Communist leadership urge local bureaucrats to implement scientific development--

Communist leadership urge local bureaucrats to implement scientific development(1)

2007-10-22 10:52:51 [ Big Normal Small ] 　Comment

BEIJING, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China onSunday wrote the "scientific outlook of development" into its amended Constitution to make it the keynote of the country's overall development in years to come, but observers say the implementation of the policy is not an easy job.

Possible challenges to the central government's authority might come from some local governments and enterprises which have their own interests, the observers warn.

Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Central Committee of CPC, has called at the Party's 17th National Congress on cadres and people across the nation to change their minds to meet the scientific development, and the new perception of development should be spread in every corner of the country.

The congress, which concluded Sunday, urged that major problems that hinder the implementation of the scientific outlook of development should be solved.

The perception was put forward by the CPC Central Committee in 2003 and has since become China's national strategy aimed at balanced and sustainable growth, as the country, the fourth largest economy in the world, is suffering from deterioration of environment and an enlarged poor-wealthy gap.

Chinese leaders have been repeatedly calling for coordinated development between urban and rural areas, among different regions, between economic and social development, between the development of man and nature, and between domestic development and opening up to the outside world.

But achieving scientific development has been an arduous task, to which challenges come from profit-seeking local governments and officials, observers believed.

On Aug.19, a molten aluminium spill occurred at a workshop under Weiqiao Pioneering Group Co., Ltd. in Zouping County, east China's Shandong Province. The accident, which happened only one month after the production facility had began operation, killed 16people and injured another 59 with a direct economic loss estimated at more than 6.6 million yuan (about 860,000 U.S. dollars).

According to the State Administration of Work Safety and a working teleconference held by the provincial government, the 4.2-million-yuan workshop, built in less than one year and came on stream in July 2007, was designed by an unqualified local agency with major designing defects and was approved against laws and regulations.

Reports said the accident stemmed from efforts to seek development in a blind way, which put the money first instead of putting the people first, a direct offense to the central government's order. False value of officials' performance and poor policy execution were also the factors behind.

More astonishing was that on the official website of the county government, an article went so far as to praise the workshop's parent company, which contributed to 50 percent of the county's fiscal revenue, for its persistence in expansion against state policies and authorities' objections.

According to Jiang Daming, the acting governor of Shandong, the parent company of the fatal facility, was an influential tax payer locally, which was protected by local governments and defied supervision by superior authorities.

The company was far from unique. Earlier this year, the State Environmental Protection Administration unveiled a blacklist of 82 projects that seriously violated environmental protection assessment rules. Involving combined investment of 1.12 trillion yuan, the big budget projects were protected by local governments as they were cash cows.

Environmental protection agencies and other departments had imposed penalties on some projects, but the penalties were not executed due to local protection.

"In the past, policy enforcement relied on political conviction and the authority and power of the central government. But now, in a free market economy, things have changed a lot. Local governments and enterprises put interests first," said Wang Xiaoguang, head of the economic operation and development section of the Research Institute of Economy under the National Development and Reform Commission.

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