News » Society » VIDEO: China urged to tackle corruption
News » Society » VIDEO: China urged to tackle corruption |
- VIDEO: China urged to tackle corruption
- Great Hall of hope - and despair
- As the showcase annual parliamentary session opened in Beijing, the city's residents and visitors reacted with a mixture of hope and despair - and sometimes apathy.
- Skipper held by Japan
- Have You Heard…
- Secretary of State John Kerry on China
- New China Leader Courts Military
- China hikes defense budget, to spend more on internal security
- China bets on consumer-led growth to cure social ills
- Highlights: China lays out economic blueprint for 2013
- What does the future hold for China?
- Woman vents anger on adopted baby, causing her death
- China's Shangpu village fights back over land grab
- Wen stresses concrete action in addressing environmental woes
- China media: NPC spokeswoman praised
| VIDEO: China urged to tackle corruption Posted: 05 Mar 2013 03:35 PM PST The outgoing leader of China, Wen Jiabao, has warned the country's new leadership that it must urgently tackle the serious problems of pollution, corruption and slower economic growth. |
| Great Hall of hope - and despair Posted: 05 Mar 2013 12:49 PM PST Ad: Work From No Home - Quality Product Taking The CB Marketplace By Storm From Peng Joon And John Chow. Insane Sales Video Conversion With Epcs Of $1.15 To $3.82. Get Your Swipes And Banners Over At Http://www.workfromnohome.com/affiliatetools |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2013 12:49 PM PST Ad: Magic Submitter By Alexandr Krulik - 1 Product Of E-business & E-marketing : Submitters Category By Popularity And Gravity! The Power To Dominate Social Media And All Search Engines Affiliates Join www.magicsubmitter.com/affiliate |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2013 12:49 PM PST Ad: Work From No Home - Quality Product Taking The CB Marketplace By Storm From Peng Joon And John Chow. Insane Sales Video Conversion With Epcs Of $1.15 To $3.82. Get Your Swipes And Banners Over At Http://www.workfromnohome.com/affiliatetools |
| Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:09 AM PST Have You Heard…   |
| Secretary of State John Kerry on China Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:10 AM PST  Source: Councel on Foreign Relations (China Unbound) by Elizabeth C. Economy When it came to China, Secretary of State John Kerry's confirmation hearing touched on a little bit of everything. Here is what he said he wants: To use the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as leverage with China to ensure commonly accepted rules of the road on trade—of course the TPP has to move forward for this to happen;To cooperate with China more closely on North Korea—that's been an item on the U.S. wish list for twenty years…but the chances are better than ever before; And to work together with China on the full range of regional and global challenges, such as climate change. Excellent, but it would really help if Secretary Kerry could persuade his former colleagues in Congress to pass climate legislation here at home. What has garnered all the attention, however, is what the Secretary said with regard to the pivot: I'm not convinced that increased military ramp-up is critical yet. I'm not convinced of that. That's something I'd want to look at very carefully when and if you folks confirm me and I can get in there and sort of dig into this a little deeper. But we have a lot more bases out there than any other nation in the world, including China today. We have a lot more forces out there than any other nation in the world, including China today. And we've just augmented the president's announcement in Australia with additional Marines. You know, the Chinese take a look at that and say, what's the United States doing? They trying to circle us? What's going on? And so, you know, every action has its reaction. It's the old — you know, it's not just the law of physics; it's the law of politics and diplomacy. I think we have to be thoughtful about, you know, sort of how we go forward. Secretary Kerry's apparent unease with the pivot has unsurprisingly set the Chinese press all atwitter and given Chinese analysts some hope that President Obama has appointed a kinder, gentler Secretary of State. The major Chinese state-supported newspapers—the Global Times, People's Daily, and Xinhua—highlighted his remarks on the pivot and then offered some thoughts on Kerry's likely diplomatic approach: China Institute of International Studies' Ruan Zongze: "Compared with Clinton's tough diplomatic approach, Kerry as a moderate democrat is expected to stress the role of bilateral or multilateral dialogues"; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Ni Feng: Kerry's "diplomatic measures" will "greatly embody Obama's concepts." In reviewing Secretary Kerry's congressional voting record, Chinese observers also noted that he "generally voted in favor of bills conducive to promoting the development China-U.S. relations and generally voted against or expressed different opinions for bills not conducive to China-U.S. relations." Overall, as People's Daily observed, "Kerry stresses more on coordination rather than confrontation in foreign relations." Secretary Kerry does not, of course, stand alone in his questioning of the pivot. CSIS Senior Associate Edward Luttwak recently suggested in a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States should refrain from putting itself front and center in Asia; instead, it should give the other countries in the region time to coalesce among themselves. This is an attractive idea—it conserves U.S. resources and keeps the United States out of Beijing's crosshairs, at least a little bit. However, it's not entirely practical. Some of our allies—such as Japan and South Korea—don't actually get along that well right now and may need a gentle push from the United States. Also, a relatively inchoate set of cross-cutting alliances or joint military exercises in the region is quite different from a well-thought-out, well-designed regional security effort that can mobilize assets efficiently. By suggesting that the pivot may be out of favor, Secretary Kerry has also drawn into question U.S. credibility. Officials and analysts abroad have already raised doubts about U.S. staying power in the Asia Pacific; Secretary Kerry's doubts will only add fuel to the fire. And Secretary Kerry might recast his "action-reaction" narrative. For most observers outside China, it was Chinese assertiveness that was the action, while the U.S. pivot was, in large measure, the reaction. Secretary Kerry understandably wants to make his mark on U.S. foreign policy over the next few years, and he appears to be setting himself a challenging agenda, including making progress on a free trade agreement with Europe and restarting the Middle East peace talks. However, the original logic of the pivot—ensuring security in the Asia Pacific and taking advantage of the region's economic dynamism through a free trade agreement—still stands. It's too early to pivot away.   |
| New China Leader Courts Military Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:11 AM PST  Source: Wall Street Journal by Jeremy Page BEIJING—China's new leader, Xi Jinping, appears to be ingratiating himself with the country's generals by protecting the defense budget even as economic growth slows. He also is cultivating a public image as a strong military leader as China faces off with Japan over a group of disputed islands and seeks to counteract the U.S. strategic pivot toward Asia. It is the first budget since Mr. Xi took over as Communist Party and military chief in a once-a-decade leadership change in November. Military spending has increased at a similar rate for most of the past two decades, but this year's increase comes as China's overall economic growth begins to slow, with parliament approving an official GDP growth target of 7.5% for the second year running, compared with an average growth of more than 10% for most of the past decade. Diplomats and analysts say Mr. Xi has moved faster than expected to establish himself as a strong military leader, making a series of high-profile visits to army, navy, air force and missile-command facilities in his first 100 days in office, and launching a campaign to enhance the armed forces' ability to "fight and win wars," according to diplomats and analysts. Those people also say Mr. Xi has taken direct control of an interagency body that has overseen an escalation in Chinese civilian and military patrols around islands claimed by both China and Japan, leading to frequent confrontations with Japanese ships and planes that many regional defense experts say could escalate into military conflict. Mr. Xi's more dynamic military profile is mainly designed to build up a political support base within the armed forces, and cultivate a public image that distinguishes him from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who struggled to establish his authority over the armed forces and was widely viewed as a weak and uncharismatic leader, say diplomats and analysts. But the U.S. and other foreign governments are watching for indications that Mr. Xi's apparently closer ties with the military might result in a continuation, or even an escalation, of China's recent assertive behavior, especially in relation to the country's territorial disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea. That assertiveness, combined with China's rapid development of military capabilities designed to deny U.S. forces access to waters near its shores, was among the factors behind the Obama administration's decision last year to bolster defense and trade ties in Asia. China has denounced that as a ploy to contain its economic and military rise. The official military spending for 2012 was around $106 billion, which was an 11.2% rise from 2011. China says its defense budget is expanding in line with its economic growth, but isn't directed at any other country, and remains far behind U.S. military spending. The figure is usually unveiled at a news conference the day before the parliament session begins, but Fu Ying, a vice foreign minister who is spokeswoman for the parliament session, declined to reveal the number on Monday. "It seems China needs to explain every year to the outside world why we are strengthening national defense and why we are increasing military spending," she said. "If a large country like China cannot protect its own security, that won't be good news for the world," she said. "Strengthening China's defense capability will be conducive to further stability in the region and will be conducive to world peace." Experts on the Chinese military have long argued that China's real defense budget is much higher than the official figure, which doesn't include big-ticket items such as arms imports, indigenous weapons development, and military components of the space program. Last year, the Pentagon estimated China's actual military spending in 2011 at between $120 billion and $180 billion. However, an article by two Western scholars to be included in this month's China Quarterly academic journal argues that China's official military budget increasingly reflects actual spending, and also includes some items—such as disaster-relief operations—that aren't usually calculated as part of Western defense budgets. "Increases in the official defense budget are roughly consistent with GDP growth and constitute a declining percentage of central government expenditures," wrote Adam Liff, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, and Andrew Erickson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. "This suggests that, generally speaking, investment in military modernization—aside from specific capabilities considered exigent for party leadership continuity, national survival and defense of critical national interests—remains a lower priority overall than economic development for Beijing's leadership," they wrote. Experts on China's military also say that generals have been lobbying for larger increases in real military spending to help fund the development of costly weapons systems including aircraft carriers, the first of which was launched last year, and stealth fighters, a prototype of which made its first test flight in 2011.   |
