Five young firefighters, aged between 18 and 22, were killed and another 14 injured in a warehouse blaze in Harbin, capital city of the Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. The cause of the fire on Jan 2, which resulted in the collapse of the building, is still being investigated.
The frequent fires that have razed the country's ancient buildings, some of them well-preserved cultural relics, have highlighted the need for the authorities to put in place stricter and more effective measures for the protection of these precious cultural gems.
News from Japan's health ministry on the last day of 2014 did not augur well for the country, as the population dropped by a record 268,000 last year.
In the cases recently exposed in the nationwide anti-corruption campaign led by the top leader Xi Jinping, many senior corrupt officials have been found to have formed "corruption gangs" to shield each other, severely undermining the interests of the Party, as well as the people.
If the New Year's Eve stampede in Shanghai's Bund with a death toll of 36 and the fire that killed five firefighters in the Northeast city of Harbin on Friday have taken some of the joy out of the festive spirit, the mismanagement that has been exposed as being the major culprit behind these tragedies should make Chinese authorities, city leaders in particular, aware that the country's urban management leaves much to be desired.
China is going through difficult reforms, and its future will be shaped by its reform today.
FROM FORMER SECURITY CHIEF ZHOU YONGKANG to the most recently fallen Ling Jihua, former vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, almost every senior corrupt official has been found to own a network of personal relations, intermingled with power and interests, involving hundreds of officials. Such gangs of corruption must be removed for the ongoing anti-graft efforts to truly succeed. Comments:
THE SAGA OF WU ZETIAN, a popular royal-themed TV drama, has had most shots of exposed cleavages cut and replaced with close-ups, which aroused a wave of discussions on-line. Comments:
Corruption, environmental pollution and widening wealth gap are the side-effects of China's fast economic growth and industrialization over the past 30 years, and these are evidence that reforms in some key areas are overdue.
The economic geography of the world is changing. The eurozone faces the specter of another round of stagnation, Japan has slipped into recession, and the United States, despite relatively strong performance in the latter part of the year, has raised concerns worldwide with its exit from quantitative easing.
In a recent joint circular, the General Offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council reiterated the ban on the use of public funds to pay "bonuses" to employees and prevent "holiday corruption" during New Year's Day and the upcoming Spring Festival.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 20100000002731 
Raymond Zhou
Op Rana
Berlin Fang
Zhu Yuan
Huang Xiangyang
Chen Weihua
