Posts tagged ‘Xi JinPing’

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02/02/2013

* Corrupt Shaanxi banker disappears with US$160 million

This disappearance will probably be the first of many.

China Daily Mail: “Posted by chankaiyee2 ⋅ February 2, 2013

Chaoyang District

In my post “Police uncover Shaanxi fraudster’s 41 Beijing properties; arrest 4 ‘accomplices’”, I told SCMP’s story of Gong Aiai, a small potato who was for some time deputy chief of a county bank. However such a small potato was found by police to have assets worth more than 1 billion yuan ($160.2 million).

Singtao Daily reports today police investigation of her started due to a post on the internet informing against her in early December.

Singtao says that Gong denied that she had such properties in an interview with chinanews.com, but later disappeared. There is rumour that she has fled abroad using her passport with fake identity.

Chinese media have made investigation and found that Gong had valuable properties in Xian and her hometown Shenmu County and owns two large hotels in Shenmu.

However, with all such wealth, Gong was not happy and tried a failed suicide last October due to pressure from her business. Her daughter who studied in Beijing was in poor health due to excessive dieting for weight reduction.

SCMP reports: “Police have uncovered the false documents of a business partner of Gong Aia. Gao Yiner – who owned properties with Gong in Chaoyang district – had two Beijing household registration papers, called hukou, and at least two identification cards listing different birthdays.

Gong, dubbed the ‘elder sister of property’ by mainland media, reportedly had four IDs and four hukou, three of which were from her hometown of Shenmu county, Shaanxi province.”

Ming Pao says, according to Chinese web newspaper yicai.com, the household registries in many areas are somewhat in a mess. They have not only become the places for police officers to make extra money by providing people with fake identities but also shelters for corrupt officials to hide their assets.

Some police officers have revealed that some party and government officials have two household registrations to keep two identities. They use their fake identities to own their ill-gotten assets, while there are no illegal assets under their true identities. In that way, they are not afraid of declaration of their property.

From this, we see Xi Jinping’s wisdom. As soon as he took over the reigns, he said he wanted to reform the letters and calls, reeducation through labour and household registration systems.

He has conducted a swift reform of the letters and calls system to prevent local officials from intercepting and persecuting petitioners and informers so that people dare to inform against corrupt officials.

He said that he would abolish the reeducation through labour system. If that system is really abolished by the National People’s Congress, local government and police will not be able to imprison people in labour camps without proper legal procedures.

As for the household registration system, I thought that he meant allowing migrant workers to have household registration in the cities they work. That will take a long time and no priority should be given to that reform.

However, reform of the system to prevent corrupt officials from having fake identities, and discovering such fake identities, will be vital to the success of Xi’s anti-corruption drive. Xi seems to have his own source of information, so that he decided to give priority to that reform.

Sources: chinanews.com, yicai.com, Singtao Daily, Ming Pao, SCMP”

via China: Corrupt Shaanxi banker disappears with US$160 million « China Daily Mail.

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30/01/2013

* Panicked property fire sale in China amid corruption fight

Sydney Morning Herald: “Thousands of Chinese communist officials have been panicked into a fire sale of their illicit properties and billions of pounds have been smuggled overseas as the country’s new leaders intensify a campaign to root out corruption.

Corruption-fighter Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan in Beijing, China.

Luxurious properties are being dumped on the market in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou for anyone able to pay in cash as officials try to cover their tracks. A report by the party’s anti-corruption unit, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said “a wave of luxury home sales began last November and has accelerated since December”.

It said the volume of deals had intensified by “a hundred times” after Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, warned that corruption could kill the party and put one of the country’s most vigorous and resolute politicians, Wang Qishan, in charge of stamping out graft.

Fu Zongmo, an estate agent in Sanya, Hainan, said his colleagues had sold two houses recently for government officials. In recent years, the tropical beaches and golf courses of Sanya have attracted plenty of speculators but recently the market has stalled.”

via Panicked property fire sale in China amid corruption fight.

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25/01/2013

* China, Japan move to cool down territorial dispute

Reuters: “China and Japan sought to cool down tensions over a chafing territorial dispute on Friday, with Communist Party chief Xi Jinping telling an envoy from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that he was committed to developing bilateral ties.

Natsuo Yamaguchi (L), leader of Japan's New Komeito party, delivers a personal letter from Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to China's president-in-waiting Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, January 25, 2013. REUTERS-Ng Han Guan-Pool

Xi will consider holding a summit meeting with Abe, Natsuo Yamaguchi, a senior lawmaker and head of the junior partner in Japan’s ruling coalition, told reporters after his talks with the Chinese leader.

The meeting came as China took the dispute over a series of uninhabited islands to the United Nations.

