死亡－上帝的礼物

死亡－－上帝给予人类社会的最好礼物。有时候，一个新时代的开启，往往是以旧时代保守人物的亡故为肇端的。

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德语媒体 | 2006.03.04

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 用什么来捆绑财产
定于本周日召开的中国全国人大年度会议继续引起德语媒体关注。“法兰克福汇报”以“是否社会主义”为题刊登一篇文章，探讨本届会议何以不审议新财产法？

该报写道：“当本周日，中国人大本年度会议召开时，有一个重要的议案将不列入会议议程：审议并通过一项新的财产法。围绕该法，中国国内发生激烈争议，并促使中国领导层决定暂时收回该法草案。中国领导层担心，相关的争议会导致出现更多壕沟。

…
“正统左派利用这一争议，从整体上置疑改革政策。20年来，中国社会曾达成一项共识，即不再进行‘姓社还是姓资’的讨论，对法律或政策只看其实际效用如何。…然而，时过境迁，在中国国内，经济改革和私有化再度成为争论焦点。而实际上，这一新法律根本就没有触及中国私有财产的核心问题，没有对土地的私有权做出明确规定。

“新法律的支持者在法律界和经济学界占多数，他们十分惊讶地看到自己处于守势，而且在意识形态方面占了下风。他们本来是想通过这一法律在中国实现对于国家、个人和集体财产的一视同仁的保护。”

“法兰克福汇报”在叙述了因一名北大教授的信而引起关于该法律的激烈争议并最终导致该法律被搁置的过程后指出：

“该法律的所有赞成者都担心，法律制定过程将重又政治化。他们担心，随着财产权法的受阻，中国公民法的制定也将被推延。…

“有关姓社姓资的争论已然卷土重来，这对（中国）党而言实在来得不是时候。在棘手的意识形态问题上，党更愿意停留在抽象的层面上，而不做出确定的结论。颇得人心的不满情绪和正统社会主义思维结成的联盟有可能给党带来新的困局。”

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Commuting poverty
Mar 16th 2006 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

Poor peasants surround Beijing

“EUROPEAN cities with an African countryside” is how a report published in China this month describes the gap between booming Beijing, the nearby port-city of Tianjin and a “belt of poverty” around them. It is an exaggeration. No Chinese city has western European levels of development, and African-style deprivation is rarely seen in China. Yet the gap is huge and growing. For increasingly vocal critics of China's imbalanced development, it is a particularly alarming example.

In recent years China's leaders have themselves stressed the need to narrow regional imbalances. This was a major theme of the annual ten-day session of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, which ended on March 14th. The 3,000 Communist Party-picked delegates approved a budget that promises more cash for farmers and a new five-year economic plan to create a “virtuous synergy” between the wealthy seaboard, central China and the poor western regions.

Yet criticism of these disparities has also become a way for some to air more general grievances about China's embrace of capitalism. The government recently shelved plans to submit a new property law to the congress after a chorus of opposition, led by a Peking University academic, Gong Xiantian. He argued that the draft, which protected property rights, was un-Marxist and unconstitutional.

Though state-controlled, China's media are adept at pinpointing issues that embarrass officials. One example is the comparison of Beijing, Tianjin and their surrounds which appeared in an annual report on regional economies in China by the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences. One Chinese web portal devoted a special page to reports on the poverty belt, with a headline “so close and yet so far”. A commentary in the Farmers Daily, published by the ministry of agriculture, said the poverty of areas of Hebei Province around Beijing and Tianjin was “astonishing”.

The academy's report echoed the findings of an Asian Development Bank study published last year. It said the belt consisted of 32 counties, mostly to the north and north-west of Beijing and Tianjin, with an impoverished population of 2.7m living in nearly 3,800 villages. Poverty is defined as an annual income of less than 825 yuan ($102). The average urban income in Beijing last year was 17,653 yuan a year. Chen Mengping, one of the report's editors, says many of these villages are in mountainous places whose economies have been hit by a bid to improve the purity of Beijing's water, which they supply. This has involved closing factories, and planting trees instead of crops.

According to the ADB study, these areas represent extremes of poverty in a province that has failed to cash in on the growth of Beijing and Tianjin. Hebei has more officially designated “poor counties” and probably more people living in poverty than any other eastern province, it says (though officials say their numbers have been falling). Hebei's failure to develop more rapidly is in marked contrast with the hinterlands of Shanghai and Shenzhen. Wealth has radiated from these thriving port cities as manufacturing industries have mushroomed around them. Hebei has a bigger state-owned sector than the areas around Shanghai and Shenzhen—no recipe for fast development—and relatively little foreign investment.

Politics is partly to blame. The cities of Beijing and Tianjin enjoy provincial status and the advantages of being the capital city and a major port. Hebei has received fewer favours. Central government assistance in recent years has focused on China's west and the north-eastern rust belt. Some Hebei delegates at the National People' s Congress openly grumbled that their province had not been rewarded for sacrifices it had made for the two cities: providing them with water, and curbing industrial development to keep it clean.