Archive for ‘Good news’

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10/07/2012

* New rule to rein in Chinese govt spending

China Daily: “Officials face removal from their posts if they are found overspending on vehicles, receptions and overseas trips, according to new regulation released on Monday.

The regulation issued by the State Council are the first legal documents that ask authorities above county level to include spending on the three items in budgets. The rules will take effect from Oct 1.

The regulation is the latest in a series of moves the central government has taken in recent years to promote transparency and fight abuse of taxpayers’ money amid public complaints.”

via New rule to rein in govt spending |Politics |chinadaily.com.cn.

More and more steps are being taken to rein in excesses of party cadres and officials. Is this because of the 10-year leadership change or a desire to be more retrained with the public becoming more aware and assertive?

See also:

Posted in China alert, Good news, Politics | 1 Comment »

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04/07/2012

The sooner the better as it will take 15 to 20 years before any effect is felt.

 

See also: Sex disparity

Posted in China alert, Good news, One-child policy | 4 Comments »

04/07/2012

Public self awareness, self analysis and open self criticism are seldom followed by ruling parties.

See also: ability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to retain the loyalty of its citizens

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04/07/2012

* China vows to improve food safety in 3 years

China Daily: “The State Council on Tuesday announced a decision to markedly improve food safety, aiming to effectively solve prominent problems in three years.

According to a State Council statement posted online, the government also aims to establish a better regulation mechanism, legal and standard system as well as technical support for food safety and improve the overall food safety management level of the food industry in around five years.

Food safety will become a measure of local governments’ performance in their annual assessment for the first time, the statement said.

A database of food safety records of food companies will be established and those on the black list will be disclosed and punished, it said.

Authorities must prevent expired food products from returning to the market, while consumers will be rewarded in cash for reporting illegal acts.

The Chinese public has become increasingly concerned over food safety after a slew of scares — from melamine-tainted baby formula products to pork contaminated with clenbuterol — exposed the vulnerability of the country’s food sector.

Authorities detected 15,000 cases of substandard food and shut down 5,700 unlicensed businesses during their inspections on food businesses across the country since the beginning of 2012, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said last month.

Dairy products, edible oils, seasonal foods and alcoholic beverages were among the major food categories targeted during the inspections.”

via China vows to improve food safety in 3 years |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.

See also: Social tensions and human rights issues, incl food safety

This follows on from the defeat of the Chinese volleyball team due to having to subsist on vegetarian dishes due to concerns about tainted meat: http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=158271eb42848310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=HK+%26+China&s=Sport

Posted in China alert, Food safety, Good news | 1 Comment »

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04/07/2012

* China Says No More Shark Fin Soup at State Banquets

NY Times: “China said Tuesday that it would prohibit official banquets from serving shark fin soup, an expensive and popular delicacy blamed for a sharp decline in global shark populations.

Fishermen displayed their sharks for sale at a market in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2011. Rapid economic growth across Asia has increased the demand for shark fin soup.

The ban, reported by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, could take as many as three years to take effect, and it remains unclear how widely it will be adhered to across a sprawling nation where orders issued by Beijing are often shrugged off by officials in faraway regions and provinces.

Still, the decision to stop serving shark fin soup at official functions was welcomed by environmental campaigners. Experts have long cautioned that soaring demand for the soup over the past two decades has imperiled shark populations around the globe.

“This is a very positive step forward,” said Andy Cornish, director of conservation at W.W.F. in Hong Kong. “It is the first time that the Chinese central government has expressed a decision to phase out shark fin from banquets funded by taxpayers’ money.” He said the move would send an important signal to consumers in China, the largest market for the fins.”

via China Says No More Shark Fin Soup at State Banquets – NYTimes.com.

Maybe the Japanese will stop killing whales!

Posted in China alert, Ecology, Environment, Good news | 1 Comment »

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27/06/2012

* China punishes officials over late-term abortion case

BBC News: “A Chinese official has been sacked and others punished over the case of a woman forced to have a late-term abortion, state-run media report.

