| Photo: Yueqing, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, by Jan Christian Teller Posted: 22 Jul 2012 06:51 PM PDT |
| Reports of Forced Abortions Fuel Push to End Law Posted: 22 Jul 2012 06:30 PM PDT Following the gory case of Feng Jianmei, whose fetus was forcibly aborted at seven months, scholars and netizens are publicly questioning China's family planning policies. The New York Times reports: Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China's population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law that penalizes families for having more than one child. Pressure to alter the policy is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China's aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labor will be a significant factor in slowing the nation's economic growth rate. "An aging working population is resulting in a labor shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading," said He Yafu, a demographics analyst. China's population of 1.3 billion is the world's largest, and the central government still seems focused on limiting that number through the one-child policy, Mr. He said. Abolishing the one-child policy, though, might not be enough to bring the birthrate up to a "healthy" level because of other factors, he said. Beyond debate about the law itself, critics say that enforcement of the policy leads to widespread abuses, including forced abortions, because many local governments reward or penalize officials based on how well they keep down the population.
See more about forced abortion and the one-child policy in China. Read also about Chen Guangcheng, the legal activist who worked to oppose forced abortions in his hometown of Linyi, Shandong before fleeing house arrest and traveling to the U.S., where he is now a visiting scholar at New York University.
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, family planning, forced abortion, one-child policy
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| ASEAN Consensus Elusive on South China Sea Pact Posted: 22 Jul 2012 12:43 PM PDT As ASEAN officials seek agreement on the dispute over the South China Sea, they are now urging a pact, but a consensus has not yet been reached. This comes amid tensions in the region as a Chinese Navy warship was sprung from a shoal in the disputed region. Reuters reports: Southeast Asian states sought to save face on Friday with a call for restraint and dialogue over the South China Sea, but made no progress in healing a deep divide about how to respond to China's growing assertiveness in the disputed waters. After heated discussions at a summit last week that saw its customary communique aborted for the first time in its 45-year history, the Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) issued a six-point statement that omitted the contentious issues that had its 10 members locked in a bitter dispute for days. Cambodia's comments contrasted with the positive gloss applied by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who on Friday said ASEAN had reached a "common position", even though there was no communique. "You can only have an ASEAN that is central in the region if ASEAN itself is united and cohesive. Last week we were tested, there have been some difficulties but we have grown the wiser from it," he told Reuters.
Despite the ASEAN summit's lack of a resolution for the South China Sea dispute, Xinhua has reported that China has pledged to work with ASEAN: China pledged Friday to make joint efforts with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to safeguard regional peace and stability after the 10-member bloc issued a six-point statement on the South China Sea. "The Chinese side is willing to work together with the ASEAN members to implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) comprehensively and effectively," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in response to a question on the ASEAN statement. "The Chinese side has noticed the ASEAN's statement on the South China Sea (on Friday)," Hong said, adding that the core problem of the South China Sea was the disputes over the sovereignty of the Nansha islands and the demarcation of the islands' adjacent waters. "China has sufficient historical and jurisprudential evidence for its sovereignty over the Nansha islands and the adjacent waters," he added.
The US has previously expressed support for the Philippines in the dispute. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the United States sees a risk of war in the South China Sea: The White House has warned of the rising risk of accidental war in the South China Sea and called for countries in the region urgently to agree to a code of conduct. Analysts say the South China Sea is the new flashpoint of Asia. Most world shipping – and Australian exports – pass through it. "A code of conduct, in our view, is a matter of commonsense," the National Security Council's senior director for Asia, Danny Russell, said. In a call implicitly aimed at China, Mr Russell said 10 years ago China had agreed to negotiate such a code of conduct. It has repeatedly said it will agree to discussions "when the time is ripe". A Pentagon official with responsibility for US defence policy in Asia, Vikram Singh, said: "The time is ripe now". China has said the US is meddling in the region's affairs by encouraging a code of conduct. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, responded: "The US is a resident Pacific power". The US takes no position on the competing claims but wants a "binding framework" to avoid clashes or to resolve them peacefully.
