News » Politics » Wukan: Still Unsolved, and Still Significant

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• Wukan: Still Unsolved, and Still Significant
• China to build logistics platform in Brazil
• More Chinese cities see home prices rise
• Heavy fog delays flights in Xinjiang
• New Apple dock connector may cause Android accessory migration
• Asian PC brands seen to gain market share after Dell's cautious view
• Chinese vessel carried North Korean weapons to Syria
• Airshow China offers a glimpse at the future of police and mil. hardware
• China arrests 73 in fake luxury bag bust, shuts 37 illegal sites
• On right track? Beijing woos with rail projects
• US Medtronic merges with Chinese orthopedic firm
• Actress Yao Chen and Cao Yu marry in Queenstown, NZ
• China holds the most US bonds as of Sep.
• "Served by China" targets "Made in China"
• Samsung and Apple buddy up with China's new leaders
• Chinese Regime Power Shift Seen in Apparatus of Repression
• Top China Stories from WSJ: CCTV Ad Haul, Obama Visit, Li Keqiang
• Taoyuan teenager faces NT$20k suit for eating expired food
• China soybean-extract industry buried under stockpile pressure
• Chinese supermarket chains outdo foreign competitors

Wukan: Still Unsolved, and Still Significant Posted: 18 Nov 2012 09:28 PM PST A new generation of Chinese Communist Party leaders has arrived amid widespread hand-wringing over the public dissatisfaction, just as the so-called "Wukan model" of reform fades from view. But what happened in Wukan still retains symbolic significance.

China to build logistics platform in Brazil Posted: 19 Nov 2012 04:47 AM PST The China Investment Corp, a sovereign wealth fund responsible for managing China's foreign exchange reserves, has formed joint ventures with large institutional investors from Singapore and Canada to...

More Chinese cities see home prices rise Posted: 19 Nov 2012 04:19 AM PST More Chinese cities saw home prices rise in October from September despite the government's dogged efforts to curb property prices, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Sunday. In Octob...

Heavy fog delays flights in Xinjiang Posted: 19 Nov 2012 04:07 AM PST Heavy fog in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Sunday left 87 flights delayed or diverted. Twenty-five inbound flights from cities such as Beijing, Dalian and ...

New Apple dock connector may cause Android accessory migration Posted: 19 Nov 2012 03:47 AM PST While new business opportunities have emerged along with Apple's new product line, the release has ruffled some feathers in the accessories market. Some Apple accessory producers have begun to plan th...

Asian PC brands seen to gain market share after Dell's cautious view Posted: 19 Nov 2012 03:43 AM PST Asian computer brands are likely to gain global market share after Dell warned of a challenging fourth quarter this year, British bank Barclays Plc said in a recent report. Dell, the world's no. 3 co...

Chinese vessel carried North Korean weapons to Syria Posted: 19 Nov 2012 03:43 AM PST A number of South Korean media outlets have revealed a Chinese-flagged container vessel destined for Syria was stopped by South Korea in May after being found carrying missile components believed to b...

Airshow China offers a glimpse at the future of police and mil. hardware Posted: 19 Nov 2012 03:31 AM PST Ground vehicles, helicopters and even unmanned aerial vehicles designed for police were among the new hardware platforms on show at the Ninth China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, comm...

China arrests 73 in fake luxury bag bust, shuts 37 illegal sites Posted: 18 Nov 2012 05:19 PM PST Chinese police, working with U.S. authorities, have arrested 73 people for manufacturing and exporting fake international brands including Hermes, LVMH's Louis Vuitton and Coach Inc, state news agency Xinhua said.

On right track? Beijing woos with rail projects Posted: 18 Nov 2012 02:37 PM PST The latest move involves an offer to bank roll and build a $7 billion railway line between Laos's capital of Vientiane and the Laos-China border.

US Medtronic merges with Chinese orthopedic firm Posted: 19 Nov 2012 03:15 AM PST US-based Medtronic, the world's largest medical technology company, on Nov. 16 announced its merger with China Kanghui Holdings for US$816 million, reported Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post. Kan...

