As the central and local governments in recent years have invested scores of billions in building public rental houses, a lot of middle-and-low incomed people’s living conditions have been improved. However, because of unfair allocation of public rental houses in some cities, still many people can’t move into public rental houses. On June 23rd, Dahe Daily reported that a city government of Henan province in Central China two years ago issued an official document stipulating that applicants for public rental houses should hold a bachelor degree. The report said, with this regulation still in effect, many applicants who badly need public rental houses has been turned down because of lacking a regarding diploma, which in turn has caused convolution and dissatisfaction among the public. Many people frequently ask one question: Why is it interrelated between holding a bachelor degree and obtaining application qualification? As a public commodity serving mass interests, public rental houses should have been distributed among the needy based on their income assessment, and hence this improper regulation has violated the basic attribute of what becomes of public rental houses. It is weird that such an irregular governmental document could have been in effective for over two years and uncertain how many applicants have been repudiated their qualification because of this odd regulation. In response to the public criticism and media exposure, the Henan city government has its own whitewashing rhetoric: setting up a diploma term is for attracting more special talents to work in this city and fuel the local economy. But again, the rhetoric goes against with whom public rental houses on earth are built for. As an integral part of the public housing system, public rental houses are built for pinpointed groups: the middle-low-incomed urban residents, migrant workers who meet the requirements of living and working for a certain period of time in the city and paying taxes and newly-graduated university students. Hence, the one and only one criterion for deciding upon an applicant’s qualification is the income standard and the status quo of their living, except which no barriers should have been applied to. The other weird aspect is the regulation explicitly rules that only applicants whose first degrees are obtained from four years full-time universities can access public rental houses. That indicates even applicants who firstly got a three years college diploma and finally obtained a Doctors’ degree are disqualified. It is such a ridiculous regulation that some law experts satirized it as ignorance of common sense. In an era when even senior technicians only with a vocational training certificate but dexterous at a particular skill can work for a Fortune 500’s Chinese affiliates, it is bewildering why the Henan local government cares so much about what kind of diploma house applicants holds. Technically speaking, behind this weird regulation is a misinterpretation of the allocation of public resources. In some cities, public rental houses are treated as incentives to attract talents, not requisite supporting resources for the needy. However, the number of public rental house inventories dwarfs the number of talents that they actually need, meanwhile, the high standards for house applying have almost fended off many middle-and-low incomed population away, so the final result is a misallocation of resources: a lot of public rental houses are unoccupied and many people desperate for a public rental house are denied access to these empty house. Distributing public resources in such an unaccepted fashion, the appearance of public suspicions that there are possible black box deals inside it is understandable. Actually, in attracting talents and distributing public rental houses among the needy, there exists no zero-sum rivalry. Nevertheless, the Henna local government wants to solve the two issues with one solution, which is unlikely because they are two totally different issues. On one hand, to attract talents, the government should have promulgated a separate package which clearly designates how many talents they want to have and how many affordable rental houses are allocated for them, and then put the package under the sunshine for public scrutiny. Only transparency can really relieve public suspicions. On the other hand, since there are more public rental houses available than before, the distribution process should be fairer. There should be just requirements, among which discriminative diploma terms and the like should be erased, applied on the application process and lucid mechanisms prepared for qualification queuing and houses lottery. If there are no enough rental houses for distribution, they government should also hammer out a roadmap to satisfy the housing demands of the needy. With housing prices sustained at an onward status in recent months, it is predicable that in the near future improving living conditions for the needy remains a challenging task for local government. As the central government pays more attention to increasing the number of public rental house, how to distribute them fairly is a matter of social justice. Starting from removing ridiculous barriers like bachelor degree out of the requirements list and establishing a fairer distribution system, the local government has more to do.

