JOB HUNTERS: Most of China’s more than 6 million college graduates in 2009 have to lower their career expectations against a tight employment market(ZHOU HENGYI)

Newcomers Must Be Paid

For millions of college students who are to graduate in the coming year, the global economic crisis is undoubtedly weakening the chances of finding a job. Under this immense pressure of unemployment, some job seekers even offer to temporarily work for free, in hopes of attracting attention from more employers and thus securing better positions in the future. In the final analysis, this is a helpless choice.

However, China's Labor Contract Law has rigid stipulations on work payment. Article 20 of the law reads, "During the probation period, the salary of a worker shall not be lower than the minimum salary for the same post of the same employer or not lower than 80 percent of the wage as stipulated in the labor contract, nor may it be lower than the minimum wage of the locality where the entity is situated." Obviously, zero-pay jobs are absolutely illegal.

At a time of global economic crisis, legitimate rights of workers are also under an unprecedented test. It's high time for the government to take substantial actions to protect new graduates' rights and supervise employers' illegal employment practices. Failing this, it seems that even more students will have their rights violated by selfish employers.

Yanzhao Evening News

Productivity Not Theory

According to statistics released by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, the country published 78,200 Ei-indexed theses in 2007, overtaking the United States for the first time to be the world's number one and accounting for 19 percent of the world's total.

The Ei theses are scientific and technical ones indexed by the United States-based Engineering Index.

This is really something to be proud of, but the volumes of papers are not as helpful to China's scientific progress.

In China, universities and research institutions are major producers of science theses. However, a noteworthy fact is that no Chinese mainland university ranked among the world's top 100 research universities in 2007.

For most Chinese scientists, a thesis is nothing but a stepping-stone to promotion. Once they have got their promotion or academic degrees, the whole research process ends. As a result, despite the huge amount of theses, few research achievements are commercially applicable.

The state has to input a lot of money into science research, but when the target of research is only a certificate or mention in a paper without any tangible benefit, it's really a waste of money and also harmful to the country's scientific progress.

Dazhong Daily

Wastewater Plants a Cash Cow

According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, it recently received 500 applications for the building of sewage plants in five days. This number is almost one third of the country's existing facilities for sewage treatment.

If these plants are really set up and put into use, they will help a lot to deal with environmental problems. However, government sources have revealed that half of the existing 1,400 sewage plants are left unused. It's quite possible that local governments will spend the money on other programs after they have received allocations for building sewage plants.

After the Central Government announced the $586-billion economic stimulus package in early November, many local officials have come to Beijing asking for investment, all hoping to get as big a slice of the cake as possible. In some cases, local governments invent various programs in order to get special funds.

Why are some local governments interested in building redundant sewage plants that surely will lead to the waste of public funds? The government must carefully examine all applications so as to prevent local governments from defrauding it of huge amounts of money in the name of boosting the local economy.

Guangzhou Daily

Scalpers Rip off Travelers

The Ministry of Railways announced on December 11 that during the 2009 Spring Festival (Chinese lunar New Year) travel peak, it would not raise prices of train tickets. Despite the ministry's commitment, those who traveled by train during previous Spring Festival holidays cannot help but feel anxious. Although efforts were reportedly launched to stabilize train ticket prices in the past two years, finally, seldom can travelers get tickets at face value when they bought them from scalpers.

What travelers are most concerned with is not whether the Ministry of Railways decides to raise train ticket prices or not, but the collusion between scalpers and some railway industry insiders to make profits on the tickets in short supply.

While teachers and doctors are accused of bribery if they accept kickbacks, railway workers can still get away with harvesting huge profits by making use of the country's limited transportation capacity.

If there is no collusion, the public will not feel as if they are cheated, even if tickets are still hard to obtain during the peak travel period. Since the Ministry of Railways monopolizes train ticket sales, it must take responsibility. Until there are effective measures to do away with scalpers, the ticket issue is far from ever being solved.

Xiaoxiang Morning Herald