"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner

Subscribe Now

• "Anonymous" says plans more attacks against China sites – Yahoo! News – "Yes, we are planning more attacks, a few at a time," f0ws3r said, adding that the plan was to take down the "Great Firewall of China".
  China blocks Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many other websites citing a need to maintain social stability.
• China’s 21M iOS Devices are Mostly in Major Cities – However, while Apple is seeing a high level of ownership in urban areas, iOS devices are very low in other areas of the country. According to figures from Shanghai-based Stenvall Skoeld and Company, ownership is dominated by just a few select urban areas.

  Building on recent research from Flurry — which indicated that China has overtaken the US as the largest market for new smartphone activations — Stenvall Skoeld estimates that, as of the end of 2011, there are a total of 21 million iPhones and iPads in China.

• Second icebreaker planned for polar research|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – A new icebreaker is scheduled to join Xuelong, the country's only Antarctic research vessel, in 2014, highlighting China's ambition for further exploration and scientific study in polar regions.
  At a news conference in Shanghai on Sunday to mark the return of Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, from its 28th Antarctic expedition, officials said the new vessel is being designed and will undergo tests starting in two years. One Arctic expedition and two Antarctic expeditions are planned by 2015.
• Special report: Rendition ordeal that raises new questions about secret trials | World news | The Guardian – The role that MI6 played in arranging the rendition of these two Libyan dissidents and their families is now well known, thanks to a discovery made last September by Peter Bouckaert, a director with Human Rights Watch, inside the abandoned office of Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi's foreign minister and former intelligence chief. Bouckaert found a file containing hundreds of secret letters and faxes that MI6 and the CIA had sent to Koussa during the early days of the rapprochement between Libya and the west. Among them were a series of documents detailing the 2004 rendition operations.

  A close examination of those papers show that a great deal of planning went into the operations, withMI6 informing Koussa's office as early as November 2003 that they were seeking the assistance of Chinese intelligence officers in their attempt to deal with "the Islamic extremist target in China". When MI6 learned that Belhaj was being held in Malaysia under his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, along with his pregnant wife, they were quick to tip off Tripoli.

• 北京两处单套过亿元楼盘不足10天即售完_资讯频道_凤凰网 – 2 beijing villa projects w houses all over 100m rmb just sold out in days?
• 果冻、老酸奶还能吃吗？ | 微访谈 – sina weibo already has a special section on the new food scandal..industrial/"shoddy" gelatin
• 青岛一家报社头版寻找失踪社长讨要工资(图)_新闻_腾讯网 –
• 老酸奶果冻被指系破皮鞋制成 赵普劝民众勿食用_新闻_腾讯网 – another food scandal. industrial gelatin additive instead of edible gelatin//

  4月9日，中央电视台著名主持人赵普等多位媒体人士发微博称，根据调查记者的爆料，老酸奶（固体形态）和果冻不能吃，尤其是孩子，具体细节很恐怖，不便透露。一时间，关于老酸奶和果冻不能吃的话题引起人们的热议。

• Chinese General: Philippines Faces ‘Last Chance’ – China Real Time Report – WSJ – Luo Yuan, a Chinese major general known for his hawkish views, in a commentary published Monday in the popular Global Times newspaper, accused the Philippines of hijacking a recent ASEAN summit and said Manila’s continuing provocations were bound to fail.

  “The biggest miscalculation of the Philippines is that it has misestimated the strength and willpower of China to defend its territorial integrity,” Gen. Luo wrote (in Chinese).

• Banker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – NYTimes.com – Instead of treating the World Bank presidency as a sacred American birthright, we should remember that it was never more than a consolation prize for an administration trying to dodge a spy scandal.
• Wait, Wait – Don’t Tell Me: China’s Anti-Rumor Campaign – China Real Time Report – WSJ –
• Rendition documents: MI6 asks Chinese intelligence for help in targetting a man who is to be rendered | World news | guardian.co.uk –
• People’s Daily Online: China’s Initial Propaganda Offering – China Real Time Report – WSJ – The listing, though, comes at a sensitive time for China’s media. Sina’s phenomenally popular micro-blog—the closest thing China has to a forum for democratic debate—had to turn off its comments function from Saturday to Tuesday. That was a punishment for allowing rumors of political instability to spiral out of control after the ousting of top leadership contender Bo Xilai.

