Voices from two sessions

"Land policies of many local governments are, in essence, designed to pull down farmers' houses."

Chen Xiwen, CPPCC member and deputy director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said local governments don't dare use farmland for construction projects but hardly hesitate to sell off the land where farmers have their homes. He quoted a senior expert as saying that there is no other place in the world where the number of villages is shrinking so fast.

"It has taken me six years to prepare a proposal to ban many 'health foods' that claim to cure men's sexual disability, but in fact harm the body."

Zhong Nanshan, CPPCC member and director of Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, pointed out a loophole in the laws due to which there is a lack of regulation in the market of health foods. The 74-year-old doctor became a household name when he exposed a cover-up of the SARS epidemic in the spring of 2003.

"Not every culture can become an industry."

Wang Guirong, NPC deputy and president of Jinzhou Peking Opera Troupe in Liaoning province, said the Peking Opera cannot be developed into a profitable "cultural industry", which many government officials want. The government should not simply cut off subsidies for Peking Opera troupes and push them to the market in the current round of cultural system reform, he said.

"People should be given the right to choose whether they want iodine in their salt or not."

Lu Yiyu, NPC deputy and medical professor at Zhejiang University, said China's practice of adding iodine in almost all salt available in the market should be halted. The iodine that an average Chinese takes is more than the maximum standard of the World Health Organization, he said. At present, people can only buy salt without iodine by having a prescription of a major hospital or at designated stores.