WEEKLY WATCH

WEEKLY WATCH

OPINION

Expensive Equipm ent

The Liuzhou Traffic Police Detachment in southw est China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region recently demanded automobile owners use new equipment to attach license plates at the price of 27 yuan($4). But the state’s w ritten regulation puts the price at only 1 yuan ( $0.15).

Liuzhou’s traffic management department repeatedly said the M inistry of Public Security had ordered the change, and the 27 yuan worth of equipment was not sold by the department, but by the Liuzhou Vehicle Driver Association. Strangely, this association is the only franchise for the new equipment in the city and its office is inside the yard of the Liuzhou Traffic Police Detachment. Liuzhou is now home to more than 300,000 motor vehicles. Sold for 27 yuan, this equipment means big business.

Like the case of the Liuzhou traffi c departments, some grassroots governmental institutions often force consumers to buy certain commodities as a way of harvesting easy and huge profi ts.

Administrative powers do have the responsibility to regulate and supervise the market, but their hands should not stretch too far. It should never order consumers to buy a certain product from a certain producer. It is not only an abuse of power, but the public will suspect collaboration between the authority and the business.Ordinary consumers have no other choice than to buy the designated product. This is more like another form of adm inistrative fee collection than a trade.

It’s hoped the incident will make more places check up on and elim inate similar coerced trade imposed by an administrative power.

Workers’ Daily

Better Care for the Aged

In Taohe Care House in Yingshan County of central China’s Hubei Province, an elderly man w ith mental problems died after being left cold and hungry for a whole night recently, because he had angered the care worker. Of the 17 elderly people at the house, 10 are visually—or vocally—impaired or have mental disorders, so they are seldom visited by their relatives. Local villagers say the elderly inhabitants of the house are often abused.

Yingshan County has 51,826 old people above the age of 60. Of the 6,055 who meet the qualification for the state’s special welfare treatment, only 2,477 people actually enjoy it. The general standard is that every care house should be equipped w ith at least three workers, but this one only had one director and one worker—the case in many care houses in the county.

China is now home to 167 million people above the age of 60. The conditions in the Taohe Care House somewhat epitomize care houses across the country. The expanding group of aging people find themselves unable to afford living in a care home at all.

The shortage of professional and cheap care houses is related to the surging number of old people, but more importantly, it results from insufficient financial input by the government. The US’ input into social security amounts to 73 percent of the national budget,but in China it is only 25.5 percent.

An old man who died lonely on a cold night in sheltered housing is a doleful picture. This extreme incident calls for a betterdeveloped social security system to take care of the old and weak and to reduce these tragedies in today’s civilized world.

China Youth Daily

Sm oking Burdens

The Director of the National Tobacco Control Office Yang Gonghuan said at a recent media forum there were now 740 million people who are passive smokers in China. In 2007,there were 540 million. He said if people continued to turn a blind eye to the risk of secondhand smoking, it would cause a huge medical burden.

China is home to one third of the world’s smokers, w ith 350 million smokers above the age of 15. Now the question is: Who is responsible for the huge medical burden secondhand smoking brings?

SHORTAGE: Due to an expand ing ag ing popu lation,inexpensive and good care houses are becom ing inc reasing ly inaccessib le. A com fo rtab le environm ent such as this one in Yuqing County, Guizhou Province,is the d ream o f m any senio r c itizens

In 2005, the direct cost of smoking, that is, the cost of smoking-related diseases,amounted to 166.5 billion yuan ( $24.5 billion). But the medical burdens caused by smokers now have to be borne by passive smokers. In China, victims are used to staying silent and coping with the damage caused solely by themselves or their families.

The large amounts of false advertising and tobacco companies’ refusal to expose harmful ingredients in cigarettes have kept Chinese smokers in ignorance of the harm of smoking.

In accordance with China’s Tort Liability Law, tobacco smoke may constitute “tort liabilities,” which means the Chinese have legal support to deal with tobacco-related lawsuits.

It’s unfair to transfer the medical burden to the ordinary public who are actually victims of smoking. Now the legal base is there, but whether the lawsuits can really bring tobacco companies to justice is still unknown. It depends on the ordinary people’s awareness of smoking risks and more importantly on the attitude of China’s judicial institutions and law enforcement agencies toward passive smokers’troubles.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph

Governm ent Purchases

On the list of to-be-purchased mobile facilities for the Fushun Finance Bureau in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, the Apple iPod Touch 4 (32G) is designated as a USB flash disk. At the price of 2,398 yuan($352.6), this device’s major functions are video, audio and games playing. This bureau is so wealthy it spends more than 2,000 yuan($294.1) on a new ly developed Apple product as a USB flash disk.

In this case, obviously, some of the government staff are taking advantage of the purchase to meet their own demands. This is not any different from embezzling public funds.

The question is why this purchase plan was ratified. The incident has triggered public concern: Does it often happen that goods purchased in the name of government office equipment are ultimately embezzled?The only way to deter greedy officials from wasting money is to punish them, making them take accountability for what they have done. The ones to be held accountable must be officials, not ordinary work staff. Besides, strict supervision, internal and external, on government’s purchase procedures is very important.Otherw ise, embezzlement and corruption can’t be rooted out.

Yangtze Evening News

SOCIETY

Tim ely Subsidies

China w ill raise the pensions for retired enterprise employees and increase living allowances for college students from impoverished families, against increased inflation.

The State Council decided on December 22 to raise the retired enterprise employees’pensions about 10 percent from 2010 levels,or about 140 yuan ($21.2) per person per month on average, beginning January 1,2011.

