REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

China's future first lady already a big star

In this photo taken on April 10, 2007 and made available on Nov 2, 2010, Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping performs in Luoyang in central China's Henan province. Xi is in line to take the country's top post in two years, setting up an unusual scenario: In a system where leaders' families are kept almost invisible, how will the ruling Communist Party handle a first lady who's arguably more famous than her husband? So far, the answer appears to be by making her disappear too. (AP Photo) (AP)

BEIJING -- She's a glamorous singer with big hair, beloved by millions, and a major general in the People's Liberation Army to boot. He's a stiff policymaker, a suit with the bland public persona of most Chinese leaders.

Vice President Xi Jinping is in line to take the country's top post in two years, setting up an unusual scenario: In a system where leaders' families are kept almost invisible, how will the ruling Communist Party handle a first lady who's arguably more famous than her husband?

So far, the answer appears to be by making her disappear too. References to Xi's marriage to Peng Liyuan are being scrubbed from the Internet. She has been given a desk job at her military song-and-dance troupe, reducing her public appearances.

Interest in the couple was renewed last month after Xi was appointed to a committee overseeing the Chinese military, boosting the likelihood he will lead the Communist Party in 2012.

Political wives have long been viewed suspiciously in China - ever since Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, promoted his most radical policies, took part in purging opponents and ultimately made a grab for power. She was arrested and jailed after his death in 1976.

In a world where first ladies from France's Carla Bruni to America's Michelle Obama routinely grab media attention, Liu Yongqing, the wife of Chinese President Hu Jintao, is rarely seen except during state visits with the spouses of foreign leaders.

The almost absent Chinese first lady reflects in part the preference of the technocratic, authoritarian leadership for running the rising global power at an impersonal distance.

"On the one hand they have been talking about governance with a human touch and given that (Peng's) image is positive, what's the point of trying to eliminate it?" said Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago. "It's only making it more mysterious and provides room for speculation."

Read more at The Washington Post

Young Kim set for early China photo-op

BEIJING - North Korea's heir-apparent Kim Jong-eun is preparing to visit China in what is seen as his first formal debut on the international stage in his official capacity as the next leader of the reclusive state, diplomatic sources in China and South Korea say.
The visit may be made soon, as early as before the year's end, the sources say, indicating that preparations are unfolding fast, given the frail health of North Korea leader Kim Jong-il.

The visit, likely arranged while China's politburo member Zhou Yongkang was in North Korea last month, will be the first official debut of the young Kim on the international political scene to crystallize his status as the crown prince and serve as a major step in his power consolidation.

The sources say they believe Kim Jong-eun accompanied his father, Kim Jong-il, to China in late August in a secretive trip that paved the way for Jong-eun to be informally introduced to the Chinese leadership for endorsement.

Analysts say the visit had been expected, although perhaps not so soon. "It will be only natural," said Choe Sang-hun, a fellow at Stanford University's Walter Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of North Korea. "North Korea internally established Kim Jong-eun as the next leader. A natural next step is for the next leader to meet with the Chinese leadership

."

The junior Kim's move will also be a natural following of his father. After being tapped as the successor to his father, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il in 1983 paid a visit to China and met with paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in what analysts saw as the moment that China officially endorsed Pyongyang's choice of heir.

Kim Jong-eun won his first military post with a promotion to four-star general in late September and was appointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party.

Read more at Asia Times Online

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg in China: People elected to Congress 'can't read'

BALILTY/AP

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the U.S. Congress during a trip to Hong Kong. Below, the mayor rides the subway.

Mayor Bloomberg, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal while in Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the C40 climate summit, had some rather harsh words about members of Congress:

"Mr. Bloomberg attacked the notion that using Chinese-made technology to promote green energy in the U.S. was politically objectionable," wrote the Journal.

"Let me get this straight: There's a country on the other side of the world that is taking their taxpayers' dollars, and trying to sell subsidized things so we can buy them cheaper, and have better products, and we’re going to criticize that?" he said.

Earliler, Bloomberg unleashed his anger at U.S. Congress.

"If you look at the U.S., you look at who we're electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can't read," he said.

"I'll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We're about to start a trade war with China if we're not careful here," he warned, "only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is."

Read more at The York Daily News

 

Here's What The 2010 Election Means For US-China Relations

The votes are cast.  The results are in.  Republicans rode a populist tidal wave to seize control of the House.  Democrats held on to a (fragile) majority in the Senate.  So what does it all mean for US-China relations?  That’s the question I was asked today on BBC radio.

