Op-Ed Contributors
China strives to build society with more fairness, justice
By Han Bing, Wu Liming (Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-10 10:13
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The ongoing parliamentary sessions in Beijing have sent a variety of eye-catching reform signals applauded by media and scholars from home and abroad.
Underneath the signals there is a theme that China is striving to build a society with more equality, fairness and justice.
It goes without doubt that enjoying more equal political rights is a vital symbol for a society with more equality and justice.
A draft amendment to the Electoral Law was tabled at the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC) for a third reading on Monday.
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The draft stipulates that both rural and urban areas adopt the same ratio of deputies to the represented population in elections of deputies to people's congresses, China's fundamental political system.
The Malaysian daily Sin Chew Jit Poh commented that the amendment would help boost political stability and social harmony in China.
Besides, a more fair social distribution system of social wealth lays down an economic foundation for the society with more fairness, equality and justice.
In his government report to the NPC session on Friday, Premier Wen Jiabao said a rational distribution system of social wealth is a vital embodiment of social fairness and justice.
The Chinese government is taking steps to reform the current distribution system.
"We must outlaw illicit income and regulate gray income to gradually develop an open and transparent income distribution system," Wen said.
Just as Richard Baum, former director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, has put it, narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor takes a long time, but the Chinese government is starting to exert an effort.
Education, medical care and housing are major grassroots concerns of the people in China.
During the ongoing parliamentary sessions in Beijing, senior ministry officials have vowed to deepen social security reform and promised improvements on house pricing, reform of medical service and employment.
Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore, said China's development in the past decades have laid down a solid foundation for the reform of social security and welfare system, and in return, the latter would advance economic reform at large.
However, China would take a "gradual" approach to the reforms.
Just as the Singapore daily Lianhe Zaobao has said, a gradual approach to social system construction and innovation is in the interests of China, and such an approach also conforms to the spirit of civilization in modern society.
It is beyond all doubt that there is no smooth road ahead for China to implement the social reforms mentioned above. However, China is moving in a right direction.
As long as the Chinese leadership and people strive to pursue the drive, China would step closer to a society with more harmony, more equality and more justice.