It was not immediately clear if the U.N. involvement would increase the likelihood the row would be resolved peacefully. But launching an international legal process could reduce the temperature for now.

At China’s request, the United Nations will, later this year, consider the scientific validity of a claim by Beijing that the islands, called the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku by Japan, are part of its territory. Japan says the world body should not be involved.”

via China, Japan move to cool down territorial dispute | Reuters.

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22/01/2013

* China’s Xi urges swatting of lowly flies in fight on everyday graft

Reuters: “Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping on Tuesday took his campaign against corruption to the petty bureaucracy and minor infractions of lowly officials who are the bane of many Chinese people and businessmen’s everyday lives.

China's Communist Party chief Xi Jinping looks on during his meeting with U.N. General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 27, 2012. REUTERS/Wang Zhao/Pool

Xi, in comments carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said it was just as important to go after the “flies”, or lowly people, as it was to tackle the “tigers”, or top officials, in the battle against graft.

“We must uphold the fighting of tigers and flies at the same time, resolutely investigating law-breaking cases of leading officials and also earnestly resolving the unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems which happen all around people,” he said.

Bureaucrats must not be allowed to get away with skirting rules and orders from above or choosing selectively which policies to follow, added Xi.

“The style in which you work is no small matter, and if we don’t redress unhealthy tendencies and allow them to develop, it will be like putting up a wall between our party and the people, and we will lose our roots, our lifeblood and our strength,” Xi told a meeting of the party’s top anti-graft body.

Xi called for “a disciplinary, prevention and guarantee mechanism” to be set up to prevent corruption, Xinhua said, though Xi did not provide any details.

Chinese bureaucrats have long had a poor reputation for laziness, a love of excessive paperwork and minor acts of corruption which infuriate the man on the street and add to growing mistrust of the party.

Since taking over as Communist Party head in November from Hu Jintao, Xi has vowed to root out corruption no matter how high it is, warning the party’s survival is at risk if it does not take the problem seriously.”

via China’s Xi urges swatting of lowly flies in fight on everyday graft | Reuters.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/12/03/5515/

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07/01/2013

* China newspaper journalists stage rare strike

I wonder how long and how far central government will tolerate this dissent.

BBC: “Journalists at a major Chinese paper, Southern Weekly, have gone on strike in a rare protest against censorship.

Demonstrators gather along a street near the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, 7 January 2013.

The row was sparked last week when the paper’s New Year message calling for reform was changed by propaganda officials.

Staff wrote two letters calling for the provincial propaganda chief to step down. Another row then erupted over control of the paper’s microblog.

Supporters of the paper have gathered outside its office, reports say.

Some of the protesters carried banners that read: “We want press freedom, constitutionalism and democracy”.

Police did not interfere with the protesters outside the paper’s offices, according to reports.

“The Nanfang [Southern] Media Group is relatively willing to speak the truth in China so we need to stand up for its courage and support it now,” Ao Jiayang, one of the protesters, told Reuters news agency.

If the Southern Weekly strike continues for any length of time, this scandal will create a major headache for China’s new leader, Xi Jinping. Since he took the reins of power in Beijing, Mr Xi has generated kudos for his seemingly laid-back, open style of leadership. But the Southern Weekly uproar will force him to reveal his hand when it comes to censorship.

Will he support Tuo Zhen, the zealous propaganda chief who ignited the fracas at Southern Weekly by censoring its editorial message? The highly-popular newspaper has experienced run-ins with government censors in the past, but its stellar reputation has also allowed it to publish hard-hitting reports on a wide range of sensitive topics, from working conditions at Foxconn factories to the spread of HIV in China’s rural areas.

Other major Chinese media outlets have been forced to toe the government line in recent years, leaving Southern Weekly unrivalled in its pursuit of top-level investigative journalism. If Mr Xi allows Southern Weekly’s special status to be wiped away, he risks tarnishing his carefully cultivated reputation as a humble man of the people.

Southern Weekly is perhaps the country’s most respected newspaper, known for its hard-hitting investigations and for testing the limits of freedom of speech, says the BBC’s Martin Patience in Beijing.

Chinese media are supervised by so-called propaganda departments that often change content to align it with party thinking.”

via BBC News – China newspaper journalists stage rare strike.

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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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30/12/2012

* Xinhua unveils top 10 domestic events of 2012

Xinhua News Agency on Saturday unveiled its list of the year’s 10 most attention-grabbing events in China.

“The events are as follows, in chronological order:

01 China cuts 2012 GDP growth target

At its annual session in March, the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, adopted the government work report, in whichgrowth - Ind vs Ch the country lowered its GDP growth target to 7.5 percent this year after keeping it at around 8 percent for seven consecutive years. The change was made in the face of global turbulence and pressing domestic demand for economic restructuring.