  Sina already has to fork out for a small army of censors to monitor and delete inappropriate content posted by users. Its Nasdaq-listed stock fell almost 10%  last week as investors bet that heightened controls will add to the company’s costs.

  Now investors with access to the Chinese market have the chance to double down. Anyone betting censorship will win out over free speech can buy into the People’s Daily IPO and take a short position on Sina’s stock.

• HU JINTAO by Kerry Brown – Over the six-month period from late 2012 to early 2013, Hu Jintao, the President of the People's Republic of China, Chair of the Central Military Commission, and Party Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), will relinquish at least two of his three positions. According to the constitution of the CCP, his time as Party head will come to an end, given that he has already served for two terms. Well over the supposed retirement age of 68, he will have to hand over the leadership of China to a new generation of leaders at the 18th Party Congress in Beijing. In Chinese politics, the act of retirement is surprisingly difficult, but Hu Jintao is widely known for his reserve and reticence; there is little doubt that he could disappear into a quiet and anonymous retirement if he so desires.

  This timely volume thus aims to provide an analytical assessment of Hu's period in charge of the world's most populous country. It concentrates briefly on his early life and entry into politics, then considers and evaluates his stewardship of the economy and of international affairs, as well as his ideological contribution and leadership of the communist party. In the process, the reader will also be afforded a broad overview of China's rapid developments over the last decade, since 2002.

• China sets up rare earth body to shake up industry | Reuters – China on Sunday set up a rare earth industry association, state media reported, in a move to speed up consolidation of its sprawling industry that has drawn fire for what overseas trade partners call unfair export quotas.
• 胡德平的微博 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿 – Sina Weibo account of Hu Deping, Hu Yaobang's son
• 我少将称中国在给和平以最后机会 菲勿欺人太甚_新浪军事_新浪网 – gen luo yuan says china giving philippines last chance 4 peace in south china sea dispute. a china skirmish w philippines would probably b very useful 4 us, both in terms of regional alliances & observations of pla weapons/tactics?//
  作者：罗援 中国军事科学研究会副秘书长、少将

  　　最近，菲律宾表演过度了。又是拉美国大旗作虎皮，狐假虎威；又是绑架东盟峰会，试图与中国打群架；又是企图主办南海争端国峰会，把南海问题国际化；更有甚者，将南中国海改名为“西菲律宾海”，在本属中国的岛礁上修工事、建机场，而且恶人先告状，把中国告到了联合国。

  　　菲律宾如此嚣张，目的无非有四：一是攫取南海的油气资源；二是为美国重返亚太充当马前卒，讨取美国青睐；三是迎合国内民族主义情绪，转嫁国内矛盾；四是利用南海声索国与中国之间的争议，挑拨离间，觊觎东盟主导权。

  从经济利益上来看，你攫取别人的资源，早晚是要吐出来的。你可以自鸣得意于一时，但将丢掉长远利益。中国是美国和日本之后，菲律宾的第三大贸易伙伴。菲律宾媒体这样报道，在当今传统西方金融市场动荡不安之际，菲律宾经济增长需要更多依靠中国这样的新兴经济体。菲方希望与中国在造船、采矿、汽车、投资基金及能源等领域组建合资企业，吸引70亿美元的投资。更长远的打算是希望到2016年为菲律宾带来约500亿美元投资。但是，你频频地挑衅中国的利益，这种希望还有可能吗？

  　　从美菲关系来看，菲律宾试图绑在美国的战车上，让美国人替他埋单，但问题的关键是，美国是否能为你菲律宾而与世界第二大经济实体对决？其实，菲律宾为美国重返亚太鸣锣开道，而美国重返亚太的终结点必将是重返菲律宾的苏比克湾和克拉克军事基地，菲律宾必将以主权的部分让渡作为为美国开道的代价，定会搬起石头砸自己的脚。

