KEYWORDS: Zhou Yongkang, Xi Jinping, Xinjiang, Terrorism, Hukou Reform, freedom of the press in Hong Kong, Occupy Central.

CHINA – POLITICS

1. Investigation of Zhou Yongkang announced

1. On 29 July, Xinhua announces the long-anticipated investigation of China’s former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang: “The investigation of Zhou, a former Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, for suspected “serious disciplinary violations” will be conducted by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). (立案审查)” The formal announcement of the probe appeared as a colossal event in China’s politics, as it has broken an unwritten rule that Party leadership will not go after former members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
   Source: Xinhua.
2. Authorities also announced the arrest of Zhou Yongkang’s son, Zhou Bin, who has been detained since December, on the same day: “Caijing reported that Zhou has been formally arrested for « involvement in illegal business operations » by the procuratorate in Yichang, a prefecture-level city in eastern China’s Hubei province”.
   Source: The Guardian
3. Reuters gave more details on the charges and likely course ahead, quoting source with leadership ties that Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping reached a consensus to deal with Zhou Yongkang for violating party discipline, and that Zhou had been accused of corruption involving family members and accepting bribes to promote officials. But not all charges would be made public, and it was unclear if Zhou would eventually be indicted. The source said “If that happens, there won’t be a high-profile trial like Bo Xilai’s.” Any trial could also be some way off. Zhou would first have to be expelled from the party and then have formal criminal charges filed against him, which could take several months or longer.
   Source: Reuters
4. Zhang Lifan, Beijing-based political analyst, said that the fact the probe took so long to be announced show how strong the forces opposing Xi Jinping are.
   Source: The Telegraph
5. William Farris notes that while a block on Sina Weibo searches for “Zhou Yongkang” has been lifted (unless in conjunction with “Xi Jinping”), another has taken its place: Jiang Zemin. Meanwhile, the Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore notes suggestions that former Premier Wen Jiabao will be targeted following the uncovering of his family’s wealth by The New York Times. At The Financial Times, Minxin Pei argued that the Party would now be more fearful and fractured than ever: “Mr Xi’s campaign has engendered an unprecedented degree of fear among Chinese officials. In politics, fear is a unifying force. If many of Mr Xi’s colleagues and rivals believe that they could be the next tigers to fall, their survival instinct might motivate them to challenge Mr Xi’s authority. The unity of leadership that has held the party together since Tiananmen could evaporate.”
   Sources: Fei Chang Dao, The Telegraph, The Financial Times.
6. The rule of law was a theme in a series of state media articles and commentaries on the announcement, which cast it as proof that no one is above the law. Authorities also announced (as anticipated) that rule of law will be the central theme of October’s Fourth Plenum.
   Source: Xinhua
7. Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson interpreted the news of Zhou’s investigation differently, foreseeing the very opposite of the rule of law: “Like Bo, the initial investigation of Zhou will be carried out by the Party, not the judicial authorities. And, like Bo, if Zhou’s case is actually transferred into the formal court system, it is equally unlikely that any of the basic legal protections that exist on paper – access to evidence, right to counsel of choice, and freedom from coerced confession – will apply. There will almost certainly be another level of injustice in Zhou’s prosecution: that the victims of his abuses are unlikely to be able to bring cases against him or those who carried out his orders. The leadership’s imperative, as past cases have shown, will be to prosecute Zhou in way that serves their political aims, which means creating an impression of combating corruption.”
   Source: Human Rights Watch
8. With Zhou’s arrest, the anti-corruption drive enters another phase. The CCDI announced its inspection tour in Shanghai last week, appearing to target the Shanghai faction.
   Source: 人民网

