BEIJING - Beijingers enjoyed two days of clean air this week, a welcome break from the smog that suspiciously aligned with the opening of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, the country's show legislature.
The government makes sure people know that the Committee is in session, interrupting programming on over three dozen channels to broadcast speeches from Premier Wen Jiabao -- who resembles an aging frog in appearance -- and some of the country's rare press conferences.
At one point this week, rather than turning off the television, I went over to CCTV-9, our cable system's lone English channel, for a comprehensive summary. The state news service breathlessly recapped the government's ambitious agenda for the upcoming year -- more housing market controls! better bank financing! more Chinese tour groups abroad! as if these items hadn't been planned months in advance.
The self-congratulation continues online, where Xinhua -- the only English language news-media accessible on the cheapie Internet service -- ran item after item from the Congress. The online item that stuck out the most was, "China aims to rid dire poverty by 2010." (Here's a direct link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/07/content_5811266.htm.) Ignoring the verb problem in the headline, this appears to be a real policy change.
Here's the lead: "No one in China should live in dire poverty by 2010, members to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference said yesterday."
Number-crazy Chinese bureaucracts are promising to counteract the Three Nos -- No Job, No Land, No Social Security -- with four new programs. Four is bigger than three, so the chances of success seem quite high.
The article quotes Chen Yaobang, "a former official in the agriculture and forestry ministries," who is currently doing God knows what. "By a simple calculation, we can see that if each person gets 300 yuan from the government, then we only need 6 billion yuan to solve the problem of people in dire poverty."
This all sounds pretty commendable. Problems begin appearing in paragraph four, where the reader learns that dire poverty is defined as annual income below 638 yuan. That's an infintesinal sum -- around $82, or 25 cents a day.
Wait a second. There are people in China make less than 25 cents a day? China may be cheap, but 25 cents won't buy much more than a bowl of noodles -- not enough to live on. And this isn't in a dirt poor sub-Saharan African nation, but a place that recently annouced that one city - Guangzhou - now has an average per capita income of over $10,000. (A number discredited when it came out because it excluded the city's legions of poor migrant workers.) Giving people 300 yuan, or about $38 a year, is a good start, but the government should be doing lots more.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this article is that I need to stop relying on Xinhua as my only news source. The flesh filled photo galleries might be great, but when the day's main headline is, "Tibetan official: slim hope for Dalai to return," it's time for the Times.
