Urgent need for soil protection

Su Yanxia, a National People’s Congress delegate from Heilongjiang province, known as China’s northeastern granary (“Beidacang”) and its black, fertile, said they need to protect that soil and that requires the coordinated efforts of authorities at both the state and regional level and a range of departments dealing with water conservation, forestry, agriculture, environmental protection, land, development, and finance. And she called for land restoration and efforts to control soil and water loss and for regulations on the management of farmland, and for the province to increase input in science and technology projects for managing the black soil.

Evaluation system for rural doctors

Gao Guangsheng, another deputy to NPC from Heilongjiang province and head of the geriatrics dept at the city of Harbin’s Hospital No.4, chose to focus on the shortage of good rural medical facilities and qualified doctors because of low pay and suggests that there be a different appraisal and evaluation system for rural areas than for urban areas. Gao says that China has more than 1.4 million doctors in rural areas but a considerable number of them have no higher medical education, and that they lack both medical theory and skills as well as equipment so it is inappropriate and unfair to judge rural and urban doctors with the same standards.