Archive for ‘Reform’

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04/11/2013

China sends graft busters to more provinces, government departments | Reuters

As the anti-corruption campaign gathers pace, one cannot but be reminded of the Joe McCarthy ‘red under every bed’ anti-communist ‘witch hunt’ of the 50s in the US. See – http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/senatorjosephmccarthy.asp.  

The main difference, I suppose, is that there were far fewer ‘commies’ than McCarthy suspected; but one wonders if there will be far more corrupt officials than the Chinese Watchdog suspects.

“China has sent anti-corruption investigators to six more provinces and four government departments, the Chinese Communist Party\’s corruption watchdog said on Monday, in the government\’s latest move to tackle graft.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has dispatched inspectors to government departments that include official news agency Xinhua and the Commerce Ministry, the watchdog said in a statement on its website.

Other targets include the southern economic powerhouse of Guangdong, coal-rich Shanxi and the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Since taking office in March, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called corruption a threat to the ruling Communist Party\’s survival and vowed to go after powerful \”tigers\” as well as lowly \”flies\”.

Authorities have already announced the investigation or arrest of a handful of senior officials. Among them, former executives from oil giant PetroChina are being investigated in what appears to be the biggest graft probe into a state-run firm in years. These investigations are unrelated to this new round of probes, or the previous one, which began in May.

The May probes, which lasted through the summer and reported back in September, targeted five regions and five departments, including the poor southern province of Guizhou, the southeastern province of Jiangxi and coal-rich Inner Mongolia, as well as the state-owned China Grain Reserves Corporation and the China Publishing Group Corp.

The party has so far given few details of the outcome of the first round of investigations, in line with its secretive nature, though the anti-corruption watchdog publishes website reports of a steady stream of minor officials being probed.

Speaking to officials in October ahead of this new round of probes, Wang Qishan, the head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, urged colleagues to spare no effort in rooting out corruption.”

via China sends graft busters to more provinces, government departments | Reuters.

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01/11/2013

Chinese land reform: A world to turn upside down | The Economist

MORTGAGING a village home is a sensitive issue in China. A nervous local official has warned residents of Gumian, a small farming community set amid hills and paddies in Guangdong province, that they risk leaking state secrets if they talk to a foreign reporter about the new borrowing scheme that lets them make use of the value of their houses. They talk anyway; they are excited by what is going on.

Urban land in China is owned by the state, and in the 1990s the state allowed a flourishing property market to develop in the cities. That went on to become a colossal engine of economic growth. But rural land, though no longer farmed collectively, as it was in Mao’s disastrous “people’s communes”, has stayed under collective ownership overseen by local party bosses. Farmers are not allowed to buy or sell the land they work or the homes they live in. That hobbles the rural economy, and the opportunities of the farmers who have migrated to the cities but live as second-class citizens there.

Hence the importance of experiments like those in Gumian. Cautious and piecemeal, they have been going on for years. Some are ripe for scaling up. Handled correctly, such an expansion could become a centrepiece of Xi Jinping’s rule.

On October 7th Mr Xi said the government was drawing up a “master plan” for not just more reform, but a “profound revolution”. Such talk is part of the preparations for a plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee which will begin on November 9th. It is the third such meeting since Mr Xi came to power; because the first two plenums of a party chief’s term are given over largely to housekeeping matters, including party and government appointments, third plenums are the ones to watch.

And Mr Xi is marking this one out as particularly important. In private conversations with Western leaders he has been comparing the event to the third plenum that, in 1978, saw Deng Xiaoping’s emergence as China’s new strongman after the death of Mao two years earlier, and set the stage for the demise of the people’s communes. Indeed “profound revolution” is a deliberate echo of a phrase of Deng’s.

via Chinese land reform: A world to turn upside down | The Economist.

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01/11/2013

China’s State Council think tank sets out roadmap for reform | South China Morning Post

A top government think tank has unveiled a detailed road map for a series of far-reaching economic policy changes, in one of the strongest indications yet that the Communist Party intends to stay on the path of reform.

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The recommendations by the State Council\’s Development Research Centre came ahead of the much-anticipated third plenum of the party\’s 18th Central Committee next month, a critical opportunity for President Xi Jinping to advance his economic and social reform agendas.

In addition, their release was accompanied by a prediction from Yu Zhengsheng – the No4 member of the party\’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee – that the annual gathering would result in \”unprecedented\” reforms.

The proposals span eight areas: finance, taxation, land, state assets, social welfare, innovation, foreign investment and clean governance, according to a copy of the 10,000-word report published over the weekend by China News Service. It recommends sensitive changes like breaking up state monopolies and speeding land reforms.

