China Diary

Envoys from the Dalai Lama arrived in Beijing in February for talks on the political future of Tibet.

But as they did so the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, threw a spanner in the works by saying: "There is a very sincere hope that the Chinese government will base the discussions on the memorandum for genuine autonomy for all Tibetans which we presented to the Chinese side in 2008."

It is never made clear in the Western press what that "genuine autonomy" entails. What the Dalai Lama demanded in 2008 was Special Administrative Region (SAR) status for the Tibet Autonomous Region - like the Hong Kong and Macao SARs.

What's wrong with that? you might ask. This: Hong Kong and Macao - and Taiwan, if it signs up to it - control their own immigration. In other words they can let in or kick out anybody they like, even Chinese citizens.

If Tibet were to get SAR status, the Dalai Lama would expel the Han Chinese and other non-Tibetans and lay claim to one-fifth of China's total territory. The chain reaction among China's 56 nationalities would result in another Yugoslavia, only a thousand times worse.

The English invasion

A warning bell has been sounded about the danger of English words corrupting the Chinese language.

Huang Youyi, director of the China International Publishing Group, pointed out that there is a growing fashion in China to interweave English words, and abbreviations such as GDP and CEO, into Chinese conversations and publications.

Huang, who is fluent in English himself and secretary-general of the Translators Association of China, was speaking at the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee - the country's highest policy-making body.

"In the long run," he said, "the Chinese language will lose its role as an independent linguistic system for passing on information and expressing human feelings."

Worker shortage

There are 150,000 job vacancies in Guangdong province, a centre of China's export trade. The immediate reason for this is that an estimated one in 12 of the area's migrant workers did not return to work after visiting their homes over the Spring Festival last month.

The government's campaign to divert funds and expertise from the coastal areas to develop the central and western parts of the country has resulted in employment opportunities in the vast hinterland provinces from which the developed coastal regions and cities have drawn most of their manpower over the past decade or so.

Wu Changqi, a professor of management studies, said: "When migrants return to their homes for visits nowadays, they become aware of the new jobs created there. There has been much infrastructure development in rural areas.

"So poorly paid agricultural work is no longer the only alternative to working in factories far from home."

The Yangtze River delta is also suffering from a labour shortage, he pointed out, with Wenzhou, a pioneering town of small enterprises, facing a possible shortfall of one million workers before long.

"The only way forward for manufacturers is to move up the value chain, and offer higher wages," he said.