News » Society » Reply to my Diaspora Fenqing Nationalist Critics
News » Society » Reply to my Diaspora Fenqing Nationalist Critics |
- Reply to my Diaspora Fenqing Nationalist Critics
- Have You Heard…
- China launches doping probe after WADA's drugs claim
- Japanese envoy in Beijing for talks on territorial issues
- China rejects arbitration attempt by Philippines
- Hope fades in landslide
- Treatment first, payment later in medical bills trial
- US claims of Chinese hackers 'groundless'
- Jiangsu, Anhui affected
- Auto-chat 'chick' appeals to single children
- 5 young boys left alone light straw fire, suffocate
- Official given 18 years in prison for graft, rape
- China Vanke Enters U.S. Property Market With Tishman Deal
- Toy Story Takes Hong Kong Disneyland to First Profit
- For a Top Chinese Banker, Profits Hinder Political Rise
- China rejects Philippines’ arbitral request
- Nuke test ‘fails to dent’ trade ties
- VIDEO: 'No one in China knew about hacking'
- China military unit 'behind hacking'
- Six trapped in N China mine flood
| Reply to my Diaspora Fenqing Nationalist Critics Posted: 19 Feb 2013 07:32 PM PST I knew this was going to happen. Was it George Bernard Shaw who said: "Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pigs like it"? That is where I find myself now. In my previous post, I criticized Great Leap Famine denialists, knowing full well that this would likely spark an attack against me personally. And, lo and behold, like clockwork, it has. I will not belabor this exchange, for there is really no prospect of any sort of meaningful outcome when dealing with staunch ideologists incapable of anything but stark binary oppositions, and I will not link to the site (don't feed the trolls...), but I will make a couple of clarifying comments. First, the question of precisely how many people died during the Great Leap Famine is not settled. It will likely never be, as I suggested in the original post. There is certainly room for serious intellectual investigation into the issue of how many people died. I do not believe that all such critical questioning of the death toll is motivated by denialism. But it is rather obvious that a particular subset of that criticism is denialist. This is difficult for ideologically- and politically-motivated people to grasp, because they think only in black and white terms. So let me be painfully clear: not all critics are denialists, but all denialists are rooted in a political agenda that keeps them from maintaining an open and, ultimately, critical attitude. They are apologists. Thus, I do not view Amartya Sen as a GLF denialist, as is implied by my critics. Sen is obviously a serious intellect. I am a bit amused, however, that he would be invoked in this manner, since he is famous for arguing that famines do not occur in democratic regimes. Although that argument has opened into a wide-ranging debate about the politics of famine, and there are ways in which Sen's analysis has run into problems (Zimbabwe, for example, turned out not to be as democratic as he first thought), his basic point is crucial to keep in mind when thinking of the Great Leap Famine: the causes of that terrible tragedy are rooted in the nature of the political regime, whether we call it "authoritarian" as Sen does or "totalitarian" as Yang Jisheng does. The PRC political system, dominated by the CCP, is chiefly responsible. I am happy to include Sen's perspective into the conversation. Selective use of sources is characteristic of the denialists' approach. In their most recent invective they continue to focus on demographic estimates, focusing specifically on possible problems with the 1953 census, in an attempt to discredit some of the larger calculations of GLF deaths. On this narrow question, I accept the possibility that the 1953 census could be flawed, just as so many other statistical products of the Maoist era PRC are flawed. But debates among demographers do not settle the larger question of how many actually died. Especially when we have a growing body of archival documentation - not simply demographic estimates, but internal bureaucratic reports from the time of the starvation itself - to bolster our understanding. The denialists assiduously avoid these sources, obviously because they point inexorably to the worst sorts outcomes. When will they deal directly with the work of Yang Jisheng and Zhou Xun? Until they do, they cannot be taken seriously. The denialists also ask why I would make the comparison between the death toll of the GLF and the horrible effects of Japanese imperialism in China. It is precisely because I see the latter as terrible, and yet, the Mao-led CCP killed more Chinese people than even that scathing inhumanity. Serious scholars of the GLF cannot avoid that sad comparison. Yang Jisheng writes (Tombstone, p. 13): "The Great Famine even outstripped the ravages of World War II; the war caused 40 to 50 million deaths throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa over the course of seven or eight years, but the Great Famine's 36 million victims died within three or four years, with most deaths concentrated in a six-month period." It is precisely because the value of every Chinese life - whether victims of Japanese imperialism or Maoist radicalism - is significant, that such comparisons must be made. But denialists cannot stand this. They must defend Mao; they must resist the terrible truth in order to preserve the memory of the Chairman. And those of us who would question Mao's culpability, must be totally negated. Thus, they call me "morally degenerate". This is Cultural Revolution language. The language of ideological motivation, intended to inspire repression and violence and elimination. That is the preferred idiom of the denialist: threaten in order to silence. It must be rather frustrating for them, because they are losing this battle. Yang Jisheng's book was first published in Hong Kong, in Chinese. It is banned still on the mainland, but it went through eight printings in two years. It circulates widely in the PRC, in spite of