Sinocism has returned to much more regular publishing thanks to the work of West Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd. West built a plugin that has significantly reduced the grind involved in the creation of the newsletter.
So they get a huge plug, and I hope any readers who need technology development work will consider them.
Here is some background on West Consulting:
“Traditionally, West is specialised in online technology, complex content management systems, making legacy systems available online in a safe and secure way, and the development of mobile applications. More recently, West is also focussing information security. Our portfolio of services has expanded with vulnerability- and security assessments, and network penetration testing.
Among our customers are the European Space Agency (ESA), the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Dutch Council for Refugees, and a number of other local Dutch and Malaysian NGOs and companies.”
I love these guys and hope that you will too since they have helped bring back Sinocism.
Today’s Links:
THE ESSENTIAL EIGHT
China to meet this year’s 7.5 percent growth target: Premier Li | Reuters Writing in Britain’s The Times newspaper on the eve of his visit to London, Li said slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy was normal and not a problem. “China’s economy needs to grow at a proper rate, expected to be around 7.5 per cent this year,” Li wrote. “It is slower than the past, but normal.”
Related: China’s fine-tuning adds up to stimulus by stealth | Reuters Wary of being criticised for not doing enough to wean the world’s second-largest economy off its reliance on easy credit and heavy investment, authorities have ruled out major stimulus even as growth slowed to an 18-month low in the first quarter. Instead, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has relied on four low-key adjustments that have added a total of 550 billion yuan ($88 billion) into the banking system, a calculation based on a Reuters poll and information from sources shows.
Related: “克强指数”回暖 微刺激有后招_财经频道_一财网 the “Keqiang Index” may be recovering as the “micro-stimuli” take effect, but experts tell CBN they expect more increases in infrastructure investment… // 在 一系列密集“微刺激”政策出台后，
Japan says Chinese warship could have ‘locked’ on SDF vessel, patrol plane – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun A Chinese warship in the East China Sea is thought to have activated fire-control radar, a prelude to opening fire, to track a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel and patrol plane on May 29, government sources in Tokyo said.
Related: China summons Japan defense attache over jets dispute | Reuters “The Japanese side ignores reality and has flipped right and wrong, making groundless accusations,” China’s Defence Ministry said in a statement on its website. Tokyo has “persistently taken it upon itself to stir up trouble, often irresponsibly inciting deception and making malicious attacks on the Chinese side,” the statement added, calling on Tokyo to “immediately correct the error”.
人民日报四问楼市会撞冰山吗：不会断崖式暴跌–时政–人民网
Related: 北京楼市降价风言过其实 业内建议刚需再等两个月|北京楼市|降价风|房价跳水_
Related: 楼市只是调整，不会崩盘（见解·
河北顺势大转场（全面深化改革进行时）–时政–人民网 pa
Related: 京津冀环保方案月底将出台 生态补偿将写入方案|京津冀|北京市_凤凰财经 Environ
Inspector questions CASS ideology – Global Times Zhang Yingwei, a senior discipline inspector with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) stationed at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), claimed that the academic institute has four major “ideological problems” on Tuesday during a public speech to the Institute of Modern History under CASS. Zhang detailed the four ideological problems that academy experts have, including using academic research as a disguise for other purposes, fabricating false theories using the Internet, conducting “illegal collusion” during politically sensitive times and receiving peer-to-peer infiltration from foreign forces.
美国中东政策难去“毛糙”（钟声）_网易新闻中心 Zhong Sheng in People’s Daily Monday on the current crisis in Iraq and America’s responsibility for creating the mess, and its inability to fix it // 新世纪以来，尽管美国中东政策几经调整，
China’s Li flies into UK to talk trade, seal deals worth $30 bln | Reuters Britain is expected to take the opportunity to announce it is easing some visa restrictions on Chinese citizens, a long-standing request from Beijing which has complained current arrangements are overly lengthy, bureaucratic and opaque. Li will hold talks with Cameron and will also meet the Queen. China’s ambassador to Britain on Friday robustly rejected local media reports that Beijing had threatened to cancel the trip if Li was not granted an audience.
New York Times to host 3rd World Media Summit| China Daily October 2013 hearing that the New York Times has pulled out..perhaps Bloomberg will step in // We are delighted to be engaged in the WMS and believe it is a mission to foster mutual understanding among leading world media organizations,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr, chairman of the New York Times Company, who attended the summit’s 2nd presidium meeting held in Hangzhou, capital of East China’s Zhejiang province. The plenum will be held in September, he said. “We are open to discussions of a theme for next year’s plenum, but we are considering ‘media without borders’.” Presided over by Li Congjun, Executive President of the WMS and President of Xinhua News Agency, the meeting discussed new media challenges and the feasibility of creating global prizes for journalism.
