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China news tagged with: NPC 2007 (62)

• Delegates speak out in defence of rivers – Three Gorges Probe

  

  Three Gorges Probe has compiled and translated news relating to China’s rivers from the recent NPC/CPPCC meetings:

  Cai Qihua, director of the Changjiang (Yangtze) Water Resources Commission and a delegate to the National People’s Congress, has called on the government to pay more attention to the safety of areas below the Three Gorges dam, and to invest more money in related research. . Ms. Cai told the recent NPC meeting that the Three Gorges project has played an important role in providing electricity and controlling floods in the downstream region.

  “But I’d like to talk about the silt in the Three Gorges reservoir,” Ms. Cai said. [Full text]

  » Read more
  • March 30, 2007 1:51 PM

• China’s Priorities on Display – Adam Wolfe

  

  From Asia Sentinel:

  The debate at the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s highest legislative body, over the country’s first private property law spilled over into the public sphere at the NPC’s annual meeting which ended on March 16, exposing internal debates around the opposing forces of capitalism and communism.

  And, despite the fact that China’s leaders are paying increased attention to the social and economic divides between the rural, inland provinces and the booming, coastal cities the fact is that the rural-urban divide is likely to continue to worsen. Much of the legislation passed will benefit the upper and middle classes in the cities far more than the poor rural areas. [Full Text]

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  • March 24, 2007 9:40 AM

• How Foreign Correspondents Covered the Two Congresses – Guo Li

  

  Southern Weekend writes about foreign correspondents’ reporting on the recently concluded National People’s Congress meetings. From a translation on ESWN:

  In the memory of CNN’s China correspondent Jaime CruzFlor [sic], it was a major heavy-weight report in the 1980’s for the China-based foreign media to be able to say that the “two Congresses will begin on such a day during such a month.” That is because “no one ever told us when the meetings start and never mind the subjects of those meetings, because we had to guess everything.” Therefore, when the two national congresses became open to the foreign media for the first time, CruzFlor could “not even imagine it.”

  Eighteen years later, CruzFlor is still reporting on the two Congresses in China. But this year, he is paying more attention to education, medical care, inequality of wealth and other issues.

  Including CruzFlor, a total of 560 reporters from 135 foreign media outlets gathered news at the two Congresses this year. For the same time, they saw the English-language versions of the standing committee work reports as well as draft laws. Also for the first time, they can look up directly from the web pages of the “news center for the two Congresses” the names and addresses of the various representative groups and their contact telephone numbers. [Full text]
  
  

  
  
  (Note: The foreign correspondent referred to above is CNN’s Jaime FlorCruz.)

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  • March 23, 2007 8:15 AM

• China: More rights for millionaires – Pallavi Aiyar

  

  From Asia Times, a look at how the government is addressing concerns about growing social and economic inequality, and the lingering tensions over the issue:

  Increasingly squeezed between the demands of the right and the criticisms of the left, the CCP is engaged in an ever more delicate juggling act, balancing the interests of the urban middle class, who have emerged as a key constituency of support, and a restive peasantry, once the party’s mainstay but progressively disaffected at being left behind by the economic boom in the cities.

  China’s unique form of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is rent with contradictions, and many of these are forcibly coming to the fore. The recently concluded annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), usually a sedate piece of set political theater, was thus the site of some unusually feisty debate this year. [Full text]

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  • March 22, 2007 1:26 PM

• Good Turn Out – Simon Elegant

  

  

  From The China Blog – TIME:

  I forgot to post this from the just-finished National People’s Congress, or rather from Premier Wen Jiabao’s Press Conference afterwards. A pretty impressive turn out, I thought, though the guy next to me said he was there reporting for the Inner Mongolian Yurt Builders Weekly…or was it the Hothot Times?

  Anyway, it struck me strongly that the question Wen spent the most time on was about democratic reform, a follow up on an article he wrote in the People’s Daily in February in which he appeared to suggest that it would be a century before China was ready for democracy. [Full Text]

  » Read more
  • March 21, 2007 9:42 AM

• Full Text: China’s economic, social development plan – Xinhua

  

  From Xinhua English:

  The following is the full text of the Report on the Implementation of the 2006 Plan for National Economic and Social Development and on the 2007 Draft Plan for National Economic and Social Development, which was submitted on March 5 for review by the Fifth Session of the Tenth National People’s Congress:

  ……Total government revenue for 2006 was 3.93 trillion yuan, an increase of 24.3%. Large industrial enterprises generated 1.8784 trillion yuan in profits, up 31%. Energy consumption per unit of GDP fell by 1.23%, which is the first drop since 2003. Water consumption per unit of the added value of industry dropped by 9%. [Full Text]

