|
govt ¹
²
³
UN ¹
² forums ¹ maps ¹ ©photo |
|
|
China's stealth war on the U.S. 7.20.05 CFR sr fellow L.A. Times
Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu of the Chinese People's Liberation Army caused quite a stir last week when he threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities if the U.S. dared to interfere with a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan. This saber-rattling comes while China is building a lot of sabers.
The Pentagon on Tuesday released a study of Chinese military capabilities. In a preview, DefSec Rumsfeld told a Singapore audience last month that China's arms buildup was an "area of concern." … Chinese strategists, in the best tradition of Sun Tzu, are working on craftier schemes to topple the American hegemon.
This book, which is available in English translation, is well known to the U.S. national security establishment but remains practically unheard of among the general public.
Cols. Qiao and Wang write approvingly of Al Qaeda, Colombian drug lords and computer hackers who operate outside the "bandwidths understood by the American military." They envision a scenario in which a "network attack against the enemy", clearly a red, white and blue enemy, would be carried out "so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network and mass media network are completely paralyzed," leading to "social panic, street riots and a political crisis." Only then would conventional military force be deployed "until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty."
This isn't just loose talk. There are signs of this strategy being implemented. Anti-Japanese riots that swept China in April (were) psychological warfare against a major Asian rival. The stage-managed protests in 1999, after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, fall into the same category.
These events have alternative, more benign explanations: Maybe Gen. Zhu is an eccentric old coot who's seen "Dr. Strangelove" a few too many times. The deliberate ambiguity makes it hard to craft a response to "unrestricted warfare." If Beijing sticks to building nuclear weapons, we know how to deal with that; use the deterrence doctrine that worked against the Soviets.
Yakuza turf turns ugly as underworld overrun by aliens 2.17.03 Cheryl Chow
WaiWai
Kabukicho, Shinjuku Crime pays, even during a protracted recession. Kabukicho, which has always had a seedy reputation, is becoming a veritable hotbed of crime. The "dark elements" of Kabukicho are not only surviving, they're thriving, reports Yomiuri Weekly (2/23). With scam artists galore, a nightclub might lure you in with a flat 5,000 yen fee for the night. But you'll get hit with a bill for 25,000 or 30,000 yen. If you complain, you'll find that true, your drinks cost only 5,00 yen. But you're charged 5,000 yen per bottle for the beer that the cute hostess drank with you. Ditto for the small plate of snacks.
Unlike legitimate banks, the underground banks don't require an I.D., and they don't ask questions. It only takes one day for the money to reach the hands of your waiting family. All you have to do is to pay a hefty fee, 5% of the transaction amount. Yomiuri Weekly writes that these underground banks became a problem in the early 90's, along with an increase in the number of illegal aliens.
According to the Police Agency, close to 500 billion yen in illegal funds were moved abroad by organized crime
between 1992 & 2002.. The money mostly goes to Asia, South America and MidEast. One of the leaders of a Japanese mob group confides to Yomiuri Weekly that his people would love to get into the lucrative business of moving lucre. "But the Chinese & Koreans have such a tight grip on the operations, we can't get a foothold."
Right now Kabukicho is home to 7 Japanese mobster families. Organized criminial groups, both Japanese & foreign, run 50 underground casinos that deal with millions of yen a day. On a smaller scale but just as pernicious are the rings of thieves. They execute well-planned attacks on upscale boutiques, stealing mostly watches & designer goods. The hot merchandise is then sold for one-tenth the original sticker price at nightclubs after hours. One regular shoplifter tells Yomiuri Weekly, "The rule is that the goods must still have the original price tag and label. Louis Vuitton bags have to be in boxes."
China changes coarse The govt has set itself a monumental task ahead of the 2008 Olympics: teaching the nation's 1 billion people how to be polite.
Beijing Even Miss Manners might blanch at the task at hand: charm school for a billion people, a good number of them convinced that life means never having to say you're sorry, excuse me or thank you. This is no tutorial on fish forks. In advance of the 2008 Olympics, the govt has embarked on a crash campaign to instill manners in the world's most populous country. The effort has left govt planners struggling to break some deeply entrenched habits, including public spitting and urinating, driving that evokes a "Road Warrior" set, and an inordinate fondness for cutting in line.
China hardly has a monopoly on rude behavior. And many give Beijing major kudos for tackling the problem.
Now China finds itself playing catch-up as it realizes that commanding global respect means more than just churning out widgets and building five-star hotels.
In April, referees repeatedly chided fans at a world snooker tournament here for their lack of manners, noisy outbursts and jangling cellphones. "Bad behavior left unchecked at one sports event can grow like a cancer and destroy an entire Olympics," the govt -run China Daily newspaper warned the following day.
"Manners are essential for interpersonal communication," said Li Lulu, dean of the sociology department at People's University. "Without rules, everyone gets hurt."
Topping the list of pet peeves in many local surveys is spitting, which not even a campaign linking it to SARS could stop. In fact, some Chinese say it improves your constitution. Asked mid-spit for his view of the govt 's politeness campaign, a resident of Beijing's Shijingshan district swore, then yelled, "It's none of your business!" before stomping off.
It also used to be much better. Historians note that China, a nation that perfected the subtleties of good taste and behavior thousands of years ago, now finds itself lagging. Some attribute this to poverty, limited education and the eradication of an upper class, the traditional champion of good manners.
In 1972, Mao attended the funeral of Marshal Chen Yi in his pajamas. And in 1954, he met former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee wearing worn trousers that were patched on the backside. Advised by an aide that he might want to wear a new pair, according to a biography by historian Chen Jin, he replied: "It doesn't matter. Who will look at my bottom?"
Today, wealth has come so rapidly to some Chinese that they haven't had time to absorb it. "You see people, yesterday they couldn't eat, overnight they're millionaires," said June Yamada, dean of a Shanghai-based "school of elegance" and author of an etiquette bestseller titled "Tell It Like It Is, June." "They have no education, but they have money. They still forget to take a bath for 3 days."
Still others, such as Peng Lin, a history professor and Confucius studies expert at Beijing's Qinghua University, question China's headlong embrace of Western manners as a way to impress the world. The trend ignores China's own rich li and yi traditions with their focus on filial piety, mutual obligation and modesty, Peng said.
On a recent weekday morning in Shanghai, she and trainer Gigi Pederosa, a former govt protocol officer from Peru, ran the Chinese sales staff through its paces at high-end watch seller Patek Philippe. During several hours of role-playing, she instructed them to be polite and warm and to avoid doggedly following customers around the store. "They're not selling vegetables," she explained.
Businesspeople also are taking a growing interest in proper behavior, in hopes of boosting profits. China's Alibaba.com, a website launched in 1999 that links Chinese and foreign wholesalers, soon found itself facing a large cultural gap. Even as Chinese companies were becoming more adept at producing mountains of goods at low prices, many employees lacked the manners or sophistication to earn the trust of customers in America or Europe.
As local govt s educate the masses, they're trying to clean up their own act. This summer, the Beijing municipal govt launched "professional manners education month," one of several campaigns nationwide. More than 100,000 workers are in training to smile, wear socks to work and use proper hygiene, among other things. A similar Shanghai campaign advises women not to dye their hair green or wear strange dresses.
Huang Wei, 31, an employee of the state TV network and mother of a 4-month-old girl, said she, her mother, grandmother and countless generations wore them, as does her daughter now. |
DoD briefing 9.9.97
Let me just say that I think one of the things that's extremely important for all interlocutors between the U.S. & China to make clear is that the U.S. considers itself to be an Asian Pacific nation.
Sec. Armitage says it best; we're here to play and we're here to stay. That's our goal & we want China to understand that. Our presence is not aimed at China. Our presence is aimed at preserving peace & stability and we're going to continue to play that role. We want very much for China to understand that and not to take steps to undermine it."
These comments certainly reflect the US capitalist rulers' endorsement of China's ongoing process of capitalist
restoration and their acute awareness that China's impending entry into the WTO will give that process a critical
boost. So keen was Forbes to promote its thesis that China has never been better off, thanks to "economic
liberalisation" and the "private sector" (capitalist mode of production), the magazine massaged statistics to "prove" its point.
According to Forbes, some among the richest 50 Chinese citizens made their fortune through traditional activities well within the reach of small producers, such as producing seeds or animal feed, breeding animals or
manufacturing auto parts, furniture, sweaters or air-conditioners. Others achieved millionaire status simply by
trading (speculating) in real estate or construction materials.
The only exception in the list is Rong Yiren (China's vice-president 1993 - 1998) & his family. The Rong family are China's richest "entrepreneurs" according to Forbes. The magazine bases this ranking solely on the 18% of shares owned by Rong's son, Larry Yung, in the Hong Kong-listed CITIC Pacific co. Rong certainly has amassed considerable wealth since Deng Xiaoping invited him in 1979 to form the state-owned China Intl Trust & Investment Corp.
This is the select group made up of the sons & daughters of top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials,
commonly referred to by ordinary people in China as the "princelings". The most critical flaw of the Forbes survey is its failure to even try to identify this crucial group of capitalists, who often take the appearance of being key executives in enterprises which are nominally state owned or only partially privatised.
No one can present a balance sheet on how the spoils of this theft of state assets have been laundered and into
what companies controlled by which CCP official or their relatives. But enough of it has happened, and it is of such a scale, that even the CCP has been forced to publicly acknowledge this phenomenon.
In 1994 the Chinese govt revealed that state assets were vanishing at a rate of 100 million yuan a day, and that
state assets valued at 500 billion yuan (US$60.25 billion) had been embezzled & looted in the previous
decade. Vice-premier Zhu Rongji warned at the time that if the "drainage" of state assets continued "there will be
no more socialism to speak of". Despite this warning, the rate at which state property was "disappearing" increased to the officially admitted figure of 300 million yuan a day in late 1995.
However, the idea that asset-stripping on the scale that the regime itself acknowledged was the result of mere
oversight or incompetence by a few "bad apples" was hardly believable. It was well-known that many CCP officials who managed state enterprises deliberately deflated the asset contribution of their enterprises in joint ventures, while inflating book contribution of foreign partners, leaving CCP officials to pocket the difference.
Princelings in business, whether acting as mere front persons or not, are only the most visible representatives of the growing layer of CCP "cadres-turned-capitalists". Their significant influence and widespread corrupt practices have attracted public anger. There was widespread applause when a 1988-89 anti-corruption campaign targetted Kang Hua Enterprise, business empire headed by Deng's eldest son Deng Pufang. With its hundreds of subsidiaries, Kang Hua Enterprise was also a feeding ground for numerous other princelings.
However, in 1992 the regime made a sharp turn toward promoting private entrepreneurship. That same year
Deng's other son, Deng Zhifang, became head of Four Seas Real Estate and CITIC. Four Seas is formally an arm of the Shanghai municipal govt but is widely known in Hong Kong business circles to be a conduit through which the younger Deng managed his extensive business interests in Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan island and Hong Kong.
Jiang Zemin's 1995 clampdown on Shougang, major steel-making state conglomerate based in Beijing which was headed by Zhou Guanwu, father of Deng Zhifang's close business crony Zhou Beifang, was a dramatic move to tackle another super-princeling. But while Deng Zhifang has adopted a lower profile since then, there are no signs he has withdrawn from "entrepreneurial" activity.
He & Gao list more than 200 princelings, their positions in the govt or the army and their relationship to senior CCP officials. The cases of 25 such families are featured. While not every one of them was known to be involved in business, enough of them have done so, especially in scandalous activities, that more general observations can be drawn. Among the more notorious examples are:
China prosecutes former bank official
China has begun prosecuting a former banker accused of embezzlement who was returned by U.S. under a promise he wouldn't be executed, state media reported Wednesday. The transfer of Yu Zhendong last year to Chinese authorities was unusual for U.S., which doesn't have an extradition treaty with China.
Yu, former head of a Bank of China branch in Kaiping, a city in Guangdong, is accused of helping embezzle $485 million from his state-owned bank. He fled to U.S. and was sent back to China in April 2004, under an agreement in which he pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in a U.S. federal court in Las Vegas.
Yu and his accomplices are accused of using their posts at bank to approve phony loans and money transfers. The case is being heard by the Intermediate People's Court of Jingmen City, Xinhua said. It didn't say when a ruling was expected.
Tailor-made problem
Pity the tailors of Hangzhou, but not their children. In shops throughout this lakefront city celebrated for its embroidered silk, middle-age men and women with nimble fingers mourn the decline of their once-glorious trade in handmade clothes. They count many reasons, including the drifting tastes of China's vast new middle class, whose members would rather don Louis Vuitton's initials or Ralph Lauren's polo pony than a sturdy nameless creation from the neighborhood.
More surprising, however, these weary craftspeople tell a tale of economic evolution that all but echoes the trials of faraway American workers. Hangzhou's tailors know little about the debates over offshoring and free trade that have complicated relations between the U.S. and China. What they know is that they are bedeviled by China's surging manufacturing power, the acres of textile and garment factories that have cropped up on the city's edge to disgorge mountains of low-cost blouses, suits and pants.
