WEEKLY WATCH

WEEKLY WATCH

OPINION

Lowered Ticket Charge

Starting from September 25, the Chinese Ministry of Railways will reduce the fee for returning train tickets from 20 percent of the ticket’s value to 5 percent, and the lowest fee of returning a ticket is 2 yuan ($0.3). This is the first time for cuts to service charges of returning train tickets since 1997.

The cut has been long urged by the public. Some people have gone as far as suing railway stations over the charge. None has won any damages. Even the administrative suggestion neither changed the ministry’s firm attitude toward the unfair charge. In 2009, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) advised the ministry to stop charging passengers extra fees when returning tickets in reply to a lawyer’s application of revoking the charge—but no actions were taken. In addition, complaints about delayed trains and terrible service have yet to be fully resolved, which has only further damaged the ministry’s image.

Though the charge has been cut, people are still dissatis fi ed. First, it comes too late,especially as the railway sector earns increasing revenue from rising numbers of passengers. Second, cutting the fee is not enough. According to the NDRC regulation,the fee should not be charged in some cases.So the current reduction is limited.

The public does not expect that the ministry will completely revoke the charge, but it must assume its social responsibility and issue equal policies rather than pursue its own interests, especially by neglecting national regulations and laws on price.

Procuratorial Daily

Overloaded School Bus

Police recently caught a severely overloaded kindergarten bus in Qian’an County,north China’s Hebei Province. It was an eight-seat minibus with the seats removed and was filled with 64 children and two adults, a driver and a teacher. These poor kids were packed like sardines face to face in the small space of the vehicle.

In recent years accidents on overloaded school buses have caused many deaths. The spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Education Xu Mei admits traffic accidents have become the primary killer of elementary and secondary school students.

Overloading school buses usually happens in migrant residences, rural areas and inland provinces, where the education investment is insufficient. In addition, some unquali fi ed education organizations overload children onto their unlicensed school buses in order to make money.

However, there is no alternative to unlicensed buses for students in rural areas.Because of the national scheme of optimizing educational resources, some village schools have been closed and students are assembled to study in better schools. Thus, students have to travel farther, increasing the transport cost for them. Due to the lack of enough school buses and huge demand of students, unlicensed and overloaded school buses began to prevail in these areas.

The overloaded school buses reflect some essential problems, such as imbalanced education resources between rural and urban areas. The governments at all levels need to tackle these challenges as soon as possible.

Beijing Times

Medicine Shortage

Protamine is a drug necessary for heart surgery. However, the government-set price leaves little room for profit for domestic pharmaceutical companies. Two of the three qualified pharmaceutical companies have stopped production. The only company currently producing this drug has suspended production due to the shortage of raw materials. As a result, hospitals around China are running out of protamine.

The shortage of protamine poses new challenges to the current medicine pricing system. China’s basic medical care system will only function when the pricing of medicines suits patients and meets pharmaceutical companies’ demand for pro fi t margins.

Since the implementation of the basic medical system, the National Development and Reform Commission has lowered prices on tens of thousands of medicines, which finally led to the disappearance of a lot of medicines from the market.

Although patients need cheap medicine,to minimize pharmaceutical companies’pro fi t margins is not always a wise decision.It’s important to base medicine prices on the relationship between supply and demand and try to reach a balance between patients’demand and pharmaceutical companies’ sustainable production.

Universal medical care is a big challenge to any government, particularly in such a populous country as China. When major manufacturers stopped making protamine,the government should have realized the price structure was not working. But relevant departments missed the signals. The medical care system is an endless process. Policies need to constantly adapt in order to keep up with changing conditions.

Beijing Youth Daily

Media Morals

Guo Meimei, a woman who boasted her connection with the Red Cross Society of China on the Internet, appeared on the cover of a fashion magazine recently.

Guo’s self-exposure to some extent has triggered public doubts about the transparency and fairness of China’s charities, which Guo later said was not her original intention.However, her irresponsibility for what she said and her tricks to make herself famous already made her a negative figure in the Chinese social life.

