Archive for ‘Reform’

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01/01/2013

* Reform now or there’ll be a revolution, Chinese leaders told

The Times: “China faces the prospect of “violent revolution” if the Government fails to implement political reform, a group of prominent intellectuals is warning six weeks after the country’s change of leadership.

Liu Xia was filmed in her house as activists pushed past the guards

The call, from 73 of China’s leading scholars, came as dramatic footage emerged yesterday of activists pushing past security officials to reach Liu Xia, the wife of the Nobel Prizewinning dissident Liu Xiaobo.

In a pointed open letter, the academics warn: “If reforms to the system urgently needed by Chinese society keep being frustrated and stagnate without progress, then … China will again miss the opportunity for peaceful reform, and slip into the turbulence and chaos of violent revolution.”

Drafted by Zhang Qianfan, a Law Professor at Peking University, the letter has garnered signatures from such prominent figures as Zhang Sizhi, a lawyer who is known in China as “the conscience of the legal world” and is best known abroad as the man who defended Mao Zedong’s widow at her 1980 trial. Other well-known signatories include Hu Xingdou, a noted economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology, and Jiang Ping, the former dean of the Chinese University of Political Science and Law.

The letter was circulated on the internet but was quickly removed from Chinese news sites, and links to it have been removed from Mr Zhang’s profile on the microblog Weibo.

Entitled “An Initiative on Reform Consensus”, it has echoes of Charter 08, a manifesto published in 2008 calling for the protection of human rights and an end to one-party rule. The main author of that manifesto, Liu Xiaobo, was arrested on charges of subversion and sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment in December 2009.

In a separate development Hu Jia, one of China’s leading dissidents, broke through a security cordon to enter the apartment of Mr Liu’s wife, who has been kept under house arrest since her husband won the peace prize. In a video clip of the confrontation, which was posted on YouTube yesterday, a security official is shown telling Mr Hu and two other activists that it will not be possible for them to see Ms Liu. In response, the three force their way past, saying: “Who are you to tell us it’s not possible?”

Although the petition, signed by the 73 academics last week, raises the spectre of violent revolution, the demands made are not as radical as those found in Liu Xiaobo’s 2008 charter. The signatories to the latest letter urge China’s new leaders to rule according to the country’s constitution. In particular, the letter underlines the Government’s duty to protect freedom of speech, the press and the right to demonstrate, to deepen market reform and to allow for an independent judiciary.

These advocates of reform may have been encouraged by signals sent out by Xi Jinping, China’s new leader, who succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Communist Party in November.

Commentators have noted Mr Xi’s easy-going style compared with his predecessors and his decision to do away with red carpets for officials.

He has been quoted in the state press saying: “The Government earnestly wants to study the issues that are being brought up, and wants to perfect the market economy system … by deepening reform, and resolve the issues by strengthening rule of law.”

Judged by actions, the signals sent out by the new government have been mixed. An apparent easing of internet searching restrictions, during which it was possible to search Chinese microblogs for the names of top officials for the first time in months, was followed by legislation that critics say will discourage free commenting online by requiring real-name registration for internet users.

Similar hopes that Mr Hu would prove to be a reformer, which were aired when he first took office, were later dashed by years of stagnation on political reform, a period that has come to be known by many as the “lost decade”.”

via Reform now or there’ll be a revolution, Chinese leaders told | The Times.

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31/12/2012

* Reform plans published for migrants’ education

A good news item to end the year with – moves to embrace migrant workers rather than treat them as a short-term anomaly.

China Daily: “China’s Beijing and Shanghai cities and Guangdong Province on Sunday published plans to gradually allow migrant workers’ children to enter senior high schools and sit college entrance exams locally.

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They are the latest in a total of 13 provinces and municipalities to formulate plans to ensure that rural children who have followed their parents to cities can enjoy the same rights as their urban peers in education.

Beijing will allow migrant workers’ children to attend local vocational schools in 2013 and allow them to be matriculated by universities after graduating from the vocational programs in 2014, said a statement from the city’s commission of education.

The eastern metropolis of Shanghai took a step further, saying it will allow migrant children in the city to enter local senior high schools, vocational schools and sit college entrance exams (commonly known as gaokao) locally starting in 2014.