2. Being a good communist: Party members warned not to “echo western values”

1. CPC Organization Department published an edict on “intense ideological education for officials to strengthen their faith in communism and curb corruption” (關于在幹部教育培訓中加強理想信念和道德品行教育的通知) . The statement said that profound social-economic changes at home and abroad have brought multiple distractions to officials who face loss of faith and moral decline, adding that the conviction and morals of officials determine the rise and fall of the CPC and the country. It pledged to improve officials’ morals, calling on them to be noble, pure and virtuous persons who have relinquished vulgar tastes.
   Sources: Xinhua, China Copyright and Media
2. Moral restraint have recently been promoted with proclamations against adultery—defined, said an unnamed official, by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection as keeping at least three mistresses—and the use of official vehicles and chauffeurs.
   Source: The Washington Post
3. Reuters’ Sui-Lee Wee notes comments from a public web chat by Yao Zengke of the Ministry of Supervision and Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in which he warned that China should learn from the fall of the Soviet Union and keep a tight rein on the views of Party members, saying that the Communist Party in former Soviet Union allowed its members “to publicly express views that were different from the organization”.
   Source: Reuters
4. At the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute Blog, Kerry Brown examined the question of Party members’ ideological rectitude in terms of Liu Shaoqi’s 1939 essay ‘How to be a Good Communist’ and Xi Jinping’s current corruption crackdown.
   Source: China Policy Institute Blog
5. SCMP reports that more Party officials committed suicide. Last month, alone, six officials committed suicide, according to media reports. Two, from Henan and Hubei respectively, left letters saying they were depressed; one was reported to have accepted bribes.
   Source: SCMP

3. Xinjiang anti-terrorism

1. New transportation regulations in Xinjiang’s Urumqi have heightened security presence on public busses and enacted a lengthy list of banned items. The local government issued new rules after a transport security meeting, barring passengers from bringing on board liquids (including drinking water, cooking oil and yogurt), lighters and unknown powders “to strike a severe blow on all forms of criminal activity on public buses,” the state-run Legal Daily said.
2. “Trapped in a Virtual Cage: Chinese State Repression of Uyghurs Online,” a recent report from the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), surveys restrictions on Uyghur-language Internet content to show how “Chinese authorities have exerted effective control over how Uyghurs seek, receive and impart information online.” Following the release of the report, UHRP’s Henryk Szadziewski and Greg Fay look at the legacy of the 10-month Internet blackout that came after large-scale unrest in Urumqi spread to other cities in Xinjiang in the summer of 2009.
   i.     “The unprecedented 10-month shutdown experienced after the 2009 protests was catastrophic for original writing in the Uyghur language. When the Internet was restored in May 2010, at least 80% of Uyghur-run websites, including Diyarim, were wiped from the web in what added up to a digital book burning of Uyghur content. On the forums of Diyarim and the other two most popular sites, Xabnam and Salkin alone, over 200,000 users had contributed over 2 million posts in 145,000 threads. Not a single website that was deleted by authorities after July 5 was devoted to religion. Instead, the sites were mainly devoted to literature, entertainment, culture and computers, based on a 2009 survey.
       ii.     […I]n an environment where one Internet footprint could land them in jail, Uyghurs tended to heavily self-censor. Especially in the post-2009 period, “crackdowns” and “strike hard” campaigns became de rigueur for Chinese officials as they attempted to demonstrate control over the region. Furthermore, the research found that just as self-censorship increased, so did distrust of VPNs, even though they are commonly used in China to circumvent government blocking of websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Uyghurs knew if they in particular were found using one, it would have all kinds of negative consequences.
   Source: The Diplomat
3. The AP reports that nine suspected terrorists were shot dead near Hotan, Xinjiang on Friday after a standoff with police. State media said that as many as 30,000 ordinary citizen joined in hunting the suspects. This comes after deadly incident in nearby Shache (Yarkant) on Monday—where 37 died in the attack and 59 suspected terrorists were shot dead, while the details of which are in dispute, with reporters barred from the scene—and the murder of a controversial state-appointed Muslim leader at a mosque in Kashgar on Wednesday.
   Source: State media
4. A report from Foreign Policy outlines Chinese concerns that Uyghur militarism is being incubated in bordering Pakistan, and how this is affecting relations with Beijing’s longtime ally. Some say that the intensification of unrest in Xinjiang can be attributed to increasingly oppressive policies stoking long-seated ethnic tensions in the region. A report from the Wall Street Journal looks at how more women in far-western Xinjiang have begun wearing veils to assert their Uyghur identity since government regulations forbade the practice in 2012: “Rarely seen in Xinjiang a decade ago, the veil has become increasingly popular. It is now part of Beijing’s broader battle to curb what it sees as religious extremism following a wave of deadly attacks in Chinese cities in recent months. [Expert said that] the veil has now become “a passive form of resistance, signifying your opposition to government restrictions on religion”.”
   Sources: Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal
5. A website notes that “crude, racist anti-terrorism posters have appeared in town (Liuzhou, Guangxi)”.
   Source: Liuzhou Laowai

