Reuters | March 6, 2002 | by Tamora Vidaillet
BEIJING - From north to south and east to west, delegates at China's annual session of parliament are echoing themes that resonate across the vast country - how to end poverty and corruption and what hardships membership of the world trade bloc will bring.
Lawmakers gathered in Beijing for the annual two-week session of parliament say education, the environment and rural poverty are the top concerns in China's first year as a member of the World Trade Organisation. Fears of rising poverty in the countryside, where some 70 percent of China's people live, as WTO membership brings in food cheaper than inefficient domestic agriculture can produce worried many delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC).
"After WTO, farmers are going to have a big problem. WTO membership is a clear attack on the industry," said He Shulan, a delegate from China's northeastern province of Heilongjiang, China's biggest producer of soybeans.
"That means China will have to guide the agricultural sector closely as they search for a solution and try to go onto the world market," said the lawmaker wearing a traditional gold and black cheongsam dress.
Millions of rural dwellers already swirl around China in search of jobs with incomes to take them beyond subsistence.
Gao Huixian, a farmer from the central province of Henan who recently moved to Beijing to benefit from a construction boom ahead of the 2008 Olympics, said his concern was a job.
"In rural areas, the bread-and-butter issue is not a big deal as we can grow crops for food," a state newspaper quoted him as saying. "People have to go to the towns for job opportunities."
Poverty also stood out as a prime concern for urban lawmakers who called for steps to improve medical facilities for the poor as more people lose jobs in a flood of foreign competition for the ailing Chinese state sector.
CORRUPTION, EDUCATION
Between typically dry speeches by Chinese leaders during the NPC, delegates will debate other worries facing China.
The gathering of farmers, lawyers, scholars and businessmen will address the need to provide adequate education in backward provinces, improve social welfare and step up the fight against pollution.
Calls for new legislation to combat a range of social ills, including terrorism and domestic violence, will also be made, state media say.
Delegates also pondered rampant corruption among government officials which has sparked growing criticism from ordinary Chinese and drew fire from Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji yesterday.
Zhu devoted a sizeable chunk of a lengthy speech to the corrupt and wasteful practices of officials who "used public funds to get drunk and over-eat, put on high-class entertainment, and travel abroad at the public expense".
"The key is not only to talk about fighting corruption but to formulate laws. We don't have enough concrete laws to enable us to better fight it," said Henan delegate Pei Qunguo.
PLANT TREES
Liu Runpu from the northeastern province of Jilin brought along a thick file of environmental issues. Reforestation and irrigation needed to be addressed, he said.
China's northeastern industrial rustbelt is reeling from decades of environmental abuse after rampant logging created soil erosion and ate away at already scarce arable land.
"The country needs to work to modify environmental planning and strengthen government support," Liu said.
Education and political concerns were the most pressing issue for Gao Jiangong, a professor of astro-physics from northwestern Xinjiang where he said an estimated 1.6 million children were without adequate schooling.
Xinjiang is home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic group and a subject of great concern to a Communist Party which accuses some Uighurs of campaigning for independence.
"If this problem is not solved, it will be easy for them to be influenced by extremist religious forces. Solving the education issue in that area is important for economic development, social stability and many other things," said Gao. (Additional reporting by Edwin Chan).Reuters:
