More Restrictions on Celebrities’ Family Planning

A state government official said on Wednesday that celebrities would be barred from entering awards competitions if they break the one-child policy, several Beijing newspapers reported.

A government inspection in four cities last year found that most celebrities and high-income families had at least two children, said Mr. Yu Xuejun, an official from the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Mr. Yu said that his agency is drafting stricter rules to punish celebrity violators, considering suggestions like establishing a “bad record” archive for them and having them face heavy fine as well as “social consequences,” such as being barred from competing for awards.

As the country still enforces the one-child policy in order to control population growth, the rule is supposed to be followed by the general public. Celebrities and other high-income people, however, constantly break the rule, because most of them do not care about paying fines or losing government sponsored benefits, like most of the common folks do.

People have seen such situation as very unfair and the government, both national and local, has started to openly denounce the rich and famous and take actions to curb the trend.

----by Josie Liu

http://www.stardaily.com.cn/view.asp?id=238157

http://bjyouth.ynet.com/article.jsp?oid=19138477

http://news.sohu.com/20070301/n248423790.shtml

Related posts:

http://josieliu.blogspot.com/search/label/one-child%20policy

Defending the Chinese New Year? A Cultural Debate

A miao hui in Ditan Park, Beijing

A so-called "defending the Spring Festival movement" has gained nation-wide attention and Xinhua New Agency has related it to more tradition-styled celebrations of this year's Chinese New Year across the country, such as miao hui (temple fair, mostly held in parks, featuring traditional food, artifacts and art performances), firecrackers and traditional decorations.

The state-run news agency reported last week that “defending the Spring Festival has become a common view of the Chinese society,” thanks to Mr. Gao Youpeng, a folk culture scholar from Henan province, who first initiated the idea in 2005. Mr. Gao apparently was pleased by the restoration of more traditional Chinese New Year rituals, which he said “demonstrates that Chinese people are returning to traditions,” Xinhua reported.

Mr. Gao wrote a “Declaration of Defending the Spring Festival” at the end of 2005, warning about the infiltration of Western culture and stressing that “defending the Spring Festival is defending safety of the national culture."

He said he made such a call because he found that many young people who lived in the world of the Internet and video games worshiped Western culture, passionate in celebrating foreign holidays like Christmas but becoming increasingly indifferent toward their own traditional holidays, Xinhua reported. He said he felt “the safety of China’s national culture is to some degree under threat.”

In fact, the Chinese public has noted for a long time that the Chinese New Year, mostly called the Spring Festival in China, is losing its traditional flavor, while young people seem to enjoy more in celebrating Christmas or Valentine’s Day, when they can have more fun on their own. The discussion, however, had rarely been put in the spot light of state news agency like Xinhua, and the Internet has facilitated a public debate on the issue to a larger scale.

The mast majority of the opinions on the Internet and other media, not surprisingly, supported Mr. Gao’s view. People expressed a strong sense of the importance of maintaining China’s cultural tradition, as well as concerns that it is diminishing in the wake of Western culture influx.

One comment, for example, reads: “Without traditional culture, it is meaningless no matter how powerful [China becomes].” Another one says that Western holidays “are flooding into Chinese society and people’s life,” and under the challenge, traditional holidays like the Spring Festival “are fading away gradually.”

There are of course different views, but are mainly focused on whether it is necessary to call for defending the traditional holiday, or whether the best way to make it attractive is to simply fall back on old rituals, with the theme of maintaining China’s cultural tradition almost unchallenged.

A critic from Beijing questioned in a newspaper article: “does Spring Festival need everybody to save or defend?” To him, nobody in China is forgetting the holiday and therefore no worry is merited. Another critic dismissed the worry by citing the increasing awareness of the Chinese New Year in the entire world.

While a group of people called for bringing back the traditional way of celebrating the holiday, others insisted that the holiday needed contemporary contents and labeled the defending theory “cultural conservatism.”

“Today’s Spring Festival of course needs to represent the modern life style,” one blogger writes, “don’t think that without traditional theater and miao hui, the Spring Festival will no longer exist.” Nevertheless, advocators of modernization of the traditional holiday mostly fell short of providing specific proposals to reach the goal.

After all, people are facing one question: how to celebrate the Chinese New Year in a way that could both maintain an ancient tradition and make it fit the new time and attractive to the new generation. The answer is yet to come.

The reality is more of a mixed picture. While traditional festivities like setting off firecrackers, family gathering and visiting miao hui are still dominantly popular, new activities like tourism, text message greetings and partying with friends are also gaining grounds. Meanwhile, other old traditions, such as worshiping ancestors and kneeling down in front of seniors, have almost completely disappeared.

