Xinmin Weekly

Bolder Reform Needed

October 18, 2010 

To root out corruption in China's football, management should be separated from operation, said Liu Peng, Minister of the General Administration of Sport, recently. Insiders noted that it's the first time for the sports minister to give open remarks regarding the year-long campaign against scandals in the football sector.

A complex supervision mechanism and an entry permit system for professional football leagues need to be introduced, Liu said, indicating the advent of a new round of reform.

However, some say what Liu called for is not new, but a topic that has been discussed for over a decade. Experts suggest that operations of football leagues be supervised by judicial bodies and regulated by relevant laws. Also, the China Football Association, top Chinese football authority, should decentralize its power so as to remove the institutional setting for corruption.

Southern Metropolis Weekly

Behind Prosperity

September 29, 2010

Hanvon has taken the lead in producing e-books in China, selling 500,000 in 2009. The selling price of its stocks even rose to 175 yuan ($26.24) from the issue price of 41.9 yuan ($6.28). Other enterprises are scrambling to enter the market, including China Mobile Ltd., Shanda Literature Corp., and Shanghai Century Publishing Group.

The industry still faces great difficulties. E-book producers need more publishers to provide content. Additionally, there is a big gap between the product and consumers' expectations and demands. Zhang Lei, a chief officer of Hanvon, explained that a lot of people bought e-books as presents, not because they were readers.

China Newsweek

PhD Candidates Reduced

September 27, 2010

According to The Quality Investigation of the PhD Candidate Education in China by Zhou Guangli, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, PhD candidates have been reduced to cheap but highly qualified workers. About 60 percent of PhD candidates think they undertake more than half of their supervisors' tasks. The relation between students and supervisors has become an employment one.

Rao Yi, a Peking University professor, admits that there are probably many supervisors who regard their students as employees, using them as tools and ignoring their responsibility to cultivate students' independent research.

This makes it impossible to train students as qualified PhDs. Rao said that students should work "with" supervisors, not "for" them, and that universities should be evaluated by the quality not quantity of PhDs they train. Failing this, the Ministry of Education should invalidate their ability to award doctoral degrees.