BEIJING - China announced plans yesterday to build thousands of new hospitals and put a clinic in every village in the next three years, the first steps in a decade-long reform plan to provide universal healthcare coverage.
Communists don't have that? Pick a model: Sicko
Public healthcare in China has been underfunded for years, and the high cost and poor availability of services are among the biggest complaints of the Chinese public.
The Chinese sound like Americans!
China is pumping in $124 billion to reform the ailing system in the next three years as part of an ambitious, and still only hazily outlined, plan to provide basic medical coverage and insurance to all of China's 1.3 billion people....
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"China releases human rights plan" by Keith Bradsher, New York Times | April 14, 2009
HONG KONG - China's Cabinet released yesterday what it called the country's first national human rights action plan, a lengthy document promising a wide range of civil liberties that are often neglected and sometimes systematically violated in China.
I know how you feel, Chinese!
The rights China promised to protect under the two-year plan include the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in government decisions, and the right to learn about and question government policies. It calls for measures to discourage torture, such as requiring interrogation rooms to have designs that physically separate interrogators from the accused.
There are also specific protections for children, women, senior citizens, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. Human rights activists applauded Beijing officials for showing an interest in the issue. But they cautioned that any implementation would require many years of work by local, provincial, and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power and discretion....
The official Xinhua news agency said: "The government admitted that 'China has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation.'" The document does not phase out China's extensive and controversial system of administrative detention, which gives broad powers to local law enforcement officials, including the ability to send people to prison camps for "re-education through labor" without a trial.
I'd criticize, but the U.S. has secret torture chambers, renditions, and this:
"Washington is seeking to release most of the 20,000 remaining detainees in the prisons it controls as part of the handover of authority to the Iraqis, and also to encourage reconciliation. Most of them have never been charged with a crime"
And while the document guarantees a wide range of rights to detainees and petitioners, there is no promise to close the unregistered jails that municipal and provincial governments have set up in Beijing and elsewhere to detain petitioners who want to present their grievances to higher levels of government.
The National Human Rights Action Plan of China 2009-2010 emphasizes economic and social rights instead, such as a "right of urban and rural residents to a basic standard of living." In some cases, the plan is quite specific about promises that may depend more on the health of the Chinese economy and even the global economy than on the efforts of human rights activists....
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