| China hikes defense budget, to spend more on internal security Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:16 AM PST  Source: Reuters By Ben Blanchard and John Ruwitch (Reuters) – China unveiled another double-digit rise in military expenditure on Tuesday, but for a third year in a row the defense budget will be exceeded by spending on domestic security, highlighting Beijing's concern about internal threats. The numbers underscore the ruling Communist Party's vigilance not only about territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asia and the U.S. "pivot" back to the region, but also about popular unrest over corruption, pollution and abuse of power, despite robust economic growth and rising incomes. The number of "mass incidents" of unrest recorded by the Chinese government grew from 8,700 in 1993 to about 90,000 in 2010, according to several government-backed studies. Some estimates are higher, and the government has not released official data for recent years. "It shows the party is more concerned about the potential risks of destabilization coming from inside the country than outside, which tells us the party is much less confident," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group. "A confident government that is not afraid of its population doesn't need to have a budget for domestic security that is over defense spending," he added. In his "state of the nation" address to the largely rubber-stamp legislature, Premier Wen Jiabao listed maintaining social harmony and stability as one of the government's priorities for this year. "We should improve the mechanism for assessing potential risks major policy decisions may pose for social stability … The purpose of this work is to preserve law and order and promote social harmony and stability." CHINA'S MILITARY AMBITIONS Still, China's defense spending is contained at about 5.4 percent of total expenditure, up from 5.3 percent last year, and remains at about one-fifth of the Pentagon's outlays. But even with its worries about domestic problems, Beijing has become increasingly assertive on the world stage. Wen said the government "should accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces … (and) should resolutely uphold China's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and ensure its peaceful development". China has advertised its long-term military ambitions with shows of new hardware, including its first test flight of a stealth fighter jet in early 2011 and its launch of a fledgling aircraft carrier – both trials of technologies needing years more of development. Beijing is also building new submarines, surface ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles as part of its naval modernization, and has tested emerging technology aimed at destroying missiles in mid-air. China has repeatedly said the world has nothing to fear from its military spending which is needed for legitimate defensive purposes, and that the money spent on the PLA pales in comparison with U.S. defense expenditure. The Pentagon's base budget under the current funding mechanism is $534 billion. "It's not good news for the world that a country as large as China is unable to protect itself," parliament spokeswoman Fu Ying said on Monday. "China's peaceful foreign policies and its defensive military policies are conducive to security and peace in Asia." Asian neighbors, however, have been nervous about Beijing's expanding military, and this latest double-digit rise could reinforce disquiet in Japan, India, Southeast Asia and self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory. A spokesman for Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party accused China of being two-faced. "China has been stressing a peace agreement with Taipei and portraying a peaceful image, but its high military budget and provocative actions in the East and South China Seas disputes run contrary to this image," said Lin Chun-Hsien. Japan and China have locked horns over islands each claims in the East China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines and other nations have challenged Beijing over claims to swathes of the South China Sea that could be rich in oil and gas. Over the past six months, China's stand-off with Japan over a series of uninhabited rocky islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China has become more acrimonious. The increase announced in the national budget is at a slightly slower pace than the 11.2 percent rise planned for last year, though actual spending in 2012 reached 691.3 billion yuan compared with the budgeted 670.3 billion yuan. Beijing's public budget is widely thought by foreign experts to undercount its real spending on military modernization, which has unnerved Asian neighbors and drawn repeated calls from Washington for China to share more about its intentions. "Traditionally, space development and the development of new weapons have not been included in defense spending in China. Even though China spends a lot in (defense-related) space programs, it would not show," said Toshiyuki Shikata, professor at Japan's Teikyo University professor and a retired general.   |
