Posts tagged ‘Beijing’

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06/11/2013

Blasts at China regional Communist Party office kill one – BBC News

A series of small blasts have killed at least one person outside a provincial office of the ruling Communist Party in northern China, state media report.

The blasts in Taiyuan in Shanxi province appeared to have been caused by home-made bombs, Xinhua reported.

It said eight people had been injured and two cars damaged.

Photos posted on social media showed smoke and several fire engines at the scene of the incident, which happened around 07:40 local time (23:40 GMT).

No immediate explanation has been given for the incident. There have been occasions in the past where disgruntled citizens have targeted local government institutions.

They do not often make the headlines but explosions in China\’s cities are not unheard of. Earlier this year, in another part of Shanxi Province, Chinese media reported that a bomb exploded outside the house of a local law official, killing his daughter. The culprit was a pensioner enraged by a court ruling against him.

Last year the BBC reported on a suicide bombing in Shandong, carried out by a disabled man upset by lack of compensation for an industrial accident. Every year there are examples of attacks with crude weapons or explosives, carried out by the desperate, the dispossessed and the disturbed, usually triggered by a dispute with some arm of local government or a local official.

It\’s too early to say whether the explosions on Wednesday follow the same pattern. But some details will worry the authorities: the ball bearings apparently placed inside the bombs, increasing their destructive power; the fact that witnesses reported several explosions over a period of time. And the bombs were placed outside the local Communist Party headquarters – was the party itself the target, or was this just the product of a local dispute?

The authorities will especially be nervous after last week\’s apparent suicide attack outside the gates of the Forbidden City, especially as the capital also prepares to host a meeting of China\’s Communist Party elite on Saturday.

Tensions are also high in the wake of last week\’s incident in Beijing. A car ploughed into a crowd in Tiananmen Square in what the authorities said was a terrorist attack incited by extremists from the western region of Xinjiang.

Later this week, the Communist Party\’s top officials will meet in Beijing to start a major economic planning meeting.

via BBC News – Blasts at China regional Communist Party office kill one.

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, public protest, unrest | Leave a Comment »

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05/11/2013

China, India begin joint anti-terrorism drill | South China Morning Post

China and India began a joint anti-terrorism drill on Tuesday, the first such exercise by the Asian powers – which have a sometimes-fraught relationship – for five years.

china_india_drill.jpg

The world’s two most populous countries each sent one company of soldiers to Chengdu, in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, for the “Hand-in-Hand 2013” drill, according to Chinese state media reports.

The joint training exercise comes even as the two remain embroiled in a border dispute that has been unresolved for decades and has occasionally led to military standoffs.

In April, India accused Chinese troops of intruding into Indian-held territory, a row that was only resolved three weeks later when troops from both sides eventually pulled back.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Beijing two weeks ago, signing an agreement with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to step up co-operation on border defence and counter-terrorism training.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters on Tuesday that the drill showed “enhancing political-military trust between the two countries”.

“Since the beginning of this year, China and India relations have scored new progress,” he said.

Indian officials said the country’s contingent for the 10-day-long drill was 162 strong and led by a brigadier.

“The joint training exercise is a counter-terrorist exercise with a purpose of exploring useful experience and thoughts, advance pragmatic co-operation, promote friendly environment and enhance mutual trust,” an Indian defence ministry statement said.

The first such exercise was held in China in 2007, with another in India the following year.

Beijing blames “terrorist” groups for incidents in its far western region of Xinjiang, home to Muslim Uygurs, and has in the past linked clashes to groups trained in Pakistan, which as well as being India’s great rival also shares a border with China.

via China, India begin joint anti-terrorism drill | South China Morning Post.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Defence, GeoPolitics, Good news, India alert, Military, Openness, peace keeping, PLA, Politics | 1 Comment »

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05/11/2013

Beijing slashes car sales quota in anti-pollution drive | Reuters

China\’s capital, Beijing, infamous for its thick smog and heavy traffic, will slash the city\’s new car sales quotas by almost 40 percent next year, as it looks to curb vehicle emissions and hazardous levels of pollution, the city government website said.

Lines of cars are pictured during a rush hour traffic jam on Guomao Bridge in Beijing July 11, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

The change in policy gives greater support for new, cleaner cars and could strengthen foreign carmakers\’ determination to accelerate growth in China\’s less crowded lower-tier cities.

In the last month alone, high levels of pollution have forced China to all but shut down the northeastern city of Harbin, a major urban center with a population of 11 million.

via Beijing slashes car sales quota in anti-pollution drive | Reuters.

