There's something about Tibetan Issue

First of all, we should try to realise the world use our eyes and mind, not only from what we heard. If there's really something misunderstanding, please, try to figure it out.

As Chinese, I am sure I will be furious when I see some incorrect news reported by media all over the world. However, it's unavoidable for us to admit, Chinese government did do something not appropiate enough, especially, the control of info. Please, let everything more transparent.

Let the world know, we are right. Tibet is part of China, no matter from historical perspective or reality.

We need peaceful! please!

Paradox in Journalistic Education: Why Can not China’s Journalism Students Become Journalists

There is a paradoxical phenomenon in nowadays China that, many graduated journalism students can’t even find a job in journalism while a large amount of graduates from other education background being recruited. A possible reason may be the disproportion between vacations and journalism graduates - over 660 journalism relative school or departments in China’s universities, the number is still increasing - but apparently it can’t simply explain why press and newspaper recruits so many students with no relative education background. Reflecting is necessary: what is wrong in the education of journalism?
The requirement of a competent recruit graduate is just the aim of journalism education. Which kind of students does media industry needs? From the practical perspective, the most basic three abilities are the creative ability of writing, the ability of percipience to the social phenomena with unique perspective, and being able to forecast the trend of journalism development. To learn and comprehend these three abilities is the most significant aspects for cultivate a competent journalist.

Some argue that the journalism educated recruits mostly can “easy begin but hardly persist” One of the journalists I knew graduated from a famous journalism school started and adapted his job perfectly in the beginning, but not long time later he lost his advantage to another recruit with literature education background who couldn’t even write a piece of full-element news in the beginning. What the literature educated journalist needed was just some most basic training and knowledge, the capacity of better organize language make him outstanding.

Firstly, changes should be made to the course structure of journalism education. Up-to-date courses according to journalism practice should be systematically enhanced, to make students more creative and sensitive with the development of media industry. Secondly, pure theoretical courses should be simplified and even cut off for the aim and time limit of undergraduate education. Students need learn more from practice to obtain the ability of seeing and touching the reality with deeper and more unique angle. At the same time, the development of China’s journalism environment requires more journalists with the ability of deeply thinking and criticizing, therefore variety and depth　should be considered when choose theoretical courses.

Pupils Cry for ‘Fan Jin’

“When our teacher gave a lecture on ‘Fan Jin’, I cried, as some other pupils did…”said a pupil in one middle school in Shenyang, Liaoning Province in China. Fan Jin, a famous tragic intellectual in ancient China, won a place in his province examination in his 60s, and suddenly got mad, because he found that he couldn’t bear the late-coming fame and gain. (11th Jan Chinese Youth Newspaper)

It is a famous article in China castigating the old civil service examination system. Why does it make a 21st century pupil burst into tears? It’s really a question worth discussing.

In pupils’ opinions, they cried inconceivably because the fickleness of harsh examination system seemed to repeat in nowadays society. When they get a good mark, teachers, parents will try their best to satisfy them; if not, they can hardly have a happy life no matter at home or at school. The freaky reality makes them feel helpless. All this reflects middle school students’ embarrassing and harsh life in China.

First of all, as I mentioned in my previous entry, the examination oriented education system is absolute great pressure. Teachers are likely to evaluate pupils by their marks. The higher mark you get the more chances you can obtain in school. You will easily be teachers’ focus and liked by them. But if you are not able to get an ideal mark, some kind of discrimination and other embarrassing things will follow you. And you will find it very difficult to let your teachers get rid of the bad impression of you. So, underachievers look like Fan Jin before winning the award, under unbelievable pressure and repression.

Secondly, parents’ opinions also give their children certain influence. In China, there’s a saying that parents always hope that their children will have a bright future. A good student with high mark is always considered as a to-be somebody, while underachiever is thought to lag behind them and can not make any difference in the future. Some parents will spoil their good children who are always whiz kids at school, while what underachievers can have is tongue-lash. They easily ignore the sound development in mind and body of the children, and can not build a good relationship with them.

Last but not least, it’s society’s responsibility. For example, every year after the entrance examination in June, the Press will focus on the students who get the highest mark. Interviews of them occupy quite a lot of pages of newspaper and their teachers and parents show their happiness in front of the camera. No one cares about ordinary students and the underachievers.