| China bets on consumer-led growth to cure social ills Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:21 AM PST  Source: Reuters By Kevin Yao and Aileen Wang (Reuters) – China's new rulers will focus on consumer-led growth to narrow the gap between rich and poor while taking steps to curb pollution and graft, the government said on Tuesday, tackling the main triggers for social unrest in the giant nation. The plan is the blueprint for the incoming administration led by Xi Jinping, who will formally take over as president at the end of the session, with Li Keqiang taking over as premier. "Production falls short of the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people," Wen said to delegates assembled in the Great Hall of the People for the once-a-year meeting of China's National People's Congress (NPC). China admitted earlier this year there was an urgent need for reforms to narrow an income gap that is now one of world's widest and at levels that analysts say sparks social unrest, despite three decades of blistering economic growth that have lifted hundreds of millions of people from rural poverty. Beijing also announced an 8.7 percent rise in the 2013 domestic security budget to 769.1 billion yuan ($128 billion), exceeding military expenditure for the third year in succession. Wen said consumption was the key to unlocking the full potential of domestic demand in the economy of 1.3 billion people, reducing excess, inefficiency and inequality. This, he said, would deliver growth of 7.5 percent in 2013 – a level China barely beat in 2012 when growth eased to its slowest pace in 13 years, expanding by 7.8 percent. "We should unswervingly take expanding domestic demand as our long-term strategy for economic development," Wen said. "To expand individual consumption, we should enhance people's ability to consume, keep their consumption expectations stable, boost their desire to consume, improve their consumption environment and make economic growth more consumption-driven." HUKOU REFORM China officially classified 51 percent of its citizens as urban dwellers in 2011, but that includes around 200 million rural migrant workers who generally do poorly paid jobs in cities, lack residency rights and have very little to spend. Wen said accelerated reform of the rigid hukou household registration system was needed to drive an urbanization effort that he said would underpin economic development. Rebalancing growth away from the investment-heavy, export-oriented model that has lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty and turned China into the world's biggest trading economy, has been a policy priority for much of Wen's term. There are growing concerns that more fixed-asset investment – already worth about 50 percent of GDP and at a level that worries the International Monetary Fund – would simply add to the inefficiency of China's state sector. Industrial inefficiency also exacerbates pollution, which has its origins in China's factory-fuelled expansion. Wen acknowledged the massive environmental cost of growth. "The state of the ecological environment affects the level of people's well-being and also posterity and the future of our nation," Wen said. "We should adhere to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment and endeavor to promote green, circular and low-carbon development," he said. There has been widespread public anger and rare media criticism over pollution in China after smog enveloped swathes of the north of the country recently, grounding flights, forcing people indoors and forcing measures such as factory closures. Wen linked the successful delivery of policies on consumers, food safety, pollution, healthcare, education, corruption and financial reform to the Communist Party's right to rule. "We need to improve the socialist market economy," Wen said. "Reform and opening up are the fundamental force that drives China's development and progress. We can continue to advance our cause only by adhering to reform and opening up," he added. INCOME GAP Despite its ranking as the second-largest economy globally after three decades of stellar growth, China remains an aspiring middle-income country riven with inequality and dependent on state-backed investment. About 13 percent of China's population still live on less than $1.25 per day, the United Nations Development Programme says. Average urban disposable income is just 21,810 yuan ($3,500) a year. On the other hand, according to the latest reckoning by Forbes, China has 122 dollar billionaires. A rival list in the Hurun Report says China has 317 billionaires – a fifth of the total number in the world. Consultants at McKinsey meanwhile estimate China will have 167 million "mainstream" consumer households by 2020 – those with annual disposable income of between $16,000 and $34,000 – more than 10 times the 14 million, or 6 percent, who currently fit that definition. There will also be 120 million households with $6,000-$15,999 of spending power, McKinsey reckons. But while Wen was heavy on promises to change China's economic model, there was a ring of familiar rhetoric to much of his speech and the spending priorities laid out in separate documents issued by the Ministry of Finance and the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planning agency. Analysts said that fit with their modest expectations of any significant change in the final stages of a once-a-decade handover of power at the top of the Communist Party that began last year and broadly concludes with the end of the NPC. INCREASED SPENDING In a broad series of increased commitments, the Ministry of Finance said China would boost fiscal spending in 2013, raising the fiscal deficit target to 2 percent of gross domestic product, its highest since 2010 and up from 1.6 percent in 2012. In absolute terms, China's budgeted fiscal spending of 13.82 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion) for 2013 is a record level. In a separate document, the Ministry of Finance said it was raising the quota for bonds issued by local governments to 350 billion yuan in 2013, compared with 250 billion yuan in 2012. It also pledged to further strengthen regulation of local government debt and curb irregular financing activities. China's local governments have been dogged by debt worries since racking up 10.7 trillion yuan of loans by the end of 2010. They borrowed heavily to finance their contributions to infrastructure spending laid out in a 2008 stimulus programme launched by Beijing in the face of the global financial crisis.   |
