| Shrinking Workforce Underlies Family Planning Issues Posted: 22 Jan 2013 05:53 PM PST China's National Bureau of Statistics announced last Friday that the working age population decreased by 3.45 million in 2012, according to The People's Daily: It is first time the country has recorded an absolute drop in the working-age population in "a considerable period of time", said Ma Jiantang, NBS director, at a press conference. "We need to pay serious attention to this," he said. He believes the causes lie in China's changing fertility rate. The working-age population, which covers ages between 15 and 59, accounted for 69.2 percent of the country's total population in 2012, down 0.6 percentage points from 2011, the year in which the rate for the first time declined, said Ma. Ma said he expects China's working-age population to decrease "steadily and gradually" over a long period or "at least before 2030."
While 2012 marked the first time China saw an absolute drop in its working age population, the percentage of Chinese who are of working age began to decline in 2011. The Economist explores why the data has defied official projections, which called for the Chinese workforce to keep growing until the mid-2020s: I'm not sure why demographers got it wrong. Predicting future rates of longevity and especially fertility is undeniably hard. But surely it isn't that difficult to figure out how many people aged seven today will become 15 (and thus of working age) in eight years' time. Therefore, it shouldn't be that hard to predict the near future of the working-age population. Perhaps the difficulty lies not with prediction so much as measurement. As I understand it, the yearly estimates of China's population are based on an annual national survey of about 1.5m people. Given the size of China's population, it would be easy to miscalculate the numbers by a few million here or there. Such errors could easily throw a projection out by a few years. Also worth bearing in mind is the definition of working age. In last year's press release, working age was defined as 15-64 years old. That is a common age range used by the UN's Population Division and China's own Statistical Yearbook. But for the purposes of Friday's press conference, the NBS changed the definition, referring instead to 15-59 year olds. The number of Chinese in this age group declined by 3.45m, it reported (see chart). But the number of people aged 15-64 seems to be increasing still. It rose to 1.004 billion in 2012 (I inferred this total based on other numbers provided in the press conference). … But it's interesting that the NBS chose to rejig the definition of working age for this press conference. One can only assume they chose the 15-59 age group precisely because its numbers are already declining. That allowed them to highlight a worrying demographic trend. In response to a reporter's question, Ma Jiantang, the head of the NBS, said he did not want the population figures to be lost in the sea of data.
Many have pointed to China's controversial one-child policy to explain the worrying demographic shift, as the population ages and the number of young workers shrinks. The South China Morning Post's Wang Xiangwei writes that Ma's comments "will no doubt ignite a new round of debate" about reforming China's family planning laws: The fact that Ma is a high-ranking official should further bolster the calls for change by opponents of the policy, by showing that support for change is also growing within the Communist Party leadership. It is interesting to note that Ma voiced his concerns just two days after the National Population and Family Planning Commission held its annual conference, in which officials vowed to unswervingly uphold family planning as a long-term fundamental national policy. The statement released after the conference suggested that the central government doesn't have any immediate plans to relax the policy. That is too bad. It is high time for mainland leaders to heed Ma's call and set up task forces to study how to further relax the rigid family-planning policy in the short term, such as by changing it to a "two-child" policy.
Social policy aside, the aging workforce has implications for the Chinese economy. As Jamal Anderlini and Ed Crooks of The Financial Times wrote Friday, it "could become a big drag on future growth:" As societies become richer, birth rates tend to decline naturally – but in China that trend has been deeply distorted by the country's controversial one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s. "Most projections . . . estimated that the decline in the working age population would start around the middle of this decade," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of economics at HSBC. "But [Friday's numbers] show it has already happened, which suggests the decline over the next few decades will be faster than expected."
