China :: Commentaries

City Sun , December 29th, 2010 Too much reading combined with poor reading posture work wonders for producing shortsighted kids. With a culture putting emphasis on rote learning, it is no surprising that China has more goggle-clad school children than elsewhere. Here pupils routinely spend eight plus hours every weekday sitting in class reading and writing. It is hard to prevent the tired kids from seeking comfort by laying their heads on their desks and peek at books at a distance too close to be healthy. In Qingdao, the government has that problem well taken care of. According to City Sun, a Qingdao-based paper, the local education bureau has distributed 10,000 anti-myopia devices to students free of charge. The device, as shown on the front page image, is essentially a fixed vertical bar that makes it impossible for kids to stoop forward. The headline of the newspaper reports that in response to the construction of a cross-strait tunnel, the real estate prices in...

Jingjiang Evening News , December 30, 2011 The Chinese government just published its first white paper on the government's anti-corruption efforts. The white paper, compiled by Information Office of the State Council, was self-described as a "thorough and systematic introduction to the basics of the Chinese government's efforts to combat corruption as well as to be a clean government". Citing a statistic released by National Bureau of Statistics of China, the white paper claims that from 2003 to 2010, the Chinese public's satisfaction level with the government's anti-corruption efforts increased from 51.9% to 70.6% with over 83.8% people believing that corruption is "under control" to one degree or another. As a proof of the government's firm determination to root out corruption, the white paper affirms that in 2009, 7,036 government officials received accountability evaluation. 4,332 government officials suspected of corruption...

After another year in which prominent corruption scandals and embarrassing controversies were brought to widespread public attention on the Internet–despite an intensifying clampdown on information by the government–you might think the government isn’t a big fan of the Internet’s role in the corruption issue. Bloomberg News Wu Yuliang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s central commission for discipline inspection, spoke at a news conference in Beijing about anti-corruption efforts on Dec. 29, 2010. Not so, they say. In first white paper on corruption, titled “China’s Efforts to Combat Corruption and Build a Clean Government,” the State Council Information Office, praised the Internet’s role in enhancing public supervision. “In recent years, with the rapid development and popularity of the Internet,” the paper said, “supervision through the Internet has become a new form of supervision by public opinion that spreads quickly, produces great influence ...

by Jonathan Watts Officials welcome citizens' help investigating as high-profile case tests China's 'trust deficit' An activist decapitated, a journalist killed, a lawyer beaten, a magazine closed and an embarrassing legal case mysteriously settled out of court. In the past few days China's netizens have dug their claws into a smorgasbord of crimes and controversies in which the only constant is a reluctance to believe the official version of events. Such is the scale of the trust deficit and the power of online opinion that police took the remarkable step today of welcoming citizen investigators to help investiagte one of China's most high-profile cases. Following a huge internet outcry, they will look into the grisly death of Qian Yunhui, a villager whose neck was severed by the wheels of a truck on a quiet rural road in Xinyi, Zhejiang province, on Saturday. Local officials initially declared the death a "traffic accident", but photogra...

Thursday, 15 March 2007, 10:24 C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BEIJING 001760 SIPDIS SIPDIS EO 12958 DECL: 03/15/2032 TAGS PGOV, PREL, ECON, SOCI, CH SUBJECT: FIFTH GENERATION STAR LI KEQIANG DISCUSSES DOMESTIC CHALLENGES, TRADE RELATIONS WITH AMBASSADOR REF: SHENYANG 26 Classified By: Ambassador Clark T. Randt, Jr. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). Summary ------- 1. (C) Liaoning Party Secretary Li Keqiang, a front runner for elevation to the Politburo this fall and potential successor to President Hu Jintao in 2012, described the challenges he faces as a provincial leader to the Ambassador over dinner on March 12. Engaging and well-informed, Li related that despite brisk economic growth, Liaoning's income gaps remain severe. To create a "harmonious society," he has tried to guarantee minimum living standards by providing new housing to the destitute and a job to every household. The public is dissatisfied with education, health care and housing, but it is corru...

by Tania Branigan Zhang Xuejing's accomplice drove his car into the wrong woman, leaving his victim in a coma A jilted teacher is serving a life sentence after hiring five former students to murder her ex-partner's lover, Chinese media reported today. But an accomplice drove his car into the wrong woman, who has been in a coma since the accident two years ago. Doctors have said it would take a miracle for the victim to recover. Zhang Xuejing from Qingdao, in northern Shandong province, originally told her former student to cause her pregnant rival to miscarry but make it look like an accident. When that plan failed, because the woman had left the mainland to give birth, she told him: "Let's find someone to make her disappear from this world." This week the Guangdong higher people's court ruled that Zhang and Hu Wenqiang, who drove the car, should serve life in prison. The Guangzhou Daily reported that Shi Chunlong, 20, who organised the incident, w...

