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31/07/2019

China claims progress towards world’s biggest trade deal, but India remains biggest roadblock to RCEP

China suggests good progress made in Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership talks after marathon 10-day negotiations in Zhengzhou
Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has opted to skip the upcoming high-level meetings, adding fuel to rumours that the country could be removed

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has overtaken the US to become China’s second-largest trading partner in the first half of 2019. Photo: AP

China has claimed “positive progress” towards finalising the world’s largest free-trade agreement by the end of 2019 after hosting 10 days of talks, but insiders have suggested there was “never a chance” of concluding the deal in Zhengzhou.

The 27th round of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations closed on Wednesday in the central Chinese city.

The 10-day

working level conference brought over 700 negotiators from all 16 member countries to Henan province, with China keen to push through a deal which has proven extremely difficult to close.

If finalised, the agreement, which involves the 10 Asean nations, as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India, would cover around one-third of the global gross domestic product, about 40 per cent of world trade and almost half the world’s population.

“This round of talks has made positive progress in various fields,” said assistant minister of commerce Li Chenggang, adding that all parties had reaffirmed the goal of concluding the deal this year. “China will work together with the RCEP countries to proactively push forward the negotiation, strive to resolve the remaining issues as soon as possible, and to end the negotiations as soon as possible.”

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (fifth left) poses with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries during the ASEAN-China Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok. Photo: AFP

China is keen to complete a deal which would offer it a buffer against the United States in Asia, and which would allow it to champion its free trade position, while the US pursues protectionist trade policy.

The RCEP talks took place as Chinese and American trade negotiators resumed face-to-face discussions in Shanghai, which also ended on Wednesday, although there was little sign of similar progress.

As the rivalry between Beijing and Washington has intensified and bilateral trade waned, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) overtook the US to become China’s second-largest trading partner in the first half of 2019. From January to June, the trade volume between China and the 10-member bloc reached US$291.85 billion, up by 4.2 per cent from a year ago, according to government data.

The Asean bloc is made up of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos.

China will work together with the RCEP countries to proactively push forward the negotiation, strive to resolve the remaining issues as soon as possible, and to end the negotiations as soon as possible. Li Chenggang

RCEP talks will now move to a higher level ministerial meeting in Beijing on Friday and Saturday, but trade experts have warned that if material progress is not made, it is likely that the RCEP talks will continue into 2020, prolonging a saga which has already dragged on longer than many expected. It is the first time China has hosted the ministerial level talks.

But complicating matters is the fact that India’s Commerce Minister, Piyush Goyal, will not attend the ministerial level talks, with an Indian government official saying that he has to participate in an extended parliamentary session.

India is widely viewed as the biggest roadblock to concluding RCEP, the first negotiations for which were held in May 2013 in Brunei. Delhi has allegedly opposed opening its domestic markets to tariff-free goods and services, particularly from China, and has also had issues with the rules of origin chapter of RCEP.

China is understood to be “egging on” other members to move forward without India, but this could be politically explosive, particularly for smaller Asean nations, a source familiar with talks said.

Deborah Elms, executive director of the Asian Trade Centre, a Singapore-based lobby group, said that after the last round of negotiations in Melbourne between June 22 to July 3 – which she attended – there was “frustration” at India’s reluctance to move forward.

She suggested that in India’s absence, ministers in China could decide to move forward through a “pathfinder” agreement, which would remove India, but also potentially Australia and New Zealand.

India’s Commerce Minister, Piyush Goyal, will not attend the ministerial level talks this week in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

This “Asean-plus three” deal would be designed to encourage India to come on board, Elms said, but would surely not go down well in Australia and New Zealand, which have been two of the agreement’s biggest supporters.

New Zealand has had objections to the investor protections sections of RCEP, and both countries have historically been pushing for a more comprehensive deal than many members are comfortable with, since both already have free trade agreements with many of the other member nations.

However, their exclusion would be due to “an unfortunate geographical problem, which is if you’re going to kick out India, there has always been an Asean-plus three concept to start with”. Therefore it is easier to exclude Australia and New Zealand, rather than India alone, which would politically difficult.

A source close to the negotiating teams described the prospect of being cut out of the deal at this late stage as a “frustrating rumour”, adding that “as far as I know [it] has no real basis other than a scare tactic against India”.

There was “never a chance of concluding [the deal during] this round, but good progress is being made is what I understand. The key issues remain India and China”, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

Replacing bilateral cooperation with regional collaborations is a means of resolving the disputesTong Jiadong

However, Tong Jiadong, a professor of international trade at the Nankai University of Tianjin, said Washington’s refusal to recognise India as a developing country at the World Trade Organisation could nudge the world’s second most populous nation closer to signing RCEP.

“That might push India to the RCEP, accelerating the pace of RCEP,” Tong said, adding that ongoing trade tensions between Japan and South Korea could also be soothed by RCEP’s passage.

“Replacing bilateral cooperation with regional collaborations is a means of resolving the disputes between the two countries,” Tong said.

Although the plan was first proposed by the Southeast Asian countries, China has been playing an increasingly active role, first as a response to the now defunct US-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and more recently as a means of containing the impact of the trade war.

