Society

Call it a Peace Prize with Chinese characteristics.

With only a few days to go until the ceremony marking jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize, a Chinese NGO has announced the winner of the Confucius Prize, which it describes in a statement as “the Peace Prize reconstructed according to Oriental thought.”

The announcement follows a November 16 editorial (in Chinese) in the Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, calling for the establishment of a Confucius Prize as a way for “the Chinese to declare China’s views on peace and human rights to the world.”

China, the world’s largest polluter, has been adopting laws to control and reduce pollution since 1979, and there are frequent reports in the press emphasizing efforts to control pollution. But regardless of how many new environmental laws are adopted, enforcement remains a critical problem.

This is true in the case of regulation by local Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), and also when citizens try to sue polluters in the courts. Both enforcement mechanisms are marked by the ongoing challenge of balancing environmental protection against the promotion of economic growth and by the tensions between central and local governments. Both also highlight broader systemic problems in Chinese governance.

There are numerous reasons why effective enforcement both by the EPBs and civil suits is greatly hampered. Local EPBs are only “nominally responsible” to the ministry-level Environmental Protection Administration in Beijing, as Elizabeth Economy notes in her 2004 book “The River Runs Black,” and rely on local governments for “virtually all their support.” Local government officials also benefit from higher levels of output in their region, as Gregory Chow has observed, noting that “they receive credits for economic development and sometimes bribes from polluting producers.” Local governments, the courts and the EPBs give protection to key local enterprises.

China's total grain harvest in 2010 reached 546.41 million metric tons, the seventh consecutive annual record and an increase of 2.9% from last year's crop, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. Last year's grain harvest was up 0.4% from 2008.

The strong harvest is expected to relieve upward pressure on prices from concerns of shortages related to weather problems and global shortfalls. This year's summer grain harvest, which normally accounts for a third of the total, dipped 0.3%, aggravating concerns about full-year supply. But few signs of problems emerged during the autumn grain season, and government officials in recent weeks had widely signaled increased confidence.

China will shift to a "prudent" monetary policy next year, the ruling Communist Party decided on Friday, a move that formalizes the government's change in priorities away from driving all-out economic growth toward combating inflation.

The change in the official language used to describe the government's economic policy, from the current "moderately loose," solidifies a transition that has taken place over the last several months. At a time when the U.S. and other major economies are still struggling to propel economic growth, China has increasingly focused on containing inflation and asset-price bubbles, and phased out some of the supportive policies that prevailed during the global financial crisis and its aftermath.