"There used to be three or four tailors every 100 meters, but the profits disappeared," Guan said, shirtless on a stifling afternoon, arms draped in a new delivery of dirty clothes. "I should have been a driver," he added.
In a nation churning with innovation, the tailors are addled by the change around them. For centuries, Chinese poets hailed this eastern city, beside the placid shores of West Lake, as a symbol of culture and beauty. For a millennium, it scarcely changed.
The tailors' problems sprouted on the city's northern edge, with rows of modest factories like the Hangzhou Guqi Fashion Co. plant, where 100 workers turn out brightly colored women's wear.
Guan, the laundry owner, crows that his 19-year-old daughter entered college this year to major in communications. With luck, in a few years she will be like Yao's 24-year-old son Yeyong, whose years of night school have paid off with a job as a programmer at the Web site Hangzhou Life. His monthly salary of $400 is three times what his father earns. |
|
China's illiterates: 50% in west, female 70% 3.4.02 Li Heng People's Daily
[ Chinese language has over 2000 characters & the culture never had egalitarian tradition of universal literacy. ]
One out of less than 10 illiterates in the world is Chinese. About 90% illiterate Chinese live in rural areas,
50% in west regions and 70% female, the statistics published by the Education Ministry have aroused
strong concern from CPPCC members at the just opened NPC & CPPCC sessions.
One out of less than 10 illiterates in the world is Chinese. About 90% illiterate Chinese live in rural areas,
50% in the west regions and 70% female, the statistics published by the Education Ministry
have aroused strong concern from CPPCC members at the just opened NPC & CPPCC
sessions.
After years of efforts China's illiteracy eliminating work has made much progress, with the illiteracy rate for adults dropped from 22.23% 10 years ago to 8.72%. But the total number of illiterate people stands as much as 85.07 million, of which 20 million are at an age between 15
& 50. Presently there are 800 million illiterate people in the world, most living in the countries as India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, and Egypt. The number in China is only next to that of India. The provinces and autonomous regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Guizhou, Gansu, Yunnan, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Shannxi are home to 50% of China's illiterates, although their whole population only takes 15% of the national total.
US warns HK over anti-subversion law
U.S. govt has warned Hong Kong that its proposed new anti-subversion law must not harm civil liberties in the
territory.
"The HK people and the intl community have raised serious concerns about the proposed legislation," US State
Dept deputy spokesman Philip Reeker said. He added that the US was concerned that any system in the territory
must be "predictable, transparent and fair".
The Basic Law, HK's mini-constitution which has governed the territory since its 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty from British rule, requires an anti-subversion bill to be passed under article 23. The proposed law is due to be enacted after a 3 month consultation exercise ends 12.24.02. Its purpose is to protect the "sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and national security" of China & HK govt.
Under the law, expressing or reporting an opinion is not criminalised, unless it threatens to "to levy war or use force or other serious offences to sedition". But emergency powers would allow a property to be entered and an individual to be stopped and searched in order to investigate suspected treason, secession,
sedition or subversion. The penalty if found guilty for such crimes would be life in prison.
Reeker said that although the US was encouraged by the fact that HK had listened to criticism of the law, he
encouraged the authorities to publish the full text of the law, which so far they have refused to do. He also added
that, ultimately, "a democratically elected govt, answerable to the will of the people, is the best way to ensure the
protection of fundamental freedoms in HK".
However the HK security bureau Wed. said "the way of
life, the rights and freedoms guaranteed for and enjoyed by HK residents, incl freedom of the press, will not be
affected by implementing the proposals."
Drive-ins the hot, 'new' thing in China
Beijing It's Saturday night, and shiny new cars rumble onto the leafy lot. Customers munch dried
squid. On the screen above, Tom Cruise is speaking Chinese. China is at the drive-in. "We all work so hard
nowadays that after work you want to be lighthearted," said Liu Xiu, who came to the Maple Motor Cinema to see
"The Last Samurai." Also in the family's year-old Citroen sedan were her husband and 5-year-old daughter.
"And what could be more relaxing than watching a movie from your car?" Liu said.
Back then, even setting foot in a theater was a luxury, so a public park with a sheet for a screen would double as a cinema. "We'd watch movies outside and sit on a rock or a small bench," said Wang. "You could say that we
Chinese have gone from sitting on a rock to sitting in a car."
Business was especially brisk last year during the SARS outbreak, when Beijing cinemas and restaurants were
ordered to close to prevent crowding that might spread the virus. "Cars were lining up to get in here," Wang said. "We were the only cultural activity open in Beijing." Car owners are still a privileged minority in China, where annual income averages just $1,000 per person and most families get by on far less. But as life for city dwellers approaches what Americans might call "middle class," cars are changing the way people live.
China's car culture is still so new that Wang says he only breaks even showing movies. Tickets are $9.50 per car, no matter how many people are inside. Profits come from 3 restaurants on the 15-acre site. Maple Motor Cinema can hold about 100 cars, but Wang said most weekend nights he gets only a few dozen. Most cars are filled with young families, but late-night moviegoers include necking couples, another novelty in strait-laced China. Wang treated it as news. "Hugging & kissing?" he said. "Maybe they do that in America, where people are more liberated. But not here in China."
Trade & Development Agency independent U.S. Govt agency under Exec.Branch, promotes economic development in developing countries by funding feasibility studies, consultancies, training pgms & other project planning services. TDA in Africa assists U.S. firms by identifying major development projects which offer large export potential and by funding U.S. private sector involvement in project planning
OFAC U.S. Treasury Dept Office of Foreign Assets Control administers
& enforces economic & trade sanctions against targeted foreign countries, terrorism sponsoring
organizations & intl narcotics traffickers
ILO MNE reports
Multinationals' 1996-99 human rights impact in 100 countries from govts, workers'
orgs, employers' assoc., & business reps. Representative sample of countries w/ FDI in
& out-flows in ILO regions.
Mary W. Covington covington@ilo.org
GB.280/MNE/1/1 synthesis analytic report GB.280/MNE/1/2 country-by-country
replies in separate vol.
U.S., China reach consensus on WTO, eye Geneva
6.9.01 Bill Savadove Reuters
Shanghai U.S. & China on Saturday said they had reached consensus on issues holding up Beijing's entry to the World Trade Organization and would work toward bringing China into the global trade body by year-end. The announcement followed talks between China's Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng & U.S. trade rep Robt Zoellick on sidelines of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC ¹ ² ³ ª) trade ministers meeting in Shanghai this week.
The 2 countries also discussed trading rights, distribution & insurance market access during bilateral talks on Tuesday, Zoellick told a news conference earlier this week. U.S. officials said earlier that the talks with China were positive, but neither side had indicated any consensus had been reached until Saturday. U.S. had wanted China to pay farm subsidies of just 5% as a developed country. China had insisted it could pay subsidies of 10% as a developing country.
In a similarly worded statement released through the official Xinhua news agency, China's trade minister Shi said the 2 sides reached "full consensus" on remaining issues concerning its entry. "This has served to create
important conditions for the 16th session of the China working group of the WTO to be held in Geneva at the end of this month, and for ending the substantive talks for China's accession to the WTO at an early date," Shi said.
Even though China & U.S. appear to have worked out their differences, the WTO must draft a complicated
accession protocol that could take 3 to 6 months, leaving a narrow window of opportunity for entry this year.
Analysts say China could shelve sweeping economic reforms linked to WTO pledges if it does not enter the trade body soon.
China secures U.S. support for WTO entry
Shanghai … rehearsal for an Oct. APEC summit at which President Bush is expected to
meet Chinese President Jiang Zemin for the first time. There had been hopes that the 2 sides would take
advantage of the APEC meeting to announce a breakthrough. But nothing had materialized by the time the
conference ended Thursday. Talks between Zoellick and Shi reportedly continued until 3 a.m. Friday.
Mexico a Holdout
China's choice was a difficult one. Already, 20 years of breakneck economic reforms have transformed a backward command economy into an impressive engine of growth. But those changes have also created huge
unemployment as well as widened rifts between rich & poor. Rural unrest is on the rise, and urban
unemployment threatens to cause more social instability. Conservatives worry that the country is simply not ready for the onslaught of more market openings & foreign competition. The reason China's growth has not ground to a halt during the global economic downturn is that its economy is protected by barriers such as tariffs, corruption, a lack of openness and the relative absence of the rule of law. Under WTO, all of that will have to change, and reform-minded leaders in Beijing, like the intl business community, which is hungry for a piece of the giant China market, believe that should be reason enough for it to embrace membership in this particular global partnership.
Mexico's Fox pledges flexibility in talks on China's WTO bid
6.7.01 L.A.Times
pA4
Beijing The president of Mexico, which has yet to formally endorse China's bid to join the WTO,
said Wednesday that his country does not object to Beijing joining the trade body and will be flexible in talks on the issue. President Vicente Fox made his comments during a whirlwind trip to Asia that has been dominated by trade & economic discussions. A day earlier, Fox & Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi agreed to consider a free-trade pact between their nations. On Wednesday, Fox met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin to discuss ways to strengthen trade, economic, scientific and cultural cooperation, one of Fox's aides said. The official New China News Agency said Fox told Jiang that Mexico "will take a more flexible stance" in upcoming talks about Beijing's WTO bid so that a deal can be reached "as soon as possible." Fox's aide confirmed the report, speaking on condition of anonymity.
6.2.01 James Gerstenzang L.A.Times
A year ago, Congress voted to make the normal trade status permanent for China. But that does not take effect
until China joins the WTO. Negotiations to complete that move are still underway. In a written statement, Bush said the trade measure would work in the "economic & security interests of the American people." At the same time, he said, it "sends a clear but simple message to the people of China: U.S. is committed to helping China become part of the new intl trading system so that the Chinese people can enjoy the better life that comes from economic choice & freedom." "Fair trade is essential not only to improving living standards for Americans but also for a strong & productive relationship with China," Bush said.
The decision, despite the vote a year ago, is controversial, particularly in light of the recently rocky state of U.S.-
Chinese relations. Although there was no suggestion that Bush would not extend the trade status, the decision
followed China's recent announcement that it was conducting war games across from Taiwan. In April, a U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan island after colliding with a Chinese jet fighter. The Chinese pilot was killed, and the American crew was held on the island for nearly 2 weeks. Seeking to smooth over likely opposition, Bush sought to remind critics of the importance that an economically powerful China can hold in relation to U.S., even as he acknowledged that the relationship has been troubled.
"U.S. has a huge stake in the emergence of an economically open, politically stable and secure China," the
president said. "Recent events have shown not only that we need to speak frankly and directly about our
differences, but that we also need to maintain dialogue and cooperate with one another on those areas where we have common interests." Outlining the administration's argument, Sec.State Colin L. Powell portrayed the decision as one that would pressure China to change "for the better." At the same time, American exporters would be able to maintain normal ties with Chinese purchasers of their products. "The president's decision is not an endorsement of China's policies, some of which clearly conflict with America's views & values," Powell said in an opinion column written for the Wash.Post. "Rather, we believe that extension of normal trade relations with China again this year is clearly in America's interest."
China's response focused on the mutual benefit from the 2 nations' trade relationship, emphasizing that U.S.
companies benefited from it. "This is a 2 way reciprocal trade arrangement between 2 nations and absolutely not a favor granted by one country to another," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao. In the past, the prospect of normal trade ties with China has brought vociferous opposition. Labor unions have objected, arguing that the ties suggest acquiescence to low pay & harsh treatment of workers in China. Others, including conservative Republicans & liberal Democrats, have built their objections around China's human rights record, arguing that the U.S. should use economic pressure to encourage Beijing to increase democratic freedoms.
foreign embassies &
missions by nation
players delegates at
U.S.-Africa
Ministerial Conference on Partnership in 21st Century WashDC 3.16-18.99
US HRts rpt interferes China's internal affairs
The Chinese govt Tue. criticized U.S. for double standards and interfering in China's internal affairs under the
pretext of human rights. Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan lambasted the 2001 global human rights report
issued by the US State Dept, pointing out that the report is another manifestation of US interference in China's
internal affairs. At a regular press conference, Kong said the report fabricated facts and confused truth and
falsehood to attack China on its legal system, ethnic policies and human rights conditions. "The Chinese govt
& people are strongly indignant about and are resolutely opposed to such a behavior," he said.
HK govt responds to US HRts report
As regards to complaints of excessive use of force by police, the spokesman said the Hong Kong police force takes a serious view of any allegation of excessive use of force by police officers. "All such complaints are investigated thoroughly by the Complaints Against Police Office and any investigations of which the results are 'withdrawn' or 'not pursuable' are subject to close scrutiny by the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) before they are endorsed," he said. The spokesman said that the govt was committed to tackling domestic violence. On the participation of women in govt & political life, he said women made up one-third of the civil service and comprised about 24% of directorate staff. Stating that the govt is fully committed to the protection of human rights, the spokesman said, "Human rights are well protected in the Basic Law, our mini-constitution, the Bill of Rights Ordinance and various local laws."
