xuefeic的博客

At the end of 2005, how do I summerize my 2005?

I have successfully graduated from the wonderful master course in leadership for sustainable development. This is what I have achieved during the year.

Due to my stubbornness, I took the chance.

I failed to persuade my boss to let me go back to work in my former radio station. I have been upset for about 2 weeks and felt quite ill due to my idleness. I couldn't stop working.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so naive that I waited till now to find a job and really tried to go back to work. I should have spent sometime even when I was in Shanghai and handed out some resume and started to look for a job so that I could have started.

No matter what I do, I should be passionate. No matter where I work, I should be dilligent.

No matter when I work, I will be exercising my leadership in sustainable development and do my best for the good of the people. It's so encouraging that our great country China is implementing sustainable development policies and make such an idea as a leading principle. As time goes by, hope we will be on the right track and go steadily forward.

My new year resolution will be to make my dream come true. I will not live in vain, I will exercise more and do my best to achieve my promise.

I hope it won't be too late for me to work more after next year.

I know it belongs to young people now. But I will learn from Zhang Haidi, she is still our model. At least, I will not bring trouble to other people. And in addition I will contribute a bit more. If not, at least I will not bring trouble.

Life is still beautiful and I will work hard to make it more beautiful. I am not the one who can be a great leader, but I can be as passionate as I can and contribute all that I can. Friends, parents, students, comrades and everyone I know and I don't know, wish you all happy new year!!!

At the end of 2005, how do I summerize my 2005?

I have successfully graduated from the wonderful master course in leadership for sustainable development. This is what I have achieved during the year.

Due to my stubbornness, I took the chance.

I failed to persuade my boss to let me go back to work in my former radio station. I have been upset for about 2 weeks and felt quite ill due to my idleness. I couldn't stop working.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so naive that I waited till now to find a job and really tried to go back to work. I should have spent sometime even when I was in Shanghai and handed out some resume and started to look for a job so that I could have started.

No matter what I do, I should be passionate. No matter where I work, I should be dilligent.

No matter when I work, I will be exercising my leadership in sustainable development and do my best for the good of the people. It's so encouraging that our great country China is implementing sustainable development policies and make such an idea as a leading principle. As time goes by, hope we will be on the right track and go steadily forward.

My new year resolution will be to make my dream come true. I will not live in vain, I will exercise more and do my best to achieve my promise.

I hope it won't be too late for me to work more after next year.

I know it belongs to young people now. But I will learn from Zhang Haidi, she is still our model. At least, I will not bring trouble to other people. And in addition I will contribute a bit more. If not, at least I will not bring trouble.

Life is still beautiful and I will work hard to make it more beautiful. I am not the one who can be a great leader, but I can be as passionate as I can and contribute all that I can. Friends, parents, students, comrades and everyone I know and I don't know, wish you all happy new year!!!

The top legislative body, National People's Congress, has voted yes to the abolition of the 2600 years agricultural tax in China.

The move is seen as a good measure to reduce farmers' burden and increase their income. In addition, since 2005, farmers in many provinces have got a stipend of 13 yuan per mu.

    How to Increase Farmers’ Consumption Capacity

                                        By Chen Xuefei

“It is good to get rid of farmers’ tax and even give them stipend. But when farmers go to buy fertilizer and pesticide, the price is much higher than expected. So the compensation from the government is crossed out by this purchase.” 71 year old farmer  Feng ming.

He has cultivated a field of 2 mu, enough for his staple food as he grows corn every year. That’s almost all his income. He also grows some apple trees and other trees in a small hillside. That takes most of his time, but the output is minimum. But the purpose of having a hillside is just to keep the hill green. “There isn’t much to squeeze out from the farmers.” He said.”Last year, I and my wife harvested 2500 kilograms of corn this year, and we sold it for 2500 yuan. But due to my wife’s cardiological problem, I spent almost 2000 yuan for medicine and injections for her just this winter.” As he can still rely on his children for a living, he is very much relieved from the worries. But many farmers have to just manage their food and clothes. And if they want to buy any industrial products, the price is always beyond their reach.

The road in his village is still the same as 30 years ago. Many of the farmers have rebuilt their houses, but after 20 years, it needs to be rebuilt again because the quality and materials were not good.

“To improve farmers life, we need to improve the infrastructure in rural areas, let farmers have tap water, cement road, bricks houses and by providing these infrastructures, it provides jobs and opportunities and it will create a service industry too.” said Chen Xi, a scholar on sustainable development.

She said there is a serious mindset change too. “Nowadays, if everything is measured by money or cash, it will cause a problem of people losing values. Thus there should be a mindset of getting things done and doing the right thing.”

                              Plan is Still an Important Thing

When I was in New Zealand, I had a good tour to the vineyard and looked at how the farmers make wine and tasted a lot of wine from Chardoney to Pinot Noir. During the visit, I asked a farmer how much he produced. He said that year he didn’t want to produce more because the market is saturated. Other times he produced more because there was a big demand. So in order to keep the price, he simply produced less when there was less demand.