This May, China’s three major telecom operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, respectively disclosed their annual results of implementing the State-Council-urged initiatives of lowering telecom service prices and racketing up telecommunication speed. Their latest data released show that their net income in 2015 has decreased by 40 billion yuan, and prices for mobile traffic and broadband network usage have shrunk by 30 percent. Three operators exclaimed that they have achieved their promises to cut prices in accordance with State Council’s administrative guidance, in that almost every telecom service subscriber has been saved by 2.6 yuan per month last year. However, the public understand the price-cutting results otherwise, with many online comments criticising that the degree of price cutting remain minimal and there is more leeway to further lower prices. Sohu.com, a news portal, recently did an investigation by sampling over 22,000 people on their altitude toward the price cut, with 82 percent of them saying they didn’t see much noticeable changes in prices and speed improvement and 88 percent holding that the degree of price cut has been too intangible to look like a PR stunt. There, obviously, is a psychologic disparity between what operators claimed to have done and subscribers’ expectation over what operators should have done. The latter wants more price cut, but the former is unwilling to do more. One basic fact is without sincerely cutting their services prices, customers won’t get satisfied. One reason to cause the disparity is operators’ introducing of price-cutting initiatives has been more propelled by administrative orders than out of their inner competition to grapple for customers. Honestly speaking, operators’ scant price cut in the past year is merely a reluctant but inevitable response to the government’s prices-slashing advocates. Last year, Premier Li Keying had urged operators more than once to lower service prices and the State Council in May even issued a guidance to explicitly stipulate on how operators should lower service fees while improving infrastructures. Without the intervention of “visible hands”, operators would have little incentive to lower prices, given that they still remain a manipulative status quo in the sector. Nevertheless, neglecting ordinary customers’ need and feelings in the process of price cutting will make their brand reputation on the line. With their telecom expenses growing rapidly, being saved by 2.6 yuan is indeed no big deal to customers. When little has been done for the sake of benefiting customers, major operators opt to exaggerate their achievements rather than confess their work ineffectiveness in this regard, customers won’t buy their beautiful rhetoric. Also, most of the so-called 40 billion yuan net profit shrinkage is not created by their price cut but the plunging usage of short message services thanks to the popularity of WeChat. Without sincere price cuts, ordinary customer won’t get satisfied. Their dissatisfaction with operators price-cutting results not only can’t be defined as greediness for more compromises with the help of government intervention, but also reflects one pending trend: consumers are becoming increasingly picky with a strong awareness of defending their own rights. Just one decade ago, when telecom industry was in thrive, consumers had little saying in negotiating prices with the operators, but now they can and will. Since they have known that successful price cutting has been achieved in the past year and there is considerable room to further lower prices, their stronger will to bargain more favourable prices can’t be underestimated.To narrow down the disparity between supply side and consumption side, operators should offer noticeable price cuts sincerely. As the market changes fast, especially with exterior rivals like the Tencent Company and Alibaba Group closely eyeing for newborn opportunities in the sector, operators should have realised the bad consequences if they don’t act timely. Ignoring improving their services and continuing to rely on the old-fashioned profit mode, dubbed “making easy money by lying on bed”, only means digging their own graves, which has already been proved by that the popularity of WeChat had almost stifled one of their cash-cow businesses, short text message. It is high time for major operators to show their willingness to continue to cut prices and better their service on one hand, and on the other hand, hammering out a measurable roadmap to achieve these goals should be high on agenda. More importantly, the government should introduce new players via deeper reform in this sector. When customers have more choices and can vote by their feet, major operators will really hunker down to treat customers seriously. Fortunately, the introduction of a fourth telecom operator this May will bring in some new blood in this market, let’s wait and see.

Recently,China’s educational authority issued a special circular to curb school bullying, stipulating that primary and middle schools as well as secondary vocational schools nationwide must launch effective campaigns to eradicate campus violences like physical hurt, verbal attack and web defamation inflicted on students by their peers. The circular also rules that schools are obliged to improve policies in preventing and tackling bullying, establishing an operating hotline for reporting bullying cases, and initiating a contingency plan for serious bullying accidents.The authority’s endeavour of specially tackling school bullying with an administration order on one hand reveals the severity of this matter, on the other hand exposes the inefficiency of current mechanisms in fighting school bullying. Nevertheless, only hinging on a blitz administrative campaign can’t address school bullying properly in the long run. The 21st Century Education Academy issued a report in April which says school bullying has been increasingly popular in most provinces’ rural and urban areas, and many bulling cases arise from trivial factors, like opinion difference, unhealthy jealousness and stereotype toward others. Another report done by several Chinese universities after sampling over 17,000 rural boarding students shows that 36.3 percent of them had been bullied two or three times per month. Meanwhile, bullying cases going viral online have not been rare in recent years, which have challenged the social morality out of our expectation. The school bullying phenomenon is becoming so worrisome that initiating a blitz campaign to curb it becomes imperative. The circular says that the special campaign will be carried out in two phases. From April to July, comprehensive measures like informing students the severe consequence of school bullying by inviting polices and judicial to give lectures and strengthening school security will be taken, then a round of supervision campaign over the effectiveness of measures taken in the first phase will follow between September and December. In the short term, these measures and supervision activities will yield positive results, like reducing the number