The labor shortage is "bad news" for China's economy in the short-term, writes Panos Mouroukoutas in Forbes, though it will force Chinese companies to innovate in the long-term. Gordon Chang, however, suggests that the bad effects outweigh the good: Perhaps the most pernicious economic effect of a declining population will be on urbanization. The decades-old migration from farm to city is one of China's "four new modernizations," announced in mid-November by Li Keqiang. The man slated to become the next premier is placing a big bet that this trend will drive growth for the next two decades. After all, the Chinese government in 2011 announced it will be building 20 cities a year in each of the next 20 years. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate that the government's city-building plan is feasible. Last year, according to the agency, China's urban population increased 21.03 million, hitting 711.82 million, or 52.57% of the country's population. That was up 1.3 percentage points from 2011. Even if these figures are correct—and there is growing doubt that NBS's urbanization numbers are accurate—it's not clear where Beijing officials are going to get the people to continue to power the farm-to-city process. Not only are the major demographic trends working against them, but there is also a growing concern that rural areas have already been emptied out.
© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: family planning, Ma Jiantang, National Bureau of Statistics, one-child policy, population, urbanization, workforce
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| Party Officials Launch Property Fire Sale Posted: 22 Jan 2013 03:38 PM PST While Xi Jinping's increasingly strong anti-corruption rhetoric has met with some skepticism, it seems that some of its targets are taking it seriously. The Telegraph's Malcolm Moore describes a Central Commission for Discipline Inspection report on officials' frenzied efforts to ditch ill-gotten properties and find homes abroad to which they might escape. "They never register the houses in their own names and they use a string of agents to do the deals," said Mr Fu. He said one company had bribed an official by buying him a property at the Mountain Water International Complex. "The property was put in the name of the official's relative. After six months, it was sold for two million yuan (£200,000), around the same amount it cost. Then the official could cash out. […] Marco Pearman-Parish at Corporation China, a company in Beijing that helps clients find properties abroad, said there had been a strong rise in clients looking for homes in the Cayman Islands. "In Beijing, half our clients are government officials," he said. "Nine out of ten claim to be businessmen, but it emerges over the course of the deal that they have government jobs. What they are looking for is resident permits abroad so that if anything happens they can escape easily." Neither the anti-corruption speeches nor the escape artistry began with Xi's appointment in November. According to the Commission report, Moore writes, as much as U.S. $1 trillion was smuggled out of China last year—though this figure is disputed—while 714 officials made successful getaways during the October National Day holidays alone.
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-corruption, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, corrupt officials, corruption, naked officials, property market, real estate, smuggling, Xi Jinping
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| Photo: Late Night Snack, Shangqiu, Henan, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 22 Jan 2013 02:54 PM PST |
| SOEs, Rule of Law Among Hurdles for Clean Air Push Posted: 22 Jan 2013 02:45 PM PST Beijing's acting mayor has announced an array of new measures to combat air pollution in the city, following heavy smog that seeped hundreds of points off the scale this month. From Xinhua: The capital will take 180,000 old vehicles off the road and promote clean energy autos among government departments, the public and the urban cleaning sector, which includes street cleaners and trash collectors, Wang Anshun said at the opening of a session of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, the municipal legislature. The heating systems of 44,000 old, single-story homes and coal-burning boilers downtown are to be replaced with clean energy, Wang said as he delivered a government work report. The city will also speed up the promotion of clean energy in rural areas and strictly control dust in construction projects, said Wang. He vowed to strengthen air quality monitoring and analysis, as well as the release of such information. The promise of increased transparency, itself coming on the heels of a wave of unusually frank coverage in state media, was accompanied by a call for public comment on the new regulations. From Dexter Roberts at Bloomberg Businessweek: In another sign that Beijing officials are, for now, leaning toward openness, officials will allow the city's 20 million residents to weigh in on draft regulations aimed at curbing the Chinese capital's horrendous air pollution, according to a notice posted Jan. 20 on the Beijing municipal government website. The public can comment on the proposed new measures until Feb. 8, the day before China shuts down for the annual Chinese New Year festival, said the statement issued by the city's legal affairs office. "This is important. Now public scrutiny should play a key role in promoting pollution control and enforcement of this