Guangdong, a manufacturing heartland in south China and a magnet for migrant workers, has asked its cities to start recruiting migrant workers’ children in local senior high schools in 2013.

The province will allow these children to sit gaokao and compete with local residents on an equal footing in college entrance starting in 2016, Luo Weiqi, head of the province’s education department, told Xinhua.

Luo said the restrictions would be relaxed gradually and “step by step” as the province must solve the conflict between its gigantic migrant population and a scarcity of education resources.

Migrant workers, whose children could be benefited by the new plans of the three regions, must have residential permits, stable jobs and incomes, and meet other local requirements, according to the plans.

China’s hukou, or household registration system, used to confine children to attending schools in their home provinces. A 2003 regulation amended this by allowing migrant workers’ children to receive the nine-year compulsory education in cities where their parents work.

But the country has in recent years faced mounting protests from its migrant workers, whose children under current policies had to either return to the countryside for further schooling or risk dropping out of school if they chose to stay with their parents in cities where the parents work.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Education asked Chinese cities to formulate plans before the end of this year regarding the further education and gaokao of migrant workers’ children.

Official figures show that China has more than 250 million farmers-turned-workers living in cities. An estimated 20 million children have migrated with their parents to the cities, while more than 10 million are left behind in their rural hometowns.”

via Reform plans published for migrants’ education |Society |chinadaily.com.cn.

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14/11/2012

* Constitution hails reform and opening up China’s “salient feature”

It’s one thing to change the constitution, it’s another to effect real change.  Let’s hope China means it and that by reform it means both economic and political reform.

Xinhua: The Communist Party of China (CPC) has amended its Constitution to hail reform and opening up as the path to a stronger China, and the salient feature of the new period in China, according to a resolution approved by the just-ended 18th CPC National Congress on Wednesday morning.

The inclusion of this statement in the Party Constitution will help the whole Party acquire a deeper understanding of the importance of continuing to carry out reform and opening up and thus pursue this endeavor even more consciously and with greater determination, says the resolution.

It is by carrying out reform and opening up that China has achieved rapid development in the past 30-plus years, and it is reform and opening up that will ensure its future development, it says.

“Only reform and opening up can enable China, socialism and Marxism to develop themselves,” it says.”

via Constitution hails reform and opening up China’s “salient feature” – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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06/11/2012

* China leaders consider internal democratic reform

Even if it seems to be somewhat internal, such a move would be the first step towards openness and transparency.  And who knows where that might lead.

Reuters: “China’s outgoing leader and his likely successor are pushing the ruling Communist Party to adopt a more democratic process this month for choosing a new leadership, sources said, in an attempt to boost its flagging legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

A man walks past a logo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at a media center for the upcoming18th National Congress of the CPC, which starts Thursday, in Beijing November 5, 2012. REUTERS-Jason Lee

The extent of the reform would be unprecedented in communist China where elections for the highest tiers of the party, held every five years, have been mainly exercises in rubber-stamping candidates already agreed upon by party power-brokers.

The Communist Party, which has held unbroken power since 1949, is struggling to maintain its popular legitimacy in the face of rising inequality, corruption and environmental degradation, even as the economy continues to bound ahead.

President Hu Jintao and his heir, Xi Jinping, have proposed that the party’s 18th Congress, which opens on Thursday, should hold elections for the elite Politburo where for the first time there would be more candidates than available seats, said three sources with ties to the party leadership.

The Politburo, currently 24 members, is the second-highest level of power in China from which the highest decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, is chosen.

They are chosen by the roughly 200 full members of the Central Committee which is in turn chosen by the more than 2,000 delegates at this week’s Congress.

Under their proposal, there would be up to 20 percent more candidates than seats in the new Politburo in an election to be held next week, the sources said. It was unclear if competitive voting would also be extended to the Standing Committee.

“Hu wants expanding intra-party democracy to be one of his legacies,” one source said, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for discussing secretive elite politics.

“It would also be good for Xi’s image,” the source added.

Xi is considered certain to replace Hu as party chief at the congress, with Li Keqiang, currently a vice premier, tipped to become his deputy in the once-in-a-decade transition to a new administration. Xi would then take over as president, and Li as premier, at the annual full session of parliament in March.

