BEIJING — Migrant worker Yue Yaowei has lived in Beijing for six years but is not recognised as a resident of the Chinese capital — and so cannot get health insurance, buy a car or…
Category: Society
The State Council has ordered 10 percent of profits from land transfers to be plowed into education spending as the Cabinet strives to find diverse sources of funding for at least an extra 200 billion…
THE woman who attempted suicide after killing her 13-year-old twin sons with cerebral palsy in a south China city was sentenced to five years in prison for murder yesterday. Han Qunfeng, 37, was given…
COMPARED to the first bullet train that will leave Shanghai for Beijing on the new high-speed line, other forthcoming services have received a lukewarm response – at least for now. Rail officials said business travelers…
Ever since Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, there has been a huge influx of mainlanders coming to Hong Kong. As a mainland-born Hong Kong resident myself, albeit one who moved young, I fell nervous about…
Cases of alcohol poisoning among graduating students are on the rise due to frequent celebration dinners during graduation season, Xi’an Evening News reported on June 29. Four graduating students were sent to the Xi’an-based Shaanxi…
Increasingly emboldened gay and lesbian groups in China have become embroiled in a public feud with fundamental Christians. More than 10 gay rights groups have called for a boycott of the works of two…
A passenger proudly displays her train ticket in Shanghai on Thursday at the launch of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway. TANG YANJUN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE BEIJING – High-speed trains linking Beijing and Shanghai made their…
China’s rise over the past 30 years has changed the world. In return, China has also been transformed by the outside world, not least in the rise of the country’s cyber society. There are more than 470 million netizens in China, and not just among the swelling ranks of the middle class, there are also migrant workers, passionate youths, powerful governmental officials, businessmen and artists all eagerly all eager to make cyber statements. Never before has there been such an egalitarian society in China. Such a responsive public sphere has never existed in China before. This flat online society compresses real-life society to such an extent that any subtle itch, if not timely managed, will explode into a convulsive jerk electrifying the whole body. The space between civil society and the government has been squeezed, so that the county truly is guojia, the Chinese word for country, which is made up of two characters meaning the government and the family. However, the cyber society also poses unprecedented challenges for the government. How to live with netizens has become a pressing concern for the Chinese government, as thanks to the government’s flexibility and openness, Chinese netizens enjoy tremendous freedom of speech. The Internet society is an active power encouraging constructive discussions about various social and governance problems, from exposing corruption to investigating food safety problems, making great contribution to promoting government transparency and good governance. In response to this the government has had to follow a steep learning curve so as to respond quickly to the issues discussed online and address people’s concerns with concrete actions in a timely manner. The government is now able to effectively discern and clarify rumors online with its cutting edge expertise and overview of social problems. In this sense, the Chinese government has successfully engaged with the cyber society while pursuing good governance in real world, which benefits a lot from a well-managed online environment.
BEIJING – Some supposedly edible cooking oil on store shelves in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province is being produced from so-called gutter oil and swill-cooked oil, Chinese media have reported. Swill-cooked oil is waste animal…