the ban, and has become "...a legendary book in China." Thus, Chinese people are gaining access to the truth that the denialists work to repress. And Yang shows us that Mao bore significant responsibility for the mass death: Those who deny that the famine happened, as an executive at the state-run newspaper People's Daily recently did, enjoy freedom of speech, despite their fatuous claims about "three years of natural disasters." But no plague, flood or earthquake ever wrought such horror during those years. One might wonder why the Chinese government won't allow the true tale to be told, since Mao's economic policies were abandoned in the late 1970s in favor of liberalization, and food has been plentiful ever since. The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy. In Mao's China, the coercive power of the state penetrated every corner of national life. The rural population was brought under control by a thorough collectivization of agriculture. The state could then manage grain production, requisitioning and distributing it by decree. Those who tilled the earth were locked in place by a nationwide system of household registration, and food coupons issued to city dwellers supplanted the market. The peasants survived at the pleasure of the state. The Great Leap Forward that Mao began in 1958 set ambitious goals without the means to meet them. A vicious cycle ensued; exaggerated production reports from below emboldened the higher-ups to set even loftier targets. Newspaper headlines boasted of rice farms yielding 800,000 pounds per acre. When the reported abundance could not actually be delivered, the government accused peasants of hoarding grain. House-to-house searches followed, and any resistance was put down with violence. That is undeniable. |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:36 AM PST Have You Heard…   |
| China launches doping probe after WADA's drugs claim Posted: 19 Feb 2013 09:28 AM PST CHINA is to investigate an allegation that virtually all the raw materials used to produce illegal performance-enhancing drugs come from China but said it remained doubtful about the World Anti-Doping Agency's statistics. China's move followed a comment from David Howman, WADA's director general, who told reporters that "99 percent of the raw materials that are used through the Internet to make up in your kitchen or your backyard laboratory are emanating from China." Howman's remarks immediately attracted the attention of the State General Administration of Sport, the governmental organization that runs sports in China and provides financial support for the country's anti-doping drive. "We are shocked at Mr Howman's comment," said China's anti-doping chief Jiang Zhixue. "We are wondering where this 99 percent came from and what is his evidence," said Jiang. "We have asked for a more detailed explanation from WADA." However, Jiang admitted that there were problems in the country's anti-doping fight. "There are problems, such as the illegal sale of banned drugs through the Internet. So we have decided to launch an investigation into WADA's allegation," he said. Jiang said the investigation needed the coordinated efforts of multiple governmental departments such as in the actions taken ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Then, a number of workshops that were illegally producing materials were shut down and the supervision and control of drug sales was stepped up. |
| Japanese envoy in Beijing for talks on territorial issues Posted: 19 Feb 2013 09:27 AM PST A JAPANESE envoy is to hold talks with Chinese officials over territorial issues after Chinese ships' closest approach to the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Shinsuke Sugiyama, director-general for Asian and Oceanian affairs of Japan's foreign ministry, arrived in Beijing yesterday for a three-day visit. He is due to meet Wu Dawei, China's special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs, and Luo Zhaohui, chief of Asian affairs at the foreign ministry. The envoy will raise concerns over Tokyo's claims that Chinese naval ships locked fire-control radar onto a Japanese military ship and a helicopter in January. On February 8, China's Ministry of National Defense denied the use of such radar and said that it was just normal surveillance of Japanese vessels and aircraft in the East China Sea. Sugiyama is also expected to ask for China's cooperation in helping the UN Security Council impose new sanctions on North Korea, following Pyongyang's nuclear test last week, according to the website of China Central Television. A day before Sugiyama's visit, a Chinese surveillance ship approached within a kilometer of the Diaoyu Islands, Japanese media reported. Kyodo news agency said Japan's formal protest had been rejected by China. On Monday, three Chinese surveillance ships patrolling waters off the islands spotted Japanese ships following them. The crews broadcast a statement in Chinese and English to warn the Japanese ships that they had infringed on China's territory, and demanded they leave. Earlier this month, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang urged the oceanic supervisory authority to enhance its law enforcement to protect China's maritime rights. Li encouraged servicemen to "sail to the deep sea, to the oceans for peaceful cooperation." China has sped up the upgrade of its maritime surveillance equipment since the beginning of the year. New vessels and aircraft have joined its fleet while an emergency command platform, which enables maneuvers in the South China Sea, has been put into use. Liu Cigui, director of the State Oceanic Administration, said last month that China would maintain its regular patrols to stop incursions into its sovereign waters. |