Powell to visit Beijing as U.S.-China ties improve
7.5.01 Reuters
Wash.D.C. Sec.State Powell said on Thursday he will visit Beijing this month to prepare a U.S.-
China summit amid signs that ties between the 2 powers were entering a more productive & stable period. In an interview with Reuters, Powell expressed hope that frictions over Beijing's detention of U.S.-connected Chinese scholars would soon be resolved and said "the force which causes us to cooperate is more powerful than the force that may cause us not to cooperate." Sino-American relations were plunged into crisis early in the administration of President Bush when China detained for 11 days the crew of an American Navy surveillance plane that made an emergency landing on Hainan Island April 1 after colliding with a Chinese fighter.
There also had been increased tensions over Bush statements and decisions viewed as drawing U.S. closer to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. But in recent days China has sided with the United
States at the United Nations on Iraq sanctions, concluded a hard-fought World Trade Organization membership
agreement and returned the U.S. surveillance plane, albeit in pieces. The Bush administration angered human
rights advocates but pleased China by declining to oppose Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympic Games.
scholars to be released?
Powell doubted Jiang gave Bush any actual assurances about the scholars' fate but said: "I hope those (judicial)
proceedings will be concluded in a way that hopefully will create a path that will allow these folks to return to the
U.S. and rejoin their families." Meanwhile, a Powell aide, Policy Planning Director Richard Haass, made an
unannounced trip to Beijing this week for talks with a senior foreign ministry strategic planner. Powell, speaking
with Reuters reporters and editors at the State Department, confirmed Haass's visit and said the talks "went well. There was a clear indication that they're anxious to move the relationship forward in a more positive way".
Haass's talks were wide-ranging, including counter narcotics efforts, Taiwan, weapons proliferation and crisis
management.
missile defense
One thorn is China's sale of missiles and other technology to certain countries. Republicans repeatedly accused former President Bill Clinton of failing to invoke U.S.-mandated sanctions for China's behavior in this sphere.
Powell says China should democratize
Tokyo Sec.State Powell said Monday the U.S. must retain its military presence on Okinawa despite friction caused by the misbehavior of U.S. troops stationed there. Speaking to reporters while en route here, Powell said the U.S. does everything it can to instruct the troops on proper behavior but added "there will be these occasional incidents." In the most serious recent incident, a U.S. Air Force sergeant was charged with raping a Japanese woman last month.
Powell then leaves for Vietnam for talks with leaders from more than 20 Asian and Pacific countries. Afterward, he will visit South Korea, China and Australia. The meeting could well be dominated by the political upheaval in
Indonesia. Powell was monitoring the situation there closely, officials said. On China, Powell said that country will
never become a full-fledged member of the international community until it moves toward creating a democratic
system. He also said the U.S. is looking for a basic change in China's human rights attitudes. It is not enough for
China to resolve occasional rights cases that have attracted international attention, he said.
Inscrutable Mr. Hu may be Tony Blair in disguise
China's Communists see themselves as the natural party of govt. Besuited men stretching across the stage of the Great Hall of the People displaying cultivated political blandness suggesting rules for Politburo Popstars are a little unconventional; the most inoffensive & least charismatic leaders are chosen to preside over 1.3 billion people and, depending on how you do the sums, to steer the world's second largest economy.
Somehow, the Chinese Communist Party has developed a formula for a bleach that drains colour from a
kaleidoscope and personality from its politicians, meaning that every movement in the Great Hall and
every photograph published in the "official" press was analysed to absurdity in the quest for an answer to
that eternal question: what on earth is going on?
It is now officially impossible to ignore China. The economic statistics are extraordinary, but its influence on the
outside world is becoming simultaneously both more obvious & more subtle. Much less easy to prove
statistically is whether Hu Jintao, new head of the Communist Party, will be influential or merely a political prop.
But the inevitable over-interpretation of who stands where on the Chinese stage could prompt the
interested observer to miss the 2 most significant trends that emerged in Beijing over the past couple of
days: the Chinese Communist Party has evolved into new Labour; and the Emperor system is dead.
Why care for a grease-stained, sweaty "model worker" when the idealised Chinese couple (whose latest-
model fridge has automatic defrost and an extra-large freezer compartment) are stylish & fragrant,
and their perfectly presented single child has every gadget imaginable and a diet rich in chocolates
& health drinks that come with modern packaging & traditional restorative powers?
Like the Labour Party, the Chinese Communist Party suggests that it is the natural party of govt because
of a record of sound economic management. When Mr Hu was introduced as leader he said that his
Politburo would "work hard to build a well-off society", which is some way from the state of permanent
revolution that Mao desired.
Whether Britain has become a one-party state will become clearer over the next 2 or 3 elections, but the
Communist Party is betting that if it gets the economy right and welcomes the newly influential merchant
class, there will be no need for political pluralism. The problem is that the party can't be all things to all
people; the Gansu farmer who lives in humiliating poverty has little in common with the Shanghai
sophisticate who speculates on the stock market and is about to buy a second apartment.
Mao's thoughts were inspired by the rise & fall of previous dynasties and he had presumed that the system
would continue long after his remains were imperfectly preserved. China has finally collectivised its leadership. Hu is hardly omnipotent and will need long conversations & consultation if he is to introduce even minor policy changes.
Thousands queue to see Mao on anniversary
Beijing Thousands queued at Beijing's Mao Zedong Mausoleum on Saturday for a glimpse of the embalmed corpse of the former Great Helmsman on the 30th anniversary of his death but Chinese state media kept coverage of the event low-key. Police and undercover agents infiltrating crowds outside the squat building on Tiananmen Square were a reminder of govt sensitivity about how the man who founded "new China", but then plunged it into bouts of famine and chaos, is remembered.
Five years after his death the Communist Party, which uses Mao as an ideological prop to help govern an increasingly materialistic country, officially declared him "70 percent right and 30 percent wrong." It has discouraged further discussion.
But officials who use Mao's image to shore up their authority are also wary of stirring up memories of his increasingly autocratic leadership and ruthless political campaigns, which claimed millions of lives. The low-profile cover of the anniversary was a stark contrast to the extravagant bombast of tributes at the height of Mao's personality cult.
Govt's mixed assessment of Mao's legacy is echoed by many who lived through first the famine caused by his Great Leap Forward and then the decade of chaos and persecution Mao sparked in 1966 when he launched the Cultural Revolution.
For many of the younger generation, Mao's relevance as anything more than an abstract figurehead is fading. Strolling on the vast square to enjoy a rare day of sunshine in the pollution-clogged capital, Li Xin, a 24-year-old clerk in a sports goods store, was oblivious to the day's significance.
In China, living with the unspeakable
40 years ago this past August, the first killings were carried out to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Two educators in Nanjing and a high school principal in Beijing were the first victims of the Red Guards, the shock troops of Mao Zedong's war against rivals in the Communist Party. Over the following 10 years, 18 million city kids were dispatched to the countryside to hack out meager existences amid the peasantry. Millions of officials were purged and hundreds of thousands were executed.
Today China's juggernaut economy, freewheeling night life and sophisticated diplomacy make it seem a world away from the Communist Party-imposed madness of the 1960s. Wu's life is an example. He's a university professor, a published author and the father of a young woman who is preparing for college in Australia. No other country seems to have been so adept at avoiding the pitfalls and erasing the memory of its past.
A few years later, Wu had the opportunity to join the Communist Party, road to a good future in China, but there was a condition. Party officials told him he had to have a "correct" understanding of why his parents died. Wu wrote in his application that his father died of chronic hepatitis and his mother of high blood pressure, and he added the requisite denunciation.
When the Cultural Revolution ended, Wu passed college entrance exams and found a job at the university where his parents were killed. His reasoning was simple. His family had been victimized there so he would be protected there.
Old Wu kept his head down. He did not march during the 1989 student protests that ended in the Tiananmen Square crackdown. After the crackdown he was put at the head of a committee investigating professors in the history dept of his university.
Wu is aware of the Faustian bargain he's made to live and live well in the People's Republic of China. It's a bargain that millions of people like him in China's growing middle class have made. They inhabit a system that many despise, but it's also a system they believe they can't live without.
China wants the 21st century to become the Chinese century, yet history has a way of sneaking up on countries, just as it does on people. The late Chinese writer Ba Jin lobbied hard in the last years of his life for a museum to commemorate the victims of the Cultural Revolution; it was never built.
opposition "threat to sovereignty"
House votes to block compensation to China
Wash.D.C. Calling China's demands for $1 million to cover its costs stemming from the downing of a U.S. aircraft the height of arrogance, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block such a payment. The Bush administration has said it is reviewing the claim and would consider "reasonable" costs to Beijing for holding the U.S. crew and reconnaissance plane after the April 1 midair collision with a Chinese military aircraft that forced the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island. But members of the Republican-led House said they wanted to make sure that none of China's claims were paid. They added language to block such payments to a $38.5 billion bill the House later passed to fund the departments of Commerce, Justice and State next fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. The House backed the amendment 424-6.
"The brazen audacity of some demands can almost take on a kind of comic grandeur," said House Republican
Whip Tom DeLay of Texas. "This Congress will never allow a single dollar to be used to compensate the
perpetrators of international aggression," he said. The collision in which a Chinese pilot was killed caused a
diplomatic row as China blamed the United States, detained the 24 U.S. crew members for 11 days over
Washington's objections and held the aircraft for three months before returning it, in pieces, to U.S. custody. |
Chinese editor fired amid clampdown 6.18.00 AP
Beijing An editor at a popular Chinese newspaper has been fired and journalists forced to undergo political instruction, part of what observers say is a new clampdown on the news media. Ma Yunlong was removed Friday as deputy editor-in-chief of the Dahe News in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, a newspaper spokeswoman said. Ma said his dismissal came after he approved articles that exposed corruption among health officials & business regulators.
Journalists & media watchers said a new campaign of firings, closures and intimidation is under way to rein in newspapers seen as challenging the Communist Party's strict limits on coverage. 2 top editors at Southern Weekend, one of China's most prominent & aggressive newspapers, were dismissed less than 2 weeks ago following official complaints about their articles. Officials at the govt's All-China Journalism Association say reporters & editors nationwide are being forced to attend refresher courses on the role of the media in China's communist society.
And at least one popular newspaper has been closed under murky circumstances. Authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan recently shuttered Shubao, a daily that enjoyed high readership and relative autonomy from govt depts. While all newspapers are state-owned, dwindling subsidies have forced officials to let them compete for readers with livelier stories that sometimes cross the line of official tolerance. But period clampdowns have at times occurred. Officials this year are concerned independent reporting could fan resentment over rising unemployment & official corruption.
The Dahe spokeswoman said govt investigators cited an article approved by Ma and published Feb. 28 that said
health insurance officials drank with female escorts supplied by drug and medical companies at a national industry conference. Ma said the article was written jointly by reporters from the Dahe News and the govt's official Xinhua News Agency. Ma said he also was criticized for approving use of a Xinhua article in March that aired complaints by foreign investors about graft, chaotic management and obstruction by Henan officials. An official of the Henan provincial propaganda dept, which oversees media in the province, denied that anyone had been penalized at the newspaper.
Just following orders in China
… California-based Web giant Yahoo deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western firm that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers of apartheid for what it has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. Shi, victim of Yahoo's shameful behavior, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "illegally sending state secrets abroad."
The security services were able to track him down thanks to information helpfully provided by Yahoo's Hong Kong affiliate, whose e-mail service Shi used. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang breezily defended his company's role: "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law."
Summed in most recent State Dept human rights report: "The [Chinese] govt's human rights record remained poor, and the govt continued to commit numerous and serious abuses." These included "instances of extrajudicial killings; torture and mistreatment of prisoners, leading to numerous deaths in custody; coerced confessions; arbitrary arrest and detention, and incommunicado detention."
Yahoo's conduct is not out of the ordinary, either for it or for other American media firms operating in China. They all eagerly kowtow to a despicable police state. Yahoo, Google, MSN and other Web search engines have agreed to block searches in China involving words such as "Tibetan independence" or "human rights." Bloggers can't post messages involving "democracy" or other "dangerous" concepts. Rupert Murdoch's Star TV has agreed not to carry BBC news or other information that the Chinese govt might not like. Cisco has sold Beijing thousands of routers programmed to monitor Internet usage and flag for the secret police any "subversive" sentiments.
The conduct of Yahoo et al should be illegal. The Commerce Dept, and if necessary Congress, should forbid American firms from facilitating human rights abuses in China. Unfortunately, the Bush administration would probably block such rules because it continues to cling to the vain hope that Beijing will solve the North Korean nuclear crisis for us. The only pressure the administration is interested in applying at the moment is to get Chinese firms to stop selling us so many bras.