China’s vice-commerce Minister, Wang Shouwen, told delegates last week that RCEP was “the most important free trade deal in East Asia”. He called on all participants to “take full advantage of the good momentum and accelerating progress at the moment” to conclude a deal by the end of the year.

Source: SCMP

Posted in Asean nations, ASEAN-China Ministerial Meeting, Asia, Asian Trade Centre, Australia, Bangkok, Beijing, biggest roadblock, Brunei, Cambodia, China alert, claims, Delhi, Henan province, India alert, Indian Commerce Minister, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Melbourne, Myanmar, Nankai University of Tianjin, New Zealand, Philippines, Piyush Goyal, progress, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), remains, rivalry, Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, towards, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Uncategorized, United States, Vietnam, Washington, World Trade Organisation (WTO), world’s biggest trade deal, Zhengzhou | Leave a Comment »

08/07/2019

Two men killed in road accident inferno after Maserati slams into BMW in central China

Father of three is killed as flames engulf car in crash at stop light in Henan
Woman from wealthy family is held as police investigate drink-driving

Footage from an intersection in Yongcheng, Henan shows the BMW being propelled across the road before bursting into flames. Photo: Weibo

A driver and her two passengers are in custody in central China after the Maserati SUV she was driving slammed into a BMW, killing two men.

Police said a 23-year-old woman surnamed Tan drove the Maserati through the streets of Yongcheng in Henan province on Wednesday night, scraping against cars on the way.

They said her vehicle struck the BMW at a red traffic light, causing it to burst into flames, killing two passengers and injuring the driver.

Tan and two others in the SUV, a woman and a man, were also injured. All three were detained by police but have not yet been charged. Police said Tan returned a blood-alcohol reading of 0.167 – well over the legal limit of 0.02.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that Tan and friends Zhang and Liu had met at a barbecue restaurant that night for dinner, according to police. After drinking, Tan took her friends for a drive. The Maserati scraped against multiple cars before the driver was slowed down by pedestrians signalling for her to stop, but she suddenly sped away from the scene. It crashed into the BMW soon afterwards, CCTV said.

The BMW bursts into flames after being shoved across the intersection. Photo: Weibo

Two men in the back of the BMW were killed in the fire that engulfed the vehicle, while the driver, also a man, suffered severe burns, according to the report. The occupants of the Maserati were treated in hospital for bone fractures and abdominal injuries, CCTV said.

Henan-based Dahe News said college graduate Tan was from a well-to-do family. Sources told the news outlet that the two men who died were work colleagues. One, aged 45, left three children, it saiA police video shot from a gantry camera showing the moment the BMW was hit was published online. The car was thrown across an intersection as it burst into flames.

Man arrested after car crashes into shop, injuring 12, in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

The accident has prompted heated online discussion in China, with some calling for the death penalty for “such reckless behaviour and disregard for the law”.

Others have doxxed the detained driver – finding photos on a Weibo account that allegedly belonged to Tan showing she had an appetite for luxury goods and expensive cars.

In recent years, a “hate the rich” sentiment has emerged in Chinese society. As the wealth gap widens, many people have become vocal about injustices they feel are fuelled by the affluent and privileged.

Others voiced anger at the legal system, saying wealthy people could buy the law.

Coach driver in crash that left five dead and 32 injured had been working 12-hour shifts, Hong Kong police say

Source: SCMP

Posted in barbecue restaurant, BMW, bursting into flames, CCTV, Dahe News, expensive cars, Henan province, inferno, killed, luxury goods, Maserati, road accident, slams into, State broadcaster, Uncategorized, Weibo, Yongcheng | Leave a Comment »

02/07/2019

China Focus: China marks 98th anniversary of CPC’s founding

BEIJING, July 1 (Xinhua) — Monday marks the 98th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Across the country, various types of events — book readings, concerts, visits to memorials, and renewing vows — have been held to mark the occasion.

Founded in 1921, the CPC has grown from a small party of about 50 members into the world’s largest ruling party, with more than 90 million members.

A brick-and-wood building on Xingye Road in Shanghai, where the CPC held its first national congress, has been packed with visitors in days leading to the anniversary.

In 1921, delegates representing about 50 CPC members nationwide convened the first national congress in the building, though they later had to move to a boat on Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing of east China’s Zhejiang Province due to harassment by local police.

The historic building has been open to the public as a museum since 1952.

Near Nanhu Lake, hundreds of members of the public gathered on a city square to present a chorus to wish the CPC a happy birthday. A relay run was held on Monday to commemorate the occasion.

Zhang Xianyi, the curator of the Nanhu Lake Revolution Museum, said the museum has become increasingly popular. On average, 11,000 people visit the museum and the boat every day. Last year, over 1.25 million people paid visits to the sites, he said.

Also on Monday, Li Jian, deputy manager-in-general of a private electronics maker in Zhengzhou, capital city of central Henan Province, had a new title. He was elected as head of a seven-member CPC branch in the company.

Li works in the Henan branch of the China Communication Technology Co., Ltd., a private company headquartered in Shenzhen.

Over the past decades, a growing number of private companies have set up CPC branches.

