CHINA – POLITICS
Mine Disaster Miracle and Muddle
The whole of China watched for a week as rescuers struggled to make contact with more than 153 miners trapped underground in a flooded mine in Shanxi province.
On April 5th, live on CCTV and with hundreds of media present, rescuers brought 115 miners out alive, 9 days after the accident happened. The rescue was hailed as a miracle as each miner was brought to the surface among cheers and receiving the congratulations of many government officials who visited the rescue scene.
Rescuers have found 25 bodies till April 9th, there are still 11 miners trapped, rescue effort continues.
The names of the survivors and the dead miners have yet to be confirmed by the authorities and this is causing much anger among relatives, many of whom are staying near the mine and still don’t know whether their husbands and fathers are alive or dead. On April 7th Changjiang Daily reporters first released 78 names of rescued miners.
The State Administration of Work Safety has blamed the accidents on the violation of safety rules during the construction of the mine. Preliminary investigations found water had gushed into the mine after workers broke into a disused shaft that had filled with groundwater.
21st Century Business Herald said, according to Shanxi government’s regulations on mine safety monitoring, state-owned mines like Wangjialing coal mine is under supervision of the national and provincial coal industry bureaus and work safety bureaus, while the local government where the coal is located has no right or responsibility to monitor it. The paper quoted a miner saying, “As for state-owned mines, local administrations has no right to monitor… Miners all know that the three steps of coal mine inspection are strolling, dining and entertainment.”
People’s Daily’s comment said “we didn’t give up rescuing and defended the dignity of life, but the rescued dignity is somewhat painful and tragic, as the accident is rather a man-made disaster than a natural one. We can’t expect to have such good luck and miracle every time when mine disaster happens.”
Meanwhile in Yichuan, Henan province, the death toll has risen to 40, with 6 missing in another mine blast. The illegal coal mine owned by a village was reported to be poorly managed and did not have a payroll list. On Mar 15, also in Henan province, a mine fire killed 25 miners.
Mine disasters are common in China. From 1999 to 2008, 54160 miners were killed in such accidents. The highest figure was in year 2002, 6995 miners died.
China’s underground surrogate mother industry
March 29th’s Southern Metropolis Daily reported on China’s underground surrogate mothers; women who have babies for childless couples for a fee.
– Booming trade
The story said surrogacy is already a mature business in some of China’s most developed regions, including the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Bohai Bay, Changsha, Wuhan, Shanghai and Beijing. The report said there are 7 to 8 agencies in the Pearl River Delta alone, each of which can cater to 5 clients a month. Agencies seek surrogates among healthy, married women in rural areas, as they are the most popular among clients. According to the reports, in 2008 and 2009, a county hospital doctor in Hunan province introduced more than 50 local women to Guangzhou agencies to be surrogates. He also developed a network of agents or “downlines”, including village heads, village women’s work officers, insurance salesmen and matchmakers.
– Rich clients
Client can spend from 400,000 to 550,000 yuan on one or more surrogates to snsure at least one baby but if there are more, the clients usually take the extra. The report quoted one client who paid for five surrogates who delivered eight babies and the client took them all! Agency staff said there are 3 kinds of clients: First, high officials who care about their privacy the most. Second, rich VIPs who “own at least one Benz” and only choose the best and most expensive service. Third, middle-class couples who like telling their bitter stories and always seek to bargain the price down.
This is a rich people’s “game”, the staff said.
– Poor surrogate mothers
Industry insiders call surrogate mothers “volunteers”. A “volunteer” can get about 100,000 yuan every time she delivers a baby successfully. The money is usually equivalent to 10 years of family income for a rural woman.
When a potential surrogate arrives in the city where the surrogate agency is, they will be provided with an apartment and be looked after by nannies. They have to pass health checks before taken to secret medical sites for surrogacy surgery. When the surrogate is 8.5 months pregnant, the agency will arrange for a caesarean delivery. Once the baby passes a DNA test to prove it is the client’s baby, the surrogate mother will be paid and then be allowed to return to her village.