| Highlights: China lays out economic blueprint for 2013 Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:27 AM PST  Source: Reuters (Reuters) – China published its economic blueprint for the year on Tuesday, targeting 7.5 percent growth in its gross domestic product that would keep the world's second-largest economy on an even keel. ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, INFLATION: "This year's economic growth target of around 7.5 percent is necessary and appropriate, and we need to work hard to achieve it." "In the current stage, the role investment plays in promoting economic growth cannot be underestimated. Governmental investment is important in guiding non-governmental investment, but its share of the country's total investment is decreasing, so we must further relax controls over market access for non-governmental investment and stimulate it." "There are relatively big inflationary pressures this year, mainly because there are pressures on China's land, labor, agricultural products and services. And major countries are stepping up loose monetary policy, so we can't overlook imported inflationary pressures." ON MONETARY, FISCAL POLICY: "We will strike a balance between promoting economic growth, stabilizing prices and preventing financial risks." "We will maintain reasonable growth in money supply and credit and appropriately expand the social financing aggregate." "We will continue to implement pro-active fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy to maintain continuity and stability and make policy more forward looking, targeted and flexible." ON FX, INTEREST RATE REFORMS: "We will steadily push forward market-oriented reforms in interest rates and the exchange rate, expand the use of the renminbi in cross-border trade settlements, gradually achieve convertibility of the renminbi under the capital account, deepen reforms of the financing and investment system and push price reforms. "We have drafted reform plans for income distribution. We will study the detailed policy. ON PROPERTY CONTROLS: "We will strengthen property market adjustments and speed up construction of affordable housing. We will curb speculation and speculative demand. This year we will basically finish construction of 4.7 million units of affordable housing, and start building 6.3 million units. ON CORRUPTION: "We should unwaveringly combat corruption, strengthen political integrity, establish institutions to end the excessive concentration of power and lack of checks on power and ensure that officials are honest, government is clean and political affairs are handled with integrity." "We should ensure that the powers of policy making, implementation and oversight both constrain each other and function in concert and that government bodies exercise their powers in accordance with statutory mandates and procedures." ON TRADE, INVESTMENT OVERSEAS: "China aims to boost total foreign trade by 8 percent this year." "We should both keep exports stable and expand imports. We should raise the quality and returns of foreign trade rather than just increase its volume, and raise its overall competitive advantages instead of relying on cost and price advantages." "We will continue to encourage companies to go out." ON URBANISATION: "We will actively and steadily push forward the healthy development of urbanization." ON ENERGY PRICE REFORMS "We will improve the pricing mechanism for refined oil products. We will comprehensively reform natural gas prices. We will organize the implementation of the reform plan to make thermal coal prices more market-based. We will improve the system of progressive pricing for household electricity consumption and the pricing policy for electricity generated from renewable energy sources … and try out progressive pricing for household natural gas consumption." ON LAND REFORM "The rural land system is central to maintaining rural stability and ensuring China's long-term development … its main objective is to ensure that China's farmland remains at or above the red line of 120 million hectares." "We will guide the transfer of contracted rural land-use rights in an orderly manner, and promote appropriately large-scale operations of land. We will offer more policy support to farmer cooperatives, service organizations in rural areas and leading industrialized agricultural production enterprises. ON OVERCAPACITY, CONSOLIDATION "We will restrain blind expansion of industries that are energy-intensive and highly polluting or have excess production capacity. "We will apply strict energy, environmental, and safety standards for market access; and accelerate mergers and reorganizations in industries with excess production capacity." ON AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT "We should always give high priority to grain production, develop high-yield basic farmland, spread advanced technologies, increase overall agricultural production capacity and effectively ensure the supply of grain and other important agricultural products. "We will further raise the minimum purchase prices of wheat and rice by 10 yuan and 10.7 yuan per 50 kg respectively; temporarily purchase and stockpile corn, soybeans, rapeseed, cotton and sugar." ON ENERGY CONSUMPTION "We will cut both energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by more than 3.7 percent and continue to reduce the discharge of major pollutants. "We will continue to carry out trials to develop an online system for monitoring energy consumption among major energy consumers. "We will formulate a national master strategy for adapting to climate change. We will comprehensively promote trials and demonstrations for low-carbon development, implement a pilot project to trade carbon emissions and research and establish a national emissions trading scheme."   |