CHINA – SOCIETY

1. China’s new hukou reform

1. China announced its long-awaited hukou reform to help the « orderly » migration of some 100 million rural workers into cities by 2020. The reform largely follows what has been proposed in the Third Plenum in November 2013.
2. In a State Council circular released last week, the government will “remove the limits on hukou registration in townships and small cities, relax restrictions in medium-sized cities, and set qualifications for registration in big cities”, while noting that “the rights and benefits of residents who do not have urban ID records in the city where they live should be safeguarded.” The circular also indicated that the reform will put an end to the dual-household registration system which has divided people into urban or agricultural households since the 1950s. The government also said, as it had before, that it would try to ease barriers that deny places in schools, health care, and family-planning and other public services to residents who do not have local household registration papers. Many city governments have resisted such changes, and urban residents fear the erosion of their privileges.
   i.     Effectively, there will be no limits for settlers moving to small cities. Medium cities, defined as cities with populations between one and three million, will have a low barrier to entry. Large megacities, defined as cities with over 5 million residents, will still have a fair amount of restrictions and aspiring residents will have to qualify under a “points system” that takes into consideration a variety of individual factors including “seniority in employment, their accommodation and social security.”
   ii.     Policies will favour rural migrants who have worked in cities for a long time and skilled workers who are more competitive in the labour market
3. Caixin and state media report that the roadmap of hukou reform has been proposed by President Xi in his PhD thesis.
   Sources: Caixin, State media
4. Although the reforms promise a unified system for both urban and rural populations, Wang Su at Caixin explains that real progress will require corresponding changes to the way pension, education, and health care benefits are distributed: “The difference in levels of public services enjoyed by people in rural and urban areas has been a major barrier preventing the free movement of people around the country. Last year authorities in Deqing County, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said they wanted all residents to get equal access to public services. They found that 33 such services were involved, but officials were only able to level the playing field for 17. The aim of the reform announced by the cabinet is to provide people across the country with the same level of public services. One way to do this is to improve what is being offered in rural areas by providing better pension, education and health benefits. The other way is to provide public services to all permanent residents of cities.” As SCMP reports, the removal of the distinction in the hukou only makes a difference on paper. The real difference will be made when the gap in terms of social benefits is filled. There’s still a long way to go before there is an equalised social security net among different regions. The fundamental solution is to unify social security [nationwide]. Professor Kam Wing Chan, who is interviewed by SCMP, said the wide variations in the quality of locally administered social welfare and social services had made “the elimination of the rural and urban hukou classifications insignificant”.
   Sources: Caixin, SCMP
5. While state media is reporting that the hukou reform will accelerate urbanization, Xinhua reports elsewhere that the proposals have been met with “indifference” by many rural migrants, who worry that changes to the system would take away what benefits they enjoy under the status quo: “Only 10.7% of people surveyed by the statistics bureau of southwest China’s Sichuan Province said they are willing to register their resident permit, or “hukou,” in cities. The uninterested migrant workers believe the hukou is more advantageous in rural areas than in cities. Among the issues they worry about most is their old-age care, house-buying opportunities and unemployment in cities, showed the research, which questioned 3,000 migrant workers aged 18 to 65 in nine cities in Sichuan in April and May.”
   Source: Xinhua
6.  Rachel Lu at Foreign Policy reports that land rights tied to rural hukou have fed reluctance to give up rural identity in exchange for urban registration: “China’s explosive economic growth plays a part in shifting the equation. Rural hukou in developed coastal regions have become more valuable as land prices have risen swiftly. In wealthy eastern Zhejiang province, the number of rural hukou holders switching to urban hukou totalled 189,000 in 2010, a 67% drop from more than 570,000 in 2004. In 2010, several well-publicized stories emerged about urban civil servants trying to claw back the rural hukou they had given up.”
   Source: Foreign Policy

2. Peking University research finds Wealth Gini Coefficient exceeds 0.7

1. A report (《中国民生发展报告2014》) published by Peking University Chinese Social Science Research Centre finds that the Gini Coefficient for 2012 reaches 0.73, which means that the top 1% households owns more than one third of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 25% households own about 1%. China published an official estimate of the Income Gini Coefficient for 2012, which is at 0.474.
2. See the difference between income Gini and the less commonly used wealth Gini
3. Chinese summary of the report can be found here