Missing dissident lawyer Gao Zhisheng resurfaces
Chinese human right lawyer Gao Zhisheng, said he is abandoning his role as a government critic and instead wants to focus on his family. Gao, missing for more than one year after being detained by police, spoke to his family by phone on March 28th. Gao said he had been released 6 months ago and had been living at Wutai Mountain, a Buddhist landmark in Shanxi province.
“I want to live a quiet life for a while,” Gao said on the phone. Gao’s wife confirmed it was Gao’s voice but said he didn’t seem at ease to express himself, and suspected he was talking under close observation.
In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press in Beijing, two weeks after his reappearance, Gao appeared thinner and subdued but said he was in good health. He refused to discuss his disappearance and instead wanted to focus on his return to his family. “We’re like a kite with a broken string”, he said.
Gao’s wish to not talk about his recent whereabouts and his often “roundabout answers” raised questions about the current conditions of his freedom and whether he is still under police surveillance.
Last month Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi said Gao Zhisheng had been sentenced on subversion charges but offered no details on his present status or whereabouts.
Shanghai Expo
The largest ever World Expo will be held in Shanghai from May 1 to Oct 31. Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng said this is the first time Expo will be held in a developing country, Shanghai won’t disappoint visitors from all over the world. Shanghai mayor Han Zheng said the total budget for Expo is 28.6 billion yuan (US$4.19 billion), including 18 billion for construction that was approved by the State Council and 10.6 billion for operation that has to be raised through marketing channels.
According to South China Morning Post, at the moment, the 5.28 square-kilometre Expo site is still very much a building site and a number of buildings are yet to be completed.
So far security and traffic are the biggest concerns of organizers.
To tighten security control, the Shanghai government issued new regulations on Apr 4, saying some designated dangerous chemicals, such as perchloric acid and nitricacid, are strictly banned from being sold to individuals between April 15 and Nov 15. Buyers of toxic chemicals including rat poison and pesticide, need to register their real names. The notice also said local police authorities can suspend the approval of blasting operations during the period, or inform operators to suspend already-approved blasting operations.
Last month, Shanghai’s vice-mayor, Yang Xiong, mentioned the Moscow metro station suicide bombings at a press conference. He said organizers are confident they can keep a lid on such threats by imposing tight checks on entrances to the Expo garden. No liquids, sharp items, matches or lighters will be allowed in. X-ray scans of commuter’s carry bags have been expanded to all metro stations in Shanghai. Wen Wei Po’s editorial pointed that Shanghai Expo needs to prevent attacks from many terror parties, including Tibetan separatists, Xinjiang separatists and terrorist activities against certain foreign countries.
Another concern is traffic. Yu Zhengsheng anticipated there will be 70 million visitors to the Expo, 400,000 per day. To avoid possible traffic jams on Apr 30 when the opening ceremony is, Shanghai government decided from Apr 30 to May 4 the whole city will be on holiday.
The ticket price is the biggest concern of ordinary people. The Shanghai government just issued nearly 7 million free tickets. That’s one to every permanent household in the city – each of which was accompanied by a travel card worth 200 yuan. But the gift from the government adds weight to rumours that the 160 yuan cover price has resulted in lower than expected demand among domestic-dominated target audience. Officials last week said they had so far sold slightly over 22 million tickets through online portals, which was in line with their projections.
Vietnamese brides
42 year old Nanjing dance school owner, Old Dai, gained online fame in the past month for his 47 diary entries on his bride-hunting journey to Vietnam. Old Dai also published hundreds of pictures of pretty Vietnamese potential brides and many successful stories of Chinese men’s bride-hunting trips.
Old Dai’s standard for an ideal bride is “not high”, as he said. She should be:
- Virgin
- Young, beautiful and in good shape
- Free of unreasonable demands
- Not going to give him a ‘green hat’ i.e. won’t have affairs with other men
- Virtuous and housewifely
Old Dai said he found it hard to find such a girl in China these days as they are all very realistic, money-worshiping and arrogant. Vietnamese girls who meet his standards are everywhere he said and it only costs 30,000 to 40,000 yuan to marry one.
