Leaflet: Free Tibet is a hoax; don’t fall for it

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On the face of it, the Free Tibet movement seems to be one of those ‘feel good’ causes nobody can argue against, like helping disabled children, or saving the rainforest. All kinds of disparate groupings, from socialists to socialites, and fascists to fashionistas can be found outside the Chinese Embassy, shouting themselves hoarse in their passion to liberate Tibet from the evil clutches of ‘neo-imperial’ China.

Why do representatives of imperialism, like George W Bush, support Free Tibet?

Many Free Tibet campaigners have also campaigned against war on Iraq and the occupation of Palestine. They see themselves as standing for justice and against tyranny, and it is a wonder that more of them are not concerned that the Free Tibet movement (and China-bashing in general) is strongly supported by those same vicious governments that led us into the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia and that have consistently supported Israel in its brutal occupation of Palestine. Is it not suspicious that Bush, Blair and Brown are all fully paid-up members of the Dalai Lama Fan Club?

• Why do the imperialists so vociferously support Tibet’s right to self-determination when they are so opposed to it in Palestine and Iraq?
• Why are they so concerned about ‘free speech’ in the Tibetan language when they so aggressively deny it in Arabic and English?
• Why do they care so much about the traditional, simple, peaceful way of life in Tibet when they are engaged in raining death and destruction on the masses of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere?
• Why has the Dalai Lama refused to utter even a word of criticism against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Free Tibet is not about supporting Tibet, it is about attacking China

Bush, Blair, Brown and Obama all cry crocodile tears over Tibet. The imperialists tell us naked lies about China and Tibet (just as they did about Iraq’s WMD). But we’ve been lied to enough that such lies shouldn’t be anything new to us.

Imperialism seeks domination, not freedom , as Lenin pointed out. The Free Tibet movement is a pawn in the imperialist game-plan to get rid of Chinese socialism and destroy China as a competitor. The well-meaning people who picket the Chinese Embassy calling for Tibetan independence are dupes of Anglo-American foreign policy.

Some facts about Tibet

• China didn’t ‘take over’ Tibet. Tibet has been recognised as a part of China since the 13th century. It was the British who first tried to separate Tibet from China, to cement their Indian rule and steal a march on Tsarist Russia.
• The independence movement in Tibet was the product of imperialism and Tibet’s feudal rulers, who were opposed to even the most basic democratic reforms. It is now led by theformer feudal rulers and funded by the CIA and related sources such as the National Endowment for Democracy.
• At the time of the revolution, the People’s Liberation Army was welcomed with open arms by the masses of Tibet, who have enthusiastically taken part in the process of overthrowing the old order and building a new socialist society. They are an integral part of New China.
• George W Bush awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal in October 2007.

Life for Tibetans is not ‘hell on Earth’

The Dalai Lama claimed that, as a result of the Chinese control over Tibet, life for Tibetans was “hell on Earth”. This absurd statement does not have any basis in fact.

• Before feudalism was abolished in 1959, life for the vast majority of Tibetans was precarious and burdened with debt (monasteries being the chief usurers). Some 95 percent of people lived like slaves, while a tiny aristocracy lived in opulent splendour. The ruling class regularly resorted to methods of extreme brutality, and every feudal manor kept special instruments for gouging out people’s eyes, pulling out tongues, hamstringing and other tortures.
• Killing the smallest living creature is ‘forbidden’ to ‘non-violent’ Tibetan Buddhism, but, given the need to keep the peasants in line, the religious authorities drew a Jesuitical distinction between flogging rebellious peasants to death (not allowed) and flogging them to the point that they were bound to die of their injuries (permitted).
• Before the revolution, there was not a single hospital or school in Tibet; now there are thousands. Literacy was below 10 percent; now it is above 90 percent.
• Before the revolution, life expectancy in Tibet was around 35; now it is over 70.
• Tibet is an autonomous region within the People’s Republic of China. The Tibetan language is thriving, and there is extensive study of Tibetan culture (all across China, not just in Tibet).

Has anyone asked the Tibetans what they want?

Contrary to the propaganda put out by the BBC and others, the majority of Tibetans don’t support secession, but want to continue to enjoy ever improving living and cultural standards as part of China. They don’t want to go back to poverty and feudal domination for the benefit of imperialism.