Former health official demands apology to those who contracted virus because of officially approved blood-selling scheme A retired Chinese health official has called on the government to come clean about a 1990s blood-selling scandal that infected tens of thousands of people with HIV. His appeal this week for a full and open investigation highlights a contradiction in China's Aids policy. Even as the government has become more open and better at treating HIV, it has refused to acknowledge past lapses, which it fears could embolden citizens to challenge its legitimacy. "Not even one word of apology has been given to the victims, much less those who died. This is not how politicians should act," Chen Bingzhong, 78, wrote in an open letter to President Hu Jintao. "How can dealing with such a major disaster this way ever be explained to our countrymen, especially the many victims?" The health ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment. The ...

by Tania Branigan Children at a high school in Guizhou province riot after learning that the cost of dishes had gone up by 5p Generations of British children could sympathise with the impulse to riot over school dinners. But the Chinese teenagers who rampaged through their cafeteria this week were protesting at the rocketing prices of meals rather than the quality of the food. While British students took to the streets to demonstrate against rising tuition fees, those at a school in Guizhou trashed the dinner hall after learning that the cost of dishes had gone up by an average of 0.5 yuan (5p). The south-western province is one of the poorest in China, with more than 5.5 million people living in poverty – 15% of the country's total, according to the state news agency Xinhua. The incident underscores the government's concern that rising food prices could lead to instability. Last week Beijing announced it would sell commodities from its reserves and ordered local o...

by John Hooper In the third of our series on immigration in Europe, John Hooper visits the thriving, Chinese-run pronto moda workshops of Prato You only need to walk a few hundred yards down Via Pistoiese, a narrow road out of Prato, to feel you have travelled several thousand miles. Beyond the bakery, at number 29, Italy all but evaporates. The supermarket shelves offer dried lily flowers, bags of deep-frozen chickens' feet and jars of salted jellyfish. There is a Chinese herbalist, a Chinese jeweller, Chinese restaurants and bars, even a Chinese ice cream parlour. According to the foreign ministry in Beijing, this Tuscan textile city and its surrounding province has the highest concentration of Chinese in any administrative district outside China itself. Silvia Pieraccini, a local journalist and author of a book, L'Assedio Cinese (The Chinese Siege), reckons there are 50,000 Chinese in Prato, and that they make up about 30% of the city's population. But no o...

by Tania Branigan Chongqing announces community service plan to 'educate' a youthful urban elite Supporters say it will help bridge the soaring gap between village and city, giving privileged youth a taste of how others live. Critics complain it has unpleasant echoes of the cultural revolution. The south-western Chinese metropolis of Chongqing has announced that it will send urban-born students to live and work in the countryside for a month as part of a community service plan. Many have welcomed the initiative, which addresses a generational gulf as well as a geographical one: the sharp increase in living standards has created a youthful urban elite with little conception of their parents' struggles. Tu Jingping, deputy secretary-general of the municipal government, said it would improve students' all-round abilities, give them practical skills and help them better understand society. But some dismissed it as a waste of time and others compared it to the 6...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk Woman jailed for life for murdering banker husband by feeding him spiked milkshake and clubbing him to death won appeal against conviction in February The retrial of the American housewife Nancy Kissel will begin in Hong Kong tomorrow after a court quashed her murder conviction earlier this year. Kissel – who was jailed for life for murdering her banker husband by feeding him a spiked milkshake and clubbing him to death – won an appeal against the conviction in Februaryn. The 2005 "milkshake murder" trial captured media attention with tales of rough sex, marital violence and adultery. Kissel, originally from Michigan, appealed against the verdict, saying the prosecution had used hearsay and other forms of inadmissible evidence and that she had been improperly cross-examined. She had admitted killing her husband, Robert, a banker at Merrill Lynch, on 2 November 2003, but pleaded not guilty to murder, a charge that requires ...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk by Tania Branigan Only good-looking women under 23 need apply to become a Chengdu law enforcement officer A good temperament might be an obvious requirement for a city warden. Good looks? Perhaps less so. But authorities in Chengdu, in China's south-western Sichuan province, have said they will hire only attractive young women for the law enforcement jobs, hoping it will improve their district's image. Others say it is a blatant example of widespread looks-based discrimination that hits women harder than men. Economists have noted the "beauty premium" in many places, but employment experts say it flourishes in China thanks to inadequate laws. The Xindu district government's advertisement stipulates that candidates must be female, aged between 18 and 23, over 5ft 2in (1.6m) tall, attractive and with a good temperament. Their contracts will end when they turn 26. China's urban law enforcement officers, known ...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk by Therese Hesketh Thanks to a shortage of girls and carers, only rarely are women forced to abort a baby A story has surfaced on a Chinese blog – subsequently picked up by the Toronto Sun and Al-Jazeera – about a woman from a county in Xiamen city, south-eastern China , who at eight months pregnant was dragged from her home by family planning officials, beaten up, detained for three days and then forced to undergo an abortion. This, it is claimed, was because she already had a nine-year-old daughter and was violating the rules of the one-child policy. Whatever the truth of these allegations, this kind of event is extremely rare now in China – especially in urban China, where it could not be kept secret. The officials involved could expect punishment for such an abuse of their power. In the very early years of the policy in the early 1980s such stories of forced abortion were not rare, but the way the one-child policy has been interp...

from World news: China | guardian.co.uk Xiao Aiying, 36, was allegedly dragged from her home and beaten for violating China's one-child policy A pregnant woman in China was detained, beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the country's one-child limit, her husband said today. Luo Yanquan, a construction worker, said his wife was taken kicking and screaming from their home by more than a dozen people on 10 October and detained in a clinic for three days by family planning officials, then taken to a hospital and injected with a drug that killed her baby. Family planning officials told the couple they were not allowed to have the child because they already have a nine-year-old daughter, Luo said. For the last 30 years, China has limited most urban couples to one child in a bid to curb population growth and conserve its limited resources. China has the world's largest population with more than 1.3...

