The party plenum: Everybody who loves Mr Xi, say yes | The Economist
COMMUNIST Party plenums are rituals of unchanging arcana. The closed-door, four-day conclave of some 370 senior party leaders that ended in Beijing on November 12th was a typical example, as usual summing up its decisions in a gnomic communiqué full of ambiguities. Yet a parsing of the document suggests President Xi Jinping (pictured above, centre) is tightening his grip on power, and with it his ability to achieve breakthroughs in economic and social reforms.
China’s state-controlled media have hailed the meeting, known as the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee, as “a new historical starting point”. Global Times, an English-language newspaper, said it was just as important as the most famous plenum in the party’s history, which brought Deng Xiaoping to power in 1978 and ushered in profound changes that turned China into the world’s second-largest economy. There is little in the communiqué to back such bullish assertions, but the summary of the proceedings offers hope that the pace of reform will pick up.
For the first time in such a document, the party has called for markets to play a “decisive” role in the allocation of resources. This has been glossed by official media as a step up from previous party language that described the role of market forces as merely “basic”. This new language, according to an academic quoted by Global Times, aroused much debate during preparations for the plenum. Semantics can be very important. The party’s decision in 1992 to create a “socialist market economy”, not just a socialist one, caused an upsurge of reformist zeal, including the privatisation or closure of tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises, as well as market-opening measures that paved the way for accession to the World Trade Organisation a decade later.
As expected, this week’s communiqué contained few indications of specific new policies. These will become clearer in a few days or weeks when the resolution is published, and after senior economic officials meet in December to decide on the country’s economic strategy for the year ahead. There was no mention of financial reforms to allow market forces to determine interest and exchange rates, which many economists view as crucial. On rural land reform, also closely watched, the document merely repeated language introduced at a plenum five years ago about the need to unify urban and rural property markets. Despite its reassuring words about the role of the market, it said the state sector should remain the “main body” of the economy, an odd concept, especially since China’s GDP is now largely generated by the private sector.
But at party plenums, repetition of familiar language is not necessarily a sign of inertia. The meeting in 1978 was laden with Mao-era rhetoric, but led to the ditching of Mao’s economic policies. More important were the signals it sent about Deng’s grip on power, including the return to central roles of many of Deng’s allies who had been purged by Mao. The just-concluded plenum announced two institutional changes that suggest Mr Xi has moved fast to consolidate his position.
The first of these is the setting up of a “state-security committee”. Details of this have not been revealed. It may be Mr Xi’s attempt to rein in a security apparatus that had become too powerful in recent years. Some of its functions are expected to mirror those of America’s National Security Council, which advises the president on foreign policy and tries to ensure that all government agencies are well co-ordinated. China’s new body is thought likely to include representatives from the army and police as well as ministries responsible for foreign and economic affairs. It would be a sign of Mr Xi’s growing power if he has at last persuaded the security forces to act more in concert with the rest of the bureaucracy.
The other notable change is the establishment of a “leading small group” to supervise reforms. Such groups count. They report to the Politburo and help to form and implement policy decisions. Again, no details have been given of the new body, but it could help to overcome bureaucratic rivalries that often stymie reforms. It may even be chaired by Mr Xi. The communiqué calls for “decisive results” by 2020 in unspecified “important areas” of reform.
Not surprisingly, given a fierce crackdown on political dissent in recent months, the document said little about political reform (although for the first time in the history of party plenums, Chinese television indulged in a show of glasnost by broadcasting scenes of group discussions, though participants’ voices could not be heard). The communiqué favourably mentions democracy 12 times, but plenum-watchers learned long ago that this particular count is best ignored.
via The party plenum: Everybody who loves Mr Xi, say yes | The Economist.
China Legal Reform Promises Cause for Cautious Optimism – China Real Time Report – WSJ
The initial communiqué that emanated from China’s major meeting of top Communist Party leaders on November 12th focused on economic reform and had little to say about the legal realm. That changed three days later when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party released a 60-point “resolution” that announced two potentially significant legal reforms and provided more detail about additional reform targets.
While it’s only possible to gauge the transformation of rhetoric into action after the fact, I’m not alone in welcoming the new goals. I recently attended a long-planned meeting in Seattle of a group of specialists on Chinese law. The meeting began on November 14, and the mood was discouraged given the scarcity of references to legal institutions in the communiqué. By the next morning, however, the atmosphere shifted as details of the just-released resolution trickled in.