• 罗援警靠菲在南海勿欺人太甚 –
• 胡锡进的微博 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿 – 一种封闭性正在微博形成。志趣相投者形成圈子，传递他们彼此喜欢的信息，强化他们彼此的价值观。结果小概率事件说成普遍典型事件，越说越真，越说越气，就像几个退休老头一起抱怨，气得直哆嗦。又真诚又可笑呵。网上声音其实挺单一的，党同伐异登峰造极。心不开放，有互联网也没用。此为转述一朋友语。
• 美国知名主持人华莱士去世 | 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿 – Death of Mike Wallace a top ten topic on Sina Weibo
• 实德落日_杂志频道_财新网 – 调查到底是“从实德开始”，还是“到实德为止”？ long article on Dalian Shide and Xu Ming in latest Caixin
• 业内自曝娱乐圈网络水军 炒作事件收费可至百万_互联网_DoNews-IT门户-移动互联网新闻-电子商务新闻-游戏新闻-风险投资新闻-IT社交网络社区 – 一场赵文卓与甄子丹的口水仗，没想到雪球越滚越大，舒淇、冯小刚、杜汶泽等明星相继被牵扯。眼见偶像一个接一个地遭受委屈，明星粉丝们则称有幕后黑手雇佣网络水军，对舒淇、杜汶泽支持甄子丹的言论进行报复性攻击。
• 凡客诚品营销副总裁杨芳离职 官方未予置评_原创_DoNews-IT门户-移动互联网新闻-电子商务新闻-游戏新闻-风险投资新闻-IT社交网络社区 –
• China Financial Markets » The ways China can rebalance – China, in other words, must stop transferring income from households to the state and in fact must reverse those transfers.  As Chinese household income and wealth become a greater share of the overall economy, so will Chinese consumption. 

  This is the key prediction, and it implies that one way or the other Beijing will engineer a transfer of wealth from the state sector to the hosuehold sector.  As I see it, the various ways in which this transfer can take place can all be accounted for by one or more of the five following options:

  Beijing can slowly reverse the transfers, for example by gradually raising real interest rates, the foreign exchange value of the currency, and wages, or by lowering income and consumption taxes.
  Beijing can quickly reverse the transfers in the same way.
  Beijing can directly transfer wealth from the state sector to the private sector by privatizing assets and using the proceeds directly or indirectly to boost household wealth.
  Beijing can transfer wealth from the state sector to the private sector by absorbing private sector debt.
  Beijing can cut investment sharply, resulting in a collapse in growth, but it can mitigate the employment impact of this collapse by hiring unemployed workers for various make-work programs and paying their salaries out of state resources.
  Notice that all of these options effectively have China doing the same thing: In each case the state share of GDP is reduced and the household share is increased. There are however very big differences in how the changes are distributed among various parts of the household sector and the state sector…
  It is worth making three points about these different scenarios. First, in both cases China rebalances, but the way in which it rebalances can have very different growth implications. Second, notice that even in the bad case, household income growth can be quite robust, which means that fears of social instability as Chinese growth slows are very exaggerated if a slowdown in Chinese growth occurs with real rebalancing.

  But – and this is the third point – that’s not all. The real cost of the rebalancing, it turns out, falls on the state sector, and we will have to keep this in mind as we consider the choices that Beijing must make.

• [视频]本台评论：对网络造谣者要果断“亮剑”_新闻台_中国网络电视台 – sunday CCTV evening news on evils of online rumors (2)
• [视频]法律专家表示：网上恶意造谣 应依法受到查处_新闻台_中国网络电视台 – sunday CCTV evening news on evils of online rumors (1). has a point
• 黑茶崛起与隐情：政府称最大利益被炒茶人拿走 – 产业资讯·ChinaVenture投资中国网 – another tea bubble
• U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal framework whatsoever, the Department of Homeland Security routinely singles out individuals who are suspected of no crimes, detains them and questions them at the airport, often for hours, when they return to the U.S. after an international trip, and then copies and even seizes their electronic devices (laptops, cameras, cellphones) and other papers (notebooks, journals, credit card receipts), forever storing their contents in government files. No search warrant is needed for any of this. No oversight exists. And there are no apparent constraints on what the U.S. Government can do with regard to whom it decides to target or why.

  In an age of international travel — where large numbers of citizens, especially those involved in sensitive journalism and activism, frequently travel outside the country — this power renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment entirely illusory. By virtue of that amendment, if the government wants to search and seize the papers and effects of someone on U.S. soil, it must (with some exceptions) first convince a court that there is probable cause to believe that the objects to be searched relate to criminal activity and a search warrant must be obtained. But now, none of those obstacles — ones at the very heart of the design of the Constitution — hinders the U.S. government: now, they can just wait until you leave the country, and then, at will, search, seize and copy all of your electronic files on your return. That includes your emails, the websites you’ve visited, the online conversations you’ve had, the identities of those with whom you’ve communicated, your cell phone contacts, your credit card receipts, film you’ve taken, drafts of documents you’re writing, and anything else that you store electronically: which, these days, when it comes to privacy, means basically everything of worth…

  the case of Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and intrepid journalist, is perhaps the most extreme

  Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.

