Jun32017
Jun32017
The World Health Organization (WHO) started a “smoke-free generation” media campaign in Beijing Thursday targeting young Chinese.
China is in the grip of a national tobacco epidemic, and children are most susceptible with cigarettes portrayed as fashionable and alluring in popular culture, said Bernhard Schwartlander, WHO Representative in China at the launch event.
According to WHO, over half of Chinese adult men smoke, two thirds of whom started as young adults. By 2014, 72.9 percent Chinese students had been exposed to secondhand smoke.
“There is nothing cool about smoking, but there is something empowering about choosing to live a healthy, smoke-free life,” said Schwartlander.
Since China ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, the country has made a number of tobacco control efforts, including banning tobacco advertisements, increasing tobacco taxes and putting forward regional smoking bans.
As of 2016, 18 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, had implemented regional smoking bans.
China has set a target to reduce the smoking rate among people aged 15 and older to 20 percent by 2030 from the current 27.7 percent, according to the “Healthy China 2030” blueprint issued by the central authorities last October.
Jun32017
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A bus catches on fire inside a tunnel in Weihai city, east China’s Shandong Province, on Tuesday, May 9, 2017. [Photo: thepaper.cn] |
A fatal school bus fire that killed 11 children and two adults in eastern China’s Shandong Province on May 9 was allegedly started by the bus driver, who also died, police said Friday.
The 11 children were aged between three and six, with five from the Republic of Korea and the rest from China.
The fire was started on the bus floor near the driver’s seat. A lighter cap was discovered nearby and gasoline residue found on multiple spots on the bus, according to a police officer with the Shandong provincial public security bureau.
Electricity faults and traffic accidents were ruled out as the cause of the fire, the police officer said.
The driver’s overtime and night shift allowance had been suspended, angering him, causing him to buy gasoline to set the fire, police said. Police received reports around 9 a.m. on May 9 about the fire inside Taojiakuang tunnel in Huancui District, Weihai city. The rented bus was delivering the children to a kindergarten, with 13 people onboard.
All were killed, including a female teacher.
Jun32017
The parties that might form a coalition behind Mr Corbyn if enough people voted that way are good at offering to spend lots of other people’s money. There is a rivalry between Labour, the Greens, the Lib Dems and the SNP to see who can offer most for popular causes. They are much weaker when it comes to explaining how all this extra money would be paid for.
The favourite method they propose is to put the rate of Corporation Tax back up to 26% from the current 19%. They think this will bring in extra revenue. It has the political advantage of not directly involving voters in paying more, though of course the extent to which companies did pay it would be passed on to customers. They need to study what has happened to revenues in countries that have gone for higher corporation tax rates. The USA is puzzling over large untaxed profits sitting offshore and debating how far to lower their rate to be able to tax that money. They also need to study what has happened to the revenues in the UK since we cut the rates.It looks as if you need to cut the rate to get more tax from business, not put it up.
In 2010 when the Coalition took over the Corporation Tax rate in the UK was 28%. Total onshore Corporation Tax brought in just £30.9bn in the year 2009-10. This year with the rate down to 19%, the forecast is for £52.7bn from this source. It is true there has been an output and profits recovery since the bad days of 2009-10. It is also true that a lower Corporation Tax rate was designed to speed that very recovery, which has been stronger than on the continent over that time period partly because of the tax changes.
In the March 2017 budget the government had to up its forecast of Corporation Tax revenue for 2016-17 by £7.4bn compared to its November forecast just four months earlier! The Treasury’s combined pessimism about the growth of the UK economy and the impact of lower tax rates on revenue had misled them badly. They claimed the increase was mainly to do with a timing difference in payments. Yet if you compare the March 2016 Budget book with the March 2017 budget book, they have had to raise their forecasts substantially for several years. Their total CT forecast for 2017-18 is £8bn higher than a year ago, and their 2018-19 forecast is more than £9bn up. This looks like having the wrong model for what happens to this tax when you cut the rate. Going back to the previous March removes any distortion caused by their Brexit worries, as in March 2016 they assumed the UK would stay in the EU.
I do not think there is an easy option to raise billions by taking the UK Corporation Tax rate back up to 26%.You could end up with less and a bigger black hole in the nation’s budgets. Large companies are footloose in where they employ people, provide services and make things. They have clever lawyers and accountants working for them to comply with the various global tax authorities around the world by taking advantage of lower tax rates where possible. Even the USA has not proved tough enough to force the profits back onshore.
Published and promoted by Fraser Mc Farland on behalf of John Redwood, both at 30 Rose Street Wokingham RG40 1XU
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From left to right: Hou Jianguo, Li Ganjie and Wang Menghui. [Photo/China Daily] |
The central government has announced the appointments of several senior officials in the past week, which experts said reflect the trend that China will have more senior officials with expertise related to their posts.
Among the newly appointed, Hou Jianguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was appointed Party chief of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the country’s top quality watchdog, on Thursday.
The 58-year-old worked at the University of Science and Technology of China in the Anhui provincial capital Hefei for 15 years and was president of the university from 2008 to 2015 before becoming vice-minister of science and technology.
He then was transferred to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region as the regional deputy Party chief in 2016.
On Wednesday, Li Ganjie, former deputy Party chief of Hebei province, was named Party chief of the Ministry of Environmental Protection after his predecessor, Chen Jining, became Beijing’s acting mayor.
Li, born in 1964, holds a master’s degree in nuclear reactor engineering from Tsinghua University. He worked as an environmental protection official for about 16 years and was vice-minister of environmental protection from 2008 to October last year before he was transferred to Hebei province.
In addition, Wang Menghui, 57, was appointed Party chief of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development on Wednesday.
Wang got a doctor’s degree in engineering after he studied urban planning and design in Tsinghua University from 2002 to 2007 when he held various posts in Guangdong province, including mayor of Shanwei city.
Generally speaking, Party chiefs of central government departments also serve as the agencies’ executive chiefs. But the appointment of ministers needs approval from the National People’s Congress, so the announcement of Party positions sometimes come first. The next meeting of the congress’s standing committee is scheduled for late this month.
Ma Qingyu, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said that the appointment of these senior officials shows the general trend of the central government to nominate more officials with expertise related to their posts.
“Personally, I feel excited to hear this news and I know many people welcome the appointments as well,” he said.
The acceleration of China’s modernization and the development of science and technology have resulted in a larger need for officials with special expertise in addition to governing capacity, Ma said, adding that officials with special expertise may be in a better position to make decisions that are in accord with the latest situation.
Song Shiming, a professor also with the Chinese Academy of Governance, said that both expertise in certain fields and governing capacity are needed by the best modern public administrators. The appointments of these senior officials well meet the needs of the times.
“It’s a general trend to transform the public administration in China to be law-based and scientific with high efficiency,” he said.
“The appointment of technocrats as high-level officials is one of the preconditions for the transformation and could help accelerate the modernization of public governance of the Chinese government.”