Letters

Building a really green city

From the Chinese press

Call for objective reporting

Aiming at fairer realty market

A well-targeted property tax can become the government's best weapon in the battle to curb rising housing prices

Cartoon

Human Rights Watch reveals its bias

The US-based Human Rights Watch organization has issued its annual World Report, commenting on human rights conditions worldwide over the past year.

Safety on the roads

The fatal traffic accidents in the past few days should sound an alarm about the country's lax traffic safety system and call for more actions to guarantee nationwide road safety for the upcoming travel peak in the country's countdown to the Lunar New Year.

Hukou and properties

Nothing is more eye-catching and sensational than the online disclosure, one after another, of officials who have more than one hukou, or household registration, and identity card, which they have used to acquire dozens of properties, in one case more than 100 properties under different identities.

Printing self-illusions a risky game

In the past four years, central banks in the advanced economies have been opting for new rounds of quantitative easing (QE) because the global financial crisis has exhausted the traditional instruments of monetary policy. And with investors seeking higher returns, more QE has been driving "hot money" (short-term portfolio flows) into high-yield emerging-market economies.

No resolution to Syrian crisis in sight

A resolution to the Syrian crisis remains a distant dream. The bloody conflict between the Syrian government and opposition forces continues and the United Nations' efforts to restore peace in the country have been failures.

Letters

System needs reforms

From the Chinese press

Blind urbanization dangerous

Online use, not abuse

In its World Report 2013 published on Friday, Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization on human rights research and advocacy headquartered in New York, continues lashing out at China, saying "its human rights record remained poor in 2012, with minimal significant progress on political, civil, socio-economic or cultural rights".