China Press

The official report is here.
Chan is the first Chinese (of Hong Kong origin) to head a UN agency. Her goal for her term is to improve the health of Africans and of women.

According to recent measures, migrants without temporary residence certificates must immediately move out of their rented rooms. Lawyers stepped forward to defend the migrants. This initiative is another "incentive for Chinese legislators to abolish the controversial residential registry system that was introduced twenty years ago to prevent excessive influx to urban cities and guarantee a sound security order". Under the system, a migrant is not allowed to permanently stay in a city.

The whole article is below and here.

Seven months ago Beijing faced a barrage of criticism after it announced measures to 'maintain public security' that dictated migrants without temporary residence certificates must immediately move out of their rented rooms.

Discordant voices swept through the media, labeling the policy as discriminatory against migrants and a violation of their rights.

Ten lawyers from Central China's Henan Province have stepped forward to defend the migrants by submitting a letter to the People's Congress and the State Council, claiming the existing temporary residence permit system runs counter to China's laws and should be revoked, reported ce.cn on December 27.

The letter, which was made public after three-months of research and preparation, is another new incentive for Chinese legislators to abolish the controversial residential registry system that was introduced twenty years ago to prevent excessive influx to urban cities and guarantee a sound security order.

The crowd of voices calling for the elimination of the controversial system reached a climax after 27-year-old Sun Zhigang became a victim of the system in 2003.

On March 17 of that year Sun was wandering down a street in south China's Guangdong Province without his ID card or temporary residence certificate. His life changed forever after being stopped by local law enforcement officers. He spent his last three days at a local repatriation clinic.

On March 20, he died. An autopsy showed his body was covered in bruises.

His death marked the end of China's repatriation system and set in motion a nationwide backlash over the decades-old temporary residence permit system.

Lawyer Fan Honglie noted that rendering a temporary residence certificate to a migrant is a typical administrative licensing measure.

Fang said as a citizen of the People's Republic of China, A migrants should not be acquired a temporary residence certificate.

Under the system, a migrant is not allowed to permanently stay in a city.

The lawyers said it is inevitable that China's social economic development will produce a human flow among cities and result in the management of migrants.

The lawyers said that the central government should not hamper the human influx via administrative measures.

For China, 2003 was a turning point due to the issuance of the People's Republic of China Administrative Licensing Law. Several cities, led by the northern city of Shenyang repealed the system in July, 2003, but announced its revival in December, citing security reasons and complex management of migrants.

Local officials claimed their decision three years ago was hurried, adding management there are new problems in managing migrants, without elaboration.

The lawyers rebutted the officials' claims, saying strict enforcement on ID card management will solve the issue.

China has the Law of the People's Republic of China on Resident Identity Cards and the People's Republic of China Administrative Licensing Law, which can replace the outdated system, the lawyers said.

According to an online poll organized by sohu.com, more than 80 per cent of the 19, 497 respondents agreed with abolishing the system, while 11 per cent disagreed.

Many employers fail to provide full maternity leave and hospital costs to female migrant workers. The whole article is below and here.

BEIJING, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- A national survey shows that only 36.4 percent of all employers provide more than 90 days maternity leave to female migrant workers.

The survey, which was conducted by the All-China Women's Federation in 2006, also shows that only 12.8 percent of employers cover hospital costs when their migrant worker employee gives birth.

Among the companies which offer maternity leave, 14.4 percent claimed they give full pay, 21.1 percent pay part of the new-mother's wage, while around 64 percent of employers did not provide paid maternity leave to migrant workers, according to the survey.

The survey also showed that 68. 2 percent of women living in rural areas and 62.3 percent rural migrant workers were provided prenatal examinations, up markedly from figures in previous surveys.

Notorious issues with migrant workers not being paid by their employers (mainly construction companies or restaurants). Employers fail to do so in order to keep their workforce in place and under control. Last week, a rural worker died when claiming his and other comrades' unpaid wages. The whole article is below and here.

A young rural worker who was beaten up last week and died while claiming unpaid wages has aroused widespread indignation over the plight of China's migrant millions. Many of the migrants are anxious to be at home for the New Year.

Xie Hongsheng, a 28-year-old peasant from southwest China's Sichuan Province, died when he was beaten up by a gang of strangers last Wednesday at a construction site in northwestern Shaanxi Province. Xie was demanding immediate payment of about 40,000 yuan (US$5,130). This sum of money was owed to a dozen rural workers including himself and his father.

The team finished putting up a 14-storey apartment building for Guanzhong Construction Engineering Co. Ltd. in mid November but Geng Zhengjun, the project manager, had paid them only 11,000 yuan (US$1,410).

Xie's father, 51-year-old Xie Youyuan, also took a pounding at the hands of the thugs. He needs a few months to recuperate from a cerebral concussion and bone fractures, said Dr. Gao Lijun at the No. 3 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Baoji, the city where they were working with about 50,000 other rural workers.

Wages in arrears: a chronic problem

Factories and construction companies who withhold workers' pay have been a persistent problem in China in the last 10 years. Many of the workers are migrants from rural areas. Until recently they've had little bargaining power with management.

A survey of the Ministry of Agriculture shows China's migrant worker population has grown to 114.9 million with an estimated 6.7 million new migrant workers this year. The central government has ordered local officials to make sure workers are paid on time and in full but enforcement is lax.

A recent investigation found that 980 employers in northwestern Gansu Province owe 130 million yuan (US$16.6 million) in wages to some 130,000 migrant workers. Most of the debtors are construction firms and restaurants. This is according to the provincial labor and social security department that investigated nearly 6,000 businesses in October and November to make sure all migrants' wages are paid.