China has only used force in defence of the people of Tibet to counter the violence of a small minority of anti-socialist and imperialist-backed wreckers and saboteurs. In the counter-revolutionary riots, which broke out on 14 March 2008, saboteurs and wreckers attacked and set fire to schools, public buildings and shops owned by unarmed and defenceless ethnic Han Chinese and Hui Muslims. On the first day, these ‘peace-loving’ Buddhists-on-the-rampage injured 623 people and killed 18 (including five young women garment workers who were burnt alive where they worked).

Don’t be a dupe! Free Tibet is a hoax; don’t fall for it

If the US managed to split Tibet from China, it would build military bases in Tibet (officially to ‘protect’ Tibet, but in reality further to threaten China, India and Pakistan and dominate the region in the interests of imperialism).

Don’t ally yourself with the agenda of Anglo-American imperialist war-mongering foreign policy. Recognise the Free Tibet movement for what it is - an elaborate exercise in deceit.

Guardian: China launches green power revolution to catch up on west

Via The Guardian

China’s ambitious wind and solar plans represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims of world leadership on cutting carbon emissions. Photograph: Keren Su/Getty

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China’s national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

“Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW],” Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

“We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption.”

That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims to world leadership in the field, despite China’s relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.

Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China’s $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.

HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.

China also believes the price reforms that will take place in its economic recovery programme will lead to more efficient use of resources and an increased demand for renewable energy.

“Due to the impact of global financial crisis, people are all talking about green and sustainable development,” Zhang added. “Enterprises and government at all levels are showing more enthusiasm for the development of solar for power generation, and the Chinese government is now considering rolling out more stimulus policies for the development of solar power.”

He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.

Zhang was speaking in London on a day China came under increased pressure from Washington to do more cut its emissions.

David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

“China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change,” said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

“No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet’s carbon emissions.”

Zhang said China was pursuing “a constructive and a positive role” in negotiations aimed at agreeing a deal in Copenhagen. As part of that agreement, he said developing countries would have to pursue “a sustainable development path”, and said Beijing was open to the idea of limits on the carbon intensity of its economy (the emissions per unit of output).

“We have taken note of some expert suggestions on carbon intensity with a view to have some quantified targets in this regard. We are carrying out a serious study of those suggestions,” Zhang said.

Zhang told the all-party parliamentary China group in Westminster yesterday that Beijing’s stimulus package was already showing signs of re-energising the Chinese economy. He said it grew by 6.1% in the first quarter of this year, and growth in the second quarter would be stronger than the first. He predicted that China would meet its target of 8% growth this year.

Looking back at Tiananmen Square, the defeat of counter-revolution in China

Very useful paper from FRSO on Tiananmen can be found here.

Tiananmen Square Is None of Your Business, Congress

Statement by Congressman Ron Paul before the US House of Representatives, June 3, 2009

I rise to oppose this unnecessary and counter-productive resolution regarding the 20th anniversary of the incident in China’s Tiananmen Square. In addition to my concerns over the content of this legislation, I strongly object to the manner in which it was brought to the floor for a vote. While the resolution was being debated on the House floor, I instructed my staff to obtain a copy so that I could read it before the vote. My staff was told by no less than four relevant bodies within the House of Representatives that the text was not available for review and would not be available for another 24 hours. It is unacceptable for Members of the House of Representatives to be asked to vote on legislation that is not available for them to read!

As to the substance of the resolution, I find it disturbing that the House is going out of its way to meddle in China’s domestic politics, which is none of our business, while ignoring the many pressing issues in our own country that definitely are our business.

This resolution “calls on the People’s Republic of China to invite full and independent investigations into the Tiananmen Square crackdown, assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross…” Where do we get the authority for such a demand? I wonder how the US government would respond if China demanded that the United Nations conduct a full and independent investigation into the treatment of detainees at the US-operated Guantanamo facility?

The resolution “calls on the legal authorities of People’s Republic of China to review immediately the cases of those still imprisoned for participating in the 1989 protests for compliance with internationally recognized standards of fairness and due process in judicial proceedings.” In light of US government’s extraordinary renditions of possibly hundreds of individuals into numerous secret prisons abroad where they are held indefinitely without charge or trial, one wonders what the rest of the world makes of such US demands. It is hard to exercise credible moral authority in the world when our motto toward foreign governments seems to be “do as we say, not as we do.”

