英语口语考试素材 (精选)
Raising the retirement age
China has decided to raise the retirement age, although a timetable is yet to come out.
Senior government officials have made it clear that the reform is set to be launched to fill the pension repayment gap.
According to scholarly estimates, the gap could be more than 2 trillion Yuan ($328 billion). As China becomes increasingly aging — in 2012, the size of China’s working population, or those from 15 to 59 years old, dropped for the first time by 3.45 million from a year earlier — the problem would only worsen.
If the retirement age were extended by one year, the gap can be reduced by 20 billion Yuan, experts estimate, thus prompting policymakers to consider the adoption of the extension policy.
Relevant discussions started in 2004 and intensified since last year. Those who support the new policy said it is a must; otherwise China’s pension repayment system would become bankrupt. Opponents said it would only bring about new problems; for example, they argued, those experienced elderly workers would grab the opportunities that would otherwise be available for young workers.
Experts also said that the State can use the profits of State-owned
enterprises to help fill the gap. Other options include allowing the State pension fund to invest in the profitable State enterprises to have access to stable returns.
Moreover, the proposed new policy has also aroused anger among some people as currently, government officials and public servants do not need to pay for the pension scheme, but their post-retirement pension benefits are generally much more than ordinary workers. Reform of such an unfair pension system, therefore, should precede retirement age extension policy, they said.
During the Third Plenary Session of the Standing Committee of the
Communist Party of China in December, policymakers decided to study and devise the policy of retirement age extension in a gradualist manner, a sign that the policy is set to be launched in the coming years.
Facing the reactions from the people, China must balance the interests of various parties and devise a policy that has the least repercussions on society.
One-child population policy
In November 2013, the government announced that it would loosen
decades-long one-child population policy, allowing couples to have two children if one of them is an only child.
The change of policy is of great importance and a practical step toward balanced population development in China.
The one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s to rein in the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child. The policy was later relaxed and if both parents were only children they could have a second child regardless.
With the one-child policy, authorities believed they had set the stage for an economic boom and social advancement, and there is no doubt that the policy has been very effective in that respect.
Statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) contend that China's population (1.34 billion) would be 400 million higher were it not for the policy.
The latest change comes as Chinese society ages and the growing
burden of social pensions poses great challenges to society as a whole. The falling birthrate that resulted, however, has thrown the growth of the aging population into sharp focus and led to shrinkage of the working-age population.
China's sixth national census in 2010 showed a fertility rate between 1.5 and 1.6, almost the same as some developed countries which are now plagued by aging populations.
China's peak population should be about 1.5 billion with a birthrate around 1.8. In addition, the labor force (940 million) decreased by 3.45 million in 2012, the first absolute decrease, and is expected to decrease by about 29 million by the end of the decade.
The elderly population meanwhile, keeps on growing with those aged 60 and over numbering nearly 200 million, 14.3 percent of the total, far ahead of the international norm of 10 percent. The figure is forecast to exceed one third of the population by 2050.
Anti-graft campaign
China has stepped up its anti-graft campaign since last year, charging more senior-level officials with corruption while initiating an overhaul of the country’s anti-corruption systems.
The Party vowed to fight both “tigers” and “flies” - meaning high-flying politicians and lowly bureaucrats - in its anti-graft drive at the 18th Communist Party of China National Congress in late 2012. Later, it
stressed the idea of “systematic anti-corruption” at the two sessions in March 2013.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2013, more than 20 ministerial-level officials have been investigated as of Feb 28, including
government chiefs and heads of State-owned conglomerates.
Most of investigations came after the 2013 two sessions. The campaign targeted top officials of the security bureau, the national oil company and other previously untouchable power centers.
According to the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection, the Party’s watchdog, 182,000 officials were punished for disciplinary violations in 2013, an increase of more than 20,000 over 2012, and of nearly 40,000 over 2011.
Thousands of officials have been disciplined for extravagances such as hosting lavish banquets, weddings and funerals, spending public funds inappropriately on travel, the improper use of government vehicles and the constructing luxurious government buildings.
The authorities have become more open to fighting corruption. The change in mindset has facilitated public supervision by establishing Internet channels to report misdeed. A number of corruption cases, as a result, have been uncovered with the help of online tips.
In building up systematic efficiency in fighting corruption, China has made the trials of some corrupt officials more transparent. In December, it released its anti-graft roadmap for 2013-2017.
New energy
Potential Chinese consumers have shown great interest in the Tesla Model S, the high-end electric car made by Tesla Motors Inc. The company expects its China sales to contribute one third of its global sales growth this year.
Behind such popularity of the brand is China’s drive to develop its new-energy cars as part of its environmental protection and energy use reduction plans.
As the world’s largest vehicle market, the number of vehicles sold in China exceeded 20 million in 2013. It was only about 4 million 10 years ago.
The rapid growth of car sales has led to fast growth in energy
consumption. China’s oil imports, as a result, have accounted for nearly 60 percent of its total consumption, prompting the government to accelerate steps to encourage the development and sales of electric cars.