of bulling cases, informing students’ knowledge and the severity of this matter and raising schools’ awareness of protecting their students from being bullied. However, when this blitz campaign expires in December, nobody can assure that bullying cases will diminish gradually. Without a good understanding of the deep-rooted factors that have resulted in school bullying, addressing this problem in the long run can be out of reach. Explicitly, our traditional views toward bully and some function deviations in our basic education have encouraged school bullying. In our context, bullying means mostly shenanigans done by naught students, no big deal. However, perpetrators in some bullying cases exposed online, who have cause noticeable physic and psychologic damages to others, should have been punished according to the law, albeit their bullying behaviours have always been watered down. In American, however, if students are hurt physically and psychologically, bullying perpetrators will subject to court prosecution. No wonder when a Chinese student who beat another Chinese student in an American school was sued with the torture and abuse charge, many Chinese consider employing a prosecution to deal with a bullying would have gone too far. Fundamentally speaking, high occurrence rate of school bullying has much to do with lacking three aspects in our basic education sector. Firstly, there are few lessons regarding teaching students to abide by laws and regulations, so that some students hardly know bullying others would cause irreversible damages on the law level. It is true young students have unstable mindsets, but their immaturity should not have been used as an excuse to hurt others or get away with the bullying consequences. Only instilling them with law awareness at an early age, can they really notice the boundary of their behaviours. Secondly, life education is absent in our basic education, which has emphasised examinations and marks for long. Introduced by American scholar Donal Waltz in 1968, life education underscores that people should love, respect, care and trust others to live up to their own life values. Habitually resorting to violence for disputes settlement among some students reveals that they lack sympathy and caring heart toward their peers. Hence bracket life education into their curriculum and teach them how to respect others，and then they will feel ashamed for bullying others. Thirdly, caring for “bad”students are not enough. Normally, students who have good performance in studies will be preferred, while those who don’t pay attention to their studies or score badly in exams are treated as underdogs. Statistics shows that bullying perpetrators, to a large extent, arise from “underdog” students. Teachers and classmates would easily tag and disparage them as evil type of person, and habitually keep a certain distance from them. However, nobody is born being underdogs, and one ignored reality lies in that these “underdogs” are usually born in an unhealthy environment. Because their parents educate them improperly and their eagerness for being loved is alway cast on with cold water, they opt to vent their frustration via bullying others. In a word, they are also victims of school bullying, who need help and consolation. To cub school bullying, a quick campaign introduced by the education authority is badly needed to prevent the matter from worsening. In addition, removing utilitarian soil out of our basic education and pay more attention to educating all-round human beings with an awareness of law-abiding, respecting others and self-loving should also high on the agenda, because imparting knowledge and cultivating people should be two important wheels of our basic education. Say no to school bullying, long-term wisdom should be in place.

In response to public appeals of printing warning signs like blackened teeth and lungs and skeletons on cigarettes packs, one top official from China Tobacco Monopoly Administration, said during the Two Sessions that printing these signs does not fit in with China’s traditional culture, and there is no such plan to be introduced for the time being. Repudiating the idea of printing warning signs on cigarettes packs with cultural concerns is not a refreshing rhetoric by tobacco management authority. Early in 2008 when signing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control presided by World Health Organisation to oblige signatories to print warning signs, Chinese representatives also said it is a matter of traditional culture and national feelings, hence China didn’t ratify compulsary articles regarding printing warning signs. The tobacco authority has repeatedly resorted to traditional culture as their infallible excuse to refuse warning signs. However, not only is this rhetoric unpersuasive, but also bewildering: how can printing warning signs has bearing on our traditional culture and will hurt our national feelings? The answer is that the tobacco department is reluctant to see its own cheesed moved, so it introduces a good-looking excuse to disguise its reluctance in anti-smoking. It is known that tobacco, imported from Latin American in Ming Dynasty, is not our indigenous staple, so controlling tobacco usage is impossible to be defined as unfitting with our traditional culture. More importantly, there is hardly any content from our traditional culture supporting tobacco usage, instead there are Confucian values in favour of curbing tobacco usage. The Confucius says it is “the starting point of filial conducts by cherishing our skin and hair given by parents”. Based on this, tobacco usage, inimical to human health, contradicts with traditional culture. There are fewer and.fewer countries and regions where cigarettes packs are not printed with warning signs on a noticeable place. Employing the culture logic by the tobacco official, aka printing warning sign doesn’t fit with our traditional culture, one preposderous conclusion can be easily made: Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan, having the same culture genesis with the mainland, however, obliging to print warning signs on cigarette packs, should have originated from a various culture source. Definitely speaking, demurring to print warning signs is not a problem of culture concern, but for one thing, a matter of legality adaption. Currently, there is only one article in the Law on Tobacco Monopoly to elaborate on cigarettes package, which stipulates that cigarettes packs available on the mainland market should be printed with warning letters “smoking is bad to health” and provide figures on the grade of tar content. This article is not enough to curb tobacco usage. Because there is no law articles mandating to print warning sings, their products available on the mainland market never print, but their products, before being exported to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, must have printed warning signs on packs because of tight regulation on eigarettes packs in these regions. Justifying saying no to print warning signs with cultural concerns, for another, is a matter of economic interests. The