Actress Yao Chen and Cao Yu marry in Queenstown, NZ Posted: 19 Nov 2012 02:55 AM PST Under the witness of a priest, Chinese actress Yao Chen and photographer Cao Yu's wedding was held in Queenstown in New Zealand on Nov. 17, according to The Beijing News. The wedding ceremony was sim...

China holds the most US bonds as of Sep. Posted: 19 Nov 2012 02:55 AM PST China was the largest holder of US national bonds as of September, followed by Japan, said US Department of the Treasury. China held US bonds of US$1.16 trillion in September, US$300 million more th...

"Served by China" targets "Made in China" Posted: 19 Nov 2012 02:31 AM PST As China catches heat for amassing a huge foreign trade surplus by allegedly "manipulating its currency," the country is dealing with widened losses in its service trade with foreign countries. China...

Samsung and Apple buddy up with China's new leaders Posted: 19 Nov 2012 02:31 AM PST Samsung and Apple have been meeting with senior officials in this critical period surrounding the 18th National Congress to strengthen their network, a move that reflects the respect the two enterpris...

Chinese Regime Power Shift Seen in Apparatus of Repression Posted: 18 Nov 2012 05:48 PM PST Meng Jianzhu in Beijing, 2010. Meng, a new member of the Politburo, is likely to take over as head of the Communist Party's security forces. (Ng Han Guan/AFP/Getty Images) Among the outcomes of the recently concluded 18th Party Congress in China was a subtle but important institutional shift: the head of the Chinese Communist Party's security forces is now no longer in the Politburo Standing Committee, the Party's seat of power consisting of seven men. But he will instead be a member of the Politburo, a body of 25 cadres that wields less unchecked authority. For nearly a decade the agency that oversees almost all aspects of law enforcement, called the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC), was essentially a personal fiefdom controlled by men loyal to former regime leader Jiang Zemin. This included from 2002 Luo Gan, his trusted lieutenant, and from 2007 Zhou Yongkang, a grim-faced Jiang loyalist with deep ties to the oil industry. The new leader is likely to be Meng Jianzhu, the current secretary of the public security bureau and a recent inductee to the Politburo. The matter of who controls the PLAC is a crucial one for the CCP. The Party spends $110 billion on domestic security, more than the amount spent on national defense. The coercive apparatus managed by the committee is massive: it includes a system of courts, labor camps of various kinds, jails, detention centers, brainwashing centers, the prosecutor's office, the police, a number of secret police forces, and the 1.5 million-strong People's Armed Police—effectively a standing army. Without oversight, whoever controls the security forces is able to play a decisive role in influencing domestic policy, as well as cultivate an army of client cadres who benefit from the enormous disbursal of funds overseen by the PLAC. Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist that escaped from house arrest earlier this year, reported much cash being handed out to the people who watched over him, many of whom had ties to local officials. Power Struggle The fact that the PLAC will now be controlled from the Politburo is a product of the political struggle between Hu Jintao's leadership and the faction of former leader Jiang Zemin, which controlled the agency for so long, according to analysts of China's blackbox politics. Jiang needed to keep the security forces in his hands after initiating the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, an unprecedented security campaign that has required massive, sustained investment of state resources that many saw as needless and wasteful. Countless yuan have been spent in prosecuting the campaign, including the construction and expansion of labor camp and brainwashing facilities, the development of highly advanced surveillance systems, and mass mobilization of security personnel across the country to enforce the regime's edict. When Hu Jintao came to power in 2002, Jiang expanded the Standing Committee by two places, and inserted Luo Gan and Li Changchun, respectively heads of the PLAC and the Propaganda Ministry, to ensure that the campaign would not be disrupted. Zhou Yongkang took over from Luo Gan. But with the events of this year, there was no one else to give the job to. Once Bo Xilai was gone there was nobody qualified to be in the Standing Committee with the experience or credit to take over Zhou Yongkang's position. "Bo Xilai was their candidate for heading the PLAC," said Xia Yiyang, senior director of policy and research at the Human Rights Law Foundation, based in Washington, in a telephone interview. "Once Bo Xilai was gone there was nobody qualified to be in the Standing Committee with the experience or credit to take over Zhou Yongkang's position." The plan to give the job to Bo broke apart in spectacular fashion beginning in February of this year, when Wang Lijun, Bo's chief of police, defected to the U.S. Consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu. Previously there had been what analysts called two centers of power within the regime, with Zhou Yongkang controlling the PLAC outside the effective oversight of regime leader