A relative said the couple were being harassed, with banners apparently calling them traitors in Shaanxi

An investigation showed that officials “used crude means” to persuade Feng Jianmei to agree to the abortion, Xinhua news agency reports.

Ms Feng’s pregnancy was terminated at seven months because she had violated the one-child policy law.

Photos of her with the foetus caused widespread condemnation online.

China’s one-child family planning policy aims to control the country’s population, which now stands at around 1.3bn. Rights groups say the law has meant women being coerced into abortions, which Beijing denies.

Ms Feng’s case has come to symbolise the extreme measures some officials take in order to meet population targets, reports the BBC’s Martin Patience in Beijing.

Officials punished

Officials in China’s north-west province of Shaanxi were punished for having “violated the laws of central and local government on family planning”, Xinhua reports.

The head of the family planning bureau in Zhenping county, Jiang Nenghai, had been sacked. Another family planning official had also been given “administrative demerits”, Xinhua said.

Other officials in connection with the case had also been punished, Xinhua said, without elaborating further.

“According to the investigation, while persuading Feng to receive the abortion, some staff of the township government used crude means to violate her intentions,” Xinhua says.

“There was also no legal basis for the township government’s demand that Feng and her family pay a deposit of 40,000 yuan [$6,300] for a certificate allowing her to have her second child,” it added.

Ms Feng will be given compensation, Xinhua adds, without providing the details.”

via BBC News – China punishes officials over late-term abortion case.

See also: Listening and responding to the people

Posted in China alert, Good news, Illegal practices, One-child policy, Rule of law, Social & cultural | 3 Comments »

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24/06/2012

* Ikea Applies for Big Indian Investment

WSJ: “Swedish housewares giant IKEA Group asked India for permission to invest €1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) in the country to set up 25 retail stores in coming years, a commitment that provides some relief for New Delhi policy makers who have been trying to boost sagging foreign-investor sentiment.

IKEA’s foray into India, made possible by a policy change last year that allowed some retailers to own 100% of their Indian units, could help transform India’s largely unorganized, $500 billion retail sector. But the company will face significant challenges, including meeting the government’s mandate that it source 30% of inventory from local small-scale industries.

IKEA, which has 290 stores in 26 countries and is known for selling affordable, modern-looking furniture and housewares, said that if the Indian government approves its application it could have a significant effect on the country’s retail sector, “vastly improving availability of high-quality, low-price products not available in India.”

The company announced its decision after its chief executive, Mikael Ohlsson, met with Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma on Friday at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.”

via Ikea Applies for Big Indian Investment – WSJ.com.

See also: Consumerism grows in India

Posted in Affluence, Consumer, Economics, Good news, India alert, Retail | 2 Comments »

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22/06/2012

* China adds more trains for holiday travel rush

Xinhua: “China’s Ministry of Railways said Friday it has put more trains on to ease transportation pressure during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday from June 22-24.

The ministry added 196 provisional passenger trains for the travel rush Thursday, one day ahead of the holiday, 70 more than the eve of last year’s holiday, it said in a statement.

China’s railways are expected to carry 6.75 million passengers on Friday, the travel peak of this holiday, up 4.7 percent from the holiday travel peak last year, the ministry has said.

It estimated a daily average passenger flow of 6.1 million from June 21 to 24, up 5 percent from that during last year’s holiday travel rush.

The Dragon Boat Festival, also called Duanwu Festival, is traditionally celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar.

The festival commemorates the famous ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan. Chinese people prepare and eat zongzi, or leaf-packed glutinous rice dumplings, drink wine and race dragon boats on the day.

