Wang Guowei heads up the policy and legislation department at the State Council Food Safety Commission. He spoke to Xu Nan and Zhou Wei about the nature of China’s food safety problems and the ongoing policy response.
chinadialogue: Compared with other countries, what are the key characteristics of China’s food-safety problems?
Ai, who lived in New York for much of the 1980s, has become a patron of China's disaffected urbanites, and here, in his tranquil garden, he holds court, offering advice to the thousands of fans, bloggers, activists, and petitioners who visit from all across China and the world. Despite the government's relentless attempts to shut him up, Ai is still talking. The first change he would make to Chinese cities? Free the people.
Over the past few years there have been repeated signs that newspapers in the southern province of Guangdong, long known to be among the China’s most outspoken, have come under intensified pressure from the authorities. CMP reported last May that a reshuffle at the top of the Nanfang Daily Media Group, which operates such newspapers as Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekly, was a worrying sign of possibly eroding independence. In a report late last week, iSun Affairs, an iPad magazine operated by Hong Kong’s Sun Media Group, took an in-depth look at recent changes at the Nanfang Daily Media Group.
Does China need "news legislation?" This is a question frequently asked as journalism develops in the country. It recently resurfaced following a Caixin report on the flourishing IPO extortion industry. The practice, sometimes called "paid media silence," sees companies hoping to go public fall victim to a media blackmailer that threatens to publish damaging reports unless a company pays them in ad deals and other ways.
In China's arid northwest, the state government is planning to build 16 new, water-gobbling, coal power bases by 2015. It is an area rich in coal but scarce in water – per capita water supply is one tenth of the national average – and these new bases are set to trigger a water crisis in an area that is already feeling the strain.
From their website:
Greenpeace is the leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
Did she indeed confess to everything? All the reports state in various ways that Gu confessed. The Zhao Report says, “She fully admitted her acts in the case without reservation; she offered no objections.” The Xinhua Report says that she “confessed to intentional homicide”. It seems, however, that in fact she did question parts of the prosecution’s case.
China's fallen politician Bo Xilai left a timebomb as a parting gift for the Communist Party leadership that threw him out—the smoldering demands for redress from the many targets of his harsh version of justice in the city he ruled.
Ryan also called for China to liberalize and become “integrated into the global order.” But, he said, Chinese leaders should not count on the decline of the United States as a great power. “We must demonstrate that planning for the post-American era is a squandered effort on their part and that America's greatest days lie ahead,” he said.
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The Weekly Standard made its debut on September 18, 1995. Edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the magazine is published 48 times a year by Clarity Media Group. The Weekly Standard is available by subscription.
