My very own sentiments.
See also: Chinese challenges
18/06/2012
* China publishes books on officials’ morality
Xinhua: “A book series expounding the moral issues of officials, the first-ever publication on the topic in China, was released for sale Monday in Beijing as part of government-backed efforts to promote integrity among civil servants.
The four-book series embodies the results of research conducted by experts with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences at the request of Beijing authorities two years ago, according to a report published by the Beijing Daily.
The books record the development of theories about officials’ morality through Chinese history and provide case studies, as well as highlight the importance of raising officials’ moral standards in modern society, an official with the Beijing Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was quoted as saying in the report.
The major difference between good and bad officials simply lies in whether they perform duties with a conscience, says the prologue of the series.
Nowadays, the CPC, as the ruling party, must value virtues of officials and it is a general trend for officials to abide by professional ethics, according to a passage in one of the books.
The book also points out a moral official in modern China should always serve the people as well as be loyal, pragmatic, fair-minded and incorruptible, while always improving oneself.
The series will serve as anti-graft reading material for all Communist Party cadres in Beijing, according to the report.”
via China publishes books on officials’ morality – Xinhua | English.news.cn.
Let’s hope the cadres take this book as seriously as their forebears took Mao’s Red Book.
See also: Listening and responding to its people.
16/06/2012
* China to Investigate Death of Labor Activist
NY Times: “Chinese officials, bending to public pressure, have announced an investigation into the death of a veteran labor activist whose body was found hanging from a hospital window this month, days after he gave a series of interviews in which he vowed to continue fighting to end the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
The dissident, Li Wangyang, who was convicted of organizing protests during the pro-democracy movement of 1989, had only recently emerged from prison. Friends and relatives have questioned how Mr. Li could have taken his own life because he was disabled from the beatings and other mistreatment he suffered during his 21 years behind bars.
Mr. Li, 62, was blind, nearly deaf and had difficulty walking unassisted.
According to the state-run Hong Kong China News Agency, public security officials in Hunan Province, where Mr. Li died, promised an investigation by a “team of experienced criminal investigation experts.” According to the agency, a police spokesman acknowledged that public pressure had prompted the announcement on Thursday.
Earlier this week, local officials in Shaoyang, the city where Mr. Li died, changed the cause of death to “accidental” from “suicide.”
Human rights advocates raised doubts after his death became public, but the suspicions began to spread more widely in the past week after family members and friends of Mr. Li disappeared or were warned by the police not to speak to the news media.”
via China to Investigate Death of Labor Activist – NYTimes.com.
Yet another case of the Chinese authorities bending to public opinion. See also:
- https://chindia-alert.org/2012/06/15/chinese-officials-apologise-to-woman-in-forced-abortion/
- https://chindia-alert.org/2012/05/20/china-dissident-chen-guangcheng-arrives-in-the-us/
- https://chindia-alert.org/2012/03/05/wukan-village-elects-own-committee-hint-of-jasmin-spring/
- https://chindia-alert.org/2012/05/31/new-punishments-for-police-abusing-prisoners/
15/06/2012
* Recent Cases Shed Light on China’s Feared Interrogation System
NY Times: “Membership in the Chinese Communist Party has many advantages. Officials often enjoy government-issued cars, bottomless expense accounts and the earning potential from belonging to a club whose members control every lever of government and many of the nation’s most lucrative enterprises.
Interrogation (Photo credit: Steve Rhode)
There is, however, one serious downside. When party members are caught breaking the rules — or even when they merely displease a superior — they can be dragged into the maw of an opaque Soviet-style disciplinary machine, known as “shuanggui,” that features physical torture and brutal, sleep-deprived interrogations.
And that is exactly what appears to have happened to Bo Xilai, once one of China’s most charismatic and ambitious politicians. Mr. Bo has not been seen in public since mid-March, when he was stripped of his position as party chief of the sprawling municipality of Chongqing in southwest China. He was later accused of “disciplinary violations” and removed from the Politburo.
Few who have been pulled into the system emerge unscathed, if they emerge at all. Over the last decade, hundreds of officials have committed suicide, according to accounts in the state news media, or died under mysterious circumstances during months of harsh confinement in secret locations. Once interrogators obtain a satisfactory confession, experts say, detainees are often stripped of their party membership and wealth. Select cases are handed over to government prosecutors for summary trials that are closed to the public.
“The word shuanggui alone is enough to make officials shake with fear,” said Ding Xikui, a prominent defense lawyer here.
Although the leadership has not disclosed details of its investigation into Mr. Bo, insiders say it involves a number of allegations, including corruption, spying and obstructing justice on behalf of his wife, who has been implicated in the death of a British businessman, Neil Heywood.
Two people who have been briefed said Mr. Bo’s troubles had been compounded by his effort to rise to the top levels of power and protect himself by currying favor with the military. In addition to inquisitors from the party’s commission for discipline, the army’s political division is playing a role in the interrogations, the sources said.
via Recent Cases Shed Light on China’s Feared Interrogation System – NYTimes.com.