“By establishing a CPC branch, I hope the organizational life of CPC members can facilitate progress in achieving company goals,” Li said.

“As a CPC member myself, I hope I can play a leading role in guiding our staff forward,” he added.

Zhao Lei, an employee of the company and also a CPC member, said the spirit of Party building is in line with the entrepreneurial spirit in that it strengthens the sense of responsibility, innovation, attention to details and persistent learning.

“A strong CPC organization attracts people to the company and lends a competitive edge to it,” he said.

“Establish a CPC branch — only a good company actively seeks to do such a thing, if you ask me. This company has been an honest one. We have complaints, and it responds to them,” said company driver Su Nanju, who is not a CPC member.

Across the country, an education campaign on the theme of “staying true to our founding mission” has been launched throughout the Party in which members are called on to keep firmly in mind the fundamental purpose of whole-heartedly serving the people and its historic mission of realizing national rejuvenation.

In southwest China’s Guizhou Province, a conference was held on Monday to commend outstanding CPC members in the battle against poverty. China vows to eradicate absolute poverty by 2020. In areas still perplexed by impoverishment, dedicated CPC members are leading the people to exert transformational changes.

“People say if you have a daughter, never marry her to someone from Qinggangba, because she would have nothing to eat but pickled vegetables,” said Leng Chaogang, Party chief of the Qinggangba village at the conference.

“But now, people here have become rich thanks to good policies of the Party, dedicated work of the cadres, and the relentless strength of the people. We will continue to work harder to make our lives better,” he said.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in 98th anniversary, China Communication Technology Co., Ltd, China marks, first national congress, founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Guizhou Province, Henan province, Jiaxing, Nanhu Lake, Nanhu Lake Revolution Museum, Qinggangba village, Shanghai, Uncategorized, Xingye Road, zhejiang province, Zhengzhou | Leave a Comment »

01/07/2019

Crunch time as gaokao exam season starts for China’s university hopefuls

Annual tests still an academic pressure cooker for students wanting to get into the nation’s top universities, despite efforts to change the system
The gruelling exam is the sole criteria for admission to university in China

After months of study, China’s high school students are about to be put to the test in the annual “university entrance examinations which begin on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

For the past six months, the life of 18-year-old Shanghai student Xiao Qing has revolved around preparation for one of China’s annual rites of passage.

Every day at school, from 7.20am to 5.30pm, the final-year secondary school student in Changning district has studied previous test papers for the gaokao, officially known as the National Higher Education Entrance Examination.

“Sometimes I feel my bottom hurts from sitting for so many hours,” she said. “We feel like we are test machines.”

Xiao Qing will put all of that preparation to the real test from Friday, when over two to three days she will be among more than 10 million people trying to qualify for one of the spots at a Chinese university.

Most students get just one shot at the gaokao, the sole criteria for admission to university in China. It’s a gruelling process that has been criticised over the years as too focused on rote learning, putting too much pressure on students and privileging applicants living near the best universities.

Education authorities have gone some way to try to address these problems. In 2014, the Ministry of Education started letting students choose half of their subjects to introduce some flexibility into the system.

Apart from the compulsory subjects of Chinese, mathematics and English, students are now supposed to be able to choose any three of six other subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, politics, history and geography.

Previously, secondary school students had been split strictly into liberal arts or science majors in a system that was introduced in 1952 and revived in 1977 after being suspended during the Cultural Revolution.

Last go at exam success for China’s ‘gaokao grandpa’

Wen Dongmao, a professor from Peking University’s Graduate School of Education, said the changes expanded the opportunity for students to follow their interests.

“The new gaokao gives students plenty of choices of subjects to learn and to be evaluated on. I think people should choose which subject to learn based on what they are interested in,” Wen said.

“Gaokao reform is designed according to some methods by overseas universities, like American and Hong Kong schools. Its direction is right, but there will be inevitable problems brought by it.”

One of the problems is the uneven implementation of the changes throughout the country, with just 14 of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions having introduced them.

In the eastern province of Anhui, for example, the reforms were supposed to go in effect from September last year but were postponed without reason, news portal Caixin.com reported.

The report quoted a teacher from Hefei No 1 Middle School in the provincial capital as saying the school was not ready for the changes.

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“Shanghai and Zhejiang are economically advanced and we are not at that level,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s a big challenge for us to manage so many students’ choices of gaokao subjects.”

In neighbouring Jiangxi province, a high school history teacher said many places opposed the reform mainly “because of the shortage of resources”.

“It’s hard to roll out gaokao reform because we don’t have enough teachers or classrooms to handle the students’ various choices of subjects. Students can choose three out of six courses and that means there are 20 potential combinations,” the teacher was quoted as saying.

Chinese high school students study late into the night for the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. Photo: EPA-EFE

In addition, the system allows students to take the tests in more than one year and submit the highest scores when applying to universities.

“I heard from teachers in other provinces that students will take the tests of the selected subjects again and again for fear that other students will overtake them. That’s exhausting and will just put more burden on the students,” the Jiangxi teacher said.

He also said the gaokao process put extra pressure on teachers who feared the tests would push students to extremes. One of his students contemplated jumping from a bridge after she thought she had done poorly in the Chinese section of the exam.