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  • March 19, 2007 3:22 AM

• China Finished Building Socialism – Alexander Gabuyev

  

  According to summaries of the recently-concluded session of the Chinese National People’s Congress published this weekend by the Chinese Xinhua news agency, the country’s national assembly has adopted legislation that will help smooth the way for China’s transition from socialism to capitalism. In addition, the country’s leadership has begun to move forward with a plan to gradually liberalize the regime, via Kommersant, Russia:
  
  

  One of the main achievements of the fifth session of the Tenth Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) was the adoption of a property law that finally guarantees Chinese citizens the right to own private property. Three years ago, the NPC introduced amendments to the Chinese constitution that recognized private property, but the government’s position on the matter was not spelled out in detail. In total, the legislation has taken 13 years to prepare, and it was passed by the NPC last week after six previous attempts had failed. Many experts consider the 247-article document to be key to China’s eventual economic transition from socialism to capitalism. This view was confirmed by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who declared that the NPC’s decision will help China “create an open and honest market system.”

  In practice, however, the law will defend the interests only of city residents and does not guarantee peasants ownership of their land. To placate rural residents and avert a possible eruption of growing tensions between the country’s 400 million urbanites and 800 million peasants, many of whom live in grinding poverty, Beijing has decided to increase spending on the countryside to $51 billion in 2007, and residents of rural areas will presumably receive the lion’s share of the $38 billion that the government has earmarked for education and social spending. A clear example of the kind of social upheaval that Beijing wishes to avoid took place last week in the town of Zhushan in the country’s southern Hunan Province, where 20,000 people, mostly farmers, took to the streets to protest a doubling of bus fare over the Chinese New Year holiday, a popular time for travel. The authorities deployed riot police and the military to break up the demonstrations and to stop the crowd from storming the regional administration building, and in the clashes that followed dozens of people were wounded and at least one student was killed. [Full Text]

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  • March 19, 2007 12:23 AM

• “I Don’t Welcome Excessive Negative Media Coverage” – Wang Min

  

  Following excerpts are from a Southern Weekend reporter Zhao Lei (˵µËïæ) interview with Wang Min (ÁéãÁèâ), Party Secretary and governor of Jilin Province, a delegate from Jilin to this year’s NPC conference, translated by CDT:
  
  

  Reporter: You have just mentioned that various governing systems are coming into being, and at the same time many problems are just showing up. As the Party Secretary of the (Jilin) Province, do you welcome the supervision from the press?

  Wang Min: The supervision of the press is an effective way to ensure that the party committee and the government will make correct decisions and conduct scientific governance. The effect is becoming more and more noticeable. But I don’t welcome excessive negative media coverage. Generally speaking, excessive negative coverage will create a negative feeling among the people. It’s very detrimental. I think the press should have a broad perspective and be politically correct. It should be responsible for the party, the government and the society. The press can’t blindly insist on being eye-catching. It should do more support and encouragement. When I was in charge of education, once I said that good kids are cultivated by praise. If everybody praises you, you will slowly have very good self-discipline. I haven’t been in charge of propaganda, but I think doing propaganda is just like educating kids, and good behavior is created by praise. [Full Interview in Chinese]
  
  

  » Read more
  • March 18, 2007 6:26 PM

• China Creating its Own Democracy, Premier Says – Mark Magnier

  

  From LA Times:

  China is on the road to democracy, but not necessarily to Western-style democracy, China’s premier said Friday, citing the country’s unique concerns and the challenge of operating within a socialist framework.

  During a rare two-hour meeting with journalists in the cavernous Great Hall of the People, Wen Jiabao delivered a series of messages meant to reassure constituencies inside and outside the country.

  One was that the world should not be afraid of China’s growing defense spending despite a missile test that destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite. He also said China wants to reduce its trade surplus, and he sought to assure Washington that Beijing’s overseas investments would not destabilize the dollar.[Full Text]

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  • March 17, 2007 10:30 AM

• China’s Great Leap Forward on Property – Peter Ford

  

  From The Christian Science Monitor:

  Of all the steps that China has taken away from its Communist past since reforms began nearly 30 years ago, few have boasted the symbolic power of the law that parliament is due to pass next Friday.

  The Property Law, for the first time since the 1949 Chinese revolution, offers comprehensive legal protection to private property. Quite a move from a ruling party whose name literally means “The China Collective Property Party.”

