Posts tagged ‘Xi JinPing’

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21/08/2014

Bosses at China’s state-owned enterprises face pay cuts of up to 50pc | South China Morning Post

Officials in charge of China’s state-owned enterprises face pay cuts of up to 50 per cent and new job descriptions under a reform plan approved by President Xi Jinping.

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Xi said at a meeting on Monday that China needed to speed up reform targeting the salaries of top executives at SOEs. He also approved a seven-year overhaul of their management structure.

Sources say the reform plan involves two steps.

The first is to cut the salaries of top executives at major SOEs, particularly those in finance and banking. Some may have to take a 50 per cent pay cut.

The second step is to gradually change their job responsibilities. The government-appointed officials will probably join the board of directors. The day-to-day operations will be handled by senior managers recruited from outside, with salaries in line with international standards.

The new model will be similar to that of the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong. As the major shareholder, the Hong Kong government appoints three representatives to the board of directors to ensure the firm follows its policy direction. The day-to-day operations, however, are run by top managers hired through an open recruitment process.

The reform is to address public discontent over the ambiguous status of top SOE managers, particularly those in charge of the so-called central enterprises directly under the State Council. Most of these top executives carry a vice-ministerial or ministerial-level ranking that comes with perks and privileges. At the same time, they are paid like top Western business executives and earn many times more than their fellow officials.

There has been criticism that the high salaries are unwarranted because many SOEs operate as monopolies or near-monopolies.

An executive of an energy industry SOE said the head of a central enterprise in his field could make one million yuan (HK$1.26 million) a year. Those working for banking and finance central enterprises could earn more.

Jiang Jianqing, the chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, was paid nearly two million yuan in 2013. In comparison, the annual salary of some ministry-level party cadres is about 200,000 yuan. Yet some top executives point to their counterparts in the West and complain their incomes are too low.

via Bosses at China’s state-owned enterprises face pay cuts of up to 50pc | South China Morning Post.

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15/08/2014

Rule of law: Realigning justice in China | The Economist

IN JULY Zhou Qiang, the president of China’s Supreme People’s Court, visited Yan’an, the spiritual home of the Communist Party in rural Shaanxi province, to lead local court officials there in an old communist ritual: self-criticism. “I have grown accustomed to having the final say and often have preconceived ideas when making decisions,” one local judge told the meeting. “I try to avoid taking a stand in major cases,” said a judicial colleague. “I don’t want to get into trouble.”

In China’s judiciary such shortcomings are the norm. But change may be coming. On July 29th it was announced that the party’s Central Committee, comprising more than 370 leaders, will gather in October to discuss ways of strengthening the rule of law, a novelty for such a gathering. President Xi Jinping, who is waging a sweeping campaign against corruption, says he wants the courts to help him “lock power in a cage”. Officials have begun to recognise that this will mean changing the kind of habits that prevail in Yan’an and throughout the judicial system.

Long before Mr Xi, leaders had often talked about the importance of the rule of law. But they showed little enthusiasm for reforms that would take judicial authority away from party officials and give it to judges. The court system in China is often just a rubber-stamp for decisions made in secret by party committees in cahoots with police and prosecutors. The party still cannot abide the idea of letting a freely elected legislature write the laws, nor even of relinquishing its control over the appointment of judges. But it is talking up the idea of making the judiciary serve as the constitution says it should: “independently … and not subject to interference”.

In June state media revealed that six provincial-level jurisdictions would become testing grounds for reforms. Full details have not been announced, but they appear aimed at allowing judges to decide more for themselves, at least in cases that are not politically sensitive.

There is a lot of room for improvement. Judges are generally beholden to local interests. They are hired and promoted at the will of their jurisdiction’s party secretary (or people who report to him), and they usually spend their entire careers at the same court in which they started. They have less power in their localities than do the police or prosecutors, or even politically connected local businessmen. A judge is often one of the least powerful figures in his own courtroom.

“It’s not a career that gets much respect,” says Ms Sun, a former judge in Shanghai who quit her job this year (and who asked to be identified only by her surname). The port city is one of the reform test-beds. “Courts are not independent so as a result they don’t have credibility, and people don’t believe in the law.” She says people often assume judges are corrupt.