China experts said a more competitive election for the Politburo would mark a historic reform that could lead to surprises in the formation of Xi’s administration, with wider implications for further political reform.

“This is a very, very important development,” said Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“It would provide a new source of legitimacy. It would not just be dark-box manipulation … The party’s legitimacy is so low that they must do something to uplift the public’s confidence.”

However, Li and other experts remained skeptical that the proposal would be adopted, given that it could still be vetoed by party elders or conservatives.

via Exclusive: China leaders consider internal democratic reform | Reuters.

Posted in 10 year leadership change, China alert, Democracy, Good news, Politics, Reform, Transparency | 1 Comment »

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03/11/2012

* From lawyer to leader, Li Keqiang will be best-educated leader yet

For 20 years, the top Chinese leaders were mostly engineers (or scientists).  The president-to-be is Xi Jinping is a chemical engineer by training; and the Premier-to-be Li Keqiang holds postgraduate degrees in law and economics. We shall soon see who are the other members of the central committee of the Politburo and what are their backgrounds. But I am certain engineers will not be in the majority. If I am correct, then as nothing significant in China happens by accident, the shift from engineers to a wider set of backgrounds probably means a shift from concentrating on infrastructure and engineering-oriented enterprises to wider investments and concerns.

South China Morning Post: “The next premier is likely to be the best educated since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, with Vice-Premier Li Keqiang , who holds postgraduate degrees in law and economics from prestigious Peking University, due to succeed Premier Wen Jiabao in March.

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At university, Li studied the ideas of leading British judges and mixed with democracy advocates, leading some to hope his premiership will herald significant political change in the world’s last major communist-ruled nation.

Li is the first senior central government leader to hold a PhD in economics and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in law, all earned at a university that was a hotspot of dissent, and his liberal studies background contrasts strongly with the engineering backgrounds of those who have run China recently.

A member of the first group of students admitted to university after late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the resumption of the university entrance exam in 1977, following the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Li studied law under Professor Gong Xiangrui , an expert on Western constitutional law who had studied in Britain in the 1930s. Li followed that with a PhD in economics under Li Yining , the mainland’s market reform guru.

Kerry Brown, head of the Asia programme at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Li was the first lawyer to become a member of the party’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee and he would be the first lawyer to become premier.

“He typifies the new leaders inasmuch as he is not a technocrat, has a PhD from Peking University and had a long period of training in the provinces before elevation to executive vice-premier in 2008,” Brown said.

Li is one of the few top leaders fluent in English, surprising observers during a visit to Hong Kong last year when he broke with protocol and addressed an event at the University of Hong Kong in English. His wife, Cheng Hong, is a linguistics professor and an expert on American literature who has translated several modern American works into Chinese.

Brown praised Li for having an engaging public manner, something he said was shown in Li’s visit to Hong Kong last year.

“He is not afraid of using English in public, though the heavy treatment of protesters and journalists at the time caused much criticism,” Brown said.

Most of China’s leaders over the past couple of decades have been engineers-turned-bureaucrats, trained in an education system heavily influenced by the Soviet Union.

But 57-year-old Li, like many of his contemporaries, brings a markedly different mindset to the problems facing the nation.

via From lawyer to leader, Li Keqiang will be best-educated leader yet | South China Morning Post.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/02/18/chinese-leadership-are-mostly-engineers/

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18/10/2012

Wonder if this is in honour of the imminent leadership change or something deeper and more meaningful. We’ll just have to “watch this space”.

 

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/chinese-challenges/

Posted in Censorship, China alert, Dissident, Good news, Politics, Reform | Leave a Comment »

17/10/2012

* In search of a dream

As usual, The Economist has encapsulated India’s dilemma superbly. India is at a crossroads between a welfare oriented approach that has not really worked for 60+ years and a growth driven approach that has been of great service to China for the past two decades. But are Indians ready to make a paradigm shift? Only future history will tell.

