"Don't let some unscrupulous coalmine owners kill more people in their last frenzy to make a profit."

Li Yizhong, pledging a lasting campaign to improve the country's work safety situation at a national conference

"Some people have pinned their hopes on Li's determination and hard work, others on input increase and restructuring; nonetheless, excessive industrial production continues to punish the country relentlessly."

China Youth Daily, on frequent workplace accidents plaguing the country

"China is capable of producing a bird flu vaccine for human use in appropriate quantities."

Zhang Jiansan, Vice General Manager of Beijing-based vaccine producer Sinovac Biotech, said when China announced on December 25 that its bird flu vaccine for human use had proved to be "safe" and "effective" during the second phase of clinical tests in September-November 2007

"We think that Taiwan's referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name ‘Taiwan' is a provocative policy."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, telling a news conference in Washington D.C. on December 21 that Taiwan's UN bid unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan Straits and promises no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage

"It doesn't really matter which party gets in just as long as we have a government as soon as possible."

Anunt, a 60-year-old Bangkok resident, calling for political stability in Thailand when he participated in the parliamentary election on December 23. A party backing ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra won the most seats in the new parliament

"The move is meant to give farmers more benefits and divert more government expenditure into the consumer sector from fixed asset investment and the export industry."

Zeng Xiaoan, an official with China's Ministry of Finance, announcing on December 22 that the government is to give farmers subsidies for purchasing household electric appliances in a bid to stimulate sluggish rural consumption and reduce the rising trade surplus

"When a former prime minister becomes a Catholic, that must be a sign that Catholicism really has come in from the cold in this country."

Catherine Pepinster, the editor of Catholic weekly The Tablet, commenting on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's conversion from Britain's established church, Anglicanism, to Catholicism in The Sunday Telegraph on December 23