China Development Brief

Businesses, government departments, NGOs and multilateral agencies have signed up to a China Health Alliance that will “educate, test, treat and support Chinese company employees, especially migrant workers, at risk of TB and AIDS,” according to the World Economic Forum, which launched the Alliance on September 11 during the second day of a Forum summit in Beijing.

Thirty two young Chinese reporters spent a week in September at an environmental journalism training workshop that was opened by Vice Director of the State Environment Protection Agency, Pan Yue (潘岳), and that features former Chief Environment Correspondent for CNN International, Gary Strieker, as a lead trainer.

International development NGO, Mercy Corps, is partnering with a local organisation established last year in Sichuan Province’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in a new initiative to improve life skills and livelihood opportunities for teenage, ethnic minority girls who have grown up in an area ravaged by poverty, drug use and AIDS.

A three-month campaign to find the “Green Chinese [person] of the Year” (绿色中国年度人物), was launched on September 5 by the State Environmental Protection Administration and six other government departments.

Grassland protection in China should take a more integrated approach and synergise the resources of government, academic and NGO sectors, according to researchers and environmental NGOs.

In response to such needs, a Grassland Conservation Network was launched on September 3 in Beijing, with more than 30 people attending its first meeting. The Network, organised by Beijing Brooks Education Centre (天下溪教育咨询中心) and supported by the Ford Foundation, aims to enhance communication and information sharing among people involved in the area to improve their understanding and capacity.

A village-level association in the Tibet Autonomous Region is hoping to reach a wider audience for an annual journal of Tibetan language materials about environmental protection.

Six years ago, the 1,347 Tibetan residents of Tserangding, a cluster of 13 hamlets in Gonjo County, Chamdo prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, established a community organisation called the Voluntary Environmental Protection Association of Kham Anchung Senggenamzong.

As Beijing’s city planners continue to re-model the capital ahead of the 2008 Olympics, a cultural heritage protection NGO has set out to preserve not just the city’s traditional courtyards and hutongs but also the work of architect, Xu Zhong who designed two Ministry of Commerce buildings completed in 1954 and now slated for demolition.

A spate of sexual assaults in Chinese cities are among the “social consequences caused by the suppressed needs of migrant workers” according to a report in the China Daily, whose pages have of late shown a marked increase in stories about human sexuality and changing social mores.

Despite rollicking economic growth—which reached a ten-year high in the second quarter of 2006—China is making little progress in “rebalancing” its underlying economic structure in favour of more equal and sustainable wealth creation, according to a World Bank Quarterly Update on China.

"The desired shift in production from industry towards services, more reliance on domestic demand, more equally shared growth and more environmentally sustainable growth that are aimed for in the 11th FYP (Five Year Plan) is yet to begin,” notes the August 2006 Update.

China’s National Textile and Apparel Council, a government-led industry association, is piloting a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standard among ten member enterprises and is likely to extend this to the whole industry, a Council leader revealed at a EU-China symposium on CSR held in Beijing in July.

Formulated last year, the China Social Compliance standard for the industry (CSC9000T) is one outcome of a five-year EU-China Trade Programme that, since June 2004, has worked to support China’s integration into the world trading system. The European Commission has committed EUR 20.6 million (USD 26.4 million) to the programme, making it the EU’s largest ever trade-related technical assistance project.