BUSINESS, ECONOMY AND TRADE
Where will the Chinese economy land? | East Asia Forum Recently, the government accelerated its pace of implementing wide-ranging economic reforms. It looks like the government will be able to push ahead with reforms more quickly in areas of reducing administrative controls, liberalising the financial system and reforming factor prices, but more slowly in areas of land reform and restructuring of state-owned enterprises. These reforms should eventually lift China’s GDP growth potential by improving resource allocation and supporting productivity gain. However, in the near term, growth will likely weaken further before it picks up. Yiping Huang is a professor of economics at the National School of Development, Peking University.
Chinese Steel Game Changer ‘Good News’ Says World’s Biggest Mill – Bloomberg ArcelorMittal (MT), the world’s largest steelmaker, welcomed the potential removal of a near 10-year block on overseas takeovers in China’s steel industry. ArcelorMittal is one of the few foreign steelmills with investments in China since the ban on overseas control was imposed in 2005.
UBS Plans China Property Expansion With New Commercial Funds – Bloomberg Office, retail and industrial properties are “where investor demand is certainly moving to” in China, Trevor Cooke, head of global real estate for Asia-Pacific at UBS Global Asset Management, said in an interview in Sydney. “The stock of investment grade assets in China is growing at about 35 percent per year.” The bank would either partner with a developer or a company with an ability to source existing assets, he said.
众多企业感融资“既贵又难” 银行的钱去哪儿了？–财经–
Kickstarter And China Manufacturing. You Are So Wrong On Your China Risks. | China Law Blog I am writing on this now because twice this week I have received calls from “companies with product” who are now encountering serious (and expensive to remedy) difficulties arising from their failures to button down their IP protections when we spoke a year or two ago. Bottom Line: Failing to protect IP early on is probably the most common mistake made by start-up companies.
China Economic Reform Scorecard – June 2014 | US China Business Council USCBC is rolling out a Reform Scorecard to assess the actual impact of China’s reforms on foreign company concerns. The scorecard is divided into categories based on key themes for reform, such as the role of the state and the market, foreign investment, institutional reform, and others. The report assesses the impact of reform policies, both individually and as a whole. In this first assessment, China’s economic reform policies to date have had a limited impact on foreign company operations.
POLITICS AND LAW
China Voice: China sharpens “Sword of Damocles” in anti-graft war – Xinhua Speaking at a meeting on disciplinary inspection work in March, national anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan called for innovation in inspections to bring a “Sword of Damocles” to hangs above those in power as a deterrent. His words came with solid actions. Over two dozens government officials at or above provincial- and ministerial-levels have been put under investigation, of which close to half were probed in the first half of this year. Undoubtedly, Su [Rong] stands out from those crooks, for being the highest-ranking official to ever be probed. //I prefer to think of Wang Qishan as the grim reaper, with a long scythe
Disciplinary inspections reveal problems in anti-decadence campaign – Xinhua Problems uncovered included local Party committees slack in supervising the campaign, inspection groups not making enough effort to review local officials’ reports and coordinate the campaign’s operation, and missions to correct officials’ misbehavior not specific and effective, said a statement released Sunday by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of Supervision…The second phase of the campaign is scheduled to last until September, targeting more low-level departments and officials, while the first phase focused on central and provincial-level departments. // 中央巡视组2013年第二轮巡视整改情况陆续公开–
巩固扩大教育实践活动成果 把作风建设新要求落到实处 lead comment in latest Seeking Truth on consolidating and expanding results of the mass line education campaign…supposed to run for four more months, can’t imagine everything will just relax when it ends…
多地纪委“招兵买马”-中国青年报 CCDI recruiting more people at all levels. They have more corruption cases than they can handle // 国家行政学院教授竹立家向记者分析，在过去一年的反腐过程中，“
国务院至少20个部委开展约谈 谈后不改将被处分–时政–
中央决定在上海广东等6省市试点司法改革_网易新闻中心 Jud
证监系统可能也会反腐-评论频道-和讯网 corruption crackdown to spread to the CSRC bureaucracy?
社会主义核心价值观是历史传承和时代要求的统一 来源： 《红旗文稿》2014/11 作者： 教育部中国特色社会主义理论体系研究中心 what exactly are Socialist Values? Red Flag Manuscript on them, seem to be hearing a lot more about them lately, and some banners are up promoting them on Beijing roads
李望知的微博_微博–Li Wangzhi Weibo Bo Xilai’s first son Li Wangzhi posts a nice Father’s Day note on his Weibo account, includes a picture of him with his father 30 years ago
盘点内地上半年被查12名女官员 部分以色谋权(图)–
神木打砸租户副局长被曝身家上亿 有多套豪宅_网易新闻中心 finance official in Shenmu. Shaanxi outed for having over 100m RMB in assets after he is caught trashing the shop of one of his tenants who was overdue on rent…he owns 6000 square meters or property
‘Desperate’ Tibetans struggle to escape from Chinese yoke – FT.com By setting up roadblocks around Lhasa, increasing border security and pressing Nepal to turn away Tibetans, China has reduced the flow of refugees to a trickle. Before the 2008 uprising, 2,000-3,000 Tibetans left annually; last year only 300 made it across. The young monk is one of only four people staying in a centre built for 500.
