China on Friday rejected reports in India suggesting that the dam it is building upstream on the Brahmaputra river was causing its lower reaches to dry up, and reiterated its commitment to Indian officials that it had neither embarked on any diversion projects nor built any large dams in Tibet.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters that China had not developed any new projects, besides the Zangmu dam on the river's middle reaches, work on which began in 2010 and which is a run-of-the-river project that would have minimal impact downstream.

China has announced it will accelerate plans to expand a railway network in Tibet to reach two towns near the border with India and will also consider building a railway line to Nepal, officials said this week.

New railway lines from Lhasa to Xigaze (Shigatse in Tibetan) and the town of Nyingchi, which lies in a prefecture bordering Arunachal Pradesh, will be built as key projects under a five-year development plan (2011-15) for the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which was announced on Wednesday.

China has said it will almost double its definition of the poverty threshold to enable an additional 100 million people to access social subsidies, a move that comes as the government looks to address a fast-widening income gap.

The government said this week it would raise the poverty threshold to 2,300 yuan ($362 or Rs.18,630) as the annual income for farmers — an 80-per cent increase from the 1,274 yuan defined last year. This brings China's poverty line to a little under a dollar a day, and closer to the $1.25 level defined by the World Bank.

China on Friday signed a long-expected contract, which has drawn much attention in Indian strategic circles, under which the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association (COMRA) will get exclusive rights to explore 10,000 square-km of seabed in the southwest Indian Ocean in an area off the coast of Africa, state media reported.

Under the deal with the International Seabed Authority (ISA), COMRA can explore polymetallic sulphide ore deposits in the region over the next 15 years.

Testifies to the nation's growing prowess in space

China on Thursday evening successfully launched its first space laboratory module, a key first step in its objective of becoming only the third country, after Russia and the United States, to assemble its own space station by 2020.

It took Chinese engineers only 39 months to build the country's grandest yet infrastructure project

The Chinese government on Tuesday indicated it would not divert the waters of the Brahmaputra river, saying it would take into