Meanwhile, the eastern province of Jiangxi has blacklisted 518 companies for defaulting on 62,000 migrants' wages of some 24 million yuan (US$3.1 million).

Anxious to bring home cash for the coming New Year holiday some unpaid migrants threatened to jump off high rises while others staged open protests. A group of 87 construction workers took their bedrolls to the doorstep of the Beijing-based Chaolin Company this week claiming 1.4 million yuan (US$180,000) of wages in arrears.

The workers had built an office building for the company earlier this year but were still waiting for 85 percent of their wages that should have been paid upon completion of the project.

"I can't go home empty-handed. I won't be able to face my family," said a migrant worker called Hu. He and his co-workers spent 48 hours in the open air sleeping on thin bedding in the freezing cold until local police and the Beijing Municipal Trade Union intervened in the dispute Wednesday.

Mr. Deng, a Chaolin Company manager, complained the workers were "making a fuss" but said the management was ready to solve the dispute "as soon as possible". On Thursday the workers were still waiting for a solution in their ramshackle, unheated sheds on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing.

Seeking help

Unable to get their wages after years of pleading, 137 construction workers in central China's Hunan Province recently sued a local court for failing to play its role.

Zhuzhou Intermediate People's Court solved a dispute between the workers and their employer, a local real estate developer, over 860,000 yuan (US$110,260) of wages in arrears since 2002 and froze the company's assets until all the default payments were made. But the assets were illegally sold in 2005 putting an end to the workers' last hope of getting their money.

Only then was Liao Heping, legal representative of the developer, arrested. He was forced to pay 100,000 yuan (US$12,820) in cash but most of the money covered legal fees and very few workers got paid.

The workers then prosecuted the court for breach of duty but lost the lawsuit two weeks ago when the Hunan Provincial People's Higher Court ruled that market disorder, rather than the intermediate court, was to blame.

"We won't give up," said Liu Huihan, one of the three representatives who've been acting as plaintiffs on behalf of the workers. "Justice must help us recover our hard-earned money," said Liu, holding up a circular issued by the Supreme People's Court instructing subordinate courts to accelerate lawsuits brought by migrant workers to recover unpaid wages.

The document issued in August said local courts should deal promptly with lawsuits brought by migrant workers over unpaid wages. Once the cases are concluded the courts should ensure that court verdicts are enforced in a timely manner.

But the litigation process is often too long and costly for the workers who, with big families to feed, sometimes can't wait to move onto the next job.

"We don't encourage workers to go through arbitration and litigation. On the other hand we warn their employers to pay wages in time to avoid escalating friction," said Liang Yongan, a lawyer at a legal assistance center for migrant workers in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province.

Six Chinese localities including Beijing and Hebei have set up such centers this year to provide free legal counseling services to migrant workers.

And trade unions in 30 major Chinese cities have teamed up to help migrant workers claim their wages. Early this year the trade union in Chengdu, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, helped 18 Sichuan farmers solve a notorious labor dispute with an employer in Xinjiang. Unable to get their wages after building a water storage facility the farmers tried to walk home to Sichuan in despair but got lost in the desert and one of them died.

With the help of its nationwide counterparts the trade union from their hometown claimed their wages from the Xinjiang company and obtained jobs for the 17 workers in Ningbo, a booming city in eastern Zhejiang Province.

China's trade unions in 2006 helped 2.8 million migrant workers claim 1.3 billion yuan (US$162.5 million) in wages, according to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).

About 29.5 million peasant-turned migrant workers had joined trade unions by July 2006 and they plan to recruit 8 million new members each year for the next three years, according to the ACFTU.

Trees covered with frost in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on January 2, 2006.

China Donates Culture Center to Bangladesh

"It will be a vocational center, where boys and girls learn computer technology and where all types of newspapers, magazines and books are available, including Chinese weekly magazine Beijing Review, English version of Chinese books like Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, Islam in China, China Sports, etc."

Loss of Hutongs Plagues Capital

In the 1980s, the city boasted more than 3,679 hutongs. Two thirds have been destroyed up till now giving way to the new developmnent.

Beijing had 458 hutongs in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and 978 of the communities during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The Panda

China has 217 pandas that have been bred in captivity.

There are about 1,600 pandas living in the wild in China. The vast majority of them -- about 1,100 -- live in one of the 59 natural reserves that China had set up for pandas by the end of 2006.

Hu calls for fighting against Taiwan secessionists
US urged to honor one-China policy
Taiwan's leader trying to ruin ties

..The mainland and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.



Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian reaffirmed his adherence to "independence" in his New Year's address on Monday.

President Hu said that the mainland's Taiwan policy of "peaceful reunification" and "one country, two systems" will not change.
The mainland will strictly adhere to the one-China principle, continue efforts to seek peaceful reunification, always place its hopes on the Taiwan people, and never compromise in the struggle against "Taiwan independence".


Hu's New Year Resolutions

-- Timely resolution of contradictions and problems in China's economic and social development, speeding up the construction of a harmonious society to provide an excellent environment and conditions for the convention of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in the later half of this year;
-- the government will exert more effort in addressing social problems concerning people's life and pursue energy efficiency and environmental protection in its "sound and fast" economic development;
-- pushing forward the reform of the political system in an active and steady manner to expand democracy, especially at local levels;
-- strengthening social security networks, improving medicare services and safety production mechanisms and maintaining public order and social stability;
-- adhering to the absolute leadership of the Party over the People's Liberation Army, promoting military innovation for better national defence;
-- stepping up the fight against corruption and striving to build a clean government, enhancing inner-Party democracy to achieve harmony inside the Party, and constantly improving the Party's administration.
-- various Parties of the CPPCC to promote unity of different political forces, religions, ethnic groups, social strata and Chinese people at home and abroad, so as to achieve social harmony.