It is hasty and irresponsible to call the medical reform in Shenmu a failure.

Those who waited until March to get free medical treatment are not necessarily low in morals. Market-oriented medical reform in China in the late 1990s rendered may middle- and low-income earners unable to afford to see a doctor. The marked increase in patients that has strained the medical infrastructure—resulting, for example, in insufficient hospital beds—is simply an inevitable cost of the implementation of free medical services.

Guangzhou Daily

The Art of Decency

It has been reported that a yet-to-open sex park in an upmarket area in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality was torn down on May 18 after being criticized by the public as "vulgar."

It is a victory for the media and the public that the sex park was eventually dismantled. However, this kind of solution cannot prevent a similar situation from happening again.

We need to ask why the park only attracted relevant authorities' attention after it became a media issue.

The authorities in Chongqing explained that operators of the park did not submit the construction plan for approval before work began. However, the construction of this park was a long-term process, which was being done in broad daylight. It's hard to imagine that the authorities were totally unaware of it for such a long time.

Another question to be asked is why the project's operator, who definitely would have known the procedure for submitting the construction plan, dared to start construction without approval.

Despite the "official answer" trying to justify why work had been going on in the park, the public sensed something wrong.

Behind the public victory of the demoli-tion of the sex park in Chongqing, some systemic problems still need our attention.

Yangtze Evening News

Power Corrupts Absolutely

At a recent anti-corruption conference, Su Zhijia, Secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, said that government officials between 31 and 45 years old had become the group most vulnerable to corruption.

According to statistics released at the conference, between 2007 and 2008, discipline watchdogs of the Party and supervisory bodies of the government at all levels in Guangzhou investigated 637 persons in 580 corruption cases. Among them, 127 were officials aged between 31 and 45, accounting for 60 percent of all disciplined government employees.

In order to fight against corruption, categorized analyses of those officials committing acts of corruption are necessary. But the assumption that young government officials are a high-risk group is unconvincing. The root cause of corruption is not the age of officials but lax checks and balances on the power they wield.

Hence, we should pay more attention to officials with unrestricted power than officials in a specific age group. If not, we will not in essence put a stop to corruption.

Changjiang Daily