China Reform Monitor: No. 833

May 28:

Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po has said that North Korea’s attack on South Korea “severely challenges China's national will and its image of being a responsible large country.” The Beijing-owned daily also called for “strengthened combat readiness to safeguard and stabilize the situation on the Korean Peninsula.” Suggested military preparations include revoking soldiers’ vacations and increased troop and armament deployments along the North Korean border.

June 6:

China's National Audit Office (NAO) has announced a nationwide audit of the new rural cooperative medical care system’s accounts. The three-month review began last month, with auditors inspecting township clinics in nine provinces – Anhui, Hubei, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Hunan, Sichuan, Fujian, Henan and Heilongjiang. About 94.44 billion yuan went into the medical fund in 2009, with the central government, local governments and affiliate organizations chipping in 26.96 billion yuan, 47.2 billion yuan, and 19.42 billion yuan, respectively, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH). The official China Military Online said that by January 2010, 833 million Chinese farmers, 94 percent of the total rural population, had joined the system. China’s massive three-year plan to overhaul the nation's rural health care system began last April. The government is expected to invest at least 850 billion yuan ($124.5 billion) in the venture.

June 8:

Beijing says last week a North Korean border guard shot and killed three Chinese and wounded a fourth near the north-eastern border town of Dandong, Liaoning province. In response, Beijing registered a formal complaint with Pyongyang. The four Dandong residents were shot “on suspicion of crossing the border for trade activities,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in comments carried by the BBC. He said the case was being investigated, but gave no further details. Pyongyang has not commented. Illegal traders regularly cross the border between North Korea and China, taking black market goods into the reclusive country.

June 10:

Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun has met with his Iranian counterpart Hamid Behbahani in Beijing. They discussed different ways to enhance Tehran-Beijing rail cooperation and Behbahani pitched a project in which China would build a railway to Europe via Iran. Liu welcomed the offer but did not make any specific commitments, the Iranian official government news agency IRNA website reports.

June 11:

Chinese hackers have attempted to bring down the South Korean government portal korea.go.kr and several online forums. The attacks came after thousands of Chinese fans were denied free tickets to a Korean boy band concert at the Shanghai World Expo causing a stampede in which at least a dozen were injured, the South China Morning Post reports. South Korea's Ministry of Public Administration and Security said that in retribution, over 120 Chinese IP addresses simultaneously attacked the government website for nearly four hours. In an online discussion hosted by the official People's Daily's website one commenter explained, “The leading force is an angry and confused generation in a society in transition. They don't know what they are after and easily feel frustrated so they become confident through nationalism.”

June 13:

China is in the midst of a syphilis epidemic. In May alone, the mainland reported more than 32,000 syphilis cases, including two deaths, making the sexually transmitted disease one of China’s top five infections, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said. The disease, which is easy to cure, re-emerged in the 1980s and has seen a tenfold increase over the past decade. MoH officials blame rampant prostitution, citing official figures indicating that there are 6 million Chinese prostitutes. Just as alarming is the rate of mother-to-child transmissions of syphilis, which jumped from 7 to 57 cases per 100,000 newborns between 2003 and 2008, the official China Daily reports. MoH has decided to include syphilis screening in routine medical check-ups for expecting mothers, together with tests for HIV and HBV.