rule," says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Ma's environmental advocacy group plans to comment through the online platform that the municipal government has created for this purpose. Edward Wong argued at The New York Times on Sunday that Beijing's "extraordinary surge" in air pollution was one of several drivers of growing demands for political input. But Reuters reported a generally unfavorable response to the plans on Sina Weibo: "These plans are just dreams," wrote one user. Others said the phasing out of old cars would make little difference in a city where about 250,000 new cars hit the road every year, albeit with supposedly higher emissions standards. "These 'old cars' are what the ordinary people drive. You people can only dare talk about this subject when you start phasing out all the cars officials drive," wrote another user. Other doubts remain about the likely effectiveness of public consultation, enforcement, and of rules targeted only at the city itself. From Yin Yeping at Global Times: Zhang Yuanxun, a professor of resources and environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that a lack of law enforcement will be a problem. "The punishments enshrined in the regulations are too strict and broad. It will require many more law enforcement officers to ensure its effective implementation," he said. "The old laws were not enforced, not to mention this new one," he said. […] "Also, just restricting the local atmospheric pollution would have little contribution to its improvement if there are no changes in the pollution conditions in the surrounding areas [of Beijing]," [Zhou Rong, climate and energy director of Greenpeace] said. Wang Yan, a resident working in international trade, said she thinks the new laws should have been launched already. "I don't think I'll offer comments on the new regulation since I doubt if my voice will be heard," she said, adding targeting street barbecues is ridiculous. At chinadialogue, Gavin Lohry suggested an additional measure that might help address a range of environmental concerns, from air quality and energy consumption to drainage: Green roofs – roofs covered with plant vegetation – first gained popularity in Germany and have since been spreading around the world. They help cities reduce storm water runoff, cool the urban environment, absorb air pollution, insulate buildings and increase biodiversity. With enough green roof adoption, Beijing could realise positive impacts on the environment and improved quality of life. My research on the topic found that in Beijing there is around 93 million square metres of roof space suitable for cost effective green roof adoption. If the cheapest and most basic forms of green roofs covered the suitable roof space, the urban environment would be substantially improved. Under this scenario air particle pollution could be reduced by as much as 880,000 kilograms every year, equivalent to taking 730,000 cars off the road. The roofs could reduce storm water by 3.5 million cubic metres during large rain events, equivalent to filling the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square with two metres of water or 1,400 Olympic swimming pools. Any boost to Beijing's drainage infrastructure would be valuable in the event of more storms like last summer's, which killed 77 people. But there are no easy solutions: the problems are tangled, often beyond the scope of local government policies, or out of human control entirely. From Jonathan Kaiman at The Guardian: Deborah Seligsohn, an expert on China's environment at the University of California, San Diego, said that there is no silver bullet for the country's air pollution. The underlying causes are dynamic and diverse: power plants, small factories, automobile emissions, rampant construction, farmers burning coal for heat. "One of the things about the air quality in Beijing is that it varies a lot more than it used to," she said. Beijing's air quality fluctuates with the weather – a strong wind from the north can blow the smog to sea, she said, while south-eastern winds trap the air against a nearby mountain range, drowning the city in a pea-soup haze. […] Beijing has taken significant steps to combat pollution – it invested an estimated $10bn before the 2008 Olympics to raise emissions standards, replace residents' coal stoves with natural gas heaters, and relocate a ring of steel plants on the city's outskirts. Yet Beijing still shares its airspace with six surrounding provinces which may not adhere to comparable environmental standards. "One of the fundamental problems is that the environmental regulators don't have sufficient authority and resources to overcome the forces that are creating the pollution," said Alex Wang, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on China's environmental law. The problem is indeed hardly limited to Beijing, as Peking University professor Pan Xiaochuan angrily pointed out while blasting the term "Beijing Cough" as an "extreme insult" to the city. Other cities have been even more severely affected, and Shanghai has not escaped. From Reuters: Shanghai, too, is improving public communication of air pollution data, as Angel Hsu describes on her blog: [… B]y far my favorite innovation Shanghai's EPB has made so far is in the use of this little air quality mascot to communicate what the various levels of pollution on the normalized AQI index mean. For the most part, things take a sour turn for AQI girl (let's just call her that, I'm not sure if she has an official name) after the Good (51-100) part