While we certainly do not condone government suppression of individual rights and liberties wherever they may occur, why are we not investigating these abuses closer to home and within our jurisdiction? It seems the House is not interested in investigating allegations that US government officials and employees approved and practiced torture against detainees. Where is the Congressional investigation of the US-operated “secret prisons” overseas? What about the administration’s assertion of the right to detain individuals indefinitely without trial? It may be easier to point out the abuses and shortcomings of governments overseas than to address government abuses here at home, but we have the constitutional obligation to exercise our oversight authority in such matters. I strongly believe that addressing these current issues would be a better use of our time than once again condemning China for an event that took place some 20 years ago.

China Outpaces U.S. in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants

Via New York Times

TIANJIN, China — China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet.

But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost.

While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.

Construction has stalled in the United States on a new generation of low-pollution power plants that turn coal into a gas before burning it, although Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the Obama administration might revive one power plant of this type. But China has already approved equipment purchases for just such a power plant, to be assembled soon in a muddy field here in Tianjin.

“The steps they’ve taken are probably as fast and as serious as anywhere in power-generation history,” said Hal Harvey, president of ClimateWorks, a group in San Francisco that helps finance projects to limit global warming.

Western countries continue to rely heavily on coal-fired power plants built decades ago with outdated, inefficient technology that burn a lot of coal and emit considerable amounts of carbon dioxide. China has begun requiring power companies to retire an older, more polluting power plant for each new one they build.

Cao Peixi, the president of the China Huaneng Group, the country’s biggest state-owned electric utility and the majority partner in the joint venture building the Tianjin plant, said his company was committed to the project even though it would cost more than conventional plants.

“We shouldn’t look at this project from a purely financial perspective,” he said. “It represents the future.”

Without doubt, China’s coal-fired power sector still has many problems, and global warming gases from the country are expected to continue increasing. China’s aim is to use the newest technologies to limit the rate of increase.

Only half the country’s coal-fired power plants have the emissions control equipment to remove sulfur compounds that cause acid rain, and even power plants with that technology do not always use it. China has not begun regulating some of the emissions that lead to heavy smog in big cities.

Even among China’s newly built plants, not all are modern. Only about 60 percent of the new plants are being built using newer technology that is highly efficient, but more expensive.

With greater efficiency, a power plant burns less coal and emits less carbon dioxide for each unit of electricity it generates. Experts say the least efficient plants in China today convert 27 to 36 percent of the energy in coal into electricity. The most efficient plants achieve an efficiency as high as 44 percent, meaning they can cut global warming emissions by more than a third compared with the weakest plants.

In the United States, the most efficient plants achieve around 40 percent efficiency, because they do not use the highest steam temperatures being adopted in China. The average efficiency of American coal-fired plants is still higher than the average efficiency of Chinese power plants, because China built so many inefficient plants over the past decade. But China is rapidly closing the gap by using some of the world’s most advanced designs.

After relying until recently on older technology, “China has since become the major world market for advanced coal-fired power plants with high-specification emission control systems,” the International Energy Agency said in a report on April 20.

China’s improvements are starting to have an effect on climate models. In its latest annual report last November, the I.E.A. cut its forecast of the annual increase in Chinese emissions of global warming gases, to 3 percent from 3.2 percent, in response to technological gains, particularly in the coal sector, even as the agency raised slightly its forecast for Chinese economic growth. “It’s definitely changing the baseline, and that’s being taken into account,” said Jonathan Sinton, a China specialist at the energy agency.

But by continuing to rely heavily on coal, which supplies 80 percent of its electricity, China ensures that it will keep emitting a lot of carbon dioxide; even an efficient coal-fired power plant emits twice the carbon dioxide of a natural gas-fired plant.

Perhaps the biggest question now is how much further China can go beyond the recent steps. In particular, how fast will it move toward power plants that capture their emissions and store them underground or under the seafloor?

That technology could, in theory, create power plants that contribute virtually nothing to global warming. Many countries hope to develop such plants, though progress has been halting; Energy Secretary Chu has promised steps to speed up the technology in the United States.

China has just built a small, experimental facility near Beijing to remove carbon dioxide from power station emissions and use it to provide carbonation for beverages, and the government has a short list of possible locations for a large experiment to capture and store carbon dioxide. But so far, it has no plans to make this a national policy.