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

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04/11/2013

Florentijn Hofman’s Big Yellow Duck Rakes In $33 Million While on Display in Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ

It was a goose that laid golden eggs, according to Aesop. But with a little help from Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, China appears to have changed the storyline.

Anyone living in or paying attention to China in the past six months will be familiar – maybe too familiar – with Mr. Hofman’s big yellow duck. Since May, multiple versions of the inflatable plastic creation, some authorized and some not, have made appearances in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing, and countless malls and souvenir stands across Asia. There’s even been an online commemoration of a certain political anniversary.

The bird’s ubiquity has given rise to an ever-growing population of duck haters. But it has proven to be such a crowd-pleaser in Beijing that officials had to work hard to count all the money it brought in.

Mr. Hofman signed rubber ducks for fans during a farewell ceremony at the Summer Palace.

In just 52 days, more than 3 million people flocked to see the 18-meter tall plastic duck at the Summer Palace and the Garden Expo, according to organizers. Some 70,000 showed up on the last day to say goodbye to their plastic friend, local media reported. And the outsized installation didn’t have to do anything besides float and look photogenic.

When an earthquake struck Taiwan on Thursday, one of Mr. Hofman’s mammoth bath toys stationed in Taoyuan proved to be – well, a sitting duck. Suddenly he had the wind knocked out of him, and when workers tried to reinflate him, his tail-end exploded. A local councilor reportedly called for a moment of silence, though others rejoiced.

Sailing was smoother in Beijing. The yellow plastic fantastic brought in an estimated of 200 million yuan ($33 million) at its two venues in the Chinese capital. Maybe not everyone had gone specifically to see it, but having it there certainly didn’t hurt. At the Summer Palace, there were two million visitors over the duck-viewing period, up 30% from a year ago.

The combined tally of cash brought in didn’t include the 7 million yuan from sales of plastic duck spin-off toys that can fit in your bathtub and don’t need a private lake to display them.

“We were happy with the results,” said Sun Qun, who organized the shows. So was the government, which partnered with him on the duck extravaganza.

Financial details of the deal with the Dutch creator weren’t disclosed.

via Florentijn Hofman’s Big Yellow Duck Rakes In $33 Million While on Display in Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, Economics, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

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04/11/2013

In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters

If the analysis in this report is correct, then it is good news for China and Xinjiang. Alleviating poverty is difficult, but far easier than eliminating religious extremism.

“In the dirty backstreets of the Uighur old quarter of Xinjiang\’s capital Urumqi in China\’s far west, Abuduwahapu frowns when asked what he thinks is the root cause of the region\’s festering problem with violence and unrest.

A police officer stops a car to check for identifications at a checkpoint near Lukqun town, in Xinjiang province in this October 30, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files

\”The Han Chinese don\’t have faith, and the Uighurs do. So they don\’t really understand each other,\” he said, referring to the Muslim religion the Turkic-speaking Uighur people follow, in contrast to the official atheism of the ruling Communist Party.

But for the teenage bread delivery boy, it\’s not Islam that\’s driving people to commit acts of violence, such as last week\’s deadly car crash in Beijing\’s Tiananmen Square – blamed by the government on Uighur Islamist extremists who want independence.

\”Some people there support independence and some do not. Mostly, those who support it are unsatisfied because they are poor,\” said Abuduwahapu, who came to Urumqi two years ago from the heavily Uighur old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang\’s southwest, near the Pakistani and Afghan border.

\”The Han are afraid of Uighers. They are afraid if we had guns, we would kill them,\” he said, standing next to piles of smoldering garbage on plots of land where buildings have been demolished.

China\’s claims that it is fighting an Islamist insurgency in energy-rich Xinjiang – a vast area of deserts, mountains and forests geographically located in central Asia – are not new.”

via In China’s Xinjiang, poverty, exclusion are greater threat than Islam | Reuters.

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Posted in China alert, Dissident, Economics, Ethnic clash, Freedom, Human rights, immigration, income-wealth gap, Inequalities, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, self determination, separatism | Leave a Comment »

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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.

Posted in agriculture, China alert, Economics, land transfer, Reform | Leave a Comment »

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01/11/2013

Chinese Rage at the Pension System – Businessweek

This public-sector / private pension imbalance is similar to that in the UK!