As many of you know from reading my bio, I worked as an aide to John Boehner, now expected to become Speaker of the House, during the last Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.  And, of course, I’ve been living here in Beijing for several years, teaching US-China business relations at one of China’s top universities.  So here’s my “American perspective from China” in the wake of the 2010 midterm elections:

China played an unusually prominent role in this year’s campaigns, on both sides of the political spectrum.  On the right, one infamous ad sponsored by Citizens Against Government Waste featured a Chinese professor, sometime in the not-so-distant future, chuckling with his class over America’s demise due to profligate taxation and spending.  On the left, Democrats hammered GOP Senate candidate Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania for once having worked in Hong Kong, while their Senate candidate in Illinois accused his Republican opponent, Mark Kirk, of “treason” for accepting campaign contributions from some of my American expat friends here in Beijing (both Toomey and Kirk ended up winning closely-fought races).

All the unflattering attention put China in an uncomfortable spot, coming hot on the heels of the House’s overwhelming passage of a bill to impose sanctions on China for keeping its currency artificially weak.  The Senate is expected to vote on that bill, or one like it, soon after the election.

Read more at Business Insider

China's chess match with Myanmar

Beijing, China (CNN) -- China prides itself on its loyalty to lao pengyou (old friends) -- even to those that some Western countries consider "rogue states."

Myanmar is one of them. China's southern neighbor is an isolated state, bedeviled by economic malaise and ruled by a military junta. The country is under mounting pressure to open up and change.

Myanmar is set to hold its first elections in two decades and many are questioning the legitimacy of the vote. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the issue at the ASEAN-U.N. summit in Hanoi last month, saying "ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the United Nations agree on the need for a credible democratic transition and national reconciliation, including the holding of free, fair and inclusive elections."

Meanwhile, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III joined international calls for Myanmar to release Noble Laureate and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

But China has refrained from publicly pressuring Myanmar. It has remained Myanmar's closest ally since the military coup 20 years ago that catapulted the Southeast Asian nation's generals to power.

Vote in Myanmar: Military will keep control

The two countries share a common border. They both wish to prevent ethnic unrest in their backyards.

"Part of the Myanmar side is populated by 'nationalities' led by persons of Chinese ethnicity," said Asian affairs expert and retired Filipino diplomat, Rodolfo Severino. "Every country wants its immediate neighbors to be friendly to it. China is no exception."

China is Myanmar's second largest trading partner. It is keen to tap Myanmar's mineral, timber and other natural resources needed for its booming economy, analysts say.

During a recent visit to Beijing, Than Shwe, Myanmar's military leader, signed several agreements on trade, education and health exchanges with the Chinese government. China has been the main supplier to Myanmar of military hardware and has trained many of its army personnel.

Read more at CNN

A partnership built on flawed assumptions

File photo of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama in Washington. Early signs that New Delhi will play the power game differently have been greeted in Washington with bewilderment, consternation and even anger

If the big ticket arms and nuclear purchases the U.S. expects India to make do not materialise, much of the warmth in the relationship will evaporate.

For all its appeals to “shared values” like democracy as a counter to China, the United States has not fully understood the meaning and significance of Democratic India's emergence as a global player.

At one level, this is hardly surprising. The U.S. itself developed a full-blown capitalist system and rose to global pre-eminence at a time when a large section of its population did not have the right to vote. The same is true of Great Britain and Japan and Europe. In the post-World War II period, countries which registered the greatest success in establishing a free market system tended not to be democratic. If capitalism and multi-party democracy come as a package in many countries today, it is capitalism which got off the starting block first in virtually all of them, leaving its imprint on democracy.

India's ruling class, on the other hand, was handicapped by the need to harmonise in real time the anti-democratic consequences of a market-based economy with the procedural and substantial requirements of a democratic polity. Of course, economic elites have had the greatest influence in policymaking but their power has always been contested. As a result, universal adult suffrage — and the wider deliberative process that comes along with it — has had more of an impact on the development of capitalism in India than in the rest of the “free world”. Unsurprisingly, the country's global outlook has also been tempered by this aspect of its polity.

Read more at The Hindu

China Responds to U.S. Election

As the U.S. mid-term elections draw to a close, China is watching closely. While major media and blogging sites have set up election chaser columns to monitor events as they unfold, responses from political commentators and citizens alike present a cross-section of opinions. Hot topics include potential effects of the election on the U.S.-China relationship, the economy, collapsing support for President Barack Obama and the “Tea Party” phenomenon. Some selected comments on the U.S. election by Chinese experts and netizens:

 

Xinhua/ZUMApress.com

One topic Chinese netizens are discussing in regards to the U.S. mid-term elections is the collapse in support for President Barack Obama.