While China moves to take control of the disputed region, Vietnamese protests continue against 'Chinese aggression,' from The Guardian: Hundreds of demonstrators have marched through the streets of Hanoi to protest, for the third time this month, against China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea. Protesters stopped mid-morning traffic as they carried banners and Vietnamese flags, while shouting "The Spratly and Paracel Islands belong to Vietnam!" and "Down with Chinese aggression!". While police escorted the protesters through the streets and did not appear to be making arrests, police have heavily cracked down on dissent in the past few weeks, and a number of influential activists and bloggers have been harassed and detained. "Police came to my house last night and told me that if I attended [the demonstration] I would be arrested," one prominent human rights activist told the Guardian by telephone on Sunday. "When I tried to leave this morning, a group of them forced me back into the house to stop me, and they are still outside."
Another Reuters article reports that China has approved of a formal military garrison of the area: China's powerful Central Military Commission has approved the formal establishment of a military garrison for the disputed South ChinaSea, state media said on Sunday, in a move which could further boost tensions in already fractious region. China has a substantial military presence in the South China Sea and the move is essentially a further assertion of its sovereignty claims after it last month upped the administrative status of the seas to the level of a city, which it calls Sansha. The official Xinhua news agency said the Sansha garrison would be responsible for "national defense mobilization … guarding the city and supporting local emergency rescue and disaster relief" and "carrying out military missions". It provided no further details.
Read previous coverage about tensions in the South China Sea, via CDT.
© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ASEAN, maritime disputes, military strategy, philippines, South China Sea, Vietnam
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| Wenzhou Train Burying Continues Posted: 22 Jul 2012 08:56 AM PDT A year has passed since the fatal high-speed train crash in Wenzhou. The Wall Street Journal reports that officials have forbidden journalists and other media from visiting the site of the crash: Chinese citizens almost one year ago were outraged to see government officials pushing into a dirt pit the ruins of a wrecked rail car left from the deadly Wenzhou train crash, literally burying a visible reminder of one of the world's worst high-speed rail accidents. China's Ministry of Railways has contacted media outlets and journalists, forbidding them from visiting the scene of the accident and is limiting its contacts to state-controlled media organizations, according to the federation. The ministry couldn't be reached for comment on Friday. As a broadcaster at state-run China Central Television said, "Can we drink a glass ofmilk without worrying? Can we live in a house that won't collapse? Can we drive along a street in a big city without it caving in? Can we ride a train that arrives safely? And if there's a big train accident, can we be sure that the engine won't be buried? In short, can we have a basic sense of security necessary for people's happiness?" A repeat of last year's outrage – prompted by images of the bullet trains that had collided, with cars dangling from the elevated tracks – wouldn't be welcome. Already, China's censors have shown their sensitivity around the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has also commented on Chinese government censorship, from Scoop: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is deeply frustrated by reports that China's Central Propaganda Department has blocked all media reporting of the anniversary of 2011's deadly high-speed train crash in Wenzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang Province. On the evening of July 23, 2011, two high-speed bulletin trains collided in Wenzhou, killing 40 people and injuring at least 192 others. During the rescue, government officials quickly ordered the burial of the train the wreckage, drawing criticism from the public for their attempts to cover-up the incident. Only state-owned media organisations, including Xinhua news agency and China Central Television, were allowed to attend a press conference to interview Railway Ministry officials, with other organisations blocked from attending. The Railway Ministry also contacted media organisations and pressured them to ask journalists to leave the scene of the accident. On July 30, 2011, the Beijing Propaganda Department issued an order to all local media forbidding independent reporting of the crash. At least two China Central Television media personnel were reportedly punished for criticising the rescue efforts in their programmes. "Unfortunately, quite a number of newspapers have already ordered their staff to ignore the anniversary", one local journalist said. "But, despite this, many journalists refuse to forget the disaster".
