Aid and Respect

This January saw the launch of the New Great Wall Project in Beijing to help poor college students. Unlike many other charity activities, this project calls on people and businesses to offer part-time job opportunities. This approach is really recommendable.

In many previous cases, aid recipients were required to exercise self-restraint in daily consumption and therefore had to sacrifice the freedom in choosing what they like. Sometimes, donors even pried into private affairs of the recipients.

Like everyone else, the poor are also eager to live a respectable life. Given this, the organizers of the New Great Wall Project try to help the needy students with job opportunities that can give full play to their creativity and ability. Charity given in this way exhibits the true spirit of giving.

It is important that charity programs place equal emphasis on both the recipients' basic life and dignity. Surveys show that 80 percent of the students staying at school during the monthlong winter vacation are willing to take a part-time job.

Many people are used to helping students from impoverished families with cash and material donations. However, it is better that aid will come to the recipients in a more humane and acceptable way.

The Beijing News

Can Lottery Help Health System?

At a high-profile symposium on the reform of China's health care system in January, participants suggested that health funds can be raised through lottery sales as is practiced in many developed countries. However, it is noticeable that in economically developed countries, state allocations are the major source of health funds and the health lottery is only a way to arouse people's compassion.

There are many reasons for outstanding problems in China's health care system: Apart from insufficient state allocations, which account for only 4 percent of the country's gross domestic product compared with 16-20 percent in developed countries, irrational resource distribution is another plague. If the unfair, unreasonable and ineffective distribution of funds remains unchanged, health lotteries can do no good at all.

Besides, China's lottery business is itself a big problem. What most lottery buyers are interested in is not public interests, but windfalls. The relevant regulatory mechanism is also underdeveloped. According to the National Audit Office, 2006 saw over 10 billion yuan worth of lottery income embezzled by some officials, instead of going to state coffers.

Health funds are not supposed to be operated in the way the lottery business is run, and this is where the government has a big role to play.

Shanghai Securities News

Rational Career Choices?

There are signs that Chinese students' passion for postgraduate education is slipping, as is shown by the two consecutive drops in the growth rate of applicants for the entrance examination in 2006 and 2007. Some believe that students are making more rational choices as they are now faced with tough competition in the job market, and will no longer rush to take the postgraduate entrance test. But it's still too early to say whether this is true or not.

Another set of statistics may offer the answer: Compared with the 300, 000 applicants for the national civil servant test in 2005, 2006 saw 530,000 people signed up for the test. Among the extra number, quite a few are college graduates.

Why is the change? A civil service position means not only a stable job, but it also ensures all kinds of security that is unavailable in other careers. As some applicants have admitted, what they are interested in is not the job, but various benefits the job will provide.

Actually, while social security is still a worry, neither of the above two tests is a rational choice in the real sense. Rational job choice happens only when there is a well-developed security network and when people's choice of career is no longer based on current benefits, future pension or health care, but on their real interest and academic advantages.

Changjiang Times

Let Migrant Workers Be Heard

At a recent meeting of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Wang Qishan, Mayor of Beijing, said that migrant workers had done a lot for the city's prosperity and thus should be well treated. It is expected that this year's sessions of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top advisory body, will also focus on this issue.

Who knows if the farmer-turned-workers are well treated or not and who knows what their needs are? The workers themselves. Unfortunately, there are few representatives of migrant workers in legislatures at both local and national levels.

While migrant workers are unable to make their voice heard when problems related to their fundamental interests are discussed, it's quite possible that the severity of the problems is underestimated and proposed countermeasures miss the target. By not having a voice, migrant workers will only become more marginalized.

Opportunities for migrant workers to voice their concerns not only represent recognition of their importance to national development, but also helps them enjoy equal political rights. So if people really care about them, give them the platform to speak.

China Youth Daily