“She called me, saying she felt it was the end of the world. I was shocked and hurried to the bridge,” he was quoted as saying. He spoke to her for more than an hour about before the girl came down, going on to get a decent score.

Critics also say the system is weighted in favour of students in bigger cities such as Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, home to the country’s top universities.

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Li Tao, an academic from the China Rural Development Institute at Northeast China Normal University in Changchun, Jilin province, said about 20-25 per cent of gaokao candidates from Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai were admitted to China’s elite universities, compared with just 5 or 6 per cent in places like Sichuan, Henan and Guangdong.

Li said that was because the top universities were funded by local governments and gave preference to applicants from those areas.

“To make it fairer, the Ministry of Education has insisted over the years that elite universities cannot have more than 30 per cent of incoming students from the area in which it is located,” he said.

Despite these challenges, gaokao was still a “fair” way to get admitted to university in China, Li said.

“Gaokao is the fairest channel to screen applicants on such a large scale, to my knowledge,” he said. “It does not check your family background and every student does the same test paper [if they are from the same region]. Its score is the only factor in evaluating a university applicant.”

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In Shanghai, as the clock ticks closer to the gaokao test day, Xiao Qing said she was feeling the pressure.

She said she would keep up her test prep to ensure she got the score she needed to study art in Beijing.

“I am trying my utmost and don’t want to regret anything in the future,” she said.

At the same time, she is not pinning her entire life on it.

“Life is a long journey and it is not decided solely by gaokao,” she said.

“I don’t agree with my classmates that life will be easy after gaokao. I think we still need to study hard once we get to university.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in academic pressure cooker, Anhui province, Annual tests, Beijing, Biology, Caixin.com, Changchun, chemistry, China Rural Development Institute, China’s university hopefuls, Chinese, Crunch time, Cultural Revolution, English, gaokao, gaokao exam season, geography, Graduate School of Education, guangdong province, Hefei, Henan province, History, Jiangxi Province, Jilin, liberal arts, mathematics, Ministry of Education, National Higher Education Entrance Examination, nation’s top universities, Northeast China Normal University, Peking University, physics, Politics, Science, Shanghai, sichuan province, Tianjin, Uncategorized, zhejiang province | Leave a Comment »

13/06/2019

Could Chinese scientists have found evidence of world’s first stoners in 2,500-year-old Xinjiang graveyard?

Findings support earliest record of cannabis use, written in 440BC
Researchers speculate psychoactive THC had role in grim funeral rites

Researchers say their findings at a burial site in Xinjiang about cannabis use 2,500 years ago back up a Greek record written around 440BC. Photo: Handout

Scientists say a burial site in mountainous northwestern China contains evidence that cannabis smoke was used there as far back as 2,500 years ago, corroborating the earliest record of the practice, written by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus.

They said the evidence was found in a wooden bowl containing blackened stones unearthed at a Scythian cemetery in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Chemical analysis showed traces of THC – tetrahydrocannabinol – the potent psychoactive component in cannabis.

Yang Yimin, lead author of a paper published in the journal Science Advances on Thursday, said the discovery at Jirzankal Cemetery, close to the border of Tajikistan, Pakistan and India, was “jaw-dropping”.

Scythians were horseback warriors who roamed from the Black Sea across central Asia and into western China more than 2,000 years ago. Herodotus wrote in The Histories around 440BC that they used marijuana, the earliest written record of the practice.

Scientists in Xinjiang found hemp had been burned on stones inside these wooden bowls 2,500 years ago. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences and Max Planck Institute

“The Scythians take the seed of this hemp and … they throw it on the red-hot stones. It smoulders and sends forth so much steam that no Greek vapour-bath could surpass it.

The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapour-bath,” Herodotus wrote.

Yang, who led an international team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and the University of Queensland, said that until now there was no evidence to back up the Greek historian’s account.

“There was never any archaeological proof to the claim. We thought – is this it?” Yang said.

The discovery posed a question for the research team: where would the plants have come from? While hemp was commonly found in many parts of the world and was used for fabric, cooking and medicine, most wild species contained only small amounts of THC.

Ruins of 2,000-year-old coin workshop found in central China’s Henan province

Yang and his colleagues speculated that the altitude, 3,000 metres (9,843 feet) above sea level, and strong ultraviolet radiation might have resulted in a potent plant strain with THC levels similar to those in marijuana today.

“From here it was selected, probably domesticated and then went to other parts of the world along ancient trade routes with the Scythian nomads, forming an enormous ring of culture that shared the ritual of smoking cannabis,” Yang said.

Archaeologists said the site, with its 40 circular mounds and marked by long strips of black and white stones, could have been a burial ground for tribal members, with human sacrifice and cannabis part of the last rites.

Researchers suspect a potent strain of cannabis grew close to the Xinjiang burial site. Photo: Chinese Academy of Sciences and Max Planck Institute

So the early pot party might not have been the kind of celebration Herodotus described, the study’s authors suggested.

While the Scythians might have been inhaling the smoke to try to communicate with the dead in the next world, evidence suggested that a sacrifice – perhaps a war captive or a slave – was struck repeatedly on the head with a sword and the body hacked to pieces nearby, the researchers said.

