China-Japan Diplomatic Event Canceled Over Islands

China-Japan Diplomatic Event Canceled Over Islands
As China-Japan Tensions Escalate, Tourists and Flights Fall Victim
Editorial Chides Xi Jinping Over Japan and US
China jails ex-police chief for 15 years in murder scandal
Ultimate source of happiness is within ourselves: the Dalai Lama
Wang Lijun: gang-busting cop whose crackdowns caught a politician's eye
China jails former police chief Wang Lijun for 15 years
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China-Japan Diplomatic Event Canceled Over Islands

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:55 AM PDT

Anti-Japanese protesters are confronted by police as they demonstrate over the disputed SenkakuIslands, on September 16, 2012 in Shenzhen, China. (Lam Yik Fei/AFP/Getty Images)

The Chinese regime has postponed a reception marking the 40th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan relations as the two nations feud over who controls a small set of rocky islands known as the Senkakus.

The China-Japan Friendship Association and affiliated organizations said they would postpone the reception, which was going to be held Thursday in Beijing.

Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua on Sunday said that "the reception would be held at an appropriate time," quoting unnamed officials, and slammed Japan's recent and "illegal" decision to purchase the remainder of the Senkaku Islands from a businessman.

The small, rocky, and uninhabited islands located in the East China Sea are said to have nearby reserves of oil, gas and possibly other natural resources. After the United States transferred ownership to Japan in 1971, Tokyo has overseen the Senkaku Islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese.

Thousands of Chinese protesters demonstrated in a number of cities over the last several weeks, with some vandalizing Japanese businesses and companies. U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke's car also did not escape nationalistic protesters' anger, as it was slightly damaged last week in Beijing.

Relations between the countries flared after Hong Kong activists landed on one of the Senkaku islands in August before they were arrested by Japan's coast guard and sent back home.

However, the nationalistic protests throughout China may have been orchestrated by hardliners in the regime, in an attempt to pressure leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, a source told The Epoch Times two weeks ago.

Japanese delegates in recent days told the Kyodo news agency that Beijing said the reception would go ahead as planned, but were informed on Sunday of a sudden change of plans.

China has also been delaying Japanese companies from allowing their employees in getting working visas over the islands row, a business source, who was not named, told the news agency.

The delays prompted concerns among corporations operating in China, who feared they would not have enough workers to man their facilities, the sources said, adding that it usually takes only four or five days for the Chinese immigration agency process visas to Japanese companies. However, several companies are still waiting after eight business days.

"We have been told they won't issue visas at present," one source told Kyodo.

Chinese Ships to Remain Near Senkaku, Official Says

As of Saturday, the Japanese coast guard confirmed that 13 Chinese surveillance and fishery monitoring ships are located in waters off the Senkakus, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

Kyodo reported that in Tokyo, hundreds of Japanese rallied against China's claims on the island, waving the Japanese flag, and denouncing Beijing as "fascist" and a "brute state."

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Click www.ept.ms/ccp-crisis to read about the most recent developments in the ongoing crisis within the Chinese communist regime. In this special topic, we provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation. Get the RSS feed. Who are the Major Players?

As China-Japan Tensions Escalate, Tourists and Flights Fall Victim

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 11:19 AM PDT

Flights from China to Japan were cancelled or cut back at airports across the country recently, as the dispute between the two countries continues to fester. (Tejia Jiapiao Xunxi/Weibo.com)

Last Sunday morning, Han Song, a journalist and blogger, should have been on a plane to Japan to attend a friendly meeting between Chinese and Japanese writers. But the Chinese side canceled it, and instead he was in the office editing articles attacking Japan.

Han detailed the experience on his Sina blog on Sept. 16, after he became one of the tens of thousands of Chinese who over the last couple of weeks have canceled—or had canceled for them—their trips to Japan.

"We'd been preparing for months, and many people had spent so much energy, care, and money," he said. "At key moments, face-to-face relations is so important between the two countries."

But as tensions between the two nations over a disputed set of rocky islands in the East China Sea increase, Chinese tourist agents and travelers are scaling back their plans, on a massive scale.

One of the largest travel agencies in China, Kanghui, recently terminated plans to send 50,000 Chinese tourists to Japan this year in celebration of 40 years of normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries.

It has also notified 5,500 branches across China to take Japan tours off the menu.

Japan Airlines has so far seen the cancellation of 12,000 tickets from costumers traveling to and from China, according to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a large financial newpaper.

China Eastern Airlines has canceled plans to open a new route from Shanghai, in China's south, to Sendai in Japan.

China Southern Airlines cut back on flights for the next two months, and Hainan Airlines suspended its Okinawa route, according to Hangzhou Daily, a Chinese newspaper.

Air China downgraded plane models for 34 routes including Beijing to Tokyo and Beijing to Nagoya, as well as Shanghai to Osaka and Tokyo routes.

In addition, 36 flights running these routes have been canceled. Air China estimates that even with the cancellations and adjustments, attendance of these flights will only be 60 percent over at least the next few weeks.