Apple's relaxed approach to conditions at Asian Foxconn plants hints that outsourced mass production no longer shocks us Next week Apple will release its fourth-quarter fiscal earnings report and, if projections are correct, it will be yet another record-breaking quarter for the electronics monolith, with revenues in excess of £13bn . Needless to say, it's been a good year for Steve Jobs and the rest of the gang in Cupertino. The world's No 1 electronics brand's stock is at a record high that analysts say will continue to rally throughout 2011 due to increasing global demand for the iPad. But there is a minor threat that the feel-good vibes of Apple's supernatural profits will be undermined by a different kind of report. Released earlier this week, Workers as machines: military management in Foxconn is a critical evaluation of the company that manufactures iPhones and iPads, among other brands of gadgetry. Produced by the non-profit organisation Students and Scho...

Village chief death questioned Villagers have expressed skepticism over a local government's claims that a former village chief in Yueqing, Zhejiang Province, who had petitioned authorities over a land acquisition issue, was killed as a result of a car accident. Village chief death questioned Yueqing police said Monday that 53-year-old Qian Yunhui, a former chief of Zhaiqiao village, died after being run over by an engineering truck Saturday while crossing a road. Police detained driver Fei Liangyu from Anhui Province, who does not have a driving license. Internet users posted pictures of Qian's body showing the wheel of the truck on his neck. Some pointed out that Qian should have fallen in line with the direction the truck was driving in, and that his neck should not have ended under the wheel. A statement released by the Yueqing government publicity office said police did not find any evidence pointing to the possibility of murder. Video footage of the accident was not avail...

Chinese President Hu Jintao has visited low-income families in Beijing ahead of the New Year, as he extends his best wishes to people nationwide. Chinese President Hu Jintao (C), also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, talks to people living in a residential community for low-income groups in Beijing, Dec. 29, 2010. On Wednesday morning in freezing temperatures, Hu dropped in on the low-rent apartment in east Beijing where Guo Chunping and her 17-year-old daughter live. Guo, renting the two-bedroom apartment from the government, told the president that thanks to the low-rent housing policy, she and her daughter could finally settle down. 'We did not have a stable place to live for years. Now, living in this apartment, we finally feel at home and safe,' she said, 'The rent is affordable.' The apartment costs her 77 yuan (11.5 U.S. dollars) per month. 'I am glad to see you two have a goo...

A report by a student group campaigning to improve working conditions at Coca Cola bottling plants in China says there has been 'disappointing' progress in fulfilling a pledge to convert temporary staff to full-time employee status. The report from the Coke Concerned Student Group (CCSG) follows earlier highly critical reports that claimed Coca Cola's systematic use of contract staff was a legal device to avoid providing benefits full-time employees are entitled to. The reports also said that long-term use of contract staff is illegal under China's labor law. In December 2009, CCSG was invited to meet in Beijing with managers from Coca Cola and some of its partner companies. Following the meeting, Hong Kong–based Swire Beverages, which operates several Coca Cola bottling plants across China, announced it was planning to convert most production line staff from contract worker status to full-time employees. CCSG's latest report, published on Christmas Day, presents th...

Toilet tour to impart sex education in China Beijing: Allowing boys and girls to peep into each others bathroom to understand gender roles seems to be the new Chinese way to teach sex education in school. Third graders at the Chaoyang district school in Beijing received their first lesson in sex education in the form of a toilet tour on Monday. Giving children an opportunity to peek into the other gender's bathroom is a way to help boys and girls understand gender roles under the new initiative, educators said. "Children tend to be curious about the bathrooms of the opposite sex," sex lecturer Hou Wenjun at Anhuili Central Primary School told Beijing News. Hou believes that education starts with curiosity. "A tour to the bathroom lets children see what behavioural differences there are between the two sexes." Now an official part of the school's curriculum for grades one to 6 (ages 6 to 11), sex education begins with the fundamental subject of ...

China corruption problem 'still very serious' - report Continue reading the main story Changing China John Humphrys: Migrating millions China's new industrial revolution Winners and losers of boom China's leaders-in-waiting? China says its corruption problem is "still very serious" and has set out new measures to tackle it. There was public anger over the activities of Wen Qiang, executed after he was convicted of rape and taking bribes In a new report on the fight against corruption, the authorities say more than 200,000 cases have been investigated since 2003. They say their efforts to date have "yielded notable results" but resolve to make them more effective. Critics say that corruption is ingrained in the system and new regulations will not solve the problem. The report carried by the official state news agency Xinhua says that between 2003 and 2009, prosecutors investigated more than 240,000 cases, including embezzlement and bribery. It highli...