latest data show that governmental fiscal revenue contributed by tobacco industry reached 1095 billion yuan in 2015, annually increased by over 20 percent, despite that tobacco sales volumes had decreased by 2.36 percent. The total fiscal revenue in 2015 was 15221 billion yuan, signifying that 7 percent of total revenue comes from tobacco industry. The huge amount of tobacco revenues has almost made tobacco management department have less incentives to employ effective policies that might reduce this revenue. China has one government department responsible for both tobacco control and tobacco sales. The department has two various names: State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China Tobacco Company. The former must take measures to control tobacco while the latter has to make profits by selling tobacco. As two contradictory roles co-exist in a certain department, plus the absence of outside supervision, the department has little impetus to employ effective policies of controling tobacco usage.From the perspective of long-term national benefits, tobacco usage brings more damages than goods. Seemingly, tobacco usage brings lots of taxes and revenues to the government, but its latent side-effects is worrisome and will be enormous. As Mr. Chen Zhu, former Minister of Health, reiterated that "economic losses resulted in by tobacco usage have almost outstripped the gains it can bring about, and more over, the havoc which tobacco use has wrecked on patients with smoking diseases, their families and the whole society can’t be evaluated by money."As the central government plans to expand the anti-smoking initiative in public areas during the 13th Five Year Plan, it is high time to legalise printing warning signs on cigarettes packs to.intimidate smokers. If the tobacco department has no incentives to do this from within, the national legislature should do something without delay.

As many state-owned companies are afflicted with debt accumulation and production overcapacity, the supply side reform has been introduced to revitalise state-owned companies. However, supply side reform means cutting old-fashioned jobs and eliminating outdated productions, which has revived the painful scourge brought to millions of unemployed people during the first wave of massive layoffs in the 1990s. Concerns about the arrival of the second wave of massive layoffs are becoming too prevailing to ignore thanks to the momentum-gaining supply side reform. Two recently cogent examples are: over half of the 80,000 steel workers of Wuhan Steel Group, one of China’s biggest steel corporations, will have to leave their steel manufacturing positions this year, and Longmay Mining Holding Company, the biggest state-owned firm in Heilongjiang province, had cut nearly 22,500 coal workers and rearranged them to work in other sectors. Before the Two Sessions, the second wave of massive layoffs has become a buzzword, and economic analysts predict the supply side reform in industries like steel and coal, which will result in 1.8 million unemployed people, according to governmentally disclosed data, has actually raised the curtain of a new round of massive layoffs. However, given Chinese economy strength is much stronger than before and the central government, prior to the launch of supply side reform, has woven a comprehensive safety net for workers, whose employment will be affected by the reform, massive layoffs won’t reoccur in China. The so-called second wave of massive layoffs is a conception vis-a-visa the first wave of laid-offs, when lots of workers in the 1990s, either chose to be resign for the sake of alleviating their corporations’ reform burden, or were forced to be unemployed because of the privatisation of their firms, which almost covered their lifetime expenses of all kinds. The scourge brought by the first wave of layoffs, with lots of unemployed people still living a hard life, not only has been deeply remembered but also silently withstood as the cost for carrying out economic reform. Nevertheless, different from two decades ago when many jobs were cut ruthlessly, the supply side reform won’t reach its purpose sheerly by throwing away any workers as nonentities who have sacrificed to build a stronger economy. Instead, the government has introduced a comprehensive contingency plan to prevent massive layoffs from reoccurring. For one thing, the government is trying to create more jobs by transforming economic structure, introducing jobs of new types and developing the third industry. Again, take Wuhan Steel Group for example. Actually, none of its workers will be thrown away: these closing to retirement age can choose to retire with a decent pension, these interested in doing non-steel positions can be rearranged to other jobs within the same group and these who can’t be covered by the first two methods can choose new jobs recommended or provided by government agencies. For another, for people who have just lost their jobs but can’t land jobs in the short term, the government has allocated special finance fund to subsidise them and offered them useful jobs information. Chinese Premier Li Keying reiterated explicitly in the Government Work Report this year that the central government will appropriate 100 billion yuan to subsidise workers who are laid off due to the clearing of “zombie” companies, which are debt-laden, feeble in market competition but have easy access to governmental subsidies and bank loans.This contingency plan tries to minimise the number of laid-offs, reduce economic loses of the jobless group to the most extent, and soothe their psychological pain. Backed by the plan, Xu Shaoshi, director of National Development and Reform Committee, confidently stated in a press briefing during Two Sessions that the second wave of layoffs won’t definitely reappear in China. The clear messages revealed by Premier Li’s and Director Xu ’s remarks show the government’s confidence and determination in preventing the second wave of layoffs from happening. That is, China can consume the layoffs in spite of a slower economy, and the government can offer them equivalent, if not better, alternatives. The clear messages as well show the government’s unwavering pursuit of emphasising more on social equity and justice. The central government firmly believes economic development fruits should be commonly shared by the people, and layoffs are no exceptional, based on which common sense of supporting deeper reform is shaped. Actually, respecting and protecting legal interests of the laid-off, to a large extent, decides their altitude toward the supply side reform, which in turn will affect the direction of the deep reform.Time has come to a similar turning point. As 20 years ago China needed to increase the efficiency of state-owned companies, the underway supply side reform is to increase dynamic of state-owned companies. By introducing a comprehensive contingency plan, the government has the ability to prevent large-scaled wave of layoffs from reappearing, and the good result will be: all workers will be united, mobilised and activated to build a better future.