His frank criticism of Chinese girls attracted a huge agreement from men and considerable opposition from women. According to Southern Metropolis Weekly, a bride-hunting travel group of four mainland bachelors led by Old Dai stayed in Vietnam for about a week to meet potential brides brought by a local woman. The men all have good jobs in China but couldn’t find a wife because “Chinese girls are too gold-worshiping, very poor quality” as they become more financially independent and enjoy more rights and power. “Women are not supposed to have money or power,” one bachelor concluded.
Old Dai said the potential transnational bride market in mainland China is “scarily big”, so far, most of his clients are from Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.
According to a marriage agency in Hanoi, Taiwan and South Korea used to be the favourite destinations for Vietnamese women who wanted to marry foreigners. But since 2008, more and more men from the mainland are seeking wives in Vietnam. For Vietnamese brides, mainland bachelors are not as attractive as their rivals in Taiwan, South Korea or the West in financial or material terms but they win their hearts by being respectful and having a strong sense of family responsibility.
A possible reason for the bigger and bigger cross-boarder marriage market is China’s long-standing gender imbalance. A recent Chinese Academy of Social Sciences report said there were 119 males for every 100 females among China’s 1.3 billion people – well above the UN’s recommended upper limit of 107. More than 24 million men could find themselves without spouses in 2020.
At the same time, more and more ‘three-high’ (三高:high degree, high income, high position or age) women are becoming left-over girls (剩女). A matchmaking website did a survey on its 20,000 single women members who were overs 28 year old and earn more than 5000 yuan a month, earlier this year. The results showed 60% of “left-over girls” would rather keep their high standards and wait than rush into marriage.
Hot online topics
– Cheap houses for Beijing civil servants
On April 6th, a post on a few of China’s most influential message boards revealed the incredibly low inner prices that Beijing’s civil servants can get when they buy houses.
It listed 11 properties built for government employees in Beijing:
Ministry of Railway’s houses, located at Xizhimen, 2000 yuan per square meter, market price of the area is 50,000 yuan;
Ministry of Public Security’s houses, located at Guangqumen Wai, 4500 yuan per square meter, market price is 35,000 yuan;
People’s Bank staff houses, located at Xuanwumen, 2000 yuan per square meter, market price of the area is 50,000 yuan; ……
The post outraged millions of netizens. “Who would like to work for the government if there’s no benefit?” “They don’t miss any profit!” “Communist Party IS GOOD!” “High housing prices are only for ordinary people.” “It’s good, at least they are paying.”
None of the mentioned government departments confirmed the content of the post.
– Property market to collapse in 2011?
On March 26, a post predicting China’s property market to collapse in 2011 caused a great deal of discussion on popular message boards like Tianya.cn, Mop as well as traditional media including CCTV and Guangzhou Daily. The post compared China’s real estate market from 2005 to 2008 with that of Japan from 1985 to 1991.
Most of the netizens who responded to the post were cheered by the prediction and will wait to buy houses after the bubble bursts. But experts and real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi said people should view it as a warning rather than a reasonable prediction as it merely reflects people’s dissatisfaction with soaring housing prices.
Xinhua’s six commentaries on housing prices
From March 28th to April 2nd, Xinhua published six commentaries criticising the soaring property prices, local governments’ land-related revenues and corruptions involved in the industry.
The series of articles listed problems in the property market and gave its countermeasures, including imposing property tax on home purchases, offer more financial support to local governments, keep information transparent in land trading and sep up property declaration system for all the officials.
The central bank’s survey showed in the Q1 2010, 41.58% potential house buyers have postponed their plan, 23.1% buyers bought their houses as investment, 40.9% interviewees think the price will still go up in a year.
Who is deleting your posts?
Why did your posts suddenly disappear? Who deleted them? Southern Metropolis Daily concluded three possibilities:
- Relevant government departments (有关部门)
- Website administrators
- Internet public relations companies
Internet PR used to be called “internet mafia” by traditional media as they can use their network and money to influence netizens’ opinions and then help their clients to win brand awareness, even in judicial trials.