The resolution specifically mentions two potentially important reforms: abolition of the system of “re-education through labor” (in Chinese: laojiao) and a plan to move the courts and the procuracy (prosecutors) away from the influence of local governments.
Laojiao, initiated in 1957, is a system under which the police may send people to labor camps for up to four years without formal arrest or trial. Initially established to deal with recidivist petty criminals who would otherwise burden the courts, it has been extensively used to incarcerate “counter-revolutionary” dissidents, aggressive petitioners, members of the Falun Gong religious movement and other persons deemed to present unwelcome political challenges to CCP rule. It has long provoked criticism by Chinese legal scholars, other advocates of legal reform and members of the public.
via China Legal Reform Promises Cause for Cautious Optimism – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
India buys third aircraft carrier amid rivalry with China | World news | theguardian.com
India has heightened its rivalry with China by taking possession of its third aircraft carrier, a refurbished Soviet-era vessel.
The £1.4bn ($2.3bn) aircraft carrier, handed over on Saturday at a north Russian shipyard, will help India to counterbalance the expansion of the Chinese navy.
The 45,000-tonne ship, built in the final years of the Soviet Union and named the Admiral Gorshkov, will be escorted by warships to India on a two-month voyage from Russia\’s northern coast. It has been renamed INS Vikramaditya.
A recent upgrade means the carrier, originally designed to carry Yak-38 vertical take-off aircraft, has been re-equipped to carry Mig-29K fighter jets. It can carry up to 30 aircraft and will have a crew of around 2,000.
China and India, the world\’s most populous countries, co-existed peacefully for centuries but relations became strained after the Communist party won the Chinese civil war in 1948. There were three conflicts between the neighbours in the second half of the 20th century, although since 1987, Sino-Indian trade has grown rapidly. India views China\’s relations with Pakistan with suspicion and China is concerned over Indian activity in the South China Sea. In March this year, tensions between troops were defused after a three-week standoff along their disputed border.
India signed the deal to buy the carrier in 2004 after a decade of negotiations. Its reconditioning was to be finished in 2009, but the price was increased and delivery postponed until 2012 under a new agreement, according to the Indian navy.
The handover was later delayed by another year.
India\’s first, British-built, aircraft carrier was bought in the 1960s and was decommissioned in 1997. Another ex-British carrier, the INS Viraat, is reaching the end of its service.
In August, India launched its first home-built carrier. The 37,500-tonne INS Vikrant is expected to undergo extensive trials in 2016 before being inducted into the navy by 2018.
India is the world\’s largest arms buyer and Russia\’s biggest arms customer, buying about 60% of its arms needs from there. But it has started to look for new suppliers and aims to build more hardware itself as part of plans to spend $100bn in the next 10 years on modernising its military. It has recently rolled out new military purchase rules to attract local companies into the sector.
The INS Vikramaditya was commissioned into the Indian navy at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, in a ceremony attended by the Russian deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, and Indian defence minister, AK Antony.
China put its first-ever aircraft carrier, another retooled Soviet-made craft called the Liaoning, into service in 2011 amid tensions with Japan over contested islands and a show of strength in the South China Sea.
In the past year China has been involved in a series of territorial spats with Japan over islets in the East China Sea; and with the Philippines, Vietnam and others over the South China Sea, the location of essential shipping lanes and important natural resources, including oil and gas.
via India buys third aircraft carrier amid rivalry with China | World news | theguardian.com.
China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters
China will ease family planning restrictions nationwide, the government said on Friday, allowing millions of families to have two children in the country\’s most significant liberalization of its strict one-child policy in about three decades.
Couples in which one parent is an only child will now be able to have a second child, one of the highlights of a sweeping raft of reforms announced three days after the ruling Communist Party ended a meeting that mapped out policy for the next decade.
The plan to ease the policy was envisioned by the government about five years ago as officials worried that the strict controls were undermining economic growth and contributing to a rapidly ageing population the country had no hope of supporting financially.
A growing number of scholars had long urged the government to reform the policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiraling out of control, but now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.
While the easing of the controls will not have a substantial demographic impact in the world\’s most populous nation, it could pave the way for the abolition of the policy.
\”The demographic significance is minimal but the political significance is substantial,\” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at Fudan University specializing in China\’s demographics, before the announcement.
