The central government will redouble its efforts to replicate this year favorable results in China grain production and farmers¡¯ incomes for next year.
The strategies to achieve the goals in the 13 main grain production provinces will be widely discussed at the annual Central Agricultural Conference, which is scheduled to be held at the end of December.
Increasing the income of China 900 million farmers and grain output is high on the government agenda. This year, the central government has earmarked 10 billion yuan (US$1.21 billion) from its grain risk fund to directly subsidize grain farmers, alleviating falling output and slow income growth.
(From China Daily)
LANZHOU: Anti-Poverty Programs Benefit Rural Women
One of the poorest provinces in China, Gansu registered about 1.69 million people under the absolute poverty line, 637 yuan (77 US dollars) per person a year. As a whole, China reported 29 million people in dire poverty in 2003.
Gansu has tried many poverty alleviation programs, but now has found that providing training that targets rural women has better results.
Badi Foundation is a non-profit international organization in Macao Special Administrative Region. Beginning in 2003, the foundation and Gansu Province have been providing personalized training for poor, rural women.
The project empowers rural women to better manage relationships with husbands, mothers- and fathers-in-law and neighbors. It encourages them to participate in social activities, develop personal capacities, improve family life and contribute more to the community and society.
Besides Badi Foundation, the province is also cooperating with Beijing Fuping Vocational Training Division, to provide free training for 1,000 poverty-stricken women. Currently, about 900 women villagers have obtained jobs in cities after training.
Beijing Fuping Vocational Training Division was set up for rural women to provide them with training on how to do high-quality housekeeping and the basic living skills in cities.
The training has paid off remarkably. After training, many women showed self-confidence and some opened their own business or started livestock farming, channeling more income to their families, according to feedback interviews by Badi Foundation staff.
(From Xinhuanet)
Prisoner Escape Rate Down 96.7% in Decade
The escape rate from Chinese prisons drops by 96.7 percent in the past decade, while crime in prison is down 83.3 percent, sources from the Ministry of Justice.
Chinese prisons made progress by improving facilities and management, though increasing crimes implicating gangsters, violence and drug trafficking have made the prison population more complicated and dangerous.
Thanks to the national Prison Law that took effect ten years ago, prisons established a basic management framework and tried many new methods of correction.
The administration is moving prisons from remote countryside and mountainous regions to city suburbs. These prisons are equipped with better facilities, and it is easier for families and folks to visit inmates.
Meanwhile, the Ministry is thinking of updating the way it has categorized prisons for five decades in a bid to make jails safer and more efficient.
It plans to divide prisons into three types: low security, medium security and high security, according to the harm their inmates might do to society, especially the violence of the crimes for which they were incarcerated.
According to the principle of combining penalty with correction written in Prison Law, Chinese jails have adopted various methods to help change prisoners into law-abiding citizens.
From 1994 to 2003, about 1.7 million Chinese inmates gained diplomas through studying behind bars, more than 60,000 gained junior technical certificates and 2,000 got senior ones.
(From Xinhuanet)
Call For Dual Nationality
Many overseas Chinese are calling for dual nationality so that they can keep their Chinese citizenship while obtaining a foreign one. The number of overseas Chinese is increasing greatly since the reform and opening-up. Nearly 300,000 Chinese have immigrated to Canada since the 1990s.
Most of the overseas Chinese wanted to keep their Chinese citizenship, said the report. The paper cited an online survey by the North Chinese Community of Canada showing that 92 percent of the polled Chinese immigrants wanted China to allow dual nationality.
Canada attracted a lot of intellectuals from other countries by embracing different cultures. Allowing dual nationality has helped the country to attract intellectuals,?said a Chinese-Canadian professor surnamed Zhong.
(From Xinhuanet)
China to Regularize Volunteer Service
Sunday marks the 18th International Volunteer Day, the Chinese government says it will soon take measures to regularize volunteer service.
A national committee for volunteers will be established to overlook volunteers¡¯ activities across the country and provide guidance for them.
The committee is also expected to set up branches at various levels in China, including city, district and community levels.
In addition, organizers of volunteer activities will be trained regularly to improve work proficiency.
At present, there are more than 80 million registered volunteers in China.
