A couple enjoy a light moment in the snow at a university campus in Beijing. Many Chinese men are decidedly cool on the idea of their wives earning more money than them. Kuang Linhua / China Daily

Legal

Laojiao reforms on cards

China is likely to reform its controversial re-education-through-labor system, or laojiao, this year, after government sources indicated that policy tweaks were being considered.

The government will push for reforms of the system this year, said an official statement released during the national political and legal work conference on Jan 7, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The existing system allows public-security officers and other authorized personnel to detain people for up to four years without an open trial. It has made headlines for months, with several cases of people being wrongfully sent for laojiao prompting public scrutiny of the 50-year-old method of punishment.

Health

Boost for health insurance

Spending on public health insurance will be increased substantially, particularly for rural residents, to ensure that at least 95 percent of them are under insurance coverage, Health Minister Chen Zhu said on Jan 7.

Under a new cooperative medical care system designed exclusively for rural people, the government subsidy is expected to reach 280 yuan ($45; 34 euros) per person annually in 2013 up from the current 240 yuan, Chen said at a national conference on health.

"More important, we'll improve the working mechanism and strengthen supervision to help avert unnecessary administration of drugs and examinations to help further ease patients' economic burden," he said.

The current reimbursement rate for hospital expenses for rural residents stands at 55 percent on average. However, this rate is designed to be around 70 percent under the new policy, Chen said.

Employment

International hiring on the rise

Employment prospects in China continue to rise as multinational corporations and Chinese companies will hire more employees this year, even as the global economic uncertainty forces companies in the Asia-Pacific region to scale back, according to a survey.

Nearly 56 percent of the MNCs in China surveyed by global human resources company Hudson indicated that they plan to increase the number of permanent staff during the first quarter of 2013.

The enthusiasm to hire comes amid the recovery in the growth of the Chinese economy and an increasing number of multinationals moving their regional headquarters to China. Although economic growth slowed in 2012, China still remains the second-largest economy in the world. The government has forecast that GDP will grow 7.5 percent this year, while unemployment rate will remain stable at about 4 percent.

Society

Earn more, but less than me

A growing number of men in China expect their wives to earn more money, but not more than they do, according to a recent survey. The findings, analysts said, reflect the rising cost of living in China and the increasing role women play as breadwinners.

On Jan 7, the Social Sciences Academic Press published the Annual Report on Social Mentality in China 2012-13, which included a research report on the criteria that people use to choose a spouse.

Less than 1 percent of male participants said they hope their future spouses will earn more than they do, while the ratio of men expecting to find a wife who makes as much as men increased from 18.3 percent in 2005 to 25.7 percent in 2010.

Meanwhile, women's income expectations for their spouses did not show any notable trends. Forty-four percent of the female respondents said they believe their husbands should earn more money than they do.

Life satisfaction declining

Fewer people were satisfied with their quality of life in 2012 amid rising living costs and changing social values, a report compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.

The report found that only 44.7 percent of the people polled nationwide were satisfied in 2012, a decrease of 2.3 percentage points from the previous year. Even among those who said they were satisfied with their lives, their satisfaction index fell from 3.46 to 3.41 on a scale of zero to five points. And 12.3 percent of those surveyed said they were dissatisfied.

The report, published on Jan 7, was based on data provided by the livelihood index research group under the National People's Congress and filed by researchers from the academy.

The survey was conducted while prices were rising, which is believed to have a role to play in the decline in the satisfaction index.

Transport

System ready for travel peak

Railway authorities have said the online ticketing system has been improved and can now better handle the huge number of requests before the coming Spring Festival rush, after the costly website's frequent failures aroused widespread criticism during last rush period.

Some 224.5 million trips by train are expected to be made during this year's 40-day Spring Festival rush between Jan 26 and March 6 this year, 4.6 percent more than in the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Railways. The Spring Festival rush is the biggest temporary human migration in the world. This year's Spring Festival falls on Feb 10.

China Daily

(China Daily 01/11/2013 page2)