Time For Some Communism

[ZingPao]

Communist reform broadens democracy

With his promise to quadruple the local GDP within three years, Chen Guohua won a landslide victory when competing for communist party chief of Longxing Township in the landlocked Chongqing Municipality.

More: http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/66098/index.html



This is a cool link to the news of the Communist Party of China:

http://english.cpc.people.com.cn/

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[Thinking Man's Idiot]

China Diary

(Wednesday 19 November 2008)

PAUL WHITE

PAUL WHITE gives a round-up of news from China.



Tackling the slowdown

CHINA is to expand its internal market to counter the global financial slowdown, which has cut international demand for Chinese exports.
At the same time, this will help the country solve another longstanding problem - an expanding urban-rural income gap.


This year's third plenary session of the 17th Communist Party of China (CPC) central committee, which closed on October 12, approved a plan aimed at doubling rural incomes by 2020.


The average income of China's 750 million rural dwellers is about £1,000 a year and some 15 million live below the poverty line.


Prior to the meeting, there was media speculation that farmers would be given more freedom to lease or transfer the management rights of their land, a measure seen as desirable as more and more rural people move to cities as migrant workers.


Chinese economists hope that agricultural reforms will lead to larger and more efficient farms that are better able to meet the demands of the evolving economy while maintaining the country's self-sufficiency in food.
The speculation was fuelled by CPC leaders' highly publicised trips to rural communities in the run-up to the plenary session.


Indeed, party head and President Hu Jintao visited Xiaogang village in Anhui province, where the "household responsibility system" was started spontaneously by villagers in 1978, leading to the scrapping of the communes.


However, the communique issued at the close of the meeting made no mention of this issue, suggesting that there is fear that farmers could be cheated of their land by speculators.

Push for unionisation

ALL workers at foreign-funded companies in China will have unions to represent their interests by the end of 2009, according to Wang Qing of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).


The announcement followed an agreement by IBM and Volvo to allow their Chinese workers to form unions and, if they wish, to affiliate with the ACFTU.


A three-month campaign which began in June targeting Fortune Global 500 subsidiaries in China had got Sony, Canon, FedEx, Intel and Toyota to agree to abide by China's trade union laws, Wang said.


He admitted, however, that the drive had met "tremendous resistance" from some foreign firms, especially US ones. He singled out Wyeth, Microsoft, 3M, AstraZenica and Pricewaterhouse Cooper.


ACFTU vice-chairman Sun Chunlan said that, as soon as all the Fortune 500 companies had been unionised, his organisation would lead a nationwide push for collective wage negotiations. He pointed out that, by September 16, all Wal-Mart's 108 branches in China had signed collective contracts with their employees though negotiations.

Growing Taiwan links

CHINA has unveiled a series of new measures to facilitate people-to-people exchanges across the Taiwan Straits.


These include round-trip charter flights by both PRC and Taiwan carriers and trips by tour groups by sea via the Taiwan-occupied islands of Jinmen, Matsu and Penghu.


Mainland tourists have been able to visit Taiwan only since July 20 this year, while the PRC has been allowing in travellers from Taiwan since 1987. By the end of last year, Taiwanese had made 470 million trips to the mainland.


There are nearly 700,000 Taiwan compatriots living and working on China's mainland. In the meantime, to boost business ties across the straits, a western Taiwan Straits economic zone is being constructed, based on Xiamen, Fujian province.

In front through a nose

A MAN in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, can drink 11 bottles of beer one after the other through his nose.


She Jianhu, can also insert 20.5cm-long nails through the same organ and extrude them through his mouth.


He often performs for crowds in the city's parks. He claims to have been practising since the age of five.

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