| China rejects arbitration attempt by Philippines Posted: 19 Feb 2013 09:26 AM PST CHINA has rejected the Philippines' attempt to seek international arbitration over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea. Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Manila's notification of the move was historically and legally incorrect and contained unacceptable accusations. The Philippines told China last month of its plans to take conflicting claims to a tribunal operating under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It wants Beijing's moves in the potentially oil-rich waters declared unlawful. The Philippines said it remained committed to arbitration. |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2013 09:26 AM PST A rescuer uses a life detector to search for survivors in the rubble of a landslide in Kaili City, Guizhou Province, yesterday, a day after a landslide buried five people, including two children. Rescuers said later that the five were feared dead. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Treatment first, payment later in medical bills trial Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:39 AM PST Patients will be able to pay after they receive medical treatment rather than before, as is the current practice, China's Ministry of Health revealed yesterday. Jiao Yahui, an official with the ministry's medical administration division, said more than 20 provincial regions are carrying out pilot programs of the new payment method. But Jiao said the "pay after" method would not be adopted nationwide in the short term due to the country's immature social credit system and insufficient medical insurance. Currently, Chinese citizens pay up front before being operated on or undergoing other treatment. They can then apply for a reimbursement covered by medical insurance, usually more than 70 percent of the total cost. In August 2011, there was a national outcry after a nightshift doctor in central China's Hubei Province removed stitches from a patient, who had torn tendons in his right hand, because the patient did not have enough money to pay the fees involved. There have also been reports of hospitals threatening to withhold medication if patients fail to pay in advance. In Shanghai, however, some community hospitals adopted the "pay after" method two years ago. In Xuhui District, that's the practice in all community hospitals. "By flashing the smart card with each person's medical insurance, the card can do real-time recording of all tests and prescriptions," said Guan Juanjuan of the district's health bureau. "Patients only need pay after all diagnosis and treatment is fulfilled, instead of paying fees before each test." However, people failing to pay bills are recorded in the medical insurance system and banned from the "pay after" method the next time they seek treatment. Larger hospitals say they would have difficulty in adopting the new method, since up to 50 percent of their patients could be from provinces which have no connection with local medical insurance. "The government only covers 5 percent of big hospitals' costs, so the hospital must earn the other 95 percent by themselves," said Xia Lin of the Shanghai Children's Medical Center. "If promoting the method, the government should give a subsidy to cover the delayed payment of hospitalized patients." In Shanghai, Longhua Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital is the only large hospital using the new method, but only for outpatients covered by medical insurance. Jiao said once the new system is implemented, patients, especially those suffering extreme conditions, receive treatment first. After the treatment, patients will only pay the part that is not included in the medical insurance. The rest will be paid to hospitals by the government. The "pay after" method was first tested in a hospital in Beijing in 2009 and was well received by patients, Jiao said. Pilot programs are generally going smoothly in many areas, but there were still some patients "disappearing" without paying treatment fees after leaving hospital. If a runaway patient is covered by the country's medical insurance, hospitals can get compensation from the government, but if they did not buy any medical insurance, the hospital would not be able to get the money back, said Jiao. The system can only be promoted step by step, Jiao added. If local governments think it is feasible, then they should do it. |
| US claims of Chinese hackers 'groundless' Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:38 AM PST ALLEGATIONS of Chinese hacker attacks are groundless, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Hong Lei had been asked to comment on a report by US security company Mandiant Corp stating it had traced cyber attacks waged against companies and government agencies in the United States to a unit of the People's Liberation Army. "Groundless criticism is irresponsible and unprofessional, and it will not help to solve the problem," he said. China had been a major victim of cyber attacks and opposed all forms of such activity, Hong said, adding that China had made and enforced laws banning such activity. He cited a report released by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center stating that 73,000 foreign IP addresses had been linked to attacks on 14 million Chinese computers. He said the number of attacks originating in the US ranked at the top. Hong said China, Russia and several other countries submitted an international code of conduct on information security to the United Nations in 2011. "China has called on the international community to make a code of conduct for cyberspace on the basis of the submission and make joint efforts to build a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyberspace," he said. Hong said the government also objected to allegations that hacker attacks had been traced to a building in Shanghai. Hong said he did not know how such evidence could be discovered, as cyber attacks were often carried out internationally and typically anonymously. Virginia-based Mandiant said it traced the hacking to a neighborhood on the outskirts of Shanghai that included a 12-story building run by "Unit 61398" of the People's Liberation Army. The unit "has systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations," Mandiant