While media outlets have been banned from reporting on the anniversary of the accident, the Global Times has reported on stories of what has happened since the accident: Without this fatal day, 3-year-old Xiang Weiyi would be a healthy girl, growing under the protection and care of her parents. Now, everything has changed. Dubbed the "miracle girl," Xiang Weiyi was the last survivor of the tragedy to be pulled from the wreckage after being trapped inside a carriage for 21 hours. Both her parents died in the collision. The investigation report, which was released five months after the deadly crash, blamed the cause on flaws in the trains' operation control system and on an inadequate emergency response by railway authorities. A total of 54 people were identified as being accountable for the crash and received disciplinary punishment. Liu Zhijun and Zhang Shuguang, the former railway minister and deputy chief engineer of the ministry respectively, were mainly said as being to blame and were placed under investigation last year for alleged "severe violation of discipline." But the charges against them are not directly related to the train crash.
Despite the outrage from citizens over the accident, China is planning a railway spending boost, according to Bloomberg: China's railway infrastructure investment may double in the second half of this year from the first six months, aiding efforts to reverse a slowdown in the world's second-biggest economy. Full-year spending will be 448.3 billion yuan ($70.3 billion), according to a statement dated July 6 on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission's Anhui branch. The document indicates a 9 percent increase from a previous plan of 411.3 billion yuan. Spending was 148.7 billion yuan in the first half. China's fixed-asset investment has already started to pick up and a jump in spending on railway construction would echo the expenditure on rail lines and bridges that was part of stimulus during the global financial crisis. A decline in foreign direct investment reported by the government today underscored the toll that Europe's debt woes and austerity measures are taking on Asia's largest economy. China Railway Group Ltd. (601390) and China Railway Construction Corp., the nation's two biggest listed rail builders, jumped in Hong Kong trading today.
© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, high speed train, media censorship, state media, train accidents
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| Beijing Au Jus: A Brief Note on Yesterday’s Flood Posted: 22 Jul 2012 07:20 AM PDT  It's been so miserably hot here that I'm sure most of us welcomed some rain. Temperature comes down, air gets cleaned out temporarily. It's all good. Usually, that is.
But yesterday, Beijing got biblical on our asses. Some are saying it was the biggest rainstorm in 50 years or more. Some people were able to enjoy it, including some expats who were swimming around and posing for photos that are now being passed around online (Note to expats: swimming in municipal effluence is disgusting and unhealthy. Get thee to an infectious disease and/or poison control expert forthwith.) Unfortunately, the rest of the news was bad. More than ten people died, some from being trapped in cars as the water rose unexpectedly, and many more were injured. There are pics all over the Internet, including a nice collection over at Beijing Cream. Some of the worst flooding apparently took place right here in Shuangjing/Guangqumen, headquarters of China Hearsay, where I hunkered down with my cats. But that's not the reason I bothered with this post. I usually don't comment on the weather or natural disasters, since I can't really add much value to that discussion. No, there's another aspect of the whole flooding story, one that takes place almost every time there's a natural disaster: profiteering. According to purely anecdotal reports my wife and I have seen via BBS and microblogs, taxi drivers were charging huge fares for even short rides. One person noted that at the airport (the airport highway was apparently a parking lot there for a while), taxis were charging hundreds of RMB to drive folks to nearby Wangjing — if you know your Beijing geography, we're talking a fairly short distance. We even read about some microbloggers who organized a Dunkirkesque rescue mission to the airport with private cars. Other reports talk about hotels in some parts of the city, such as Sanyuanqiao, hiking rates multiple times because people were stranded and didn't have any other options. Same thing happens when there's an earthquake or other calamity, so I shouldn't be surprised. However, this kind of behavior is clearly illegal in China under various legal provisions, including the price law. I know it's not reasonable or feasible for the government to investigate and punish all these taxi drivers and small business hotels. Too bad. Love to see some of those mercenary pricks be made an example of. But for now, it's more important to clean up, dry out, and mourn our losses.
© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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