The source of the recommendations was as interesting as the details. Among its authors were the think tank\’s chief, Li Wei, who served as secretary to former premier Zhu Rongji, and Liu He, a top economic adviser to Xi.

Although the road map would be subject to behind-the-scenes horse-trading during the plenum, the document was clearly aimed at restricting the government\’s role in economic matters and allowing more freedom in the market. It sets a timetable for action extending to 2020.

The report recommends an ambitious plan to make the yuan a major international trade- settlement and invoicing currency within 10 years, as well as a reserve currency in \”regional markets\”.

It highlighted three projects key to advancing economic reform: relaxing control over market access, setting up a \”basic social security package\” for all residents and allowing sales of collectively owned rural land.

The national social security package would provide all citizens with a social security card to claim modest but equal pension, medical insurance and education subsidies.

Meanwhile, the unpopular hukou system – which for decades has discouraged migration by tying mainlanders\’ benefits to their registered place of residence – would be phased out.

The road map also proposes granting farmers the right to trade their collectively owned land under a unified open market in which urban and rural lands would be valued equally.

Currently farmers only have rights to use collectively owned land and receive meagre compensation when their land is claimed by local governments for development projects. The situation has emerged as a leading cause of social unrest.

The plan proposed fighting rampant official corruption by establishing a clean governance allowance, which officials could claim after retirement if they are found to have been honest during their careers. But some experts questioned the feasibility of the reform plans, given the many possible vested interests.

\”The top leadership may view it necessary to push for reforms, to things such as land rights and the social security system, but how the ideas will be received by the interest groups remains to be seen,\” said Professor Hu Xingdou , of the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Guan Qingyou, assistant dean at the Minsheng Securities Research Institute, cautioned that the road map was only one of several research reports submitted to the top leadership ahead of the party plenum.

via China’s State Council think tank sets out roadmap for reform | South China Morning Post.

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17/09/2013

China Communist Party investigators tried over drowning

The Communist Party of China seems to be trying hard to apply the ‘rule of law’ to its own cadres.  Must be a good thing.

BBC: “The trial has begun in China of six Communist Party officials accused of causing the death of a man who drowned after his head was repeatedly plunged in icy water during an investigation.

File photo: Yu Qiyi poses for a photo at an exhibition held at a hotel in Beijing, 2 September 2012

Yu Qiyi, the chief engineer of a state-owned company in Wenzhou, was being interrogated by party officials – and not police – when he died on 9 April.

As the trial got under way, the family lawyer said he was ejected from court.

Analysts say the case casts light on the darker side of party discipline.

Indeed the case, which is being heard in the city of Quzhou, appears to be a rare acknowledgement of some of the methods that lie behind the country’s well publicised crackdown on corruption, according to correspondents.

The case is extremely sensitive and the lawyer for Mr Yu’s family has already expressed his anger at being removed from court, saying the legal process was flawed.

Reuters also reports that the lawyer for one of the accused expressed concern about the court’s actions because her client wanted to apologise.

There has been no comment from the lawyers of the other accused men and neither the government nor the Communist Party has commented publicly on the case.”

via BBC News – China Communist Party investigators tried over drowning.

Posted in China alert, Good news, Human rights, Illegal practices, Interrogation, Openness, Politics, Reform, Rule of law | Leave a Comment »

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11/09/2013

China ditches pointless awards in latest anti-waste push

More austerity.

Reuters: “China said on Wednesday that it will ditch 76 pointless official – and sometimes obscure – awards as it seeks to rein in waste and extravagance, part of President Xi Jinping‘s crusade against pervasive corruption.

Government departments will, for example, no longer be able to award prizes for “excellent vocational education teaching materials” or “administration in accordance with the law” for tax collectors, according to the new rules.

“In recent years, many government departments … have been obsessed with these kinds of awards and evaluations and formalism has run rampant,” the central government said in a statement on its website (www.gov.cn).

“Not only has this not had the desired effect, it has been a huge waste of personnel and resources and has even caused unhealthy tendencies, causing a strong reaction in society.”

A similar campaign in 2009 had resulted in annual savings of 6.4 billion yuan ($1.05 billion), the government said.

“The cancelling of these 76 awards is just the first step, and the project will continue and deepen,” it added.

Plaques marking the award of such prizes and evaluations can be seen everywhere in China from ministries to parks and subways and generally have little real meaning as they are mostly given for political rather than competitive reasons.

The new rules echo demands made of officials to simplify their lives and get closer to the people by Xi since he took over as Communist Party chief last November.