Her success to become famous actually reveals a disease in China’s current social communication environment. Nowadays,if one wants to get famous, the media are always the first choice. Apart from spreading information, guiding public opinion and supervising social environment, the media are also entertainment providers who want to make money. However, the media must know that not all businesses are suitable for them. If they offend social moral standards,surely they will trigger public indignation.

Amplifying a negative fi gure will bring huge pro fi ts, and the media fi nds it irresistible to get involved with scandals. Guo on the cover is not a bad picture, but behind the cover is an ugly moral tale. In order to attract people’s eyeballs, some media even make use of negative figures to advertise themselves,and this in return encourages more people to“promote” themselves through mean practices. As culture spreaders, the media must follow certain moral principles, and never should they provide stages for “clowns” because of pro fi t allure.

China Youth Daily

SAFE SCHOOL BUSES NEEDED:Pupils of Zouping County, Shandong Province, queue up for school buses sponsored by the local government on February 25

XINHUA

Building a Space Station

China plans to launch its unmanned space module,Tiangong 1(Heavenly Palace 1), between September 27 and 30, paving the way for a planned space station.

The 8.5-ton space vehicle will dock with the unmannedShenzhou 8spacecraft, which will be sent into space at a later date, performing China’s first space-docking procedure.

Chinese scientists plan to test long-term unmanned operations and temporarily-manned operations of a space station, as well as carry out medical and technical experiments aboard theTiangong 1. In 2012, theShenzhou 9andShenzhou 10spacecraft will blast off to complete at least one manned docking. Technical and medical experiments will provide crucial data ahead of the building of the space station scheduled for 2020.

SOCIETY

Arms Sales Opposition

The Chinese Government on September 21 expressed strong indignation and resolute opposition over a new round of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

“The wrongdoing by the U.S. side will inevitably undermine bilateral relations as well as exchanges and cooperation in military and security areas,” said Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun, who was instructed to summon U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke in Beijing.

Regardless of China’s repeated solemn representations, the U.S. administration announced a new arms package worth $5.852 billion to Taiwan, including the so-called“upgrading” of F-16A/B fi ghter jets.

“The Taiwan issue concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, impacts China’s core interests and touches the national feeling of 1.3 billion Chinese,” the vice foreign minister said. “It is always the most important and most sensitive core issue in China-U.S. relations.”

Zhang Yesui, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, also lodged strong protests on behalf of the Chinese Government in Washington, D.C.

Rice Record

The yield from a hybrid variety of rice bred in China has exceeded 900 kg permu(0.067 hectare), setting a new world record in the productivity of rice.

The rice strain, DH2525, produced a harvest of 926.6 kg permuduring its trial plantation in Longhui County in Hunan Province, said the provincial academy of agriculture at a press conference on September 19.

To ensure the accuracy of the yield measurement, an expert panel under the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) randomly selected three out of the 107.9mutrial fi eld’s 18 plots and supervised the harvest on September 18.

INUNDATED Houses submerged by flooding in Hechuan District, southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, on September 20. Rain-triggered floods since September 1 affected 6.18 million in Chongqing and Sichuan, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Shandong,Shanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, leaving at least 90 people dead and 22 others missing by September 21

DH2525 was developed by Yuan Longping, known as the “father of hybrid rice,” who started developing hybrid rice in the 1960s. His research team achieved target yields of 700 kg permuand 800 kg permuin 1999 and 2005, respectively, setting world records on both occasions.

However, the new variety will not be deemed a total success until it produces a 900 kg yield permuyield on at least 100muof farmland for two consecutive years, according to the MOA expert panel.

Bribery Blacklist

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP)of China unveiled on September 18 plans to set up a national online database of individuals convicted bribers by the end of this year.

The database will serve as an admittance control mechanism in bidding and government procurement procedures, the SPP said in a statement.

China has posted online lists of the names of bribers since 2006, but the new list will be more detailed and comprehensive.These lists have effectively deterred some cases of corruption as well as commercial bribery, said the SPP.

