BEST CHOICE: Chongqing residents exchange views on a local public rental flats project. The municipality in southwest China has imposed a strict cap on rent to reduce financial burdens on middle- and low-income tenants (CHEN CHENG)

Brazen Polluters

It has been a month since the toxic wastewater leak at a plant of Zijin Mining Group in south China's Fujian Province. However, there has not been any news about the company's expenditure on environmental improvement and compensation for local residents' losses.

As for the recent oil pipeline explosion in Dalian, Liaoning Province, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) claimed it was caused by a contractor and the CNPC had only played a minor part in it. When the media came to visit the contractor, local people said they had never heard of the company. (See p.16-21)

Both companies have caused serious pollution and tremendous losses. How badly the local ecological environments will be affected is still unpredictable. But they are playing word games and trying to shake off their responsibilities and compensation as much as possible.

In contrast, after BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company was forced by the U.S. Government to set up a $20-billion compensation foundation.

Loopholes in China's laws on pollution is helping Zijin Mining and the CNPC evade the issues. Affected local residents can do nothing but accept the cruel facts because of the lack of related laws.

As large enterprises, Zijin Mining and the CNPC are expected to take on social responsibilities, rather than going out of their way to take advantage of the legal system's loopholes.

China Youth Daily

Inaccessible Welfare

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development recently announced the planned rents for three projects of public rental flats whose construction is ongoing. Official statistics show they are 12-35 percent lower than current prices in surrounding residential neighborhoods. However, investigations by media organizations found the planned rent of 20-30 yuan ($2.94-4.41) a square meter a month is not lower but, in some cases, higher than market rates.

The pricing regime is of vital importance to the popularity of public rental flats. But in many places, it is only stipulated the rents of public rental flats should be a bit lower than market rates, which turn out to be 80 or 90 percent of the latter in practice. The only exception is southwest China's Chongqing, which pioneered the building of public rental flats. The local government has announced the rents for public rental flats should be at least 40 percent off market rates.

Such high rents are unattractive to most middle and low-income earners. If public rental flats can't play the role they are expected to, why is Beijing spending huge money on them? While the rents are not low enough, applicants still have to go through complicated and strict procedures to apply for the flats. If this trend continues, some day no one will be interested in public rental flats. That will result in a huge waste of public funds.

Since public rental flats are part of social welfare benefits, they should never be used as a tool to make profits or to bolster the government's image.

The Beijing News

Still Dirty

Disinfected tableware is being promoted in city restaurants, so people naturally will have higher expectations about restaurant hygiene. But awful sanitary situations are found in tableware disinfection factories in Henan and Yunnan provinces: flowing sewerage and buzzing flies everywhere. To put chopsticks out in the sun is said to be a process of disinfection, dirty water used to wash the implements is used again and again, and tableware is packaged and sold after being wiped with a dishcloth that is only washed once a day. There is no disinfection at all.

From swill (filthy and toxic cooking oil extracted from gutters and drains) to dirty tableware, the public feels worried and even disgusted about restaurant sanitation. They have even begun to doubt the sanitation of the entire catering industry.

As for tableware disinfection, the Ministry of Health issued explicit regulations in May. Generally speaking, the time following the promulgation of a new law or regulation will be tough on illegal practices. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the tableware disinfection sector.

After the swill oil scandal, catering sanitation should have become a priority on the agenda of relevant government departments, but we have not seen tangible actions yet. It's not these departments that uncover these illegal operations, but tip-offs by the public and journalists' investigations finally disclose them.

If government departments only take action after media exposure and deal only with exposed cases, probably unclean tableware won't be the last terrible story from the catering industry.

Procuratorial Daily

Crazy Growth

On July 27, the Ministry of Education publicized on its official website 140 new undergraduate programs to be offered by China's higher learning institutions. These programs are all related to government-designated emerging industries of strategic importance and will begin to recruit students from 2011.

What will the new programs bring to students? Is it responsible to so quickly set up new programs when the development of relevant industries is still hard to predict?

Stressing the demands of the market, colleges rush to set up in-demand programs, neglecting their teaching capacity. What is taught in class basically has nothing to do with what's required in the market. Previous blind expansion of higher learning institutions has led to a surplus of graduates.

China's higher learning institutions now offer more than 700 undergraduate programs. A survey in March showed, students of law, computer science, international economics and trade, which were considered the most promising majors several years ago, faced the worst difficulty in finding work. One third of unemployed college graduates are from these programs.

As for the 140 programs to be launched, are the higher learning institutions ready to face up to the market's tests?

Xinhua Daily Telecom