Career prospects are unappealing for the young and well-educated like Ms Sun, who got her law degree from Peking University. The overall quality of judges has risen dramatically in recent decades, but there are still plenty of older, senior judges with next to no formal legal training. Seeing no opportunity for advancement after eight years, Ms Sun left for a law firm and a big multiple of her judge’s salary of about 120,000 yuan ($19,000) a year. She says many other young judges are leaving.

It is unclear how much the mooted changes will alleviate these concerns. Those Shanghai courts that are participating in the pilot reforms (not all are) are expected to raise judges’ pay. They are also expected greatly to reduce the number of judges, though younger ones fear they are more likely to be culled than their less qualified but better connected seniors.

The most important reforms will affect the bureaucracies that control how judges are hired and promoted. Responsibility will be taken away from the cities and counties where judges try their cases, or from the districts in the case of provincial-level megacities like Shanghai. It will be shifted upwards to provincial-level authorities—in theory making it more difficult for local officials to persuade or order judges to see things their way on illegal land seizures, polluting factories and so on.

Central leaders have a keen interest in stamping out such behaviour because it tarnishes the party’s image. But many local officials, some of whom make a lot of money from land-grabs and dirty factories, will resist change. With the help of the police they will probably find other means to make life difficult for unco-operative judges. And provincial authorities are still likely to interfere in some cases handled by lower-level courts, sometimes in order to help out county-level officials.

via Rule of law: Realigning justice | The Economist.

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13/08/2014

China Names U.S. as the Top Destination for ‘Economic Fugitives’ – Businessweek

China’s wealthy elite is fleeing the country for a better quality of life—better education, better air, and greater personal security. China’s Ministry of Public Security has just added a further potential reason: fleeing the police.

“The U.S. has become the top destination for Chinese [economic] fugitives,” Liao Jinrong, a ministry official told state-run China Daily on Monday. According to the English-language newspaper, “More than 150 economic fugitives from China, most of whom are corrupt officials or face allegations of corruption, remain at large in the United States.”

While this is a rather incredible admission, the intent of the article—no doubt placed by China’s propaganda authorities—seems to be to make the case for an extradition treaty between the U.S. and China. “We face practical difficulties in getting fugitives who fled to the US back to face trial due to the lack of an extradition treaty and the complex and lengthy legal procedures,” Liao told the paper.

via China Names U.S. as the Top Destination for ‘Economic Fugitives’ – Businessweek.

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09/08/2014

China builds friendship railway to link Pakistan | The Times

In a park outside Islamabad, fountains tinkle beneath the huge glass façade of the new Pakistan-China Friendship Centre. “Pakistan China friendship is as high as the Himalayas, as deep as the ocean and sweet as honey,” declares a hoarding above an escalator, which grinds to a halt intermittently due to the country’s chronic power shortages.

Nanga Parbat mountain

Next month, China’s President Xi Jinping will arrive here to finalise plans to turn this gushing propaganda into reality by building a 1,800km railway that would, for the first time, directly link Beijing to Islamabad via its eastern province of Xinjiang. Stretching to Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi, and beyond to a Chinese-built deep-sea port at Gwadar on the Gulf of Oman, the railway would bore through some of the world’s highest peaks in the Karakoram sub-range of the Himalayas.

“China has a new focus on this region,” beams Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the chairman of the Pakistan China Institute, who says the railway will be a “game changer” and the most ambitious part of a Chinese plan to reboot the area’s troubled economy and open up its own western flank to development. After years of war and terrorism, Pakistan has suffered an exodus of foreign cash and expertise, but with Beijing now splashing out $32 billion on more than 120 projects in Pakistan over the next seven years, the number of Chinese living and working in the country has leapt to from 3,000 in 2008 to nearly 15,000.

Chinese workers are dredging Karachi’s port complex, and building a giant hydroelectric dam at Bunji on the Indus River, a highway linking Lahore to Karachi, and nuclear and coal-fired power stations, solar power plants and ports.