Related articles
- Former Wukan Village Party Members Detained and Interrogated (theepochtimes.com)
- Chinese official Li Xingong detained on suspicion of raping underage girls during police interrogations – @Reuters (vancouversun.com)
- China police interrogate party members over letter (sinodaily.com)
- Petition From 300 Chinese Villagers Circulated in Politburo (theepochtimes.com)
15/06/2012
* Toilets Become a Battle Cry in India
NY Times: “You could be forgiven for thinking that safety is the top concern for travelers brave enough to venture on Indian railways. It’s not. Unclean toilets appear to be their main grouse, according to a recent survey.
Across India, toilets appear to be the new battleground on which wars are being waged, whether it’s about hygiene, austerity, gender equality or corruption.
On India Ink, we’ve previously written how sanitation is a dump in India, with more than half of all households having no toilet facilities.
Even Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest people, has made his new mission to “reinvent the toilet.” “One of my ultimate dreams now is to reinvent the toilet — find a cheaper alternative to the flush toilet that does not require running water, has smell characteristics better than the flush toilet and is cheap,” he told the Times of India newspaper.
But it’s mostly the women in India who are paying a price for toilets -– literally. On Thursday Jim Yardley wrote in The New York Times that unlike men, many women in Mumbai often have to pay to urinate –- an injustice that has started a “Right to Pee” campaign.
Toilets have also been flushed into the austerity debate last week, when India’s Planning Commission ran up a 3 million rupee, or $54,100, bill for renovating the toilets at its headquarters, a move viewed by some as lavish and a drain on public funds. That was followed by news that the western state of Goa had given 2 million rupees, or $35,700, to build a single air-conditioned toilet in the constituency of the former chief minister of the state.
Think that raises a stink? In India, where the government is reeling with corruption scandals, the innocuous toilet made a brief swirl when many reportedly went missing. According to an April report in an Indian daily, the Telegraph, the federal government says it delivered about 87.1 million toilets to households across villages over the last decade. But the census shows that only about 51.6 million had toilets in 2011. That’s a case of 35 million missing toilets.”
via Toilets Become a Battle Cry in India – NYTimes.com.
Another example of discrimination against women in India. See: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/06/14/india-the-worst-big-country-to-be-a-woman/
See also: Will India overtake China in 25 years?
15/06/2012
* Deutsche Bank Makes Cross-Border Yuan Payment Under New China Central Bank Scheme
WSJ: “A pilot scheme intended to make it easier for companies to settle trade in the Chinese yuan officially kicked off Friday, with Deutsche Bank AG completing the first cross-border yuan payment transaction under the program.
The new program, launched by the Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China on a trial basis, aims to streamline the process for settling cross-border trade in the yuan by exempting qualified companies from submitting original trade documentation to support each payment. Information on the program has recently been circulated among banks in Shanghai, bankers said, though the central bank hasn’t yet made a public announcement on the initiative.
Deutsche Bank, one of the largest providers of liquidity to currency markets, executed the transaction on behalf of the China subsidiary of Huettenes-Albertus, a German manufacturer of foundry chemical products, under which the company paid a foreign supplier in yuan.
“In the past, settling trade in yuan has been both time-consuming and labor intensive,” said Beng-Hong Lee, Deutsche Bank’s head of foreign-exchange trading in China. “This is a big leap forward.”
The new scheme currently is limited to companies and banks operating in Shanghai. It follows the PBOC’s move in March, when the central bank expanded the use of yuan in trade settlement to exporters and importers across the country.
As China pushes ahead with its drive to spread global use of its currency, many analysts expect the yuan to account for a bigger share of international trade settlement. Beijing started to allow cross-border trade to be invoiced and paid for in its currency about three years ago, and since then, yuan-settled trade has grown to about 10% of China’s total trade. Some analysts have predicted that figure to grow to 3.7 trillion yuan ($587 billion) this year, or 15% of China’s total trade.”
via Deutsche Bank Makes Cross-Border Yuan Payment Under New China Central Bank Scheme – WSJ.com.
Another step in freeing the world economy from US $ domination.
15/06/2012
* Arrested spy compromised China’s U.S. espionage network
Reuters: “A Chinese state-security official arrested this year on allegations of spying for Washington is suspected to have compromised some of China’s U.S. agents in a major setback that angered President Hu Jintao, sources said.
Hu personally intervened this year, ordering an investigation into the case after the Ministry of State Security arrested one of its own officials for passing information to the Americans, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The official, an aide to a vice minister, was taken into custody sometime between January and March after the ministry became alarmed last year over repeated incidents of Chinese agents being compromised in the United States, they said.
Seal of the C.I.A. of the United States Gov’t (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The ministry’s own investigations found the aide had been working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for years, divulging information about China’s overseas spy network in the nation’s worst espionage scandal for two decades, they added.
