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Links » Cream » CCP Casts Out Former Railway Minister

CCP Casts Out Former Railway Minister

Posted: 28 May 2012 07:34 PM PDT

China's Communist Party has expelled former railway minister Liu Zhijun, who was removed from his post as minister more than a year ago amid allegations of , according to a decision by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. From The China Daily:

The disciplinary watchdog said Liu had taken advantage of his position to help Ding Yuxin, board chairwoman of Boyou Investment Management Corp, make huge illicit gains.

He was also charged with accepting a large number of bribes and leading a corrupt life.

His illicit gains have been confiscated and he will be handed over to the judicial department for further investigation. His disciplinary violations may include criminal acts, the watchdog said.

Lin Zhe, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC who specializes in fighting corruption, said Liu will probably face severe punishment.

"Expelling Liu from the Party means his political life has ended," she said, adding such punishment for an official is very heavy.

However, Lin added Liu's case will not be brought to court any time soon, "because the case is complicated", and more time is needed to investigate.

Removal from the Communist Party "virtually guarantees a conviction," according to The Associated Press. The drama surrounding Liu's sudden ouster in February 2011 has since been overshadowed by the demise of former Chongqing party chief , but today's news provides hints as to how the Bo case may play out. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The handling of the railway minister's case serves as a reminder of the steps the party traditionally takes when disciplining senior officials. It clears a politically charged case from the party's agenda ahead of a leadership shuffle that has been complicated by the drama around Mr. Bo.

…

A secret process of internal review and discipline by the party precedes any judicial prosecution a top official might face. The status of Mr. Bo's case is unknown but the party has said he is under investigation. In theory, the party's maximum penalty is expulsion. But its handling of a case is thought by analysts to greatly influence the outcome of any subsequent judicial process.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Tiananmen Father Hangs Himself in Protest

Posted: 28 May 2012 07:06 PM PDT

Ya Weilin, the 73-year-old father of a man shot in the head during the 1989 crackdown, hanged himself in Beijing last week in protest at the government's failure to recognise the issue. From the Associated Press:

Ya's son Ya Aiguo was shot in the head by martial-law troops in , according to an obituary the support group posted on its website. A testimony by Ya Aiguo's mother on the same site says that at the time, the 22-year-old had been waiting to be assigned a job and had gone out shopping with his girlfriend the evening he was killed.

His father killed himself out of despair and to protest the government's long-standing refusal to address the grievances of the victims' relatives, said Zhang Xianling, who knew Ya and his wife from the support group.

"The government's cold-blooded behavior has caused this tragic ending," said Zhang, who lost a 19-year-old son in the crackdown.

"I hope this incident will make the government circumspect and that such a thing will not happen again," Zhang said. "In this, the government has a responsibility. It owes a life now."

From the South China Morning Post:

founder , said it was the first time a member had committed suicide over despondency at the fight against the authorities.

"We didn't expect that he would end his life like this," Ding said of Ya.

"Every time he met us, he asked how the campaign was going.

"It was disappointing to him every time."

Two monks also attempted suicide protests in Lhasa on Sunday, setting fire to themselves outside the city's Jokhang Temple. One was killed, while the other survived. The self-immolations were the first to take place in the Tibetan capital.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Former Beijing Mayor Denies Charges

Posted: 28 May 2012 06:34 PM PDT

, who served as mayor of during the 1989 crackdown before he was dismissed from his post in 1995 and then sentenced to jail on charges in what many saw as the result of a power struggle with then President Jiang Zemin, has challenged the charges against him in a series of interviews to be published in Hong Kong. From Reuters, which reports that Chen's story is likely to attract parallels to the downfall of former Chongqing party chief :

"This was the worst miscarriage of justice involving a high-level leader since the Cultural Revolution, or since 1989 – it was an absurd miscarriage of justice," Chen says of the corruption and abuse of power charges that brought him a 16-year jail term in 1998. Chen won medical parole in 2004.