The festival falls on June 23 this year.”

via China adds more trains for holiday travel rush – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Although the festival commemorates a historic Chinese event – see http://mandarin.about.com/od/chineseculture/a/dragon_boat.htm – over recent years it has become an international sporting event http://www.dragonboatcalendar.com/ . Not dissimilar to the Greek Marathon now an international sport.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Good news, History, international sport, Transport | Leave a Comment »

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21/06/2012

* All eyes on China’s green leap forward

New Scientist: “TWENTY years ago this week, the United Nations’ Earth Summit closed in Rio de Janeiro having forged landmark agreements on climate change and biodiversity. Next week, delegates from around the world will meet again in Rio for a new Conference on Sustainable Development, dubbed Rio+20. How far have things advanced in the interim?

On the face of it, the picture is dispiriting. Annual global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by over 50 per cent, and the demise of the Kyoto protocol has halted co-ordinated action on climate change. And while the Convention on Biological Diversity is still in force, it has not prevented rampant habitat destruction.

With global co-operation proving hard to secure, progress now depends heavily on the unilateral actions of individual countries. The US tops the priority list, just as it did at the original Earth Summit – but it has been joined there by China. The Asian giant’s extraordinary economic growth has come at enormous environmental cost: it is now among the world’s largest polluters, and its natural resources have been massively exploited in recent years.

Despite this, China’s appetite for resources still falls well short of the west’s on a per capita basis, and its people do not generally enjoy the prosperity, health and life satisfaction common to the world’s richest billion inhabitants. It has become the received wisdom that nothing approaching global parity can possibly be achieved without utterly gutting the planet. The implication? That the lives of 6 billion of the world’s residents are, and must remain, “nasty, brutish and short”.

We now have a first sense that this picture is not true to life. Much discussion revolves around GDP, but this is a poor measure of sustainable development. Pick a metric that emphasises citizen well-being in combination with the environment, such as the Happy Planet Index, and the pecking order is turned on its head, with countries such as Costa Rica topping the league (see “What is wealth on a happy planet?”).

Such measures are for the moment informal. But the World Bank has for some time been plugging away at its own tweaked index, which would offset the environmental damage caused by a nation’s industry against its productivity. It has been slow going, due to political resistance and the difficulties of pricing up “natural capital”.

This is where China’s role becomes most surprising – and promising. It is setting out on a huge green experiment that could provide lessons far afield (see “China leads the march for the green economy”). Even as its economy booms, it is sharply reducing its “carbon intensity” – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – and deploying new economic models to price natural resources.

Such models are routinely scorned in the west as the products of ivory-towered wishful thinking, and their adoption deemed unthinkably risky. Yet China, acting largely out of economic self-interest, and perhaps with a longer-term vision than beleaguered western democracies can muster, is forging ahead.

All this does not expiate China from its environmental sins. But its experiment offers the west scope to learn from its experience. Our representatives at Rio+20 should pay close attention.”

via All eyes on China’s green leap forward – opinion – 14 June 2012 – New Scientist.

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18/06/2012

* China publishes books on officials’ morality

Xinhua: “A book series expounding the moral issues of officials, the first-ever publication on the topic in China, was released for sale Monday in Beijing as part of government-backed efforts to promote integrity among civil servants.

The four-book series embodies the results of research conducted by experts with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences at the request of Beijing authorities two years ago, according to a report published by the Beijing Daily.

The books record the development of theories about officials’ morality through Chinese history and provide case studies, as well as highlight the importance of raising officials’ moral standards in modern society, an official with the Beijing Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was quoted as saying in the report.

The major difference between good and bad officials simply lies in whether they perform duties with a conscience, says the prologue of the series.

Nowadays, the CPC, as the ruling party, must value virtues of officials and it is a general trend for officials to abide by professional ethics, according to a passage in one of the books.

The book also points out a moral official in modern China should always serve the people as well as be loyal, pragmatic, fair-minded and incorruptible, while always improving oneself.

The series will serve as anti-graft reading material for all Communist Party cadres in Beijing, according to the report.”

via China publishes books on officials’ morality – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Let’s hope the cadres take this book as seriously as their forebears took Mao’s Red Book.

Posted in China alert, corruption, Good news, Illegal practices, Rule of law | 2 Comments »

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