\”This is one of the most urgent policy changes that we\’ve been awaiting for years. What this will mean is a very speedy abolishment of the one-child policy.\”
In the 1980s, the government allowed rural families with a girl to have two children, Wang said. \”Ever since the \’80s, there\’s been nothing as clear as this,\” he said.
Wang Guangzhou, a demographer from top government think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, estimated the new policy would affect 30 million women of child-bearing age In a country which has nearly 1.4 billion people.
Although it is known internationally as the one-child policy, China\’s rules governing family planning are more complicated. Under current rules, urban couples are permitted a second child if both parents do not have siblings and rural couples are allowed to have two children if their first-born is a girl.
There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for ethnic minorities and allowing parents who are themselves only children to have two children at most.
Any couple violating the policy has to pay a large fine.
The one-child policy covers 63 per cent of the country\’s population and Beijing says it has averted 400 million births since 1980.
Many analysts say the one-child policy has shrunk China\’s labor pool, hurting economic growth. For the first time in decades the working age population fell in 2012, and China could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.
\”It\’s not a huge reform, there have been small adjustments all along,\” said Liang Zhongtang, a demographer from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
\”I am just worried that they will make no further adjustments for a very long time after they\’ve made this one.\”
Tian Xueyuan, a retired family planning scholar who helped draft the original one-child policy, told Reuters the rules were only meant to last about 25 years.
\”They could have implemented this policy several years ago,\” he said.
Numerous studies have shown the detrimental effects of the one-child policy. China\’s labor force, at about 930 million, will start declining in 2025 at a rate of about 10 million a year, projections show. Meanwhile, its elderly population will hit 360 million by 2030, from about 200 million today.
A skewed gender ratio is another consequence.
Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons. Many families abort female fetuses or abandon baby girls to ensure their only child is a son. About 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, against a global average of 103-107 boys per 100 girls.
Family planning officials have been known to compel women to have abortions to meet birth-rate targets.
Still, the adjustment is likely to be popular.
Zhang Yuanyuan, who has a one-year-old son, said she had already decided to have one more child before the new policy and was willing to pay the fine.
\”We are very, very happy about this new policy,\” Zhang told Reuters.
via China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters.
Reform in China: Every move you make | The Economist
DO YOU understand “the three represents” or “the six tightly revolve-arounds”? Have you fully embraced “ecological development civilisation” or “socialist modernisation construction”? No, neither have we. The communiqué issued after the Communist Party’s third plenum of the 18th Central Committee is as opaque and dense as ever. As usual, optimists can find cause for hope and pessimists will see their worst fears confirmed. The one thing they both agree on is that it is unusually important. Third plenums have a special place in Chinese politics as the venue for big changes in direction—and President Xi Jinping had hinted that this one would be no different.
Will this third plenum turn out to transform China as Deng Xiaoping’s did in 1978? More details will emerge. But on the basis of the document, issued on November 12th, and the choreography before the plenum, we are optimistic.
SOE far, so good
With an increasingly vocal Chinese public making growing demands on its leaders, Mr Xi, like his predecessor, Hu Jintao, has learned to talk a good reformist game. But Mr Hu failed to change much, partly because he never found a way round the mass of vested interests, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and local governments, who benefit from the current system and so stand in the way. Although the communiqué laying down Mr Xi’s priorities contains plenty of party-speak (just as Deng’s did in 1978), some of its content suggests that this chief may be more serious about reform than Mr Hu was.
In economic policy the communiqué calls for the market to play a “decisive” role in allocating resources. Until now, party literature has said the role of market forces should be “basic”. Words matter in China. This tweak is a sign that Mr Xi wants the market to play a bigger part in shaping the economy; it may even signal that he wants to take on the SOEs, which squander vast amounts of capital. In the political arena, the communiqué proposes the setting up of a new “leading small group” to oversee reforms. Made up of senior party leaders, these groups report directly to the Politburo. The job of this new one will probably be to bang together the heads of obstructionist SOE bosses and provincial leaders to make them work together better, and Mr Xi himself could well chair it.
A new “state-security committee” could be more contentious. In foreign affairs, this is expected to mirror America’s National Security Council, which advises the president and helps co-ordinate government agencies. America has long complained about the lack of coherence within Chinese policy-making, which leaves its most important bilateral relationships vulnerable to unpredictable hiatuses and sudden changes in direction. The committee is expected to include the army and police. If so, it could be a sign of Mr Xi’s growing clout and determination to rein in the free-wheeling security forces to ensure that they work with the rest of the state.
