A landmark Internet poll on the effectiveness of the Beijing city government has ended with overwhelming numbers voicing a high level of dissatisfaction with the work of the city's political leaders.
The survey, which ran from Nov. 11 to Dec. 5 on the city government's Web site, saw some 126,000 respondents separately rate the government's 60 departments on a degree of satisfaction.
Participants effectively were allowed to voice their concern with ongoing urban problems, including increasingly snarled traffic jams, the city's often arbitrary requisitioning of land and an ineffective mechanism to voice complaints.
Beijing's early attempt to cover up the SARS outbreak and a slow response by hospitals to contain it in the capital, which was the world's hardest hit city, also led to the city's health department winning a low level of support.
The city's traffic bureau had the worst rating with 87 percent of respondents dissatisfied, while the urban planning commission was close behind with a dissatisfaction rating of 86 percent.
Rounding out the worst departments were the health bureau with a 76 percent dissatisfaction rating, followed by the complaints bureau and the industrial and commercial bureau with ratings of 74 percent and 73 percent respectively.
However, things were not all bad, with the city's tax bureau snaring the highest approval rating of 61 percent.
This was followed by the township enterprise bureau with a 53 percent approval rating and the education office which had 51 percent rating.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion