"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
Today’s Links:
THE ESSENTIAL EIGHT
Assessing China’s Foreign Policy Under Xi (Part II)-Carnegie-Tsinghua Center In this podcast, hosted by Carnegie–Tsinghua’s Paul Haenle, Xie Tao, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, explained that the placement the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Cooperation’s deep-sea drilling oil rig in a disputed South China Sea area could be viewed as “one step forward, two steps back” in terms of improving China’s relations with its neighbors. However, Xie posited that such a move might also be a useful tool for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aim to accelerate military professionalization. Xie explained that Xi might need foreign policy crises to give him a stronger mandate to discipline the powerful Chinese military. Once Xi has consolidated his power in several years time, perhaps China would deescalate its aggressive behavior, Xie suggested. If this proves to be true, he concluded, the Chinese military would finally be in position by that time to fight a war and win.
Related: China takes dispute with Vietnam to UN – The Washington Post Why would China do this? Does it allow China to avoid UNCLOS-related arbitration and instead put into the general UN where it can better control the outcome? 中国照会联合国秘书长表明立场–国际–
Chinese official plays down emission cut expectations | Reuters Any near-term regulation of China’s greenhouse gas emissions would likely allow for future emissions growth, a senior government official said on Monday, discounting any suggestion of imminent carbon cuts by the biggest-emitting nation. Sun Cuihua, deputy director of the climate change office at the National Development and Reform Commission, said it would be a simplification to suggest China would impose an absolute cap on greenhouse gas emissions from 2016.
Full Text: The Practice of the “One Country, Two Systems” Policy in the HKSAR[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn The Information Office of the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, issued a white paper on the practice of the “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Following is the full text:
Related: Despite Critics, China Asserts Democratic Progress in Hong Kong – NYTimes.com The “white paper” was issued just as pro-democracy elements in Hong Kong have been agitating for Beijing to finally allow universal suffrage, amid signs that the Communist Party leadership will continue to exert strong control over who gets chosen to run the territory’s government.
Xi Urges Greater Innovation in ‘Core Technologies’ – NYTimes.com On Monday, Mr. Xi delivered his biggest speech on science and technology since becoming national leader and gave fresh urgency to demands that China master and control the new technologies that, he said, will decide the global economic and political winners and losers of coming decades. And he pointed to China’s past as a victim of invasion and subjugation as a lesson in the price of scientific backwardness.
Related: 在中国科学院第十七次院士大会、
学者称城镇住房空置率22.4% 沉淀了4.2万亿住房贷|住房空置率|住房贷款|住房市场_
Related: China’s First-Home Buyers Shrink as Market Slows, Survey Shows – Bloomberg how good is Professor Gan’s work? I remember there were some questions about a previous report that pegged China’s Gini above 0.60 // About 20 percent of buyers are purchasing homes for the first time this year, according to a survey between August and March, compared with 48 percent in 2012, said Gan Li, director of the center and a professor at Southwestern University of Finance Economics. Such buyers accounted for 90 percent in 2000, said Gan, who surveyed 28,000 households in 29 Chinese provinces. “The era of Chinese real estate industry being driven by first-time homebuyer demand is over,” Gan said after a press conference in Beijing today. “The market is going to be driven by investment and improvement in demand that is sensitive to price.”
Power and Order in Asia | Center for Strategic and International Studies Asia stands out as the world’s most vibrant region, where rivalries and confrontation coincide with increased economic cooperation and community building. How should we interpret these two dynamics, and what are the implications for U.S. policy? With the support of the MacArthur Foundation, Asahi Shimbun, Joongang Ilbo, and China Times, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) collaborated with Opinion Dynamics Corporation on a survey of strategic elites in 11 Asia Pacific economies.
Young Chinese Twitter User Arrested for Proposing Method to Spread Truth about June 4th Massacre « China Change On Monday, June 9th, China’s state-run media outlet China News (中新网) reported that Beijing police had arrested a 22-year-old young female by the family name Zhao for posting an article on Twitter that teaches how to use a pseudo base station “to send illegal information.” According to the report, the Chinese internet security police formed a task force to solve the case as soon as they discovered this particular tweet, and a multi-agency investigation led to Zhao’s arrest and the confiscation of her “criminal tool” – a laptop computer.
