LUXURY OR LEISURE: Glittering nightlife along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, does not cover up the fact that most ordinary people's subsistance is subject to extreme pressure (XINHUA)

Priceless Quality

Recently, the construction authority of Beijing's Daxing District found six flat buildings in a public housing project did not meet quality requirements. These buildings were ordered to be demolished and rebuilt.

In this case, the quality watchdog fulfilled its responsibility. This issue rings alarm bells about the quality of public housing.

The substandard buildings in Daxing are not the only case of their kind. In southeast China's Fujian Province, it was reported public housing projects there were being built farther away from the downtown area, making the life of residents very inconvenient. Besides, the living environment is awful. There is no green land, nearby schools and property management, and rubbish is left unattended.

There are many reasons for the poor quality of public housing. Some local governments believe it's unprofitable business. Moreover, real estate developers try to minimize costs to maximize profits.

Low-income earners always tend to be disadvantaged, so they are not powerful enough to fight developers when their interests are violated.

The government must do its best to protect low-income earners' rights. Otherwise, justice and fairness will be nonexistent and the credibility of public goods will surely be tarnished.

The Beijing News

Busy Chiefs

October 18 was the day principal officials of the Municipal Government of Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong Province received local residents' complaints directly. At all of the reception venues, people began to queue up at dawn. Some even had waited for three successive days to meet the mayor. Some of them burst into tears the moment they saw the mayor.

The mass crowds were in outstanding contrast to the tranquil government building on other workdays. While overstaffed departments show very low efficiency in addressing local residents' concerns, leading city officials are able to give people a positive answer within minutes. In this situation, more and more people choose to wait for several days to meet high-ranking officials, instead of going through the time-consuming regular channels to raise their complaints. Worse still, they also neglect inaction of many administrative departments.

When leading city officials are busy with specific yet trivial issues, how much energy can one expect them to spare for the overall management of the whole city?

If the regular channels were efficient enough to help people in difficult situations, then people would not need to wait several days or queue up from dawn to meet the mayor.

Huashang Daily

Overstretched Education

A 13-year-old student at Shandong Province's Linyi No.6 Middle School killed herself by drinking pesticide, after she was repeatedly denied admission to the school because her hair length failed to meet the management's requirements.

As famous Chinese educationist Tao Xingzhi (1891-1946) said, students must try to learn to be true and real people. Adolescents do need to be guided on various issues, but if they are restricted by various petty rigid regulations and rules, they feel they are not respected and will never be the kind of people they hope to be.

If schools are able to improve students' overall quality and help them develop the ability of telling right from wrong, it is unnecessary for them to spend so much time telling students what their hairstyles should be and how they should be dressed.

In this case, the school busied itself in an area that was not one of its real responsibilities, and neglected its more important obligations. This sort of groundless regulation fully underlines the school's failure in educating students.

Qianjiang Evening News

Leisure or Pressure

China's top 10 leisure cities were unveiled recently, with east China's Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province and Nanjing in Jiangsu Province coming to first and third place.

The ranking was mainly based on a group of so-called experts' estimation. Since there are no widely recognized criteria to assess whether a city provides a nice place to vacation or live, so for the time being taking into account people's feelings about "comfortable life" may be the more effective measurement. Listing Nanjing and Hangzhou triggered sarcastic comments on the Web, because these two cites are first of all famed for exorbitantly high housing prices and many white-collar workers have left there for other places where they think are more easy to live.

When the living environment in a city becomes agonizing, how can they retain the title of "leisure city?"

Under huge pressure, people feel forced to work—and work at a fast pace—to make ends meet, and often find free time unobtainable. If basic rights to housing, rest and health are not guaranteed, the title of "leisure city" is self-deceiving. More terrible is that it may only be something the local governments mean to take advantage of, but has nothing to do with ordinary local residents.

Chinese Business Morning View