After the Spring Festival, many first and second tier cities have demonstrated a spree of panic house buying, too abnormal to do any good to the healthy development of the home industry.According to Beijing Morning Post, new homes in a Hangzhou living community were sold out two hours after they were opened for sales, 352 luxurious villas at least costing 10 million yuan each in Shanghai were snapped up within one day, and frenetic home buyers in Shenzhen and Nanjing were queuing up overnight to obtain a buying quota. Coinciding with panic buying, new home prices in 61 cities out of the 100 sampled cities grew slightly in February, and the figures in Shenzhen and Wuhan specially accreted by 52.55% and 16.31% respectively. Media coverage and industry data both allude to a seemingly inevitable trend: the property market is picking up with a gaining momentum. However, a dubious wait-and-see mood is also diffusing among home buyers, many of whom firmly believe that home prices hike in first-tier cities never represent the status quo of national home market in general and home buyers should be conscientious. Various expectations toward the future of Chinese home industry is a good sign, because it means more and more people are not following the trend, but making decision by their own. But where the Chinese house market is heading for? It is a question haunting many home buyers. The future can only be explored by better understanding the present, hence figuring out reasons behind the recent panic buying is of great significance. The panic buying, on one hand, is a knee-jerk reaction to the favorable home-buying macroeconomic policies. Since the Central Economic Working Conference in December, reducing unsold houses has been listed as one of the five kernel economic tasks in 2016. So after the Spring Festival, minimum down payment rate for buying the first and second home in cities without home buying restrictions has been narrowed down to 20 percent and 30 percent respectively, and home buying tax rate for purchasing the first home under 90 square meters has been cut back to 1.5 percent. These policies, having almost excluded home buyers in first-tiers cities from benefiting from them, undoubtedly offer unprecedented supports to people in the 3rd and 4th tier cites, desperate for buying their first homes or improving their current living standards. Ironically, the home market in the 3rd and 4th tier cities hasn’t bounded back and oversupply burden still lingers, while home prices in the 1st tier cities have propped up because of the shrinking land lot supplies in these cities and the expectation that home buying restrictions will possible be lifted in the coming months. On the other hand, the recent monetary ease has also contributed to panic buying. Central Bank of China has continually reduced interests rate and deposit reserve ratio to support real economic, albeit most new bank loans have flown into the home industry in mega cities, because homes prices there are more immune to market fluctuation. In January, new bank loan amounted to 2.51 trillion yuan, 1.04 trillion more than last January. Nevertheless, the PMI stagnated under 50 in January, a receding indicator of real economy.With the help of monetary ease, many home buyers in the first tier cities, in addition to obtaining bank loans much easier than before, are borrowing either from their relatives and friends in the form of fundraising or from the third-party P2P companies with a high interest rate to buy houses for making profits, in which a long fragile debt chain is formed. Once home prices don’t grow satisfying the market expectation, these home buyers can’t make profits at all, let alone paying high interest rates to their lenders. Because of the high risk, some P2P companies involving loaning in real estate industry in the first-tier cities have either turned insolvent or been ordered to drop out. The encouraging policies and the monetary ease, instead of reducing home inventories in the 3rd and 4th tier cities, have eventually expedited to channel money into the real estate industry in mega cities, which has resulted in the abnormal panic buying. The deviation regarding home policies implementation should serve as a wakeup call to the government’s efforts to restructure the chaotic home market: every city should have its own specified housing policies, and one packaged solutions for all cities can’t work effectively. The home de-stocking process will be a long uphill battle, but the right methods lie in that: For the first-tier cities, tight control over home buying should continue to be applied to, because excessive home price hikes is counterproductive to their economic transformation, and for 3rd and 4th tier cities, a large number of unsold homes should be cleared with tailored policies, because there are still hundreds of millions of migrant workers with considerable purchasing power waiting to be recognised as citizens. photo source: Global Times