Many of the most influential portal sites and message boards like People.com.cn, sina.com, youku.com, netease.com, tianya.cn and sogou.com would delete posts after negotiating with internet PR companies, but of course, there’s a price. From a few hundred to hundreds of thousand yuan, it depends on the content of the post and the client’s financial background.
A CEO of a Shanghai-based internet PR company said the industry is impossible to be banned because traditional media’s content can be controlled by PR companies and they can exert the same control on the internet.
CHINA – ECONOMY
Central bank names new members to policy committee
On Mar 29, the People’s Bank of China appointed Zhou Qiren, Xia Bin and Li Daokui as members of its monetary policy committee. The three will replace Fan Gang, so far the only academic in the 13-member committee.
Adding two more academic members indicates the increasing importance of academic voices in monetary policymaking, said an economist with Fudan University.
“Going by their recent comments on inflation, with Li saying that China could precede the United States in raising the rates and Zhou urging a timely and firm exit from stimulus policies, it is speculated that their appointment may signal chances of an earlier rate hike,” said China Daily.
On Apr 2, in an interview with China Business News, Zhou Qiren said “stability in the yuan’s value is worth pursuing in the long term,…It’s not worth it to sacrifice stability of the yuan’s value and pursue stability of the exchange rate…At the moment China lacks conditions to peg the renminbi to US dollar because the latter is extremely unstable…To solve this, we can deal the rate and currency separately, as exchange rate is up to trading behaviour instead of blames, threatening, debates and political pressure.”
China leads G-20 members in clean energy finance and investment
In 2009 China invested $34.6 billion in the clean energy economy while the United States invested $18.6 billion and came in second place, according to Pew Charitable Trusts’ report released on Mar 24, “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?” Overall, investments in clean energy dropped about 6.6 percent in 2009 to $162 billion around the world due to the recession, said the report. It forecast investments would grow to $200 billion in 2010.
According to Reuters, China has adopted national targets for renewable power including mandates for 30 gigawatts each from wind and biomass energy by 2020. It also has a fixed feed-in tariff for wind farms, which guarantees a minimum price for electricity from the source that’s higher than that from traditional power sources like fossil fuels. But the U.S. lacks strong national policies to support renewable energy.
21st Century Business Herald said, in the new era, developing clean energy is a battle for the economical and technological high ground and it’s a competition between China and the U.S..
Geely purchases Volvo
On Mar 30, China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding agreed to pay Volvo US$2.7 billion – 1.8 billion on purchase and $900 million on expanding production, for the purchase from Ford Motor Co., which made the deal the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese carmaker. Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman said three quarters of the total financing would come from Chinese banks and overseas capital markets while the rest would come from Geely.
Li is very confident about Volvo’s profit in the future. He told reporters that Geely has found the way to lower the costs and expand the production scale. According to 21st Century Business Herald, Li Shufu’s made a five-year plan for Volvo: to raise share of domestic purchase 8% per year and make it 40% after five years, thus the company can cut US$120 million in purchasing in five years. In the future, Beijing’s Volvo production base will be able to produce 300,000 cars per year, in fiver years’ time, the global production scale will reach 900,000 in five years.
CHINA – DIPLOMACY
Beijing and US try to clear air before talks
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made a surprise visit to Hong Kong and China after a scheduled trip to India. Geithner’s Hong Kong and China trip was only announced a day before his arrival in Hong Kong with much speculation in Western media the trip was meant to avoid a confrontation on US demands for China to revalue its currency, the yuan.
In Hong Kong, Mr. Geithner met with former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, former Monetary Authority chief executive, Joseph Yam Chi-kwong and current Chief Executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.
In Beijing Mr. Geithner met with Vice Prime Minister, Wang Qishan. Mr. Wang is seen as an influential economic policy maker in Beijing. A statement released by both sides after their meeting said the two sides exchanged views on US-China economic relations.
Geithner’s trip comes after it was announced the US would delay a report scheduled for release on April 15th which was widely expected to name China a currency manipulator. President Hu Jintao also announced he would visit the Washington next week for talks on nuclear security.