学区房牛市下半场：只涨不跌的“神话”_财经频道_一财网 re
Related: 媒体:北京“幼升小”
BUSINESS, ECONOMY AND TRADE
China property, structural faith edition | FT Alphaville Further proof of a serious mismatch between the supply of and demand for charts about China property herein. This splurge is from Deutsche who seek to bring some optimism to the debate. Note, there’ll be less optimistic charting and more on the political subtleties from elsewhere nearer the bottom.
专家：中国不会发生房价暴跌 无房者不能太天真_新闻_腾讯网 当然，
万科疾进的烦恼 千亿房企为何频曝质量问题_21世纪网 21st Century Business Herald on the continuing quality issues with Vanke Construction, in spite of Wang Shi’s promises // 万科董事会主席王石也曾公开表示：”
China IPO market resumes after four-month hiatus | Reuters Seven Chinese firms launched mainland initial public offerings on Tuesday, marking a resumption of China’s IPO market after a four-month hiatus. The offerings come after the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said late on Monday it had given final approval to 10 firms seeking to list on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock exchanges.
China CPI Ticks Up On Pork Prices, Base Effects | MNI Inflation may be low, but it is not a determinant of the government’s policy stance this year. Even if relatively low CPI readings provide room to act, Beijing has been unusually communicative in insisting that it has no intention of introducing aggressive stimulus measures and exacerbating the problems created by the previous government. The PPI reading explains this resistance. The 27th straight month of producer price deflation is the result of widespread industrial overcapacity made worse by sluggish domestic demand. Some Chinese industries are effectively tapped out and pumping more cash into the economy, or lowering the cost of borrowing, may only worsen these problems.
Inflation: The One Bright Spot in China’s Economic Figures – China Real Time Report – WSJ Tucked away amid the details about pork and fruit prices is a bit of insight into China’s labor situation. The CPI data is a good way to tease out the cost of labor-intensive services, says PNC Financial Services Group in a research note, and the latest data suggests labor conditions in China are tight. Despite China’s vast population, fewer farmers are available to move into more productive factory jobs and wages are rising, part of a significant shift in China’s competitive position.
推荐64项节能低碳技术 北京发展节能环保业投巨资（股）_行业资讯_中证网 China Securities Journal on stocks that should benefit from Beijing’s plans to clean up the city’s environment // 近日，北京市相继出台包括节能低碳推荐技术目录、
China’s Alibaba Economy Promises an Escape From the Country’s Debt Trap – Businessweek Doomsday theorists—focused on the old economy—say that with ever-increasing credit required to produce ever-decreasing growth, China is destined for an economic slump, financial crisis, or both. The promise of the new economy is that with consumer and technology-orientated businesses producing higher returns with less debt, robust growth can be sustained for a while longer.
Goldman Sees China Commodity Financing Unwinding – Bloomberg “The developments in Qingdao are likely to continue the significant scaling back of FX inflows from foreign banks into China via commodity financing business,” analysts at New York-based Goldman Sachs said in the report dated yesterday. “As foreign banks reduce their exposure to Chinese commodity financing deals, the profitability of these could be reduced meaningfully.”
Citic Seeks to Secure Metal in Chinese Port of Qingdao – WSJ State-owned Citic Resources Holdings Ltd. 1205.HK -9.77% said Tuesday it has applied to courts in the port city of Qingdao to secure metal assets it owns in warehouses, as concerns mount over the use of commodities for financing in China. Citic Resources’ parent is Citic Group, one of the country’s biggest state-owned enterprises. The operator of Qingdao port, on China’s eastern coast, confirmed on Monday that Chinese authorities were conducting a probe into allegations of fraud. Separately, Western banks worry that the potential fraud has flared up at a second Chinese port, Penglai, also located in Shandong province, according to people familiar with the matter.
The return of the subsidy | Black China Blog We’ve reported in our latest client publications that Chalco Guizhou Branch is restarting part of its idled capacity. It is doing so despite the fact that its cash costs remain over its selling price due to high power prices in the southwest of China. However, the smelter was urged to restart by the local government, with inducements in the form of subsidies. It’s clear that the local government is violating the order from central government again. Last December, the National Development Reform Council (NDRC) jointly with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released an order about conducting tiered power prices. In that notification, it clearly stated that local governments should strictly obey the national power policy and could not solely reduce the power price. Any violation should be corrected as soon as the order took effect.
