Beijing can make life more convenient for all residents

While reading a Beijing newspaper, two stories at the bottom of a page caught my attention. One was about the Beijing municipal government's decision that parents cannot be compelled to buy school uniform for their children any more. The other story was about the abolition of the old rule that the Elderly and Disability Assistance Card holders could spend the special care allowance money deposited by the government into their accounts only in certain special stores.

The editors of the two newspapers treated the stories lightly, perhaps because they saw them as routine information from a couple of departments. But to millions of parents and elderly people, the new measures are a positive response to their needs, showing that the local government takes their concerns seriously.

School uniform was alien to my generation when people had to toil just to make ends meet. Today, uniform has become mandatory even in the rural schools after it was introduced three decades ago. Costing between a few hundred to a few thousand yuan for one set of uniform, school uniform has become more of a burden on parents of young kids. In fact, parents have no choice but to buy it to avoid violating school rules, for which their innocent children have to pay the price.