The possibility exists that China-U.S. relations could suffer short-term setbacks or even regressions after these elections. But in the long term, as China becomes an increasingly stronger power, improvement in China-U.S. relations will prove to be the overall historical trend. This is something a single election can’t change…In the American mid-terms, internal political problems, particularly economic ones, are what voters are most concerned about. The Obama government’s inability to deal with internal problems has become a burden to other Democrats who share his views. The best hope for winning elections is to come up with different policies from the incumbent government, and this is precisely why we’re seeing anti-Chinese sentiment starting to ring out…The Obama administration still hopes to stabilize relations with China, but if more anti-Chinese representatives are voted in, it will inevitably stifle the administration’s China policy in the future.
-Shen Dingli, associate dean, Fudan University Institute of International Studies, Shanghai. Interviewed by Zhejiang’s Qianjiang Evening News, Nov. 2

Read more at China RealTime Report

The Asian Challenge to Jon Stewart's Dominance

Yes, of course, I'm scare-mongering. As with many other "imminent threats" from the unstoppable Chinese and their East Asian neighbors, the idea that Comedy Central will soon lose its #1 rank in politics-based humor is an exaggeration.

And yet....!! You can't minimize what the NMA ("Next Media Animation") group in Taiwan could be capable of. They've made an art form out of campy but compulsively watchable CGI reenactments of events in the news, with a rich helping of the tabloidesque. The first one that was widely noticed in the US was their dramatization of the Tiger-v-Elin Woods tussle last year.

Two election-related features from NMA to get on the record now, as the world watches  America going to the polls. First, their distillation of Christine O'Donnell's campaign themes, including her warning about China's "carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over the United States."

The full clip is here and in embed below.
  On the same China-menace theme, NMA has also done a remix of the famous/ infamous "Chinese Professor" ad. Perhaps it is one degree more obvious and less deft than the O'Donnell, Woods, or Sarah Palin items but it is still effective in its own way. (It's worth noting the rococo element to the satire here. In America, the "Chinese Professor" ad might evoke fears of Asians in general or ethnic Chinese as a group, which would certainly affect people in Taiwan -- but also specific fears of the government in Beijing, which at times is the object of fear-mongering in Taiwan too.)  In any case worth seeing as a complement to the original ad, (whose audience full of "Chinese students" is actually the result of a casting call in the DC area) and for the surprising star turn by the surly panda at the end.

Read more at The Atlantic -James Fallows

文章翻译：“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology

He explained why he was more able to repent than Red Guards who had beaten people and why he dared to be different from them.  Whether or not to apologize is a major question.   How you set the implied meaning of the apology is also a major question.

“You set a good example:” A Red Guard apology
By Wang Youqin (王友琴)

I’ve seen a few letters recently that have to do with things which happened 44 years ago.  Several middle school students who were Red Guards in 1966 wrote them to apologize to the teachers they “struggled against” at the time.  Since I am a researcher of history, I thought it would be a good idea to write about it and let the world know. 

One side of the story concerns the teacher Cheng Bi (程璧) who is 86 this year.  She was in charge of Beijing Foreign Languages School during the Cultural Revolution, and just like so many others in education, Ms. Cheng first had her responsibilities revoked and later was imprisoned in the school.  She suffered insults and was savagely beaten.  They shaved half of her scalp to give a “yin-yang head.”

I conducted an investigation on this.  In August of 1966, the Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School beat to death a kindergarten worker named Liu Guilan (刘桂兰) in the auditorium with wooden sticks, belts, and water pipes.  Those under persecution were called “demons and monsters” [牛鬼蛇神] back then and were the ones forced to carry her body away.  Ms. Cheng and Director of Instruction Yao Shuxi (姚淑禧) each grabbed a leg and dragged her away.  Yao Shuxi was beaten many times herself.  One night five different groups of Red Guards attacked her.  She was found in the ladies latrine with a rope around her neck as she dangled from a sewer pipe after “having committed suicide.” 

Another side of the story concerns eight Red Guards from Beijing Foreign Languages School in 1966.  They were teenagers 44 years ago, so now they are all about 60.  They have apologized to Ms. Cheng Bi and repented of the violence and persecution they perpetrated that year. 

A massive wave of violence started by the Red Guards in Beijing swept throughout the country in August of 1966.  They beat 1772 people to death in in Beijing alone (according to a December 20, 1980 report in Beijing Daily).  The number of people who suffered and the savagery which was used was unprecedented.  The victims were [politically] rehabilitated around 1979 and families of the deceased received 420 yuan in “compensation.”  What are those perpetrators of the violence from that year thinking now?  Do they admit to their failures?  Are they willing to apologize to the victims?  Can they repent?  Many people aren’t so sure. 

I have not investigated these people myself, so I have no way of knowing how representative the eight who apologized are in comparison to the whole population of Red Guards.  However, I am convinced that this action is worthy of praise. 

