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- Chinese anti-corruption drive nets Politburo member
- Chongqing sets out new roadmap in post-Bo era
- 10 Chongqing officials sacked for sex videos
- Have You Heard…
- China’s New Freight Plane Extends Military Modernization Program
- Ray of hope breaks through the haze
- Emissions of four major pollutants dropped last year and should fall by a similar level this year, but the mainland still faces a tough task in trying to end chronic air pollution, according to the environment minister.
| Chinese anti-corruption drive nets Politburo member Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:10 AM PST
(Reuters) – A senior Chinese official is under investigation, a Hong Kong newspaper reported at the weekend, in a case that could represent the first time a national political figure has been netted in China's anti-corruption drive. The Hong Kong-based Ming Pao newspaper however reported that Li had checked into a Beijing military hospital due to "psychological stress" from the investigation. A call to the National People's Congress news department was not answered on Sunday. If charges do result, Li would be the highest-ranking official snagged in an anti-corruption drive launched by the new party leadership. Earlier this month, the new head of China's ruling communist party, Xi Jinping, said anti-corruption efforts should target low-ranking "flies" as well as powerful "tigers". Not all corruption investigations result in charges, and officials rumored to be under investigation often reappear in public in a sign that their case has been cleared. Li, who is not a widely known political figure, was formerly secretary to Li Ruihuan, a powerful official throughout the 1990s. He is considered close to the Communist Youth League, the power base for outgoing Chinese president Hu Jintao, and was only named to the Politburo in November. He spent many years as party secretary of Shaanxi Province before a brief stint as party secretary of Shandong Province. If charged, Li would be only the fourth member of the Politburo, a powerful grouping of only 25 senior Party members, to be toppled in a corruption scandal since 1995. The anti-corruption drive has so far implicated mostly regional officials, including the deputy party boss of Sichuan Province, Li Chuncheng, who had for many years overseen development of the province's prosperous capital, Chengdu. A construction magnate has also been detained in that case. Li is a common family name in China, and the three Lis are unrelated. |
| Chongqing sets out new roadmap in post-Bo era Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:07 AM PST  Source: Xinhua via china.org.cn Chongqing's municipal government vowed Saturday it would shake off the impacts of the Bo Xilai scandal and make law-abiding governance the priority alongside further reform. The local legislature convened its annual session on Saturday with aims to outline the city's future blueprint for the next five years. The mayor said the government has endeavored to maintain steady economical and social development despite the severe toll of the incidents involving Bo Xilai, with the city recording an annual economic growth of 13.6 percent. "It turned out that Chongqing citizens have weathered storms and withstood ordeals," he said. The government published the full text of its work report, in which it placed governing in accordance with the Constitution and the law as a main focus for this year, while references to Chongqing's previous high-profile crackdowns on organized crimes are notably absent. In 2009, when Bo Xilai was the CPC (Communist Party of China) chief of Chongqing, the city launched a massive anti-crime campaign, prioritizing fighting local mafia-style gangs. Though Bo and Chongqing's police were credited with reducing crime, concerns were raised about abuses of power and the neglect of due legal process. The government should rule in accordance with the law, and "no organization or individual has the privilege to overstep the Constitution and the law," the work report said.h As power reshuffle in this session is set to usher in new local leaders, higher requirements are posed for the municipal government to further intensify reform, Huang told the lawmakers, adding that improvement to work style should be made following the central leadership's call for eradicating bureaucracy and formalism in December. Officials in Chongqing are urged to remain low-key and down to earth, talk less and work more to better serve the people. The strict observance of morality and discipline is required while officials, especially those with high ranks, should better educate and restrain their relatives and staff members working closely with them, allowing no privilege, according to Huang. Bo's wife, Bo-Gu Kailai, and his former police chief, Wang Lijun, were convicted over the scandal that stemmed from the murder of a British businessman in November 2011 while Bo was secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the CPC. Bo was later deprived of CPC membership and expelled from public service for severe disciplinary violations. Zhang Dejiang, who replaced Bo in March, noted at a Party congress meeting that the cases have greatly tarnished the image of the party and have had a grave impact on Chongqing's reform and development. BALANCED GROWTH A TOUGH CHALLENGE The report indicates that Chongqing municipal government now has its feet on the ground, said Zhou Qingxing, professor with the Trade and Administration department of Chongqing University. "The report refutes what has been propagated as skyrocketing in Bo's term of office since 2007," Zhou said. In outlining the city's targeted development in the next five years, the report envisions the city reaching the national average level in 2017. Admitting to the reality that Chongqing still lags behind much of the rest of the country will provide impetus for officials and people to work realistically, according to Zhou. Chongqing, a city with most of its 8.4 million square meters spanning across mountainous areas, has been burdened with undeveloped rural areas for decades. The situation reflected the nation's reality that urban and rural imbalance has greatly hindered economy and social development. Authorities began to address the city's chronic urban-rural imbalance in 2007, with implementation of a pilot reform program to bridge the urban-rural gap. The reform has proven to be smooth. The report suggests that the urbanization ratio has risen to 57 percent in 2012, and rural residents' annual income grew at 16 percent in the past five years. Over three million farmers have already gained urban resident status, with authorities permitting them to retain their rural land and gain equal access to education, health care and other services in the city. However, Prof. Zheng Fengtian said Chongqing still faces tough challenges in achieving an overall development, mainly due to its huge rural-urban imbalance. "Chongqing is a sprawling metropolis with 20 million rural people in its 33 million-strong population, which means higher costs for rural infrastructure investment," said the professor with the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development in Renmin University. |