New York China trails only U.S. in number of people with Internet access at home, more than 56
million able to connect from their residences despite more than half of its population lives on less than $2 a day, per Nielsen//NetRatings study released Monday showing just over 5% of more than one billion Chinese can reach the Internet from home. Far higher%age in many developed nations reach the Internet at home, but China's massive population pushed it above Japan, Germany, and Britain in terms of overall at-home Internet access. The U.S. leads the world with 166 million Americans reaching the Internet at home, the study showed.
With Internet subscription rates in China growing at 5 to 6% monthly, 25% of China's population, or more
than 250 million people, may have online access in only 3 or 4 years, said Nielsen//NetRatings managing dir. Hugh Bloch in North Asia. "The potential is staggering, and it's a not-too-distant reality," he said.
China to be #2 market for PCs by 2006 study
With the shipment of personal computers in China surpassing that Japan, China will become second largest
market in world after U.S. by 2006, leading IT market research organization predicted. "After adjustments &
consolidations in 2001 & 2002, growth of market will pick up speed until 2006," said CCID Consulting Co Ltd president Yang Tianxing, affil. with Information Industry Ministry. Intel's CEO Craig Barrett also said Thu. that China will surpass Japan as its largest customer in this year or the next. According to CCID Consulting forecasts shipment of desktops will see a breakthrough with 10.1 million units in 2003 and the figure will reach 17.4 million, more than double the 7.28 million last year. Aver. annual growth rate for Chinese PC market will remain at 18.8% for next 5 years.
Sales volume of market expects almost 2 fold increase to 104 billion yuan (US$12.6 billion) from last year's 51.7
billion yuan (US$6.3 billion), according to the research firm. Yang chided the pessimistic outlook of some
researchers that China's PC market has entered recession. "The difficulties many PC makers faced last year
mainly resulted from too high expectations of computer sales in China after the Internet fever in 2000, so the long-
term prospect will still be positive," the veteran IT expert said at the weekend.
"In 5 to 10 years, more & more intl players will shift their plants to China which will become a centre
of PC manufacturing and exports by then," he added. However, there will still be hard times for almost all PC
makers this year, analysts believe. According to a recently released report on CCID Consulting on the desktop
market in 2001 and 2002, the growth of shipments last year was 17.4% on 2000, while the growth of sales was only 12.3%.
Changes and industry reshuffle inevitable. "The scenario for the market will see some major changes in these
years and an industry reshuffle is inevitable," said Zhang Hongfen, a senior researcher on computer market with
CCID Consulting. She predicted the arena for desktop makers would be more and more concentrated into the
hands of some big nationwide players.
China leads PC sales in Asian Pacific. Sales of personal computers in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan,
rose 14.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to 4.7 million units, led by sales in China,
according to latest data released by U.S.-based market-research firm Gartner.
China, Taiwan conflict causes flag flap at Comdex
6.19.01 Reuters
Las Vegas China's refusal to recognize Taiwan as anything more than a renegade province has
stirred up a duststorm of controversy in this desert city, resulting in a ban on all foreign flags at Comdex, the
biggest U.S. computer show. China's views carried particular clout this year because the country, a growing high-tech powerhouse, will send a full-fledged delegation for the first time to the show scheduled to start on Nov. 12. Key3Media Group Inc, Los Angeles-based company that organizes the massive event held every fall, confirmed that no flags will be draped from the exhibition hall ceilings at this year's exhibition except for that of U.S. Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, said his country's state-run Council of
Chinese Trade Promotion reiterated its opposition to the Taiwanese flag several times before Key3Media decided to abandon the banner hanging at Comdex.
China #1 mobile phone country in the world
In a short span of a dozen years or so, China has become a No.1 country in the world for cellular phone users.
Neither strange nor new to see a garbage collector with mobile phone in hand. China has no brand-name cellular phone of its own. Kejian domestic made cellular phone field not until 1998 followed by Xoceco, TCL, Bird and Hai'er. Less than 3% of market shares in our hands in 1999, then a rise to 8% in 2000 followed with an increase to 15% in 2001. Domestic brands still lag foreign brands Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson in terms of technology in general while technology at the core is almost totally controlled by foreigners. Domestic models can be renewed once in 3 months while intl market sees change once in 7 days. … "Auto-reporting technology for the lost" made by Xoceco for cellular phone & the CDMA technology on chip-card separate from phone-set by Kejian. Meanwhile, the state will also make a lump sum of funds to support R&D for domestic manufacture. Whoever knows Chinese consumers best, says one expert, will eventually win the Chinese market. Better follow-up service is advantage of local manufacturers. …
No one could accuse the Chinese of being squeamish about the things they eat; monkeys' brains, owls' eyes,
bears' paws and deep fried scorpions are all items on the menu. But most dishes revered as national favourites
sound as harmless as boiled rice when compared to the latest pint de jour allegedly gaining favour in Shenzhen - human foetus. Rumours that dead embryos were being used as dietary supplements started to spread early last year with reports that some doctors in Shenzhen hospitals were eating dead foetuses after carrying out abortions. The doctors allegedly defended their actions by saying the embryos were good for their skin and general health. …
Out in the orchard
… …products for sale last night at health store at Beijing Airport. There were 60-capsule packages of various forms of “human placenta” for sale. According to the label, they were a product of Utah, USA. The price for one type, “Row Poison Soft Capsule,” was 429 yuan. (Currently there are about 8.2 yuan to the dollar.)
Controversial topics & seeing the sights
… One final note about this orchard: There was marijuana growing wild! Some suggested the weed is beneficial because it wards off snakes. Do they get so stoned they are harmless? …
Chinese banks test investors' patience
Shanghai Foreign companies have been practically stepping over one another to invest in Chinese banks, but it will probably be a long time before anybody walks away with happy returns. Just ask Frank Newman, a turnaround artist who took the helm at Shenzhen Development Bank a few months ago. When the former No. 2 man at the U.S. Treasury Dept arrived at the bank, an institution with $25 billion in assets, he was amazed that there were no financial reports on co. divisions. The bank's thick book of bad debts was fraught with surprises: One real estate loan had been neglected for 12 years. Many others, he learned, were actually collectible because borrowers had hidden assets.
"In all my years of banking, I've never seen anything like it," said the 63-year-old Newman, who helped revive Bank of America in the 1980s and Bankers Trust a decade later. Analysts consider China's financial sector to be the weakest link in the nation's booming economy. Chinese central govt has poured tens of billions of dollars to prop up its big banks, which have been hobbled by corruption and lax lending practices. At the same time, Beijing has encouraged foreign firms to buy a stake in them, to inject capital and much-needed technical and management know-how.
The allure is China's huge banking market, which is dominated by 4 state-owned banks but will be open to all comers at the end of 2006 under Beijing's agreement when it joined the World Trade Organization. Foreign banks are buying stakes now to get a toehold in that market, and investors are betting that China's banks will be reformed and someday become valuable publicly listed companies.
There could be more trouble ahead. Leading analysts say China's economy is downshifting. Corporate profits are weakening, as are Chinese imports of steel, oil and capital goods. Real estate activity in places such as Shanghai is slowing.
Central govt will see to it that the biggest banks don't fail because that could lead to social disorder, which could be disastrous for the Communist Party leadership. But a relapse would be more costly to Beijing, which already has handed out about $100 billion to banks, mostly to the big four: Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China.
"We don't think their credit quality will improve substantially because of a new partner," said Connie Wong, an S&P analyst in Hong Kong, explaining that it was partly because foreign investors can acquire only a minority stake, thus giving them relatively little control over operations and management.
The problems at China Construction Bank and the others go back decades, a legacy of a centrally planned economy in which banks functioned to serve state-owned enterprises and keep party bureaucrats happy. Even today, entrepreneurs complain that the big commercial banks favor state-owned firms. But Beijing is trying to change that culture and bring its lenders up to international snuff before December 2006, when foreign banks will be allowed to do business directly with Chinese consumers.
Newbridge Capital, a Fort Worth-based private equity firm, paid $145 million late last year for an 18% stake in Shenzhen Development Bank. Other foreign firms that have opted to invest in smaller Chinese banks, partly so they can have greater influence, include Citigroup Inc., which for now holds 5% of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and Britain-based Standard Chartered, which last week agreed to invest $123 million for a 20% interest in Bohai Bank in the northern city of Tianjin.
That helped the bank collect $185 million of bad debt in the first 6 months of the year. But the bank still has $1.8 billion of nonperforming loans in its books. That represents a hefty 10.7% of the company's overall loan portfolio. The average nonperforming loan ratio in the U.S. is closer to 2%.
That's where foreign banks see an opening. But analysts caution that it'll hardly be a cakewalk. Last year Chinese officials lifted the ceiling on interest rates for loans, giving banks the ability to charge risky customers a rate well above the govt's benchmark rates. But Beijing didn't abolish the minimum rate that banks could offer.
Chinese premier hits Wall St amid trade spats
NYC China premier Wen Jiabao prepared to hit Wall St on Monday, cozying up to America Inc. in a bid to highlight a desire for greater cooperation between the world's fastest growing economy and its biggest.
The visit takes place against a backdrop of tension over Taiwan, which Beijing fears is creeping toward
independence under President Chen Shui-bian, who has said he plans to use a new referendum law at polls in
March.
Other New York events were strictly business, reflection of concern over trade tensions with Washington which
slapped sanctions on Chinese textiles & TVs Nov. 2003. State media sought to play down the trade tensions. "It is important for China-U.S. economic relations to remain on track despite recent trade spats between the 2 countries," the China Daily said on Monday.
U.S. officials argue Beijing keeps its currency artificially weak, giving its exports unfair advantage at expense of U.S. jobs. Treasury Sec. John Snow said on Friday the administration would press China to make the yuan more flexible. U.S. also would push China to live up to its WTO commitments to open its markets, he said.
China also points to a mass of WTO-related laws it has already approved and says it is trying to fight piracy.
Wen would be firm against U.S. moves last month to cap some imports of Chinese textiles, like bras and robes,
and impose tariffs on TVs, analysts said. Taiwan, however, remains at the top of China's agenda.
Beijing China on Tuesday denied accusations of plundering the world's rain forests to meet booming demand for wood. Environment groups say China is at the heart of a global trade for lumber it sells to markets in the United States and Europe and that much of its plywood exports comes from illegal logging.
Domestic demand from a fast-growing economy only adds to the problem, they say. "As for the question that China's large demand for timber assists illegal logging and smuggling from Asia, this statement has no basis," State Forestry Administration spokesman Cao Qingyao told a news conference.
British-based NGO Global Witness said last year China imported timber from Myanmar alone worth an estimated $350 million (185 million pounds), almost all of it illegal. But the group conducted an investigation in May that showed Chinese checkpoints had been sealed to log transports from the former Burma, where years of military rule and ethnic unrest in remote mountain areas have lead to widescale forest clearances.
China accounted for over half the log exports from Papua New Guinea, Myanmar and Indonesia, the report said. Cao said that over the next few years China's timber trade would be stable, with exports not exceeding imports, though that for certain products, like paper, there was still a lack of domestically sourced wood.
Shanghai The Chinese oil company battling to buy Unocal Corp. abandoned its effort Tuesday because of what it termed "regrettable and unjustified" U.S. political opposition, ending a showdown that spotlighted American concerns about energy security. The decision by CNOOC Ltd., largely owned by Chinese govt, to drop its $18.5-billion bid for Unocal clears the way for Chevron Corp. to acquire the El Segundo-based company in a deal currently valued at $17.5 billion.
But the furor that it generated in Congress underscored the increasing economic and political competitiveness between U.S. and a rapidly rising China. Even though analysts said CNOOC's failed bid could give other acquisition-minded Chinese companies pause as they look to build their brands and compete on a global scale, it's not likely to end their interest in buying U.S. companies.
CNOOC's withdrawal from the contest appeared increasingly likely in recent days as American political objections mounted and Unocal's board of directors swung its support behind Chevron's competing bid, which will be voted on by Unocal shareholders a week from today.
The hostile political climate created "a level of uncertainty that presents an unacceptable risk to our ability to secure this transaction," CNOOC said in a statement. Fu wasn't available for comment, but a CNOOC spokesman left no doubt about the company's bitterness.
There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese govt. A month ago, China's Foreign Ministry excoriated American politicians for interfering with what it called a routine business deal. Some members of Congress, however, raised the specter of CNOOC's bid as a security threat to the United States, although most experts said there was little evidence to support that claim.
Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), who pushed the energy bill amendment mandating additional review of any CNOOC-Unocal deal, said the Chinese company's decision to pull out was "good news for the free markets, the American consumer and U.S. national security."
Analysts say the Chinese govt could retaliate by cutting purchases of U.S. goods or delaying approvals for American corporate initiatives in China. That could worsen bilateral relations that are already strained by trade disputes over textiles and recent statements by U.S. defense officials that China's military buildup poses a threat to the region.
He said CNOOC's effort to buy Unocal fit well with Beijing's strategy of expanding its search for energy resources beyond politically sensitive areas such as Sudan and Iran. With most of Unocal's assets in Asia and its oil production comprising of just 1% of U.S. consumption, Chinese officials didn't expect the CNOOC bid to ignite such political uproar. "It's a bitter lesson," Jiang said.