China is making other efforts to reduce its global warming emissions. It has doubled its total wind energy capacity in each of the past four years, and is poised to pass the United States as soon as this year as the world’s largest market for wind power equipment. China is building considerably more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, and these do not emit carbon dioxide after they are built.

But coal remains the cheapest energy source in China by a wide margin. China has the world’s third-largest coal reserves, after the United States and Russia.

“No matter how much renewable or nuclear is in the mix, coal will remain the dominant power source,” said Ashok Bhargava, a China energy expert at the Asian Development Bank in Manila.

Another problem is that China has finally developed the ability to build high-technology power plants only at the end of a national binge of building lower-tech coal-fired plants. Construction is now slowing because of the economic slump.

By adopting “ultra-supercritical” technology, which uses extremely hot steam to achieve the highest efficiency, and by building many identical power plants at the same time, China has cut costs dramatically through economies of scale. It now can cost a third less to build an ultra-supercritical power plant in China than to build a less efficient coal-fired plant in the United States.

China of great help to Africa in fighting global financial crisis: Zambian minister

Via Xinhua.

WASHINGTON, April 25 (Xinhua) — China is of great help to African countries in their efforts to deal with the current global financial crisis and the worst world economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s, Zambian Minister of Finance Situmbeko Musokotwane told Xinhua here on Saturday.

Musokotwane, who is in Washington to attend the two-day annual spring sessions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua that the Chinese assistance includes efforts to save jobs for Zambians by the Chinese mining company, and offering the low-interest loans to African countries including his nation.

“The Chinese mining company in Zambia is not going to lay off any one,” he said. “They are not cutting jobs.”

Due to the current global financial crisis, the mining industry in Zambia is the hardest hit as African countries are feeling the effect of the financial crisis, which started some six months ago in the United States, said the minister.

“For us, the biggest pain is in the mining industry,” he said. “Our ability to ensure the financial stability also declined.”

The mining industry has been the economic and social backbone for Zambia since the 1930s. Since that time a wide spectrum of other metalliferous and non-metalliferous resources have been discovered in the East African country.

Zambia is internationally recognized as a major producer of copper and cobalt. It ranks as the world’s seventh largest producer of copper, generating 3.3 percent of the western world’s production, and world’s second largest producer of cobalt, which accounts for 19.7 percent of the world total.

Meanwhile, the minister said that after the November 2006 China-Africa Summit in the Chinese capital Beijing, China had offered low-interest loans to Africa, including Zambia.

“Obviously, China is providing low-interest loans to Zambia, (and) not just Zambia, but Africa,” the minister said.

The two-day Beijing Summit, highlighting “friendship, peace, cooperation and development,” drew 41 heads of state or government and senior officials of 48 African countries that have diplomatic ties with China, as well as representatives from regional and international organizations.

The Summit was held within the framework of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (CACF), which was jointly proposed and established by China and some African countries in 2000, with the aim of “equal negotiation, enhancing understanding, increasing consensus, strengthening friendship and promoting cooperation.”

The CACF is a mechanism for China-Africa collective dialogue and cooperation to cope with new challenges and facilitate common development.

In the Saturday interview, the Zambian minister also said that he hopes to see more Chinese investment in Zambia and other African countries.

Nice picture of Hu and Chávez during the latter’s recent visit to China

China to offer 300,000 more jobs for disabled by 2010

Via Xinhua.

BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) — China will create 300,000 additional jobs for the disabled in cities and towns by 2010, said the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010) released Monday by the Information Office of the State Council (Cabinet).

The plan said the state will guarantee the disabled people’s right to employment. The government will strengthen employment training for the disabled and the construction of an employment service network, standardize and develop business that offer jobs to a considerable number of disabled people at one go.

The government will promote compulsory hiring of disabled people in accordance with their proportion to the population at large, it said. The protective employment system for the disabled will be improved, which includes tax deduction and exemption, and the special production and marketing of certain products by the disabled.

Measures such as creating welfare work posts and providing social security subsidies will be implemented to ensure that by the year 2010 there will be 300,000 additional jobs for the disabled in cities and towns, it said.

The state will enhance support for poverty-stricken disabled people in rural areas, said the plan. Help will be provided to enable the 4 million disabled rural people who want for food and clothing to have adequate food and clothing, to enable the 400,000 disabled rural people with financial difficulties in the central and western regions to receive training in practical skills, and to enable 128,000 rural disabled people to rebuild their dilapidated houses.