To curb wage arrears phenomenon, the central government since 2003 has issued dozens of measures by both holding companies defaulting wages maliciously accountable and establishing law aid mechanism to facilitate migrant workers to get back their wages, and the legislative authority in 2011 had added the charge of maliciously defaulting wages in the criminal law to severely punish violators. Wage arrears remain a critical issue in recent years, though, especially in the construction industry. As the Spring Festival had once again shown, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, waged a persistent war of demanding their bosses to pay them wages.However, when it comes to wage arrears, people will easily come to a conclusion that it is the greedy construction bosses who have made huge profits but refused to pay wages. Lamentably, sometimes, it is not bosses but some local governments, who have contracted out government-funded projects to developers but can’t pay them in time, to blame. In reality, local government funded projects are always contracted to developers, and subsequently distributed to subcontractors, who in turn assign construction tasks to dozens of construction crews, mainly consisting of migrant workers. To finish projects, subcontractors and construction crews have to use their own money or borrow money to buy construction materials and employ migrant workers, which brings about uncertainty of whether their prepaid investment will be gotten back. In recent years, cases of local government defaulting migrant workers wages are not rare. In 2011, a migrant worker from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region who spent 27 years in getting back his unpaid 5,000 yuan wage was owed by the education bureau of a county in the region. In 2012, over 2.1 million yuan wage was defaulted by a town government in Dongguan City, Guangdong province. In 2014, a construction crew chief from Anhui province committed suicide because he couldn’t get back over 10 million yuan project money owed by one county government and was constantly pressured by his crew colleagues and loaner to pay wages and debts. Because local governments only pay for finished projects and some local government can’t pay even when they are finished thanks to their limited fiscal revenues, subcontractors and construction crews can’t get paid in time and a long debt chain is formed, stretching from some local governments down to the migrant workers. Migrant workers, at the chain bottom, have the smallest say and suffer the most damage in the chain: they are habitually paid their whole year wage at the year end, and once they are defaulted wages, not only would they miss their Spring Festival holidays to reunite with their families, but also some tumultuous factors would be resulted in to affect social harmony. The reason why some local governments initiate projects that they can’t afford is to fuel GDP growth. Some local governments know they don’t have enough money to launch projects, but for the sake of creating growth, many are capriciously launched. Some local officials care little about whether the projects will cause problems of wage arrears, on the contrary what occupies their mind is to seek promotion by launching good-looking projects at any cost. According to the latest date, 17 cities in an eastern province by late 2014 had piled up over 100 billion yuan defaulted project money, in which over 80 billion yuan was created by local governments that didn’t allocate fiscal money in time or didn’t have enough money to pay off the debt.Actually, most wage arrears, directly or tangentially related with some local governments’ inability to pay project money, have not been exposed, and these governments should have set a good example in this regard. Instead, they on one hand are spending a considerable amount of resources in combating illicit wage arrears, on the other hand are defaulting wages themselves. If labor policy violators were some local governments, who are labor law enforcement entities as well, labor protection measures and law articles to curb wage arrears will become hard to implement. Hence, to circumscribe local governments’ capriciousness in defaulting wages, the recently revised budget law, stipulating that any government project investment without guaranteed money source will not be approved, should be strictly implemented. Also, the finished projects that still haven’t paid off subcontractors or construction crews should be paid without delay. Moreover, wage arrears by some local government should have been exposed and supervised by the public to put their power into cage.