More recently, Chinese appliance maker Haier Group joined with two U.S. firms in a bid for Maytag Corp., but dropped out last month in the face of a higher bid from Whirlpool Corp. Many Chinese companies are cash-rich and the recent appreciation of China's currency, an action taken by Beijing at the behest of American politicians, will give the Chinese even more buying power abroad. That could engender further ill will in U.S., although not the kind of opposition triggered by CNOOC's foray into an industry that many consider vital to America's national interest.
Internally, CNOOC dubbed its bid for Unocal as "Treasure Hunting Ship," an apparent reference to the 15th century Ming Dynasty voyager Zheng He, who was known for leading an armada to the "western ocean." Although Unocal is small compared with major multinational oil companies, its allure is its substantial holdings of natural gas and oil in Asia, which is fast becoming one of the strongest energy markets in the world. In addition, Unocal is a world leader in deep-water drilling, and has several such projects underway in the Gulf of Mexico.
CNOOC sought to deflect political opposition by voluntarily seeking a quick U.S. govt review of the deal, offering to divest certain Unocal assets and pledging to retain Unocal's workforce and management. An advisor to CNOOC said Tuesday that more Unocal employees faced the loss of jobs in a merger with Chevron than CNOOC.
Analysts said that unlike CNOOC, Chevron was a known quantity and it would be easier to blend the cultures and operations of two California firms than those involving companies operating across the ocean. CNOOC's advisors said it was clear that they and management at the Chinese firm underestimated the degree of political resistance in Washington, a feeling intensified by the large U.S. trade deficit with China and complaints about Chinese competition from American small businesses and manufacturers.
March 3: Unocal's stock rises 12% on speculation it may be bought by Chevron Corp.
April 4: Chevron offers to buy Unocal in a stock and cash deal valued at $16.4 billion, or about $62 a share.
June 7: CNOOC says it also may bid for Unocal.
June 10: The Federal Trade Commission approves proposed Chevron-Unocal deal after the companies agree to surrender Unocal's patents for making cleaner-burning gasoline.
June 22: CNOOC unveils $18.5-billion, or $67 a share, all-cash offer for Unocal.
June 27: Two key members of the U.S. House of Representatives urge President Bush to block CNOOC's bid.
June 28: Chinese govt says political considerations shouldn't interfere with bidding for Unocal. Unocal and CNOOC begin 3 days of meetings.
June 29: The Securities and Exchange Commission approves Chevron's offer, clearing the way for a vote by Unocal shareholders in early August.
June 30: The House passes two measures aimed at blocking CNOOC's bid for Unocal.
July 13: Chairman of House Armed Services Committee says "it would be a mistake" to allow CNOOC's bid to succeed.
July 14: Unocal Chief Executive Charles Williamson tells CNOOC CEO Fu Chengyu that the Unocal board is prepared to drop its support of Chevron's offer if CNOOC raises its bid.
July 15: Williamson informs Chevron CEO David J. O'Reilly that the Unocal board may rescind its approval of Chevron's offer.
July 16: Fu tells Williamson that CNOOC will not increase its original offer.
July 19: Chevron raises its bid to $63 a share, or $17.2 billion. Unocal directors recommend that shareholders approve the new offer at the Aug. 10 meeting.
July 20: CNOOC says publicly it has no plans to increase its offer.
Friday: Congress OKs energy bill, which mandates that a CNOOC acquisition of Unocal undergo federal scrutiny that would delay a deal by at least 120 days.
Monday: Influential shareholder advisory firm backs Chevron's bid.
Tuesday: CNOOC withdraws its offer for Unocal, citing political opposition.
3 years ago, Dr. Thomas Diflo's moral nightmare walked into his examination room: a patient freshly implanted with a kidney bought from China's death row, where prisoners are killed, sometimes for minor offenses, and their organs harvested. Since then, Dr. Diflo, director of the renal transplant program at NY Univ. Medical Ctr, has seen half a dozen such people, typically young Chinese American women. The surgeon says his patients weren't distressed about snatching organs from the condemned, but he was overwhelmed by the implications. Unable to shoulder the burden alone, on 1.11.01, Diflo took his "horror at a real ethical quagmire" to the medical center's Ethics Committee. Diflo is the first American doctor to talk publicly about this experience, and he did so only after being drawn out by the Voice. The gruesome practice has been documented among ethnic Chinese communities throughout Asia, but so far every attempt to prove that people were leaving U.S. soil to buy organs from China's massive death row has failed.
"To tell you the truth, the original rationale for bringing this situation to the Ethics Committee was my own
discomfort in taking care of these patients. I was outraged at the way in which they obtained their organs, and I had a great deal of difficulty separating that fact from the care of the patient," Diflo told the Voice. "Several patients were very up-front and candid about it, that they bought an organ taken from an executed convict for about $10,000," Diflo recalls. "Most of the patients are ecstatic to be off of dialysis, and none has seemed particularly perturbed regarding the source of the organs." There's no telling how many kidney buyers returning to the U.S. have gone for follow-up care at a less elite institution or stayed within secretive medical channels recommended by their brokers. Diflo gets his patients on referral from recognized hospitals. "Patients sort of arrive on their doorstep and they don't know what to do. Not everybody who's had a transplant is cared for by a transplant specialist. I tend to see the more complicated ones," Diflo says.
… outright sale of organs is abhorrent to nearly all surgeons in the field. Selling organs is a felony under a
1984 federal law that was spearheaded by then senator Al Gore, and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. Live or executed prisoners in the U.S. are forbidden to donate an organ, even for free, except to family members under special circumstances. In China, human rights groups say, citizens have been executed for nonviolent offenses like taking bribes, credit card theft, small-scale tax evasion, and stealing
truckloads of vegetables.
Political dissidents have also been sentenced to death. Chinese embassy officials did not respond to requests for comment, but in the past the govt has denied promoting the for-profit organ trade. Diflo says he and his colleagues wrestled with the issue in a debate that was "quite lively and revealing, but the bottom line was that we take care of patients who come to us, regardless of their situation—moral, ethical, financial, or social. Although I might find what they had done reprehensible, I was still nonetheless obligated to care for them in the best way that I knew how, and that is what I do."
China's bitter harvest
Foshan, China Peng Xiaohong's 7-year-old son, Zhang Yao, died last Nov. from gas poisoning
while taking a bath. A devastated Peng kissed his eyes one last time before sending his body to the morgue. She thought that was the end.
At first, doctors at the district hospital in this southern city said the damage was caused by accidentally dropping the body. Then, they blamed it on rodents. Their explanations dodged the obvious: Someone stole the cornea.
[ So much for the liberating democratic influence of a genuinely free market, something
regarding which the Chinese NEVER needed a lesson. ]
"Without a law, there is no institutionalized, effective system," says Xu Hong- dao, president of the China Organ
Transplantation Development Fdtn, who is seeking legislation on organ donation &and transplantation. Efforts to establish an organ-donor program conflict with the traditional belief of keeping one's body whole even in death. Confucius dictates that it is a gift from one's parents and that to damage it is to dishonor them. Living family members are considered the only acceptable donors. But that's hardly sufficient. For instance, some 2 million Chinese go blind from corneal diseases each year; there is reportedly a supply for only 3,000 operations.
Because China executes more prisoners than the rest of the world combined, it can supply foreigners
willing to pay to avoid the long waiting lists for donated organs in their home countries. "Every hospital we visited, the doctors were totally open about the organs coming from executed prisoners," says a Taiwanese man whose ailing father paid $35,000 and the standard $2,000 bribe for the doctor to obtain a liver transplant after a 2 day wait. "We were lucky that there happened to be an execution of a convict . . . whose blood type matched my dad's," he says. " They said the longest wait would only have been about a month."
The govt so far has failed to curb abuses. Though some regulations exist, they are poorly enforced and not backed up by laws. Shanghai, which enacted China's first organ donation regulations, effective March 1, has expressed concern that organ smugglers will find a loophole to legalize their deals. The Ministry of Health is currently reviewing a draft national Organ Transplantation Law, which if enacted should encourage organ donations and end some of the more grisly practices. And attitudes are changing. "We did a survey of young people in Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan and found that 70% were willing to donate their organs," says Xu. "All we need is to formalize an institution to accept them." For now, with no clear law, someone like Peng Xiaohong cannot expect redress for what happened to her son. She has been trying to sue the hospital but only to get someone to admit responsibility. "If they had only asked me whether I would donate my son's corneas for someone who needed them, I would have gladly said yes," says Peng, gazing sadly at a picture of her once bright-eyed son. "But the problem is, they had to do everything so underhandedly." For her, as with many others, a system of organ donation will have come too late.
An Execution for a Kidney
Malacca, Malaysia The night before their execution, 18 convicts were shown on a Chinese
television pgm, their crimes announced to the public. Wilson Yeo saw the broadcast from his hospital bed in China and knew that one of the men scheduled to die would provide him with the kidney he so badly needed. Mr. Yeo, 40, a Malaysian who manages the local branch of a lottery company here, says he never learned the name of the prisoner whose kidney is now implanted on his right side. He knows only what the surgeon told him: The executed man was 19 years old and sentenced to die for drug trafficking. …
HKpaper re transplants of executed prisoners' livers
Recent reports from a Hong Kong newspaper prove again that the gruesome practice of harvesting organs from
executed prisoners continues in Mainland China. Patients from Hong Kong obtained liver transplants at Sun Yatsen Hospital in June of 1999. … Beginning with a 1994 report on organ harvesting by HRtsWatch, reports of the lucrative organ trade in China have centered around kidney transplantation. …
Pressuring China to end abhorrent organ harvesting
Jiang Zemin's visit to America will overlap the holiday of Halloween, which should make the Chinese president feel at home. For when it comes to outright ghoulishness, nothing with fake fangs in a $30 costume can compare to the organ-selling business presided over by Jiang's govt. Recently ABC's "PrimeTime" confirmed on videotape what human-rights groups have long reported: Petty criminals, whose misdeeds would draw a short jail stay elsewhere, are being executed to supply their kidneys to rich patients in Asia, Europe and the United States. Many of these legalized murders occur at military hospitals, and according to dissidents like Harry Wu, the Chinese army has made millions in the organ trade. So accepted is the practice in China that the macabre debate there is not over the ethics of the practice, but whether poison or a bullet produces the least damage to marketable innards. (The latter is still widely favored. Last year, reports Amnesty Intl, Chinese firing squads killed 4,367 convicts, more legal executions than in the entire rest of the world.)
Utilitarian-minded Chinese authorities no doubt imagine they are serving dual goals, "social hygiene" &
national defense. Zero tolerance is the watchword. The London Sunday Times reports 8 people were executed in Fujian province for stealing pigs; 3 others who burglarized a car were shot within a week. This fast-track
bloodletting facilitates the matching of kidney types. Instead of "3 strikes & you're out," in China the
penological standard is "one strike & you're dead." …
Organ harvesting charges dismissed
Celebrated case against 2 Chinese citizens accused of trafficking in body parts of executed Chinese prisoners
was dismissed yesterday by a judge highly critical of the govt's reliance on an unsavory informant and dubious of the defense's ability to proceed without cross-examining the man, who recently fled the country. Southern Dist. Judge Deborah A. Batts dismissed all charges against Xing Qui Fu, 36, who runs a laundry in Queens, and Chen Yong Wang, 42, a former Chinese prosecutor, in a 155-page ruling accusing the govt of "willful ignorance" about their witness, Paul Risenhoover, who "made" the case for prosecutors along with human rights activist Harry Wu.
Her ruling, in U.S. v. Wang, 98 Cr. 199, also faulted govt delays in turning over exculpatory material and found the defense could not develop claims of innocence and entrapment without questioning Mr. Risenhoover, an American sympathetic to the Chinese dissident movement, about his motives and possible unrelated criminal activity.
In response, Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for Southern Dist. U.S. Atty Mary Jo White, issued a written statement saying the govt "believes that its investigation & prosecution of this case was responsible & well-founded." The statement said the govt disagrees with the judge's analysis and conclusion and is "reviewing her opinion and assessing our options." …
Since their arrests, the defendants maintained they were innocent victims. They claimed they were set up by
activists looking to prove China, which executes some 4,000 prisoners a year, was engaged in the illegal sales of prisoner body parts, an activity known as "organ harvesting." Judge Batts' ruling does not resolve this allegation but suggests it is possible. She cited questions about Mr. Risenhoover steering the taped conversations and translating incorrectly portions of the defendants' statements to make them more incriminating.
She dismissed the charges, however, because of Mr. Risenhoover's disappearance and the govt's failure to timely respond to defense requests about him. …
Nuclear baby tests confirmed in HK
Hong Kong A scientist who led Cold War experiments on the effects of nuclear fallout has
confirmed that corpses of Hong Kong babies were used, the South China Morning Post reported Sunday.