There are more than 50 m illion retired enterprise employees in China. It is the sixth consecutive year China has raised the pensions for retired enterprise employees.

The State Council also decided to increase state allowances for 4.3 m illion needy college students from the current 2,000 yuan($303) per student per year to 3,000 yuan($455).

It also decided to extend tuition waivers to 4.4 m illion vocational school students,and provide 1,500 yuan ($227) in allowance to each of China’s 4.82 m illion needy high school students on annual basis.

Grim Prospects

China is expected to meet its pollution control targets for the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-10), but challenges w ill be“fairly arduous” in the next development period, M inister of Environmental Protection Zhou Shengxian said on December 21.

Zhou said the sulfur dioxide index is expected to drop 14 percent in 2010 compared w ith 2005. A lso, the index of Chem ical Oxygen Demand (COD), a measure of water pollution, is expected to decrease 12 percent.

The 11th Five-Year Plan comm its to reducing COD and sulfur dioxide levels by 10 percent during its implementation.

Besides sulfur dioxide and COD, Zhou said, the levels of ammoniacal nitrogen and nitrogen oxides, both major air and water pollutants, kept increasing. He said pollution from motor vehicles and agriculture was becoming more obvious.

Car Curbs

Beijing w ill lim it the issue of new car plates to 240,000 annually in an effort to ease the capital city’s traffic jams.

Car buyers w ill have to obtain car plates by draw ing lots before they can drive their cars on road, said the Beijing M unicipal Commission of Transport at a press briefing on December 23.

The new po licy w ill take effect on January 1, 2011, the comm ission said.

In 2010, more than 700,000 new cars were sold in Beijing, bringing the capital city’s total number of registered automobiles to more than 4.7 million.

Em bezzled Funds

Auditors found in June 142 million yuan($21.5 million) was w rongly paid to central government agencies as reimbursements for fake invoices, and now 68.31 percent of the funds, or 97.37 million yuan ($14.8 million),have been recovered.

The remaining fake invoices, valued at 45.03 million yuan ($6.8 m illion), have been transferred to supervisory departments or judicial authorities for further investigation,according to a report submitted on December 22 to the 18th Session of the Standing Comm ittee of the 11th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.

A total of 5,170 was confirmed as fake among the 29,363 “problematic” invoices submitted by 56 central government agencies, says the report.

According to the report, the National Audit Office had recovered 5.34 billion yuan ($809 million) of funds, which were found embezzled in 2009, by the end of October of this year.

A total of 95 officials were arrested,prosecuted, or convicted in the process, and 1,103 received disciplinary punishment.

FAIR PLAY On Decem ber 18, Wang Yuquan(left), a resident in Beichuan Coun ty,Sichuan Province w ho survived the catastrophic 8.0-m agnitude earthquake in May 2008, uses a lottery m achine to dec ide on the schem e fo r d istribu ting hom es in a rebuilt comm unity to his fellow villagers

ECONOMY

A Boost to Im ports

China w ill add more items to its preferential technologies and products import catalog to boost mechanical and electrical products imports, said Zhang Ji, Director of the Department of Mechanic, Electronic and Hi-tech Industry of the M inistry of Commerce.

Emerging industries and traditional equipment manufacturing w ill now be included in the catalog.

An active import policy w ill help satisfy Chinese demand for production factors as the country transforms its econom ic development model and updates its industrial structure.

The move will cut China’s trade surplus,he said.

RMB Bond Index

Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd. w ill launch the Bank of China (Hong Kong)Offshore RMB Bond Index on December 31, the fi rst offshore renminbi bond index in Hong Kong, the bank said on December 20.

The offshore renm inbi bond index includes those offshore renminbi bonds w ith relatively high liquidity based on a set of pre-defined criteria on constituent bonds selection. This renminbi-denominated bond index is designed to track the total-return performance, including accrued interest as well as capital gains and losses, of offshore renm inbi bonds.

The index includes 28 constituent offshore renminbi bonds worth some 54 billion yuan ($8.1 billion) in total, representing around 90 percent of the market universe in terms of value.

HK GDP Up

Hong Kong’s GDP rose 6.8 percent in real terms in the third quarter of 2010 year on year by using chain volume measures, the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department said on December 20.

Net output in all service activities rose 6.9 percent in real terms in the quarter.

Net output in financing, insurance, real estate and business services sectors rose 3.6 percent in the third quarter, beating the 0.9 percent increase in the second quarter.

Net output in the wholesale, retail, imports and exports, and the restaurants and hotels sectors grew 15.2 percent.

Robust trade flows brought a 4.4-percent rise in net output in the transport, storage and communications sectors in real terms in the third quarter.

Telecom Revenue

China’s telecom industry reported 819.03 billion yuan ($123 billion) in main business revenue for the fi rst 11 months of 2010, up 6.6 percent year on year, the M inistry of Industry and Information Technology said on December 21.Mobile telecommunications income accounted for 69.82 percent of the total.

Gas Prices Increase

The Chinese Government raised oil prices for the third time this year, citing surging international crude oil prices.

Gasoline and diesel prices were raised by 310 yuan ($46) per ton and 300 yuan ($45.8)per ton, respectively, beginning December 22, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The adjustment would raise the benchmark retail price of gasoline by 0.23 yuan($0.0346) per liter and diesel by 0.26 yuan($0.0391) per liter.

The NDRC pledged subsidies to lowincome fam ilies, farmers, taxi drivers and other sectors that could be hurt by the price adjustment.

The rise in fuel prices was a move to restrain rapid increases in the country’s oil consumption and boost energy conservation.

any related training and has only four years’ school experience. How has he become a care worker and also temporary director?