At one of Beijing’s famous tea stores, shop assistants easily sold beautifully wrapped packages of tea priced at 42,000 yuan (6,160 U.S. dollars) before the Chinese Lunar New Year, or the Spring Festival, which fell on Feb. 14.

At department stores, customers buying shopping cards with money pre-charged on them had to wait in long queues.

The Chinese tradition of presenting gifts to family members and friends during the Lunar New Year has now been extended to sending gifts to officials, which poses new challenges to the country’s anti-corruption efforts.

The Procuratorial Daily, official newspaper of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, recently reported that among the 30 bribery cases investigated by a district procuratorate in Jinan of east China’s Shandong Province, bribes during the New Year period totalled 870,000 yuan (127,000 U.S. dollars).

It also said that among the 100 bribery cases heard from 2005 to 2007 at the Beijing Dongcheng District People’s Court, Beijing Haidian District People’s Court and the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, 78 officials had accepted bribes during the Lunar New Year period.

Peking University professor Huang Zongliang attributed this phenomenon to bribers trying to “buy over” officials in a non-obvious way and make it easier if they ask for favors in the future.

“Festival gifts are simply bribes in disguise, although bribers may not ask for favors immediately,” Huang told Xinhua.

However, nearly half of the officials who took bribes during the Lunar New Year believed the “gifts” should not be considered bribes, according to the Procuratorial Daily report.

Shortly before this new year, a former high-rank official in southwest Chongqing Municipality defended himself at court by saying that the gifts he took for his birthday which coincided with Spring Festival celebrations, should not be considered as bribes.

The official was Wen Qiang, former director of the Chongqing municipal bureau of justice and a key figure in the country’s largest gang crackdown. He was found to be in possession of antiques, brand-name watches and an authentic painting worth several million yuan in total.

Huang said the official’s argument was just an excuse. “If he did not have power, many would not have bought him birthday gifts.”

China’s Criminal Law defines bribes as cash or properties officials take in exchange for asked favors abusing their power.

According to the law, bribes worth 5,000 yuan or less could send an official to two years in prison. Those taking more than 100,000 yuan could face more than 10 years in jail, or even life imprisonment.

Traditionally, items such as fine wine, tobacco, tea and brand-name watches would be on officials’ gift lists.

New gift ideas in recent years have included pre-charged shopping cards and gifts covering officials’ private travel costs.

Corruption watchdogs in China have in the past repeatedly warned officials against taking gifts disguised as bribes during festivals, with some even explicitly listing what items to avoid.

In January, President Hu Jintao, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, again called for stricter self-discipline among officials.

In a speech delivered at the Third Plenary Session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Hu said CPC members must unremittingly improve their mastery of the “Party spirit,” meaning that moral and discipline standards should be further raised.

Besides self-discipline, experts believe supervision from both higher level departments and the public should be another tool used to curb corruption.

Li Chengyan, another professor at Peking University, said the public should be allowed to participate in the appraisal of an official’s performance.

Li also believed information of an official’s possessions should be made public and people should be encouraged to supervise and report irregularities in officials’ private lives.

Help for migrants

The labor scarcity is not only a result of the sudden rise in demand in the coastal export hubs. Wu Yaowu, a researcher of labor at the China Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that many local governments of inland regions have launched policies to help migrant workers find jobs after they returned to their hometowns amid the crisis.

“If they could find jobs with similar pay at home or in nearby cities, why would they travel to areas far away from their families?” Wu asked.

Many manufacturers, previously located in coastal cities, have moved inland, which also contributes to local employment, Wu added.

He suggested that manufacturers in coastal areas take this as a chance to change their growth pattern and accelerate industrial and technological upgrading.

Tan Bing, a researcher at the Development Research Center in Guangdong, said the economic recovery after the crisis is just a trigger of the labor shortage, which can be traced back to five to six years ago.

“The real reason is that the era of “low-cost labor” has gone. The poor salaries, which were not compatible with the heavy labor intensity, are no longer attractive to migrant workers,” Tan was quoted by the China Economic Times as saying.