Lawrence Culpa, a project leader of "Project Sunshine," was quoted as saying that British scientists carried out
tests on the corpses of babies, children and adults in Hong Kong, then a British colony. U.S. scientists turned to
Taiwan in their search for corpses, Culpa was quoted as saying, though the story did not specify whether any
bodies were obtained there. British newspapers reported last week that around 6,000 stillborn babies and dead
infants had been sent to U.S. & Britain from hospitals in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and S.America over a 15-year period without the permission of parents.
Project Sunshine began in 1955 when University of Chicago doctor Willard Libby, who was later awarded a Nobel prize for his research into carbon dating, appealed for bodies, preferably stillborn or newly-born babies, to test the impact of atomic fallout, the reports said Culpa later led the project, the Post reported.
Culpa was quoted as saying that Project Sunshine had been organized on a "doctor to doctor" basis and that it had drawn the participation of British scientists. It was not a govt project, he said. Hong Kong health officials said last week they would not investigate the reports unless specific evidence came to light that local babies had been used in the tests. Health officials were not available for further comment on Sunday. Australian officials Thursday confirmed that cremated bones from some Australian babies, children and adults had been shipped to U.S. and Britain to test for fallout from nuclear tests.
| |
|
Chinese doctor tells of organ removals after executions
¹ 6.27.01 Steven Mufson & Lena Sun Wash.Post pA1
A Chinese man seeking political asylum in U.S. says that as a physician in China, he took part in removing corneas & harvesting skin from more than 100 executed prisoners, including one who had not yet died. Wang Guoqi, a burn specialist, said in a written statement that he also saw other doctors remove vital organs from executed prisoners and that his hospital, the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, sold those organs for enormous profits. China executes more prisoners a year than any other nation, and some patients from U.S. and other Western countries travel there for organ transplants. Although China's practice of harvesting body parts after executions has been widely alleged, Wang's asylum petition offers a rare, eyewitness account from someone who was involved in a large number of cases. The House International Relations Committee has invited him to testify today.
Wang, 38, came to U.S. on April 30 with a tourist group and stayed on rather than returning to China as scheduled May 14. He later made contact with Harry Wu, a Chinese American who spent 19 years in prison in China for political offenses. Wu heads the nonprofit organization Laogai Fndtn campaigning against the collecting of organs from Chinese prisoners. He said that he went to great lengths to verify Wang's identity and that both he & congressional staff members found the doctor's statements "highly credible." Wang's detailed statements, provided to The Washington Post by Wu's foundation, include the dates & places of executions, the names of doctors involved in organ removals and graphic descriptions of the medical procedures.
"After all extractable tissues & organs were taken, what remained was an ugly heap of muscles, the blood
vessels still bleeding, or all viscera exposed," he said. "Then the corpse was handed to the workers at the
crematorium." Wang said his conscience has been "tortured" since an Oct. 1995 incident in Hebei Province, where he and other doctors arrived for the execution of a man sentenced to death for robbery & murder. Before the execution, Wang administered an injection of heparin to prevent blood clotting. A policeman told the prisoner it was a tranquilizer. An executioner then shot the prisoner, but the bullet did not immediately kill him, and he lay on the ground convulsing, Wang said. Nevertheless, the doctors were ordered to take him to the ambulance, where urologists extracted his kidneys and left the scene with the county staff & executioner. Wang & other burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin. Then they threw the half-dead prisoner in a plastic bag on a flatbed truck and left, he said.
"Whatever impact I have made in the lives of burn victims & transplant patients does not excuse the unethical & immoral manner of extracting organs," Wang wrote. He added that hospital authorities criticized him after he asked to be transferred to different work. The hospital demanded he write a self-criticism and promise not to expose its organ extraction and sale practices. In his application for political asylum, he said he fears persecution if he returns to China. Wang said he obtained a passport under a false name for about $550 and joined a tour group to U.S. The group visited Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Universal Studios and Disneyland. He said there were 15 people in the group and, to the best of his knowledge, none of them returned to China as scheduled.
According to the Laogai Foundation, there were 1,769 executions and 3,167 kidney transplants in China in 1998.
Wu noted that a 1984 Chinese regulation bars organ removal from condemned criminals unless they, or their
families, volunteer their bodies for medical use. But he said that, in practice, prisoners and their families are not
consulted and the process is rife with corruption. In its annual report on human rights this year, the State Dept said that "credible reports have alleged that organs from some executed prisoners were removed, sold, and
transplanted." Chinese officials "have confirmed that executed prisoners are among the sources of organs for
transplants but maintain that consent is required from prisoners or their relatives before organs are removed," the report added.
2 charged in organ sales
¹
ƒn incl at right
NYC 2 men were arrested on charges they planned to sell body parts of prisoners
executed in China, spotlighting longstanding complaints from human rights groups about trade in human organs. "Trafficking and profiteering in human organs is ghoulish, criminal conduct that imperils the most vulnerable," U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White said in a statement Monday. The men, Cheng Yong Wang, 41, and Xingqi Fu, 35, both of Flushing, Queens, were arrested Friday. The complaints alleged they tried to sell corneas, kidneys, livers, skin, pancreases and lungs for transplant. The Chinese govt has consistently denied the accusations of human rights activists. A foreign ministry spokesman today said such trade is against the law. In 1993, Amnesty Intl called on the Chinese govt to ban the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners but found that the practice continued.
Prosecutors said an informant showed them papers indicating Wang had been a prosecutor in the Hainan Province of China and participated in the execution of Chinese prisoners. Wang and Fu were caught when an FBI agent posed as a board member of a dialysis center in a meeting Friday, the complaint said. Wang allegedly discussed with the agent the methods by which Chinese prisoners are executed, and described how he & Fu would sell the dialysis center two corneas from executed prisoners for $5,000.
On Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said: "The Foreign Ministry spokesman and relevant
departments of the People's Republic of China have repeatedly indicated clearly that such incidents would never
happen in China. Should it occur, the Chinese law will punish the culprits." If convicted, Wang & Fu could face up to 5 years in prison & fines of $250,000. Fu appeared Monday before Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis, who set bail at $100,000. Wang will appear in court Wednesday.
Call for laws to protect doctors
MORE protection has been urged for doctors against legal action from patients and their relatives in order to
increase the number of life-saving operations and organ donations. …
Follow transplant education with legislation
Though the Govt rejected the Legislative Council's call for an "opt-out" organ donation scheme last Wednesday,
the debate carried 4 messages: It shows there is still a large group among legislators and inside the Govt who are reluctant to accept that the current opt-in works as necessary …
Pre-arranged permission
The govt sensibly has rejected Legislative Council calls for an "opt-out" organ donation scheme, on the grounds
that this would be seen as a totalitarian approach. A system that makes the organs of dead people automatically
available for donation individuals deliberately opt out, assumes ...
Secret world of human cloning There may be little to stop scientists from breeding designer babies to order; the age of designer humans is getting closer: carbon-copy people with high intelligence, identical people born at different times, designer babies for tomorrow's parents, or babies cannibalised for organ donation. … |
Finance officials from 15 European and 10 Asian countries have sounded an upbeat note on the global economy
and pledged to crack down on terrorist finance. Speaking mid-way through 2 day round of talks in Copenhagen,
Danish finance minister Thor Pedersen said there was unanimous agreement on the need to choke off the flow of funds to terrorists. "Everyone wants to take part and share the responsibility," he said. "Nowhere should people
who want to finance terrorism feel that they are secure."
Indonesian finance minster Boedonio said he would take action to ensure that his country was removed from a
blacklist of countries where anti-money laundering rules are lax. The blacklist, drawn up by a task force set up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development, comprises 15 countries incl Indonesia & Philippines.
The ministers explored ways of improving banking transparency, and discussed means of tracking flows of money around the world. On the economy, the ministers said the global recovery would gather momentum in the second half of this year and continue in 2003. Growth in Asia was expected to outpace the rest of the world, although there was agreement that structural reform would be needed to sustain the continent's recovery. Europe, meanwhile, would benefit from lower inflation due to the rise of the euro against the dollar.
The issue of structural reform is a vexed one, with most European govts favouring strict codes of conduct and
global standards of corporate governance, while Asian countries are loath to introduce burdensome legislation
which could slow their economic development.
The ministers are being joined by representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central
Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Union. The Copenhagen talks coincide with a meeting of
South East Asian trade & economics ministers in Malaysia. That meeting will discuss the creation of the
world's largest free-trade area incl existing 10 members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China. ASEAN & China aim to create the free-trade zone within 10 years.
|
Rumsfeld makes light of alleged split with Powell 7.30.01 Reuters
Canberra DefSec D.Rumsfeld said on Monday relations with China were evolving and made light
of talk of a split between him & SecState C.Powell on how to approach the communist giant and other issues. The two men appeared side-by-side at a news conference in Australia, where they attended talks with their counterparts, facing questioning about their alleged difference in approach. Powell repeatedly characterized China as a "friend" during a visit to Beijing at the weekend and told reporters en route from China to Australia late Sunday that he had decided to stop talking about the communist giant as a "strategic competitor."
Rumsfeld, who flew round the world to join Powell in Canberra, is seen as more hardline on China, and did not use the word "friend" in remarks about the country. But he said, "Colin Powell and I talk every day and meet several times a week and I don't know that there's a difference between us."
Later he was asked about U.S. plans for a missile defense, a system opposed by China which fears it would
neutralize its nuclear arsenal, and treated with caution or suspicion by many other countries, including U.S. allies.
Powell is often at pains to emphasize the U.S. desire for consultations with other countries as it proceeds with
developing the system, in hope of winning them round to the U.S. position that the post-Cold War world needs a
new strategic framework to fight new threats. Rumsfeld put it differently. Missile defense "really ought not to offend anyone other than a country that intends to use ballistic missiles to impose their will on their neighbors."
We agree, except when Colin is learning Later Powell chipped in to say they discussed China regularly and the hope was that U.S. engagement "will move them in the right direction." He added, "But we can't see into the future so at the same time we have to remain strong. We have to not be naive. We have to keep following their actions very, very carefully." In an apparent bid to explain any difference in tone between himself and his colleague, Powell said, "Obviously I would come to it from a foreign policy perspective and the secretary from a defense perspective. But there is no real space between us as suggested." |
China's vast military cuts fat, adds muscle
Downsizing is consistent with a new emphasis on mobility, technology. But personnel policies have added to the ranks of the disgruntled. 1.10.06 Mark Magnier L.A. Times
Beijing China, which has the largest military force in the world, is making important strides toward developing a lean, high-tech fighting machine, the People's Liberation Army said Monday. A two-year slim-down program has eliminated more than 200,000 jobs, or about 9% of the service, according to the PLA's official newspaper. By year end, that left a total of about 2.3 million members, a 45% reduction since 1987.
The PLA has made no secret of its effort to craft a slimmer, more mobile force versed in the use of advanced weaponry as a source of national pride and a deterrent to Taiwanese independence. In an environment in which too many officers and poorly educated soldiers undercut efficiency, these staffing reductions are in line with analysts' expectations. But the downsizing has engendered less obvious social changes, the analysts say.
"This reaction is natural and normal," said Beijing-based govt-linked think tank China Arms Control and Disarmament Assn. analyst Liu Yongsheng. "Certainly many are not happy with the layoffs. But it's necessary, and the govt has considered all this. In Chinese, we say it's better to suffer short-term pain than long-term pain."
In August, China's Central Military Commission warned PLA members never to take part in street protests or put the interests of the army above those of the Communist Party. Any activities that challenged single-party rule would be severely punished, it added.
Generals also have more subtle headaches. As they hire better-educated people to fill the ranks, a generation brought up in shopping malls and karaoke halls and used to having much more personal choice than their parents inevitably exerts more pressure for change. China is also working overtime to lighten many of the army's ancillary responsibilities, including planting crops, teaching school and running shops. These activities grew out of a tradition dating back to the conflicts with the Japanese and the Nationalists, when fighters were supposed to be self-sufficient. |
China's official military budget in 2005 was about $30 billion, a 12.6% increase from the prior year. The U.S., in comparison, earmarked $420.7 billion for defense in the 2005 fiscal year. Some analysts, though, believe Beijing's actual budget is larger than reported. The U.S. has far fewer military personnel than China: about 1.39 million on active duty worldwide in September, according to the Pentagon.
As part of its restructuring program, the Chinese army has sought to acquire more high-tech equipt and tried to strengthen the effectiveness of how decisions are made and carried out, known in military parlance as command and control.
The infantry now makes up an all-time low proportion of the force, the army newspaper said, whereas the shares of the navy, air force and Second Artillery Corps, which oversees China's nuclear missiles, are rising.
The govt has been lobbying the European Union to end its ban on weapon sales, so far without success. Washington has urged the EU not to lift the ban. This has left Russia as Beijing's primary supplier of military hardware.
In August, China and Russia cooperated in the largest joint military exercise in decades, descending on China's Shandong peninsula with 10,000 troops and a range of sophisticated weapons. Russia is expected to hold a similar exercise on its territory this year. Analysts believe the exercises are partly meant to showcase Russian technology for Chinese buyers.