The Economist: “When India won independence 65 years ago, its leaders had a vision for the country’s future. In part, their dream was admirable and rare for Asia: liberal democracy. Thanks to them, Indians mostly enjoy the freedom to protest, speak up, vote, travel and pray however and wherever they want to; and those liberties have ensured that elected civilians, not generals, spies, religious leaders or self-selecting partymen, are in charge. If only their counterparts in China, Russia, Pakistan and beyond could say the same.

But the economic part of the vision was a failure. Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the independence movement, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, left the country with a reverence for poverty, a belief in self-reliance and an overweening state that together condemned the country to a dismal 3-4% increase in annual GDP—known as the “Hindu rate of growth”—for the best part of half a century.

That led to a balance-of-payments crisis 21 years ago which forced India to change. Guided by Manmohan Singh, then finance minister, the government liberalised the economy, scrapping licensing and opening up to traders and investors. The results, in time, were spectacular. A flourishing services industry spawned world-class companies. The economy boomed. Wealth and social gains followed, literacy soared, life-expectancy and incomes rose, and gradually Indians started decamping from villages to towns.

But reforms have not gone far enough (see our special report). Indian policy still discourages foreign investment and discriminates in favour of small, inefficient firms and against large, efficient ones. The state controls too much of the economy and subsidies distort prices. The damage is felt in both the private and the public sectors. Although India’s service industries employ millions of skilled people, the country has failed to create the vast manufacturing base that in China has drawn unskilled workers into the productive economy. Corruption in the public sector acts as a drag on business, while the state fails to fulfil basic functions in health and education. Many more people are therefore condemned to poverty in India than in China, and their prospects are deteriorating with India’s economic outlook. Growth is falling and inflation and the government’s deficit are rising.

Modest changes, big fuss

To ease the immediate problems and to raise the country’s growth rate, more reforms are needed. Labour laws that help make Indian workers as costly to employers as much better-paid Chinese ones need to be scrapped. Foreign-investment rules need to be loosened to raise standards in finance, higher education and infrastructure. The state’s role in power, coal, railways and air travel needs to shrink. Archaic, British-era rules on buying land need to be changed.

Among economists, there is a widespread consensus about the necessary policy measures. Among politicians, there is great resistance to them. Look at the storm that erupted over welcome but modest reformist tinkering earlier this month. Mr Singh’s government lost its biggest coalition ally for daring to lift the price of subsidised diesel and to let in foreign supermarkets, under tight conditions.

Democracy, some say, is the problem, because governments that risk being tipped out of power are especially unwilling to impose pain on their people. That’s not so. Plenty of democracies—from Brazil through Sweden to Poland—have pushed through difficult reforms. The fault lies, rather, with India’s political elite. If the country’s voters are not sold on the idea of reform, it is because its politicians have presented it to them as unpleasant medicine necessary to fend off economic illness rather than as a means of fulfilling a dream.

Another time, another place

In many ways, India looks strikingly like America in the late 19th century. It is huge, diverse, secular (though its people are religious), materialistic, largely tolerant and proudly democratic. Its constitution balances the central government’s authority with considerable state-level powers. Rapid social change is coming with urban growth, more education and the rise of big companies. Robber barons with immense riches and poor taste may be shamed into becoming legitimate political donors, philanthropists and promoters of education. As the country’s wealth grows, so does its influence abroad.

For India to fulfil its promise, it needs its own version of America’s dream. It must commit itself not just to political and civic freedoms, but also to the economic liberalism that will allow it to build a productive, competitive and open economy, and give every Indian a greater chance of prosperity. That does not mean shrinking government everywhere, but it does mean that the state should pull out of sectors it has no business to be in. And where it is needed—to organise investment in infrastructure, for instance, and to regulate markets—it needs to become more open in its dealings.

India’s politicians need to espouse this vision and articulate it to the voters. Mr Singh has done his best; but he turned 80 on September 26th, and is anyway a bureaucrat at heart, not a leader. The remnants of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to whom many Indians still naturally turn, are providing no leadership either— maybe because they do not have it in them, maybe because they have too much at stake to abandon the old, failed vision. Sonia Gandhi, Nehru’s grand-daughter-in-law and Congress’s shadowy president, shows enthusiasm for welfare schemes, usually named after a relative, but not for job-creating reforms. If her son Rahul, the heir apparent to lead Congress, understands the need for a dynamic economy, there’s no way of knowing it, for he never says anything much.