Although Chen's assertions about 1989 and his own downfall appear likely to draw dispute, they suggest how, as with Bo, charges against ousted Chinese leaders are often near impossible to separate from broader political contention.

"In a power struggle, any means possible – any low-handed means – will be used, and the objective is to seize power," Chen said, while denying accusations of scheming and disloyalty against President Jiang that accompanied his downfall.

"But I didn't take part in any power struggle, no matter what they think," he said of his unidentified accusers.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Photo: Butchers, by Michael Steverson

Posted: 28 May 2012 06:28 PM PDT

Beijing Condemns Latest Syrian Bloodshed

Posted: 28 May 2012 06:20 PM PDT

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin on Monday condemned the "cruel killings" in the Syrian town of Houla, where 108 people were killed on Friday, though he stopped short of echoing the United Nations Security Council in directly placing blame on the Syrian government. From Reuters:

"China feels deeply shocked by the large number of civilian casualties in Houla, and condemns in the strongest terms the cruel killings of ordinary citizens, especially women and children," Liu told a daily news briefing.

"This incident again demonstrates that an immediate cessation of violence in can brook no delay," Liu added.

"We call on all sides concerned in Syria to implement the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and Annan's six-point proposal immediately, comprehensively and thoroughly."

In a contribution to CNN, Asher Kaufman of the University of Notre Dame writes that the violence in Syria has turned into an "asymmetric " and claims that only China and Russia can end the bloodshed:

The U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, who is in Damascus, was also careful not to put the blame on any side, again reflecting the political dynamics in the United Nations between supporters and opponents of al-Assad. Annan believes that his six-point plan is still the only workable road map to stop the violence.

Because it is the only plan on the table, Annan is probably correct. But since the conflict in Syria has evolved into a full-fledged civil war, the questions are no longer about political reforms or cooperation between the opposition and the government to stop the violence and rebuild Syria. Rather it is the actual physical survival of al-Assad, his family and his supporters. It is also about a complete overhaul of the power structure that has been in place in Syria for more than 40 years.

Given this bleak reality, the only way to put an end to the violence in Syria is by working with those who support al-Assad's regime from the outside. and China need to be convinced that it is in their best interest to bring down the regime and that this is the only way to move forward in this crisis. Once this happens, Iran may also be willing to give up on its ally.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Ai Weiwei: ‘Why Do They Still Have to Spy on Me?’

Posted: 28 May 2012 06:11 PM PDT

The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon talks to Ai Weiwei about pressure from the authorities, its effect on his art, and his ongoing state of heavily restricted freedom which, MacKinnon writes, "could only be possible in the China of 2012."

After barely speaking to him during his 81 days of solitary confinement last summer, the men who held China's most famous artist and dissident captive came to him with a suggestion: Focus on your art, they told him. Stay away from politics, and you're free to make as much money as you can ….

"I tried to explain to them that I'm artist and expressing myself is my job, my duty. That communicating is very important for me." It wasn't an argument that impressed the security men. "They kept telling me that I'm part of a Western strategy to change China …."

"My art comes from my understanding of the world in front of me, which includes the politics," Ai says when asked how his battles with the government have affected his artistic output. "It includes all the human struggles – mental, aesthetic, moral, philosophical, and of course, in China right now, politics is part of it. But I don't have to put politics in my art. It's all part of it."

The authorities' support for Ai's art career appears to be a relatively recent development. According to Edward Wong's account in Saturday's New York Times, one of his interrogators last year questioned the artistic merit of his Zodiac Heads, expressing bewilderment at the high prices they had fetched. "Very few people know why art sells so high," Ai told him. "I don't even know."

See more on the artist and his struggles via CDT, and a list of upcoming screenings of Alison Klayman's documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Is Internet Speed Retarding China’s Economic Growth?

Posted: 28 May 2012 10:13 AM PDT

The answer is, of course, yes, but the real question is by how much? I honestly do not believe we know the answer to that question.