A longer-range objective for China, analysts say, is to build a home-grown arms manufacturing capability. Although Moscow is eager to earn more hard currency from its aging militaryindustrial complex, analysts say it is wary of selling its best technology to a potential rival.
|
Lead hawk Rumsfeld sour on China ties 6.11.01 UCLA prof. Tom Plate S.China Morn.Post
The sourness of GWBush admin policy towards China is beginning to alarm many Americans. The Defence Dept's
decision last week to back away from military contacts with China came across as provocative. And the tit-for-tat
cancellation of navy ships' future port calls to Hong Kong, after Beijing itself spiked the latest one, added downward
momentum to the relationship. Where will this stop? How vicious will the volleying get? The Bush hawks cannot
control everything, of course. They won't be able to reverse last year's congressional approval of permanent normal
trading relations for China. They could appear out of touch if they continue to oppose awarding the 2008 Olympics
to Beijing. And are they seriously thinking of boycotting this autumn's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit
in Shanghai? This important event raises consensus on both sides of the Pacific Rim.
The hawks could also be frustrated by clever Chinese diplomacy. The Chinese might regard Mr Rumsfeld's
provocations as a tempting but dangerous detour from their solid, heretofore successful focus on economic
development. Beijing needs to resist Mr Rumsfeld's neo-Cold War fandango and instead build on the development
path that has lifted many Chinese out of poverty. To be sure, the impediments keeping the hawks from flying too
high are far from foolproof. The Senate's Democratic committee chairmen have little to say about the Bush
administration's public rhetoric. Nor can the Senate force the administration to consult sincerely on security issues
of concern to E. Asia, from peace on the Korean peninsula to the mess in Indonesia. Plus, the Chinese care
enough about what is said publicly not only to sulk when insulted but sometimes to do far more when taunted.
Beijing could enhance Mr Rumsfeld's hand by overreacting. |
Capt Kelly a glimmer of hope for US policy in Asia 5.14.01 UCLA prof. Tom Plate S.China Morn.Post
Jas.Kelly, local boy who became a policy boffin and has now gone to Washington for a big job in the State Dept, is
still seen as "one of us" by many of the Hawaii-based business & academic professionals who populated a big
meeting about Asia last week at the Hawaiian Convention Ctr. They say he is not Dr Strangelove masquerading as
a responsible U.S. defence secretary or some two-step Texan masquerading as a cosmopolitan world leader. But
are they right about the Asst Sec.State for E.Asian & Pacific Affairs? After all, working in Washington for too
long can do strange things to people. But if Mr Kelly's statements at his confirmation hearings in the Senate reflect
the views of his superiors, then he is the best thing the GWBush administration has done for Asia to date.
U.S. asst sec., due to lead a delegation to China today, paints the Sino-US relationship not in black-versus-white
terms but in "a considerable range of grey". China's tendencies towards globalism & intense nationalism are
"contradictions . . . that make it difficult to predict the future course of our relationship". But China "is not the Soviet
Union in the 1970s; we do not see factories putting out thousands of tanks and jet bombers or anything of that
sort". Taiwan's democracy is a regional high point. He insists US policy on that island's relationship with Beijing
hasn't really changed, despite his boss' recent back-and-forths. Of Japan, he says: "Solving the problems of a huge
& rich economy like Japan is not an easy task."
U.S. strategy doesn't spell Asia troop cut-Admiral
TOKYO A possible shift in U.S. military strategy to focus on the capability to win one major conflict
and defend against new threats would not spell a reduction in forces in Asia, Admiral Dennis Blair, commander-in-
chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said on Thursday. President Bush has vowed to modernize the cumbersome
U.S. military, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last month that the current U.S. strategy built
on readiness to win two major wars at once was "not working" and he hoped to recommend changes.
China question
North Korea
Okinawa matters
At least 15 dead found fighting on side of Taliban 10.22.01 Debka Intelligence Files WorldNetDaily.com
The intelligence service reports its sources have no doubt that the Chinese combatants fought in a Taliban unit and
were not part of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda or its associated Egyptian Jihad forces in Afghanistan. Neither
organization admits non-Arab adherents, certainly not as guards for its senior officers. The Chinese-bin Laden
relationship goes back some years. The British daily, Guardian, carried a report Saturday by John Hooper in
Milan, claiming that 3 years ago, China paid bin Laden several million dollars for unexploded American cruise
missiles left over from the U.S. attack on his bases. Hooper quotes an alleged senior Al Qaida agent in Europe,
whose account is contained in the transcript of a secretly taped conversation between two bin Laden adherents.
The Americans fired 75 missiles in the raid on bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan, carried out 8.20.98, in reprisal for
the terrorist strikes against U.S. embassies in East Africa. 40 were found unexploded. The conversation taped took
place in Milan between a Libyan called Ben Heni, who was arrested in Munich last week and accused by the Italian
prosecution of being the liaison officer between two Al Qaida cells in Frankfurt & Milan and a leader of the
Italian cells, Sami Ben Khemmais Essid. The Italian police had bugged the flat. According to the Guardian report, the 2 men confirmed bin Laden's close ties with China and described how the huge sums the Chinese paid for the unexploded U.S. missiles helped him finance his next three years of Al Qaida operations. In addition, the Wash.Post reported Sept. 13 that Beijing signed a memorandum of understanding with the Taliban for greater economic & technical cooperation, the last of a series of Chinese agreements with Afghanistan in the last 2 years. The Post characterized China's relationship with the Taliban as the closest of any non-Muslim country. The memorandum of understanding was, ironically, signed Sept. 11. |
|
Secret arms shipments from China to Cuba U.S. won't confirm allegations, which cite intelligence officials 6.13.01 Nancy San Martin & Jane Bussey Miami Herald
American Forces Information service
Alpha Co. (3rd Batt.), 504th Parachute Infantry
privateers cf. article in column
above
11.21.99 People's Daily (Xinhua)
He said that the troops stationed in Macao are mainly a contingent of the infantry army, with a small number of
naval & air force officers. The troops will be equipped with all necessary weapons, mainly light weapons, to
fulfill their mission, according to the general. Major General He Xianshu, political commissar of the Macao SAR
garrison troops, these men and officers are selected based on PLA army units which have enjoyed historical
success, including the army unit established in the early stage of the Red Army in the late 1920s, and troops
participating in the War of Resistance against Japan between 1937-45, in the Liberation War against the
Kuomintang, and in the War to Resist US Aggression and Assist Korea in the 1950s.
Some members are from the Hong Kong SAR garrison troops, he added, and some participated in the flood-
fighting campaign of 1998. He said that all the officers and soldiers are selected from active PLA military service
rosters in accordance with China's conscription regulations. They are of good professional & moral quality,
and have a passion for the motherland as well as for the Macao SAR, he said. In addition, every officer &
soldier has a sound educational background, he said, adding that the officers are all college graduates or above
and soldiers graduates of senior middle schools or higher. They are also in excellent physical condition, and the
requirement for their height is over 1.7 meters for men and 1.65 meters for women. In order to successfully execute
their duties in Macao, said the commissar, the troops are undergoing strict training & educational courses.
They are studying the Macao SAR Basic Law, the Garrison Law, the Chinese govt's policies regarding Macao, and
other laws & information concerning Macao.
On how the troops will enter Macao, Major General Liu said it will be decided according to the actual situation. It will
be convenient for the troops to enter quickly by land in the case of Macao, he added. According to the Basic Law,
the Macao SAR govt will be responsible for the region's social security. However, if there is a riot that surpasses
the SAR govt's capability to control, the Macao garrison troops will act strictly according to the Garrison Law which
prescribes explicitly their duties & tasks, the general explained.
The commission included several academics such as Harvard University professor Stephen Rosen, Princeton
University professor Aaron Friedberg and University of Pennsylvania professor Arthur Waldron, as well as former
Ambassador to China James Lilley. Peter Rodman, a current nominee for assistant defense secretary also took
part, as did retired Army Col. Larry Wortzel, a former attache in China who is currently with the Heritage
Foundation. The panel met 3 times with CIA Director George J. Tenet. CIA sources said Mr. Tenet tried
unsuccessfully to persuade the commission to soften its findings, arguing that its findings would fuel critics of the
agency. One of those critics is Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and the vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, who took the lead in pushing for the CIA to form the "competitive analysis" commission. Mr.
Shelby said in an interview that the CIA has "not viewed China in a realistic way." "They have tried to look the other
way when China, in my opinion, may be moving toward a belligerent stand, if not attitude," Mr. Shelby said. "They
are always looking the other way to put their spin on the U.S.-Chinese relationship, that everything is going well in
the long run. It's just not very real. China is, has been and I believe will be a big competitor of ours, economically,
militarily, politically, in every respect. They could be our biggest adversary. They are certainly not our strategic
partner as Clinton and Gore would lead you to believe."
A Pentagon report issued in December by the Office of Net Assessment, headed by long-time defense strategist
Andrew Marshall, also criticized U.S. intelligence shortfalls on China.
|
NATO future 7.99 Not so long ago, the idea of Russia & China signing their first treaty in decades would have alarmed the west. But the agreement reached in Moscow on Monday by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and China's Jiang Zemin is a cause for satisfaction rather than concern. It is in the west's interest that these two nuclear powers with long common frontiers co-operate. During the cold war, their border rivalry almost escalated into a nuclear conflict. In the past decade, relations have improved but have been marked by considerable confusion as Moscow, in particular, has been preoccupied with domestic change. Monday's treaty is a coherent attempt to make a new beginning, although it will still take considerable effort to overcome years of mutual suspicion. Mr Putin and Mr Jiang have been brought together partly by their fears about the US. Both countries are frustrated that since the end of the cold war, the US has emerged as the world's only superpower. Their concerns have been magnified by signs that President George W. Bush's administration may pay even less attention to the concept of multi- polarity than did President Bill Clinton's team. The summiteers condemned Washington's plans for a missile shield and scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile pact. The two leaders warned of the risk of a new arms race. The west should treat these concerns seriously. While the US is not wrong to develop new defence technologies, it should avoid doing so in ways that provoke other nuclear powers to increase their arsenals.
But even in attitudes towards the shield, the old rivalries between Moscow & Beijing persist. Mr Putin has
previously offered to collaborate with Washington on a limited regional shield. China would oppose such a
development because its nuclear arsenal is smaller than Washington's or Moscow's. It will also be hard for Russia
& China to work together in another important arena: central Asia. Both would benefit from a reduction in the
tensions born of poverty, crime and Islamic militancy. But it remains to be seen whether they can overcome
centuries of rivalry in the region and collaborate to promote stability. |
China grooms political unknown to lead next generation
10.30.01 Joe McDonald AP
Beijing He's getting star treatment in Europe. Russia's President Vladimir Putin took time to
discuss terrorism. Queen Elizabeth is giving him a private audience at Buckingham Palace. The target of Europe's
enthusiasm is China's vice president, Hu Jintao. He rarely travels abroad and is a political enigma even at home.
But this former engineer excites interest because he is widely expected to be China's next leader.
Foreign govts get the message, and are treating Hu to high-level hospitality. The trip that began Saturday in
Moscow is Hu's first to every country on his itinerary, Russia, Britain, France, Spain and Germany. In
each, he is meeting national leaders. Russian officials say he and Putin spent 90 minutes talking about terrorism,
Afghanistan and China-Russia relations.
But he has avoided being associated with any faction or policy. Now, he is under pressure not to outshine Jiang in
a society where folk wisdom advises, "the bird that sticks its head out gets shot." "Hu has no clear political or
ideological leanings. To show that is risky in Chinese political life. That's why he has survived so long," said Wu
Guoguang, a former Chinese official who teaches at the Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong. Jiang benefited from a similar surprise choice when Deng summoned him from Shanghai to lead the party after a 1989 power struggle. Jiang, 75, is expected to hand the party leadership to Hu next year, and the title of president in 2003. It isn't clear whether Jiang will give up his most important post as head of the commission that controls China's military. But |
The biggest skeleton in Hu's political closet is his tenure as party secretary for Tibet in charge in 1989 when
soldiers opened fire on Tibetans protesting Chinese rule. In London, Tibet activists blocked the front of Prime
Minister Tony Blair's office, forcing Hu to use a side entrance. Protesters shouted that Blair was "harboring
terrorists" at 10 Downing St. Hu also has to contend with the dismal record of past heirs apparent, whose
wrecked careers litter China's recent history.
Zhao Ziyang, once Deng's man, fell out of favor in 1989 and has lived under house arrest ever since. That record
suggests why other candidates have yet to challenge Hu, said Cheng, the Hong Kong researcher. "They have
plenty of time to edge him out if he makes mistakes later," he said.
|
5.2.01 report S/2001/434 Inter-Agency Mission rpt 3.6-27.01 quarterly Campaign to Reform UN McKinney support UNations & Peoples Org UNAssociation of U.K
7.16.03 CNN "Quadrupling the GDP of a country of 1.3 billion, can you imagine what are the consequences if you go in the same structure as was done in the so-called developed countries?" Toepfer told reporters during a visit to Sydney. He said that if China had the same density of private cars as, for example Germany, it would have to produce 650 million vehicles, a target that environmentalists say the world's supply of metal and oil would be unable to sustain.