With Pakistan’s reputation for violence, terrorism and corruption, some westerners are privately raising their eyebrows at the scale of China’s spending spree. However, for China’s former ambassador to India and Pakistan, Zhou Gang, the attractions are clear. “It will promote the economic development of all Asian countries,” he said, pointing out that to reach the Gulf of Oman from Shanghai, Chinese goods must currently travel 15,858km by ship through the Strait of Malacca. A railway, road or pipeline through Pakistan would slash that journey to 4,712km.

Despite the hype, however, tensions exist. India disapproves of the railway, which would run through territory it claims as its own. China also frets about the safety of its citizens in Pakistan, several of whom have been killed. One Pakistani official warned: “If they can’t sort out the terrorism and security then it won’t happen.”

via China builds friendship railway to link Pakistan | The Times.

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07/08/2014

China suspends work at hundreds of factories after deadly blast | Reuters

China has suspended work at more than 200 factories in an eastern province for safety checks as part of a nationwide review following an explosion at an auto parts plant that killed 75 people, government officials and state media said.

Family members cry at a caring centre for relatives of victims of a factory explosion, in Kunshan, Jiangsu province August 3, 2014.REUTERS/Stringer

Officials have been ordered to shut all aluminium and magnesium factories – and others that generate metal dust – for safety violations, the Jiangsu provincial government said in a statement late on Wednesday. Some 214 factories in Suzhou and 54 factories in Kunshan have been shut and will not reopen until they obtain government approval.

It was not immediately clear how long that would take.

Provinces such as Shaanxi, Tianjin and Sichuan, as well as the Guangxi special administrative region, have also stepped up safety checks. The crackdown comes after a blast at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products Co Ltd on Saturday, China’s worst industrial accident in a year.

State media has reported that investigators’ preliminary findings show that Kunshan Zhongrong bears the main responsibility for the blast in Jiangsu, which also injured 185 people when a flame was lit in a dust-filled room.

An hour’s drive from Shanghai, Kunshan Zhongrong polishes wheel hubs for automakers including General Motors Co.

“The suspended factories were found to suffer the same safety risk of dust pollution,” the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday, citing the government in Suzhou, which includes the satellite city Kunshan.

Xinhua did not give further details on the factories or what they produced. Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are known for their alloy wheel makers, with Jiangsu home to four of China’s top 10 exporters, according to the Automobile Association.

Many alloy wheel makers in Jiangsu have poor safety practices, the official China Securities Journal said.

Earlier this week, President Xi Jinping demanded a full inquiry into what happened at Kunshan Zhongrong and that those responsible be punished. China’s State Council Work Safety Commission ordered nationwide inspections and a safety campaign targeting factories that process aluminium, magnesium, coal, wood, paper, tobacco, cotton and plastic, Xinhua said.

Xinhua also said authorities would draw up comprehensive regulations for dust control at factories.

Police took at least two Kunshan Zhongrong representatives into custody earlier this week, Xinhua reported.

via China suspends work at hundreds of factories after deadly blast | Reuters.

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28/07/2014

Beijing gets tough on party officials who go private | The Times

China’s intensifying anti-corruption campaign has turned its guns on the people who link government and business, forcing nearly 230 senior Communist party officials to quit the company directorships they hold on the side.

China’s president Xi Jinping

The draconian orders, which have also affected tens of thousands of more junior officials moonlighting for corporate China, are said to have unleashed a mass “exodus” of independent directors from listed Chinese companies in recent months.

The government has promised there will be more to come. China’s state news agency warned that the authorities were planning another “detailed directive” that analysts believe would attempt to tighten further the restrictions on the roles officials can play in the private sector.

The rules are expected to crack down on the activities of retired officials: as the rules stand, they are able to take on company directorships if those positions do not relate to their former specialities as civil servants.

Sources believe that the new directives will broaden the terms of the ban in a way that could affect foreign companies in the mining, energy, banking and pharmaceutical sectors.

The same burst of anti-corruption propaganda also invited the public to “blow the whistle on violations”.

The crackdown began last autumn with a ban on senior government and party officials from working for outside companies. Although a few resignations followed that ban, the real purge did not begin until scores of listed companies were subjected to an inspection a few months later.

That inspection, according to Chinese state media, identified 229 officials at the ministerial or provincial level who were working for outside companies and 40,700 junior officials with a source of company income outside their civil servant salaries.

