
The government used the issuing of the new cards to create update statistics about journalists working in China.
   
Of the 150,000 journalists in China, more than 70,000 are writers for newspapers and magazines. More than 60,000 are from broadcasting and TV stations and others represent news agencies.
   
Statistics from the General Administration of Press and Publication show that 98 percent of Chinese journalists have received higher education; 64 percent joined the occupation after undergraduate work and 13 percent earned master's degrees.
   
According to the statistics, most of the reporters are young and middle-aged, with those aged between 20 and 30 accounting for 29 percent, those 30 to 40 making up 27 percent and reporters aged40 to 50 accounting for 24 percent.
   
Women have hold up the "half sky" of the press, as they account for 41 percent of total reporters. With 1,300 journalists working for magazines, 700 are women.

(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2005)