BYSTANDERS: More than 1,000 lamps along the 53-km expressway linking Zhengzhou and Shaolin Temple in Henan Province have been idle since the road opened to traffic nearly seven years ago (WANG SONG)

Arbitrary Bank Fees

In some southern and eastern Chinese cities, most state-owned and joint-stock commercial banks have recently doubled the commission charge for inter-bank withdrawals to 4 yuan ($0.59) a transaction.

It's not realistic to fix the commission charge standard forever, but there must be two conditions for raising it: First, it should be made clear why the commission charge must be raised; second, the hike should have public consent since it has a direct bearing on the interests of clients and breaks original contracts between banks and clients.

Most banks, however, raised their commission charge in a sneaky way—neither informing clients nor giving specific reasons. The Law on the Protection of Consumers' Rights and Interests says businesses, banks included, and clients should trade on the principle of "voluntary, equal, just and honest". Nonetheless, this unilateral commission charge rise is neither honest nor equal.

The commission charge hike also violates the Law on Pricing, which mandates hearings when prices of public services and monopoly products are to be adjusted. Without input of public opinion, banks shouldn't raise commission charges arbitrarily.

People have known for years there are more than 100 chargeable items from commercial banks, including many really unreasonable ones. The real problem is, if the monopoly status of banks is not broken, and at the same time regulatory departments just stand by and do nothing, how can the interests of clients be protected?

Zhujiang Evening News

Costly Ornaments

Seven years after the opening of an expressway linking Zhengzhou and Shaolin Temple in central China's Henan Province, 1,000 lamps along the expressway have never been turned on for passing vehicles. The installation of this lighting cost at least 6 million yuan ($882,000).

With any project, as long as it has been designed and built, there must be something we hope it does. Fences and traffic signs ensure road users' safety and provide drivers with road information. With illuminated street lamps, drivers feel safer at nights. Particularly, when a car suddenly applies brakes, cars following it will be aware of it in time so as to avoid crashes.

But lamps that cost more than 6 million yuan have been there unused for seven years, without any maintenance during that time.

When asked why these lights are never turned on, the road operator claimed it did so to save energy and reduce emissions. But with lighted lamps, it is possible to avert traffic accidents. Doesn't that save a lot of money and energy, too?

Yanzhao Metropolis Daily

Value of Lives

The State Administration of Work Safety recently said, from June 1 next year, the one-time compensation standard for work-related injuries and deaths will be calculated at 20 times the average annual disposable income of urban residents for the previous year. Under the new standard, victims' families will be able to receive compensation of up to 600,000 yuan ($88,235), nearly three times the current amount.

Businesses are profit-driven entities, which know how to maximize profits and minimize cost. Why do so many mine owners prefer to offer compensation to workplace accident victims rather than taking measures to improve safety facilities and working environments?

The answer is, while a mine owner's annual revenue may approach 100 million yuan ($14.7 million), the death of a worker only costs him at most 200,000 yuan ($29,400). The meager compensation by no means arouses coal miners' awareness of protecting workers' safety. As a result, tragic mine accidents continue to happen.

In order to encourage business owners to do more for workers' safety, now is really the right time to raise the workplace accident compensation standard higher than estimated safety spending.

Legal Daily

Misused Donation

Liu Mingguo, a farmer from Laiyuan County in north China's Hebei Province, has made a denunciation in the media that almost half of the 51,000 yuan ($7,500) people donated to his son who has leucocythemia was pocketed by local officials.

The officials' callousness toward leucocythemia victims makes people shudder with fear. If the processing of donations can be corrupted, what kind of money can survive?

The scandal also undermines the credibility of the entire charity system and discourages people giving away their money for love.

People have focused on the alleged lack of a sense of charity among Chinese people. For instance, statistics from the China Charity Foundation show that 70 percent of the donations it receives came from foreign countries and China's Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, while only 15 percent were from the Chinese mainland.

From the story above, we can see that maybe the problem is not in the lack of benevolence among Chinese people but in an imperfect charity system.

Yangtze Evening News