"It's not a question whether you are devoted to nature or whether this is an emotional topic. This is the rationality of economics," Toepfer said. China's gross domestic product, or GDP, grew 8% last year and the govt expects it to expand another 7% in 2003.
While senior Chinese officials appeared to be fully aware of the constraints the environment placed on their
economic plans, Toepfer said more work needed to be done in developed nations to make environmentally friendly products "trendy" & mainstream.
China's influence spreads around world
Karratha, Australia For nearly three decades, Chinese peasants have left their villages for crowded dormitories and sweaty assembly lines, churning out goods for world markets. Now, China is turning the tables. Here in the Australian Outback, Shane Padley toils in the scorching heat, 2,000 miles from his home, to build an extension to a liquefied natural gas plant that feeds China's ravenous hunger for energy.
The reason: China. For years, China's booming economy touched daily life in the West most visibly through the "made-in-China" label on everything from clothes to computers. But now, economic growth is giving rise to something more that can't be measured just by widgets and gadgets, a shift in China's balance of power with the rest of the world.
China, like the United States, is also learning that global power cuts both ways. The backlash over tainted toothpaste and toxic pet food has been severe, as has the criticism over China's support for regimes such Sudan's. To understand why China's influence is increasingly pushing past its borders, just do the math.
China's desire for expensive hardwood to turn into top-quality floorboards for its luxury skyscrapers has penetrated deep into the Amazon jungle. In the isolated community of Novo Progresso, or New Progress in Portuguese, one of the biggest sawmills was started by the mayor with financing from Chinese investors.
"Ten years ago no one knew about China in Brazil; then the demand just exploded and they're buying a lot," Tremonte said. "This wood is great for floors, and they love it there."
Along with looking to other countries for goods for its people, China is also going far and wide in search of markets for its products. In war-torn Liberia, where electricity is hard to come by, Chinese-made Tiger generators keep the local economy humming. Costlier Western brands, favored by aid agencies and diplomats, are beyond the reach of small business owners such as Mohammed Kiawu, 30, who runs a phone stall in the capital, Monrovia.
China is having to make up for decades of economic stagnation after the communist takeover in 1949. When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping began dabbling in economic reforms in 1978, farmers were scraping by. By 2005, income had increased sixfold after adjusting for inflation to $400 a year for those in the countryside and $1,275 for urban Chinese, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics.
If China stays on the same economic track, it would become the world's largest economy in 2027, surpassing the United States, according to projections by Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Wall Street investment bank. And unlike Japan, which rose in the 1980s only to fade again, China still has a huge pool of workers to tap and an emerging middle class that is just starting to reach critical mass.
In its attempt to secure markets and win allies, China is stepping up development aid to Africa and Asia. Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged last year to double Chinese aid to Africa between 2006 and 2009, promising $3 billion in loans, $2 billion in export credits and a $5 billion fund to encourage Chinese investment in Africa.
"In some ways, it will be integrating us into a new international order in which democracy as we've known it or the right to open organized political activity is no longer considered the norm," said James Mann, author of "The China Fantasy," a book about China and the West.
The backlash is also coming on the consumer front, with Chinese goods earning a dubious reputation for quality. In the United States, there is a furor over the standard of Chinese imports. In Bolivia, vendors peel off or paint over any indication that their wares were "Hecho en China," Spanish for "Made in China."
Even those who benefit from China's growth express some wariness. Aerospace giant Boeing expects China to be the largest market for commercial air travel outside the United States in the next 20 years, buying more than $100 billion worth of commercial aircraft, U.S. trade envoy Karan Bhatia said in a recent speech.
That's what happened to Western and Japanese automakers, which made inroads in the Chinese market only to see their designs copied and technologies stolen. Already, China's vehicle manufacturers are venturing overseas, exporting 325,000 units last year, mostly low-priced trucks and buses to Asia, Africa and Latin America. |
11.18.01 Stephen Dinan Wash.Times Unlike years past when the debate was whether to contribute to the population fund at all, this year the White House, the House and the Senate each supported funding, $25 million in the House version of the bill and $40 million in the Senate version. The fund runs clinics and provides education & assistance for family planning, treating and preventing sexually transmitted diseases, and gynecological care.
From 1986 to 1992, U.S. contributed nothing to the fund. Funding was restored in 1993, topped out at $40 million in 1994 and has been $25 million the past 2 years. House & Senate negotiators said they struck a balance this year with a $37.5 million contribution to the fund, closer to the Senate's figure, in exchange for the Senate dropping its amendment that would have overturned the "Mexico City policy." The policy, which critics call the "gag rule," prohibits the U.S. from contributing to overseas family planning groups that provide or counsel women about abortions.
But when Rep. Jim Kolbe R-AZ presented the deal to his colleagues, Rep. Christopher H. Smith R-NJ and others
balked, arguing that the House conceded too much for an organization some would rather not fund at all. "$25
million is $25 million too much, but it's certainly not $34 million or $39 million or some other number," Mr. Smith
said. "They certainly shouldn't be getting an increase when they are flaunting coercion while pretending to embrace volunteerism." He said the population fund has "aided & abetted" communist China's policies, in which the central authorities have set quotas for population growth for certain regions. In some cases local authorities, in order to meet their quotas, have forced population control, including abortion.
U.N. Population Fund spokeswoman Corrie Shanahan in NY, said the agency works only in areas where the one-child policy has been suspended. "That's the basis for us working there. We would not want to, nor would our mandate allow us to, work there if that was not the case," she said. The fund's supporters say rather than aiding China's policy, the fund has the best chance of proving that population growth can be controlled without coercive policies & forced abortions."It has been the UNPF that has been consistently at the forefront of trying to oppose coercion and provide choice instead," said Rep. James C. Greenwood R-PA.
For now, House Republican leaders have sent Mr. Kolbe back to negotiate a lower U.S. contribution. Several
lawmakers & aides said the end result likely will be a compromise in which the Senate agrees to lessen the
amount another million dollars or so. Senate negotiators say they already have given up a lot by relenting on the
Mexico City policy. But they were unlikely to win that fight anyway since President Bush has said he would veto the bill if it overturned the policy.
China's union organizers
Parents crowd parks, sometimes by the thousands, seeking spouses for their adult children. It seems no detail is too personal. 12.31.05 Mark Magnier, Ding Li Beijing L.A. Times
Beijing The middle-aged men and women gather in small clumps around the pavilion in Zhongshan Park like molecules in motion, drawn together by the magnetic force of their placards and photos, the odd smile, a flirtatious nod that hints at fading charms.
These earnest hunters aren't in search of soul mates for themselves. They're looking for husbands and wives for their grown children, most of whom have no idea they're here. In fact, many would blanch at meeting anyone their parents recommended.
Still, they return week after week to parks across China, driven by the anxiety of watching the younger urban generation marry later, devote more time to careers and give little apparent thought to starting a family — at least on their parents' schedule.
Known in slang as "bare sticks", more than 500,000 singles between 30 and 50 live in each of China's 2 main cities, Beijing and Shanghai, according to government figures. That is a fivefold increase from 1990. In China, the average marrying age in 2001 was 24 for men and 23 for women, although experts say it's closer to 30 in big cities such as Beijing.
"China has 1.3 billion people," says Bai Qianling, a woman in her early 60s out looking for a suitable match for her very tall 27-year-old daughter, a former volleyball player now doing brand marketing. "Why is it so hard to find one reasonable person?"
There are also a lot of data to pore over, Fu adds. In addition to the height, wealth and education of various strangers' children, there are other things to match, such as blood type, food preferences and the Chinese animal signs. On the assumption that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, you also need to size up the other parents, something you can't do with Internet matches.
Those hyping daughters appear almost apologetic at times as they detail their offspring's prestigious jobs, education, good looks. Some parents are so stressed by the experience that they burst into tears when talking about their daughters. "It's really pretty tough," says Zang Ling, 54, a retiree looking for a match for her 24-year-old daughter, a hospital administrator. "I've been twice, and it's not very easy hunting."
"I'm not happy with this," says Lu Jiajia, 27, a graphic artist whose mother has tried to set her up several times. "I told my mother not to go to the park. I don't need her help."
Socialists say even as society changes, younger Chinese are still more willing to accept parental involvement than their Western counterparts, a reflection of China's culture of close-knit families. Traditionally, marriage was seen as a union of two families, not something left to the whims of individuals.
The one-child policy also has changed the equation, reducing pressure on daughters to leave home and free up the spare room even as it eliminates siblings' friends as a way to meet future spouses, experts say.
In October, parents were abuzz when an 80-year-old woman showed up at Zhongshan Park looking for a wife for her 51-year-old son, an extreme example of how Chinese parents often remain a force in their children's lives well into adulthood.
Another element of the equation is that for many parents, hunting in the park beats playing mah-jongg at home. It gives them something to do and provides a common topic to discuss and obsess over, even if it doesn't go anywhere.
Green Apple's Chen says that she has advised many parents not to intervene but that most refuse to listen. For many, it's more about satisfying their own insecurities and easing the loss of face in having unmarried children, she says.
After the communists took power in 1949, arranged marriages were banned as feudalistic. Mao Tse-tung set an example by marrying three times without an intermediary or the approval of his father, whom he disliked.
As China opened up in the late 1970s, people's view of marriage changed. Increasingly, money and social status counted again, along with personal happiness. Zhu Junfang, an illiterate coal miner, posted the first marriage advertisement after the Cultural Revolution in the June 1984 issue of the Women in China monthly magazine.
Many in the park remark how much easier it was to find someone in their day, when everyone around them got involved and expectations were lower. |
Beijing China imposed broad new restrictions Sunday on the distribution of foreign news in the country, beefing up state regulations on the news media. Under new rules that were said to take effect immediately, state-run New China News Agency said it would become de facto gatekeeper for foreign news reports, photographs and graphics entering China. The agency announced in its own dispatch that it would censor content that endangers “national security.”
If enforced as drafted, the regulations could have a major impact on news agencies like Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News that sell news-related products to a wide range of Chinese clients. More generally, the step appears intended to further restrict the information that news media in China, including news-oriented Web sites and financial, cultural and sports publications, can receive and convey to viewers or subscribers. Many such media outlets have skirted censorship procedures that old-line media must follow in China, a one-party state.
Party leaders have been alarmed by the increasing assertiveness of the domestic and the foreign news media. After a period of relative openness, officials now seem determined to make sure that the Chinese public does not have easy access to information that could provoke popular discontent or weaken the governing party’s grip on power.
President Hu Jintao has intensified a crackdown on all kinds of news media in recent months, arresting and harassing journalists, tightening regulation of Web sites and online forums, hiring tens of thousands of people to screen and block Web content deemed offensive and firing editors of state-run publications that resist official controls.
Chinese authorities promise that they will allow thousands of outside journalists to visit China during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and allow them to report freely on developments here. Some Western media watchdog groups say the new restrictions and a sharp increase in the number of journalists being prosecuted for their work have raised doubts about whether Beijing will honor those promises.
The New China News Agency has long played a dual role in China’s media world. It acts both as the official distributor of state news and information, selling its products much as any Western news agencies would do. But it also regulates outside news agencies, a power that Western news providers say it seeks to use to enhance its own bottom line.
A decade ago, the New China News Agency sought to take control of the lucrative business of providing live news and data feeds to banks and financial firms in China, determining pricing, policing content and collecting the revenue. The industry, dominated by big Western agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg, successfully fought those restrictions. They have continued to market their products directly to brokers and traders in China rather than providing all services through the New China News Agency.
It was not immediately clear if the new restrictions are a fresh attempt by the Chinese agency to take over that business, which is valued in the tens of millions of dollars. The dispatch said the new rules replace those promulgated in 1996 and subsequently watered down after vigorous protests.
The wording of the announcement is broad enough to include all forms of foreign news and information, including those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
“Foreign news agencies shall not directly solicit subscriptions of their news and information services in China,” the New China News Agency said in announcing the rules, adding that it had “the right to select the news and information released by foreign news agencies in China and shall delete any materials” it deemed harmful.
Among the categories of news that will be banned is anything that may “endanger China’s national security, reputation and interests.” China will also censor news articles that violate religious policies, promote cults or superstition, or “incite hatred and discrimination among ethnic groups.”
The prohibition on distribution means that the New China News Agency itself intends to act as the sales agent for foreign news providers that want to sell information or services to Chinese clients, likely taking a big cut of the revenue. In the past, Western media companies have said that such strong-arm tactics may violate China’s obligations under the World Trade Organization.
|
§ite map courtesy of FreeFind |
presented by § |
OCIAL JUSTICE |