The Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee announced that in the next five years, it will select 20,000 college graduates each year and send them to the countryside to take village leadership positions, 80 percent of them must be party members and have a four-year college degree.
Source: Xinhua, May 22, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-05/22/content_11415899.htm
To resolve the pressure of unemployment for college graduates, the Communist Leaders are following the pattern established by Mao Zedong during the cultural revolutionary period, of sending youth to rural areas.
On May 3, Premier Wen Jiabao went to Tsinghua University, Beijing, to meet the 2009 class graduates who will work at the rural areas of China. Although it is the best university in China, Tsinghua graduates are also facing an unemployment challenge and have been encouraged to take entry-level positions or go to rural areas. This year, more than 10% of Tsinghua graduates will work in the West or Northeast areas of China (which are considered to be poor areas with bad living conditions in China). [1]
On May 4, member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Li Changchun delivered a speech at the 90th anniversary Commemoration of the “May 4” Movement (a youth patriotism event celebrated by the CPC) at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. He implicitly indicated that the youth should go to poor and rural areas by saying, “(Youth) should learn from books, from practice, and from people; combine ‘book reading’ and ‘traveling around’ together; voluntarily go to the place where the country and the people need you the most, to places which perform the forefront work for “Reform and Open” and “Modernization construction,” and to the places with complex situations and a lot of growth opportunity; understand the reality of the country, and the opinions of the grass-roots level people, …” [2]
Source:
[1] Xinhua, May 3, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2009-05/03/content_11305182_1.htm
[2] Xinhua, May 4, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2009-05/04/content_11311353.htm
"Since 1999, Chinese authorties have maintained over 2, 000 research projects in religious psychology in order to suppress religious groups," said Dr. Sun Yanjun, a visiting professor of the Psychology of Religion at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Sun made the remarks at a press event held on May 4, 2009, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. According to Dr. Sun, in addition to the National Social Science Foundation and other State foundations, the Public Security Ministry, the State Security Ministry, the Communist Party Propaganda Department, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs have all funded these research projects. Almost all of the cognizant research institutions have participated in these projects. “Under a dictatorship, science becomes the accomplice of tyrannical rule. This is the scientific professionals’ deepest shame,” says Sun.
Source: Epoch Times, May 5, 2009
http://epochtimes.com/gb/9/5/5/n2516116.htm
Study Times reported on April 27, 2009, that allowing farmers to keep some land would help prevent farmers from migrating to major cities, a situation that could result in social unrest. According to Study Times, the International fianancial crisis is harming Chinese agriculture in four areas. It is pushing down agricultural product prices; there are fewer jobs for migrant workers; agricultural exports are decllining; and the tough times make it difficult to develop small town businesses and processing shops for agricultural products. The article concludes, “Allowing farmers to retain some land rights and to migrate between urban and rural areas would help prevent a concentration of farmers without land in major cities, which would result in serious social problems.”
Source: Study Times, April 27, 2009
http://www.studytimes.com.cn/WebPage/ny1.aspx?act=0&id=2597&bid=1
A recent public survey indicates what people perceive to be the professions most lacking integrity in China. In order, starting from the worst are: physicians (74.2%), police (57.8%), teachers (51.5), lawyers (48.4%), and civil servants (47.8%), followed by journalists (37.6%), accountants (30.7%), scholars (20.3%), and social workers, listed at the bottom at 10.9%.
73% of the people believe the main reason for the slipping moral standards is the strong pursuit of personal gain, self-interest and neglect of the importance of professional conduct. 52.4% of those surveyed think such a phenomenon is caused by lack of legal regulation and an environment in which the public voice has no influence. 52.3% believe that the entire society’s moral decline is what has caused such unprofessional conduct. 41.9% of the people believe it is because the public has little idea what professional integrity means.
Among all of those surveyed, 82.4% think the worst situation of all is when physicians lose their moral code.
Source: China Youth Online, April 28, 2009
http://zqb.cyol.com/content/2009-04/28/content_2642546.htm
Beijing has ruled since 1949 and is nervous about its upcoming 60th anniversary. The city is requiring that secured be tighten up, and will take every measure necessary to prevent anything that the party doesn’t like from happening, including handling those giving petitions for their cases to designated agencies.
Source: China News, April 28, 2009
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/news/2009/04-28/1667131.shtml
During an interview, the author of the book "Losing the New China," Ethan Gutmann, shared his view on Falun Gong’s "protest" outside of the Chinese central government compound, Zhongnanhai, 10 years ago. Gutmann said that after an in-depth investigation and many personal interviews, he had concluded that the "4/25 incident" was a setup by the Communist Chinese leader at the time, involving the intentional misrepresentation of Falun Gong practitioners’ actions to present grievances legally and openly at the Court of Appeals (near Zhongnanhai). He affirmed that the 4/25 incident was "just an excuse" on the part of the Chinese Communist Party leader at the time, and that the Falun Gong practitioners had fallen into a trap orchestrated by the Party used to justify a persecution that was already in the making. Subsequent investigation by Gutmann revealed that over the years, many Falun Gong practitioners have been killed as a result of the persecution as well as killed for their organs. He believes that the death toll has very possibly reached beyond 100,000, of which about 10,000 have been used for organ transplants.
Gutmann has been recently denied a visa into China.
Source: Epoch Times, April 17, 2009
http://epochtimes.com/gb/9/4/17/n2497771.htm
According to the statistics released by Minghui or Clearwisdom, an overseas website recording daily updates about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, there are about 200,000 active underground material production sites throughout mainland China. Their daily operation is to download materials from Minghui using software to get around censorship, then print and assemble those into booklets which will then reach a minimum of 40 million practitioners in China through an internal network.
Additional data released by Minghui include the number of experience sharing articles received by Minghui Annual Mainland Online Experience Sharing Conference increases from 2200 to 2600 articles between 2004 and 2007 to 11,000 articles in 2008. Since July 20, 1999, Minghui received, confirmed, and published 254,000 torture cases of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
According to Minghui, Minghui website was created and is maintained by Falun Dafa practitioners. It is designed to serve both fellow practitioners and the general public with daily articles that provide insights into Falun Dafa cultivation practice, expose the harsh persecution in China, and report the news of Falun Dafa activities around the world.
Source: Minhui, April 19, 2009
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/4/19/199284.html