Shrinking Mekong River & China dam building
The leaders of the four member-states of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) – along with dialogue partner China and military-ruled Myanmar- had a landmark meeting on April 4th in Hua Xin, Thailand talking about the severe regional drought. At the meeting, China’s Vice Foreign Minister denied the fears that the dam building on upper Mekong (China calls it Lancang) exacerbated the regional drought.
The meeting had been widely seen as a rare opportunity for lower Mekong countries to voice their long-held concerns over their powerful neighbour China’s dam-building frenzy.
Chinese media widely reported that MRC CEO Jeremy Bird told local media the low water levels in the Mekong as being the result of the severe drought, instead of Chinese dams. But Bird has also been reported saying, “It’s difficult to say categorically that there is no link (between the low water levels and those dams)”.
CHINA – CULTURE
Newsroom revolt
After twelve days’ revolt, on April 1st, editors of Sichuan-based Science Fiction World (科幻世界) magazine achieved what they hoped – editor-in-chief Li Chang (李昶) was suspended from his position. “This is not an April Fool’s joke”, The Southern Metropolis Daily reported on the 12 days of revolt.
It all started from an open letter posted on Douban.com on Mar 21 that listed 7 points of disagreements of the staff, including cutting manuscript rates, renting magazines under SFW under a “one license, multiple publications” scheme to unqualified parties, etc. The staff charged Li Chang with short-sighted management practices that bordered on incompetence.
The letter then was posted on Tianya.cn and attracted more than 180,000 hits. Editors started getting lots of encouraging phone calls everyday. “They (fans) stay in front of computers making voice and writing posts for us…They are the real power that scares bad people away,” an editor said.
Editor Liu Weijia said they had planned the revolt for more than two months, but nobody leaked the information because editors all felt desperate with the situation. “He (Li Chang) was trying to change this leading science fiction magazine into a poor-quality paper,” which is totally unforgivable. “Freedom has a price!” Liu said.
Is Han Han influential?
Author, blogger and car racer Han Han was nominated as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. The news cheered Han Han’s fans, and shocked a large number of Chinese netizens. The Beijing News’ poll result showed nearly 60% of the 33,952 voters agree with the nomination, while 40% disagree. Some detractors said Han Han’s influence doesn’t go beyond China’s borders. Other Chinese candidates on the same list include human right activist Liu Xiaobo, Vice-Premier, Wang Qishan, Chongqing Party Secretary, Bo Xilai and Baidu CEO, Li Yanhong.
Earlier the People’s University professor Zhang Ming said in his book that in China these days, Han Han’s influence is bigger than that of all the Chinese intellectuals. Maybe Professor Zhang is being dramatic, but nobody can deny Han Han’s influence as a blogger among Chinese readers, especially young Chinese internet users, as each of his blog articles attracts about half a million hits and tens of thousand comments.
Where is his influence from? Most of the Beijing News poll voters say it’s from his common sense. “Han Han is ahead of his time, because he chose to base himself on common sense a long time ago…In today’s China, common sense is so precious that it takes not only courage but also wisdom to gain it from the real life…Only in a society where common-sense is so lacking among the majority can someone like Han Han have such a big influence.”
Han Han himself has remained low-key towards the nomination. He said in his blog that he felt ashamed about his so-called influence, because he knows nothing but writing. But in China, influence is supposed to be power, which is in the hands of the people who can play with your fate, and they are usually unsearchable on China’s search engines.
TV stations told to stop using English phrases
The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) issued a notice to relevant broadcasting organizations, asking them to stop using English abbreviations in Chinese programs. CCTV sports channel confirmed that from April 4th, sports commentators have started calling CBA 中国男子职业篮球联赛, the full Chinese translation of CBA. Accordingly, NBA will be avoided as well. Other popular abbreviations like GDP, WTO and CPI will also be substituted with their Chinese pronunciations, the notice said.
The move comes after a growing number of national legislators and political advisors called for preventive measures to preserve the purity of the Chinese language.