Source: SCMP

Posted in cannabis, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese scientists, evidence, first stoners, found, Germany, graveyard, Greek record, grim funeral rites, hemp, Henan province, Herodotus, human sacrifice, India alert, Jirzankal Cemetery, marijuana, Max Planck Institute, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Pakistan, psychoactive THC, Science Advances, Scythians, Tajikistan, tetrahydrocannabinol, ultraviolet radiation, Uncategorized, University of Queensland, vapour-bath, Xinjiang, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region | Leave a Comment »

13/06/2019

Chinese tour guide barred after forced shopping trip in scenic Guilin

Visit to beauty spot spoiled as tourists ordered off the bus to spend, spend, spend

Guilin is renowned for its scenic cruises along the Li River, through magnificent karst mountains. But one tour group was forced on an unexpected shopping trip. Photo: Alamy

A tour guide in the scenic city of Guilin in southern China has been stripped of her licence after forcing tourists to spend at least 20,000 yuan (US$2,900) in local shops.

The tour guide, surnamed Zhao, was captured on video telling her customers they had an hour to spend the money and she would accept no excuses.

The short clip, which has been circulating widely on Chinese social media this week, was filmed on June 1, according to online news portal QQ.com.

“You might have thousands of reasons to refuse me, such as you already have this stuff at home,” Zhao said in the video. “I don’t care why you have come to Guilin. Now you have chosen this group … get off the bus and spend 20,000 yuan [in] an hour.”

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Some of the tourists can be heard on the video murmuring “how can it be like this?”

The 55 members of the tour group, from Hunan province in central China, had travelled to Guilin in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region from May 30 to June 2. According to their itinerary, they were supposed to visit three shops on the day the incident happened, but instead visited six, the QQ.com report said.

One of the tourists bought more than 10 quilts, at more than 4,000 yuan each.Guilin is among China’s most popular tourism destinations, famous for its boat cruises on the Li River, which winds through beautiful karst mountains along its banks.

The Guilin tourism bureau said on Tuesday it had ordered Zhao to apologise to the group, and had revoked her tour guide licence.

In its statement on microblogging platform Weibo, the authority also said it was investigating her employer.

Ferrying tourists along China’s Yellow River

Tour guides are banned from forcing tourists to shop or join programmes charging extra fees. A State Council regulation issued two years ago set a 10,000-50,000 yuan penalty for individuals violating the rule, and a further 100,000-500,000 yuan fine for their tour company.

Despite the crackdown in recent years, it is not uncommon for Chinese tourists to be coerced by tour guides into extra spending during their trips. China’s authorities have repeatedly reminded the public to be wary of companies that lure potential tourists with extremely low group fees.

In July last year, a group of 300 elderly people, from the central province of Henan, were reportedly forced to buy jewellery from a shop in Hong Kong. The tour agency charged them just 380 yuan for the whole package and promised there would be no forced shopping activity, according to Henan TV.

But, despite the assurance, they were taken to a jewellery shop where their tour guide told them, “Henan people, spend some money to earn face for your Henan folks.”

Those who did not spend as they were urged had to wait in the shop for hours and were cursed by the tour guide, according to the television report. It is not clear if the tour guide or the agency received any penalty.

Source: SCMP

Posted in barred, forced shopping trip, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guilin, Henan province, Hong Kong, jewellery, karst mountains, Li River, licence, news portal qq.com, State Council regulation, Tiffany, tour guide, Uncategorized, video, Yellow River | Leave a Comment »

24/05/2019

A pollution crackdown compounds slowdown woes in China’s heartland

ANYANG/SANGPO, China (Reuters) – For years, China’s industrial heartland has been cloaked in smog, its waterways choked with pollution pumped from enormous clusters of factories churning out the mountains of cement and steel needed to build the Chinese economy.

Aiming to tackle what has become a huge public health problem, the authorities have cracked down on polluting industries, targeting provinces like Henan, which has a population of 100 million people and hundreds of factory towns.

According to interviews with factory and business owners, and consumers and workers across Henan, that crackdown – conducted with often heavy-handed local enforcement – is crippling the economies of towns and cities that depend on polluting industries.

Manufacturers across Henan have been particularly hard hit by the new environmental regulations, compounding the pressures the province faces from China’s slowing economy and a grinding trade war with the United States.

It also highlights the trade-off China faces between providing a healthier environment for its citizens and maintaining economic growth in a province whose climb from poverty has lagged that of coastal regions.

China does not provide statistics on the costs of the environmental crackdown, but it has said that short-term pain will lead to long-term growth through an economic “upgrade”.

The information office of the State Council, China’s cabinet, did not respond to a faxed request for comment on the economic effects of the new restrictions.

It’s difficult to get a full picture of Henan’s economy from unreliable official figures, as it is for the whole country. Henan’s official growth rate was 7.6% in 2018, higher than the national rate and down 0.2 of a percentage point from 2017.

But the interviews conducted by Reuters across Henan suggest consumers are spending less, cities are struggling to retool their economies and the pollution crackdown is hurting businesses and employment.