| 10 Chongqing officials sacked for sex videos Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:04 AM PST
Ten mid-ranking officials in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality have been removed from their posts, as authorities continued to investigate an online sex-video scandal that led to the sacking of a district official last year. The sacked also include five board directors or executives at five State-owned enterprises, it said. In November, Lei Zhengfu, former Party chief of Beibei district, was removed from his post only three days after the local disciplinary watchdog confirmed he was in a widespread online sex video. Government sources said the 10 officials, including Peng Zhiyong, Party chief of Jiulongpo district; Fan Mingwen, Party chief of Bishan county; Han Shuming, deputy Party chief of Changshou district and head of the district government; and Luo Guang, board director of State-owned Southwest Securities Co Ltd, were removed for being involved in the same sex video scandal as Lei. The municipal government also said that it has busted a criminal ring that used young women to seduce officials and then used secretly filmed sex videos to extort them in 2008 and 2009. Xiao Ye, one suspect and a key member of the network, and several others, were arrested, as they were accused of arranging for women to seduce those officials and then blackmail them with secretly filmed videos. Xiao, 45, was the boss of Yonghuang Group in Chongqing, a real estate company that mainly undertakes municipal engineering projects with a total registered capital of 61.7 million yuan ($9.91 million), the Southern Metropolis Daily reported. Xiao told several women to send text messages to local officials, saying they had met at a dinner and hoped to keep in touch. If the officials returned the messages, the women would occasionally entice the officials with words or photos. The women later met those officials in high-end hotels in Chongqing for tea or coffee and later in hotel rooms for sex, which was videotaped with hidden cameras. Xiao closely monitored the progress of relationships between the women and the officials, and would even require reshooting sex videos if they were of poor quality. In their next date after the video was filmed, several other suspects arranged by Xiao would break into the hotel room to extort the official. The report said most officials would offer to compromise after seeing the video, and Xiao would step in at this time as a mediator. Lei had sex with a woman arranged by Xiao in February 2008 and was extorted by Xiao. Xiao's company later saw its business expand and undertake several real estate projects in Beibei district, where Lei was Party chief at that time. The report said Lei later decided to confess to the Chongqing Party committee, and authorities ordered a police investigation. Xiao was given a suspended prison sentence by the court of Shapingba district for "disrupting public order". He was put into a detention center in 2009 and released a year later. However, the police investigation of the officials did not continue, and those involved in the scandal were not affected in their political career. Lei's scandal was exposed on Weibo in November and the report said the video was leaked by a Chongqing police officer. Despite reports that suggested the officials were the victims of entrapment, Liu Shanying, a researcher on political studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believed the root of the problem lies with the officials. "There is an old Chinese saying that says: 'Flies never visit an egg that has no crack'. The criminal suspects could not have succeeded in their plot if the officials didn't have such vulnerabilities," he said. Liu said the power of supervision by the media and Internet users has been proved in this sex scandal. "As the case has suggested, real estate and municipal engineering projects are corruption-prone areas, and discipline inspection authorities should work more on these areas," he said. The sacking of officials in Chongqing was announced one day after Qu Songzhi, Party secretary of the Chengdu branch of the Red Cross Society of China, was removed from her post, the Beijing News reported on Friday. Qu is the wife of Li Chuncheng, former deputy Party chief of Sichuan province, who was removed from his post for disciplinary violations in December. |
| Posted: 27 Jan 2013 08:55 AM PST Have You Heard…   |
| China’s New Freight Plane Extends Military Modernization Program Posted: 27 Jan 2013 09:12 AM PST  Source: Bloomberg News China successfully tested a locally- built freight plane, two months after the debut of its fighter jet, boosting the nation's efforts to use homegrown technology to expand defense capacity. China achieved a military milestone when its fighter jet landed on its new aircraft carrier in November, extending a modernization bid that's recorded advances in submarines, cyber warfare and in outer space. The J-15 jet was developed and built by AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Corp., a unit of China's largest aerospace company, Aviation Industry Corp of China. It can carry multi-type anti- ship, air-to-air, air-to-ground missiles and precision-guided bombs. The aircraft tests underscore China's progress in military modernization, which has been accompanied by a doubling of the defense budget in six years. China, the biggest spender on defense after the U.S., has become increasingly assertive in the region as President Barack Obama executes a strategic shift toward Asia and tensions rise with Japan and other nations over territorial disputes. China's defense spending, estimated at 670 billion yuan ($108 billion) in 2012, has more than doubled since 2006, tracking a rise in nominal gross domestic product to 47.2 trillion yuan from 21.6 trillion yuan.   |
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