There are more than 83 million people with various kinds of disabilities in China, accounting for 6.34 percent of the total population, according to the plan.

Average life expectancy of Chinese to reach 73 by 2010

Via Xinhua.

BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) — The average life expectancy of Chinese is expected to reach 73 years by 2010, according to the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010) released Monday by the Information Office of the State Council, or Cabinet.

The basic framework for the basic health care system covering the entire nation will be established by 2010, to make China among the countries where the national basic health service is available, according to the plan.

The main goals expected to be reached in 2010 also includes: infant mortality rate, below 14.9 per thousand; mortality rate of children under five, below 17.7 per thousand; mortality rate of pregnant and lying-in women, below 40 per 100,000; and the free national immunity vaccination program for children, 95 percent in cities and 90 percent in the countryside.

The action plan says the government is going to expedite the establishment of the basic medical care system. By 2010, the allowances from the budgets of governments at all levels to urban residents covered by medical insurance and rural residents covered by new rural cooperative medical services will be raised to 120 yuan (nearly 20 U.S. dollars) per person annually.

Within three years, efforts will be made to support the construction of 2,000 county-level hospitals starting from 2009, so that every county will have at least one up-to-standard hospital, while 3,700 community health service centers and 11,000 community health service stations will be built or renovated in cities.

“In large and medium-sized cities, one community health service center will be built for every 30,000-100,000 residents or in every neighborhood”, the plan says.

By 2010, a new rural cooperative medical care system will cover virtually all the rural residents. Every township will have a government-run hospital, and every administrative village will have a clinic, it says.

The government will provide safe drinking water for another 60 million rural population in 2009, so as to realize the goal of “halving the proportion of the population unable to get sustainable safe drinking water by 2015″ set by the United Nations, ahead of schedule, according to the government action plan.

China unveils ambitious plan to overhaul health care sector

Via Xinhua

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) — China unveiled a three-year plan on health care reform Tuesday, which it said would lay a solid foundation for equitable and universal access to essential health care for all in China by 2020.

Under the 850 billion yuan (124 billion U.S. dollars) plan for 2009 to 2011, the government promised universal access to basic health insurance, introduction of an essential drug system, improved primary health care facilities, equitable access to basic public health services and pilot reform of state-run hospitals.

The document from the State Council, or Cabinet, detailed tasks and goals for the 2009-2011 period as the government explained how it would implement its long-term health care reform plan, which it announced Monday.

The plan did not elaborate how the 850 billion yuan, including 331.8 billion yuan from the central budget, would be used.

But it is widely expected to be spent on subsidizing basic medical insurance programs, supporting grassroots-level health facilities and in underdeveloped western and rural regions.

TARGETING SCARCE, COSTLY CARE

After more than 20 years of transition from a socialist planned to a market economy, China’s cradle-to-grave social security network was gradually dismantled, leaving many vulnerable.

Efforts in the past decade to reform the health sector were also regarded as unsuccessful.

Between 1980 and 2005, annual disposable income per capita increased by almost 20 times in China, while annual health expenditure per capita increased by 133 times, according to figures from the Ministry of Health.

According to the 2007 World Health Statistics, available on the ministry website, government and private expenditures on the health sector in China were respectively 38 percent and 62 percent in 2004, compared with 54.1 percent and 45.9 percent in Brazil, 17.3 percent and 82.7 percent in India, 86.3 percent and 13.7 percent in Britain, and 44.7 percent and 55.3 percent in the United States.

In the same year, China’s total health expenditure accounted for 4.7 percent of its GDP, against 15.4 percent in the United States, 8.8 percent in Brazil, 8.1 percent in Britain, and 5 percent in India.

“The three-year reform mainly targets the pressing problem that medical care is too expensive and hard to get, which has drawn many complaints from the people,” said the document.

The current system had many problems, the government admitted.

“Some people are not covered by medical insurance, the public health sector has been weak for a long period, and state-run hospitals are too profit-obsessed,” said the document.

“These problems must be solved to lay a solid foundation for the long term and for overall health care reform,” it said.

China wants to have more than 90 percent of its population covered by some sort of basic medical insurance by 2011.

Three different insurance programs already exist for urban employees, unemployed urban residents and rural residents, into which governments, employers, and individuals contribute.

