Pre-school education The top legislature will begin making a law on pre-school education to regulate the fast-growing sector that has drawn increasing public concern. The process will be initiated in the five years starting from 2018 within the term of the sitting Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress, according to the NPC legislative agenda released this week. “The need to draft such a law has become pressing,” said Li Lihua, an NPC deputy familiar with the legislation. Spending on pets A recent report found that China’s consumer market related to pets reached 170.8 billion yuan (US$24.9 billion) in 2018, an increase of 27 percent from a year earlier, according to the 2018 White Paper on China’s Pet Industry. The number of pet owners in China’s cities and towns now totals 73.55 million, the white paper says. Among them 33.9 million are dog owners, 22.58 million are cat owners, and there are also aquarium pet owners. It shows that 87.5 percent of dog owners were women, half of them had a bachelor’s degree or above, and the majority were employees in companies. Internet court The country’s second Internet court opened in Beijing on Sunday as authorities step up measures to protect business transactions, and intellectual property online. The Beijing Internet Court is given the jurisdiction* to handle certain types of Internet-related cases that should be tried by a primary-level people’s court in Beijing in the first instance. Disputes in online shopping, service contracts, lending, copyrights, and domains are among the typical cases. Illegal animal trade The online trade of nationally protected animals appears to be rife on Xianyu, Alibaba’s app for second-hand goods, reported Xinhua on Friday. Protected animals like the white-tailed sea eagle*, golden parakeet* and leopards were found on the app. After a tip-off* from one of the app’s users, the Shenzhen Forest Police launched an investigation into the selling of a white-tailed sea eagle, which is listed as a first class national protected animal.(SD-Agencies) | 