Field day for newsmakers
Housing, health and wealth are among issues that will be discussed during the NPC and CPPCC plenary meetings.
THE plenary sessions of both the National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) – China’s major annual parliamentary and advisory meeting – began in Beijing on Saturday.
NPC is the top legislative house with 2,980 deputies and CPPCC comprising 2,262 members, and serves as an advisory board to the government.
It is the best time of the year for the press and newsmakers. The media would be able to interview prominent politicians and policymakers on current issues while the NPC and CPPCC delegates would get the opportunity to have their views highlighted in the media.
NPC deputy He Keng was among the biggest newsmakers in the first few days of the meeting, with his quotable quote: “I still cannot afford to buy a house, especially a decent one, with my current salary.”
The NPC’S finance and economy committee vice-chairman had revealed in an interview with China Central Television in 2009 when he was the National Statistics Bureau deputy chief that it was too hard for a cadre-level official like him to buy his own house, let alone an ordinary man.
Three years after the property market has seen some signs of decline in house prices, he said buying a decent apartment in Beijing city centre remained a distant dream for him.
“If I really do not have a place to live anymore, I can still afford a 40 to 50 sqm apartment; but definitely not a 150 sqm apartment which at least costs four to five million yuan (RM1.9-RM2.4MIL).
“Even if I use 30 years of my savings, it will still be impossible for me to buy it,” he told Huashang Daily.
However, he said the government would expand its implementation of property tax nationwide within a year or two in its bid to further control house prices since the pilot started in Shanghai and Chongqing last year.
He added that private developers would have to take up the local governments’ offer to build more lowrent public housing units to address housing problems faced by the middle income group.
Chinese billionaire Zhang Yin, who is a CPPCC member, hoped that the public would give homegrown entrepreneurs like her due respect instead of being jealous of their fortune or having a second opinion about them.
“Apart from what we eat, where we live and what we use and wear, everything else belongs to the society. When we leave this world, do you think anyone will bury his company with him?” she was quoted by China News Service as saying.
Last year, she had made similar remarks, saying that the public should not discriminate against the second generation rich people.
Zhang Yin, who founded Nine Dragons Paper Holdings, was spotted with an old model handphone that she said she had been using for many years.
“I think the production of this handphone model has already stopped. It will be enough for me as long as I can use it to make phone calls,” she added.
Renowned soprano and CPPCC member Li Suhua, who was beside her, joked: “She has not changed from 10 years ago, as if time has moved backwards.”
Meanwhile, every year, Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu is one of the most sought-after CPPCC members during the meeting.
Despite his less than 1.7m stature, almost every journalist and photographer could not miss him. He was swarmed by the largest group of reporters at the entrance of the Great Hall of the People and spent about half-an-hour fielding questions before he could enter the hall for the opening ceremony of the CPPCC plenary session.
He said, in his probable last term as the minister, he would like to further push for healthcare and medical reform in the country and rectify the mistakes the government had made in the past.
He said the government would allocate more funds to public hospitals so that they would stop their previous policy of profiteering from the sales of medicine to sustain operation costs, hence upsetting the patients who complained of spiralling medical costs.
“In future, more doctors would be able to work at other public or private hospitals apart from their parent hospital in the government’s bid to share human resources in the sector,” he added.
The NPC and CPPCC plenary meetings will be on for about 10 days where delegates will meet in small group discussions and attend briefings on work reports from the State Council, procuratorate and judiciary.