of the range. I like how they coordinated her hair color with the official color codes of different pollutant thresholds – it's a great way for people to automatically remember and understand what the different colors mean. AQI girl also provides a much more people and user-friendly means to calculate air quality, as opposed to other cartoon characters or anime figures that they could gone with. […] I can only imagine next will come a video game for AQI girl, that will feature her navigating Shanghai's polluted streets, having to dodge roadside exhaust coming from tailpipes, all the while remembering to wear her face mask when she sees AQI readings above 150. The Wall Street Journal's Brian Spegele and Wayne Ma described the obstacles to implementing deeper and broader solutions. Proposed changes inevitably raise questions of who will pay for them. Over the long term, drawing down emissions will require costly upgrades to industrial facilities and oil refineries, measures resisted by state-owned companies unable to pass costs on to consumers and local governments that depend on industrial output for revenue. […] Though attention over the years has focused on power plants and passenger-car emissions, China's pollution problems are complex and spread broadly across the economy. Mr. Zhao, of Nanjing University, and a research team studied the effectiveness of Chinese government policies in curbing emissions between 2005 and 2010 and estimated PM2.5 from coal-fired power generation fell roughly 21% as cleaner technologies took hold. Meanwhile, PM2.5 emissions from iron and steel production rose roughly 39% to 2.2 million metric tons, according to the estimates, as output increased. China is particularly struggling to curb what are known as secondary pollutants, formed when primary pollutants—such as emitted sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, from coal burning and other sources—undergo reactions in the atmosphere. The government has had some success targeting primary pollutants, but analysts say it is just beginning to target secondary pollutant problems, including particulate matter that is harmful to human health. Spegele also discussed a range of air pollution issues with the Journal's Deborah Kan: Officials have been careful to manage expectations, stressing that real change will take years, just as the current situation was years in the making. South China Morning Post's Li Jing spoke to Qu Geping, whose career in shaping China's environmental policy included a stint as the country's first environmental protection administrator from 1987 to 1993. Qu lamented that the present of emergency was foreseen thirty years ago, when China nearly chose a different development path to avoid it. He blames the lost opportunity on government according to "the rule of men", rather than rule of law. "I would not call the past 40 years' efforts of environmental protection a total failure," he said. "But I have to admit that governments have done far from enough to rein in the wild pursuit of economic growth … and failed to avoid some of the worst pollution scenarios we, as policymakers, had predicted." […] But, Qu said, if the central government had respected a policy that it released in 1983, China could be in a much better place now. "The State Council published a document that year, stipulating that economic and urban construction should synchronise with environmental protection, so that the three legs of social development could reach a co-ordinated benefit," he said. "It was a pragmatic and feasible strategy, even more approachable than the notion of 'sustainable development' enshrined by the United Nations years later." […] "Why was the strategy never properly implemented?" he said. "I think it is because there was no supervision of governments. It is because the power is still above the law."
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Post tags: 2008 Olympics, air pollution, air quality, Beijing, Beijing environment, beijing flood 2012, Chinese Academy of Science, clean air, clean energy, factories, forbidden city, greenpeace, industrial pollution, law enforcement, Ma Jun, PM 2.5, PM2.5, power plants, rule of law, Shanghai, state-owned enterprises, steel, Tiananmen Square, Wang Anshun
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| Xi Jinping Fights Corruption Among “Tigers” and “Flies” Posted: 22 Jan 2013 02:27 PM PST As part of his stated commitment to stamp out corruption, incoming president Xi Jinping has called for a crackdown not just at the top of the Party ("tigers") but on low-level local officials ("flies") as well. From Reuters: Xi, in comments carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said it was just as important to go after the "flies", or lowly people, as it was to tackle the "tigers", or top officials, in the battle against graft. "We must uphold the fighting of tigers and flies at the same time, resolutely investigating law-breaking cases of leading officials and also earnestly resolving the unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems which happen all around people," he said. Bureaucrats must not be allowed to get away with skirting rules and orders from above or choosing selectively which policies to follow, added Xi. "The style in which you work is no small matter, and if we don't redress unhealthy tendencies and allow them to develop, it will be like putting up a wall between our party and the people, and we will lose our roots, our lifeblood and our strength," Xi told a meeting of the party's top anti-graft body.