The first letter was written by Shen Xiaoke (申小珂):

Read more at infzm

China-bashing is bipartisan in US races

WASHINGTON—In these angry political times, Democrats and Republicans agree on next to nothing. China is one exception. Democrats and Republicans alike are accusing each other of cozying up to Beijing and backing policies that send U.S. jobs and IOUs to the world's second-largest economy.

Hot rhetoric from both parties in the closing days of midterm campaigns has helped to fan protectionism sentiment in the United States, casting doubt on the fate of pending free-trade agreements and complicating U.S. dealings with a muscle-flexing China.

This America-first sentiment—against a background of continued high unemployment, a snail's pace recovery and hot political attack ads—seems likely to carry over to the next

Congress no matter who wins control of the House and Senate in Tuesday's elections.

That anti-trade message is not good news for President Barack Obama as he heads to Asia in early November on a trip that includes a 20-nation summit in South Korea of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies.

The Group of 20 gathering had been seen as an opportunity to ease global trade tensions and to douse recent flare-ups between the U.S. and China over currency, exchange rates, climate change and security. But it could instead end up emphasizing unresolved differences.

In an election cycle in which foreign policy is seldom mentioned, China has become a prime economic target for both parties.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer upbraids Republican rival Carly Fiorina for sending jobs to "Shanghai instead of San Jose" as former CEO of Hewlett Packard. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada calls tea-party backed Republican challenger Sharron Angle "a foreign worker's best friend" for supporting tax breaks for "outsourcing to China and India."

Read more at Mercury News

China, Japan to improve ties

China and Japan have agreed to improve ties and discussed the issue of a disputed gas field, Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Friday after talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.

"We agreed that we will make efforts to improve the ties between Japan and China and press forward the strategic, mutually beneficial relationship. The Chinese side also agreed on it," Maehara told reporters.

Maehara "proposed that the two countries resume the negotiations over the resources development in the East China Sea which has been postponed," said a senior Japanese foreign ministry official who attended the meeting.

However, contrary to an earlier report, the minister did not say that there was an agreement to resume negotiations over a disputed gas field.

Japan has previously called for an early resumption of the stalled negotiations over the disputed gas field -- called Shirakaba by Japan and Chunxiao by China -- which have been a casualty of a simmering territorial row.

Read more at Daily Nation

On Leadership

I was recently sent an article written by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former candidate to become President of the European Council, whose text includes a couple of interesting comments on the vexed topic of Europe’s leadership – or lack thereof. Among these are the observation that the leaders of Europe are little if at all worse than those of preceding generations, and that in any event, the purpose of the European Union ought to be to make the need for such ‘transformative leaders’ redundant. These remarks set right a widespread misconception of what the European Union is, and can hope to achieve.

For let us ask the question, what is leadership? By definition, it requires that decision-making capacity be placed in the hands of a single individual. Such a concentration of power is justified when we believe that certain individuals are endowed with sufficient insight and knowledge to know better than a group of their peers; and that political institutions might exist which reliably place such individuals in power.  Presidential democracies are based precisely on such a faith: a faith that is recurrently betrayed, as candidates reveal their humanity.

If one does not believe this fairy tale, then one might see a well-designed polity as one in which not individuals, but rules, and organisations, govern. Rules, because in the absence of a beneficent leader whose informed whims prove consistently correct, it is upon tested principles that we must rely; and organisations, because a collective of individuals, serving in committee, is more consistently correct than any single individual can ever be.

Read more at euObserver

Chinese-Americans split on immigration policy

ANGEL ISLAND, Calif. — As he sailed on a ferry to Angel Island State Park, clad in the hooded brown robe of a Franciscan friar, the Rev. Franklin Fong imagined his ancestors who landed on the island about 80 years ago.

"It takes every generation of native-born folks to recognize, you know, there's something to learn from our own history," Fong said. "Because if we don't know our history, we're destined to repeat it."

The friar at Oakland's St. Elizabeth Catholic Church was one of about 350 people, nearly all of them Chinese-Americans, who took a pilgrimage recently to the island's old immigration station. They prayed, shared stories and sought to make connections between the plight of Asian immigrants who faced discrimination a century ago and the challenges faced by newcomers today.

"I think the challenges are very similar," Fong said. "Obviously, the time is different. The circumstances are different. The nations providing the immigrants are different, but in many ways we have the same fears, the same anxieties about why these people are coming and what are we going to do about them."

Opened in 1910 and closed in 1940, the Angel Island station is remembered as a detention center more than as a welcoming gateway to America. Many Asian ship passengers, subject to strict exclusionary laws from 1882 until the mid-20th century, were interrogated and jailed for weeks or months once they reached the island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Immigration laws of the time allowed just a few Chinese merchants into the country, but many Chinese laborers tried to come anyway. Some purchased new identities that would improve their chances of getting through the island.

