WEEKLY WATCH

WEEKLY WATCH

OPINION

Drill or Playacting?

A m iddle school in Kunm ing, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, held an earthquake evacuation drill last month but,strangely, students were only allowed to use two fl ights of stairs while the other six were left for leaders to observe. Students were in danger of being trampled numerous times.

Once a drill turns into playacting, it nears another disaster. In the case of a devastating quake, students w ill tend to take the course they took in the drill. If they do, the consequence w ill be disastrous as they spent 10 minutes making their way from the fourth floor to the ground floor. How ever, the students w ill not be able to survive any earthquake unless they can finish the process in 2 minutes.

In this evacuation drill, students were restricted to crowded stairs and the safest and most convenient passages were reserved for leaders. This wasn’t an evacuation drill but rather a show for the leaders.

Most school evacuations nowadays are conducted w ithout special technical instructions or planning. In most cases, it’s nothing but a formality. If this situation remains, what w ill happen when a real disaster hits?

Workers’ Daily

Disgracefu l Culture

The Wangjing outlet of Japanese retailer Ito-Yokado in Beijing recently decided if an employee makes mistakes, apart from being fined, he or she has to stand in the staff hallway for 20 minutes and bow to other staff the following week. The store labels this practice a kind of “corporate culture.” Some workers rejected the rule and resigned.

Businesses do need a set of rules to standardize em ployee behavior. But the W angjing outlet of Ito-Yokado is going too far, because it is insulting employees’dignity.

The objective of any “corporate culture”should be to encourage employees to love their work and cooperate better with others so as to strengthen the company’s competitiveness. Around the world, successful businesses are all examples of respect for employees and have their ambience peoplecentered.

Scandals of offending a worker’s basic rights and dignity happen frequently in China because of shortsighted bosses, and also the underdeveloped corporate management system and low level of social and econom ic development. Some businesses even try to strengthen competitiveness by encroaching on employee rights.

Given the recent serial suicide attempts in the south China plant of Foxconn, the Taiwan-based world’s largest electronic contract manufacturer, some enterprises do have serious problems not only in their corporate systems, but also in their culture.

Beijing Times

Reliab le Help

LIFE EXERCISE: Studen ts com e ou t o f a c lassroom in queue du ring an earthquakeevacuation d rill at a schoo l in Xing tai Coun ty, no rth China’s Hebei Province on May 12

The number of court cases against local governments has risen sharply in recent years.

Many of the people who fi led lawsuits asked to stop local governments from evicting them from their homes to make way for commercial real estate projects. In some cases, local governments forced farmers to sell their land to them at giveaway prices and then resold them to developers for skyhigh prices.

However, many people lost the lawsuits against the government and were forced to turn to higher-level governments for help.

Local officials then tried every means possible to prevent the people from petitioning higher-level governments, including declaring them mentally challenged and putting them in asylums.

The Supreme People’s Court, the highest judicial organ in China, has announced the launch of a campaign from May 22 to the end of the year to deal w ith cases involving people suing government agencies. It’s the right time to give full play to the role of judicial supervision in tackling the problems from the very beginning.

Zhujiang Evening News

Wasted Efforts

In the past three years, Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province has spent 500 million yuan ($60 million) on cleaning up a local river but achieved little.

This is only one of the many failures of this kind. It’s reported the disappointing cleanup campaigns for Dianchi Lake in Yunnan Province and Taihu Lake in Jiangsu Province cost 4.6 billion yuan ($673 million)over 13 years and more than 10 billion yuan($1.5 billion) over 16 years, respectively.

The efforts to control water pollution in Taihu were doomed, experts said, though the financial input was huge. The solutions used to try to clean up Taihu and many other lakes and rivers around the country lag behind current world levels by nearly 50 years. The reason is simple: It is more profi table to parties involved in the cleanup campaigns.

We have always blamed slow progress in elim inating pollution sources and an inefficient, redundant management system for China’s disappointing pollution control performance. Corruption also costs us our valuable resources in environmental conservation.

China Youth Daily

SOCIETY

Resources Tax

China introduced a new tax on sales of crude oil and natural gas in western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the M inistry of Finance said on June 2.

The 5-percent tax is aimed to increase revenue for the local government of the resource-rich region, and is part of a support package unveiled at a central work conference held in Beijing last month.

The new measure, a shift from current taxes based on output, is a crucial step to save natural resources by raising the cost of consumption. (See page 26)

Court Slaughter

According to local authorities, a man killed himself after shooting three judges dead and injuring another three in a court office on the morning of June 1 in Yongzhou City, Hunan Province.

The gunman, Zhu Jun, barged into an office on the fourth floor of the courthouse and shot the judges before killing himself, police said.

Zhu, 46, was head of the security squad of the China Post branch bureau of Lingling District. He took a submachine gun and two pistols from his subordinate under the guise he would have the guns examined by higher authorities.

The investigation concluded Zhu committed the attack as revenge on the court.Zhu’s family and colleagues told police Zhu thought the court unjustly handled the property division when he divorced his w ife three years ago. The victims were not involved in Zhu’s divorce case, police said.

Disturbed Pregnancy

More than half of all expectant mothers in Chinese mainland cities are exposed to secondhand smoke, according to results from a recent survey released on May 28.

