At a recent press conference, a senior official from the State Environmental Protection Administration introduced that some Chinese provinces have established a stringent accountability system under which, if a region fails to meet the compulsory pollutant discharge reduction targets, its leading official would be removed from the post. With environment pollution being such a severe problem, this is naturally big news.

In trying to balance development and environment, more emphasis is being put on the latter and the appraisal of officials' achievements also now takes into account local economic growth's impacts on the ecosystem. However, to conduct environmental protection by punishing senior officials won't help to improve the situation.

At the present stage, the fundamental way out for environmental protection is to encourage the involvement of the public. First we should let the public's voice be heard and act on their recommendations, as they are the direct victims of pollution. This may be more important and useful than removing the local officials.

Oriental Morning Post

Put Students' Interests First

Since November 5, Peking University has begun to check the ID cards of those who enter its teaching buildings and non-students are asked to leave. The university claims, this move aims to preserve the limited teaching resources to its students.

Many people expressed their dissatisfaction with this entry ban, believing that public tertiary institutions, including Peking University, should be open to all as they are operated with state funds, which means every taxpayer has the right to use resources offered by universities.

However, although those universities are set up for the convenience of the public's study needs, their priorities are to provide a good environment and adequate resources for students on campus. Universities are foremost a place to cultivate talent. We can not turn a blind eye to the troubles caused by non-students: The campus tranquility is often disturbed by visitors, library books get damaged or lost, and in some cases non-students even compete against college students for classrooms. Moreover, the influx of non-students onto university campuses may even be a safety risk.

Rather than opening the gate wider to the public, Chinese universities should step up measures on campus management to ensure a safe, orderly and quite environment for students. Only on this precondition can we expect universities to be opened up more to the public.

China Youth Daily

Don't Enslave Homeowners

In the face of a sizzling domestic property market, China has increased commercial banks' lending interest rate five times this year in the hopes of reining in the soaring prices through cooling demand. Unfortunately, for those who have bought apartments on mortgage, their loan burden is snowballing.

Frightened by much tighter measures, those who can have tried to pay off the loan before the next interest rate hike takes effect. But the majority of new homeowners have to bear the pain of paying mounting mortgage loans for the next decades.

To regulate the rocketing housing prices, the key is to put profit margins of involved parties throughout the house building process under effective control and therefore lower the overall costs. Given this, major regulation targets should be local governments (land supplier), developers and financial institutions, instead of the consumers. The Central Government has tried again and again to stabilize housing prices, but even after five interest rate hikes in the past 12 months alone, the prices maintained a strong uptrend. Maybe it's time to find out the root of the problem instead of infinitely raising mortgage loan rates.

Shanxi Evening News

More Fees for Motorists' Pockets

Shanghai's traffic authorities recently revealed that the city is planning to charge on-road vehicles certain fees to alleviate the traffic congestion on some road sections. According to official sources, this initiative is expected to encourage more people to choose public transit systems when considering the high cost of using private cars.

Despite the urgent need to reduce the stress of traffic jams, the "congestion charge" seems to go too far. If this is the way to go, Shanghai needs to build a number of tollgates. As there is more than one road leading downtown, does it mean all the road entries to this area should have a tollgate? If so, building the number of toll gates needed in Shanghai would be an energy-consuming project. Besides, as for car owners who work downtown, would they have to pay a daily fee? It seems unfair.

It's necessary to encourage public transit use, but it's unreasonable to do so by adding financial pressure on car owners, who have already paid a lot of money for all kinds of taxes related to auto purchase and road maintenance.

Dahe Daily