China Development Brief

Rather than treating child trafficking as an isolated issue, the government of China should respond by creating comprehensive and integrated child protection mechanisms, Save the Children’s Kate Wedgwood, He Ye (何叶) and Sun Tiezheng (孙铁铮) argue in the following excerpts from a recent presentation to the Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing.

Citizen “petitioners” seeking justice in Beijing have come under increased pressure and abuse from authorities in their areas of origin following the introduction of new regulations on petitioning, according to a recent survey by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) researchers.

China’s total illiteracy rate rose slightly in 2005, and the country will miss its targets for eradicating illiteracy unless greater efforts and resources are deployed to tackle the issue, government officials and researchers say.

At the end of 2005, the People’s Bank of China (China’s central bank) launched a pilot initiative to create new, privately invested lending institutions in some of China’s poorest areas. A year later, the China Banking Regulatory Commission announced measures to stimulate new “village banks” and financial cooperatives, and on the last day of 2006 it also licensed the Post Office Savings Bank to enter the rural credit market. Rural finance experts have welcomed the new measures. But, Nick Young reports, many earlier efforts to encourage rural credit have faltered and it may be some time yet before financial services trickle down to the poor.

In January the Ministry of Agriculture launched a month-long drive to inform farmers and local officials about the new Law on Farmer Professional Cooperatives (农民专业合作社法). Given China’s long and varied experience of things called “cooperative” it might take longer than a month to get the message through, Chang Tianle (常天乐) concluded after visiting Anhui, Sichuan and Yunnan.

Rural migrants to Chinese cities are having a very tough time, according to a report issued in March by Amnesty International. True enough. But hardly news to anyone at all familiar with the subject. Any well-informed broadsheet newspaper reader in the West knows this already, and so of course do all Chinese people who have been out of their village. So what was the point?

Although average rural incomes have failed to keep pace with rising urban incomes, some people in China’s countryside are managing to thrive. Here, Ren Xuping (任旭平) tells Chang Tianle (常天乐) about his journey from poverty to relative prosperity in rural Sichuan, and how this led him to become a social entrepreneur.

A non-profit Workers’ Health Centre, established in 1984 by Hong Kong medical, rehabilitation and occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, is scaling up efforts to prevent occupational illnesses on China’s mainland through workplace assessments and trainings for factory workers and management staff.

February saw the formal launch of a Ministry of Civil Affairs information clearing house designed to facilitate information flows across China’s charitable sector and foster a more favourable philanthropic environment for both donors and beneficiaries.

A non-government Legal Aid Station for Migrant Workers (农民工法律援助工作站) in Beijing will help 15 provinces establish similar “stations” in a USD 500,000 programme funded by the government of Belgium and brokered by UNDP and its Chinese government counterpart agencies, it was announced last week.