Those who made it through faced harsh rhetoric as local newspapers and political groups railed against them, blaming them for various social and economic problems.

The organizers of the pilgrimage see parallels between the inflamed passions over Asians a century ago and the political climate today for new immigrants.

"The rhetoric is curiously the same to me," said the Rev. Emily Lin, of the Chinese Community United Methodist Church, which has been in Oakland's Chinatown for 123 years. "It's not so much the Chinese anymore. Now it's sort of targeting Mexicans and Latin Americans."

You could lift some of today's anti-immigrant signs and slogans, she said, from those targeting Chinese a century ago.

Some Chinese-Americans in the Bay Area think the comparison is unfair.

Read more at The Boulder Weekly

The Party Reaches Out Online

The web in China has been seen from the outside as a boon for dissidents—a place to organize and spread their views, with only sluggish harassment from the state in the form of blocked Web sites and occasional arrests.

Yet according to a new paper from Chat-ham House, a London-based think tank, Beijing—far from being a passive actor—is starting to increase its Internet presence as a means to reinforce its position of power. The Internet, write coauthors Shaun Breslin and Simon Shen, is a “key tool in the authorities’ attempts to convince the Chinese people that it is constructing a fairer, more predictable, and open form of government.” Party forums provide space for citizens to complain constructively on sanctioned topics like low-level corruption or medical malpractice; and leaders host Internet Q&A sessions in an “attempt to rebrand the party as more responsive to the public,” says Breslin.

Read more at NEWSWEEK

Wen calls for political reforms

China's Premier Wen Jiabao has warned that the country could risk losing the gains it has made in the three decades since economic reforms if it delayed implementing political reforms.

The Premier, who has in the past stirred debate with his liberal views, called for “political restructuring” to expand democratic rights, and hit out at the “over-concentration of power” within the government.

He also pressed for reforming institutions, particularly the judiciary, to better guarantee people's “democratic and legitimate rights” and as a means to check the “ineffective supervision” and over-concentration of power within the ruling establishment.

Mr. Wen was speaking during a visit this past weekend to the southern port city of Shenzhen, where China first launched its economic reforms in 1978. China established its first Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen in 1980, and the reforms famously transformed the sleepy fishing village to a powerhouse of Chinese industry.

The Premier's comments come four months after he stirred debate with an article he penned in the People's Daily, the Communist Party's official newspaper, in which he praised the disgraced former leader Hu Yaobang.

Hu, who championed the cause of political reforms, was sidelined by the party's more hard-line elements in the 1980s. He remains a sensitive figure in today's politics, absent from many official histories.

It was Hu's death that ultimately sparked the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989.

Read more at The Hindu

Hong Kong begins electoral reform debate

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- Protesters on Wednesday rallied outside Hong Kong's Legislative Council as lawmakers began debate over an electoral reform package that may determine the Chinese territory's political future.

Police estimated that both camps of protesters numbered in the hundreds at noontime but said they were prepared for as many as 10,000.

At issue: the pace of implementing universal suffrage, or direct elections. Under the reform package, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang has said the territory may implement universal suffrage for the election of the Chief Executive in 2017 and for Legislative Council in 2020.

"May" is the operative word, said Fred Lam, a member of Post-80s Youth Against Unrightful Authority, one organization protesting the reform plan outside the Legislative Council (LegCo) building. "We think the government or the Beijing government should give a real definition of universal suffrage, a real promise of democracy in 2017 and 2020. It's ambiguous about the date."

"There is not a 'must' or a 'will,'" he added, saying that the absence of a "more concrete promise" doesn't lend confidence.

Lawmaker Tam Yiu-chung, of the Pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, called passage of the reform package long-awaited. "Today we pass the resolution. After that, we will study about the functional constituency elections," he said Wednesday, referring to a controversial electoral component. Asked whether they would ever be eliminated, he responded, "It will not be changed."

Read more at CNN

Grovelling apology demeans New Zealand

It would be difficult to find a less-principled example of prime ministerial grovelling than the apology John Key issued to the visiting Chinese delegation who manhandled Green Party co-leader Russel Norman on Parliament's grounds last week.

Norman was a sole protestor (using his privilege as an elected MP) holding a Tibetan flag on Parliament grounds last Friday during a visit by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping when he was manhandled by Chinese security guards. Norman was jostled, had an umbrella put over him and the flag ripped from his grasp and trampled.

It was behaviour which would be commonplace in protecting the dignity of Chinese leaders but should be condemned when visitors treat our MPs this way here in New Zealand.

This was lost on our sycophantic Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, who took the Chinese side in the incident, but Key's unctuous behaviour is deeply embarrassing.

