Front Page of the Day

The Premier apologizes

jinghuashibao.jpg
Beijing Times
January 30, 2008

On the front page of today's Beijing Times is a picture of Premier Wen Jiabao paying his respects to the relatives of three power company workers in Changsha, Hunan Province. The three workers died on Saturday during a job de-icing a tower; their support equipment collapsed, and they fell off the 50-meter structure.

The Premier said to the families, "Standing before you, I cannot offer any words of comfort. All I can do is bow in apology."

Today's top headline reports on a Politburo meeting held yesterday to assess the current situation and making plan for future relief work. General Secretary and President Hu Jintao presided.

Other headlines:

  • The Ministry of Education published regulations cracking down on universities that feed false information to prospective students;
  • The Yonghe Lama Temple Subway Station will close on February 7, the first day of the Spring Festival;
  • Last year, the per-capita GDP of Shenzhen topped US$10,000;

Today's best headline appears at the bottom of the page: "Seventeen-year-old girl robs feeble taxi driver." The incident, in which a taxi driver put up no resistence when his passenger stole his mobile phone and wrecked his car, occurred last August. Chaoyang Juvenile Court heard the case yesterday but did not reach a verdict.

There are currently 4 Comments for The Premier apologizes.

Comments on The Premier apologizes

i'm really moved by reading this: Prime Minister Wen Jiabao travelled to the center of the country to help direct disaster relief. and when i watched the news later in the evening, i heard that he tried to solve this problem through three steps, 1 coal 2 electricity supply 3 transportation (cuz right now, lots of transports are still paralyzed)

and it's said that since the founding of the PRC, this is the first time we witness this kind of disastrous winter weather. currently what i can do is just to give them the bless and wish them good luck and hopefully those ppl can go home asap.

what a memorable spring festival...

What a harmonious holiday it is.
Just one question...
If everyone else is stranded how did this fine young fellow get to Guangzhou?
Did he take a sanlunche or a flying pigeon?

FRITZ

He arrived by his special plane.

Nit-picking: the bow maybe should be interpreted as a special way of offering comfort, rather than an apology. Wen said "let me give you a bow", but he did not say that this is an apology; personally I don't think that he had something to apologize for: the deaths were not caused by him - it was an accident.

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Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
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