I know what you're thinking. Whenever disaster strikes, and the pigs are dropping dead, the laborers are rioting or fifty tons of hydrazine is barreling down your local waterway, the government never seems to get it together to do the one thing that the situation really calls for: convene a press conference.

But this excruciating heartbreak will soon come to an end if this exhaustively detailed report from Xinhua is to be believed. It turns out the State Council Information Office has recognized the government's weakness in this area, and has pledged action. Because of the importance of this announcement to my journalist friends, I am reproducing the Xinhua article here in its entirety:
Press conferences to quickly react to breaking news

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- In the event of breaking news, the Information Office of the State Council will try to respond immediately, organizing news conferences to release information in the fastest way possible, said Cai Wu, head of the Information Office of the State Council here Thursday.
Breathtaking. That's decisive action. I'd expect no less from a government with such manifest dedication to transparency and openness. Of course, I do note the use of the weasel-word "try", as in "try to respond immediately". But I'm sure that's just a typo.

Come the next disaster, I expect a press conference within minutes.

On a similarly surreal note, I note another report on Xinhua today announcing the launch of a website for reporting corruption. That's great news for China's long-suffering peasants, who will now be freed from the burden of making pilgrimmages to Beijing to petition the government for a redress of grievances:
BEIJING, Dec. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- China's discipline watchdog announced here on Wednesday the opening of a website facilitating the public reporting of corruption.

The launching of the website, jubao.gov.cn, is another step forward by the government in curbing corruption through the introduction of strict prevention and punishment measures, said Liu Fengyan, deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Does anybody else get as tingly as I do at the thought of a Central Commission for Discipline Inspection? Tie me up, deputy-secretary; Imagethief has been a very naughty boy!

The site is live (www.jubao.gov.cn) and you can even submit your corruption complaint through the form provided (although a terms-and- conditions screen forces you to wait through a fifteen second countdown, perhaps to give you time to decide if you really want to attach your name and national ID number to your compaint). Alarmingly, however, the first time I accessed the site I got the following warning from Firefox:
Unable to verify the identity of www.jubao.gov.cn as a trusted site.
Worrisome. If even your web browser doesn't trust the government, why should you?

The article comes to a truly bizarre, only-in-China climax:
In the following year, China will scale up its anti-corruption campaign through incorporating it into the country's social and economic development plan, said Liu.

Liu said more than 67,000 new songs with anti-corruption themes were composed and over 24,000 singing concerts held in the past year to educate key officials about self-discipline.
Cracking good work, everybody. The nation is clearly well on-target to meet the anti-corruption song target laid out in the tenth five-year plan. With cadres bombarded with anti-corruption songs at this rate, completely clean government will be just around the corner.

Woodstock, eat your heart out.