And for foreigners there's a particular problem of having your usual standards of judgment mismatched to China's scale. I have been in cities that looked middling-size. Based on the street grid and downtown area, I would have estimated the population at maybe 100,000 -- then I'm told that two million people live there. (True? I don't know.) Every reporter in China knows about the government statistics reporting 60,000 to 70,000 mass disturbances throughout the country each year. Could that possibly be true? Two hundred a day? It doesn't seem plausible, but I see the figure quoted all the time.
In the corrected version, ninety thousand people had died in accidents of all sorts in China last year, not just in coal mines. The coal mine fatality rate was more like nine per day, not 250.
GUANGZHOU, China—In a Feb. 19 story about Chinese university graduates taking jobs as housekeepers, The Associated Press erroneously quoted the general manager of a training school and placement service for domestics saying her agency has yet to receive an application from a man.
Cong Shan, general manager of Guangzhou Home EZ Services, said males are currently enrolled in training courses.
The story also quoted Shan as saying that she had never had a university graduate apply for training until last year. She now says some university graduates applied before 2008, but their numbers have jumped since last August to 90 percent of the 500 to 600 women applicants.