He has made cutting back on ostentation and waste a key theme of his administration, seeking to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the party.”

via China ditches pointless awards in latest anti-waste push | Reuters.

see also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/05/25/restraint-is-the-new-red-in-china/

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11/09/2013

Guangzhou to empty labour camps

SCMP: “Guangzhou plans to empty its hard-labour camps by year’s end, state media reported yesterday, the latest locality to phase out the notorious punishment.

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Rights advocates have long complained that the “re-education through labour“, or laojiao, system which lets police send suspects to work camps for up to four years without trial, is widely abused to silence dissidents, petitioners and other perceived troublemakers.

In March, newly installed Premier Li Keqiang promised nationwide reforms to the system this year, but concrete steps have yet to be announced. In the meantime, some cities or provinces have been moving away from the punishment.

“All [100 or so] detainees in Guangzhou labour camps will have completed their sentences and be released by the end of the year,” the China Daily reported, citing a senior judge in the city. Guangdong province stopped taking new re-education through labour cases in March, it said.

In February, Yunnan said it would no longer send people to labour camps for three types of political offences.

Four cities designated as testing grounds have replaced the system with an “illegal behaviour rectification through education” programme, domestic media said at the time.

The forced labour system was established under Mao Zedong in the 1950s as a way to contain “class enemies”. A 2009 UN report estimated that 190,000 mainlanders were locked up labour camps.

Calls to scrap the system grew last year after the media exposed the plight of Ren Jianyu , a former official who spent 15 months in a Chongqing labour camp for reposting criticisms of the government on his microblog.”

via Guangzhou to empty labour camps: state media | South China Morning Post.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/01/07/china-turns-dark-page-of-history-puts-end-to-labour-camps/

Posted in China alert, Human rights, Illegal practices, Justice, labour camp, Politics, Reform, Rule of law | Leave a Comment »

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30/08/2013

China’s Rich Want Their Say on Policy Reform

BusinessWeek: “Pan Shiyi is a real estate tycoon whose company Soho China has built some of the most fashionable developments in the country. Pan has a political side, too, which he expresses in a blog followed by 16 million Chinese. After Pan posted a call for increased transparency on how authorities monitor pollution, the governments of Beijing and 73 other cities started releasing more daily pollution data. He was also invited to tour the offices of the environmental protection agency for Beijing after a heated online exchange with its spokesman.

He Di co-founded the Boyuan Foundation

Such an episode would have been unthinkable in China 10 years ago, given the tight censorship. But China now has an emerging business class that wants to influence the debate on pollution, economic reform, U.S.-China relations, and broader political change. Some, such as Pan and Lee Kai-Fu, ex-head of Google China (GOOG), use the Internet to spread their views. Others, including the founders of the Boyuan Foundation, take an institutional approach to reform and seek ways to engage the government. Most of these executive-activists back what’s known in China as universal values—the rule of law, free markets, and freedom of speech, assembly, and religion.

Lee’s two microblogs have more than 66 million followers, an audience nearly as big as the Communist Party’s membership. In between notes on his family, Lee points out cases of corruption and censorship and advocates greater freedom of expression. In the past half year, the government imposed a temporary gag on his social media activities after he criticized the state’s backing of a search engine run by the People’s Daily. (Lee is back blogging.) An army colonel has accused Lee of being an American spy.”

via China’s Rich Want Their Say on Policy Reform – Businessweek.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/recent-chinese-politics/

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23/05/2013

* Conservatives counter demands for constitutional rule in China

It seems the ‘gloves are off’ – conservatives versus the President: see last para of this article.

SCMP: “Chinese conservatives have come out to argue against the adoption of “constitutional rule”, a term increasingly used by liberals to demand the realisation of basic human rights guaranteed in the Chinese constitution.

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The nationalistic Global Times in an editorial on Wednesday called such demands “empty political slogans” made by “a group of misled intellectuals”.

These intellectuals wanted to “change China’s course of development”, the paper argued.

“If the entire Western world together can’t muster the might [to change China’s course], then a small group of domestic dissenters will be even less able to do so.”

Even though the Chinese constitution in theory guarantees freedom of speech, the press and to demonstrate, and the right to elect and be elected, human rights organisations say such rights are consistently cracked down upon.

Many lament that courts cannot invoke the constitution to protect the civil and political rights of citizens. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo has attempted to cite rights guaranteed in the constitution in his trial for “inciting subversion of state power” that led to an 11-year prison sentence in 2009.

When the liberal Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekly called for a realisation of a “constitutional dream” in its traditional New Years editorial in January, censors replaced the text with a more muted version, triggering a rare public strike by journalists.