‘Fan Jin’ is not a simple story. It’s a historical mirror. What we can see from it is the unadvanced education system. Seeing pupil’s tears, it’s time for us to consider today’s education situation, and choose an appropriate method to cultivate our children because it’s not only related to the youth, but also to our social long-term development.

One More "catfish" Always Not A Bad Thing

As mobile phones are increasingly "amiable", the call cost is lower too. In the past, if the cost of the calls was below RMB 200 a month with the phone always power-off, I didn’t have tolerance for the happiness. And now, dozens of yuan a month has been more than enough.

There is no doubt that this change benefits from the break of the telecommunication monopoly, and the starting point for breaking the monopoly was the establishment of China Unicom. On July 19, 1994, China United Telecommunications Co. Ltd. set up, which is a significant milestone in the history of the development of China's telecommunications industry

At that time, the Global of China Mobile costs monthly 50 yuan for fee and usage charges 0.48 yuan / min, while Unicom costs monthly 30 yuan for fee and usage charges 0.32 yuan / minute which quickly attracted a lot of people. The final result of the first round of the competition was that the Global usage charges from 0.48 yuan / minute fell to 0.40 yuan / minute. Do not ignore this small district 8 cents, but the "catfish effect" brought the first gift to mobile phone users.

When we looked back, without exception, almost every time, the price offense was launched firstly by China Unicom. It is the positive confrontation many a time that not only causes the cell phone charges all the way plummet, but also causes the telecom operators to continuously upgrade their own quality of services and rich the contents.

Recently, aiming at the rumors that China Mobile may be split, Jianzhou Wang, the chairman and CEO of China Mobile, said that he was not worried that the company will be split up because the trends of the reorganization of the telecommunication industry is quit different from that 10 years ago. 10 years ago, large companies split into smaller companies, but now, small companies merge into large companies, which is the direction of government support. In fact, from 2004, various discussions and speculation on telecommunications restructuring have never interrupted, and the remarks of Jianzhou Wang once again stirred up the anticipation of the restructuring in the telecommunications industry.

Among four major telecom operators of China Telecom, Netcom, Mobile and Unicom , China Mobile is thriving – the profit growth of China Mobile from January to August in 2007 is up to 2.4 times the sum that of the China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom. Based on this background and with the problem of "when to license 3G, how many licenses, license to whom", the issue of split of China Unicom has become the most economically viable option. It is imperative to improve the monopolistic situation, and in such a constant deepening of the reform of the telecommunications, Unicom will continue to play a key role.

Despite various restructuring plan complicated, the core purpose which is to change the current imbalance competition situation in the market has been clear. Therefore, whether Unicom is divided into two new mobile operators or it’s allocated to the China Telecom and China Netcom, the most important thing of the problem lies in whether such reorganization could promote competition, thus makes the development of the whole industry into an optimal direction, rather than evades and further consolidate its monopoly to monopoly status.

What operator’s name shown on the phone screen? It’s not important to the overwhelming majority of ordinary users, in fact. What they care about is whether they can enjoy more quality services, as well as more favourable rates. Telecom appears ready to go ahead reorganization, and hope that such reorganization could stimulate the original "catfish" to greater vigor, or welcome more "catfish", instead of hastily making a clean break with the "catfish" that has ever made his contributions in work.

Why Christmas So Attractive?

Recently, a company in Dongguan, Guangzhou in China notified the staff not to celebrate Christmas in the company. The manager said, what they believe is Sinology, what they advocate is Chinese traditional festival, that’s why they don’t allow the staff to celebrate western festival such as Christmas. (24th December Nanfang Metropolis)

Qingming Festival, Mid-autumn Festival, Spring Festival…the celebration atmosphere for these traditional festivals gradually died away, but, Christmas and other Western Festivals become more and more popular. In recent years, more and more people advocate that we must all be on guard of the cultural aggression. This point pushes through the modification of holiday system to some extent. “Ban Christmas” demonstrated a kind of “Culture Discipline”. But, Can it completely be banned? I think, it’s Impossible and not necessary.

Comparing to the thousand-year history of Spring Festival, Christmas is quite a young festival, which is known to Chinese people in past 30 years. Why is it so popular? Obviously, it’s related to political civilization, advanced economy as well as mighty culture. However, the root is Christmas has the popular cultural factor which is liked by Chinese people. If we can throw away cultural discrimination and attitude of self-protection, Christmas is absolutely irresistible. Cordial Santa, always easygoing and makes us feel warm. That’s a little bit different from Chinese festival’s solemnities and formal.