wrote. "From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyberespionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen," the company said. It added that the unit has been in operation since at least 2006. Mandiant said: "It is time to acknowledge the threat is originating in China." |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:27 AM PST EAST China's Jiangsu and Anhui provinces were severely affected by heavy snow between Monday and yesterday morning. Nanjing Lukou International Airport reopened at 9:20am yesterday after closing for nearly 12 hours. Authorities in the cities of Nanjing, Wuxi, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou and Changzhou postponed the start of the spring semester, set for yesterday, for a day or two. Nanjing saw 12 to 21cm of snow by yesterday morning. As of 3pm yesterday, 309,000 residents in five cities in Anhui had been affected by the snow. Ninety houses were toppled and 114 others were damaged, causing direct economic losses of 84 million yuan (US$13.38 million). Some expressways closed temporarily. Anhui had gotten 6 to 12cm of snow with more expected today. |
| Auto-chat 'chick' appeals to single children Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:21 AM PST THE popularity of a new auto-chat app with Chinese students has sparked a debate about social skills under China's one-child policy and the craze for online networking tools. The "little yellow chick" app has attracted more than 2.2 million followers since it was launched in December on Renren, a social networking site. Anyone can post a message to which the "chick" will respond. Although the replies are generated by sophisticated software rather than human direction, young people have been amused by its humorous and frequently surprising answers. It has become the perfect conversation partner for many youngsters. It knows about Lady Gaga and can tell a boy to go get his love if he has a crush on a girl. It often humors its human partner by telling them they are the best-looking guy or girl in the world. "We don't have to worry about bothering others when talking with this chick," said Chang Yue, a university freshman. It also gives young people a channel to vent their complaints about study pressure, emotional problems and their opinions about social events. Web users even asked it for solutions to Beijing's worsening air quality when China's capital city choked in dense smog in January. "The app has catered to the need of youngsters to communicate with people and feel emotionally connected," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor with the Renmin University of China. Under China's family-planning policy, most Chinese families only have one child, and Zhou believes this feeds into the success of the little yellow chick. "The only child in a family lacks emotional communication when they grow up, which makes them more prone to be technology dependent," the academic said. But some also worry about what such apps say about people's alienation from conventional society. "Not just people's loneliness in the real world, but also their lack of trust in society, has contributed to the success of the auto-reply app," said "ccllong" on Weibo. The chick is not the first technology of its kind to draw attention. "Xiaotu," a robot-like auto-reply app on the website of Tsinghua University's library, went viral last year after users found it cute and cunning. Like "Xiaotu," the chick has the ability to learn. It understands the latest news events, hot words, and even dirty jokes, which it learns from online followers. |
| 5 young boys left alone light straw fire, suffocate Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:20 AM PST FIVE boys ranging in age from four to six died, apparently from suffocation, in an abandoned building where they burned straw on Monday evening as their parents were busy organizing a wedding in southwest China's Guizhou Province. It was the second case of its kind in the province within three months. The five children were found in a deserted building that had been used for tobacco curing by local villagers in Majiang County at 5:40pm, local officials said. Four of the boys were dead at the scene and a fifth died at the hospital. They belong to five families, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Their parents were busy with the wedding and left them alone, an initial investigation showed. They burned damp straw in the mud brick house, possibly to keep warm, which is thought to have deprived them of oxygen. No charges had been filed in the case. The five have already been buried according to local ethnic customs that call for deceased children to be buried quickly, officials said. The provincial Party committee sent each victim's family 22,000 yuan (US$3,522) in cash and 100 kilograms of rice as relief assistance, state-run China Central Television Station reported. On November 16, five boys from the same extended family, aged nine to 13, were found dead in the province's Bijie City in a trash bin. Autopsies showed they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Remains of burned charcoal were found inside the bin, indicating that they suffocated while trying to keep warm by burning charcoal in that cramped bin. They were living on the street after dropping out school and had not been seen for weeks. Their family hadn't reported them missing. Eight officials were punished. |
| Official given 18 years in prison for graft, rape Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:19 AM PST A FORMER transportation official in southern China has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for rape and graft, a newspaper reported yesterday. Huang Ping, former head of Humen Traffic Bureau in Guangdong Province, embezzled 980,000 yuan (US$156,898), took bribes up to 2.15 million yuan and illegally appropriated national assets involving 410,000 yuan, the Dongguan No. 1 People's Court heard recently, New Express reported. Signs of corruption came to light after police started investigating the rape, the paper said. Huang raped a female subordinate between March 2010 and April 2011. The woman's husband found she was in her seventh month of pregnancy, though the couple had been childless for seven years. She confessed that she had been raped and the husband called police, the newspaper reported. Eight other transportation officials were also implicated in the graft investigation, including the former transportation chief in Dalingshan and two deputy directors in Huangjiang and Xiegang. They also were sentenced, but the report didn't provide any details. The nine went to court in October, but the court had not announced the verdicts until this week. |