The new generation of workers born in the 1980s and 1990s also pay more attention to the guarantee of their legal rights and the prospect of the job, Tan said.

Upgrade needed

The central government, however, has not detected a drop in unemployment rates due to the labor shortage, which has seasonal, periodical and regional characteristics.

Yin Chengji, spokesperson with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said last month that the emerging labor shortages in some regions did not indicate a fundamental improvement in the employment situation in China.

“College graduates and those with high-school qualifications from rural areas are the two new forces to hit the country’s job market this year. With rising numbers in these two groups, the prospect of the employment situation remains grim, and the employment task is still arduous,” Yin said.

According to two surveys carried by the Guangzhou Human Resource Service Center, more than 40 percent of 600 manufacturing enterprises require mechanic certificates from applicants, while only 10 percent of 5,000 interviewed migrant workers possess such certificates.

“The lack of technically skilled workers always exists. The upgrading of labor and career trains should catch up with industrial upgrading,” Zhang Baoying, director of the center, told the International Finance News.

After so much fanfare — featured by intense media attention and China’s repeated warnings — US President Barack Obama finally met the Dalai Lama at the White House on Thursday.

With this latest move to test China’s limit of tolerance, Obama has hit a home run to complete his months-long season of a game called “antagonizing China”.

At least we hope so. After all the recent tensions in Sino-US relations, a half-time break is what both sides desperately need.

But it is still too early to heave a sigh of relief.

Thanks to his vow to “get much tougher” with China, Obama has struck nearly every note to create the cacophony against a country that he once pledged not to contain. From the US$6.4 billion arms sales to Taiwan to issues related to currency rates and Internet freedom, Obama has taken a poke at China in every possible front.

So much that no one can say for sure whether China-US relationship is resilient enough to survive all the damages done.

It is up to Washington to show its sincerity to begin again the work of repairing the damaged relations.

It usually takes some time for US leaders to learn the ropes of their China policy.

Bill Clinton had argued that Washington “should not reward China with improved trade status when it has … failed to make sufficient progress on human rights”. George W. Bush had pledged to do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan. But it did not took them long to come to terms with reality.

China, with a quarter of the world’s population and a fast growing economy, means a lot to the US and the world. It does both sides absolutely no good if the two countries collide rather than cooperate.

It would have been foolish not to understand this at an early date.

In a speech Obama made during his visit to Shanghai in November last year, Obama quoted a Chinese proverb “consider the past you shall know the future”.

Christmas and Valentine’s Day might be a little more chic these days for youngsters, bringing reverberating warnings that traditional festivals – and to some extent our cultural heritages – are in danger.

We do have things to worry about but it’s not about our festivals.

This holiday season, as always, hundreds of millions of people are, or will be, on the move. And more likely than not, the destination is one single place: home.

At this moment, for those of us working and living apart from our parents, home is not where we reside after work. It’s where mom and dad are.

In front of the anxious crowds packing transit hubs across the country, all the hoopla to “safeguard” the Spring Festival sound redundant. Home is where the hearts are because this festival is about the family and family gatherings.

On the lunar New Year’s Eve, or chuxi, every Chinese feels homesick. We were born tied to our homes, which is why tickets for trips to and from our homes are the most coveted commodities these days, and why we brave the seasonal human tides and hit the road.

High-speed railways between Wuhan and Guangzhou and between Zhengzhou and Xi’an have come into operation, just in time for the Spring Festival passenger peaks.

Yet the way home remains just as difficult for most of us, since more are out on the road this holiday season. Our lunar new year trips will become more enjoyable as our trains get faster.

And we have seen railroad authorities trying to make our trips home less difficult. Their vociferous experiments on ticket sales might, just like critics pointed out, end up being little more than posturing. Yet the Guangdong police departments’ initiative to dispatch police vehicles to convoy motorcades of home-bound transient workers, for one, warms the heart.

We hope all the reportedly 100,000 transient rural workers, from Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, who chose to go home from Guangdong on motorcycles, have arrived home safely. They illustrate what home means for Chinese people.