Key says his apology had nothing to do with trade and was simply an apology for the failure to provide proper security for the visit. This explanation doesn't hold water. There was no problem with security for the visit and no threat to anyone in the Chinese delegation.

It's true the dignity of the Chinese vice-president may have been affected but the sensitivities of the leadership of a brutal regime must never be put ahead of the human rights of the people of Tibet and the hundreds of millions of Chinese workers denied the right to form trade unions.

Key believes the right for any visitor to be able to enter and exit Parliament in dignity must take precedence over defending the rights of the oppressed in that country or protesting the foreign policy the country follows. If such protests make John Key's job more difficult then so be it

Read more at Frontline

Public Recommendation and Direct Elections in Nanjing to Cover Cities and Countryside, Allow People to Wield Rights

While elections in China exist at the village level, they are rare at the township level and above. Currently, Nanjing is the only city with direct elections of grassroots officials on a large scale. China Newsweek reports on “democracy’s new evolution.” Translated by CDT:

The new century ushered a landmark democratic innovation, “public recommendation and direct election,” into the Chinese Communist Party. The Communist Party’s democracy experiment now nears its tenth year, starting with the initial implementation of “public recommendation and direct election” in Sichuan’s Pingchang County — the first break with the Party’s “appointment system” — and lasting till today.

According to Samuel Huntington, political order and stability depend on the relationship between the level of political institutionalization and the degree of political participation.

In ten years, it was the first such experiment in the country, and its “public recommendation and direct election” would later receive the full affirmation of the 17th National People’s Congress as the Communist Party’s goal for democratic governance. Today, Nanjing alone, already with 806 village party organizations and 363 city community organizations, has implemented public recommendation and direct elections.

In Nanjing, one of the most important cities in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, grassroots party organizations have already received democracy’s “full coverage.” Democracy, in this [provincial] capital of 7.58 million, is on the brink of evolving towards a major trend. Because of a few differences in the Party’s democracy experiments in the past, Nanjing’s experiment will provide China’s evolving democracy with a brand new urban sample. This city’s efforts may advance China’s broader democracy by providing ideas.

China Digital Times

Questions Surround Cancelation of Li Peng Book

A Hong Kong publisher’s surprise decision Friday to cancel publication of a book that purports to be the diary of former Chinese Premier Li Peng has raised questions of what prompted the cancelation and what role Chinese government officials had in the move.

Reuters

Li Peng in September 2002

The book was reported to be Li’s diary around the time of the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Media reports based on leaked copies of the manuscript had set off much anticipation in recent weeks.

However, the legality of publication had appeared murky. Publisher Bao Pu, founder of New Century Press, acknowledged he hadn’t received permission from Li to publish the manuscript.

Bao told China Real Time Report on Monday that mainland officials met with him over the past few weeks to dissuade him from publishing the book. Bao is an outspoken human-rights activist, who had vigorously defended publishing the work despite questions surrounding its authenticity.

Bao would not say how many times he met with Chinese officials in Hong Kong nor would he elaborate on the nature of their discussions. An initial 20,000-copy printing had been set to go on sale Tuesday in Hong Kong.

News agencies reported over the weekend that the decision to cancel publication was a matter of new information on potential copyright issues, but Bao said Monday that other concerns were also involved in the decision.

Read more atChinaRealTimeReport

India to ‘expose’ China-Pakistan N-deal

NEW DELHI: India will oppose all attempts by China to ‘grandfather’ two more nuclear reactors to its pre-2004 deal for civil nuclear cooperation with Pakistan. According to senior government officials, India may not be a member of the NSG, which is meeting in New Zealand next week, but it will diplomatically oppose such a move as it is a Chinese “afterthought and a knee-jerk reaction” to India’s nuclear deal with the US in 2008.

The China-Pakistan nuclear rendezvous is not officially on the NSG agenda, but Beijing is likely to make a statement on its decision to supply two more nuclear reactors to Islamabad during the session. While the US has expressed its reluctance to back such a deal between China and Pakistan, and it is highly unlikely that Pakistan will be able to get an India-like exemption, Indian officials believe there is an outside chance of NSG countries coming together to let Beijing grandfather its latest deal to the nuclear pact with Pakistan before 2004, when China was not a member of NSG.

For India, as an official put it, it is important to call this bluff. “As far as we know, the pre-2004 pact accounted only for the Chasmah 2 reactor and maybe some other research reactors. For several years, there was no mention of any further nuclear reactor to Pakistan by the Chinese. It’s only now, after India secured a clean waiver for nuclear commerce, that this entirely new deal has come up,” he said, adding that there is no question of drawing any parallel between India and Pakistan over the issue because of India’s immaculate non-proliferation record.

