On March 23, China’s World Cup qualifying victory
over South Korea provided a welcome shot in the arm
for domestic football, and the 1-0 win in Changsha,
Hunan Province, kept alive China’s slim hopes of
reaching next year’s finals in Russia. But there is still a
long way to go.Many migrants who work far from
their hometowns don’t have time to
get back home to mourn their dead at
the tomb-sweeping holiday. That real-
ity has triggered new commercial ser-
vices, where people can hire strangers to
sweep tombs on their behalf and watch
the service via live streaming. Gao Wei,
a folklore expert at the China Folklore
Society, praised the innovation, since
the new tomb-sweeping service presses
traditional funerary and interment cus-
toms to reform, while opponents argued
that outsourcing tomb-sweeping does
not honour one’s ancestors. But there is
no doubt that these commercial tomb-
sweeping services do meet the needs of a
large number of young people working
or living in other cities, said Ran Yu, a
media commentator and writer, and at
present it is too early to judge this ac-
tivity because there must be a process
before recognising it as the mainstream.
Beijing has introduced 10 policies over the
past 18 days to rein in surging housing pric-
es, including raising the deposit for second
homes, imposing stricter tax regulations on
residents without a local household registra-
tion (hukou), and shutting down real estate agencies for illegal operations, in a bid to
promote the stable and healthy development of the property market. According to Beijing
Daily, these policies will not only cool down the city’s overheating housing market but
also provide low-rent public housing for residents in need.
Tsinghua University recently announced
that starting from this year its students won’t
get certificates after graduation unless they
can swim. One reason the decision by Tsin-
ghua has caused controversy is that physical
education has long been marginalised in China, so many think that such a regulation
from any university or college in China is reasonable. Many commentators said the uni-
versity’s regulation does not require every student to be a swimmer, instead, it just requires
students to build muscle strength and endurance and remain physically fit. Wang Dan, a
commentator for news portal http://www.gmw.cn, stressed that the marginalisation of physical
education reflects on the country’s imperfect examination-oriented education.
Liu Qiangdong, CEO of JD.com, Chi-
na’s second-largest e-commerce company,
has called for small and micro enterprises,
both online and offline, to enjoy the same
tax incentives because some e-traders gen-
erally pay no taxes or are able to evade
taxes, at a meeting co-chaired by the State
Administration of Taxation and the All-
China Federation of Industry and Com-
merce. But Jack Ma, founder of Internet
commerce giant Alibaba, countered that
the main problem is the inequity between
large and small enterprises, and sug-
gested small ones should keep enjoying
the benefits of tax breaks. A director of
Zhongnan University of Economics and
Law, Pan Helin, said tax incentives are
still needed, and China should track the
capacities of small enterprises in a bid to
improve the standards of business taxes,
stressing that, rather than imposing more
tax on e-commerce operators, offering of-
fline tax breaks would be better and fairer.Most Circulated post
Retweeted 273,233 times by April 8poll the people
Source: http://www.sina.com.cnProactive
equitable
“The investment and the effort in
football at home have been im-
pressive, but actually the level of
the national team hasn’t improved
much ... Chinese fans should keep
the victory over South Korea in
perspective and also keep a long-
sighted determination to deepen
the reform.”Yes, they will. (75%)
No, they won’t, since the governments at
both central and local levels have issued
many restrictions to rein it in. (25%)In January and February 2017, China’s real estate
market showed great prospects, and sales rose
26 percent year on year. Although the price of
a new house in first-tier cities like Beijing has
stopped rising at the rate of previous months,
other housing prices are surging.
Do you think house prices will keep growing?controversial
PHYsical