More Open to Religious Charities

Although China is home to 178,000 NGOs, less than 0.2 percent of them are operated by religious organizations, compared to 75 percent in the US. According to Chinese law, a religious organization cannot register a charity until it gains approval from both religious and civil affairs authorities. Even after registration, their charitable activities are limited to places of worship only, since local governments worry that events in public places might lead to evangelism. In early July, the Chinese government issued a new regulation, believed to be an official permit for religious charities. But due to a lack of clarity, experts predict that the implementation of the new regulation will still depend heavily on the whims of local government.

Marriage for Sale

Threatened by the growing popularity of social networking sites, China’s romantic matchmaking services are shifting their focus towards a more profitable line of business playing Cupid to the ultra-rich. Nationwide auditions are common in a recent case, a Shenzhen-based matchmaking company organized a “wife recruitment drive” for 25 billionaires, in which several hundred girls competed on appearance, IQ, EQ, and housework abilities, for the chance to meet their potential husband. Such eyecatching activities have raised the success rate of matchmaking, but critics worry that they reinforce the idea that marriage should be based on money.

IT Enters Agriculture

Attracted by large profit margins in the agriculture industry, a growing number of Chinese IT companies, such as Web portal and computer manufacturer Lenovo, are investing in poultry and livestock, aiming to produce high-end meat products for sale on their Internet platforms. Consumers have been generally receptive, believing that IT companies, with their strong customer service and technological backgrounds, are well placed to combat China’s chronic food safety problems. The government, however, is unimpressed. Experts have said that IT companies lack the necessary expertise to manage a fully-integrated industrial chain from breeding to processing and sales. More importantly, centralized production requires large plots of land, but offers few employment opportunities bad news for China’s large rural population.

Huge Cost, Little Return

China has been hot on high-speed rail development since 2006, when then railway minister Liu Zhijun ordered a switch from the development of homegrown technology to “importing technology with big deals.” Yet, despite several trillions of yuan (hundreds of millions of US dollars) in investment, the country has not yet mastered several core technologies. Insiders revealed that the Ministry alone has the power to bid for imports, but deals are largely based on financial gain, rather than real technological benefit. Worse still, most cities, especially poorer ones, cannot afford the huge cost of high-speed railways. By 2010, the Ministry was 1.72 trillion yuan (US$253bn) in debt due to high-speed rail development.

Carving Up the Jinsha River

The controversial Three Gorges reservoir seems to have done little to quench Chinese hydropower companies’ notorious thirst for water resources. The Jinsha River, in the upper reaches of the Yangtze, is now lined with thousands of hydroelectricity stations in various stages of completion media have revealed that most of these projects were initiated before gaining official approval, displacing swathes of the local population in the process. Experts warned that this unregulated construction has left the Three Gorges reservoir unable to maintain its minimum water level. Much worse, the long chain of stations is expected to have a destructive impact on the river’s ecosystem.