“When a Beijing professor recently suggested pushing back the age at which retirees get their pensions, China’s bloggers let loose. “You’re indeed completely without conscience, a mouth filled with poison and cruelty, your heart that of a beast,” wrote one blogger from Shenyang, in Liaoning province, on the online portal Sohu.com, according to ChinaSMACK, a website that translates Chinese Internet content. “The clamor to postpone the retirement age is getting louder, a raging fire burns in my heart,” wrote another from Jiangxi province. “Tsinghua University truly has raised a bunch of garbage professors,” wrote a blogger from Guangdong, referring to Yang Yansui, director of Tsinghua’s employment and social security institute, who raised the idea.

The heated responses reflect the crisis faced by China’s pension system. A shrinking workforce must support more than 200 million retirees. The government has moved in the last few years to add farmers, the unemployed, and migrant workers to its pension rolls, which now cover more than four-fifths of those registered in cities and 43 percent of rural Chinese.

1.6:1—Expected ratio in 2050 of working-age people supporting 1 retiree, down from 4.9 to 1 today

When top officials gather in Beijing on Nov. 9 to map out the next set of reforms, solving the pension crisis could well be high on their list. Last year for the first time, the working-age population—those 15 to 59 years old—declined, falling by 3.5 million to 937.3 million. People older than 60 make up 13 percent of the population. By 2050 that number will rise to 34 percent, estimates the World Bank. Today an average 4.9 Chinese of working age support one retiree. That ratio could fall to 1.6 by 2050, estimates Robert Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.”

via Chinese Rage at the Pension System – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, retirement pensions | Leave a Comment »

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01/11/2013

Tiananmen crash ‘incited by Islamists’ – BBC News

China\’s top security official says a deadly crash in Beijing\’s Tiananmen Square was incited by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

The crash occurred on Monday when a car ploughed into a crowd then burst into flames, killing three people inside the vehicle and two tourists.

Police have arrested five suspects, all from the western region of Xinjiang, home to minority Uighur Muslims.

Security has also been tightened in Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia.

China often blames the ETIM group for incidents in Xinjiang. But the BBC correspondent in Beijing says few believe that the group has any capacity to carry out any serious acts of terror in China.

Uighur groups claim China uses ETIM as an excuse to justify repressive security in Xinjiang.

via BBC News – Tiananmen crash ‘incited by Islamists’.

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Ethnic clash, Freedom, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, public protest, separatism | Leave a Comment »

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01/11/2013

Zhang Xin: the billionaire queen of China’s new skyline | The Times

At nine she was homeless; as a teenager, she worked in sweatshops. So how did Zhang Xin become one of China’s richest women, asks Leo Lewis.

Zhang Xin in front of the Galaxy Soho construction site, 2011

Inside the penthouse premises of the exclusive Beijing American Club, China’s most powerful woman aims a quiet smile at a circle of armchairs; she targets each occupant with a flash of eye contact and brings the exquisitely elite gathering to attention. Silence falls.

Property developer Zhang Xin, queen of the Beijing skyline, is the chief executive of Soho China, one of the country’s most influential property companies. She is immaculately but not ostentatiously dressed in a scarlet blouse, chairing a discussion that touches delicately on the future of China, of the Communist Party and of China’s engagement with the outside world. Sharing her sofa, and the main speaker for the evening, is Peter Mandelson; his book The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, newly translated into Chinese, is already popular within the higher echelons of Party leadership. Around them sits a unique assembly of Chinese business leaders, diplomats, journalists and high financiers. It is an evening that reflects Zhang’s status as one of the world’s greatest female success stories.

Over the past decade, Zhang, 48, has become a role model for women, for the ambitious poor and for ordinary Chinese in general. The 6.7 million people who follow her on Weibo (China’s equivalent of Twitter) are doing so for a reason: the Chinese Government may try to co-opt the concept of a “Chinese Dream” for political ends, but Zhang is its living embodiment – a woman who has risen from her beginnings as a teenage sweatshop worker to become one of the wealthiest women on the planet, overseeing an empire worth $3.6 billion (£2.2 billion).

Zhang’s parents were educated Chinese Burmese who moved back to China in the Fifties when Chairman Mao’s dream still appeared unsullied. But during the lunacy of the Cultural Revolution, their university degrees counted against them: a young Zhang and her mother were separated from her father and brother and forced – as part of the country’s “re-education” programme – to swap their urban lifestyle for the grinding poverty of the Chinese countryside.