Read more at The Times of India

Is China Really Changing?

Investment banker Robert Lawrence Kuhn sees China moving toward democracy, a particularly Chinese form of democracy. Why devaluing the yuan makes sense. Big challenge: the largest planned migration in history.

ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN, an international investment banker, corporate strategist and author, has spent much of the past two decades trying to understand how China's leaders think.

By his reckoning, he has visited that nation more than 100 times and interviewed hundreds of its top political figures, bureaucrats and technocrats.

In the past few years, he has been on a self-financed China Odyssey to some 40 cities in 20 provinces on the mainland. The result is How China's Leaders Think, a 546-page book published this year by Wiley, that looks at reforms taking place in today's China and what they mean for the U.S. and other countries.

The 65-year-old Kuhn has written or edited more than 25 books, including a 710-page biography of China's former president—The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (Crown, 2005). It was the first biography of a living Chinese leader to be published on the mainland and a bestseller; more than 1.1 million copies of the Chinese translation were purchased.

A former investment banker and mergers and acquisitions specialist who sold his company to Citigroup in 2001 and a commentator on the government-owned China Central Television (CCTV) network, Kuhn is an advisor to BNP Paribas and counsels multinational corporations on their strategies, structures and relationships with China. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, Kuhn also holds a Ph.D. in brain research from UCLA.

Barron's spoke by phone with the peripatetic Kuhn while he was in Shanghai. To learn his views on the world's most populous country, read on.

Barron's: You were educated as a brain scientist and have worked as an investment banker and merger specialist. How did you suddenly end up writing about Chinese politics?

Kuhn: It wasn't sudden. In early 1989, as an investment banker and a scientist, I was invited by China's State Science and Technology Commission to advise on reform. Then came the suppression of student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and I, like many foreigners, refused to return to China. But in the summer of 1990, I invited a Chinese government scientist to a conference I was co-chairing at UCLA on creativity in large organizations. During a break, several of us confronted him about Tiananmen and he said something remarkable. He agreed that China was moving backward, but he argued that it was more our fault than his, because by turning our backs on China, we in the West were abandoning domestic reformers. His appeal touched me and changed my life.

Read more at Barron's

US, China welcome Aquino's victory in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Leaders of the U.S., China and Japan welcomed Philippine President-elect Benigno Aquino III's rise to power, pledging help Thursday as he faces daunting challenges including rebellions, massive poverty and a crippling budget deficit.

The Philippine Congress proclaimed Aquino as the Southeast Asian nation's 15th president Tuesday, formalizing the landslide victory of the son of deeply revered democracy icons. Shortly after the euphoric ceremony, Aquino said his legal team had begun an inventory of the problems he will inherit.

President Barack Obama congratulated Aquino during a telephone conversation, praising the country's first automated elections on May 10 as a "positive testament to the strength and vitality of democracy" in the former U.S. commonwealth.

Both "looked forward to bringing our cooperation to a new level and to meeting at a mutually convenient time," the White House said.

To introduce some "humor" into his conversation with Obama, Aquino said he brought up both their smoking problems, for which the new Philippine leader has been criticized by both supporters and critics.

"Mr. President, I understand we have the same issue with smoking," Aquino said he told Obama. "He said, 'Well I quit that already. I have quit. It's your sole problem. At the time that you decide to quit, I'll send the advice.'"

Obama said last year that he couldn't quite break his 30-year smoking habit at times, and his doctor said in February that his smoking was still a struggle.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Filipinos expect Aquino "to carry forward the democratic traditions that his parents did so much to champion."

Read more at Google News

Allies can develop unofficial relations with China: Ma

Taiwan's diplomatic allies are free to develop unofficial relations with China, President Ma Ying-jeou said yesterday.

Ma made the comments at the occasion of a visit to Taiwan by Kiribati President Anote Tong. Kiribati is a Pacific island nation and one of Taiwan's 23 official diplomatic allies.

Ma's statement confirmed his policies of "viable diplomacy" and "diplomatic truce" with China, meaning the two countries should not try to take away each other's allies. "Both sides have a silent consensus not to go and try to win over each other's allies," Ma said. "Taiwan will strengthen its relations with Kiribati, but will not oppose Kiribati developing unofficial relations with Mainland China."

Chinese fisheries concerns reportedly recently approached Kiribati for a cooperation project.

Taiwan was building a new airport on the Pacific island nation, while Ma said he hoped more young people from Kiribati could come over to Taiwan to study English teaching and Mandarin Chinese.

Ma said that over the past two years since he came to power, Taiwan's foreign relations had been stable, allowing the country to develop its relations with its allies. Most of Taiwan's allies are small or impoverished nations in Africa, the Pacific, Latin American and the Caribbean.