(From Xinhuanet)
China Revises Law Protecting Disabled
The Chinese government has passed a revision of the law protecting disabled people, hoping to better address their concerns, and provide assistance and help where it needed.
Dec. 3 is the International Day for Disabled People. The day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights, and well-being of people with physical handicaps.
But, there is still a long way to go. One-third of China 30 million people living below the poverty line are disabled. 60 percent of blind people are illiterate, and less than 60 percent of blind children have the chance to go to school.
The federation says the central and local governments do have many new measures to protect disabled people rights and interests. But, it says, these measures need to be fully recognized in the form of law.
China and its people need new revisions to deal with the problems disabled people are facing. Changes include:
Equal rights for disabled citizens - no exclusion from education, employment, information access, and recreation.
And, further special assistance to narrow the gap between disabled people and the rest of the society.
(From Xinhuanet)
14 Mln People Register As
Volunteers
Participating in volunteer activities has become popular in China, a country that boasts nearly 14 million people sacrificing their free time to lend a helping hand.
Vice-director of Chinese Young Volunteers Association or CYVA, Lu Yongzheng discussed the situation at a forum for volunteer services and social development in southwestern city of Chengdu in Sichuan province.
He said more people are now volunteering their time in China for charitable causes.
150 million people have participated in voluntary services like poverty alleviation, community construction, environmental protection and many other fields in the past 10 years.
(From CRI Online)
Reemployment Looks Optimistic
China has created over eight million new jobs in the first ten months of the year, leading to the reemployment of more than 4 million laid-off workers.
Officials from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security say that so far about 14 million people in China are registered as officially unemployed, and many of them are receiving free training and job placements from local governments, China Radio International reported.
China has planned to create nine million new jobs to get five million more people back to work this year.
(From CRI Online)
Income Gap Tops Senior Officials¡¯ Concerns: Survey
In the eyes of senior Chinese officials, the top three problems of 2004 are income gap, ¡±public security¡± and ¡°corruption,¡± accounting for 43.9 percent, 24.3 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, of their responses to a survey, Beijing Daily reported.
The survey was done by a research group of the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the training center for Chinese senior officials. The participants were 107 senior officials at or above city level across China studying at the school, the paper said.
Compared with the survey in 2003, noted the paper, ¡°unemployment¡± dropped from 23.3 percent to 3.7 percent, and ¡°corruption¡± dropped from 15.5 percent to 8.4 percent.
¡±The survey result shows that the unemployment and corruption problems have been alleviated in 2004, while the public security concerns rose sharply,¡± Prof. Qing Lianbin from the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told the paper.
The survey shows that about 88.8 percent senior Chinese officials feel confident in the prospect of the ongoing reform while merely 1.9 percent of them do not have enough confidence in reform.
About 61 percent of them think that the overall pace of reform is good while 28 percent of them deem it as ¡°too slow¡± and 6.5 percent deny ¡°no progress,¡± the paper reported.
¡±Properly handling the relation between the CPC and government¡± ranked first among the decisive factors to the success of China political reform, followed by ¡°expansion of democracy inside the CPC¡± and ¡°further shifting the function of governments,¡± the paper acknowledged.
Nearly 59 percent of senior officials consider aintaining social stability¡¯ the most decisive factor to the smooth development of the reform, the most popular answer for the second year in a row, the paper said.
¡°Income distribution reform¡± and ¡°political reform¡± rank first and second on the list of their three most concerns selection. If they only had one choice, ¡°personnel reform¡± would be the choice of 28 percent, according to the paper.
¡°Senior officials¡¯ opinions on reforms will inevitably be affected by what the reforms impose on their individual interests. So we pay much attention to their opinions on the relation between the reforms and their individual interests,¡± Qing told the paper.
Nearly 80 percent of them think that they will benefit from ¡°salary reform,¡± followed by ¡°political reform,¡± picked by 60.7 percent. ¡°Medical reform,¡± ¡°house distribution reform¡± and ¡°endowment insurance reform¡± are considered the top three imposing negative influence on their interests, while more than half of them do not know the possible impact of ¡°company management reform¡± and ¡°employment reform,¡± according to the paper.