This was called the market fluctuation or market mechanism. Similarly, if we don’t have strong demand from the market, we have to think of the production in addition to consumption. So far, due to blindly investment in iron and steel, we have great surplus of production capacity. And this surplus will be a waste. But on the other hand, I think the production can be slowed down.

 What are the major cause of the serious mining accidents in 2005?

                     Chen Xuefei

From November 2004 to the end of 2005, there were 6 major nationwide influential accidents while in total 691thousand accidents took place, 9% lower than last year. The total number of people died of accidents all over the country reached nearly 120 thousand 7% lower than last year.

Li Jizhong, Minister of State Safe Production and Supervision Administration attributes mine managers’ ignorance of safety regulations and negligence of national law as one of the major reasons for the accidents.

“Some managers simply ignore any laws and there were no management or implementation of laws and regulations at all. They even neglect life for profit.”

Due to economic interest, some local government didn’t strictly implement laws and regulations in resolutely closing down or eliminating those should have been closed.

He said supervision work was not done well either. “Sometimes they didn’t find the problem, sometimes even though they found the problem, they didn’t really solve the problem. Many times, they were still not serious in taking measures to solve the problem. Still a lot of formalities exist.”

For some deeper or fundamental causes of the accidents, Li Yizhong said the mode of economic growth is very backward, management was weakened, supervision system was not complete, investment in safety was not sufficient and there are lot of historic debts in this field. The transfer of rural labors to urban areas is very fast, but they lack training and education. Another reason is the officials and business people are trading each other with power and money, that is corruption in another word.

Economic development is so fast that the transportation of coal, electricity and oil is operating with great pressure. They are normally operating to their full potential or even over their capacity.  

Li Yizhong said 7 measures will be taken to control the accidents. They include inspecting and getting rid of the potential problem, suspending production of 12999 coal mines, closing down those who are not qualified, (at least 4000 should be closed down), standardizing the restrucuring to avoid the delay of closing down process or avoid being closed down, strictly banning over-capacity production or mining,and resorting the responsibility to those who are in the county and township coal mines.

 Professional Diseases among Rural Workers

Rural workers working in urban or township enterprises are the most vulnerable group of getting professional diseases such as lung problem and brontitis.

Ministry of Health reported that currently there are 100 million rural laborers working in cities while 136 million working in township enterprises. About 200 million people are in danger of getting professional diseases due to worse working conditions and environment.

Sadly most of these people don’t have medical care and no insurance when they came to work. They even didn’t sign a legal contract.

Thus corporate social responsibilities need to be implemented by business and workers need to be trained in getting the knowledge of protecting themselves.

   The Government Did the Right Thing—to Get Rid of Agricultural Tax                                   Chen Xuefei

It’s expected that the National People’s Congress will announce that the 2600 years old Agricultural Tax will be abolished at the beginning of 2006.

This is the right thing the communist government has done. This will be the second time the Chinese farmers benefit from the government policies.

The first time was in 1978 when China started rural reform by contracting land to farmers so that farmers could have greater enthusiasm and work hard to achieve a good harvest. That was after the long term restriction of leftist ideas of rather getting the land wasted full of grass than growing any other crops except grain. That was the first time of mind liberation.

After 1992 when Deng Xiaoping encouraged the country to take a bolder step forward, fast economic development has been experienced mainly in cities. With reform of state-owned enterprises, both state-owned and private business have taken the lead to increase people’s income in cities. More and more business people benefited from the country’s policies of encouraging more manufacturing and many other industries.

Meanwhile, more and more rural people come to cities to work as cheap labor while the women and the weak are still working in rural areas.

With the fast pace of becoming world factory, people in cities benefit more from economic growth than farmers. The gap between the rich and the poor is much higher than expected. Farmers don’t have medical care, nor retirement pension. They got nothing to ensure their old age. At the same time the traditional big family bondage was also broken. Old farmers have no one to rely on.

For many years, farmers have been burdened by all kinds of taxes such as education fee, agricultural surtax, agricultural tax and others. They have to be in charge of the local officials’ salary and local teachers’ slary and students school fees. Even though the fees are not much, compared with their income, it’s a huge proportion of their income. Farmers income can barely be enough for their life. They have no extra money to purchase more commodities from the city’s industry.

"Without 900 million farmers’ purchasing power, Chinese market will not be big enough. If you want the farmers to buy more, you have to let them earn more." said Chenxi, a researcher in sustainable development. 

Thus the central government now decides to unfetter the farmers from tax and on the other hand, gives them some stipends such as 13 yuan per mu. One mu equals to 1/15 hectare. 13 yuan is about 1.6 dollars. It’s not a big number, but it is a plus, but not a minus.

In budget, the central government now is also capable of providing help to farmers. In the 1950s, agricultural tax accounts for 39 % of the total revenue. But by 2004, it only accounts for 1%. Thus, it’s time to truly get rid of farmers’ burden, this in another sense is also getting rid of the whole countries burden.

"Only when the 900 million farmers in China are rich, will the whole country be rich, and only when they can buy more, can the full market potential be achieved." added Chenxi. 

So the government is doing the right thing. And the whole plan of building the new socialist countryside should be hailed, encouraged and be sincerely carried out.