STEEL TOWN PAIN

The steel-producing centre of Anyang, which has long had some of the worst air in China, is one place that has been hit hard by the anti-pollution campaign.

The city of more than 5 million people, dominated by the infrastructure and insignia of the state-owned Anyang Iron and Steel Group, has forced local industry to upgrade equipment and curb pollution, and shut down companies that were unwilling or unable to comply.

Li Huifeng, president of Baoshun High-Tech Corporation, a coking coal company founded by his parents in 1983, said the cost of compliance had been painful.

Baoshun’s huge plant, built in the hills in the west of Anyang, was forced to implement production cuts last winter even though it had installed low-emissions equipment that exceeded required standards.

“Last year, business was really good but this year it is full of uncertainties,” said Li. He added that new efficiency guidelines were likely to result in the closure of many producers of coking coal, which is used in steel production.

Li Xianzhong, the owner of the Xinyuan Steel Mill in Anyang’s western outskirts, said he was facing curbs on production as well as spiralling costs because of the new environmental regulations.

According to industry estimates, environmental costs per tonne of steel produced have risen to around 150 yuan per tonne, up from less than 50 yuan per tonne when the war on pollution was launched in 2014.

“All this equipment needs a lot of capital, and after you’ve invested, the operation costs are also higher,” said Li. “If you don’t meet the standards, you aren’t allowed to operate.”

Near the sprawling Anyang steel plant in the city centre, residents and workers complained that the new environmental inspection rules had made it harder to make a living.

Many small workshops, which often use small metalworking furnaces, have also been targeted.

“Before we would just give them a pack of cigarettes or treat them to a meal and you’d then be fine for a year, but now it’s no use,” said a bicycle repairman, identifying himself by his surname Zhang, whose workshop near the plant was shut by inspectors.

Over the past years, Anyang has tried encouraging new and cleaner forms of economic growth. It has shut hundreds of small polluters in sectors like ceramics and cement, and tried to attract industries like solar panels and electric vehicles by offering incentives and building sprawling new industrial parks.

However, it has struggled to compete with numerous Chinese cities making similar bets, especially as China’s economy slows.

And the results of the anti-pollution efforts have been mixed.

Steel still accounts for more than half of Anyang’s economy – unchanged from a decade ago – and the environment is still bad. The taste of brimstone hangs in the air, and the fairy lights festooned on hundreds of cranes on the city’s skyline could only be dimly seen during a recent visit.

Part of the problem, according to Liu Bingjiang, who heads the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s air pollution office, is that smog is also blowing in from neighbouring industrial regions, undermining local cleanup efforts.

“All these measures, all these plans are in place, but it still can’t solve the smog,” said Li, the steel mill owner.

SHUTTING DOWN THE BOOTMAKERS

The anti-pollution campaign is also hitting much smaller industrial centres.

Sangpo, a dusty two-street village in northeast Henan, used to live off scores of sheepskin processing factories cranking out winter boots modelled on UGG, the American brand with Australian roots.

While the industry was the main employer in the village, that came with a heavy environmental cost: treating the raw sheepskin consumed copious amounts of water and contaminated the local water supply.

Last July, the government moved to close most of the factories, sending dozens of police cars into Sangpo with sirens wailing to enforce the shutdown.

Government inspectors were installed to keep watch at each factory to ensure compliance with the order. Three factory owners were arrested for violating environmental regulations.

During a visit to Sangpo by Reuters, most factories were idle during what should have been peak production season. Hundreds of workers had left town in search of work elsewhere, leaving behind shuttered shopfronts and deserted roads.

“The village is at a tipping point,” said a former factory owner who only wanted to be identified by his surname, Ding. Most businesses were mostly “more dead than alive,” he added.

Before the factories were shut, the village of 6,500 people, mainly from the Hui Muslim minority, had been punching well above its weight.

It achieved national recognition as a thriving model of e-commerce, winning glowing write-ups in national newspapers after it was named in 2015 by the tech giant Alibaba as central China’s very first “Taobao village” – a designation for top rural sellers on the company’s internet retailing platform.

But that all changed last year as China’s pollution crackdown intensified. The top county-level official, factory owners said, held a town hall meeting and threatened to shut everyone down permanently. A deal was made for 19 of the 135 factories to remain.

Those wanting to stay open agreed to upgrade their businesses and invest in equipment to ensure they met water treatment standards. Factories that opted out were shut, their boilers and processing equipment destroyed.

The government of Mengzhou, which oversees Sangpo, declined to comment when reached by phone. But Mengzhou’s mayor said last year that the crackdown was necessary and in accordance with the popular will, according to a statement on the Mengzhou government website.

Sangpo village’s party chief declined to comment when reached via the Chinese messaging app WeChat. Calls to his cellphone went unanswered.

The county government’s plan is to corral remaining factories into a new industrial zone by the end of the year. But remaining business owners are worried about the slow pace of construction and fear they will be forced to shut.

Ding, the former factory owner, said business owners didn’t expect the crackdown – which has also discouraged lending from banks – to be so harsh.

“Everyone in the village was moaning and sighing but no one thought it would be this extreme,” Ding said. “We are at our wits’ end.”