About 300 Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges have apparently been affected by the shakedown, losing the officials they specifically hired to build relationships with Beijing and bring the companies closer to the government.

The central role of those relationships within Chinese business has been laid bare over the past two years as details have emerged of the fabulous wealth amassed by the families of senior officials.

Also exposed has been the extent to which western companies operating in China have been convinced that their success can only be guaranteed by hiring either former officials or people with exceptionally strong personal links to the central and provincial governments.

via Beijing gets tough on party officials who go private | The Times.

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21/07/2014

To No End: Why China’s Corruption Crackdown Won’t Be Stopping Soon – China Real Time Report – WSJ

One major question hovering over China’s anti-corruption campaign – already the longest the country has ever seen — is when it’s going to wind down.

According to anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan, who briefed fellow officials on the campaign last week (in Chinese), it won’t be any time soon.

And the major reason for that may well be that Beijing hasn’t yet figured out how to end it.

Wang laid out the anti-corruption strategy in unusual detail during these meetings, supplying a road map that outlined where the campaign had been and where it’s now headed (in Chinese).

Beijing’s anti-graft crusade isn’t just a one-off initiative, but an extended battle which began last year, taking down, as President Xi promised, both high-ranking “tigers” and lower-level “flies.”

And it’s accelerating.  According to an analysis that appeared on the website of the People’s Daily earlier this month, from January to May this year, Wang’s inspection teams disciplined 62,953 people, an increase of 34.7% over the same period the previous year (in Chinese).

In his briefing last week, Wang conceded that the campaign didn’t start all that well.  Indeed, in the early stages of the campaign, Wang said, the sense among his inspection teams was that corruption was buried so deep within China’s political marrow that it couldn’t be defeated, only deterred from growing.  Party officials were only too comfortable with political business as usual, where bribes and personal connections overrode considerations of actual talent when it came to selecting and promoting cadres.

“Some localities and departments, as well as some party organizations saw the pursuit of honest government as not their main responsibility,” Wang said, adding that the only option at that point was to “not allow corrupt elements to gain a foothold” in the few institutions where corruption was not already omnipresent.

The tide turned, he said, when cadres were finally given political cover by Beijing to report on their comrades engaging in corruption, especially those selling access to government officials and offering bribes for promotion.  That routine had become worrisome to Beijing because unqualified and immoral officials were becoming policy-makers.

Moreover, Wang argued, by focusing on specific areas known to be rife with graft—such as land development and real estate projects, mining rights, and public welfare funds—inspectors showed skeptics and potential targets that this campaign was a serious effort to rollback misconduct.

So what’s next?

That’s the tricky part.  Punishing corruption is one thing; preventing its reemergence could be a far-greater problem.  As one Chinese analyst admitted despondently in the pages of the People’s Daily (in Chinese), unless the system is thoroughly reformed, there’s a good chance that “the rot will come back.”

Continuing to press hard against corruption seems to make sense if Beijing’s expanding fight against graft is finally starting to show success and developing the party’s legitimacy as a problem-solver on issues that matter to the masses. But there’s also concern about just how much longer the campaign can be maintained when, as the analysis above notes, there is “a danger of overdoing something, leaving some people in a constant state of anxiety.”

Fear is evidently freezing some officials from becoming more actively engaged in supporting Xi’s call for changes in how the government operates—a passivity that has led to complaints in the Party media (in Chinese).

And there’s a greater danger:  That this effort to tear down corruption is simply dealing with the existing problems and not doing anything about building a new way of decision-making.

As a leading Chinese commentator on the current leadership’s policies put it in the same People’s Daily essay, the real need is “to create a good political environment, allowing officials to devote oneself, heart and soul, to do things, and not focus on the small circle of relationships one has with one’s superiors, doing always what one is told to do.”

That’s an attractive vision, but one that would require a major restructuring of politics in China.

via To No End: Why China’s Corruption Crackdown Won’t Be Stopping Soon – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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20/07/2014

China, Brazil close plane, finance, infrastructure deals | Reuters

In a raft of energy, finance and industry accords signed before presidents Xi Jinping and Dilma Rousseff, the two nations agreed to join forces to build railways to help Brazil cut its infrastructure deficit and feed China’s appetite for commodities.