----by Josie Liu

Blog links:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/4999dc97010007xs
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/3cfacd82010008l1
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/4b49df10010007eg
http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/48a043ba010008y2

Declairation of Defending the Spring Festival
http://www.singtaonet.com/culture/NewYear/speak/t20060114_119529.html

Xinhua Story:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-02/11/content_5725237.htm

New Year Fireworks Caused Some Casualties in Beijing

Firecrackers and fireworks bring joy as well as problems to Chinese cities during the holiday


One person died and over 100 visited hospitals in Beijing on the night of Chinese New Year Eve, due to injuries caused by fireworks and firecrackers, a local newspaper reported. At least one person had to have his eyeball removed. Fireworks also caused more than 100 fire incidents in the city on the Eve.

This year is only the second year that Beijing city allowed residents to set off fireworks and firecrackers on their own in the urban area and nearby suburbs.

Last year, firecrackers caused 384 fire incidents in Beijing during the two-week holiday period, as well as over 800 injuries resulting in hospital visits. But there was no major fire, and no reported death or serious injuries that led to eyeball removal.

The old Chinese saying says an old year is driven away in the sounds of firecrackers, and Chinese people set off numerous firecrackers every year during the Chinese New Year, especially on the Eve. Almost every household would light up at least one set of firecrackers before the midnight on the Eve, to send off an old year and welcome a new one with hope and excitement.

But firecrackers and fireworks were completely banned in Beijing’s urban area and its vicinity for 12 consecutive Chinese New Year from 1994 through 2005. Over 300 major cities in China also adopted a similar ban, citing several sins of firecrackers and fireworks, including injuring people, causing fire, polluting the air and making too much noise.

Despite the prohibition, many people simply cannot endure a Chinese New Year without the exciting sound of firecrackers. Illegal selling, buying and setting off of firecrackers persisted throughout the years, as well as consequent casualties and fire.

Meanwhile, the public and scholars, including famous writers, condemned the firecracker ban as killing an ancient Chinese tradition while depriving people of the joy and atmosphere of the traditional festival. For a time, the call for recovering the “taste of Chinese New Year” was prevalent.

Beijing city government finally lifted the ban prior to the 2006 Chinese New Year, and about 200 other cities followed the suit.

The prohibition in Beijing was replaced by limitations. Now people are allowed to set off firecrackers and fireworks only from the New Year Eve to the Lantern Festival, or the fifteenth day of the holiday, but mostly confined to the evening hours. Meanwhile, historical sites, transportation terminals, hospitals and forests are among the locations that do not allow the set-off.

Lift of the ban also boosted the firework business. This year, fireworks for sale in Beijing are worth 114 million yuan (about $14.25 million), and sales have gone very well, according to local newspapers. Last year, the sales amounted 55 million yuan (about $7 million).

To keep the supply under control, Beijing government only gave permit to one company to import firework products from other regions and then provide them to retailers in the capital. All retailers, either individual-run stands or chain super markets, have to get a license from the government to sell the products legally.

Now millions of people can again enjoy the ancient Chinese New Year entertainment, although besides human injury and fire, the activity also generate other problems, such as tons of trashes, including ruins of firework packages and the paper skin of firecrackers, to be cleaned up.

More than 20,000 city janitors worked overnight in Beijing on Chinese New Year Eve to get rid of the leftover of the intense firecracker set-off that night. By the next morning, over 900 tons of firecracker trashes were cleaned up, according to a local newspaper.

Dealing with such problems has become a major task for city governments around the country during the big holiday.

----by Josie Liu

http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2007-02/18/content_5752535.htm
http://www.ha.xinhuanet.com/add/wyzt/2005-02/18/content_3728144.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2007-02/19/content_5755399.htm

China Set up Citizen Identification Information System

Chinese ID card




China has established what is seen as the largest citizen identification information database in the world, the Ministry of Public Security announced this month.

The database contains the name and citizen identification card number of nearly 1.3 billion people in mainland China, as well as other personal information such as gender and date of birth. It took five years to establish this data system, which was accomplished at the end of last year.

The system, under the supervision of China’s Ministry of Public Security, will allow individuals and businesses to verify certain person’s identity, by submitting this person’s name and ID card number to the National Citizen Identity Information Center, which will compare the submitted information with that in its database and send results back to the service user, even with a picture of the person being checked. People can use the service on the Internet or by text messaging on cellphone.

Every Chinese citizen aged 16 or older is required by law to register with local public security authorities to get an identification card, with their name, gender, date of birth, ethnic group and residence printed on it. People need to provide their ID card when openning bank accounts or becoming cellphone users. Meanwhile, fake ID has been widely used in criminal activities like defrauding, which results in hundreds of millions yuan of loss every year, Xinhua reported.

Although haled as an effective way of preventing identity fraud, the database also brough about concerns for personal information privacy. In state media reports, the authorities have pledged to guard the privacy.

----by Josie Liu

http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-02/08/content_5715838.htm