Society

China's latest push to ban smoking in indoor public venues has come into effect.

The Health Ministry's amended guidelines on the management of public places that now ban smoking in more venues like hotels and restaurants were implemented Sunday.

Various observers have noted this week that China's economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016. This comes from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April world economic outlook database. Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first time in more than a century that the United States will no longer be the world's largest economy, this development will be the object of some discussion – from various perspectives.

First, let's consider the economics. China has been the world's fastest growing economy for more than three decades, growing 17-fold in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 1980. It is worth emphasising that most of this record growth took place (1980-2000) while the rest of the developing world was doing quite badly by implementing neoliberal policy changes – indiscriminate opening to trade and capital flows, increasingly independent central banks, tighter (and often pro-cyclical) fiscal and monetary policies, and the abandonment of previously successful development strategies.

China's population is aging rapidly, the government said Thursday, though its leaders are refusing to relax strict family planning controls that are part of the cause.

The results of a national census conducted late last year show the proportion of elderly people in the country of 1.34 billion jumped, while that of young people plunged sharply. The census results, announced Thursday, also show that half the population now lives in cities.

The census adds data to the world-changing shifts under way in China in the past decade, as economic reforms raise living standards and pull more people off farms into the cities while families get smaller and the population ages.

China's rapid aging has fueled worries over how long the country will be able to sustain its high economic growth, as fewer young people are available to work in factories and build the roads that transformed it into the world's second biggest economy after the United States.

Chinese citizens will be asked to think about donating their organs in the event of death when applying for drivers' licenses, reported the Legal Evening News on Sunday quoting Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu.

Huang said by the end of this year, all driver's license applicants will be given the option to donate their organs should they die and which organs they'd like to donate.

Huang said the move is to streamline the donor registration system so as to expand the pool of organs available for transplant surgeries.

Currently, China suffers a big shortage of transplantation organs. According to official statistics, China has 1.5 million patients in need of organ transplants each year, but only 10,000 of them could get transplants due to few donations.