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE AFFAIRS
DOD Report Shows Chinese Nuclear Force Adjustments and US Nuclear Secrecy | Federation Of American Scientists Like all the other nuclear-armed states, China is modernizing its nuclear forces. China earns the dubious medal (although not in the DOD report) of being the only nuclear weapons state party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that is increasing it nuclear arsenal. Far from a build-up, however, the modernization is a modest increase focused on ensuring the survivability of a secure retaliatory strike capability (see here for China’s nuclear arsenal compared with other nuclear powers). The report continues the Obama administration’s don’t-show-missile-numbers policy. Up until 2010, the annual DOD reports included a table overview of the composition of the Chinese missile force. But the overview gradually became less specific in until it was completed removed from the reports in 2013. The policy undercuts the administration’s position that China should be more transparent about its military modernization by indirectly assisting Chinese government secrecy.
高度重视网络意识形态安全 来源： 中国社会科学报 作者： 李殿仁– 一、
WMS global awards for excellence to open for entries – Xinhua The WMS Global Awards for Excellence, which is launched by the World Media Summit (WMS), will open for entries on July 1, the WMS Secretariat said here Sunday. The awards are launched upon the decision made during the Second WMS Presidium Meeting held in Hangzhou last October. The awards honor “truth, objectivity, excellence” in journalism, the secretariat said, and are aimed to encourage all people working in the media sector to hone their professional skills and pursue excellence, while inspiring media setups to work with the times in the spirit of innovation.
Interview: Abe’s “active pacifism” can not bring real peace to the region: Japanese former PM – Xinhua Japan’s former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama criticized Japan’s current military stance, saying the “active pacifism”created by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a blinkered concept and, therefore, can not bring real peace to the Asian-Pacific region. Hatoyama made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Saturday before his departure to China for a peace forum which focuses on how to build peace in Asia and the world
Former U.S. congressman: Diaoyu Islands part of China – Xinhua | English.news.cn The Diaoyu Islands belong to China since ancient times, former U.S. congressman David Wu said. The Japanese government’s behavior on the issue has brought troubles for the China-U.S. relations and put the Obama administration in a very awkward situation, Wu said in a recent interview with the Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Hui Po.
US Aircraft Carrier Welcomes Chinese Military Officials Aboard, Seeks Return Invite | Defense News | defensenews.com The four People’s Liberation Army members were among guests flown by a C-2 Greyhound aircraft to the USS George Washington for a “VIP visit” before it berths Monday off Hong Kong on a routine call.
Christopher Walker: Authoritarian regimes are changing how the world defines democracy – The Washington Post We can infer from this that the emerging authoritarian doctrine reflects the need for leaders in Moscow, Beijing and elsewhere to contain what they fear and do not possess: democratic accountability and legitimacy. Given the stakes for the liberal order, the democratic world will need to develop a serious “long game” sooner rather than later to respond to the growing challenge presented by the migration of the authoritarians’ illiberal norms beyond their borders.–Christopher Walker is executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.
China ‘builds school’ on disputed South China Sea island – Yahoo News The school on Chinese-held Sansha or Woody Island will serve about 40 children whose parents work there, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday, adding that construction will cost about 36 million yuan ($5.8 million) and take a year and a half.
Asia-pacific – Pakistan launches ‘comprehensive operation’ against militants – France 24 Military sources said a number of ethnic Uighur militants, who operate alongside Uzbeks and share a similar Turkic language with them, had also been killed.
HONG KONG, MACAO AND TAIWAN
China respects Taiwan’s social system, senior official says | Reuters Yu Zhengsheng, China’s top political adviser and a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee, said problems in cross-Straits relations should be resolved by China giving “more understanding, respect and consideration from the perspective of a family” to Taiwan, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Yu made the remarks at a forum on cross-Strait ties in the coastal city of Xiamen.