English: Official photo of President Rousseff,...

English: Official photo of President Rousseff, taken by official photographer, at Alvorada Palace on January 9th, 2011. Français : Photo de Dilma Rousseff, prise par un photographe officiel, dans le Palácio da Alvorada le 9 janvier, 2011. Português: Foto oficial da presidente Dilma Rousseff feita no Palácio do Alvorada no dia 9 de janeiro de 2011 pelo fotografo oficial. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Trade between China and Brazil soared to $83.3 billion last year from $3.2 billion in 2002, with iron ore, soy and oil making up the bulk of Brazilian exports, making China the South American nation’s biggest trade partner.

China’s Eximbank extended a $5 billion credit line to Vale to buy ships and equipment from Chinese companies, but there was no mention of a solution to an impasse over China’s refusal to allow giant, bulk iron ore carriers used by Vale SA to dock at Chinese ports.

In a sign of deepening financial ties between the two members of the BRICs bloc of emerging nations, the China Construction Bank formalized acquisition of 72 percent of Brazilian mid-size lender Banco Industrial e Comercial SA, a 1.62 billion real deal agreed in October.

Xi visited Brasilia after a BRICS summit that set up a new $100 billion development bank, to be based in Shanghai, that will fund infrastructure projects, providing developing nations with an alternative source of funding to Western-dominated multilateral financial institutions.

via China, Brazil close plane, finance, infrastructure deals | Reuters.

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17/07/2014

Ex-Mongolia party officer gets life imprisonment for taking millions in bribes | South China Morning Post

A mainland regional official was sentenced to life imprisonment today for bribe-taking, a court said, the first high-ranking bureaucrat to be jailed in the corruption crackdown overseen by President Xi Jinping.

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Wang Suyi, 53, was last year removed from his post as chief of the Communist party’s United Front Work Department in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, an agency that liaises between the ruling organisation and non-communist groups.

He was convicted of bribery and sentenced to life in prison by the First Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing, the court said on its official account on Weibo.

He was charged with taking more than 10.73 million yuan (HK$13.5 million) in bribes between 2005 and last year in exchange for securing business deals for companies and promotions for individuals, earlier local media reports said.

Wang was the first official to face criminal trial among the 40 of vice-ministerial or higher rank investigated since China’s once-in-a-decade power transition in 2012 that anointed Xi as chief of the ruling Communist Party, according to the reports.

The South China Morning Post previously quoted a senior editor with a regional party newspaper as saying that Wang’s mistresses accused him of taking 100 million yuan in bribes, and of nepotism involving about 30 relatives.

Xi took office as president last year and has vowed to root out corrupt officials, warning that graft could destroy the ruling party.

Corruption causes widespread public anger in China and the drive has been widely touted.

At least 10 mainland provinces have launched investigations to track down so-called “naked officials”, those whose relatives have moved abroad, and the party is increasingly punishing members on charges of “adultery”, as it tries to clean up cadres’ reputation for corruption and womanising.

But critics say no systemic reforms have been introduced to combat it, while citizen activists calling for such measures have been jailed on public order offences.

via Ex-Mongolia party officer gets life imprisonment for taking millions in bribes | South China Morning Post.

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15/07/2014

Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Goes Green in China’s Guizhou – Businessweek

Guizhou may be one of China’s poorest and least developed provinces. But the flip side is an environment so pristine that President Xi Jinping recently joked its air should be bottled.

Terraced fields of rice paddies are farmed on June 4, 2013, in Jinping county, Guizhou province, China

Now, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group (2317:TT), the world’s largest consumer electronics producer, with more than a million employees working in 30-some industrial parks across China, has set its sights on backward but beautiful Guizhou.

The maker of Apple’s (AAPL) iPad and iPhone and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) servers is building an industrial park in China’s southwest, seemingly worlds away from its massive and gritty Shenzhen manufacturing base, that aims to be state of the art in energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. Set among karst hills on the outskirts of Guiyang, the provincial capital, the 500-acre park will keep about 70 percent of the natural vegetation undisturbed.

via Apple Manufacturer Foxconn Goes Green in China’s Guizhou – Businessweek.

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