02 Medical reform meets three-year target

The State Council in March issued an implementation plan for reforms in the health and medical care sector in the next three years. According to official statistics, as of the end of 2011 the basic medicare insurance system covered over 1.3 billion people in China, more than 95 percent of the total population, marking the realization of the previous three-year target for the 2009-2011 period to form a universal medicare system.

 

03 Bo Xilai under investigation; Wang Lijun convicted

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on April 10 decided to suspend Bo Xilai’s membership in the CPC Bo & GuCentral Committee Political Bureau and the CPC Central Committee, as he was suspected of being involved in serious discipline violations in the cases of Wang Lijun and Bogu Kailai. The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection put him under investigation. Bo was later expelled from the CPC and public office and the case was turned over to prosecutors for investigation.

In August, Bogu Kailai was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for intentional homicide by the Hefei City Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province.

In September, Wang Lijun was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bending the law to selfish ends, defection, abuse of power and bribe-taking by the Chengdu City Intermediate People’s Court.

04 China vigorously protects maritime rights

SoChinaSeaIn response to some foreign countries’ actions infringing upon China’s maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea and East China Sea, China has vigorously launched campaigns to protect its legitimate rights.

Since April, China has dispatched government ships and planes to monitor Huangyan Island in the South China Sea.

Five months later, the Chinese government announced the base points and baselines of the territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands and their affiliated islets and started continuous patrols in waters around the Diaoyu Islands.

In December, China reiterated its claims in the East China Sea by presenting to the UN Secretariat its Partial Submission Concerning the Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf beyond 200 Nautical Miles in the East China Sea.

05 China’s first female astronaut participates in successful manned space docking mission

In June, China sent three astronauts, including the country’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, into space for the nation’s manned Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut, waves during a departure ceremony at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu province, June 16space docking mission.

The three astronauts successfully completed an automatic and a manual docking between the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft and the orbiting Tiangong-1 lab module in space before making a safe return to Earth.

06 Manned submersible sets new national dive record

Chinese submersible breaks 7,000m mark Also in June, China’s manned submersible, the Jiaolong, set a new national dive record after reaching 7,062 meters below sea level during its fifth dive in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.

 

 

07 First aircraft carrier commissioned

In September, China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was delivered to the People’s Liberation Army Navy and put into commission after years of refitting and sea trials. Last month, the country successfully conducted flight landing exercises on the aircraft carrier, where the home-grown J-15 fighter jet made its debut in a landing and take-off exercise.

08 New CPC leadership and new targets

Xi & LiThe CPC convened its 18th National Congress between Nov. 8 and 14, when the Party’s new leadership was elected, including Xi Jinping, who was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee. The congress also set new targets for the country such as efforts to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

09 Full coverage of pension scheme

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced in November that China’s urban and rural pension insurance systems covered 459 million people at the end of October and that as many as 125 million elderly people receive monthly pensions. The State Council had previously decided to make pension insurance available for everyone in urban and rural areas.

10 New CPC leadership rejects extravagance, bureaucracy

The newly-elected leadership of China’s ruling party has pledged to reject extravagance and reduce bureaucratic visits and meetings, in a bid to win the people’s trust and support.

In a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Dec. 4, members vowed to shorten meetings and documents, reject bureaucratism in domestic and overseas visits, reduce road closures for official activities and support more practical content in news reports. The leaders also promised to take the lead in putting these requirements into practice.”

via Xinhua unveils top 10 domestic events of 2012 – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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30/12/2012

* Corrupt Chinese Officials Draw Unusual Publicity

Yet more evidence that the new leadership is serious when declaring that corruption must be stopped.

NY Times: ““Something has shifted,” said Zhu Ruifeng, a Beijing journalist who has exposed more than a hundred cases of alleged corruption on his Web site, including the lurid exertions of Mr. Lei. “In the past, it might take 10 days for an official involved in a sex scandal to lose his job. This time he was gone in 66 hours.”

————————————————————————————

The Chinese have become largely inured to tales of voracious officials stockpiling luxury apartments, $30,000 Swiss watches or enough stolen cash to buy their mistress a Porsche.

But when images of a bulbous-faced Communist Party functionary in southwest China having sex with an 18-year-old girl spread on the Internet late last month, even the most jaded citizens took note — as did the local party watchdogs who ordered his dismissal.

These have been especially nerve-racking times for Chinese officials who cheat, steal and bribe. Since the local bureaucrat, Lei Zhengfu, became an unwilling celebrity here, a succession of others have been publicly exposed. And despite the usual cries of innocence, most have been removed from office while party investigators sort through their bedrooms and bank accounts.