When she was 9, Zhang was able to return to Beijing with her mother, but the city offered scant relief from debilitating poverty. The two were briefly homeless, obliged to sleep on the desks of the small office where Zhang’s mother worked translating the grandstanding speeches of Communist leaders. Life did not improve much. A few years later, with China’s great economic boom still years away, the pair escaped to Hong Kong. Aged 14, Zhang toiled in the territory’s cramped, punishing garment factories. Driven by the need for hard cash, she would switch employers for the sake of a single dollar’s increase in pay.

“The motivation for working in the factories was to get out of the factories,” she says. The girls alongside her appeared content with their lives. She could never contemplate that. Convinced even then that education had the power to change everything, Zhang would scurry from each 12-hour shift straight to evening classes. She dreamt all the time, she says, simply of keeping pace with the education that “normal” teenage schoolgirls would be receiving back in China.

Slowly, her savings grew to the point where she could afford a plane ticket from Hong Kong to London. Armed with nothing but a raw immigrant’s ambition, she arrived in the UK and began another lowest-rung scrabble for cash. This time, there were English classes at the end of each work day. The strategy paid off: using grants and scholarships, she secured a place at the University of Sussex. Afterwards, she completed a master’s degree in development economics at Cambridge.

Earlier this year, Zhang returned to Sussex as an honorary Doctor of Laws and delivered a speech to graduating students. “It is the place that cultivated me, inspired me and encouraged me to follow my deepest instincts and to become the person that I am today,” she told them. “For this I am truly grateful.”

“If I look back at my life and ask myself what was the most important transformational element, I would say education,” she says. “The point it all changed was when I decided to go to England to become a student.

“When I first got there, I thought there has to be a model answer for these essays we write every week, because that is how the Chinese write. I would submit the essay and my tutor would call us in, and he wasn’t interested at all in whether this answer was right or wrong. Only later, I understood this is a way of cultivating your intellectual curiosity… That is still largely missing in Chinese education.”

via Zhang Xin: the billionaire queen of China’s new skyline | The Times.

Posted in China alert, Construction, Economics, education, national dream, Social & cultural, The Chinese Dream | 2 Comments »

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26/10/2013

Japan Prime Minister Abe Says Japan Ready to Counter China’s Power – WSJ.com

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China\’s power, seeking to place Tokyo at the helm of countries in the region nervous about Beijing\’s military buildup amid fears of an American pullback.

In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Abe also defended his program of economic reforms against growing criticism that the package lacks substance—though he offered few details of new programs, or a timetable, that anxious foreign investors have been seeking.

\”I\’ve realized that Japan is expected to exert leadership not just on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific,\” Mr. Abe said, referring to his meetings with the region\’s leaders at a series of summits this month.

In his continuing attempt to juggle his desire to enact economic-stimulus policies with the need to pay down Japan\’s massive debt, the prime minister said he was open to reviewing the second stage of a planned increase in the sales tax in 2015 if the economy weakens after the first increase is implemented in the spring.

Less than a year after taking office, Mr. Abe has already emerged as one of Japan\’s most influential prime ministers in decades. He has shaken up the country\’s economic policy in an attempt to pull Japan out of a two-decade-long slump, and plotted a more active diplomacy for a country whose global leadership has been crimped by a rapid turnover of weak prime ministers.

In the interview, Mr. Abe made a direct link between his quest for a prosperous Japan, and a country wielding greater influence in the region and the world.

View Graphics

\”Japan shrank too much in the last 15 years,\” the leader said, explaining how people have become \”inward-looking\” with students shunning opportunities to study abroad and the public increasingly becoming critical of Tokyo providing aid to other countries.

\”By regaining a strong economy, Japan will regain confidence as well, and we\’d like to contribute more to making the world a better place.\”

Mr. Abe\’s views expressed in the interview reflect his broader, long-standing nationalistic vision of a more assertive Japan, one he has argued should break free of constraints imposed on Japan\’s military by a postwar pacifist constitution written by the U.S.—and that has also been hampered by economic decline.

Mr. Abe made clear that one important way that Japan would \”contribute\” would be countering China in Asia. \”There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won\’t be able to emerge peacefully,\” Mr. Abe said. \”So it shouldn\’t take that path, and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community.\”

via Japan Prime Minister Abe Says Japan Ready to Counter China’s Power – WSJ.com.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/04/03/china-asean-agree-to-develop-code-of-conduct-in-south-china-sea/

Posted in China alert, Defence, Economics, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, Military, Neighbour conflict, Politics, Territorial dispute | 1 Comment »

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