Source: Reuters

Posted in Alibaba, American brand, Anyang, Anyang Iron and Steel Group, Australian roots, Baoshun High-Tech Corporation, cellphone, Cement, China's cabinet, China's heartland, Chinese economy, compounds slowdown woes, curb pollution, environmental crackdown, factories, Henan province, Hui Muslim minority, Mengzhou, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Pollution, pollution crackdown, Sangpo, Smog, State Council, Steel, Taobao village, UGG, Uncategorized, upgrade equipment, water pollution, WeChat, Xinyuan Steel Mill | Leave a Comment »

21/05/2019

Chinese street cleaner says unlicensed taxi drivers who throw cigarette ends cost him nearly half a day’s wages

Man says his pay packet takes a hit every time cabbies flick butts onto the street
Zhengzhou city management says supervisors are too zealous with staff fines

Local authorities say a street cleaner in Henan province fined for the cigarette butts left by smokers on his beat may be the victim of a zealous supervisor. Photo: Weibo

A street cleaner in eastern China who was filmed complaining about the hefty fines he had to pay for the cigarette ends found littering his section of road has won a hearing for his case and the support of internet users, social media site Pear Video said on Tuesday.

In the video taken on Saturday, the elderly man from Zhengzhou in Henan province claimed that he was once fined 260 yuan (US$38) – 7 yuan (about US$8) per cigarette end – from an 86 yuan per day pay packet.

“Today, I had to clean up five or six thousand cigarette butts,” the man said in the video while working outside a subway station.

“All the fines come out of my salary. This month they docked me a few hundred yuan.”

The Zhengzhou street cleaner says he can pick up thousands of cigarette ends off the street each day but the littering in his section does not stop. Photo: Weibo

The man blamed littering on unauthorised taxi drivers who throw cigarette ends into the street.

“These black cab drivers come here every day, again and again. They never stop coming here,” the cleaner was quoted as saying.

Pear Video spoke to other street cleaners in Zhengzhou, who confirmed that they were fined 7 yuan per cigarette butt found after cleaning.

It’s a dirty job, but don’t treat them like trash: Hong Kong’s cleaners are an aged, overlooked group

However, city authorities denied that the penalty system was strictly enforced and blamed overzealous monitoring officers.

“[Management patrol] will say things like this because they want to supervise the street cleaners. But there are no detailed written guidelines, and this was never formally implemented,” a representative from the Zhengzhou City Management Command Centre was quoted as saying in the report.

“It is just for the purpose of verbal supervision and encouragement.”

The Zhengzhou official said the centre would investigate further and speak to the street cleaners about fines.

In response to the cleaner’s complaints, city authorities in Zhengzhou say they will investigate and speak to staff about fines. Photo: Weibo

The video stirred up angry reactions on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.

“When [Pear Video] investigated they say it hasn’t been implemented. If they didn’t investigate, they would have just carried on giving fines,” read one comment that attracted more than 17,000 likes.

Street cleaners in China often earn meagre salaries for gruelling manual labour for long periods of time.

Last month, it emerged that more than 500 street cleaners in the city of Nanjing were ordered to wear GPS tracking bracelets that would alert authorities if they stayed in the same place for more than 20 minutes. The manufacturer removed the feature after a backlash inside and outside China.

Source: SCMP

Posted in black cab drivers, butts, Chinese street cleaner, cigarette ends, City Management Command Centre, cost, day’s wages, Henan province, Hong Kong, Pear Video, supervisors, taxi drivers, throw, Uncategorized, unlicensed, Weibo, Zhengzhou | Leave a Comment »

21/05/2019

China’s green efforts hit by fake data and corruption among the grass roots

Local officials have devised creative ways to cover up their lack of action on tackling pollution
Falsified monitoring information risks directing clean-up efforts away from where they are needed most

China’s efforts to cut pollution are being hampered by local officials who use creative methods to hide their lack of action. Photo: Simon Song

China’s notoriously lax local government officials and polluting companies are finding creative ways to fudge their environmental responsibilities and outsmart Beijing’s pollution inspectors, despite stern warnings and tough penalties.

Recent audit reports covering the past two years released by the environment ministry showed its inspectors were frequently presented with fake data and fabricated documents, as local officials – sometimes working in league with companies – have devised multiple ways to cheat and cover up their lack of action.

Local governments have been under pressure to meet environmental protection targets since Chinese President Xi Jinping made it one of his top three policy pledges in late 2017.

The performance of leading local officials is now partly assessed by how good a job they have done in cleaning up China’s much depleted environment.

According to the reports released this month by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, pollution inspectors have found evidence in a number of city environmental protection bureaus of made-up meeting notes and even instructions to local companies to forge materials.

Cao Liping, director of the ministry’s ecology and environment law enforcement department, said many of the cases uncovered were the result of officials failing to act in a timely manner.

“In some places, local officials didn’t really do the rectification work. When the inspections began, they realised they didn’t have enough time, so they made up material,” he said.

China ‘still facing uphill struggle in fight against pollution’

While some officials are covering up their inaction, others are actively corrupt. According to Guangzhou’s Southern Weekend, since 2012 there have been 63 cases involving 118 people in the environment protection system involved in corruption.