| China Vanke Enters U.S. Property Market With Tishman Deal Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:39 AM PST  Source: Bloomberg News China Vanke Co., the biggest developer listed on Chinese exchanges, has entered a residential-property venture in San Francisco, its first foray into the U.S. real estate market. Chinese developers are starting to venture overseas, chasing wealthy locals who are buying apartments as the government restrains the property market at home. Xinyuan Real Estate Co. in September took control of a lot slated for more than 200 units of housing near New York's Brooklyn waterfront for $54.2 million, a deal the Beijing-based company said was the first of its kind by a Chinese firm in the U.S. "China Vanke has always been a company with a global view, good at learning from excellent peer enterprises," Wang said in the statement. "We are entering the U.S. market to continue this learning process, to understand business models in a mature market and accumulate management experience through project cooperation." The San Francisco project at 201 Folsom St. will be two connected towers with a total of 655 units, the companies said in the statement. The site is across the street from the Infinity, another Tishman Speyer residential development, where prices ranged from $600,000 to $6 million. Price Jump San Francisco real estate prices have been surging, buoyed by growth in the technology industry. The median price of a home sold in San Francisco county jumped 16 percent last month from a year earlier to $699,000, according to research firm DataQuick. The deal is Vanke's first outside Asia and comes after the company's Hong Kong unit jointly won a HK$3.43 billion ($442 million) bid for a site in that city, marking its entry into a new market. The developer, based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, set up international units to expand overseas after it acquired a Hong Kong developer in May. China Vanke shares fell 2.7 percent 11.7 yuan at the close of trading in Shenzhen, the lowest in three weeks. "Good enterprises in the 21st century must have global and international vision," Wang wrote in the microblog, commenting on the deal. Vanke's investment is pending approval from the Chinese government.   |
| Toy Story Takes Hong Kong Disneyland to First Profit Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:42 AM PST  Source: Bloomberg News By Vinicy Chan Hong Kong Disneyland had its first profit in the seven years since it opened as attractions such as Toy Story and Grizzly Gulch helped draw mainland Chinese visitors to the theme park. Hong Kong Disneyland has been adding attractions to woo visitors from government-owned Ocean Park and to benefit from an increase in tourists from mainland China. It is still assessing the scale and timing for further expansion. "We are still negotiating with all the shareholders," Managing Director Andrew Kam said at a press conference. "The expansion is a matter of when, how and what scale." Fiscal-year sales rose 18 percent to HK$4.27 billion, according to the statement. Attendance climbed 13 percent to 6.73 million. China Visitors Hong Kong Disneyland, which opened in September 2005, has also had to contend with the local Ocean Park, which had 7.1 million visitors in the fiscal year that ended in June, a 20 percent jump from a year ago. Ocean Park's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, rose 49 percent to HK$505.4 million for the fiscal year and overall revenue reached HK$1.6 billion. Both have benefited from visitors from China's mainland. Total visitor arrivals to the former British colony rose 16 percent to 43.8 million for the first 11 months in 2012, with the number of tourists from the mainland climbing 24 percent to 31.4 million, according to provisional figures from the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Mainland visitors accounted for nearly 72 percent of the city's total number of tourists. Walt Disney, the world's largest entertainment company, this month posted first-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates as the interactive unit registered its first profit and new theme-park attractions drew more visitors.   |
| For a Top Chinese Banker, Profits Hinder Political Rise Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:49 AM PST  Source: Wall Street Journal By Lingling Wei and Bob Davis BEIJING—Jiang Jianqing built Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. into the most profitable state-owned bank in China. Mr. Jiang's reward from China's leadership: The longtime ICBC chairman was the only one of his peers at the nation's top four banks to be passed over for promotion at a recent Communist Party Congress. That badly weakened his chances of running the central bank or holding another senior ministerial-level position in the coming reshuffle of the country's key economic posts. His problem, according to some bank and party officials, was putting commercial performance ahead of pleasing the Communist Party. ICBC lagged behind other state-owned banks in boosting lending to fight the global downturn in 2009, these officials say, because Mr. Jiang worried that hastily made loans would produce buckets of red ink. "There's a view he should have done more in 2009," says one official at China's central bank, who says Mr. Jiang should have kept in mind what ICBC's largest shareholder, the Chinese government, wanted him to do. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, ICBC said the bank "disagrees with the opinion," declining to comment further. Mr. Jiang declined to be interviewed. The Communist Party's Organization Department, which controls personnel decisions within the party, also declined to comment. Mr. Jiang's story illustrates how difficult it can be for heads of Chinese state-owned firms to balance the demands of commercial shareholders and those of the Communist Party. While fatter profits are the road to promotion at many Western companies, in China it is party officials who make personnel decisions about top corporate executives—and those party officials have political goals. "The party personnel system isn't based on performance and competence," says Fred Hu, a former executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who helped take ICBC public. "It's based on loyalty and connections." When China's largely ceremonial legislature meets for its annual session in March, the nation's new leaders are expected to make decisions about top economic slots, including the head of the central bank and the ministries of commerce and finance. Mr. Jiang once was viewed by party officials and international financial institutions as a leading contender for one of these plum positions because of his success at running ICBC. He is no longer in the running, according to a party official involved in personnel matters and several others involved in regulatory issues. To qualify for a ministerial post, they say, a candidate generally must be a member of the party's Central Committee, the 205-member body that approves key policies and appointments. Mr. Jiang wasn't elevated to that level; he remains an "alternate" member, a position he has held since 2002. Mr. Jiang is known within the bank as a tough boss who sets demanding targets—and gets top performance. Several ICBC officials and other employees say his lack of political advancement has hurt morale at the bank, with some executives questioning his profit-centric strategy and others worried that his current political standing could limit their own chances of promotion. Mr. Jiang has tried to allay concerns. After the Party Congress ended on Nov. 14, Mr. Jiang, who serves as ICBC's Communist Party secretary, called a meeting of several hundred bank employees at its Beijing headquarters. The purpose, according to several bank officials who attended, was to "study the spirit" of the congress—to figure out what lessons it held for them—a Communist Party ritual for state-owned firms. Mr. Jiang, who is 60 years old, opened the meeting by addressing what ICBC employees considered topic No. 1: why he wasn't promoted to a more senior party role while his banking peers were. He told his colleagues that he wasn't passed over, and that his reappointment to a lower-ranking group of party officials was a compliment, according to three people who attended. "He said that given his age, the leadership actually made an exception for him by keeping him" in his political post rather than making him retire, recalls one of the ICBC officials who attended. "He said it proves the leadership values him as a banking specialist. Then he asked us not to talk about this anymore and go back to work." Mr. Jiang was 59 at the time of the November party congress. Shang Fulin, former head of Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., was appointed China's top banking regulator in 2011 at age 59 and is considered a top candidate for central bank governor. Lou Jiwei, head of China's sovereign-wealth fund, China Investment Corp., won a slot on the Central Committee in November when he was 61. It isn't clear whether Mr. Jiang will stay at ICBC until his retirement or will be moved to a less prestigious post, such as running China's social-security fund, according to bank officials and the party official involved in personnel matters. Mr. Jiang has said publicly that he views himself as a banker. China's top four banks—known as the Big Four—have long served as launching pads to senior government posts. Mr. Jiang's predecessor as ICBC president, Liu Tinghuan, became vice governor of the central bank, called the People's Bank of China. The current governor of the central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, previously served as head of China Construction Bank Corp. Mr. Zhou has reached the retirement age of 65, and the leadership is debating when he should step down and who should take over. One of Mr. Jiang's peers, Bank of China Ltd. Chairman Xiao Gang, has emerged as a strong contender to run the central bank or another financial regulator, according to the party official involved in personnel matters. Mr. Xiao was selected to the Central Committee in November. Bank of China was the least profitable of the Big Four banks in the first nine months of last year but was the most aggressive of the Big Four in ramping up lending in 2009 when the party requested that. "Xiao grabbed the opportunity," says the party official. Bank of China officials declined to comment. Top executives at large Chinese companies such as ICBC, which is publicly traded but 70% owned by the state, are chosen by Communist Party officials. The party shuffles most senior officials every few years into different government and business positions, which gives them a variety of experiences and a web of political connections. Mr. Jiang is an anomaly in that he has spent nearly his entire career at ICBC. He came of age during the zealotry of the Cultural Revolution. In 1970, at age 17, he was sent to the countryside to work as a farmer and later a coal miner. He returned to Shanghai nine years later. In 1986, he joined ICBC as a bank teller and worked his way to the top, taking over in 2000 when the bank was seen as a bloated bureaucracy weighed down by bad debts. Mr. Jiang slashed the workforce by some 160,000, reduced its bad debts to below 5% of total assets and boosted profit. When the company went public in 2006, it was then the world's largest initial public offering. "He's a terrific banker," says former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who