Xinhua has more on Xi's comments: Xi said "the mainstream of our cadres and Party members is good. But we should soberly recognize that corruption is still prone to occur or happen quite frequently in certain areas." He added that some major law violation cases have had a negative impact and the anti-corruption situation is still severe. He stressed that the fight against corruption is a long-term, complicated and arduous task. Anti-corruption efforts must be consistent and will never slacken. "We must have the resolve to fight every corrupt phenomenon, punish every corrupt official and constantly eliminate the soil which breeds corruption, so as to earn people's trust with actual results," he said.
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-corruption, high-level corruption, local power, Xi Jinping
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| Censorship Vault: Hillary on Internet Freedom Posted: 22 Jan 2013 01:57 PM PST  Netizens circulated this image from Eugène Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" after Clinton's Remarks on Internet Freedom. From the Censorship Vault features previously untranslated censorship instructions from the archives of the CDT series Directives from the Ministry of Truth (真理部指令). QuanzhouNet: Provincial Propaganda Notice Carry only domestic Xinhua copy regarding U.S. Secretary of State Hillary [Clinton]'s remarks on Internet Freedom. All other coverage must be deleted without exception. Keep close tabs on forums, blogs, instant messaging tools, and social networking services. We urge websites in all locales to earnestly implement these measures. There are still websites which have not implemented related requests with regards to Hillary's remarks on Internet freedom, and have republished coverage against regulation. We urge websites in all locals to seriously and thoroughly investigate their main and subsidiary sites. Documents not in compliance with these requests must be deleted without exception. (January 22, 2010) 【泉州网】省宣通知：有关美国务卿希拉里就网络自由发表演讲事只刊发新华社对内通稿，其他稿件一律删除。要严格管好论坛、博客、即时通讯工具和社区网站。务请各地各网站认真落实。希拉里发表网络自由演讲的报道，还有网站没有落实相关要求，违规转载稿件。务请各地各网站立即对本网站和属地内网站进行认真清查，不符合要求的稿件一律删除。
Secretary of State Clinton delivered her Remarks on Internet Freedom on January 21, 2010, where she asked China to investigate the hacking of Gmail accounts that lead Google to stop censoring its search engine and eventually end its mainland Chinese operation. China's Foreign Ministry retorted that "China's Internet is open" and that Clinton's speech was "harmful to Sino-American relations." These instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation. Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. For domestic audiences only, as distinguished from Xinhua coverage for international audiences. Back.
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Post tags: censorship, Censorship Vault, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Hillary Clinton, Internet censorship, Internet freedom, Ministry of Truth, propaganda
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| Re-education Through Labor To Be “Abolished” Posted: 22 Jan 2013 01:21 PM PST Following reports, which were later removed from official news websites, that the re-education through labor (laojiao) system would be reformed, officials have now made the "most authoritative" statement yet about their plans. From China Daily: The use of the controversial laojiao system will be tightly restricted, with lawmakers expected to approve its abolition this year, a top government legal adviser has confirmed. Chen Jiping, deputy director of the China Law Society, said the changes to laojiao, or re-education through labor, announced at the national political and legal work conference on Jan 7, are imminent. As part of discussions with legal experts from law societies nationwide about the major tasks, he said the closed-door conference had committed to reducing the use of the controversial punishment this year until the National People's Congress, the top legislature, can entirely scrap the system.
AFP has more background on the system and recent public anger over its implementation: It is another signal that the widely criticised system – where people can be sentenced to up to four years' re-education by a police panel, without an open trial – is coming to an end. The comments come after the Communist Party's newly installed leader Xi Jinping said the organisation recognised as a "pressing problem" that it was "out of touch with the people". Opponents say the camps are used to silence government critics and would-be petitioners who seek to bring their complaints against officials to higher authorities. Earlier this month reports emerged briefly that the system – known as laojiao – would be abolished, but they were swiftly deleted and replaced with predictions of reforms, with few details and no timetable.