When it comes to leftover men crisis in China, people generally think of around unmarried men in urban areas, who have well-paid jobs but are picky in choosing their matches. In cities, leftover men are no big deal if they can lower their marriage criterion to some degree. However, in rural places, the bachelor crisis is worrisome: the reason rural men stay single is not because they feel loath to get married, but because they have to be bachelors. When rural areas accumulate a gigantic number of leftover men, the negative consequences like the trafficking of women and sexual violence can't be ignored. Recently, an investigative report by China Youth Daily brought the rural bachelor crisis into the spotlight. The report notes, quoting a marriage broker, a rural woman meeting dozens of men a day for matchmaking purposes during the Spring Festival is not rare and the scarcity of rural women is too unimaginable to satisfy rural men's marriage demand. The rural bachelor crisis has been frequently reported in recent years, but the severity of the crisis is much worse in statistics than media coverage has shown. The main reason is the imbalanced sex ratio, according to sociologists. China's natal sex ratio of males to females reached 113.51 to 100 in 2015, higher than the international warning line of 107. In the past two decades, the ratio even peaked at 120, meaning six boys for every five girls. The skewed sex ratio has mainly happened in rural areas thanks to the tradition of regarding boys as superior to girls and the harsh implementation of the one-child policy in urban places. Competition for women among rural men has turned fierce. Given that rural men are always at the bottom rung of the marriage ladder because of their low economic status, the percentage of unmarried men in rural areas is higher than in urban areas. Statistics show that nearly 20 million leftover men out of 30 million unmarried Chinese men in total are from rural villages. The imbalanced sex ratio has caused rural marriage costs to skyrocket and left rural men cynical about their marriage prospects. About 10 years ago, a washing machine, refrigerator, and a set of furniture could still be considered as trendy betrothal gifts for a rural marriage. Lamentably, currently, it is not uncommon for rural women to demand males to purchase urban apartments and private cars, in addition to offering their new mother-in-laws a fat red envelope. The materialism of rural marriage has overshadowed rural males' own wealth, hence family money is playing and will still play an important role in obtaining successful marriage. The rural bachelor crisis is not just a matter of demographic concern, but will pose a critical challenge to social harmony. The army of unmarried men will result in social problems and a higher crime rate.The skewed sex ratio wouldn't necessarily have resulted in the rural bachelor crisis, had rural places not been impoverished for long. A skewed sex ratio can be actually leveled and averaged through a freely moving population. Nevertheless, this leveling process can't be achieved in rural areas. Instead, the exorbitant outflow of rural women, who swarm into urban areas for better opportunities and expect to improve their destiny by marrying urban males, has intensified the crisis. Focusing on alleviating the crisis, the government should mitigate rural leftover men's sense of relative deprivation by helping them improve their economic status, narrowing down the rural-urban disparity and uprooting the soil of rural poverty. One fundamental cause of the crisis is rural poverty and backwardness, a byproduct of the gap between the urban and rural economies. Only with accurate poverty reduction measures in place will rural leftover men become rich enough to marry their women.

On Feb. 18, Apple launched its mobile payment platform Apple Pay in China after US, UK, Australia and Canada. On debut day, over 38 million Chinese iPhone users registered the tool, and nearly 80,000 bank cards were bound to Apple Pay per minute. Many people rushed to experience Apple Pay’s idiot-proof functions, shown by a video going viral online that users can scan bank cards and type into verification code to easily bind their cards and they only need to unlock their iPhones to receive wireless Pos machine signal for finishing paying in a second. Unlike Alibaba’s Alipay and its counterpart Tencent’s Tenpay, which rely on Internet access to start apps and scan QR code for finishing paying, Apple Pay has an unparalleled trait: employing the Near Field Communication technology. NFC helps Apple Pay copy a substitute virtual card in iPhones after binding and then users can swipe the virtual card to pay without even accessing the Internet, more efficient and safer than Alipay and Tenpay. Cooperating with Union Pay, a nationwide bank card payment network, Apple Pay’s entrance is highly anticipated in market performance by some industry observers, who ascertain that it will become a competitive player in domestic mobile payment market and bite into the dominant market share occupied by Tenpay and Alipay. Apple Pay’s successful launch obviously have introduced new competition to current mobile payment market. However, interpreting Apple Pay’s miracle as a prelude to reshuffle China’s current mobile payment market and disrupt the status quo is either a misrepresentation of reality or a wishful thinking. Following Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay are also well-prepared to enter China in the form of joining hands with Union Pay. Involvement of many more new comers will intensify competition, but potential leeway left for Apple Pay and the like to grow is limited. Because Apple Pay only works on Apple Watch, iPhone6 and iPhone versions above iPhone 6, and the total number of these qualified devices reaches maximumly 84 million, not enough to overwhelm the gigantic number of active users in Alipay and Tenpay.Meanwhile, Chinese customers have got used to Alipay and Tenpay and their mobile consumption experience has almost been shaped by the two, hence new mobile payment tools like Apple Pay can’t challenge them easily. The latest data by Central Bank of China shows that 70 percent of the 85 trillion yuan paid via mobile phone was transacted via Alipay and Tenpay in the