FOR the first time in more than four decades, the Government is asking urban residents in the north to pay for their own heating this winter.
Free heating during the cold season has been considered a basic right of northern urban residents since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and attempts to make consumers pay for their heat will almost certainly lead to greater discontent.
Vice-Premier Zou Jiahua has issued an urgent notice to local governments urging them to guarantee heating this year, while an experimental fee collection scheme is implemented in selected cities.
The drastic move has been forced on the Government by delinquent state-owned enterprises - traditionally responsible for providing heating for employees - that have routinely failed to pay their bills to the heating plants.
Plants in the northeastern industrial city of Shenyang have only received 32 per cent of payments due this year, leaving a record shortfall of one billion yuan (HK$929.3 million), said a Shenyang government official quoted in the China Business Times.
The shortfall led to 30,000 Shenyang homes not receiving heat last year and, unless 'remarkable' increases were made in heating plant incomes, that figure could rise to 60,000 this year, he said.