Read the original Chinese article.

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The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Editorial Chides Xi Jinping Over Japan and US

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 10:11 AM PDT

Global Times is supervised by People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. It recently chided Xi Jinping for suggesting that the United States might be "neutral" in the Chinese regime's dispute with Japan.

After an unexplained, nearly two week absence, the presumptive next leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in Beijing on Sept. 19. Though he asked the United States to stay neutral on the regime's Senkaku Islands dispute with Japan, he was the following day admonished in a state-run, nationalist newspaper, for "fantasizing" about the United States.

The editorial, published by Global Times, a rabble-rousing nationalist newspaper supervised by the People's Daily, the Party's official mouthpiece, titled the editorial "China Won't be Able to Persuade the US to be 'Neutral' With Only its Lips."

Xi met Panetta in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. At the meeting Xi said that China takes a serious stand on the dispute. "We hope that the U.S. can look at it from the point of stabilizing local peace and be cautious not to interfere with the dispute and do anything that can aggravate the conflict and complicate the situation."

The editorial takes the tone of educating Xi, saying: "It is not possible that China can succeed in persuading the United States to stay truly neutral. China should not fantasize about the United States."

It is uncommon for a state-run media to write open criticism of high-level Party officials' statements. Global Times is often described an "ultra-left" state newspaper with links to the Jiang Zemin and Zeng Qinghong faction, which favors a hardline approach to domestic and foreign policy. Factional struggle reached a peak this year with the Bo Xilai scandal, and is thought to be continuing in the mere weeks that are thought to remain in the lead-up to the 18th Party Congress, where a new generation of communist apparatchiks will be ushered in to take over the Party.

The editorial continued: "It's not enough to just orally warn the United States. China must validate its words with actions in the dispute with Japan, so the United States will believe that China means what it says."

Xi Jinping, in Apparent Good Health, Meets Panetta

Read the original Chinese article.

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The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.

China jails ex-police chief for 15 years in murder scandal

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 06:40 PM PDT

A Chinese court jailed ex-police chief Wang Lijun for 15 years on Monday after finding him guilty on four charges, including seeking to conceal the murder of a British businessman, in a scandal that felled the ambitious politician, Bo Xilai.

Ultimate source of happiness is within ourselves: the Dalai Lama

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 07:49 PM PDT

Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that the ultimate source of happiness is within ourselves and stressed on the need to develop inner peace. He was speaking to a large number of Indians gathered in his exile hometown

Wang Lijun: gang-busting cop whose crackdowns caught a politician's eye

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 07:31 PM PDT

Chongqing police chief made his name with tactics that drew accusations of brutality but made him a close ally of Bo Xilai

Before the ambitious young policeman arrived, locals called Daming "Little Hong Kong". It was a peculiar nickname for the dust-blown, semi-rural strip on the outskirts of an industrial town in north-eastern China.

The phrase was not a tribute to Daming's ambitions; rather, a caustic joke about the gangs that infested it, extorting money from businesses and robbing residents.

"But after Wang Lijun came, the hooligans didn't even dare drink after midnight," said a restaurant owner.

Long before the Chongqing police chief's flight to a US consulate made headlines – toppling the local leader, Bo Xilai, and triggering Gu Kailai's trial for murdering Briton Neil Heywood – he knew how to make an impact.

He claimed to have wrestled a suicide bomber to the floor just seconds before the man detonated his explosives. He boasted about love letters from awed young women and that his classmates at police academy had nicknamed him "tiger general". But for all the self-mythologising, he succeeded in winning popular acclaim.

As Bo's loyal aide, he led a dramatic campaign against organised crime, which built the politician's profile nationwide – and echoed the crackdowns Wang spearheaded in his earlier career; even, some say, in their disregard for procedural niceties.

Like his patron, he was tall and image-conscious, a populist who used dramatic stunts to enhance his standing, a transparently ambitious risk-taker who made many enemies.

But unlike his boss, the "princeling" son of a veteran red family, Wang was born with few advantages. His parents worked on the railways and in a textile factory.

Now 52, Wang, grew up in north-eastern Liaoning province and served in the army – where he met his wife – before joining the police, initially as a traffic policeman.

His devotion to duty was such that he chose to holiday in Beijing, where – rather than sightseeing – he spent hours standing at major road junctions, watching the traffic officers work.

Once back home, he used the photographs he had taken to practise his gestures and hand signals.

Wang soon worked his way through the ranks, boasting that the police university had trained him as a special agent, with mastery in multiple martial arts. By the time he arrived in Daming, in Tieling city, as police director in the early 90s, the pattern appeared to be set.

While one resident said his tactics were rough and ready, most recall his zero-tolerance approach fondly; one older woman recalled weeping when he left for a higher post in Tieling.

Within a few years, he had been praised as a "national model worker" and inspired a TV drama series, Iron-Blooded Police Spirits. Zhou Lijun, the scriptwriter, spent 10 days following Wang and described the police chief standing on his car and firing into the air as he arrived at low-level busts.

