Posts tagged ‘Beijing Institute of Technology’

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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.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Re-balancing the economy, Reform | Leave a Comment »

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27/09/2013

Xi Jinping tightens his grip with echoes of Chairman Mao at his worst

The Times: “Xi Jinping has marked his first half-year as President of China by resurrecting some of the finest leadership traditions of the late Chairman Mao: public humiliation, political backstabbing and crackling paranoia between officials.

Mao Zedong (1893-1976) leader of chinese communist party

The campaign, which was given a test-run in Hebei province yesterday under the glare of Mr Xi himself, involves a revival of the widely despised “criticism and self-criticism” drives established in the post-revolutionary 1950s.

The unbearably tense sessions, which force officials to decry their own shortcomings before highlighting the faults of their closest colleagues, have been given a makeover for the early 21st century and rebranded as “Democratic Life Meetings”.

But they have lost none of their old edge. Though nominally cast as a way to bring operational problems to light, the sessions were always intended to enforce discipline. The return of the practice comes as Mr Xi appears to be channelling key tracts of rhetoric and ideology from Mao Zedong.

In his first six months at China’s helm, the new President has intensified a Mao-style control of information, he has unabashedly allowed critics of the regime to be rounded up, he has called for Mao-style indoctrination for school children and told regional officials that “revolutionary history is the best nutrition for Communists”.

Even his much vaunted anti-corruption campaign has drawn on the vocabulary employed by Mao: Mr Xi has asserted the need to bring down both the “tigers” and “flies” of corrupt officialdom in a direct echo of comments by Chairman Mao six decades ago.

Hu Xingdou, a political economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said that while Mr Xi’s economic policies were in the mould of the great reformer Deng Xiaoping, the new leader was a Maoist when it came politics.

The criticism sessions, which could be rolled out to affect tens of thousands of senior officials across the country, are part of Mr Xi’s reference to the overtly Maoist leadership model known as the “mass line” that seeks to focus policy on the needs of ordinary Chinese.

“At the moment, the ruling party feels it needs Maoism, and it is hard to say whether it is Xi’s own idea or not. There are too many social contradictions in China and the Party does need some type of authority in order to rule, otherwise the boat will overturn,” he said.

The latest round of criticism and self criticism sessions were conducted among the top echelon of Communist Party officials in Hebei: the 12-member provincial standing committee.

With a shirt-sleeved and unsmiling, Mr Xi quietly taking notes, and with state-run television cameras rolling, the party secretary of Hebei, Zhou Benshun, condemned a senior colleague’s personal ambition and her consuming need to look good in the eyes of supervisors. This misguided focus, he said, would lead to the local government “doing something irrelevant to the public interest”.

Obliged then to come up with a genuine set of personal failings of his own. Mr Zhou had to list his foibles as the most powerful man in Asia glowered inches away from him.

“I have not done enough to orient my achievements around ordinary people’s interests,” he said. “Sometimes my policy making is too subjective and carried out without a deep knowledge of the people. I haven’t been practical enough in my ideology. My fighting sprit is slack and my drive to work hard is falling away.”

His blunt appraisals were merely the opening gambit in a session in which nobody escaped criticism – much of it openly tailored to Mr Xi’s previous tirades against formalism, waste and corruption.

As the accusations flew, one member was accused of being too impatient, another said that the committee generally issued too many documents. With possibly negative implications for his career, the local head of the disciplinary inspection commission was accused by colleagues of underplaying the importance of punishment.

Several offered up broad condemnations of waste in the province, pointing out that Hebei had spent Rmb3.3 million (£335,000) hiring celebrities to sing and dance at the New Year Evening Gala in February.

Sun Ruibin’s self criticism, meanwhile, appeared carefully attuned to the public disgust at corrupt officials. “As a municipal party secretary I was given a big cross-country 4×4 car,” he said. “I felt perfectly at ease about it, although it was in clear violation of rules and regulations.”

In its write-up of the Hebei sessions, Chinese state media quoted a senior Hebei official who, perhaps unsurprisingly, felt that the revival of the criticism and self-criticism seminars was a good thing.

“After we were promoted and were officials for a long time … we started feeling good and arrogant,” he said, “We began just glancing at ‘shop fronts’ and rarely checking out ‘the backyards’ and ‘corners’ during inspection trips.””

via Xi Jinping tightens his grip with echoes of Chairman Mao at his worst | The Times.

