April 4^th, 2006

When in China I always take great pleasure in reading your weekly magazine and usually tune on interesting and useful topics.

This time I would like to congratulate your office and Mr. Lan Xinzhen about the articles written about the issue of solid waste management: both articles--the general one and the related were very interesting and hit the issues on the center of the nail for both treatment and collection. I appreciated greatly the point discussed on sorting thrash and its difficulty of doing so yet in China, which is one we are experiencing on some of the project we financed.

——Edouard Motte

April 28, 2006

I can not agree with you more on the short article “Scientific Research Overlap” by People’s Daily Hua Nan News in Beijing Review dated April 20, 2006. It is a sheer waste of precious valuable resources in scientific research duplications. Except in government funded research projects, the government can exert very little control over private free enterprises carrying out their own research projects. Unless there is an established channel of communication between various private enterprises doing similar research projects, agreeing to pool their resources together with the government’s blessing, the government can do very little except to act as in-between or as project coordinator between private enterprises.

Ting Yap