• Amazon.com: Making the Connection: The Peaceful Rise of China’s Telecommunications Giants eBook: David Wolf: Kindle Store – How did two previously unknown Chinese companies suddenly leap to the forefront of the high tech business of global telecommunications infrastructure? Competitors, the telecom industry, and the U.S. Congress all want to know. In Making the Connection, Beijing-based business strategist David Wolf plumbs the history of the industry to find an answer, and comes to some unexpected – and controversial – conclusions. For anyone interested in one of the most dynamic industries in China, an industry that has played a key role in China's economic development, and one that, will serve as a bellwether for how Chinese business will develop and globalize in the future.
• Amazon.com: Making the Connection: The Peaceful Rise of China’s Telecommunications Giants eBook: David Wolf: Kindle Store – How did two previously unknown Chinese companies suddenly leap to the forefront of the high tech business of global telecommunications infrastructure? Competitors, the telecom industry, and the U.S. Congress all want to know. In Making the Connection, Beijing-based business strategist David Wolf plumbs the history of the industry to find an answer, and comes to some unexpected – and controversial – conclusions. For anyone interested in one of the most dynamic industries in China, an industry that has played a key role in China's economic development, and one that, will serve as a bellwether for how Chinese business will develop and globalize in the future.
• Hundreds Honor Flying Tiger | The Pilot: Southern Pines, NC – Two flags – the red flag and gold stars of the Peoples Republic of China and the Star Spangled Banner – snapped in the breeze overhead as cadets of Pinecrest High School’s AFJROTC lifted sabers over delegates from China and other dignitaries crossing a red carpet as they arrived. Mayors and other representatives of every municipality in Moore County came, each bearing a resolution endorsing the day. N.C. Sen. Harris Blake greeted them and welcomed J. Don Hobart, the official representative of Gov. Bev Perdue.

  Among the Chinese delegates were two from Huaihua – where the Flying Tigers were based – and two from Zhijiang, Pinehurst’s sister city. There were delegates from Hunan’s capital city of Changsha, the district’s central city of Chenzhou, and from Guidong, Moore’s sister county.

• 任意调重“鬼秤”疯狂 – 头版 -新京报电子报 – 　本报记者多日暗访调查，一个修改电子秤的主板、软件，利用密码任意调制计量单位，改装销售“鬼秤”的地下链条浮出水面。
  　　“鬼秤”真的很鬼。
• 逾20%社区将“直选”居委会 – 头版 -新京报电子报 – direct elections in beijing 4 over 20% of neighborhood committees.
• 江阴出逃行长 桥断“过桥贷款” – 新京报网 –
• Xinjiang Source: In Focus: The Uyghur Human Rights Project – The UHRP was founded after a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED has often been criticized for meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, and indeed one of its founders has stated that “a lot of what we do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA.” How would you respond to critics (such as the Chinese government) who would argue that accepting this money brings into question the moral legitimacy and/or motivations of the organization?

  HS: You will have to ask NED and the CIA on the specifics of what they do and don’t do! To clear things up, UHRP does not ‘accept’ money from NED. Every year, we go through a rigorous grant application process that is assessed by NED’s Board of Directors. UHRP has a clear mission statement, and UHRP appreciates NED’s vital contribution as we strive to achieve our mission. NED only supports nonviolent pro-democracy and human rights groups, which explains our continuous funding since 2004. I will let our findings on human rights abuses in the region, as well as the findings of a number of other human rights entities, help your readers determine whether before questioning others’ moral legitimacy, the Chinese government should be concerned about its own.

• Progress making dissidents more obsolete – Fang Lizhi, physicist and dissident, died Friday at the age of 76 in the US. Fang's influence has been gradually fading in recent years, a fate shared by many other dissidents who left for the US in the last two decades.

  Western support to dissidents has been regarded as an influential force in contemporary China. The batch of dissidents who charted the same route as Fang failed to make a splash. A few of them died quietly abroad. This perhaps is not what they had imagined at the beginning.