headed Goldman Sachs when it helped take ICBC public. "As opposed to the heads of some state-owned enterprises, he's much more of a natural business leader than a political leader." Even some of Mr. Jiang's colleagues at the bank say he neglected the political part of his job. When Mr. Jiang was overseeing mass layoffs, he could count on support from Huang Ju, a member of China's ruling Politburo Standing Committee and, from 2003 to 2007, vice premier in charge of finance and banking, according to several ICBC officials. But after Mr. Huang died in 2007, Mr. Jiang didn't seek out another patron, these people say. He believed that "doing a good job" at the bank would be sufficient to propel his career, says one ICBC official. That meant Mr. Jiang didn't have someone to champion him within the party when decisions were being made about positions outside the bank, these officials say. Commercially, the bank excelled. ICBC invested heavily in information technology to analyze credit risks and manage the bank's far-flung operations, which include about 17,000 domestic branches. The bank regularly was China's most profitable large bank. In 2012, it became the first Chinese bank to get Federal Reserve consent to buy a foreign bank's retail branches in the U.S. Some Chinese politicians didn't want the bank to stray from home, especially after the U.S. housing bubble burst, according to the party official involved in personnel matters. "Some people in China think that we should remain in China and only develop domestic business," Mr. Jiang said in an interview with the Asian Banker in 2010. He said that would mean ICBC would lose customers and "gradually become a regional bank."  When the global economic crisis hit in 2008, foreign demand for Chinese goods plummeted. China's leaders sought to stimulate domestic demand. In November 2008, Premier Wen Jiabao publicly pressed the financial industry to "increase its support to China's economic growth." Mr. Jiang worried that a surge in lending by ICBC would batter the bank's profits in the event of an economic slowdown, according to ICBC officials. In its 2009 annual report, ICBC said it "has especially taken strict control over loans approval when increasing the credit…and made [a] full check of new lending to make prompt corrections and eliminate potential risks." From the fourth quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2010, ICBC increased lending more slowly, on a percentage basis, than its biggest competitors. In the average quarter during that period, new loans originated at ICBC were 20% higher than in the year-earlier period, compared with 33% higher at Bank of China and 24% at China Construction Bank, according to ChinaScope Financial, a data provider. The other Big Four bank, Agricultural Bank of China, didn't fully disclose quarterly loan data during that period. In the one quarter for which it did, the fourth quarter of 2009, its new loans increased 33% over the prior year, compared with 50% at Bank of China, 27% at Construction Bank, and 25% at ICBC. ICBC, which is much larger than the other three, originated 286.8 billion yuan ($45.5 billion) of new loans per quarter, on average, in 2009. That was less than Bank of China, which originated 401.9 billion yuan per quarter on average, but more than China Construction Bank, which averaged 252.3 billion yuan per quarter, according to ChinaScope. Some analysts predict that many loans originated during that period are likely to go bad. A 2011 report by U.K. bank Standard Chartered estimated that eight trillion to nine trillion yuan of local-government debt and railway lending, much of it incurred between 2008 and 2010, might eventually have to be written off. Chinese officials have said the bad-loan problem is "manageable." By avoiding excessive loan growth during 2009, "ICBC might be able to incur lower credit losses than its peers in the next few years," says Standard & Poor's analyst Liao Qiang. The commercial success didn't translate into plaudits from party leaders, according to the party official involved in personnel matters. "There are different views about Jiang's management style and strategy," he says. Some senior officials, he says, were "skeptical of Jiang's strategy of plowing profits made domestically into foreign markets." Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official responsible for China, says Mr. Jiang "created enemies," especially among provincial leaders who wanted ICBC loans to build housing, subways, airports and other infrastructure. "When the government asked for the banks to step up lending, Jiang was one of the most reluctant," says Mr. Prasad, now a China scholar at Cornell University. In a March 2009 interview with business journal McKinsey Quarterly, Mr. Jiang said that "the government's recent decision to boost domestic demand offers a great opportunity for the banking industry. However, ICBC is a commercial bank and we have to view these opportunities from the business perspective." Chinese banks were "technically bankrupt" around 2000 because of bad debts, he said. "The high risk situation that China's banking institutions experienced before is the last thing we want to see this time." During months of political wrangling before November's Party Congress, China's communist elite picked the ruling Politburo standing committee, including Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and No. 2 official Li Keqiang, who are expected to run China for the next 10 years as president and premier, respectively. Mr. Jiang's political standing was evident in his recent selection as an alternate member of the central committee. Alternate members are listed publicly by the number of votes they receive. Out of the 171 alternates, Mr. Jiang was 31 spots from the bottom.   |
