April 3:
China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and TV has issued new rules governing audiovisual content broadcast online and via mobile devices. Anyone wishing to post TV shows or similar content must now apply for a license before broadcasting online. Only state-approved TV stations and cinemas will be able to import content for webcasting. Programs deemed to be anti- constitutional or endangering national security have been banned; specifically forbidden are TV shows that incite ethnic hatred, publicize cults or superstitions, or "explicitly display sexual perversions (including extramarital affairs and wife swaps), extreme violence or the slaughtering of animals,” the Irish Times reports. This year’s post Olympics anti-smut campaign has closed 341 audio-video websites for containing low- brow content, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
[Editor’s Note: The rules come on the heels of a ban on the online video site YouTube, which cannot be accessed in China because of footage broadcast showing the beating of protesters by Chinese police during last year's riots in Tibet.]
April 5:
The New York Times reports that thousands of children have been stolen from China’s Pearl River Delta and never recovered by their parents or by the police. Although some end up in Southeast Asia, the U.S. and Europe, most of the boys have been purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir. The demand is strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and Beijing’s strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business. The unlucky ones, especially older children, who are not in demand by families, can end up as prostitutes or indentured laborers. Some of the children begging or hawking flowers in major Chinese cities are in the employ of criminal gangs that abducted them. Beijing insists that there are fewer than 2,500 cases of human trafficking each year, a figure that includes both women and children. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands.
April 6:
Zhongguo Xinwen She reports that An Min, vice president of mainland China’s quasi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) is in Taiwan for seven days of economic exchanges with a 14-member delegation including Liang Shuhe, deputy director of the Foreign Trade Department under the Ministry of Commerce and Wang Zheng, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council’s Economic Bureau. Kao Koong-lian, vice chairman and secretary-general of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) affirmed the “frequent exchanges between ARATS and SEF.” SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung said the international community supports exchanges and cooperation between the two sides of the Strait.
April 8:
Beijing has announced its China's 850 billion yuan ($124 billion) health care reform plan with an eye towards a comprehensive medical and health care system in China by 2020. The plan includes a preliminary national drug system and the trial of a public hospital reform program. Li Lei, director of the Beijing Pharmaceutical Technology Research Center, told Russia’s Interfax News Agency that to “reduce cost-plus markups on drug prices," the new national system will include a public bidding system for the production and distribution of drugs. The central government will purchase them in bulk and supply to the provinces. Provincial governments will then determine the price of the drugs based on national guidelines. All government-funded medical institutions must purchase drugs from the system starting this year and private medical institutions will abide by a new set of laws governing their purchases from official drugstores. In addition, Beijing will promote investments in medical institutions, private and foreign sources, enable hospitals at the same levels to share patient medical records, and allows doctors to practice in more than one hospital.
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