HONG KONG – POLITICS
1.53 million HK people back on radical tactics
A survey by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies shows that 25.9% of Hong Kong adults agree only radical tactics can force the government to respond to people’s aspirations, Ming Pao reported on Apr 9.
The percentage of residents calling for radical tactics is up 4.5% compared with 2008, while at the same time, only 26.5% of interviewees think Hong Kong is a harmonious society, which is down 11% compared with the result of 2008. This is also the first time the survey found that residents generally don’t think Hong Kong is a harmonious society. The Chinese University of Hong Kong interviewed 1,005 people aged 18 and over in February and March as part of its “harmonious society” survey conducted every two years.
The institute’s honorary researcher, Laurence Ho, said people shouldn’t ignore the 4.5% increase as it means if the situation continues there will be more radical candidates elected into the Legislative Council in 2012.
Another survey done by Baptist University last month showed 58% of Hong Kong youth are dissatisfied with the government. The biggest dissatisfaction is with the growing gap between rich and poor.
First HK-Guangdong cooperation framework agreement signed
Hong Kong and Guangdong province signed a new agreement on April 7th aimed enhancing mutual economic and financial co-operation. The signing ceremony was observed by mainland vice-president Xi Jinping.
Chief Executive Donald Tsang said the agreement would be an opportunity for Hong Kong to contribute towards economic development in the mainland.
The agreement would increase co-operation in several areas. This includes:
– Developing financial services industries in Guangdong so it can build an international financial centre with Hong Kong;
– Using Hong Kong’s service industries and Guangdong’s manufacturing industries to develop a global manufacturing and services base;
– Building an international aviation, shipping and logistics hub; and
– Promoting more co-operation among Hong Kong and other Pearl River Delta cities.
Experts told the Southern Metropolis Daily that, Hong Kong people should lower their gesture, it’s time for them to learn from mainland neighbor. Also, Hong Kong should break its protective labor control and lower the salary level and housing prices, to improve regional labor flow.
Hong Kong Economic Journal said this is a landmark agreement. Vice-President Xi Jinping’s observation at the signing ceremony suggests the central government agrees the regional development should lead by Hong Kong, while Guangdong and Shenzhen will play supportive roles. The agreement will improve the region’s efficiency in cooperation, so it can compete with the uprising Yangtze River Delta.
Tung Chee-hwa visits Taiwan
Former HK Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa arrived Taiwan on Mar 27 for a six-day visit, one of the highest-ranking Chinese officials to ever visit the island. Tung is now vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He was not scheduled to meet any government officials.
TAIWAN – POLITICS
Snails-without-shells back on stage
Members of Snails-without-Shells Alliance stood up again after 20 years the group formed, to push Taiwan government to issue a housing policy that would make it easier for ordinary people to get a home. The founder of alliance Lee Sing-jhang said the main cause for the high housing prices is the money-wasting elections that cost tens of billions and paid by big financial groups. Those big financial groups can gain huge profit from the property market under the permission of the elected party and wouldn’t care about ordinary people’s life.
Lee said they will form a “Sacred Invalid Votes Alliance” to ask people cast invalid votes, in order to push the government respond to housing price issue effectively.
Premier Wu Den-yih said the government can’t put press on the leading real estate industry, or else the whole economy will be affected.
Shanghai & Taipei sigh direct MoUs
Four memoranda of understanding (MoUs) for cooperation between Shanghai and Taipei were signed on April 6th during Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng’s maiden visit to Taiwan, a move that marked increasingly active relations between cities across the Straits. The MoUs cover cooperation in the areas of culture, tourism, high-tech industrial parks and environmental protection.
Jiefang Daily said the MoUs between the two cities are a positive move and the cooperation may expand to other areas including culture and education.
Tai Kung Po said Han Zheng has charmed Taiwanese politicians, businessmen and media during his visit.
China Review Agency’s editorial on April 9th said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) didn’t show much interest to the “Shanghai fever”. For example, Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu who were welcomed by Han Zheng during her visit in Shanghai last May didn’t even invite Han Zheng to her city. DPP missed a chance to contact mainland officials and also marginalized itself, the editorial said.