The government has issued preferential subsidy policies to support sales of the new-energy cars. It expects China’s electric and hybrid car production capacity could reach 2 million units by 2020.
The car industry is a miniature of the Chinese economy. While the scale of the economy expands rapidly, it has caused increasingly serious environmental and energy use problems, most notably the recent smog that covers many parts of the northern region.
China has made relentless efforts to address the problem. It has
increased policy and fiscal supports for new energy sectors, such as wind power and solar energy. In 2013, it met its pre-set energy use reduction goal, forcing its energy use per unit of GDP to fall by 3.7 percent year-on-year. It plans to reduce it by another 3.9 percent this year.
Still, China’s energy use level in per-unit GDP terms is much higher than that of the developed economies. It needs to renew its efforts to accelerate the development of its new energy sector.
China’s educational reform
China’s educational reform has gathered pace in the past year as the country tries to liberalize curricula and provide fair opportunities for children of all places.
The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China
Standing Committee urged in late 2012 that educational reform should be accelerated. The Ministry of Education released a guideline on deepening educational reform in late January, 2013, which lists the targets and priorities of the reform. It said, for example, that the local governments should facilitate children of migrant farmers working in the cities to take middle school and college entrance exams locally, which was not allowed in the past.
One of the proposed reform measures is to reduce the weight of English and raise that of Chinese in college entrance exams. Meanwhile,
students may be allowed to take the English exam twice or more a year, with the highest score taken as their final score. Some cities, such as Beijing, have released a timetable for the reform.
The government has also vowed to reduce interference in the enrollment process of the universities so that they can be more independent. More support would also be given to private schools and colleges, according to the guideline.
More concrete implementations of the reform are expected to come out this year.
China’s reform of administrative
China’s reform of administrative approval power will prove one of the toughest tasks it will handle, but, if successful, will have a far-reaching bearing on the economy and its efforts to build a clean government. China started reducing the power of the government in approving
various projects, for example, launching a private business or opening a training school, in the early 2000s. After Premier Li Keqiang took over last March, the central government had about 1,700 approval items at hand. Within a year’s time, a total of 416 items that require
administrative approval have been scrapped or transferred to lower-level local authorities.
This year, another 200 items will be slashed, Li promised in his government work report delivered on March 5. Li said the central government will publicize a power list for approval items so that the public knows exactly which items need to be approved and those that do not.
The power to approve various social and economic matters is one of the systematic sources creating red tape and corruption. Some government officials take advantage of the power to take bribes. The bold power-reduction steps by the central government in the past year will prove important as the country fights corruption.
China’s growth philosophy
During the Two Sessions, China’s growth philosophy is being put in the spotlight, with the focus expected to shift to quality and sustainability of GDP expansion.
China’s economy has become the world’s second largest in terms of GDP. This has been achieved through more than 30 years of fast-paced economic growth since China launched the reform and opening up drive in the early 1980s. However, as many local governments have taken expansion of GDP as their top priority in governance, such GDP mania led to the ignoring of environmental protection and resource reservation, as is shown by the recent smog covering many parts of the northern region.
At last year’s Two Sessions, the government vowed to accelerate
economic restructuring and seek a more balanced social and economic development.
In June, President Xi Jinping vowed to give up the traditional way of assessing career performance of officials through GDP figures. During the Central Economic Work Conference in December, the country’s top leadership stressed the platform of sticking to a quality-based and efficiency-oriented growth philosophy that will not leave side effects for later generations. It is a de facto announcement of casting away the philosophy of a lopsided pursuit of GDP itself.
During the just-concluded local Two Sessions, 22 out of 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions decided to cut their GDP growth
target for this year, a significant step toward seeking a more reasonable and sustainable growth philosophy.
It is no exaggeration that China’s urbanization process will become a driving force for changing China’s social and economic landscape in the coming decades and have a significant bearing on the global economy. It has managed to raise its urbanization rate by about 1 percent each year in the past three decades, leading it to reach 54 percent by the end of 2013. By 2018, it could reach 60 percent.
The sheer rise in the rate, or the proportion of urbanites in the overall population, however, should not be the top priority for policymakers. What they should care about most is a how to find a sustainable way to move the Chinese people from rural areas to the urban regions.
China devised a roadmap for pushing its urbanization drive last June, when the Urbanization Development Plan (2012-20) was completed. Policymakers reached a consensus on blazing a new trail of
urbanization that is more people-oriented, efficient, intelligent, green and low-carbon.
In others words, as people move to new cities and towns, they should have access to local residences and the many benefits and public
services accompanying with it. There should be viable industries in the newly formed or expanded cities so that the immigrants can have jobs. Meanwhile, in building or expanding cities, environmental and energy use issues must be on top of the local agenda to make the process sustainable.
Only by achieving these tasks can China’s urbanization become a long-term driving force for the brisk growth of the overall economy. To that end, the Central Economic Work Conference in December required that the quality of this new type of urbanization be ensured. When delivering his government work report on Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang vowed to review efforts to accelerate the process of this new urbanization.