CHINA – DIPLOMACY

Censorship in EACS conference held in Braga

1. Confucius China Studies Program (CCSP), part of the Confucius Institute Headquarters (漢辦), who co-funded the European Association for Chinese Studies Conference with the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (CCKF) held in Braga last week, ordered the certain pages containing the CCSP logo, CCKF’s self-presentation and mentions of Taiwan be removed from the conference programme. The conference programme, which the CCSP did not directly fund, was sent to the CCSP three weeks before but was approved. The removal of the pages happened after CIH’s Vice-Minister Xu Lin, upon arrival, ordered her CIH colleagues to remove all the conference materials from the conference venue and take them to the apartment of one of the Chinese teachers employed at the Confucius Institute at the University of Minho. Four pages were removed in total.
   Source: EACS
2. After the EACS President Roger Greatrex was informed that conference participants were receiving Conference Programmes lacking several pages, including the page bearing the CCKF self-presentation, on his own authority he ordered the conference staff to make 500 double-sided full-colour identical copies of the original CCKF page, on paper of the same quality as that of the Conference Programme. He emphasized that the EACS is unable to accept any attempt to censor conference materials by the CIH. EACS will issue a formal letter of protest to Hanban against its political interference in academia.
3. From Wikipedia:
   i.     Confucius Institutes are non-profit public institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the PRC.
   ii.     Li Changchun, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, was quoted in The Economist saying that the Confucius Institutes were “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.”
   iii.     While Chinese authorities have been cautious not to have CIs act as direct promoters of the party’s political viewpoints, and little suggests that the Confucius Institutes function in this way, officials say that one important goal of the Institutes is to influence other countries’ view of China. According to Peng Ming-min, a Taiwan independence activist and politician, colleges and universities where a Confucius Institute is established have to sign a contract in which they declare their support for Beijing’s « one China » policy. As a result, both Taiwan and Tibet become taboos at the institutes, he claims. This claim is in dispute, however. Michael Nylan, professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Berkeley, says CIs have become less heavy-handed in their demands, and have learned from « early missteps, » such as insisting that universities adopt a policy that Taiwan is part of China. Nylan’s survey of faculty and administrators at fifteen universities with Confucius Institutes revealed two reports that institutes had exerted pressure to block guest speakers, but both events went ahead anyway.

HONG KONG – POLITICS

1. The House News closed down citing political pressure

1. Pro-democracy website, blog, and news aggregator House News (主場新聞) has shut down due to a combination of political pressure and low advertising revenue despite high traffic (more than 300,000 unique viewers per day). SCMP reports: “In a letter posted on the website’s front page, Tony Tsoi Tung-ho, [founder of the website], said he and his family had been increasingly influenced by the spreading “white terror” in society, as a number of democracy advocates had been followed, had their past investigated and been smeared.”
   Source: SCMP
2. The Hong Kong Journalist’s Association recently released its annual report « Press Freedom Under Siege » calling the past year in Hong Kong the “darkest for press freedom in several decades,” which mentioned police obstruction of journalists trying to cover protests, and brutal attacks on members of the Hong Kong press. Earlier in 2014, international press freedom advocacy groups the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders both noted Beijing’s expanding influence on Hong Kong media by using economic clout to encourage self-censorship.
   Source: Hong Kong Journalist’s Association

2. More than a million signed Anti-Occupy petition

1. The WSJ reports that the Alliance for Peace and Democracy is claiming to have already gathered nearly 1 million signatures, with three weeks left in the petition. Each signature is submitted on a form that begins: “I oppose violence. I oppose Occupy Central.”
2. Chief Executive CY Leung, and many other government officials and politicians also signed the petition. A report from the SCMP notes opposition to the petition, and describes the Alliance’s tactics to tally signatures by extracting them from often apolitical villagers in the outskirts of Hong Kong: “the media descended on the three sleepy villages yesterday, as locals – some elderly, illiterate, or indifferent to politics – were invited to show their support for the alliance. Those who couldn’t sign their names were told an “X” would suffice. “I actually don’t know what the Occupy Central movement is about,” Sam Mun Tsai shopkeeper Cheung Wing-wah said after signing the petition. He nodded when asked by the campaigners if he wanted a “stable and prosperous Hong Kong”.”
   Source: SCMP