TWELVE PEOPLE STOOD on the top of a government building in Shuozhou, Shanxi province, on Monday, saying they would jump unless the authorities caught a local official who fled after illegally raising 180 million yuan ($29 million) from them. Police and officials finally managed to persuade them to come down. Comments:
A video showing a police officer treading on the long hair of a female rural migrant worker, believed to have been beaten to death by police officers, not only shames the police in the city of Taiyuan, where the incident took place on Dec 13. It has also raised the question of how police officers should be prevented from using violence.
The Chinese government is good at reforms, except reform of its own vehicle use.
The year 2015, the last year of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) and also the starting year for comprehensively advancing the governance of the nation by rule of law, is expected to witness the government's intensified efforts to push forward overall and deepened reforms.
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:
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