| What does the future hold for China? Posted: 05 Mar 2013 01:42 AM PST China's new leaders are tasked with governing an increasingly complex and powerful nation, writes the BBC's Damian Grammaticas. |
| Woman vents anger on adopted baby, causing her death Posted: 04 Mar 2013 11:57 PM PST A 28-year-old woman tossed her adopted daughter to the ground in a quarrel with her husband and caused the 6-month baby to die. But she lied to police that the girl suffered severe injuries in a car accident. The woman surnamed Lian has been detained by police in the southern city of Shenzhen on suspicion of intentional injury, a local newspaper reported today. Lian and her husband, both from Shaanxi Province in northwest China, got married 10 years ago but failed to have their own child. Even adopting a baby didn't ease their strained relationship. After a fight with her husband last Friday, the jobless woman slapped the face of the baby and threw her to the ground. When her husband returned home and found the girl twitching and with bruises in her face, she lied that she fainted and the baby fell to the floor. The couple didn't bring the baby to hospital immediately until the next noon when they found the girl motionless. The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital. Police are now investigating the case, the paper said. |
| China's Shangpu village fights back over land grab Posted: 04 Mar 2013 11:34 PM PST Violence erupts over a land grab in Shangpu villag |
| Wen stresses concrete action in addressing environmental woes Posted: 04 Mar 2013 10:17 PM PST CHINESE Premier Wen Jiabao stressed today that the government should adopt effective measures to prevent and control pollution in response to people's expectations of having a good living environment. The government should resolve to solve the problems of serious air, water, and soil pollution that affect the people's vital interests, improve environmental quality, and safeguard people's health, Wen said while delivering a government work report at the annual session of the National People's Congress. "We should give the people hope through our concrete action," he told almost 3,000 legislators in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing. It is Wen's last government work report to the country's top legislature as the NPC deputies are expected to decide on a new premier, vice premiers and cabinet, as well as elect new president and vice president for the next five years. The government should greatly strengthen ecological improvement and environmental protection, as the state of the ecological environment affects the level of people's wellbeing and also posterity and the future of the nation, he said. "We should adhere to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment and endeavor to promote green, circular, and low-carbon development," he said. The government should greatly boost the conservation and reuse of energy and resources, give priority to saving energy in industry, transportation and construction and in public institutions, restrict total energy consumption, and reduce energy and materials consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, he said. The government should also speed up adjusting the economic structure and distribution and upgrading related standards, practices, and laws and regulations, he added. Actually, China has made steady progress in conserving energy, reducing emissions and protecting the environment. Over the past five years, China has closed a number of backward production facilities, including iron works with a total output capacity of 117 million tons, steel mills with a capacity of 78 million tons and cement plants with a capacity of 775 million tones, according to Wen's report. In addition, the country's daily urban sewage treatment capacity increased by 46 million tones, the energy consumption per unit of GDP fell by 17.2 percent, the total chemical oxygen demand fell by 15.7 percent, the total sulfur dioxide emissions fell by 17.5 percent, and the air quality index for monitoring fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, was added. China has achieved rapid economic growth over the past three decades, but at the cost of environment and resources. Heavy pollution is overshadowing the world's second largest economy that endeavors to build a "beautiful China," as proposed by Chinese President Hu Jintao last November. The country has also witnessed a string of "mass incidents" and even violent protests due to environmental woes over recent years, prompting the government to seek to keep a balance between economic growth and environmental protection. "Premier Wen's requirement for concrete action signals that the government has already noticed the public's appeal for a beautiful environment," said NPC deputy Huang Zuoxing from east China's Zhejiang Province, who is chief engineer of the Jiangnan Holding Group. "I hope the government can resolutely ban the approval of heavily-polluting industrial projects in the future," he said. NPC deputy Luo Shenglian, vice president of Nanchang Hangkong (Aerospace) University, said the most urgent "concrete action" for the government now is to launch a general overhaul of the country's pollution situation and make clear the scope and extent of pollution. "Although everyone is talking about controlling pollution now, there has nevertheless been no basic statistics for reference in this regard," he said. |
| China media: NPC spokeswoman praised Posted: 04 Mar 2013 10:27 PM PST As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao opens the National People's Congress, media in China focused on Fu Ying's debut press conference as NPC spokeswoman. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Update » News » Society To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Comments