However in China’s own unionised state enterprises the health and safety record is also

However, in China’s own unionised state enterprises, the health and safety record is also poor. Statistics are difficult to obtain, but according to the Ministry of Labour there were 28,200 industrial fires in the first 10 months of 1993, killing 1,480 people and injuring 51,340.A new wide-ranging labour law came into force a year ago as the government tried to respond to growing labour unrest, in foreign-invested factories and in state enterprises. A month later, a fire at the Taiwanese joint venture Gaofu Textiles factory in Fuzhou killed 61.Among those later jailed for their part in the Zhili factory tragedy were two Shenzhen fire officials who had been bribed into letting the enterprise pass its fire inspections.Dangerous conditions are no deterrent to unemployed rural workers who eagerly seek work in joint-venture factories. Salaries probably average around 500 yuan (pounds 40) a month, significantly more than these workers could earn in their home provinces.After the 1993 deaths, the Chinese government introduced regulations forcing foreign joint ventures to set up branches of the government-controlled, All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). The victims, almost all migrant female workers, had been locked into their dormitory building because the owners were concerned about possible thefts They had no chance of escape. But all too often, bribery and corrupt practice mean that safety regulations are flouted.In November 1993, a fire at the Hong Kong joint-venture Zhili toy factory in Shenzhen killed 87 workers and injured 47.

At least 37 workers at the Longhua town site were also injured.Two years ago, a series of fires in southern China shocked Peking into trying to improve safety for the millions of migrant Chinese workers who staff the export-driven enterprises, often working in sweat-shop conditions. This latest tragedy came despite a two-year-old government drive to enforce better health and safety standards in foreign-owned enterprises.The blaze at the Taiwanese venture started early on Monday and lasted more than three hours, destroying over 3,000 square metres of factory workshops and workers’ dormitories. And I think at times I’ve tried to play other roles, and it’s almost always been wrong.”. TERESA POOLE

Peking
The human cost of southern China’s export-driven economic success rose again this week when a fire in a Christmas decoration factory killed 19 workers in the Shenzhen special economic zone, bordering Hong Kong. And on several occasions, and that’s one, I did things that weren’t right.”He meant henceforth, he said, to listen more carefully, to be more precise and more thoughtful in what he said.”You know, I’m the Speaker of the House I’m not an assistant professor of history I’m not an analyst I’m not a commentator. “There’s no question that there are times, as I’ve described it, where it’s like throwing an interception straight into the other team’s defence. Which is why he too has been engaging in a little end-of-year self-flagellation.

In a weekend interview with CNN he acknowledged he had not projected himself as well as he might have and said his New Year’s resolution would be to adopt a more thoughtful and contemplative approach to life.He had erred, for example, in complaining publicly about seating arrangements on the presidential plane on the flight to Israel for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. “President Clinton,” she noted, “has captured words like compassion.”Lurking, unspoken, over the proceedings was the shadow of Mr Gingrich. It was he who had masterminded the Republicans’ victory in November 1994 by tutoring party candidates in the semantics of power. Thus he taught them to attribute to their cause words like “courage”, “family” and “peace” and to their Democratic rivals words like “sick”, “corrupt” and “stagnation”.Yet today, with Mr Gingrich’s negative poll ratings exceeding 60 per cent, a growing number of Republicans are beginning to wonder whether he might be a better professor than a leader, whether perhaps he might turn out to be his revolution’s greatest liability. “If you don’t use the right words you can’t get the message across Clinton is using more effective words than the Republicans Clinton is a better communicator. Now, if Ronald Reagan were our leader, we’d win the battle.”Laura Ingraham, one of the organisers of the powwow, noted that while conservatives were driving the nation’s political discourse, they had lost their edge in the debate.

Thus Ralph Reed, the secularly ambitious head of the Christian Coalition, said the Republicans should shift the rhetorical emphasis away from dismantling central government to restoring power to the states and to the people.Michael Huffington, who vainly spent $25m in 1994 trying to win election to the Senate, elaborated in a speech on Mr Reed’s idea. But the last thought on anybody’s mind was that the time might have come to redefine Republican goals. The sacred task remained the same: to destroy “the Liberal Welfare State” and return to the individual the right to shape his own destiny alone. The problem, they concluded, lay in the way the Second American Revolution had been packaged.The debate turned less on the substance of Republican ideas than on how to sell them better. For the truth had dawned that Newt Gingrich’s plans “to change the world” and “shift the entire planet” had been thwarted by checks and balances in the constitution and the democratic imperative to pander to the vagaries of public opinion.The revellers used the Dark Ages Weekend as an opportunity to regroup, take stock, evaluate.

The name was chosen as a spoof – “to show we Republicans have a sense of humour”, as one Congressman explained it – on a New Year’s bash attended by President Bill Clinton called the Renaissance Weekend.The organisers of the Dark Ages event, a couple of young Washington lawyers, provided guests with plenty of jolly, Olde Worlde amusement: a Charlemagne tennis tournament, a William the Conqueror golf competition, a masked ball and a Canterbury Tales banquet.But the mood was rueful: December had been a cruel month. On that basis, it contends, the FDA has no right to try to regulate cigarette sales.. JOHN CARLIN

Washington
Sobered in 1995 by the discovery that democracy is not conducive to revolution, a group of leading Republicans spent the New Year festivities in nostalgic recollection of an era when the business of government was accomplished by royal fiat.More than 300 conservative congressmen, businessmen and thinkers gathered at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami for an event called the Dark Ages Weekend. In the meantime, the tobacco industry has taken steps to try to block the FDA’s path by filing a lawsuit.Central to the industry’s case is its claim that the FDA is mistaken in suggesting that cigarettes fit the legal definition of a drug, and that the effects of smoking fit the definition of addiction. The others were Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco and the Liggett Group.The FDA has also received large submissions from anti-smoking advocates who support the move but would prefer its provisions to be much stricter.It is likely to be months before the FDA is able to make final preparations for enacting the rules.