Because of its use against dissidents and petitioners, human rights activists have expressed concern that the government has not yet explained if another form of "administrative detention" will replace laojiao. From a statement from Human Rights Watch: Public outrage over RTL cases has grown in recent months, particularly about RTL punishments given to individuals who complain about the government and who express their opinions online, including Tang Hui, a mother sent to RTL in 2012 for complaining to the government about the rape of her young daughter. In 2012, a senior official responsible for judicial system reforms acknowledged that there was "consensus" for "reforming the RTL system." Other recent government decisions, such as removing the head of the Ministry of Public Security as a permanent member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo in 2012, may also reflect central government awareness of public anger over the impunity enjoyed by the domestic security apparatus. Over the summer of 2012, authorities announced a pilot scheme in four cities to test out reforms to the system. Little is known about these "reforms" except that the name of the system has been changed to "Education and Correction." It is therefore unclear, after the government "stops using" the system, whether it will be reformed, abolished, or replaced by another administrative detention system with a different name.
Read more background about the re-education through labor system and recent cases that have generated public outrage, via CDT.
© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: criminal rights, detention, dissidents, legal reform, petitioners, re-education through labor
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| China Calls For UNSC Prudence on North Korea Posted: 22 Jan 2013 08:43 AM PST As trade between China and North Korea increases despite tensions over North Korea's satellite launch, China is calling for the United Nations Security Council to 'react calmly' over North Korea's recent rocket launch, from The Global Times: "China maintains that the Security Council's reaction should be prudent and moderate, and that it should work for the peace and stability of the (Korean) Peninsula and avoid the progressive escalation of tensions," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily press briefing on Monday. Hong said China has repeatedly expressed its position on the satellite launches, stressing regret over the issue. "Based on such a stance, China has constructively participated in the recent UNSC negotiations," Hong said in response to reports that the UNSC is likely to pass a resolution on North Korea's satellite launch. "China and the US have many differences in principles over dealing with the satellite launch. That's why the UN negotiations have lasted for more than a month," said Shi Yuanhua, a researcher on Korean studies at the Shanghai-based Fudan University. The US wanted to impose new sanctions against North Korea, while China wants to issue a statement to expand the existing UN sanctions, Reuters said.
While Chinese state media is calling for the UNSC to be prudent, diplomats at the UN say China and the US have reach a deal that would tighten sanctions on North Korea. The Voice of America reports: The diplomats say the U.S. circulated a draft resolution to the 15-member U.N. Security Council. It could vote as early as Tuesday to punish North Korea for the launch. They say the resolution would condemn the launch and expand existing sanctions. But it is not clear if it would add any new sanctions – a step that China, Pyongyang's only major ally, has been reluctant to accept. Washington has been pushing Beijing to accept strong measures following the rocket launch, which was widely condemned as a disguised missile test banned under U.N. Sanctions. China, which has previously agreed to U.N. sanctions against North Korea, has said it wants the Security Council to take a "cautious" approach that will not further escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Aside from the UNSC resolution, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China does not support North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Yang made these remarks at a meeting with a delegation sent by South Korea's President-elect, Park Geun-hye, from Yonhap News Agency: According to Shim Yoon-joe, a member of the delegation, Yang praised Park's so-called "Korean Peninsula trust process," which states that if the North accepts denuclearization, large-scale international economic projects will be pursued in the communist country to help restore inter-Korean relations. During the meeting, the delegation made clear that South Korea will not tolerate the North's nuclear ambitions, but that they believe it is very important to build trust through dialogue with the communist nation. Commenting on Beijing's relations with Seoul, Yang said that China considers its relations with South Korea "very" important and that he expects bilateral ties to further grow under the new leaders in both countries, according to the delegation. "I believe South Korea under Park's leadership will achieve its growth targets of the new era," Yang was quoted as saying during a meeting with the delegation. "South Korea is very important to China, and our strategic relations will develop into a new stage and take a big leap down the road."
