Suggestions and blueprints are being collected from home and abroad to help renovate the Great Wall, which now faces unprecedented devastation due to natural weathering, graffiti and out-of-order construction.

"We have received more than 330 pieces of advice on how to repair the 'scars' on the Great Wall," Dong Huiyao, vice-president of the Great Wall Society of China, said Tuesday.

All these suggestions will be sent to an expert committee under the society's guidance to map out concrete renovation measures, Dong said.

The ongoing campaign, jointly launched by the society and the scenic administration bureau of Badaling, aims to raise people's awareness of the problem.

As the Chinese saying goes, "He who does not climb the Great Wall is not a true man." The Wall at Badaling received more than 200,000 true men, women and children during the week-long National Day holiday this year.

But nearly every touchable brick from the Badaling section is carved with people's names or graffiti, either in Chinese or foreign languages, said a staff member with the society.

Tourists have used knives to carve remarks and incisions of up to half a centimetre in depth, or have painted on the wall with ink and paint. The earliest graffiti can be traced to the 1950s.

Checks on more than 100 spots organized by Dong's society indicated that less than 20 per cent of the Great Wall constructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) is in good condition. And Badaling is not the only place. Other places report that the Wall was unable to withstand erosion caused by the elements and calamities inflicted by people.

Local residents have carted off Great Wall bricks to build their houses, sheep corrals and pigsties. Some parts were demolished to make way for roads and residential buildings.

Almost a 100-metre stretch of the Wall in Xinxing Village, Zhongwei city in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was destroyed in January after being plundered for road-building materials, reports said.

Dong told China Daily the State Council is drafting a regulation to protect the Great Wall as a whole, which it hopes will take effect next year.

The 629-kilometre section of the Great Wall in the Beijing area is already protected by a municipality regulation that went into effect from August 1, 2003.

Experts hailed it a good start in protecting the cultural heritage, which is actually a series of walls built and rebuilt by different dynasties over 2,000 years.

China's home-grown human bird flu vaccine is at least a year away from hitting the market but clinical tests on people have been approved by the government, head of the research drug company said on Friday.

Development of the vaccine -- called Panflu -- started last year after bird flu outbreaks in Thailand and Vietnam and animal trials have already been completed, said Yin Weidong, managing director of Sinovac Biotech.

Underscoring the urgency of the research, China this week said that a second person had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, and health officials expect there to be more deaths as the pandemic in poultry continues to spread in China.

"It is not a virus that is spreading from human to humans, so we are very optimistic," Yin told Reuters in an interview.

H5N1 made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six people. The virus resurfaced in late 2003 and is known to have infected 130 people in several parts of Asia, killing 68 of them.

"It is not decided yet when the human trials will begin. We just got approval on November 22 by the State Food and Drug Administration and now we are adjusting our research schedule according to the approval," Yin said.

Initial human testing on 100 volunteers will take 210 days and then there will be a production cycle of 128 days before the vaccine is ready for market, said Yin from his office near the university district in northwest Beijing.

"I can't say specifically when we will start human trials, but we will begin as soon as possible."

SARS BEATEN, BIRD FLU NEXT

Experts say experimental vaccines for bird flu are unlikely to be a good match for an H5N1 strain that may eventually emerge in transmissible form among humans.

Using current technology it takes 6 months or more to make a new flu vaccine and there is no way to predict what a pandemic strain might look like.

As a measure of the importance the government attaches to the company, which also makes ordinary influenza and hepatitis vaccines, Premier Wen Jiabao visited Sinovac Biotech last week.

Pictures in the entrance of the facility, which is partly government-funded, show a visit by President Hu Jintao as well.

The company also researched a vaccine for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which surfaced in southern China in 2003, spread to the rest of Asia and North America and killed hundreds of people.

Development stopped when the crisis abated, though the firm is proud of its association with SARS. A red banner hanging over the entrance to the laboratory reads: "We have successfully conquered SARS and we are confident we can conquer bird flu."

China, the world's largest poultry-producing nation, has confirmed three cases of human bird flu. The third person, a nine-year-old boy, recovered. His dead sister is a suspected case.

Yin said he was confident of success, though.

"The development of the human bird flu vaccine is pure influenza vaccine research and it has less uncertain factors than SARS research," he said. "The possibility of successful research is greater than with the SARS vaccine."

Fourteen people have so far been killed and 20 others seriously injured in an earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale Saturday in a region between Jiujiang and Ruichang in east China's Jiangxi Province.

Information from the State Seismic Bureau said five of the death toll occurred in Ruichang City, and seven in Jiujiang, where 20 people were also seriously injured, and two more in Wuxue, a city facing Jiujiang across the Yangtze River in central China's Hubei Province.

The quake was also felt in northern Jiangxi Province, eastern Hubei Province, southern Anhui Province, northwestern Zhejiang Province and northeastern Hunan Province.

China National Seismic Observation Network monitored a quake jolted northern Jiangxi around 8:49 a.m. Saturday, with the epicenter being located at 29.7 degree north latitude, 115.7 degree east longitude.

The State Seismic Bureau sent two work teams to give guidance to rescue operation in the quake-hit area. Teams dispatched by local seismic bureaux of Jiangxi, Hubei and Fujian provinces are also on their way to the quake-stricken region to render help.