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19/07/2013

China Seeks Australias Help Building Emissions Trading Scheme

Sydney Morning Herald: “Australia has been drafted in to help design an emissions trading scheme for China, the world’s biggest polluter.

A deal announced in Canberra on Thursday will see the Australian National University take leadership of a program that will analyse pollution data provided by China and allow Chinese university researchers to examine Australia’s experience of the carbon tax and transition to an emissions trading scheme.

China pollutionChina is aiming for a full national emissions trading scheme by 2015.

The program, known as the “Australia-China research program on market mechanisms for climate change policy”, will team Australian researchers with those from three provincial universities in China and the Beijing Institute of Technology.  The University of New South Wales and Melbourne University will also take part.

The deal comes less than a month after China launched the first of seven pilot emissions trading schemes.

The first, in the manufacturing city of Shenzhen, will cover 635 companies, responsible for 38 per cent of the city’s total emissions. Chinese authorities are under pressure to do something about the chronic air pollution affecting public health in Shenzen and across China.

China emits one-quarter of the worlds greenhouse gases – nearly 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the US and India combined.

The $305,000 program, announced by Trade Minister Richard Marles, will be run by the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, and led by Associate Professor Frank Jotzo of the Schools Centre for Climate Economics and Policy. He said projects would include modelling the effects of emissions pricing on electricity sector investments in China; research on how energy markets can be reformed to make carbon pricing more effective and the design of China’s pilot emissions trading schemes.

Professor Jotzo said: In the future, China is expected to rely less on command-and-control economic management and more on market-based systems to help protect the environment and modernise its energy system.

The research under this program will help inform Chinese policymaker’s about innovative approaches and international experiences, he said.

Climate expert and economist Ross Garnaut, a professor at ANU, said the most recent climate science showed a two degree warming of the planet was now a minimum and Chinese leaders understand there is a huge potential impact from climate for that nation.

via China Seeks Australias Help Building Emissions Trading Scheme.

Posted in carbon emission, China alert, Climate change, Economics, Green, greenhouse gas, Pollution | Leave a Comment »

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12/11/2012

* Hu’s calls on household registration reform face opposition

As usual, local authorities go against national strategy and interests.

SCMP: “President Hu Jintao’s calls for faster reforms to the out-of-date household registration system face strong resistance from local government officials, the Jinghua Times reported on Monday.

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Household registration, or hukou, which covers every family in mainland China, records people as either town dwellers or rural peasants. Many blame it for causing discrimination against peasants who move to cities, where their identity prevents them from gaining access to services like health care and education for their children.

At the 18th party congress, which continues this week in Beijing, Hu has called for faster reform of the registration system and expanded public welfare coverage for all citizens, whatever their household origin.

But scholars say the reform effort is encountering strong opposition from local government officials, because it would unleash financially ruinous demands for social welfare spending, the Jinghua Times newspaper said.

Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said the state council has issued several orders for reforms since 2001, but they were blocked by fierce resistance at the local government level.

Reforms bring heavy financial pressure on local governments, says agricultural economics scholar Zheng Fengtian. The social welfare costs needed to cover tens of millions of rural migrants, when they arrive in big cities, are too heavy for local governments to handle, he said.

A blue paper from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences forecasts that 500 million peasants will move from the countryside to the mainland’s cities within the next 20 years. Including them in social welfare programmes will cost between 40 trillion and 50 trillion yuan (HK$49 trillion and HK$62 trillion), it estimates.

This situation will be especially intense in coastal regions, where the mobile population will surpass the number of city residents, Zheng added.

Professor Hu said market mechanisms would solve the problems that concern local officials. “When [rural migrants] find cities overcrowded, and the unemployment rate and housing prices too high, they will eventually leave the cities,” he said.

He warned that delaying reforms will only increase the risks, saying “what matters most is the central government’s determination on reform”.

There are currently 271 million people in the mainland who are not living in the location of their household registration, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Dang Guoying, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said “without proper reform of household registration, peasants cannot benefit from urbanisation, which will intensify social disparities and eventually bring stagnation to China’s development”.”

via Hu’s calls on household registration reform face opposition | South China Morning Post.

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