  External influences are exerting less pressure on China as the country continues to grow. It appears that the Internet is bringing foreign ideas to the fore, but the direction of China's reform and development is firmly in the hands of the Chinese people.。。
  Dissidents relying on Western support will be less and less accepted by Chinese society as competition with the West intensifies. Individual power can be amplified if one supports and advances China's revival. Otherwise, one wastes talent and life on a meaningless mission.

• On Wang Wen’s HuffPo Essay | ChinaGeeks | analysis and translation of modern China – Oh boy. Take a look at this essay by Wang Wen that appears in Eric X. Li’s column in the Global Times Huffington Post.

  Before we begin, it’s worth noting that the HuffPo piece fails to mention that Wang Wen is an editor for the Global Times. It does specify that he’s an editor for a major paper, but conspicuously fails to mention that the paper in question is the State-owned Global Times. That seems questionable — doesn’t someone working for the government have a vested interest in its perpetuation, and isn’t that a conflict of interest worth noting? — but let’s move on.

• China’s ‘Floating Hotels’ Are Hiring – China Real Time Report – WSJ – Looking for a job? Chinese yacht buyers want captains.

  Yacht companies face many obstacles in expanding their business in China, including marina water depth, infrastructure, sales tax around 40% — and finding workers who can operate the crafts.

  A boat that is longer than 55 feet requires a captain, and boats longer than 100 feet need crews.

  “Think of it like a floating hotel,” said Vincenzo Poerio, chief executive of Italian yacht maker Azimut Benetti Group, which hopes to sell four to five yachts in China this year. “You need staff that can create the lifestyle and the luxury.”

• Walter Russell Mead: The Myth of America’s Decline – WSJ.com – Washington now has added China, India, Brazil and Turkey to its speed-dial, along with Europe and Japan. But it will remain the chairman of a larger board.
• American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI – Bloomberg – A foreign scientist’s military background or purpose isn’t always apparent. Accustomed to hosting visiting scholars, Professor Daniel J. Scheeres didn’t hesitate to grant a request several years ago by Yu Xiaohong to study with him at the University of Michigan. She expressed a “pretty general interest” in Scheeres’s work on topics such as movement of celestial bodies in space, he said in a telephone interview.
  Unaware of Credentials
  She cited an affiliation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a civilian organization, Scheeres said. The Beijing address Yu listed in the Michigan online directory is the same as the Academy of Equipment Command & Technology, where instructors train Chinese military cadets and officers. Scheeres said he wasn’t aware of that military connection, nor that Yu co-wrote a 2004 article on improving the precision of anti- satellite weapons.
  Once Yu arrived, her questions made him uncomfortable, said Scheeres, who now teaches at the University of Colorado. As a result, he stopped accepting visiting scholars from China.
  “It was pretty clear to me that the stuff she was interested in probably had some military satellite-orbit applications,” he said. “Once I saw that, I didn’t really tell her anything new, or anything that couldn’t be published. I didn’t engage that deeply with her.”
• 药监局被曝遭企业公关后将不合格产品改为合格_新闻_腾讯网 – 2月29日和3月5日，国家食品药品监督管理局先后向地方监管部门下发内部通知，通报检出铅、砷超标的13家“不合格”螺旋藻生产企业和内容物欺诈的8家鱼油生产企业名单。
  据了解，这两份名单被媒体曝光后，引发舆论普遍关注，多家涉事企业进京“公关”。
  3月30日凌晨，国家食药监局对外公布的“最新”抽检结果显示，原先“黑名单”上的13家“不合格”螺旋藻生产企业仅剩1家产品不合格，而原先8家内容物欺诈的鱼油产品变为3个为假冒产品、其余产品检查结果未予公布。
• China March inflation spikes to 3.6 percent on food | Reuters – China's annual inflation spiked unexpectedly in March to 3.6 percent driven by rising food prices, data showed on Monday, surprising investors who had bet on cooling price pressures to give Beijing room to ease monetary policy.
  But quickening inflation in March may not dissuade Beijing from the view that price pressures in China are in retreat and that support for a slowing economy is the top priority.

  "We see that pork prices have come down a bit so we think this is a short-term rebound, the trend is still headed lower," said Li Wei, an economist at Standard Chartered in Shanghai.

