Olympic Chief Backs China

Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has found the recipe for successful engagement with China.

"You don't obtain anything in China with a loud voice," Rogge told British newspaper Financial Times on April 26, and said "respectful, quiet but firm" discussion was the way to get things done. According to the IOC chief, a big mistake of people in the West is that they want to impose their views on others.

Rogge called on the West, which he said had only granted independence to some colonies 40 years ago, to stop bashing China over human rights. "It took us 200 years to evolve from the French Revolution. China started in 1949," he said.

Rogge defended the IOC's decision to award the 2008 Games to Beijing, explaining that, when he and his colleagues made the decision in September 2001, they believed it would open China up. To illustrate they had, he noted the regulations that took effect on January 1, 2007, which significantly relaxed restrictions on foreign journalists' reporting in China in the run-up to and during the Games in August.

Scholar Proposes Labor Solution

Professor Wen Tiejun, Dean of the Agriculture and Rural Development School of Beijing-based Renmin University of China, has warned that China's unemployment levels will rise exponentially by 2020 as the number of active laborers grows to a predicted 940 million.

Speaking at a forum in south China's Guangdong Province in late April, Wen suggested the return of farmer-turned-laborers to hi-tech and intensive farming as the solution to an excess of laborers and other rural problems. "The country needs to optimize allocation of resources and invest more in rural development," he said.

The 57-year-old Wen is the scholar who coined the term "Rural Problems in Three Dimensions" concerning agriculture, the countryside and farmers. He is the director of James Yen Rural Reconstruction Institute, a nongovernmental and non-profit teaching institution where rural illiterates are taught and rural community development is highly advocated, and also advisor to ministries of environment, agriculture, water resources and health.

Pilot Given Right to Leave

Zheng Zhihong, a veteran pilot involved in a protracted labor dispute, has had his day in court. On April 24, the Kunming Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of Zheng's resignation, but said he could leave only after paying 1.4 million yuan ($200,000) in training costs to his former employer, China Eastern Airline's Yunnan branch.

The court rejected the company's request to impose a penalty on Zheng for his alleged breach of their labor contract, saying Zheng had gone through legal procedures to quit.

Zheng, a 24-year flying veteran, first resigned in May 2007. China Eastern Airlines, however, agreed to his resignation only if he paid an overall compensation of 12.57 million yuan ($1.8 million). Zheng later sued the company.

China's civil aviation industry is expected to be short of 10,000 pilots over the next five years. For a long time, major airlines have attempted to prevent their pilots from transferring to rivals by demanding large compensation.

Zheng's lawyer said the case might set a precedent for the settlement of similar disputes in the future. Zheng said he was satisfied with the outcome.

"When we had a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet./ When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it was human rights abuse./ When we were poor, you thought we were dogs./ When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts./ When we build our industries, you call us polluters./ When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming."

A poem posted on the Internet by "a silent silent Chinese," expressing the Chinese people's feelings that no matter what China does, it cannot win in the arena of world opinion

"Overall, although China is a net importer in the agricultural sector due to very extensive importing of oil-bearing seeds, the country can still cover its own rising demand in most major farm products."

Central Agricultural Market and Pricing Agency, an agricultural market research group established by German farm producers, dismissing the often repeated claim that rising demand from China is the main reason for surging world food prices in a report released on April 25

"I reproach them, that the economy was not as resilient as it could have been due to the ongoing tax cuts and the huge costs incurred by the war in Iraq."

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, blaming Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the government of President George W. Bush for the U.S. financial crisis in an interview published on April 28 in Profil magazine

"Eventually, if the world is to succeed in Afghanistan, it will be by building the Afghan state, not by keeping it weak."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, telling The New York Times in an interview published on April 26 that his government must be accorded the lead in policy decisions

"We have the resources and the know-how. But we have less than 1,000 days."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, inaugurating an ambitious global initiative to eliminate malaria in Africa by the end of 2010, including the delivery of 250-million insecticide-treated beds, on April 25, the first World Malaria Day