The survey by the Horizon Research Consu ltancy G roup is based on interview s w ith main caregivers of children under 5 years old and pregnant women in seven Chinese cities including Beijing.Altogether, 9.9 percent of pregnant women suffered from frequent passive smoking and 4.8 percent were exposed to smoke almost every day. About 7.7 percent of respondents believe “smoking doesn’t affect the health of expectant mothers and their children.”

The survey found the top three reasons behind the expectant mothers’ exposure to passive smoking are: fam ily members who are not able to quit smoking (56 percent); a senior in the fam ily smokes and asking him or her to quit is impolite (27 percent); a fam ily member’s work-related social activities requires them to smoke(26 percent).

BUMPER HARVEST A com bine harvester w o rks in a w hea t fie ld in Huzi Village, Henan Province, on June 2, as the w heat reap ing season starts in the largest w hea t-p roduc ing p rovince in China

Tibet in Dossiers

The China Tibeto logy Pub lishing House recently released a 10-volume compilation of Tibet’s historical archives of the Republic of China period (1912-49),providing a rich record of the southwestern region as a then administrative division of the country.

The com pilation, titledArchives Compilation of Tibet and Tibetan Affairs Preserved by the Second Historical Archives of China, gives a record of government policies on Tibet and measures taken to manage major events and issues in the region.

The compilation, as the first part of a 50-volume series, also includes documents that reflect the development of politics, the economy, religion, culture and education in other Tibetan areas in the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan.

ECONOMY

No Nam e, No Trade

Individuals running online stores w ill have to comply w ith a real-name system—as opposed to relying solely on Web-based names or identities—beginning July 1,as stipulated by interim measures for the administration of online trade involving commodities and services.

The m easures, issued by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on June 1, regulate the entire process of online trade and related services. Individual storeowners are not required to possess a license, but they must supply the website with information regarding their name and address. The responsibilities of the websites are also defined in the measures.

Helping Macao

Macao w ill enjoy more access to the Chinese mainland market.

Supplement VII to the Closer Econom ic Partnership A rrangement (CEPA), signed by China’s M inistry of Commerce and the Macao Special Adm inistrative Region Government, w ill come into effect next year.

The new supplement includes measures concerning facilitating trade and investment in more areas such as education, expanding industrial cooperation programs, and liberalizing 11 service sectors for Macao investors.

Upon implementation, the supplement w ill enable companies and investors from Macao to explore the mainland market w ith lower costs and higher efficiency.

Ningbo Po rt Seeks IPO

Ningbo Port Co., the second largest port on the mainland by cargo, plans to raise 13.25 billion yuan ($1.94 billion) on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which w ill be used to build and revamp coal and container berths.

The planned listing could be the second largest IPO in the Shanghai Stock Exchange this year after Huatai Securities Co., which raised 15.7 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) in February.

The company w ill trade no more than 2.5 billion shares, or 19 percent of its stake, on the A-share market, the company said in a statement on the website of the China Securities Regulatory Comm ission (CSRC).

The port operator w ill also sell no more than 2.35 billion shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after its Shanghai listing,said the statement.

The CSRC is review ing the listing plan.No date for the Shanghai listing was given.

Overseas Takeover

China Railw ay Construction Corp.(CRCC) and Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings have completed a 4.27-billion-yuan ($626-m illion) acquisition of Canadian Corriente Resources Inc. in China’s second-largest overseas copper mine takeover.

The two sides gained 96.9 percent of all Corriente shares on a fully diluted basis, through a 50-50 joint venture, CRCCTongguan Investm en t (Canada) Co.,Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group said in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The acquisition would give the firms m ining rights to Corriente’s main assets:17 deposits in the copper belt in southeast Ecuador. Copper reserves in the four main m ining regions total around 11.54 m illion tons, which could yield a cash flow o f 150 billion yuan ($21.96 billion).

MODERN MARVEL The 6-km tunne l running unde r China’s longest river, the Yang tze River, is open in Nan jing, Jiangsu Province on May 28. The six-lane engineeringfeat w ill ease tra ffic congestion in Nan jing

1. AFGHANISTAN

Afghan President Ham id Karzai add resses the National Consu ltative Peace Jirga in Kabu l on June 2.Som e 1,600 rep resentatives discussed w ays to p rom o te peace and reconc iliation in the w ar-ravaged country

2. BRITAIN

Po lice stand guard at the scene o f a shooting in Whitehaven in Cum bria.At least 12 peop le w ere killed and 25 in jured after a gunm an w ent on a shoo ting ram page in the no rthern Eng lish county on June 2

3. KAZAKHSTAN

Japanese So ichi Noguchi,Russian Oleg Kotov and Am erican Tim o thy Cream e r (le ft to righ t) w ave after returning to Earth on June 2 from a ha lf-year stin t on the International Space Station

4. SOUTH KOREA

A vo te r casts his ba llo t a t a po lling station in Seou l on June 2 during Sou th Ko rea’s fifth loca l e lec tions

5. THE UNITED STATES

A m arine sa lu tes m o to rcyc lists in the Ro lling Thunder comm em oration passing before the Linco ln M em o ria l in Washing ton, D.C. The event on May 30 w as part o f Mem orial Day ce leb rations that recognized U.S. so ld iers w ho have died on duty

6. TURKEY

Dem onstrato rs in Istanbu l w ave Palestinian flags during a p rotest denounc ing a dead ly raid by Israe li comm andos on a flo tilla carrying Tu rkish ac tivists and aid bound fo r the Gaza Strip on May 31