These people are hindering India’s progress, not helping it. It is time to shake off the past and dump them. The country needs politicians who see the direction it should take, understand the difficult steps required, and can persuade their countrymen that the journey is worthwhile. If it finds such leaders, there is no limit to how far India might go.”

From: http://www.economist.com/node/21563720

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05/10/2012

* India Moves Again to Ease Way for Foreign Investment

It’s a case of “in for a penny in for a pound”. If the Opposition is stirred up already against the opening up of retail business to FDI, why not jump in with insurance and pensions too.

New York Times: “In their second major effort in two months to revive a flagging economy, Indian policy makers on Thursday proposed letting foreign investors take a bigger stake in insurance and pension companies.

The measures, which were approved by the cabinet, will now go to the Parliament, where their passage is far from certain. The national governing coalition led by the Indian National Congress Party does not have a majority in the legislature, and opposition parties and even some of its own allies have said they do not support greater foreign investment.

Still, anticipation of the changes sent the India’s benchmark stock index Sensex up 1 percent to its highest close in more than a year.

The index has rallied about 5 percent since the middle of September, when the government allowed greater foreign investment in retailing and aviation and reduced government energy subsidies.

Under the proposal approved by the cabinet, foreign companies would be allowed to acquire up to 49 percent in Indian insurance and pension firms, a change that both Indian and overseas firms have long lobbied for, saying that the sectors needed more capital to grow.

Foreign companies are now allowed to hold a 26 percent stake in insurance companies but are not allowed to invest in pension firms. India’s insurance premiums total about $40 billion a year and its pension industry has assets of $300 million.

The changes will most likely face stiff opposition in Parliament, which was paralyzed during its last session after the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party repeatedly interrupted proceedings to demand the resignation of the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in connection with a scandal involving the allocation of coal concessions. The next session of Parliament begins in November.

Opposition officials, who were involved in drafting the proposals at an earlier stage of the lawmaking process, have said that they would not support an increase in foreign investment to 49 percent. Some of the government’s allies have also said they do not support the change.

“Legislation in democracy is a process of negotiation and discussion,” Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, said at a news conference.

“Obviously, we need to talk. We will sit and talk to all parties, especially the principal opposition.””

via India Moves Again to Ease Way for Foreign Investment – NYTimes.com.

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27/09/2012

* Rudd Sees More Economic Reforms in China

WSJ: “Australia’s former prime minister and longtime China watcher Kevin Rudd said Thursday that China’s incoming leadership will be strongly reform-minded on the economy and usher in a new era of diplomacy in the region.

As territorial disputes between China and Japan escalate, Mr. Rudd said Chinese leaders also face numerous challenges, including the flight of capital among the nation’s wealthy and a slowing economy. However, he expressed confidence in the ability of presumptive next leader Xi Jinping and his team to manage domestic challenges and foreign relations, calling him “the sort of leader that the Americans can do business with.”

The U.S. has sought to expand its influence in Asia to counterbalance China’s growing regional clout, announcing plans to increase its naval presence in the Pacific and sending top officials to canvass the region. Such moves have complicated relations between the two powerhouses, but Mr. Rudd—who said he spent much time with Mr. Xi when he was Australia’s prime minister—said he anticipates Mr. Xi’s rise will help alleviate such tensions.

“I believe that Xi Jinping will want to work…with the Americans on a common road map for the region’s future,” Mr. Rudd told The Wall Street Journal at the end of a two-week trip to China and Hong Kong. Mr. Xi’s ascension will allow the U.S. and China to “carve out a different period of strategic cooperation.”

Mr. Rudd said he expects further privatization of Chinese state-owned firms after the new leadership takes over, in part to address private sector companies’ concerns about their business prospects, which has led to some capital outflows. He also expects further currency liberalization and said that change is necessary, because the current growth model can’t sustain full employment in China.”

via Rudd Sees More Economic Reforms in China – WSJ.com.

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25/09/2012

If this article is correct, then it is good news, indeed. Mr Wen may yet achieve what he didn’t quite do while Premier for a decade. It all depends upon whether then new top two leaders (probably Xi and Li) are pro-reform or not.

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