On one round of anti-prostitution raids, a search of a hairdressing salon found no sign of anything shady. But Wang ordered subordinates to cart off a young man with dyed yellow hair anyway. "A man with hair like that can't be any good," he barked.

Wang told Zhou he was as disposable as chewing gum in an official's mouth – "When the official cannot taste anything, he will spit it on to the ground."

"He was very disappointed that I didn't use his real name … and that he couldn't play himself in the TV series," wrote Zhou, who has declined interviews since Wang's fall.

Some suspected that the officer hyped his life-and-death struggle with triads. Neighbours recalled seeing him with the family he supposedly sent away for their protection.

The rising star attracted Bo's attention. When the politician moved to Chongqing, he took Wang along to spearhead his dramatic "strike the black" anti-gang campaign.

Officials said that no one was above justice; even the former deputy police chief was executed for sheltering criminals. Many in the city welcomed the crackdown, saying it had freed them from the tyranny of organised crime. Wang, already the subject of the hagiography Siberian Tiger Legend, commissioned a four-volume history to immortalise the campaign.

But others saw the drive as brutal, callous and selective, leaving those with ties to Bo unscathed.

There was particular concern at the prosecution of a lawyer, Li Zhuang, for "falsifying evidence" after he said his client had been tortured. "He trampled on the laws. Many people were tortured so they would admit crimes. [He caused many] unfair, unjust legal cases," said Li, who served 18 months.

Wang was dedicated, if erratic. He was hard on his staff – sometimes checking on police stations overnight – and he boasted of performing postmortems in his spare time.

He also found time to patent more than 150 inventions, including a hostess trolley and a phone booth all but identical to Britain's traditional red boxes. Most of the devices, however, related to his day job. They ranged from police cars to helmets with integral fans for hot weather and a jacket for desk-bound officers with special stretchy sleeves to allow a wide range of arm movements.

It would, explained the filing, ensure that staff looked good and did not tire at their duties. At least two of the items went into production and were bought by Chongqing police, presumably to the inventor's benefit. The force had a 2.68bn yuan (£260m) budget in 2010.

In May 2011, Wang's efforts won him another promotion, with Bo appointing him vice-mayor of Chongqing. It would prove to be the peak of his career.

Less than a year later, Wang fled to Chengdu's US consulate after telling Bo he believed Gu guilty of murder. Now the city's intermediate people's court has jailed the self-proclaimed tiger.

Tania Branigan

China jails former police chief Wang Lijun for 15 years

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 06:48 PM PDT

Wang Lijun was found guilty of covering up the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood by Bo Xilal's wife Gu Kailai

China has spared the high-flying police chief whose flight to a US consulate led to the toppling of leader Bo Xilai, with a court in Chengdu handing him a relatively lenient 15 year jail sentence on Monday.

Wang Lijun, 52, had previously been Bo's right hand man in Chongqing, winning plaudits for the pair's populist anti-gang crackdown and earning a promotion to vice mayor.

State news agency Xinhua said the Chengdu intermediate people's court found him guilty of defection, accepting bribes of at least 3 million yuan, abuse of power and bending the law to selfish ends by covering up the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood by Bo's wife Gu Kailai.

Gu was last month handed a suspended death sentence for the crime, while an aide who helped her was jailed for nine years.

"[Fifteen years] was in the realm of expectations but I would say on the low end of what most people were expecting," said Joshua Rosenzweig, an expert on the Chinese criminal justice system.

The crimes for which Wang was convicted carry penalties ranging from several years in prison to the death sentence.

Wang stood trial in hearings over two days in the southwestern city last week. The first day was held secretly because it touched on state secrets, according to his lawyer. The second was watched by a carefully vetted audience of a few dozen people.

An official statement on his trial, issued by the court, had already hinted heavily that he would be treated leniently - with prosecutors citing factors such as his confession and the fact that he had given information on other people to investigators.

A subsequent report from state news agency Xinhua formally linked Bo to the case for the first time - raising the chances of him too facing trial.

Although it mentioned him only by position, rather than name, it described him scolding and hitting Wang after he alleged that Gu had murdered Heywood.

The court had heard that Wang fled to the US consulate in Chengdu several days later, after he had been removed from police duties and three staff members had been illegally detained. There, he repeated his allegations to US diplomats - leading to British demands for a reinvestigation of Heywood's death last November. It had initially been ascribed to excessive alcohol consumption.

Tania Branigan

Top China Stories from WSJ: Japan Warns China, Sotheby’s Expands, GMAT Growth

Posted: 23 Sep 2012 06:36 PM PDT

Japan warned China that its inflammatory reaction to a territorial dispute could further weaken the Asian giant's already-fragile economy; auction house Sotheby's will be the first foreign company allowed to sell art in China; one in five people who took the business-school entrance test last year was from China.

Toxic dye found in dried chilis in Hunan