Hu Jintao. That was a dynamic engineered by Jiang on his way out, where significant authority over portfolios was devolved to individual members of the Standing Committee. The recent shift means that the PLAC is no longer a plaything of Jiang Zemin, but is now firmly within the control of the Party proper, and the idea of there being "two cores" within the Party, one being the PLAC, is no more. "It's about consolidating one-Party rule, so they can use the PLAC to oppress the people more effectively, and not have it get involved in intra-Party struggle," said Zhong Weiguang, a scholar of totalitarianism based in Germany. "But we must be clear: there will be no change in how they use the PLAC to persecute the Chinese people," he added. Warzone The role of the PLAC, and the difficulties inherent in any major reassessment of its role in social control, means that little change is actually possible, despite the lowering of the agency's profile, according to Xia, the researcher. A police guard stands in a courtyard inside the No.1 Detention Center in Beijing in October. The regime's budget for domestic security is at least $110 billion, more than is spent on national defense. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images) "The problem is that this notion of 'maintaining stability' is the Party's policy. This is the only way they can maintain their power," he said. The term "maintaining stability" is a catchall for a range of coercive techniques by the regime to repress dissent, ranging from Internet censorship at the light end, to incarceration and electric-baton torture at the harsh end. "This is a warzone. It's fighting. The CCP is fighting against the whole nation. There are so many issues that they cannot handle in a regular way, like other countries," said Xia. "Other countries can manage social problems, but there's no management here. They have to use power to crack down." The stability maintenance system, at least in its current form, owes in large part to the innovations in how coercion was used against Falun Gong practitioners. The techniques used against Falun Gong were then reapplied to the wider population, according to a paper that Xia presented to the European Parliament in 2011. But given that the current, sophisticated system of violence has grown over the last 13 or more years, in lockstep with China's rapid economic development and the social dislocations that unbalanced economic growth has brought, finding a new means for addressing problems will be impossible, Xia believes. "They need something to take the place of the current system if they no longer want to use it, but that would mean the whole society would have to change. That means political reform. They won't take that road. So they have to use this system." The ubiquity with which the PLAC's power invades the daily lives of Chinese citizens could not have been on clearer display than in the period leading up to the 18th Party Congress, which concluded last week in Beijing. Kites and pigeons were banned from the skies, vegetable knives were removed from shelves, thousands of dissidents were detained or driven out of Beijing, stifling Internet restrictions were put in place, and taxis were made to lock their rear windows, in case riders planned on tossing out political leaflets. Related Articles New Rulers of Chinese Communist Party Announced "This time for the 18th Party Congress they used about 1.4 million security personnel," said Xia. "How do you imagine that they would need this massive security force? It means they consider the whole nation their enemy." chinareports@epochtimes.com The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 19 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.  Editor's Note: When Chongqing's former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing any longer to participate in the persecution. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes. 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?

Top China Stories from WSJ: CCTV Ad Haul, Obama Visit, Li Keqiang Posted: 18 Nov 2012 05:49 PM PST Obama's historic visit to Myanmar comes as large of a shadow-boxing match with China; companies looking to advertise on China's biggest television network upped their spending for 2013; questions swirl over whether Li Keqiang will draw on his education to encourage the reforms that the current premier never delivered.

Taoyuan teenager faces NT$20k suit for eating expired food Posted: 19 Nov 2012 12:59 AM PST The manager of a convenience store in Taoyuan has sued one of his part-time employees demanding compensation of NT$20,000 (US$660) for his eating of and sharing expired food with friends, our Chinese-...

China soybean-extract industry buried under stockpile pressure Posted: 19 Nov 2012 12:59 AM PST Unreliable forecasts over soybean output has again cast shadows over many companies connected to the industry in China. Following the output-forecast adjustment updated from the US Department of Agric...

Chinese supermarket chains outdo foreign competitors Posted: 19 Nov 2012 12:55 AM PST Chinese supermarket and general merchandise chains are faring better than their struggling foreign counterparts. Domestic names have been able to differentiate themselves by providing broader services...

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