Some complaints about the National People’s Congress

Hu Xiaoyan meets Wen Jiabao

The ending of this year’s NPC on March 18 fizzled out in the news media as events in Tîbet made headlines. But in the week since then, blogs, news reports and BBS postings have continued to discuss developments at the NPC. Below is a roundup of some of the news and commentary on the Chinese Internet.

Until this year, China’s migrant workers did not have their own representatives at the NPC. This year there were three new faces amongst the 2987 people’s representatives—the newly selected migrant workers’ delegates. It is still inappropriately few considering that there are between 200 and 300 million migrant workers, more than the population of most of the world’s countries, and accounting for about one fifth of the China’s own population. But now, at least symbolically, the state of being “taxed without represented” for these people is over.

Hu Xiaoyan (胡小燕) was given the most attention of the trio. Still a little bit awkward with her new title as people’s representative, she seemed more than flattered to have the opportunity to meet important people and especially to talk to Premier Wen Jiabao.

New to the job, she nevertheless showed a competent grasp of the required subtleties: to the beaming approval of the officials, she said she herself was a living example that the social status of migrant workers was improving, showing that the Party and the country did care about them.

Although it is not clear what improvement there is going to be for migrant workers, the social status of Ms Hu was greatly improved: Back home in Foshan (佛山), Guangdong Province after the NPC, she was warmly welcomed by her factory bosses , and now has her own office. She is going to have her own website to communicate with people too. Inspired by Premier Wen’s question to her “Do you want to go into politics?” she told the media that she would like to commit herself to the interests of migrant workers. This is not going to be easy as she has already been criticized for being timid about expressing the grievances of her underprivileged constituency.

In contrast to Hu, another people’s representative, Zhang Yin (张茵) would never be blamed for being too weak to stand up for her own rights. In fact, this rich business woman has quite the opposite problem: she’s preoccupied with her own interests and those of the rich people of China. Zhang is well placed to represent those interests; she topped the Forbes‘ list of the richest people of mainland China in 2006 with a fortune of 27 billion yuan under her name. Her proposals to the NPC included: to exempt labor-intensive companies from signing permanent work contracts with employees who have held their jobs for ten or more years, which they have worked for more than 10 years, as the current Labor and Contract Law stipulates.

In a recent interview with Southern Metropolis newspaper, she said:

China is not Europe, the law should have Chinese characteristics… In America, you can fire a worker with compensation of a few months’ salary, but in China [after the introduction of the new labor law], you can’t fire the worker if he does not want to go.

She also wanted to cut personal income tax on earnings of more than 100,000 yuan a month from 45 to 30 percent.

If tax is too high, people will move their money to other countries… We should attract the fortunes of the whole world to China (by lowering the tax rates)

Whether or not she was justified in speaking for her own interests, she is by no means the only one that was accused for being shamelessly self-interested in this session of the NPC.

Does the Railway Ministry owe millions of people stranded in railway stations during the Spring Festival rush an apology?

Railway vice minister Lu Dongfu (陆东福) didn’t think so. His comment that the would “give 90 to the performance of the railways during the spring festival rush” has caused quite a bit of controversy. The only reason he could not give a perfect 100 was the “lack of transportation capacity”.

Guo Xiling(郭锡龄), a people’s representative from Guangzhou demanded more: “Someone in the ministry should resign”. Regardless, Liu Zhijun (刘志军), was reelected as head of the Railway Ministry. Mr Liu, with 211 representatives voting against his reappointment, was the also the second least popular minister. He was only beaten by the minister of education, Zhou Ji (周济), who got 384 negative votes.

Zhou Ji’s unpopularity comes mainly from the tight control of the Education Ministry over universities, which undermines their autonomy and vitality. His promise to reform China’s bureaucratic higher education system and to give people equal and better educational opportunities have so far come to nothing. Instead, citizens and NPC delegates continue to complain about high tuition fees and academic corruption and the minister’s reforms are considered to have failed. He was also dragged down in a controversy about his recent decision to make Beijing Opera part of the elementary school curriculum. The list of Beijing Opera plays that will be taught includes revolutionary ‘model operas’ that are held as reminders of the dark days of the Cultural Revolution by many people.