In the southwest province of Sichuan, 32 current and former employees of Suining city’s environmental protection bureau were found to be corrupt, raking in illicit income of 6.32 million yuan (US$900,000).

Fabricated notes

The party committee of Bozhou district in Zunyi, Guizhou province in southern China, was found to have fabricated notes for 10 meetings – part of the work requirement under the new environmental targets – in a bid to cheat the inspectors.

The case was flagged by the environment ministry in a notice issued on May 10, which said party officials in Bozhou lacked “political consciousness … the nature of this case is very severe”.

Watering down results

Environmental officials in Shizuishan, in the northwest region of Ningxia, tried to improve their results in December 2017 by ordering sanitation workers to spray the building of the local environmental protection bureau with an anti-smog water cannon.

The intention was to lower the amount of pollutant particles registered by the building’s monitoring equipment.

The scheme may have gone undetected if the weather had been warmer but the next day a telltale layer of ice covered the building and the chief and deputy chief of the environmental station in the city’s Dawokou district were later penalised for influencing the monitoring results.

1 million dead, US$38 billion lost: the price of China’s air pollution

Similar tactics were deployed in Linfen, in the northern province of Shanxi in March 2017, when former bureau chief Zhang Wenqing and 11 others were found to have altered air quality monitoring data during days of heavy pollution.

The monitoring machine was blocked and sprayed with water to improve the data and Zhang was also found to have paid another person to make sure the sabotage was not captured by surveillance camera.

According to the environment ministry, six national observation stations in Linfen were interfered with more than 100 times between April 2017 and March 2018. In the same period, monitoring data was seriously distorted on 53 occasions.

Zhang was sentenced to two years in prison in May last year for destroying information on a computer.

Bad company

A ministry notice on May 11 flagged collusion by local officials and businesses in Bozhou in southeast China’s Anhui province. Companies were given advance notice of environmental inspections, with instructions to make up contracts and temporarily suspend production in a bid to deceive inspectors.

In Henan province, central China, inspectors found a thermal power company had been using a wireless mouse to interfere with the sealed automatic monitoring system. They were able to remotely delete undesirable data, eliminating evidence of excessive emissions, and only provided selective data to the environment bureau.

Officials in Shandong reprimanded for failing to cut pollution

In another case, from 2017, an environmental inspection group in Hubei province, central China, found a ceramics company had been working with the data monitoring company to alter automatically collected data on sulphur dioxide emissions.

Criminal offence

Cao said that while the cheating by grass-roots officials was serious, the involvement of companies in falsifying data was a major issue that made the work of inspectors even harder.

“Some fraudulent methods are hidden with the help of high technology, so it’s hard for us to obtain evidence. Besides, the environment officials are not totally familiar with these technologies,” he said.

The environment ministry was working on solutions to the problems, he said, adding that falsifying monitoring data was now a criminal offence.

Fake data was particularly serious, he said, because it could directly influence his department’s decisions about where to deploy resources.

Wang Canfa, an environmental law expert at the China University of Political Science and Law, said the problem of fake data could damage the government’s credibility but also prevent it from taking measures in time.

“If the water pollution or air pollution is severe in one place but the local government has said it’s not a big deal, then the investment needed to control the situation might go to other places,” he said.

Zhou Ke, a professor of environment and resources law at Renmin University, said there was an incentive for local officials to cheat because the inspection results were directly related to their career prospects.

Officials ended up cheating or forging materials to protect local interests or their own political achievements, he said.

Source: SCMP

Posted in among, Anhui province, Bozhou, Cao Liping, ceramics company, China University of Political Science and Law, China’s green efforts, Chinese President Xi Jinping, corruption, ecology and environment law enforcement department, environmental law expert, fabricated, fake data, grass roots, Guangzhou, Guizhou Province, Henan province, hit, hubei province, Linfen, local governments, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, professor of environment and resources law, Renmin University, shandong province, Shizuishan, sichuan province, Southern Weekend, Suining city, Uncategorized, Wang Canfa, Zhang Wenqing, Zhou K, Zhou Ke, Zunyi | Leave a Comment »

09/04/2019

Int’l trade fair opens in central China

ZHENGZHOU, April 8 (Xinhua) — An international investment and trade fair opened Monday in central China’s Henan Province.

More than 15,700 business delegates, including 2,566 from overseas, are taking part in the 13th China (Henan) International Investment and Trade Fair in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, according to the organizer.

The fair covers an exhibition area of 54,000 square meters. A batch of cooperation projects is expected to be inked at the fair, with projects each worth more than 1 billion yuan (149 million U.S. dollars) to account for about one-third of all deals to be signed.

A variety of activities, including a forum on “Air Silk Road” will be held during the fair. More than 170 company executives and 43 scholars will participate in these activities.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in Air Silk Road, China alert, Henan province, International Investment and Trade Fair, international trade fair, Uncategorized, Zhengzhou | Leave a Comment »

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SHUTTING DOWN THE BOOTMAKERS

Chinese street cleaner says unlicensed taxi drivers who throw cigarette ends cost him nearly half a day’s wages

China’s green efforts hit by fake data and corruption among the grass roots

Int’l trade fair opens in central China

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