|
 |
|
SAFE SCHOOL BUSES NEEDED: Pupils of Zouping County, Shandong Province, queue up for school buses sponsored by the local government on February 25 (XINHUA) |
Starting from September 25, the Chinese Ministry of Railways will reduce the fee for returning train tickets from 20 percent of the ticket's value to 5 percent, and the lowest fee of returning a ticket is 2 yuan ($0.3). This is the first time for cuts to service charges of returning train tickets since 1997.
The cut has been long urged by the public. Some people have gone as far as suing railway stations over the charge. None has won any damages. Even the administrative suggestion neither changed the ministry's firm attitude toward the unfair charge. In 2009, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) advised the ministry to stop charging passengers extra fees when returning tickets in reply to a lawyer's application of revoking the charge—but no actions were taken. In addition, complaints about delayed trains and terrible service have yet to be fully resolved, which has only further damaged the ministry's image.
Though the charge has been cut, people are still dissatisfied. First, it comes too late, especially as the railway sector earns increasing revenue from rising numbers of passengers. Second, cutting the fee is not enough. According to the NDRC regulation, the fee should not be charged in some cases. So the current reduction is limited.
The public does not expect that the ministry will completely revoke the charge, but it must assume its social responsibility and issue equal policies rather than pursue its own interests, especially by neglecting national regulations and laws on price.
Procuratorial Daily
Police recently caught a severely overloaded kindergarten bus in Qian'an County, north China's Hebei Province. It was an eight-seat minibus with the seats removed and was filled with 64 children and two adults, a driver and a teacher. These poor kids were packed like sardines face to face in the small space of the vehicle.
In recent years accidents on overloaded school buses have caused many deaths. The spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Education Xu Mei admits traffic accidents have become the primary killer of elementary and secondary school students.
Overloading school buses usually happens in migrant residences, rural areas and inland provinces, where the education investment is insufficient. In addition, some unqualified education organizations overload children onto their unlicensed school buses in order to make money.
However, there is no alternative to unlicensed buses for students in rural areas. Because of the national scheme of optimizing educational resources, some village schools have been closed and students are assembled to study in better schools. Thus, students have to travel farther, increasing the transport cost for them. Due to the lack of enough school buses and huge demand of students, unlicensed and overloaded school buses began to prevail in these areas.
The overloaded school buses reflect some essential problems, such as imbalanced education resources between rural and urban areas. The governments at all levels need to tackle these challenges as soon as possible.
Beijing Times
Protamine is a drug necessary for heart surgery. However, the government-set price leaves little room for profit for domestic pharmaceutical companies. Two of the three qualified pharmaceutical companies have stopped production. The only company currently producing this drug has suspended production due to the shortage of raw materials. As a result, hospitals around China are running out of protamine.
The shortage of protamine poses new challenges to the current medicine pricing system. China's basic medical care system will only function when the pricing of medicines suits patients and meets pharmaceutical companies' demand for profit margins.
Since the implementation of the basic medical system, the National Development and Reform Commission has lowered prices on tens of thousands of medicines, which finally led to the disappearance of a lot of medicines from the market.
Although patients need cheap medicine, to minimize pharmaceutical companies' profit margins is not always a wise decision. It's important to base medicine prices on the relationship between supply and demand and try to reach a balance between patients' demand and pharmaceutical companies' sustainable production.
Universal medical care is a big challenge to any government, particularly in such a populous country as China. When major manufacturers stopped making protamine, the government should have realized the price structure was not working. But relevant departments missed the signals. The medical care system is an endless process. Policies need to constantly adapt in order to keep up with changing conditions.
Beijing Youth Daily
Guo Meimei, a woman who boasted her connection with the Red Cross Society of China on the Internet, appeared on the cover of a fashion magazine recently.
Guo's self-exposure to some extent has triggered public doubts about the transparency and fairness of China's charities, which Guo later said was not her original intention. However, her irresponsibility for what she said and her tricks to make herself famous already made her a negative figure in the Chinese social life.
Her success to become famous actually reveals a disease in China's current social communication environment. Nowadays, if one wants to get famous, the media are always the first choice. Apart from spreading information, guiding public opinion and supervising social environment, the media are also entertainment providers who want to make money. However, the media must know that not all businesses are suitable for them. If they offend social moral standards, surely they will trigger public indignation.
Amplifying a negative figure will bring huge profits, and the media finds it irresistible to get involved with scandals. Guo on the cover is not a bad picture, but behind the cover is an ugly moral tale. In order to attract people's eyeballs, some media even make use of negative figures to advertise themselves, and this in return encourages more people to "promote" themselves through mean practices. As culture spreaders, the media must follow certain moral principles, and never should they provide stages for "clowns" because of profit allure.
China Youth Daily | 