James Fallows noted this on his blog yesterday:

After another several-month stay in China last year, I came up with one proxy for China's ability to take this next step: how slow its Internet service is, compared with South Korea's or Japan's.

In much of America, the Internet is slow by those standards, but mainly for infrastructure reasons. In China it's slow because of political control: censorship and the "Great Firewall" bog down everything and make much of the online universe impossible to reach. "What country ever rode to pre-eminence by fighting the reigning technology of the time?" a friend asked while I was in China last year. "Did the Brits ban steam?"

Not a new issue, and critics of China's Internet regulations use this to argue for liberalization. In other words, there is an economic argument to be made to push back against the content monitoring system.

But how much is China's GDP suffering because of lower Net speeds? Is that comment about the Brits banning steam fair?

First answer: I don't really know. I don't trust the stats I've seen on this, because what they usually do is reduce everything down to a man-hour calculation. That does tell us something, but not as much as we might think. And there are a lot of assumptions that must be made about Chinese web habits, what kinds of Net use actually matter when it comes to productivity, and whether domestic alternatives mitigate the problems with access to offshore sites.

Second answer: I have a feeling that the conclusions on this issue are overstated to some degree. When coming from the media on an anecdotal basis (e.g. the Beijing Bureau Chief of Newspaper X writes an article about how slow YouTube is when she uses her VPN), I tend to discount the reports. Surfing habits of these folks bear almost no resemblance to your average Chinese Net user.

Moreover, I don't really think anyone has figured out what lost man-hours due to Net use really mean anyway. Consider two horny men, Mr. Zhou in Beijing and Mr. Yamashita in Tokyo: Mr. Zhou spends two hours a day surfing ServileJapaneseChicks.com. Mr. Yamashita watches the same video clips of women in French maid costumes playing with farm animals, but due to higher Net speed, it only takes him 1.3 hours (I'm making up these numbers).

But we're forgetting about human nature. Does Mr. Yamashita get back to work sooner or does he watch another .7 hour's worth of naughty vids? What do you think? And if Mr. Zhou's Net speed is really slow, does he go back to work or rather spend his time watching those torrent files he downloaded the day before?

Just one example . . .

My point is that it's too easy to say that China's Net speed is slow and therefore its economy is taking a significant hit.

 

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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The Daily Twit (@chinahearsay Twitter feed) – 2012-05-28

Posted: 27 May 2012 08:59 PM PDT

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China’s Service Industry: Not for the Faint Hearted

Posted: 28 May 2012 04:57 AM PDT

Steve Dickinson has a great post on China Law Blog on foreign companies providing services to Chinese firms. The advice is solid, at least in cases when the service company has sufficient leverage and/or is strong enough financially to turn away business. Here's Steve's major point:

U.S. consulting companies are increasingly selling their services in China.  This is part of the general trend towards sales into China that we have noted.  In confirmation of this trend, we have recently worked with several U.S. based consultants in selling their services into China. The approach taken by U.S. consultants is consistently naïve and almost guarantees problems in China.

[. . .]

The only way to prevent [payment disputes] from happening is to insist that no work begins until a substantial initial payment has been made.

What I find amusing about the discussion is that this general problem is something faced by lawyers every day, and not only when they deal with Chinese companies. For my law student readers, let this be a warning: this is the kind of industry for which you are preparing yourself.

With some exceptions, most clients do not value the work lawyers do, or at least they do not believe that the money lawyers charge is at all justifiable. Lawyers who do not come to terms with their clients upfront on fees are courting disaster and pretty much inviting a dispute when the project is over.

And for those lawyers out there who deal with new client SMEs or companies of any size from certain countries (I will avoid making a list here) and do not insist on a retainer payment upfront, I wish you luck. Try to ask for your costs upfront; in some cases, that's the only payment you'll ever get.