Romantic. When we imagine our dear Santa climbing down the Chimney and putting the fancy gift in our prepared socks, we will feel very happy. It is like a beautiful legend. Thinking of our Chinese Traditional Festivals, people always have to take nostalgia and other things into consideration. That’s why Christmas becomes more and more attractive.

Relaxed. Spring Festival always makes us feel exhausted. Visiting relatives, sending gifts to each other, ceremonies and dining together... which are all unavoidable. But Christmas is different. No pressure, no mission, only one diner, and everyone can enjoy himself totally. What Christmas brings to us is relaxation and pleasure which is really treasure in contemporary society.

Warm, relaxed and romantic…these are brought by Christmas, which are expected by Chinese people but difficult to obtain. That’s decided by the cultural connotation but not religion property. So, don’t go to extremes, and make yourself enjoy it. Chinese should carry forward our traditional festivals, but not at the cost of banning other countries’ festivals. And just welcome some interesting festivals in other countries and have a good time.

Personal Income Tax Adjustment Need Not at the Cost of Reducing Fiscal Revenue

The 31st Session of the Tenth National People's Congress Conference was held on 23rd December, 2007. Rising up the threshold of Personal Income Tax has become a hot issue and more and more clear. Finance Minister Yuren Xie stated, the threshold is likely to rise from RMB 1600 to RMB 2000, and the percentage of wage-earner taxpayers will reduce from 50% to 30%.
24th Dec. Beijing Business Today

Finance Minister delivered us of all our fears of the threshold of personal income tax. Now, it’s not a good time to talk much about whether the threshold is too low, but, there would not be notable floating though the possibility of further increasing still exists. After this topic, following words from Minister Xie made me feel a bit upset – once the threshold is raised to 2000RMB per month, there will be a 30 billion loss in fiscal revenue.

Similar opinion also emerged last year –at 17th January. 2006, Jiping Wang, head of Beijing Local Tax Authority asserted that, as soon as the threshold being adjust to 1600 RMB, there will be a deduction of total 1.6 billion to local tax income; considering this, a series of tax-free income categories, such as communication subsidy, housing accumulation fund, medical insurance etc, will be taxed. A great debate was caused by this speech – One of the most significant principles of lawmaking is no tax should be collected from citizen’s basic living fee, however, which of former tax-free category is not populace’s “basic living fee”?

Certainly, there’s no doubt that Minister Xie will take measurements to remedy the reduction of fiscal revenue; whereas these financial efforts might make people benefited from the threshold adjustment felt uneasiness, the sacrifice of fiscal revenue is not necessary neither.

Before the tax threshold adjustment, there are 50% wage-earners pay taxes, the question is: how much contribution have they made to the individual income tax? Minister Xie’s answer was: about 65% individual income tax was draw from these 50% wage-earners, at the same time, 20% rich population only offered 10% of national individual income tax. The well known 20% - 80% law indicates that, normally approximately 80% social wealth is owned by 20% high-income people. But it seems the rich people always have more ways to avoid the levy of tax than pay actively, though at the same time the low-income tax payers have no options to avoid. Based on this, simply raising the threshold without corresponding measures will not only reduce the tax burden of wage-earners but also certainly decrease the fiscal revenue.

The equitableness of tax drawing is based on two aspects: reasonable threshold and various responsibility sharing. If the threshold adjustment is dissatisfying common people while continuously decreasing fiscal revenue, then apparently the methodology of tuning needs more deliberating. Basically, personal income tax plays as an adjusting lever, the high-income class should pay more.

In America, the threshold will increase along with the personal income increasing, which means to an individual tax payer, the higher income, the lower threshold, until every penny of income is taxable. Accordingly, in China only the affluent class yet wage-earners could be able to profit from the non-flexible tax threshold.

Actually, there is also differed participating in personal tax in China. For instance, people with more than 120 thousands per year, should pay the tax compulsorily, but in fact the major tax income is come from wage-earners. Obviously, the absence of high-income people has delayed the process of increasing the threshold of income tax; what is more, the bound of acceptance to the reduction of national financial revenue will become a realistic problem.

In conclusion, an ideal threshold adjustment to personal tax lawmaking should enhance the surveillance to high-income class and clarify their responsibilities while raising the threshold. Only by this mean, there will be no more heavy complaint about the reduction of financial revenue, which could only make people misunderstand that relevant departments would fill the reduction with using unnecessary fund.