Our profound thanks go to those who are working to make our trips home safer and easier. And best wishes for those who are still on their way home.

Let the precious coincidence of the lunar New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day make this holiday season sweeter.

And let the new snow not deter anybody from going home, and instead augur an auspicious lunar new year for all.

By Grayson Clark, an international consultant based in Beijing)

If you have not been to China and will not in the next couple of days, chances are you will not understand what a big event Spring Festival is. Before I came to China in 2006, I had a vague idea it was something to do with bright red lanterns and special food. Little did I know that collectively it could be described as the world’s biggest annual party. It certainly is the greatest annual migration on the planet, dwarfing anything seen on the plains of Africa. So, for those new to China, here is what Spring Festival means to me – and almost all of them begin with the letter ‘F’.

First, it is for families. One of the downsides of China’s remarkable progress is the number of children rural parents have left at home with their grandparents to work in cities and other provinces. Spring Festival is that joyous time when parents and children are reunited and the bonds of parenthood reasserted. However hard the journey back home is, it is a time to treasure.

Next, it is for friends. Only slightly below the family in importance, old friends are whom most people visit during the days after the new year. For young people, it’s a great chance to catch up with old school friends who for the other 51 weeks of the year may be scattered far and wide across China.

The next ‘F’ is for food. Spring Festival is the greatest culinary event on the planet. It’s true, these days many people eat out on lunar new year’s eve and the ready meal concept (heaven help us!) is threatening to make its way even to new year’s eve dinners at home. But talking to my colleagues, I was happy to know that many of them will still help their mothers and grandmothers cook a variety of dishes they don’t have the time or inclination to do at other times of the year. Therefore, Spring Festival can be regarded as the ultimate safeguard for China’s family culinary traditions.

Even if the above pass you by, you can’t escape the next big ‘F’. Spring Festival is the biggest fireworks event outside, well, the Olympics! The number of fireworks let off on our compound in two thinks, I think, exceeds what we saw at London’s millennium celebrations a decade ago. Of course last year the pyrotechnics got a little out of hand. Hopefully, people will take more care while driving out evil spirits this year. But all said and done, fireworks are the most spectacular part of the whole event.

The next ‘F’ is stretching it a bit. Spring Festival should signal the end of winter. The first year we were here, it certainly did as the mercury climbed to a balmy 15 C. But in 2008 and this year this ‘F’ unfortunately stands for the big freeze.

But, for me, the two most important ‘F’s are “freedom” and “fun”. For a week or two, or even three, people can be free of routine work, because they have something more important to think about. And if we can’t have “fun” during Spring Festival when can we have it? To all our readers, especially newcomers to China, I wish a very happy Chun Jie.

The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in the United States remained above the epidemic threshold for three weeks running following a short decrease since the beginning of 2010, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday.

“During week four (Jan. 24 to 30), 8.1 percent of all deaths reported through the 122-Cities Mortality Reporting System were due to P&I. This percentage was above the epidemic threshold of 7. 8 percent for week four,” the CDC said on its web site, adding that “this is the third consecutive week that the percentage of P& I deaths has been above the epidemic threshold.”

Since last October, when the A/H1N1 pandemic peaked and as many as 48 states had widespread activity of the new virus, the proportion of deaths attributed to P&I based on the 122 Cities Report had been above the epidemic threshold for 11 weeks running.

As the A/H1N1 flu began to wane in December, the proportion of deaths linked to P&I based on the 122 Cities Report was dipping below the epidemic threshold in week 50 of 2009, but bouncing back in week 51. After that, it remained below the epidemic threshold for two more weeks, but bounced back again during the second week of 2010.

The epidemic threshold is the point at which the observed proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia or influenza is significantly higher than would be expected at that time of the year in the absence of substantial influenza-related mortality.

The latest statistics released by the CDC show that, from August 30, 2009 to January 30, 2010, there were 39,794 laboratory- confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations and 1,905 laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated deaths, including 257 of young patients under age of 18, that have been reported to the federal agency.