Democracy activists are often seen holding placards with the Chinese characters for “constitutional rule” in photos shared on microblogs.

The editorial in the Global Times, which ranks among the most widely read dailies in China, comes a day after a Beijing law scholar Yang Xiaoqing wrote an article with similar reasoning for the Communist Party’s bi-weekly Red Flag Magazine.

Citing Marx and Engels, the Renmin University professor repudiated what she called the “old Western” understanding of constitutional rule as an oppressive tool of the – in Marxian terms – capitalist stage of development.

Those with capital use the constitution’s allure to trick those who have nothing into believing that they lived in a fair system, she argued in ideologically orthodox terms. Citing Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, she predicted chaos for China if the country were ever to come under constituional rule.

In contrast to that chaos, Yang offers a vision of a “Chinese contribution to humanity in regards to constitutional rule” in which China’s People’s Congresses under the leadership of the Communist Party are truly representative of the nation’s people and are able to supervise the judiciary.

While a few people supported her comments, they have predominantely been mocked on microblogs, with thousands of people sharing her photo. Lei Yi, a Beijing-based historian, sarcastically wrote in a microblog post that he was reminded of Stalin and Pol Pot.

President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called for more respect of the constitution since he assumed the leadership of the Communist Party in autumn. “No organisation or individual should be put above the constitution and the law,” he reportedly said at a Politburo seminar in February.”

via Conservatives counter demands for constitutional rule in China | South China Morning Post.

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08/05/2013

* Detention of petitioners denounced

China Daily: “Anti-graft officials vow protection of whistle-blowers from retaliation

Officials with China’s top anti-graft authority expressed firm opposition on Tuesday to the detention of petitioners.

Authorities are not allowed to detain petitioners at any level of petition offices and at public venues, said Zhang Shaolong, deputy director of the office of letters and calls of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.

It is a legal channel for petitioners to submit whistle-blowing materials face to face to the anti-graft authorities, and the petitioners should receive a warm welcome from anti-corruption agencies, he said.

Zhang made the remarks on Tuesday during an online interview with two other anti-graft officials from the commission.

Under the administrative mechanism in most places, the leading officials will not get promoted if too many petitioners appeal to higher authorities.

Many corrupt officials were exposed by online posts, Zhang said, adding that some inaccurate online information has also made the investigations of corrupt officials difficult.

Among all the cases investigated by the commission last year, about 41.8 percent of the clues were collected from the public whistle-blowers through online reports, letters and calls, Zhang said.

Guo Hongliang, Zhang’s colleague who also attended the online interview, said that the commission has received 301,000 online whistle-blowing reports from 2008 to 2012.

The commission established 12388.gov.cn, its online whistle-blowing website, in October 2009, and the Internet has become one of the most important channels for the commission to collect information, he said.

Deng Jixun, another colleague of Zhang who attended the interview, said that real-name whistle-blowing activities should be encouraged to promote the efficiency of anti-corruption work.

The anti-graft authorities should protect real-name whistle-blowers from being victims of retaliation, he said.

Zhang acknowledged that some officials try to prevent people from petitioning to higher levels of government, and these officials’ behavior should be firmly opposed.

A report in People’s Daily revealed that many petitioners had been detained by the government of Hai’an county in Jiangsu province since March when they tried to visit the anti-graft officials from an inspection team sent by the provincial government.”

via Detention of petitioners denounced |Politics |chinadaily.com.cn.

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19/04/2013

* Supreme Court criticizes official bureaucracy

Xinhua: “The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) on Thursday named six officials and institutions that have violated eight bureaucracy-busting guidelines announced by central authorities late last year.

English: a Balance icon ‪中文(繁體)‬: 天平圖示

English: a Balance icon ‪中文(繁體)‬: 天平圖示 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The officials involved in the cases have been punished, according to a statement from the SPC.

Since the election of the new leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November, the CPC has launched a high-profile campaign to stamp out bureaucracy, formalism and the improper spending of public funds.

The bureaucracy- and formalism-fighting guidelines were introduced by a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in December.

In one of the cases, officials from the Intermediate People’s Court of the city of Huanggang in central China’s Hubei Province spent 14,396 yuan (2,329 U.S. dollars) on two dinners and were reimbursed by the court. Two officials involved in the case have been punished.

Another case involved two judges from a court in Xishui County in southwest China’s Guizhou Province who left the office on a weekday afternoon to play cards at a teahouse on Jan. 8. The two officials have been punished with administrative discipline.”

via Supreme Court criticizes official bureaucracy – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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