According to The Guardian, China may block Korean unification. The report was released by US senate Republican staff members that claimed Beijing would assert territorial claims over Pyongyang. This comes amid China's claims over the South China Sea and Diaoyu islands: The report was released last month with little fanfare, but North Korea watchers say it gives voice to an increasingly popular but still-sensitive sentiment: that China will ultimately try to prevent the South from absorbing the North, the long-assumed post-collapse scenario. China might act with similar aggression in North Korea, the report argues, to "safeguard its own commercial assets, and to assert its right to preserve the northern part of the peninsula within China's sphere of influence". The report was written primarily by Keith Luse, an east Asia specialist who worked as an aide for the recently defeated Republican senator Dick Lugar, who had been a member of the Senate committee on foreign relations with a long-standing interest in North Korea. The minority staff report, Luse said in an email, was written to inform committee members – including John Kerry, nominated by Barack Obama as the next secretary of state – "to not expect an East-West Germany repeat situation" regarding unification between the Koreas. "Anybody who is a serious analyst can't discount this as a plausible scenario," said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the general argument of the report. From a US perspective, Cha said, the greatest concern is how poorly prepared other countries are to deal with – and co-operate during – a crisis in North Korea. Beijing has no interest in planning with Washington and Seoul, thinking such talks too sensitive. And Seoul worries that such talks would cause tensions with Beijing to spike.
Read more about China's relations with North Korea, via CDT.
© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: North Korea, North Korea relations, south korea, U.S., UN, UNSC
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| China’s Focus on Aerospace Raises Questions Posted: 22 Jan 2013 08:33 AM PST Chinese state media reports the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) unveiled a plan that would boost civil aircraft manufacturing. This comes amid China's attempts to build jet engines for both commercial and military aircraft. From The Global Times: According to the plan, the nation will guide the localization of aircraft, engines and airborne equipment, and encourage research and development of domestic regional aircraft and general aviation aircraft. The plan also calls for making the airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou into large-size international airport hubs, as well as nurturing the gateway airports in Kunming in Southwest China's Yunnan Province and Urumqi in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The CAAC's plan also includes reforming the use of the country's airspace, which commercial pilots have blamed for delayed flights and the increase in passenger 'air rage'. Bloomberg reports: A more than 90-fold surge in China's economy in the past two decades has fueled demand for flights. The State Council's plan is based on guidelines released in July last year that were the first China has issued for the domestic aviation industry. Chinese carriers will need 5,260 new planes worth $670 billion through 2031, according to Boeing Co. (BA) forecasts. "The government is sending a clear message that aviation is very important," said Li Lei, a Beijing-based analyst at China Minzu Securities Co. "But the current problems such as airspace restrictions or airport slot limits won't change overnight."
Although the plan outlines the aims for civil aircraft, China's recent show of military power by landing a fighter jet and unveiling a stealth fighter has prompted both welcome and worry. China's aerospace ties to the military have raised issues for American regulators, according to The New York Times: Washington is trying to figure out what to do about China's deal-making broadly. "Many of these transactions raise important security issues for our country," said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was created by Congress to monitor the bilateral relationship. "China's interest in promoting these investments isn't necessarily consistent with our own interests, and it's appropriate to thoroughly examine the transactions." "There has always been an obvious cross-fertilization of ideas, expertise and money between the civilian and military," said Martin Craigs, a longtime aerospace executive in Asia who is now the chairman of the Aerospace Forum Asia, a nonprofit group in Hong Kong. He added that Chinese companies had been actively hiring senior American and European aerospace engineers, so national security concerns could be quelled some by hiring the right people. Western companies and their advisers say that they are acutely aware that technology transfers could help China strengthen its military and develop more competitive civil airplanes, and are taking precautions to protect trade secrets and national security. "You transfer the part that is most easily reverse engineered, or easily dissected," said a lawyer with detailed knowledge of these transactions. But many in the aerospace sector are more skeptical that the West can avoid losing control of technology. "The mentality is, they're going to find a way to get there anyway, and we may as well get there with them," Mr. Harbison of the CAPA-Center for Aviation said.
Read more about aviation in China, via CDT.
© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aerospace industry, aircraft, airline industry, aviation, planes
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