But health officials believe the actual death toll have been much higher than the figures of laboratory-confirmed influenza- associated deaths.

The CDC estimated 55 million Americans became ill from the A/ H1N1 flu between last April and mid-December — the first eight months of the pandemic. About 246,000 Americans were hospitalized and 11,160 killed.

“The estimates are actually much more accurate than the confirmed numbers,” the CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said. “The number of confirmed deaths is really just a small proportion of the number of total deaths,” he explained.

On the whole, the CDC reported on Friday that the A/H1N1 flu infections continue to be on the wane nationally and there had been no states reporting widespread activity across the country for the first month of 2010.

Although the A/H1N1 flu infections are declining, But CDC spokesman Tom Skinner warned that it would be too early to say the virus has disappeared.

“We’re still seeing (regional, local and sporadic) activity across the country. It’s certainly not at the levels of late October, early November, but activity is still going on, and we have many weeks left in our flu season,” he stated.

Out of nearly 120 million A/ H1N1 vaccine doses distributed in the United States, only about 70 million have been used, it was reported on Saturday.

An additional 35 million doses have been produced but not shipped and instead may be donated overseas, the Los Angeles Times said, quoting federal officials.

Of the total doses, four million were distributed to the Los Angeles County alone last month, according to the paper.

New orders had come to a near halt for the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) which were holding back 1.5 million doses to begin building a stockpile for the next flu season, said the paper.

Just months ago, the vaccine was so scarce that people camped out at free clinics for the chance to get it. But now the surplus raised the question: what should happen to the unused doses, the paper asked.

In L.A. County, it remains unclear how many of the four million doses distributed have been used. Also unknown: a full accounting of which providers got the vaccine, when they got it and how much they received.

The Los Angeles County Depart of Public Health, along with state and federal health officials, has so far refused to release a list of doctors, clinics and other private healthcare providers who ordered the vaccine, citing privacy concerns, according to the paper.

Some providers report confusion about what to do and frustration with a distribution system that has made it difficult to know whether their unused doses, some of which are about to expire, are needed by another doctor to vaccinate patients, the paper said.

State public health officials say that although doctors may now refuse to accept previously ordered shipments of H1N1 vaccine, once they sign for the doses the state will not take them back. At that point, it is up to the provider to consult with local health officials, said Mike Sicilia, a spokesman for CDPH.

In some cases, doctors said they have been rebuffed by county health officials when they attempted to give back surplus vaccine so it could be redistributed.

But many doctors report that demand is simply no longer there, in some cases leaving them with thousands of doses of the once-hot vaccine, according to the paper.

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Chinese staffers with the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti on Saturday donated two large tents, some food and drinking water to a local orphanage whose building sustained cracks in the January 12 earthquake.

The Chinese police force working with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) decided to make the donation after learning that the orphanage with 40 children aged between 4 months and 14 years old had to settle its minors in two small tents on the lawn of its yard and had the older children sleep with its staffers in the open air during the night for fear of lethal aftershocks.

The two large tents given by the Chinese donators are big enough to house all the 40 children.

Madam Rachel, daughter of the founder of the Orphelinat Solidarite et Fraternite in the Tabarre quarter of Port-au-Prince, said the Chinese donation was the first assistance her orphanage had got after the temblor.

The Chinese police force even brought to the orphanage what they had saved from their daily rations of biscuits and fruits. They also gave the orphans some stationeries, hoping they could soon resume classes.

Founded in 2005 by Madam Devastey, the orphanage was lucky not to lose a single kid in the deadly earthquake that has reportedly claimed more than 170,000 lives.

Hu Yunwang, deputy chief of the Chinese police force with the MINUSTAH, said that his team would closely follow the situation in the orphanage and would offer further necessary assistance.

Madam Rachel and the kids expressed their gratitude to the Chinese police representatives.

Before the January 12 devastating quake, there were nearly 100,000 orphans in Haiti. UNICEF has said that the quake made lots of Haitian children lose contact with their families and international institutions have been identifying these children before confirming a definite number of earthquake-orphaned children in the Caribbean island country.