For once the government is doing the right thing. But it should be throughout all of china. But the main thing the corrupt communist government needs to do is arrest all the corrupt thieving corrupt central communist governments leaders and family members for fraud and severe corruption crimes they have committed. I saw they were quick to executes some woman for fraud and corruption over some money so why hasn't hu jinto's son hu haifeng been arrested and executed!!!

I know you're mad and probably don't really mean what you say literally, but isn't that a little extreme? From what I've read, there hasn't yet been anything to tie Hu Haifeng to the corruption in Namibia. And if he is involved, do you really want a "justice" system that handles complex international corruption and money laundering cases by snatching accused people up and putting bullets in their brains in a matter of a couple of weeks?

"Reduce the daily intake of salt from 13.4 grams to less than 10 grams. "

This is an absolutely dangerous level of sodium, and its probably the reason most elderly Chinese have high blood pressure and many die of strokes. Ideally, people shouldn't add any sodium to foods, and sodium levels should be down towards 1,000 mg, not 10 to 13 times that amount.

See: link

But in any case, although these targets are a bit funny (because they have such feeling of meeting random targets, ala the state planned economy days), nonetheless, they are important.

Still, I wonder how they could achieve these without implementing corresponding policies (raising taxing cigarettes, limiting sodium in processed foods...etc). Most likely it will remain in publicity/propaganda sphere.

Maybe these goals are too modest? I mean it is good to be practical and realistic, but these goals looks like they will achieve almost by themselves in 10 years, such as raising the average lifespan from 80.27 to 81.

One more thing:

Daily exercise would be so much more common in China were the CCP willing to allow for the expansion of civil society.

China's gold medal success at last year's Olympics made it abundantly clear that there is a big difference between a "gold medal power" (金牌大國) and a "sporting power" (體育大國). China is the former, perhaps; but it is certainly not the latter.

The reason I mention civil society is this - an official for FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, was recently asked why China has been unable to field a quality men's national soccer team (China currently ranks 108th in the world). He responded by suggesting that the lack of a real, thriving, and protected civil society was at the root of the problem. In other words, China is not too poor (plenty of poor nations have excellent teams). Neither does China lack the desire (soccer is China's most popular spectator sport). Contrary to the views of many (including a discouraging number of Chinese), the Chinese are not a physically weak race (anyone who has watched a match between the Chinese men's team and a good foreign team can testify to the fact that Chinese players run as fast and with as much endurance as foreign players). Finally, the Chinese do not lack good coaching and first rate skills (good coaches can be had for the right price and several Chinese players are skillful enough to be playing abroad)

Rather, China lacks football clubs of the sort that are found throughout Europe and the Americas. The greatest soccer players in England, from Beckenbauer and Maradona to Zidane and Pele, were all products of club systems. England alone has more than 40,000 registered football clubs, and Brazil has close to 30,000. How many does China have? None. Why not? The CCP won't allow it.

Confounded by China's failure to produce a good team. Blame the government.

China, like North Korea, may one day produce a good team or two. But like North Korea, China will never be a consistent soccer power until it allows for the creation and expansion of a real civil society, the likes of which exist in places as different from each other as England and Brazil.

Sport in China is all about the prestige of the state, not the health and well-being of the people. If the CCP genuinely hopes to inspire the people - especially children and young adults - to exercise more, it would do well to reconsider its longstanding opposition to and suspicion of civil society.

Much has been said recently about the Net Nanny. In fact, however, the Nanny exists everywhere in China, not only on the internet. Get rid of the Nanny, and Chinese soccer will improve overnight. And so will the people's health.

Stinky,

You jumped to quickly to your conclusions I'm afriad as CIA figure was for average Chinese life expectancy for the whole country and this article is refering to the life expectancy of residents of Beijing city only.

ChineseInUK -

True, I skimmed the piece too quickly and overlooked the bit about it referring to Beijing residents only.

Then again, if you imagine that the average Beijing resident's life expectancy at birth really is 80.27 years and that the CIA's figure of 73.47 years is correct for the nation as a whole, what does that say about the fairness of Chinese society? If Beijingers are living to the ripe old age of 80, then you must assume that residents of China's other wealthy cities are also living that long. What then must the average life expectancy of rural Chinese be? Something less than 73.47 years, no?

After 60 years of CCP rule and 30 years of reform, China is one of the world's most unequal societies. Something to remember on Oct. 1. The revolution failed.

Stinky,

Thanks for your reply.

Using life expectancy disparity alone to judge a government is a little too simplistic, in my view.

There were 13 years life expectancy difference between Kensington & Chelsea at 83.7 and Glasgow at 70.8 in 2006 (the latest statistics that I could find) for UK. China is a vast developing country so one would naturally expect the difference to be much bigger.

What I'm more interested is whether the life expectancies for the poorest regions had improved substantially and perhaps at a faster rate than those richer regions, over the past 60 years.

Tibetans' life expectancy (currently lowest)almost doubled since 1959 from 35.5 to 67, and between 1990 and 2000 it increased by 4.75 years (the fastest) compared with the increase for GuangDong (one of the current highest) at 0.75 years and Beijing at 3.25 years for the same period.

ChineseInUK -

Comparing life expectancies is just another way of pointing out the fundamental unfairness of Chinese society. I never suggested that life expectancy in the countryside hadn't improved, but it hasn't improved at nearly the rate that it has in wealthier Chinese cities. As is the case with per capita GDP, rural Chinese find themselves lagging quite some distance behind their urban countrymen. And I'm hardly the first to suggest that as China has grown wealthier, it's grown increasingly unequal. Sadly, it seems that this disparity applies not just to average household incomes but to average life expectancy as well. This is what I mean when I suggest that the revolution has failed. Contrary to promises made by the CCP to create a new and equal society, it has simply replaced one ruling class with another. Furthermore, the myth of transition (i.e., the idea that China is now moving from an unequal capitalist society to an egalitarian socialist one) is pure makebelieve, it seems to me. Simply put, I can't imagine the next 30 years being as successful as the last 30. Then again, I also believe that, sometime in the not too distant future, we'll all look back on the first 30 years of reform and realize that they were less than a spectacular success.

As for differences in average life expectancy in the U.K., I don't doubt they exist. They exist here in the U.S. too. Average life expectancy for black males, for example, is just 69.8 years, while it is 75.7 years for white men. Importantly, figures for both groups include infant mortality - much higher for blacks than for whites - thereby depressing the figure for black males. Unlike China, however, the gap in life expectacy between whites and blacks in America has narrowed during the last 30 years, not widened.