  It couches that protection, though, in language that often seems more solicitous of state property – a sign of the subject’s sensitivity. “This is a very loaded text politically,” says one Western diplomat. “It says a lot about the current balance and trends of the regime.”[Full Text]

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  • March 17, 2007 10:25 AM

• Folk Pokes From The People’s Congress

  

  The folk tradition of making up shunkouliu, doggerel satire known among Sinologists as “slippery jingles”, thrives today in the Chinese vernacular – mostly in the form of politically tinged gripes about social inequities. Shunkouliu allow the hoi poloi to vent about everyday abuses and parody Party rhetoric. Five years ago, a popular one lampooned apparatchiks implementing Jiang Zemin’s prescription to modernize the party. “By day, the Three Represents. By night, the Three Accompaniments,” (ÁôΩ§©Â≠¶‰∏â‰∏™‰ª£Ë°®,Êôö‰∏äÊâæ‰∏âÈô™). The latter is a euphemism for the full services of karaoke hostesses.

  “Slippery jingles” are flying in this politically pivotal year, as was evident at the parliamentary sessions that just concluded. Delegates parroted them liberally in speeches and interviews, filtering the acerbic expressions of plain folk into mainstream state press. (It’s an open question, of course, whether their net effect was provocation or propaganda.) Lists of those quoted at the congress are now being passed around on the Web, which has become the main conduit for spreading
  

  shunkouliu

  outside the countryside. Here’s by far the most widely circulated list. We’ve translated it loosely, attempting where possible to preserve the original rhymes.

  规划规划，赶不上领导的变化
  “They plan and plan, but can’t keep up with changes by The Man.”
  - Sichuan NPC delegate Ji Jinshan(Á∫™Â∞ΩÂñÑ), an economist at Southwest University of Finance and Economics, voicing popular dissatisfaction with reckless planning and implementation of “New Countryside” policies.

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  • March 17, 2007 3:03 AM

• New Bid to Ban Smoking in Public – Ma Quan

  

  From China Daily:
  
  

  Thirty national legislators have proposed a ban on smoking in public, but concede imposing such a rule would be hard habit to crack in China, which has an estimated 350 million smokers.

  In a motion before the National People’s Congress the legislators claimed as many as 600 million Chinese people are exposed to passive smoke, putting them at risk of getting lung cancer…

  At a CPPCC discussion last week, deputy chief of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration Zhang Baozhen said China “needed” the tobacco industry and China’s stability could be “threatened” if the government tried to curb smoking. [Full Text]

  » Read more
  • March 17, 2007 12:11 AM

• Cultural Rise a Hot Topic at this Year’s Sessions – Josie Liu

  

  From China in Transition blog:

  So much talk has been devoted to China’s cultural development that it became one of the major topics at this year’s NPC and CPPCC sessions, which concluded on Friday.

  Quite a few delegates demonstrated a sense of urgency in their discussion about China’s “cultural rise,” as well as protecting and reviving China’s traditional culture, and seemed to agree that it is time to strengthen China’s soft power.

  » Read more
  • March 16, 2007 8:23 PM

• Socialist China Passes Private Property Law – NewsHour

  

  From PBS:

  China’s National People’s Congress officially passed a landmark law that strengthens private property rights, despite opposition from left-wing intellectuals who claim it will accelerate the gap between the rich and poor.

  The law — passed on the closing day of the NPC’s annual session — intends to safeguard the assets of China’s growing middle class by reassuring them their property rights are secure and strengthening protection for private businesses, a sector that accounts for 65 percent of China’s gross national product.Supporters of the law claim it could help reduce disputes over property that have become the leading cause of social unrest in cities and the countryside when farmers are pushed off their land to make way for housing and factories, often with little or no compensation. [Full Text]

  - See also a Los Angeles Times article on the same topic, which says:

  » Read more
  • March 16, 2007 11:47 AM

• The “Two Sessions” and the Path of Reform – Hu Shuli

  

  An editorial from Caijing Magazine editor Hu Shuli:

  Market-oriented reform is a multi-dimensional process. In fall 2006, the Party advocated ‘advancing reform and innovation in the economic, political, cultural and social systems, and continuing to open the door to the outside world.’ This was a basic summary of the characteristics and tasks of the current reform effort. In addition, it clearly showed that reforms in various spheres will affect one another.

  So we must think comprehensively while continuing reform, and advance it in various ways. Current efforts to deepen reforms of the economic system face many challenges. Therefore, it is high time that we continued on political system reform actively and safely. The core goal for political-system reform is to accelerate democratic change and establish a modern, socialist country with democracy and a full-fledged legal system.

  Efforts to reform the political system and other arenas should proceed shoulder-to-shoulder. These changes should include ever-advancing – never retreating — reforms of the economic system. This is a long and hard battle. [Full text]

  » Read more
  • March 15, 2007 3:34 PM

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