Economy/Resources - 194. page

According to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the number of privately owned cars will exceed the 100 million mark during the first quarter of 2013. State media Guangming Daily expressed concern about road congestion, air pollution, a shortage of energy, and a scarcity of land. In 2000, China entered into a 10 year boom in the automobile market. In 2010, China became the largest automobile market in the world, 5 years ahead of the original projection of 2015. Guangming further stated that there are over 5.6 million automobiles in Beijing where the roads are designed to carry only 4 million. Traffic congestion is intensifying and pollution is rapidly getting worse. In addition, in 2012 China imported 59% of the crude oil it consumed.

Source: Guangming reprinted by Xinhua, February 20, 2013
http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2013-02/20/c_114730723.htm

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection recently issued the 12th Five-Year Environment Plan for Risk Prevention and Control of Chemical Products. The Plan acknowledged that a variety of chemical substances have been detected in some Chinese rivers, lakes and coastal waters, wildlife, and human beings. Toxic and hazardous chemicals have resulted in multiple incidents of acute water and air environmental emergencies and in drinking water crises in many regions. "Cancer villages" have developed in some regions.

Earlier, some Chinese media reported on a widely circulated Google map, which displays more than 100 "cancer villages" in the country. Most of these "cancers villages" are reportedly located in the affluent eastern coastal regions, which were the first to bring in the introduced pollution-prone industries from overseas. However, with the readjustment of the industrial structure and environmental regulations, there are signs that contaminated areas and cancer villages are developing inland as well.

The report also pointed to the frequent occurrences of industrial accidents in the production of dangerous chemicals, transportation accidents, and environmental emergencies caused by illegal sewage. On January 31, 39 tons of aniline leaked from a chemical plant in Changzhi City, Hebei Province, with 8.7 tons flowing into a local river, causing a water outage in a large area in nearby Handan City.

Source: BBC Chinese, February 21, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/china/2013/02/130221_china_pollution_cancer.shtml

China Review News published a commentary on the reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). According to the article, the reform has gone through three stages. The first stage was the entire 1980s when the reform priority was to invigorate the SOEs by loosening up the planned economy mechanism and implementing the open door policy. The second stage was from the 1990s to the early 2000s. In the competition between SOES and privately owned companies, some SOEs did not survive the market mechanism, while others thrived. The national economy has become one in which SOEs coexist with privately owned companies.

“The third stage is the last stage of SOE reform, the core issue being the exit of the SOEs. We are now in this stage. … The process of the exit of SOEs from the economy involves first, classification and then, gradual phasing out. Specifically, the first step is to divide the SOEs into two categories: competitive and non-competitive. Then the exit of competitive SOEs and the reform of non-competitive SOEs will be carried out concurrently.”

Source: China Review News, February 13, 2013
http://www.zhgpl.com/doc/1024/3/7/6/102437687.html?coluid=53&kindid=0&docid=102437687&mdate=0213081122

Chun Yun, the Chinese New Year’s travel season, usually starts 15 days before the Lunar New Year and ends 25 days afterwards. It is China’s busiest travel season of the year. Between January 8 and February 16 of 2012, the total volume of tickets using all means of travel was over 3 billion. One of the major issues in railway transportation is the difficulty of purchasing train tickets.

Two Beijing lawyers recently requested that the Ministry of Railways disclose the available number of railway tickets for sale during the Chun Yun period. The Ministry of Railways refused the request, claiming that information about railway ticket sales falls under the domain of the railway transportation enterprises and is therefore not applicable as government information. Some people questioned the black-box operations of the Ministry of Railways.

One economist questioned the logic of the response. "Generally speaking, Chun Yun is a major social issue. The government has a greater responsibility than corporations do to be transparent to the public. The enterprises subordinate to the Ministry of Railways are monopolistic enterprises; they are thus different from normal private companies in a highly competitive sector. The response is very strange and does not pass the logic test. … Information of this kind should be open and there is no reason to hide it."

A lawyer told Radio Free Asia, "It is a problem with the whole system. All authorities shirk their responsibilities. It is not just one single ministry; it is the whole government system that is shirking its responsibilities."

Source: Radio Free Asia, February 8, 2013
http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/zg-02082013112753.html

On February 3, 2013, in his personal blog on the website of Caijing Magazine, a business and finance magazine in Beijing, a professor of economics published an article about the problem of China’s high housing prices. According to the article, the Chinese government is responsible for the high housing prices in China. Many large state-owned enterprises, rather than upgrading their products, have been rushing to buy land and build buildings. To do so, they have used hundreds of trillions of easily earned monopoly profits. As a result, China’s real estate prices have shot sky high. Due to the high housing prices, many “ghost towns,” where nobody lives, have emerged in China. Meanwhile, migrant workers cannot afford to bring their families from the countryside to the cities where they work. That is why China always faces extremely high traffic congestion during the annual “Spring Festival Travel Rush,” when migrant workers return home to see their families.  

The article concluded that the high price of housing has commandeered China’s entire national economy. Although huge amounts of wealth and resources have been invested in real estate, ordinary Chinese people still cannot afford an apartment.  

Source: Caijing Magazine website, February 3, 2013
http://blog.caijing.com.cn/expert_article-151350-47336.shtml

According to a recent Guangming Daily article, a reporter found that the sum of China’s provincial accounting of GDP statistics for 2012 totaled 57.69 trillion yuan, 5.76trillion higher than the National Bureau of Statistics’ preliminary estimate of 51.93 trillion. The difference is the equivalent of the total GDP for Guangdong Province’s economy.

The problem has existed for years. Since 1985 when the central government and the local governments started to do independent accounting of GDP statistics, the sum of the provincial figures has been higher than the total GDP. For example, the provincial total in 2009 exceeded the national figure by 2.68 trillion yuan; the difference increased to 3.2 trillion yuan in 2010, and 4.6 trillion in 2011. It was 5.76 trillion for 2012.

In March 2012, the National Bureau of Statistics exposed cases in which local governments were involved in local enterprises’ fraudulent statistical reporting. The article called for a reform of the current system of using GDP figures as a major factor in evaluating local officials’ performance.

Source: Guangming Daily, February 4, 2013
http://politics.gmw.cn/2013-02/04/content_6613391.htm