With white paper, Beijing may have achieved the opposite of what it wants | South China Morning Post Michael C. Davis says not only does the white paper raise doubts about Beijing’s commitment to the rule of law, but its tough stance has also inflamed, not frightened, Hong Kong protesters
Hong Kong international schools full of scions of mainland elite｜Culture｜WantChinaTimes
TECH AND MEDIA
News Analysis: Huawei’s Kirin 920 to shake global chip market? – Xinhua | English.news.cn all indigenous tech, no patent issues? // When it comes to chips for powering smartphones, it has long been a story of the world’s leading smartphone chip-maker — U.S. firm Qualcomm. This time, it is a Chinese-made chip that has caught the eye of market observers. The octa-core Kirin 920, unveiled by Huawei-owned HiSilicon on Friday, features support for QHD displays, 4K video recording and a high-speed LTE category-6 platform, something even the global industry leaders find it difficult to offer.China relies heavily on imported chips, which are among the country’s top four import categories in terms of value, along with oil, iron ore and LCD panels. As its reliance on foreign oil and iron ore cannot be reversed overnight, China has been working hard to promote the other two industries.
Fei Chang Dao: Caixin Report Provides Context for Baidu’s 2011 Censorship of Search Resutls for “CCTV Baidu” good lesson in the complexities of trying to understand the motivations behind CCTV attacks on businesses // a former CCTV employee has confirmed to Caixin that it was not Guo who initiated the affair. This source says that the four-day’s of continuous reports was not some plot of the economic programs, but rather came about as a result of a document from the “National Leading Group on Rectifying and Regulating Market Economic Order,” and that the primary goal was to regulate Internet order, which was growing more chaotic by the day. But what surprised him was that, after submitting what he originally took to be just another report, it would broadcast in such an “explosive” format. A source at CCTV told Caixin that internally it was said that prior to this Guo had harbored a grudge against Baidu. It related to an incident where the Internet was plastered with reports and posts about quality problems with a certain company’s pork products. This company sought out Guo, and paid him to help out. Guo personally approached Baidu, hoping to comprehensively block relevant posts from Baidu search. Baidu tactfully declined.
郭振玺妻儿不在国内 到央视财经后频道风气巨变|央视财经|郭振玺_新浪财经_新浪网
SOCIETY, ART, SPORTS, CULTURE AND HISTORY
What does Chinese say What does Chinese say allows you to search among Chinese news and social media (weibo). It uses Baidu translation API, so you can search in English and view results (machine-translated) in English.
Online sitcom sparks trendy Xinjiang image – Xinhua The online sitcom “Ledoumanwu,” [the show on Youku 《乐逗满屋》] or “Fun-filled Apartment” depicts the lives and friends of four college boys living in a rented apartment in Xinjiang. The lead characters represent the many ethnic groups in Xinjiang, including the Tajik, Uygur and Kazakh people. The show has been available exclusively via the Chinese online video platform Youku.com since April 4. It had been viewed more than 6 million times as of Monday.
Chinese Fathers Who Beat Their Kids Get a Beating Online – China Real Time Report – WSJ This past year, a reality show titled “Dad, Where Are We Going?”—which features celebrity fathers and their sons working together to succeed at different tasks such as cooking—became a big hit in China. Separately, a survey of 500 Chinese dads by communications company JWT last November found that many don’t even want to scold their kids. Instead, Chinese fathers said playing the family chauffeur was their most important role, compared to many of their American counterparts, who said discipline came in first. Among the memories that users recalled from their childhood on Weibo, though some were bitter, many said their punishments were a form of parental love.
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND HEALTH
China readies for an energy revolution | Business Spectator Xi, who arguably has greater power vested in him than any Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, made five important points about China’s energy industry that could have lasting consequences for the global energy sector. The one that will have the most impact on Australia is the push to diversify China’s energy sources. Xi emphasised the importance of having a diverse range of energy suppliers and sources to ensure the country’s energy demand and security. Chinese authorities will place new prominence on clean coal technology and upgrade polluting coal fired power stations.
Hunan chemical plant shut over high lead levels in children, official blames ‘pencils’ – Global Times A chemical plant suspected of causing lead poisoning in more than 300 children in Hengdong county, Central China’s Hunan Province, was shut down Saturday, said the county government. One local official, however, contended that the results might come from the children “biting pencils.” China Central Television (CCTV) reported Saturday that blood tests on more than 300 children in Dapu township, Hengdong county found excessive lead levels, a sign of heavy metal poisoning.
FOOD AND TRAVEL
In China, Negotiating Peaks and Police – NYTimes.com “People don’t live in this valley, but we might come across herders,” Kiboya said. The herders brought their yaks to higher altitudes to graze. Kiboya said we might be the first foreigners to walk through the valley — he had not heard of anyone taking this path to enter Huanglong. Most foreigners who came to the area took another route outside Mafengcun to climb the nearby snow mountain of Xuebaoshan, whose 18,000-foot peak was on this day shrouded in clouds.
BEIJING
北京幼升小报名家长凌晨4点排队|北京幼升小_新浪新闻 As part of the Beijing primary school reforms Shijia, one of the top schools, has expanded its catchment area and increased entering class size…wonder how much the administrators’ incomes dropped // 今年，东城史家小学扩大了划片范围。昨天，