The sources’ comments represent the first confirmation that overseas Chinese espionage was deemed to have been damaged by the security breach, which has been kept quiet by both Beijing and Washington. Reuters first reported it on June 1.”
via Exclusive: Arrested spy compromised China’s U.S. espionage network: sources | Reuters.
15/06/2012
* Chinese officials apologise to woman in forced abortion
BBC News: “City officials in China have apologised to a woman who was forced to have an abortion and suspended three people responsible, state media reports.
This came after photos showing a foetus and the mother, Feng Jianmei, shocked web users.
She was made to undergo the procedure in Shaanxi province in the seventh month of pregnancy, local officials said after investigating.
Chinese law clearly prohibits abortions beyond six months.
The Ankang city government said it decided to suspend three officials in Zhenping county following initial investigations. It also urged the county government to conduct a thorough review of its family planning operations, said Xinhua news.
China has long denied that its vast army of local family planning officials are using abortion to enforce the country’s one-child policy.
In this case, though, there has been a rare admission that her pregnancy was terminated against her will, and now action will be taken against certain officials.
What has made the difference appears clear.
Minutes after the abortion, a family member posted on the internet a photograph of Feng Jianmei’s aborted foetus, clearly formed at seven months, lying next to her on a hospital bed and the image went viral.
It is a classic illustration of the challenge posed to China’s one party system by the internet.
On Thursday night, the city officials apologised to Ms Feng, 27, and her family, the report said.
She was ”forced to terminate her pregnancy” at a hospital in Zhenping on 2 June, said Xinhua.
Officials in Zhenping county claimed she agreed to the abortion because she was not allowed to have a second child by law. She already has a daughter, born in 2007.
But activists said she was forced into the abortion as she could not pay the fine for having a second child.”
via BBC News – Chinese officials apologise to woman in forced abortion.
15/06/2012
* More people see China as the world’s top economy, poll finds
LA Times: “Never mind that the U.S. economy is about twice the size of China’s. More people than ever perceive the Asian giant as the world’s dominant economic power, according to a Pew Research Center global survey.
The results are believed to reflect popular opinion that the U.S. and Chinese economies are heading in opposite directions.
“The global financial crisis and the steady rise of China have led many to declare China the world’s economic leader,” said the report, which was released Wednesday and also addressed a series of global opinions on the perception of nations and their leaders.
For the first time, respondents around the world picked China as the world’s leading economy over the U.S., by a margin of 42% to 36%.
Asked the same question last year, a median of 41% said the U.S. is the world’s leading economy and only 35% picked China.
Even many American respondents said they believed China was ahead, with 41% saying China was the leading power and 40% saying the U.S.
Chinese respondents were more sanguine (and realistic), with 48% calling the U.S. the primary economic power and 29% choosing China.
There’s ample reason to believe that China is ascendant. The country was able to insulate itself from the 2008 financial crisis with minimal exposure to foreign banks. What it lost in trade it made up for with a massive stimulus plan. China is also sitting on a cache of $3.2 trillion in foreign reserves that many believe it can wield as a financial weapon.
But China’s path to global dominance is anything but assured and, at the very least, decades off, economists say.”
via More people see China as the world’s top economy, poll finds – latimes.com.
They say: “perception is reality”!
See also: G2?
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- 10 Ways America Is Losing Its Superpower Status to China (dailyfinance.com)
- The Last Years of America’s Historic GDP Reign (businessweek.com)
- 11 International Agreements That Are Nails In The Coffin Of The Petrodollar (judgementofamerica.wordpress.com)
14/06/2012
* Chinese State Council improves food safety
China Daily: “The State Council laid out measures to improve food safety on Wednesday, including tighter supervision and harsher punishment for violators.
“It is an onerous task for the government to ensure food safety,” as China’s food industry is still suffering from nonstandard management and many hidden safety risks, according to a statement released after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.
Police officers examine decayed beans at an illegal food processing plant in Cangshan county, East China’s Shandong province, on June 1. The plant has been shut down. Initial investigation found its products, fried beans and peanuts, were mainly sold to rural market. [Zhu Wutao / For China Daily]
The government should enhance supervision by setting up an efficient mechanism that covers all links in the food industry and a rigid food recall system for destroying defective products, the statement said.
The State Council has vowed a “vigous crackdown” on those who endanger food safety.
Meanwhile, policies, laws and regulations should be revised to increase costs for violators, according to the statement.
The country will intensify a series of food safety supervisions, including strengthening enterprises’ accountability for their food products and streamlining current food quality testing standards .
The country will establish credit profiles for food enterprises, releasing quality information to the public in time, the statement said.
Also, the country will give prizes to people who expose substandard food products, it said.
China is facing increasing risks on food safety as some food enterprises have put too much emphasis on profits, negatively affecting sales, Pu Changcheng, deputy director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said at a news conference on Monday.”
via State Council improves food safety |Politics |chinadaily.com.cn.
Related articles
- China listens to and responds to citizens
- Student’s food safety website fuels his fame (chinawatch.washingtonpost.com)
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 