Ten hot topics for the NPC
Today sees the opening of the first of this years’ ‘Two Congresses’, the Third Session of the 10th CPPCC National Committee, which will be followed by the Third Plenum of the 10th National People’s Congress, China’s supreme legislative body.
The Political Affairs Office of the People’s Daily apparently conducted an on-line survey to find out what are the ten topics of greatest concern to readers of the paper’s website. Here’s what they distilled from their ten thousand or so responses:
- Social equality and reducing the gap between the rich and poor 关注社会公平，缩小贫富差距
- Opposing corruption, advocating probity and punishing corrupt officials 反腐倡廉，惩处腐败分
- Improper fee-charging and corruption in education 关注教育乱收费，警惕教育腐败
- Solutions to the difficulties of getting medical treatment and improvements to the medical welfare system 解决看病难，建立健全医保体系
- State enterprise reform and prevention the loss of public assets 关注国企改革，防止国有资产流失
- Government by due legal process 依法行政，打造法治政府
- Attention to public petitions and solutions to popular grievances 重视信访，解民疾苦
- Crackdown on counterfeit goods and services; re-establish good faith in social dealings 重视信访，解民疾苦
- Upholding equal justice and establishing judicial authority 维护公平正义，树立司法权威
- Shortages of urban housing and rising prices 城市住房紧张，物价上扬
I read the story in a re-post here, where there’s more comments posted by readers. Don’t expect to read anything too far outside the officially prescribed parameters for debate though, because Xinhua has proudly announced that ‘China will enforce a 24-hour monitoring over the Internet‘ whilst the NPC is in session.
March 11th, 2005 at 12:17 am
Hullo, glad this blog is live! You made a nice comment about socialism or barbarism at Monkeyfilter and I just want you to know that I am glad you are doing what you are doing. Keep it up!
March 15th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
is this a translation website?can you put in something from your own perspective?
March 15th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Hi Wood - I do intend to comment on some issues but I’ll by and large try to stick to translating. That’s my storng-point and probably the best contribution I can make to informed understanding by non-Chinese speakers of changes in Chinese society.
There’s a lot of not too well informed comment on Chinese issues by foreign commentators who aren’t aware of or are unable to access the range of discourse and debate that happens in China. I think if I can make some of this available that in most instances it will be more interesting than my own insights which are hardly that penetrating. My choices of what I choose to translate about what issues are a commentary in themselves I suppose.
March 19th, 2005 at 1:52 am
Sorry to go off-topic, but the links in the second migrant workers posting don’t seem to work.
March 20th, 2005 at 8:14 am
Thanks for the heads-up path. I think it was a ‘curly quote’ style apostrophe generating a garbled permalink, which should be fixed now. I’m just finishing a major piece of translation work and should be able to add some updates to the site soon, including the other stories..
March 20th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Waiting for more storeis.