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Beware the Waking Dragon
A Chinese newspaper that made a front-page appeal for the release of a reporter accused of defamation is to be overhauled, a press regulator says.
The Guangzhou-based New Express made a rare public plea for the release of journalist Chen Yongzhou.
But Mr Chen subsequently admitted on television that he had taken bribes to fabricate stories about a part state-owned company.
Now the New Express is to undergo \”full rectification\”, the regulator said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chinese and Turkish leaders have pledged to enhance cooperation to jointly build a Silk Road economic belt.
Liu Qibao, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), who is heading a CPC delegation here, met Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Thursday.
Liu, who also heads the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said China wanted to work with with Turkey and all the other countries along the route to build an economic belt through enhancing policy communication, traffic connectivity, smooth trade flow, currency circulation and people-to-people exchanges.
The potential for bilateral cooperation on culture and tourism is huge, Liu said, calling on the two countries to accelerate the establishment of culture centers reciprocally, share tourism resources, deepen people-to-people exchanges and enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples.
Gul said the Silk Road idea, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, carries great significance and Turkey would cooperate with China to open a new chapter for the legendary Silk Road.
Turkey expected to strengthen cooperation with China on culture, tourism and education as well, he added.
via China, Turkey pledge to build Silk Road economic belt – Xinhua | English.news.cn.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/07/21/hauling-new-treasure-along-the-silk-road-nytimes-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.
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\”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.
China‘s top legal body has strengthened consumer rights in the country after it revised the nation’s Consumer Protection Law on Friday, the first major overhaul in two decades.
The revisions increase consumer powers, add rules for the booming Internet shopping sector and stiffen punishments for businesses that mislead shoppers.
Chinese regulators have been cracking down on real or perceived corporate wrongdoing, with domestic and international infant formula makers and drugmakers particularly coming under the spotlight this year.
Scientists in China said on Thursday they had designed a “smart” window that can both save and generate energy, and may ultimately reduce heating and cooling costs for buildings.
While allowing us to feel close to the outside world, windows cause heat to escape from buildings in winter and let the sun’s unwanted rays enter in summer.
This has sparked a quest for “smart” windows that can adapt to weather conditions outside.
Today’s smart windows are limited to regulating light and heat from the sun, allowing a lot of potential energy to escape, study co-author Yanfeng Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
“The main innovation of this work is that it developed a concept smart window device for simultaneous generation and saving of energy.”
Engineers have long battled to incorporate energy-generating solar cells into window panes without affecting their transparency.
Gao’s team discovered that a material called vanadium oxide (VO2) can be used as a transparent coating to regulate infrared radiation from the sun.
VO2 changes its properties based on temperature. Below a certain level it is insulating and lets through infrared light, while at another temperature it becomes reflective.
A window in which VO2 was used could regulate the amount of sun energy entering a building, but also scatter light to solar cells the team had placed around their glass panels, where it was used to generate energy with which to light a lamp, for example.
“This smart window combines energy-saving and generation in one device, and offers potential to intelligently regulate and utilise solar radiation in an efficient manner,” the study authors wrote in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
via Chinese scientists unveil energy-generating window | South China Morning Post.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/how-well-will-china-and-india-innovate/
China‘s Ministry of Supervision on Thursday revealed 10 major cases of environmental damage in which local officials were punished for failing to prevent or act after severe pollution.
“Promoting the conservation culture and protecting the environment is an important duty for government at all levels,” said a statement from the ministry.
Supervisory departments should ensure local governments fulfil their duties to environmental protection and pollution reduction, with an attitude of “high responsibility for younger generations”.
Iron fist policies should be adopted to punish lawbreakers and audit officials who oversee the matters.
The vice mayor of Hezhou in southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and other 26 officials were disciplined and four were prosecuted for failing to stop scores of mines from illegally discharging wastes, causing serious water pollution to the city itself and the Zhaoqing city downstream.
Three officials from Dagang district of Tianjin city were punished for allowing six factories including the Julong paper mill to operate without passing environmental impact evaluation and discharging waste water without treatment.
There were eight other cases of environmental damage in north China\’s Hebei and Shanxi, east China’s Shanghai and Shandong, and central China’s Henan, due to officials’ malfeasance.
via China punishes officials for not punishing polluters – Xinhua | English.news.cn.
Fresh human cases in eastern China of a deadly new strain of bird flu signal the potential for “a new epidemic wave” of the disease in coming winter months, scientists said on Thursday.
The strain, known as H7N9, emerged for the first time in humans earlier this year and killed around 45 of the some 135 people it infected before appearing to peter out in China During the summer.
But a new case in October in a 35-year-old man from China’s eastern Zhejiang province shows that the virus “has re-emerged in winter 2013” and “indicates a possible risk of a larger outbreak of H7N9 this winter,\” according to Chinese researchers writing in the online journal Euro surveillance.
Flu experts around the world have been warning that despite the marked drop off in cases during the summer months, the threat posed by H7N9 bird flu has not passed.
via New China H7N9 bird flu cases ‘signal potential winter epidemic’ | Reuters.
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
continuously updated blog about China & India
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 