• 王文评论的微博 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿 – global times editor wang wen on weibo about his guest column on huffington post. huffington post does not disclose his affiliation with global times.
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-x-li/bo-xilai-china_b_1409901.html
• 新闻出版总署署长柳斌杰发微博剑指公款消费 _经济频道_光明网 – 　新闻出版总署署长柳斌杰今日通过他的实名微博，参与人民微博争鸣版中关于“河南省宁陵县设临时禁酒办能奏效吗？”的话题讨论，他投票支持，认为“有必要，减少公款消费”，并发表了相关评论。
• 几百个文件管不住大吃大喝，症结何在？ __光明网 – 光明网评论员：来自人民网的消息称，新闻出版总署署长柳斌杰在人民网的实名微博留言，参与有关“河南省宁陵县设临时禁酒办能奏效吗？”的话题讨论。柳斌杰在微博上指出，“几百个文件管不住大吃大喝，真是治国之败笔”。
• The Road We Need Not Have Traveled – NYTimes.com – As Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief military prosecutor, said in a speech at Harvard on Tuesday, the use of military commissions “has become a matter of the rule of law and of recognizing that at some point justice delayed really is justice denied.” But it is worth remembering how we got to this system and this place — the worst way to administer justice to the 9/11 terrorists.

  Let’s start with the delay. All of the men could have been brought to trial years ago, but President Bush decided he could ignore the Constitution. He ordered them to be held in secret C.I.A. prisons and subjected to brutal and illegal interrogations. Mr. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month alone. That torture produced no useful intelligence, according to virtually all accounts, except those offered by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was the key architect of the Bush administration’s lawless detention and interrogation policies.

• 我家的文革微历史的相关微博 – 新浪微博 –
• Fang Lizhi – James Fallows – International – The Atlantic – those who hear current leaders say things and get excited should memorize the last sentence as an antidote to naivete//

  The last words of Schell's article are resonant, 24 years later. He wrote them during a moment when it appeared that China might be part of the worldwide shift away from Communist authoritarian control:
  Liberal friends who only the winter before had been gloomy about the prospect for political reform in China were now filled with a new optimism.

  But, chastened by the many earlier abortive reform efforts, Fang remained skeptical about the future. When asked by the Hong Kong journal Baixing Banyue Kan how he viewed the outcome of the Congress and Zhao's clearly reform-minded speech to the Party, he replied, "It is true that Zhao's report was very stirring. But in his own time Mao Zedong made speeches that were even more stirring." After citing a host of ways in which the Party continued to conduct itself in an undemocratic fashion, Fang went on to warn, "It's not enough just to read of speeches in newspapers. One must always keep one's eye on reality…There are still just too many examples of authorities saying one thing but doing another."

• China’s Andrei Sakharov – 88.05 – The speeches of the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi have galvanized students and given political discourse in China a new depth of field, and although he has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party his influence is undiminished

  by Orville Schell

• China News Headlines | Hong Kong’s premier newspaper online | SCMP.com – Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, Li Yuanchao, director of the party's organisation department, and Yu Zhengsheng, Shanghai party secretary, stand a greater chance than their peers. Wang is expected to become executive vice-premier while Li is most likely to assume the vice-presidency, which probably means he will be Beijing's highest official in charge of Hong Kong affairs.

  Yu, who is already 67, has seen his political fortunes boosted in the past week after People's Daily lavished praise on Shanghai's development under his leadership. He is now widely expected to replace Wu Bangguo as chairman of the National People's Congress.

  Vice-Premier Zhang appears to have also secured a seat, as his recent appointment as Chongqing party secretary shows that he has support from all factions.

  The remaining three seats are up for grabs among Zhang Gaoli, the Tianjin party secretary, Liu Yunshan, currently in charge of propaganda, Wang Yang, the Guangdong party secretary, and Liu Yandong, a State Councillor in charge of united front work and sports.

  Wang, 57, has long been considered a contender for a seat on the Standing Committee and is known for his liberal thinking and reformist ideas. He is regarded as a political rival of Bo as they both appear to hold vastly different views over the mainland's future direction.

  Following Bo's ousting, many believe Wang stands a higher chance but others think the strong reaction from Bo's supporters within the party could mean Wang being sidelined in the months to come.

• 北京将迎高地价住宅入市高峰 郊区项目面临跌价出售_中国经济网――国家经济门户 –

Subscribe Now