In the weeks since the Communist Party elevated a new slate of top leaders, the state media, often fed by freelance vigilantes, have been serving up a head-spinning collection of scandals.

Highlights include a deputy district official in Shanxi Province who fathered 10 children with four wives; a prefecture chief from Yunnan with an opium habit who managed to accumulate 23 homes, including 6 in Australia; and a Hunan bureaucrat with $19 million in unexplained assets who once gave his young daughter $32,000 in cash for her birthday.

“The anticorruption storm has begun,” People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece, wrote on its Web site this month.

The flurry of revelations suggests that members of China’s new leadership may be more serious than their predecessors about trying to tame the cronyism, bribery and debauchery that afflict state-run companies and local governments, right down to the outwardly dowdy neighborhood committees that oversee sanitation. Efforts began just days after Xi Jinping, the newly appointed Communist Party chief and China’s incoming president, warned that failing to curb corruption could put the party’s grip on power at risk.””

via Corrupt Chinese Officials Draw Unusual Publicity – NYTimes.com.

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30/12/2012

* Chinese state secrets revealed: Details of leaders’ families

Is this the first signs of China’s ‘glasnost’?

Straits Times: “China’s top two leaders have revealed photographs and details of their families, breaking a long-held taboo where such information is considered a state secret.

A picture taken in 1988 shows a young Mr Xi (above), then the secretary of the&nbsp;Ningde Prefecture Committee of the Communist Party, participating in farm work&nbsp;during a visit to the countryside in Fujian province. -- PHOTO: XINHUA<br />

In a surprise move, clearly aimed at boosting their public support, the official Xinhua news agency released previously unpublished photographs of Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and incoming premier Li Keqiang late on Sunday night.

It also carried lengthy profiles that chronicled their careers from early grassroots days up to their recent activities since taking over the helm of the Communist Party last month.

But what struck observers most was the information on the pair’s families, including what is believed to be the first mention in state media of the name of Mr Xi’s daughter.”

via Chinese state secrets revealed: Details of leaders’ families.

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07/12/2012

* India Dips a Toe into the South China Sea Dispute

Thoughtful commentary about why India, who has no territorial claims in he area, is getting involved with the South China Sea disputes.

Geopolitical Monitor: “Although the Xi Jinping administration is now secure enough in its transition to power to put nationalist jingoism back in the box from whence it came, recent events suggest that China will continue to tow a hard line in regards to its military and economic rights in the South China Sea.Joint exercises between the Indian Navy and the US Navy

Earlier this week, Chinese media sources reported that police authorities in Hainan province will be authorized to search and seize foreign vessels operating in Chinese waters starting next year. The announcement prompted an immediate response from the Philippine government, which condemned the move and requested a clarification as to what exactly can be considered ‘Chinese territorial waters.’ ASEAN also chimed in over the announcement, with Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan calling it a move that “raises the level of concern and great anxiety [in the dispute].”

Judging by Chinese official statements on the subject, it seems likely that this expansion of search and seizure powers applies to China’s entire territorial claim, which is essentially most of the South China Sea, extending as far south as Brunei. It can be seen as an initial attempt to leverage China’s growing naval power to buttress an ambitious territorial claim that has, up until now, remained largely rhetorical.

If Beijing goes through with the plan, it will ramp up the volatility in an already precarious region. Whenever hard military assets are being deployed and coming into close contact with one another, the risk of a crisis breaking out is substantially heightened. It wouldn’t take much for a relatively small and seemingly insignificant event, much like the standoff between China and the Philippines earlier this year, to spin out of control and set off a regional conflict.

And make no mistake: there will be no shortage of military ships operating in the South China Sea. On the very same day that China announced its intention for expanded search and seizures, the government of Vietnam announced that it was going to begin military patrols of its own territorial claim. This announcement comes on the heels of an incident earlier this week in which a group of Chinese boats cut the cables of a PetroVietnam survey vessel operating off the Gulf of Tonkin.

But by far one of the most interesting recent developments in the South China Sea dispute is the entrance of India into the fray. Earlier this week, Indian Admiral D.K Joshi publically asserted that India will not back off from protecting its maritime and economic interests in the South China Sea.

Although India doesn’t have any direct territorial claim in the area, the waters are strategically important to New Delhi for three reasons. First, like for any trade-dependent country, the South China Sea represents an important global shipping route and freedom of navigation must be maintained. Second, India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) owns a stake in waters claimed by Vietnam. And third, and perhaps most importantly, the South China Sea represents an opportunity for an Indian riposte against China’s ‘string of pearls’ naval encirclement of the Indian subcontinent.”

via India Dips a Toe into the South China Sea Dispute – Geopolitical Monitor.

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