basically the ways to use punctuations are really similar to those are used in English. The answers for all of your questions are Yes.

Wow. There's so much that's different. That sentence is thousands of miles long!! I will definitely have to investigate this matter further. Thanks again for everyone's contribution on this issue.

In Chinese most punctuation is exactly the same as english, but I've noticed they use commas a more in their writing, many times in places that an English speaker might use a period. When translating, I often have to translate one Chinese sentence into several sentences in English. For example: 宁波市公共自行车公司一位相关负责人跟记者“倒了苦水”：其实去年，当地就发生过类似的“熊孩子”暴力破坏自行车事件，当时是几个十多岁辍了学的孩子暴力拖车，经过教育后，他们的家长出面赔了钱，事情也算是得到了圆满解决。 Another difference is they put movie, t.v. show and book titles in brackets.《人民的名义》

You can google "国家标准标点符号" to access the Chinese national standard of punctuation usage. The explanation is very clear.

yes，you can use comma if there are phrases,but in Chinese we have this “、” to serialize a list. about semicolons，yes they do.