Turning to tax issues in China. Shanghai tax officials said at a press conference Thursday that they're planning wide-ranging reforms to the city's tax administration. The changes will have two major dimensions -- one is to punish tax dodgers and companies for faking invoices. The other will set up an online platform to enable companies and individuals to pay taxes more conveniently. Our reporter Yu Wen has the story.

Shanghai has been working for some time to stamp out false invoicing and other forms of corporate tax dodging. In the first six months of the year, over 400 local companies were investigated for a total of more than 340 thousand false invoices representing some 8 billion yuan in taxes. The city's tax officials say that they are now sharing their data with banks, customs, and public security bureaus to intensify the crackdown on tax cheats.

JIANG ZHENPING, DEPUTY DIRECTOR SHANGHAI MUNICIPAL TAX SERVICE "The Tax Service has released 66 'blacklist' cases so far this year. We and 34 departments will be punishing those companies, including banning criminal suspects from leaving the county. The firms will be restricted or even banned from operating, investments, bidding, procurement, and buying land."

Another major part of the tax reform, however, is the establishment of an electronic tax payment system which went online yesterday. The system is accessible by the tax department, commercial banks, and the taxpayers themselves. They're calling it the "three-party deal".

LI JUNKUN, CHIEF ACCOUNTANT SHANGHAI MUNICIPAL TAX SERVICE "During the trial period, 587 tax accounts were set up online. If 300,000 tax-paying households signed up for the system each year, overall time required to account for their taxes would be reduced by 600 thousand hours, and the paperwork files could be reduced by some 700 thousand."

Experts say that companies signing up for the new system need to be aware of its stringent controls, however.

ROBERT LI, INDIRECT TAX LEADER PWC CHINA "Things have been improved a lot over the last ten years with the tremendous efforts of tax authorities, especially in the last few years with the introduction of the Golden Tax Face 3, the system is used by the taxpayers to issue invoices, and once they issue invoice, the information is uploaded to the tax bureau database so that it can do the examinations and assessments. In the meantime, I think the challenge for taxpayers is that they need to have a well-established internal control process and also their tax management system because right now all the tax invoicing can be digitized for the purchase, the sales, the tax compliance, the filing, etc."

The digitization of tax payments not only ensures the safety and privacy of taxpayers but also streamlines the tax paying process -- from one to two days to only two minutes. The increased effectiveness of the tax system is aimed at creating a better business environment in Shanghai.