Pessimists will find plenty to be gloomy about. Asian markets fell when the plenum made its announcements, perhaps because of the lack of news about financial reform. The communiqué barely mentions the need for changes in rural land ownership let alone household registration (hukou). Although it nods towards judicial reform, it does not speak of allowing any more political freedom. There are fears that the security committee could be used for internal repression. Some see it as a power grab by Mr Xi to give himself a more direct role in the security apparatus.
Yet if Mr Xi is to overcome China’s conservative interests, these changes or something like them are necessary. Too many people do too well out of today’s system to make change easy. The new small leading group should act as an economic commando force, tackling obstacles to reform within the bureaucracy and the party. The state-security committee could aim to ensure that factions do not embroil China in disputes abroad that escalate to the central leadership only very late, when much of the damage has been done.
The new committees leave Mr Xi with more power than any Chinese leader since Deng. A lot depends on what he does with it. If the coming years see more changes, such as economic reform in the countryside, curbs on the party’s clout and greater recognition of the rule of law, then people will look back on the plenum as the start of a better China just as they do now to the 1978 meeting. If Mr Xi does nothing, the country will be heading in a dangerous direction.
New Chinese Agency to ‘Manage’ Social Unrest | StratRisks
Source: RFA
The ruling Chinese Communist Party on Tuesday said it would establish an agency to “manage” growing social unrest, as part of a set of reforms largely focusing on the economy.
The new “state security committee” will tackle social instability and unify other agencies in charge of increasing security challenges, both foreign and domestic, the party’s Central Committee said in a statement after a four-day plenary meeting in the nation’s capital ended Tuesday.
State news agency Xinhua said the committee would “improve the system of national security and the country’s national security strategy” so as to “effectively prevent and end social disputes and improve public security”.
But it gave no further details of how the new plan, which was announced amid a raft of economic reforms, would be implemented.
China’s nationwide “stability maintenance” system, which now costs more to run than its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), tracks the movements and activities of anyone engaged in political or rights activism across the country.
Under this system, activists and outspoken intellectuals are routinely put under house arrest or other forms of surveillance at politically sensitive times.
However, analysts said that the agency was likely a bid by China’s new leadership under President Xi Jinping to curb the powers of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which administers the “stability maintenance” budget and has been slammed for behaving like a law unto itself.
“I think they have suddenly decreed the creation of this state security committee because the political and legal affairs committees have got such a bad name now,” said Chen Ziming, a former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement who is now based in the United States. “Maybe they want to give it a makeover.”
“Also, they want to boost their overseas contacts,” he said. “It’s not just anti-terrorism; it has to do with many aspects of internal security and diplomatic relations.”
“All of those will be strengthened via this new agency,” he said.
New curbs
Shenzhen-based independent commentator Zhu Jianguo said the new committee would likely herald further attempts by the government to stamp out activism and curb online freedom of expression.
“This is exactly what everybody was afraid would happen,” Zhu said. “It will set new curbs and limitations on freedom of speech and thought.”
“If these reforms were genuine, they would be encouraging freedom of thought and expanding opportunities for public supervision [of government],” he said.
He said there had been no signal from China’s leadership that any reforms of the political system were in the pipeline.
“This is very far from any reform of the political system,” he said.
Cheng Li, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and an expert on Chinese politics, said Xi’s administration had taken inspiration from the U.S.’ National Security Council, and was aiming to place more power in the hands of president.
“The official line is to better coordinate the very different domains: the intelligence, military, foreign policy, public security and also national defense,” Cheng told Reuters.
“This gives tremendous power to the presidency,” he said.
Sensitive session
Authorities in Beijing detained or dispersed hundreds of petitioners who tried to voice grievances against the government during the plenary session of the party’s Central Committee.
Police appeared to be on full alert after detaining or intercepting more than 300 former PLA officers last week.
The requisitioning of rural land for lucrative property deals by cash-hungry local governments also triggers thousands of “mass incidents” across China every year.
Many result in violent suppression, the detention of the main organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the government’s wishes.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA’s Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
via New Chinese Agency to ‘Manage’ Social Unrest | StratRisks.
How U.S. and China may administer the “Six Wars”
Hope the scenarios do not actually play out as predicted by The Inndian Defence Review. See – https://chindia-alert.org/2013/10/20/six-wars-china-is-sure-to-fight-in-the-next-50-years-stratrisks/
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 