December 28, 2007
Like many papers in China today, The Beijing News features the death of Benazir Bhutto on its front page. The Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister, known to Chinese media as the “iron butterfly,” was shot while leaving a political rally. The main front page photo shows the aftermath of a suicide bomb that went off just after the shooting, killing twenty.
The notably ad-free front page also contains the following headlines:
· Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda arrives in Beijing. He will stay in China for a four-day visit;
· The Beijing SASAC has decreed that state-owned enterprises may not raise executive salaries without a corresponding increase in the salaries of ordinary workers. This is part of a new set of payroll rules to go into effect in 2008;
· Beijing will elect a new mayor on 20 December during the municipal People’s Congress session. Guo Jinlong, who became acting mayor at the end of November after Mayor Wang Qishan was put on the Politburo, has been added to the People’s Congress membership list;
· Twenty-nine new academicians were named to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the smallest class ever; the selection process was much stricter this year than in the past and required a two-thirds vote rather than the previous one-half.