For those non-legal service companies that are running into trouble with receivables, you could do worse than asking a lawyer for advice before taking on that new China project. We've been there and unfortunately know all the pitfalls. By the way, we're going to be asking you for a retainer.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Capital Punishment in China: Ditch the Moral Argument

Posted: 28 May 2012 03:13 AM PDT

Policy discussions about capital punishment usually either focus on the normative question or procedural flaws. In countries like China and the United States, clear majorities of the population favor capital punishment, which takes care of the moral issue for many lawmakers. However, because of that public support, many procedural problems are overlooked or deliberately ignored, such as racial bias in the U.S.

In China, some of the procedural challenges have been addressed by reforms in the past few years, including a mandatory review by the nation's Supreme People's Court. There are limits to major reform efforts, though, and strong public opinion supporting capital punishment is often used not only to beat back attempts at abolishing the death penalty entirely, but also to push back on new rules that would significantly reduce the number of capital cases.

An Op/Ed today on this issue muddles the normative and procedural issues somewhat, and misses an opportunity in doing so. Here's the basic argument:

Despite efforts from the government and lobby groups to reduce death sentencing, the Chinese public still favors capital punishment for those convicted of violent crimes. This contradiction often raises doubts over whether China can ever eventually abolish the death penalty.

[ . . . ]

However, critics point out that people wrongfully executed have no means of redress.

Some credit should be paid to grass-roots movements by NGOs and public figures, whose efforts have significantly raised public awareness on the fairness of the death penalty and its impact on human rights.

[ . . . ]

But will these changes reach the minds of the Chinese public? It is possible. More and more legal professionals and public intellectuals are starting to participate in grass-roots campaigns to promote values that cherish human life more.

OK, granted, this Op/Ed is not a lengthy, well-reasoned argument. However, there's enough there to reveal the muddled approach. If the issue is public opinion and "rights," then we're talking about a normative discussion. Many of the NGOs that compile wonderful statistics and conduct detailed studies are making a mistake when they bring that data into a question of the morality of capital punishment. Who cares whether one or a thousand people are executed if the argument is that it is morally reprehensible? The numbers are irrelevant, unless perhaps the goal is to increase people's feelings of personal guilt.

But when the discussion turns to "wrongful execution" and "fairness," that's another matter. Sure, there's obviously a moral problem with executing the wrong guy, but the fundamental criticism is one based in rule of law: the system isn't working the way it is supposed to. In this discussion, data is paramount. One or two procedural mistakes might be acceptable from an administrative point of view, for example, but when the number of mistakes reaches a certain level, the argument that a system is fundamentally flawed becomes much stronger. (I personally favor a zero-tolerance policy towards administrative failures when it comes to the death penalty, which is why I don't support it.)

The advantage of this argument is that it completely sidesteps the normative question. It doesn't matter whether you think the death penalty is right or wrong. Everyone should support fairness and attempts to minimize wrongful execution. This can be used in support of significant reforms. For example, one can say that because of problems with local courts (e.g. corruption, lack of proper training), the SPC review process is necessary to ensure fairness in capital cases. This reform measure can be supported entirely on rule of law/procedural grounds without any invocation of fundamental rights, good and evil, or any other moral framework one wishes to drag into the discussion.

Because the procedural argument attacks rules from a fairness perspective, it has a much greater chance of success when it comes to public support. For some reason, folks have a tendency to be defensive when you attack their personal ideas concerning moral philosophy. Who needs some holier-than-thou NGO telling someone that their moral compass is off kilter? That doesn't personally bother me in the least, but most people are more sensitive than yours truly.

So, you want capital punishment? That's fine, as long as it's carried out properly. And by the way, once those reforms kick in, the number of cases will shrink dramatically. Everyone's happy short term: advocates for reform see a drop in executions, while folks who support the death penalty can sleep better at night knowing that fewer innocents are being executed.

Yes, there will be many "law and order" types who will continue to push back against any reforms. But critics of capital punishment are never going to get much help from those folks. And besides, with a "fairness" argument, critics and reformers will at least be able to occupy the moral high ground, so to speak.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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