More than 200 million urban workers, 100 million urban residents and some 800 million rural residents have already joined the three programs respectively, according to the Development Research Center under the State Council.

The health insurance subsidy offered by the government for unemployed urban residents and farmers will rise from 80 yuan per person to 120 yuan per person as of next year, according to the action plan.

The level of reimbursement an inpatient or an outpatient can get from one of the three programs will be gradually raised.

The reformers also intend to have more vulnerable people covered by insurance, such as retirees from bankrupt or financially troubled companies that can no longer pay for insurance, migrant workers and the self-employed.

In some places where pilot work was carried out, progresses have been made in bringing more people under the shelter of medical insurance.

Li Liang, a farmer in Ejin Horo County, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said he only paid 10 yuan (1.46 dollars) a year to join the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care system, into which the central and local governments contribute 130 yuan.

Meanwhile, Li is entitled to have as much as 50,000 yuan reimbursed every year to pay his medical bill, if there is any.

“Now I feel quite relieved because 50,000 yuan can be a huge burden for me and my family,” said Li.

Fu Wei, an official with the health ministry, said the reimbursement level would be further raised to ease rural residents’ financial burden.

PROMISING GOOD MANAGEMENT

The broad principles contained in China’s new reform “are in line with what the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting. For example, the principle of equity, the principle of having the poor (covered by) health policies,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.

The government promised good management and supervision of funds for the insurance programs, and it said it would explore more rational and convenient methods for people to use the programs.

To lower prescription costs, which have drawn much criticism, the government will promote a system of essential medicines for state-run hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. A list of essential drugs will be published this year.

Due to longstanding low government funding for state-run hospitals, which in many places only covers 10 percent of operating costs, doctors often aggressively prescribe expensive, sometimes unnecessary medicines and treatment, in order to make profits for the hospital.

This situation has meant high medical bills and corruption in the medical profession.

The reformers want to designate essential drugs, at controlled prices, to cut the cost of hospital services, while promising to increase funding to non-profit state-run hospitals and clinics, which account for 80 percent of medical institutions in China.

This forms part of the arduous reform of state-run hospitals to improve efficiency and quality. The plan said pilot work would be carried out this year in chosen hospitals, without giving details.

IMPROVING PRIMARY CARE, TRAINING

To improve primary health care facilities, China will give priority to construction of about 2,000 county-level hospitals so each county would have at least one hospital that was essentially in compliance with national standards.

The central government will fund the construction of 29,000 township hospitals this year and the upgrading of 5,000 township hospitals, under the plan.

The central government will also finance the construction of village clinics in remote areas so that every village will have a clinic in the next three years.

It said 3,700 community health centers and 11,000 community health stations would be set up or upgraded in cities.

Liu Xinmin, an official with the health ministry, said the plan is aimed at improving the medical service network at grassroots level so that patients do not have to travel far to see a doctor.

He said the distribution of hospital resources was extremely unbalanced at present, with about 80 percent of hospital resources in cities.

Even in places where village or township clinics are available, many patients opt for big hospitals in the city just because they do not trust local medics, he said.

In the next three years, China will train 1.37 million village doctors and 160,000 community doctors. Also, city-level hospitals, which usually have better expertise and equipment, will each be required to help three county-level hospitals to improve the skills of medics.

Doctors at city hospitals and disease control agencies will be asked to serve in rural hospitals for at least one year before they can be promoted.

Other measures include setting up a universal medical records database, which will be strictly managed, regular exams for those older than 65 or younger than three, and pre-natal check-ups.

In addition to programs to prevent or control major diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, China will launch new projects to help those below the age of 15 receive hepatitis B vaccines, eliminate risks from coal-burning fluorine poisoning and improve rural water and sanitation facilities.

It will also provide folic acid to rural women who intend to get pregnant or are in the early stages of pregnancy, to prevent birth defects.

China Central Television, the state broadcaster, has been ordered to open a TV channel for health education.

According to the plan, China will increase investment in the public health service at a standard of 15 yuan per person a year in 2009, and 20 yuan by 2011. This translates to a huge investment of between 19.5 billion yuan and 26 billion yuan each year.

“Such investment is very necessary for China because people must understand that disease prevention and control will eventually help save more money,” Liu Xinmin said. “In China, many people become ill just because they don’t know how to prevent.”