China's earthquake monitoring department managed to detect and report an earthquake within 10 minutes thanks to a new digital network, the China Earthquake Administration announced in Beijing on Friday.

The network, under construction since June 2004, passed a test by a 19-member expert panel. It has cut the time needed to report an earthquake from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, said Chen Xinlian, the CEA's chief engineer for the new network.

The network can detect a quake as small as 2.5 on the Richter scale, compared with 4.5 in the past, he said. In six areas of China that have volcanic activity, it can detect an earthquake of just 1.0 on the Richter scale, he added.

As part of the 2.28-billion-yuan (US$325 million) project, China has built state-of-the-art detection stations in all 31 provincial divisions on the mainland and linked them by computer.

According to an earlier CEA report, China has about 1,200 earthquake monitoring stations, and 25 provincial divisions have set up emergency teams for earthquake rescue and relief.

(Shanghai Daily/Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2008)