Car Ownership

Statistics released by the Ministry of Public Security show the number of automobiles in China has surged to 100 million.

China registered 219 million motor vehicles as of the end of August, with automobiles accounting for 45.88 percent. The ministry separates motor vehicles into four categories: motorcycles, tractors, trucks and automobiles.

From 2006 to 2010, China posted an average annual growth of 9.51 million automobiles.

In the first eight months of this year,9.83 million new automobiles hit the road in China, 79.45 percent of which were passenger cars.

ECONOMY

Decelerated Growth

The IMF said on September 20 China’s economic growth was expected to grow at 9.5 percent this year and 9.0 percent in 2012,slowing down from 10.3 percent in 2010.

Investment growth had decelerated with the unwinding of the country’s fi scal stimulus, but it remained the principal contributor to growth, said the IMF in its latest World Economic Outlook.

Although in fl ationary pressure persisted,property price inflation and credit growth had softened from recent record levels due to efforts to withdraw credit stimulus, the report said.

Iron Ore Pricing

China officially launched its iron ore price index on September 20, a move believed to better reflect the domestic market and give the country a greater say in global pricing.

The China Iron Ore Prices Index, which will be released on a weekly basis starting in October, is made up of two sub-indices: the domestically produced iron ore price index and the iron ore import price index.

The domestic iron ore price index is based on the prices of iron ore concentrates in 14 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities as well as in 32 mining areas.The import price index is collected based on data from eight ports.

Debt Risk Controllable

Chinese experts said local government debt risks are controllable, seeking to ease concerns that the country’s credit binge will result in a rise in bad loans and derail economic growth.

According to the country’s top auditing authority, local government debt stood at 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.67 trillion) at the end of last year.

The debt ratio of local governments stood at 70.45 percent if their contingent liabilities are all included in the calculations,lower than the 100 percent warning line, said Li Weian, President of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics.

Different from the European sovereign debt crisis, China’s local government debt is mainly internal debt, which means most of the creditors are Chinese residents and institutions, Li said.

Experts are upbeat about local governments’ repayment ability, due to the country’s fast economic growth and surging fi scal revenues.

Feed Investment

Sichuan Tequ Group on September 19 officially commenced production of animal feed in Viet Nam’s northern Bac Giang Province.

Khu Hope Feed Co., the fi rst feed company built by Tequ Group in Viet Nam, with an investment of $10 million and an annual output of 400,000 tons, is currently the largest Chinese-funded feed manufacturer in Viet Nam.

Hoang Kim Giao, Director of the Livestock Breeding Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the venture will bring advanced feed production technology and management experience to Viet Nam,and further enhance agricultural cooperation between the two countries.

Wang Degen, President of Sichuan Tequ Group, said Tequ will improve the investment in Viet Nam and achieve the group’s strategy of a complete livestock and aquaculture, feed production and food processing chain in Viet Nam by 2020.

SEWAGE TREATMENT Two inspectors monitor treated water in Beitang Sewage Treatment Plant in north China’s Tianjin Municipality on September 19. With the completion of the plant’s first-phase project this month, the plant currently is able to treat industrial sewage of 150,000 cubic meters a day

1. THAILAND

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra points at bags of heroin and other drugs seized by the police before their incineration in Ayutthaya on September 17

2. GERMANY

People dressed in traditional Bavarian clothes share a toast at the start of the 178th Oktoberfest,the world’s biggest beer festival,in Munich on September 17

3. PAKISTAN

Flood-affected villagers reach safety in Badin, Sindh Province, on September 13. The floods that started in late August have left 280,000 Pakistanis homeless

4. INDIA

A man stands on the rubble of his home in Gangtok, capital of the Sikkim State, on September 19 after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake hit the region the day before

5. THE PHILIPPINES

Volunteers collect trash along the Manila Bay on September 17,the International Coastal Cleanup Day

6. THE UNITED STATES

Demonstrators rally near Wall Street in New York City on September 17 to voice their frustration with the U.S.financial system