Corruption and Food Safety Top Netizen Concerns
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As the annual sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference kick off in Beijing, a Sichuan Daily survey lists official corruption, food safety, and health care reform among the nation's top 10 concerns.
A survey of Internet users jointly conducted by the Sichuan Daily and the website Sichuan Online (www.scol.com.cn) asked people to choose the issues that most concerned them from a list of 32 topics. The following are netizens' top 10 picks.
Corruption and clean government
People are concerned with how the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package will be distributed. A netizen named Sarma said: "Most of the fund will be used in infrastructure construction. We call on NPC deputies and CPPCC members to weed out parasites from the process of bidding and construction."
Supervision of food and medicines
The recently passed Food Safety Law is of great concern to Chinese people. A netizen named Ultraviolet Ray Removes Dust said: "The contaminated milk and meat incidents revealed vast and difficult problems in the country. Government departments are trying to shift the blame onto each other. We hope the Commission of Food Safety won't become just another rubber-stamp department."
Healthcare reform
The new healthcare reform plan is expected to be submitted to the NPC during this session. A netizen named September 9 said a major problem in China's health care system is that doctors boost their low pay by over-prescribing medicine. "As long as doctors' pay is linked in this way, hospitals won't be able to curb over-prescribing and unnecessary check-ups," said the netizen.
The environment
Netizens appealed to the government not to cut environmental standards for enterprises bidding for projects, saying: "The government must take strict measures against polluting projects. They should place special emphasis on energy saving and emissions reductions on large scale projects."
"Environment protection should be at the heart of the stimulus plan," said one group of netizens.