SHORTAGE: Due to an expanding aging population, inexpensive and good care houses are becoming increasingly inaccessible. A comfortable environment such as this one in Yuqing County, Guizhou Province, is the dream of many senior citizens (XINHUA)

Expensive Equipment

The Liuzhou Traffic Police Detachment in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region recently demanded automobile owners use new equipment to attach license plates at the price of 27 yuan ($4). But the state's written regulation puts the price at only 1 yuan ( $0.15).

Liuzhou's traffic management department repeatedly said the Ministry of Public Security had ordered the change, and the 27 yuan worth of equipment was not sold by the department, but by the Liuzhou Vehicle Driver Association. Strangely, this association is the only franchise for the new equipment in the city and its office is inside the yard of the Liuzhou Traffic Police Detachment. Liuzhou is now home to more than 300,000 motor vehicles. Sold for 27 yuan, this equipment means big business.

Like the case of the Liuzhou traffic departments, some grassroots governmental institutions often force consumers to buy certain commodities as a way of harvesting easy and huge profits.

Administrative powers do have the responsibility to regulate and supervise the market, but their hands should not stretch too far. It should never order consumers to buy a certain product from a certain producer. It is not only an abuse of power, but the public will suspect collaboration between the authority and the business. Ordinary consumers have no other choice than to buy the designated product. This is more like another form of administrative fee collection than a trade.

It's hoped the incident will make more places check up on and eliminate similar coerced trade imposed by an administrative power.

Workers' Daily

Better Care for the Aged

In Taohe Care House in Yingshan County of central China's Hubei Province, an elderly man with mental problems died after being left cold and hungry for a whole night recently, because he had angered the care worker. Of the 17 elderly people at the house, 10 are visually—or vocally—impaired or have mental disorders, so they are seldom visited by their relatives. Local villagers say the elderly inhabitants of the house are often abused.

The care worker concerned has never received any related training and has only four years' school experience. How has he become a care worker and also temporary director?

Yingshan County has 51,826 old people above the age of 60. Of the 6,055 who meet the qualification for the state's special welfare treatment, only 2,477 people actually enjoy it. The general standard is that every care house should be equipped with at least three workers, but this one only had one director and one worker—the case in many care houses in the county.

China is now home to 167 million people above the age of 60. The conditions in the Taohe Care House somewhat epitomize care houses across the country. The expanding group of aging people find themselves unable to afford living in a care home at all.

The shortage of professional and cheap care houses is related to the surging number of old people, but more importantly, it results from insufficient financial input by the government. The US' input into social security amounts to 73 percent of the national budget, but in China it is only 25.5 percent.

An old man who died lonely on a cold night in sheltered housing is a doleful picture. This extreme incident calls for a better-developed social security system to take care of the old and weak and to reduce these tragedies in today's civilized world.

China Youth Daily

Smoking Burdens

The Director of the National Tobacco Control Office Yang Gonghuan said at a recent media forum there were now 740 million people who are passive smokers in China. In 2007, there were 540 million. He said if people continued to turn a blind eye to the risk of secondhand smoking, it would cause a huge medical burden.

China is home to one third of the world's smokers, with 350 million smokers above the age of 15. Now the question is: Who is responsible for the huge medical burden secondhand smoking brings?

In 2005, the direct cost of smoking, that is, the cost of smoking-related diseases, amounted to 166.5 billion yuan ( $24.5 billion). But the medical burdens caused by smokers now have to be borne by passive smokers. In China, victims are used to staying silent and coping with the damage caused solely by themselves or their families.

The large amounts of false advertising and tobacco companies' refusal to expose harmful ingredients in cigarettes have kept Chinese smokers in ignorance of the harm of smoking.

In accordance with China's Tort Liability Law, tobacco smoke may constitute "tort liabilities," which means the Chinese have legal support to deal with tobacco-related lawsuits.

It's unfair to transfer the medical burden to the ordinary public who are actually victims of smoking. Now the legal base is there, but whether the lawsuits can really bring tobacco companies to justice is still unknown. It depends on the ordinary people's awareness of smoking risks and more importantly on the attitude of China's judicial institutions and law enforcement agencies toward passive smokers' troubles.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph

Government Purchases

On the list of to-be-purchased mobile facilities for the Fushun Finance Bureau in northeast China's Liaoning Province, the Apple iPod Touch 4 (32G) is designated as a USB flash disk. At the price of 2,398 yuan ($352.6), this device's major functions are video, audio and games playing. This bureau is so wealthy it spends more than 2,000 yuan ($294.1) on a newly developed Apple product as a USB flash disk.

In this case, obviously, some of the government staff are taking advantage of the purchase to meet their own demands. This is not any different from embezzling public funds.

The question is why this purchase plan was ratified. The incident has triggered public concern: Does it often happen that goods purchased in the name of government office equipment are ultimately embezzled?

The only way to deter greedy officials from wasting money is to punish them, making them take accountability for what they have done. The ones to be held accountable must be officials, not ordinary work staff. Besides, strict supervision, internal and external, on government's purchase procedures is very important. Otherwise, embezzlement and corruption can't be rooted out.

Yangtze Evening News