first three quarters of 2015. With the market continues to grow, the user base number of two dominators will continue to increase accordingly. One compelling reason to be optimistic about the future of Apple Pay in China is the seemingly win-win bond between Apple Company and Union Pay, which indeed has contributed greatly to Apple Pay’s short-term success. Nevertheless, how the bond will benefit the two in the long term remains to be seen. As a hardware manufacturer, Apple has limited resources to tap mobile payment market, hence relying on Union Pay’s extensive Pos machine network and intimate relationship with domestic banks to promote Apple Pay becomes imperative. As for Union Pay, which have launched its own version NFC mobile payment platform Quick Pass last December to resist the prevailing offense by Alipay and Tenpay, have been increasingly losing its own battle ground in offline payment sector, so uniting Apple Pay might help Quick Pass gain popularity in mobile payment. Frankly speaking, this bond is a temporary expedient, not strong enough to dethrone Alipay and Tencent, because both Union Pay and Apple have their own unspoken impetus. On one hand, given that iPhone sales in China has shrunk, some telecommunication experts predict that the real reason for Apple to launch Apple Pay is not promote its mobile payment tool, but to ratchet up the declining iPhone sales. When Apple focuses on increasing its phone sales, its investment in mobile payment can’t be overestimated. On the other hand, Union Pay’s real purpose is to join hands with Apple Pay to compete with Alipay and Tenpay, but learning from good runners can’t make Union Pay become a good runner easily, let alone winning competition. Because Union Pay’s payment interface has been not user-friendly and discount items provided have been overshadowed by Alipay and Tenpay, Union Pay has lagged behind in spite of its technological advantage. With the help of Apple Pay, Union Pay might prioritize its service standard and expand its users base number quickly, but the changeable market won’t give it enough time to mend its mistakes, when Union Pay transfigures to be a good runner, Alipay and Tenpay possibly will have finished all laps. All in all, Apple Pay won’t change the basic status quo of China’s mobile payment market in the short term, but its avant garde, safe and efficient paying method intrigue millions of Chinese customers and broaden their horizon in a way that even Alipay and Tenpay feel envious of. The dominance of Alipay and Tenpay will continue, but the process of satisfying customers’ needs by constantly improving the technology is endless.

AS China enters the “Internet Plus” era, Internet platforms like WeChat and Weibo have increasingly become new channels for charity organizations and individuals to solicit contributions. With these platforms, soliciting philanthropic funds is easier than ever because people can donate with a tap or a click.However, because most donors don’t check the authenticity of requests for help and the philanthropy law loosely stipulates the qualifications of individuals’ online solicitation activities, scams were bound to pop up.This January, a man pretending to be a girl on zhihu.com, China’s largest online question-and-answer community, claimed to have transferred money to help another user on the same website who purportedly suffered from an incurable disease. The man has nearly 60,000 followers and he eventually cheated other users out of more than 150,000 yuan (US$22,830).Another cheater, who sought help after the deadly Tianjin blasts last August, was severely punished in January. The cheater falsely claimed on Weibo that her father was confirmed dead in the explosions and she needed urgent assistance. She received over 90,000 yuan from Weibo users. She was sentenced to three years in prison last month.Similar cheating cases have one thing in common: By exaggerating miseries or faking pitiful experiences, solicitors arouse sympathy and obtain donations quickly. Because Internet solicitation platforms have low entry requirements, almost anyone can access them easily and receive donations.When people’s good intentions are misused, their trust in others will be jeopardized. The number of people who run online scams is relatively small compared with those who really need help, but their disgraceful behaviors hurt legitimate charities as well. Just as the saying goes, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch.”Why not just ban online solicitations since they have brought about severe consequences? Raising money through Internet platforms has unparalleled advantages, which traditional charity channels, such as the Red Cross, don’t have. By receiving hundreds of thousands of small donations, charities can raise more money than ever before. Without these platforms, many needy people’s requests for help may go unnoticed because traditional charity systems have limited capacities and resources to reach the needy.Meanwhile, Internet solicitation platforms are becoming an important supplement to the traditional charity system. Despite scandals surrounding the Red Cross, Chinese people’s zealousness in supporting charities in general has not cooled down, which is indicated by the drastic increase rate in the amount of charity money raised on the Internet. As Internet platforms gradually expand their roles, many people have an increasing interest in directly donating to people who they think are qualified to receive help and to charity organizations they think are credible.Internet donation solicitation has a learning curve and should be given a chance before it matures. Most cheating is done by individuals, so people can donate to trustworthy organizations or charity programs instead. The disadvantages regarding Internet solicitation will be resolved once Internet platforms gradually improve and better their charity service standards.The newly revised philanthropy law leaves room for innovative charity initiatives by stipulating that individuals and organizations that have no legal qualifications to receive donations can cooperate with qualified organizations. Hence the “Internet Plus” strategy can also be applied to charity. Internet charity endeavors can help more people by joining hands with traditional charities.