Kiribati established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2003, the year Tong was elected president. He told Ma Monday that his country was willing to continue and support Taiwan in its campaign to join international organizations and participate in international events.

Taiwan News

 

The Marginalized Second Generation Peasants

Translation of a commentary in Southern Metropolis Daily titled “The Second-Generation Peasants Living an Ostracized Life”.

ALICE POON
Here is my translation of the commentary:- 

“Human beings are the subjects of a development process. Development policies should aim at transforming each individual into a major participant and beneficiary of the process and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups.

 

At the inauguration ceremony of the recent Shenzhen National People’s Congress meeting, government officials and enterprise management personnel had a chance to reflect on this issue. Xu Xiaowen, president of the Chang Yuan Group, said that it is necessary to change the present situation where factory workers are treated like ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’, and to increase after-work recreational activities for the workers.

 

In the author’s view, this is a depiction of the same old marginalized way of life for the second-generation peasant workers. Presently, the second-generation peasants are still ostracized from the urban social security system. They have long been in a precarious position in many aspects like living standards, job opportunities and medical benefits etc. Such precarious position is bound to force them to live spiritually isolated lives from society, and is the cause for their marginalized existence. The second-generation peasants live in isolation, far away from urban dwellers, from normal city life. They are unable to have normal family lives. They are like a bunch of ‘Robinson Crusoes and Fridays’ who have been stranded on a remote island and who live like castaways.

 

Hidden behind the saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ are two horrible revelations. One is that the second-generation peasants are doomed to the destiny of the first generation and from this phenomenon one can perceive the seriousness of social class stratification. The second-generation peasants are excluded from the city’s systems. Although they live within a city, their identities are not recognized by urban society, thus making them neither villagers nor city dwellers and landing them in an awkward position. This gives another marginalized quality to their existence.

 

The second revelation is that the hereditary gene rooted within the psyches of the marginalized group can lead to a strengthening and inflation of the feelings of deprivation. On the surface, the second-generation peasants have accepted the city way of life, but the city has not extended them an official reception, as the city does not count them in in its policy-making. It has thus caused antagonism in the marginalized group towards the city government. On this second-generation peasant issue, inequalities in the economic, cultural and social aspects are most prominent, as is the contradiction between the city’s acceptance of this group’s economic contribution and its non-acceptance of the group’s social status in the city.

 

The saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ fully reflects the fact that the second-generation peasants’ development right is being ignored. Human beings are the subjects of development process, and development policies should transform each individual into a participant and beneficiary of that process, and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups. Hence, ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ is as well a matter of rights. It is only on this ground that one can see clearly the allegory of marginalization. Only from this standpoint can one contemplate the problem of how best to protect the young lives of the second-generation peasants.”

Asia Sentinel

Tiananmen mothers fear history will die with them

BEIJING -- The man was in his 80s and dying. The woman was 73 and held his hand. They each lost a son in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and fought for decades to get China to acknowledge the deaths.

But Duan Hongbing wouldn't live to see that day.

FILE - In this June 4, 2008 file photo, Ding Zilin, co-founder of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group representing families of those who died in the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, stands in front of a shrine to her son, Jiang Jielian, at her apartment in Beijing. As the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in China's capital approaches on Friday, June 4, 2010, the aging mothers of people killed say they fear history will die with them. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File) (Greg Baker - AP)

"I held his hand and told him that I won't give up," the woman, Zhang Xianling, said she told Duan on a visit to his Beijing hospital bed. She said he squeezed her hand and closed his eyes in response, no longer able to speak. He died last year, a few days after that promise was made.

As the Tiananmen anniversary approaches Friday, the aging parents of victims fear their cause will die with them. The oldest of the Tiananmen Mothers, as the group is called, is 94 years old. The group's leader, retired professor Ding Zilin, says more and more members die each year.

"Can it be that you really want to wear us all down or wait for our deaths so that the problem will naturally disappear?" the group wrote in an essay addressed to the Chinese government and made public this week through the New York-based group Human Rights in China.

At the end, the 128 families who signed it attached the names of 22 former signers who have died.

China's government has never fully disclosed what happened when the military crushed the weekslong, student-led protests on the night of June 3-4, 1989, possibly killing thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens.

Authorities try to stifle any public activities that remember those who died. That has long caused friction with the victims' families as they demand recognition and compensation.

"You have posted guards and sentries in front of the home of each victim's family, followed us closely, watched us, eavesdropped on our phone conversations, interfered with our computer communications, and opened and confiscated our mail," the essay says. "You have even arbitrarily detained us, arrested us, searched our homes and confiscated our possessions, frozen donations to us, and deprived the freedom of movement of relatives of the victims."

Read more at The Washington Post