| China rejects Philippines’ arbitral request Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:51 AM PST  Source: xinhua china.org.cn The Chinese government has rejected a Philippine move to take their dispute regarding sovereignty issues in the South China Sea to the United Nations for arbitration, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. "The note and related notice not only violate the consensus enshrined in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), but are also factually flawed and contain false accusations," Hong said. China is committed to addressing the dispute through bilateral talks, Hong said, noting that the consensus in the DOC states that disputes should be solved through talks between the nations directly involved. Hong reiterated that China has sufficient historical and jurisprudential evidence to support its claim to the Nansha islands, which are located in the South China Sea, and their adjacent waters. "China hopes the Philippines will honor its commitment by not taking any action that could complicate the issue, positively respond to China's proposal to establish a bilateral dialogue mechanism on maritime issues and work to solve the issue through bilateral negotiations," Hong said.   |
| Nuke test ‘fails to dent’ trade ties Posted: 19 Feb 2013 08:56 AM PST  Source: By Li Jiabao and Bao Chang (China Daily) Last week's nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has had little effect on its trade with China, but the two new DPRK economic zones may suffer, analysts warned on Monday. Qian Yingchun, general manager at Tongyi Co in Dandong, Liaoning province, said trade with the DPRK has been "operating as usual" since the test. "Most trading business with the DPRK in our city is small-scale, which is influenced slightly by the dispute at the international level," Qian said. Tongyi is a trading company that has exported Chinese construction materials, metals, general merchandise and furniture to the DPRK for more than 15 years. The cross-border trade in the frontier city of Dandong alone accounts for more than 80 percent of Sino-DPRK trade. "Even if our trading goods are suspended due to the current situation, it will be short term, and customs formalities will return to normal a few days later," Qian said. China is the DPRK's largest trading partner. Excluding a dip in 2009, trade has increased every year since 2000, reaching $5.67 billion in 2011, a rise of 62.4 percent year-on-year, according to the General Administration of Customs. China's major imports include coal, ores, woven apparel, fish and seafood, while exports include electrical machinery, vehicles and iron and steel. China is also a major source for the DPRK's petroleum. The two countries in 2010 established the Rason Economic and Trade Zone in the DPRK port of Rason on that country's east coast near China's Jilin province, and the Hwanggumphyong and Wihwa Islands Economic Zone, in the west at Hwanggumpyong and the Wihwa islands near Dandong, aiming to boost bilateral trade and investment cooperation. But Sang Baichuan, director of the Institute of International Business at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the nuclear test already "has had a major effect on trade relations, and efforts to further advance the two economic zones have been suspended". He did not give the source of the information. Huo Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a think tank affiliated with the Commerce Ministry, said that to what degree bilateral trade and economic relations will be affected still depends on how the situation develops. Wang Yuzhu, a researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the nuclear test could adversely affect the DPRK's economy. "Unilateral sanctions, if introduced, will hit the DPRK very hard, as the country is less developed in agriculture and industrialization," he said. However, Dong Manyuan, deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies, dismissed the possibility of unilateral sanctions from China and the suspension of the two economic zones as China constantly opposes sanctions, and "negotiations are the only resolution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula". Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a newsbriefing on Monday that "the situation of the peninsula currently is sensitive and complicated", while appealing for all parties involved not to take any action that could worsen the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, Zhao Ping, a Chinese businessman who has invested 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) in a real estate project beside the Hwanggumphyong and Wihwa Islands Economic Zone, expressed his confidence on investment prospects in the area. "Real estate prices have surged by more than 50 percent from a year earlier, and I'm sure I can make profits from the investment thanks to the business opportunities of the zone," Zhao told China Daily. Data from the Ministry of Commerce show that China's investment in non-financial sectors in the DPRK had reached $300 million by the end of 2011, while the DPRK's total investment in China was $100 million, going to various industries including catering.   |
| VIDEO: 'No one in China knew about hacking' Posted: 19 Feb 2013 03:11 AM PST A computer security company based in the US says the Chinese military is behind a series of high-level cyber-hacking attacks. |
| China military unit 'behind hacking' Posted: 19 Feb 2013 11:57 AM PST A Chinese military unit is likely one of the world's "most prolific cyber espionage groups", a US firm says, as the White House voices concern about cyber theft. |
| Six trapped in N China mine flood Posted: 19 Feb 2013 12:20 AM PST SIX men are still trapped underground hours after a coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province flooded, the local government said. The accident happened at about 4 am today in the city of Yangquan, where 12 people were carrying out illegal mining operations, the municipal government said. Six of them managed to escape. The miners had illegally dug a pit in a small room in a residential home. Although water levels in the pit have dropped following rescuers' efforts to pump water out, the rescuers said their work has been difficult because of a lack of geological data. |
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