High Yields on Chinese Corporate Bonds Lure Investors – WSJ Global investors are buying Chinese debt at a record pace, attracted by the high yields and defying growing concerns over the health of the world’s second-largest economy. But the higher borrowing costs Chinese companies need to pay—coming when those in most other emerging markets are moving lower—are a reminder of the country’s mounting risks as bad loans multiply, the pace of growth slows and the once white-hot property market dims.
POLITICS AND LAW
China Police Kill Man Who Took 50 Students Hostage – ABC News A convicted criminal who took 50 elementary school students and a teacher hostage was shot and killed by police in central China on Tuesday, the Public Security Ministry said. Officers on the scene were searching the school in the Hubei province city of Qianjiang for any explosives that might have been hidden by the suspect, the ministry said on its microblog
大城市路边停车费都去哪了?-财经频道-新华网 XInhua asks where do the the parking fees collected in big cities go? It likely can only get an answer if Wang Qishan’s CCDI gets involved…Caixin tried to dig into the Beijing parking market in 2011…deep waters it sounds like 路边车位 谁的王国
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE AFFAIRS
China’s new weapon for expansion: lawfare–John Garnaut April 2014 It says the People’s Liberation Army is using what it calls ”legal warfare”, ”media warfare” and ”psychological warfare” to augment its arsenal of military hardware in order to weaken the resolve of the US and its regional partners to defend islands and oceans in the East and South China Seas. ”They have introduced a military technology which has not previously been considered as such in the West,” says the report, China: The Three Warfares, which was commissioned by the Pentagon’s most senior strategist, Andrew Marshall, and circulated to leaders of the US Pacific Fleet. This technology has ”side-stepped the coda of American military science,” it says.
America’s Asia Challenges: China, Air-Sea Battle and Beyond | The National Interest The National Interest’s Managing Editor Harry J. Kazianis spoke with Congressman J. Randy Forbes concerning present day challenges in the South China Sea, the ongoing debate over the Air-Sea Battle Concept, the UCLASS project, and more.
鲁炜会见美国驻华大使博卡斯–时政–人民网 China’s top Internet regulator, Director of the Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group Office and SIIO head Lu Wei met with US Ambassador Baucus // 6月9日，中共中央网络安全和信息化领导小组办公室主任、
Second Chinese Army Unit Implicated in Cyberattacks – NYTimes.com Just weeks after the Justice Department indicted five members of the Chinese army, accusing them of cyberattacks on United States corporations, a new report by Crowdstrike, released Monday, offers more evidence of the breadth and ambition of China’s campaign to steal trade and military secrets from foreign victims. The report, parts of which The New York Times was able to corroborate independently, ties attacks against dozens of public and private sector organizations back to a group of Shanghai-based hackers whom Crowdstrike called Putter Panda because they often targeted golf-playing conference attendees. The National Security Agency and its partners have identified the hackers as Unit 61486, according to interviews with a half-dozen current and former American officials.
Banyan: The perils of candour | The Economist Western diplomats used to talk about how forums such as this were a way of “socialising” China. But China may be losing interest in being welcomed—“accommodated”, as some put it—by a Western-led club. It may well see the whole Shangri-La Dialogue, which is organised by a London-based think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, as a microcosm of an old world order it no longer feels bound to accept. Viewed from China, that order is one in which the West, and especially America, sets the agenda. They let China in, but only so long as it abides by the West’s house rules; other countries can team up to criticise it, hoping to thwart its rise to great-power status. Meanwhile, far from the discussions in the air-conditioned banqueting rooms of a luxury hotel, China is asserting its claims in the seas around it. There it encounters no resistance it cannot brush aside, for now.
China in Africa: The Real Story: JICA: Excellent New Estimates for Chinese Aid At last, a team of experienced researchers with extensive experience on official development assistance (and foreign aid), and with deep background on China, the OECD, and the Asian approach to aid and cooperation more generally, has come up with an estimate of China’s total annual official development assistance (ODA) in 2013 of $7.1 billion. This fits well with the latest glimpse into official figures, when a Chinese official let slip in April 2013 that China’s official aid was about $6.35 billion, and with my own estimates.
China Complains About Plutonium in Japan – NYTimes.com Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Monday that Japan’s stockpiling of nuclear materials was “a matter of grave concern for the international community.” She said that Japan was obliged to report that plutonium to the I.A.E.A. and raised the question of whether its failure to disclose the material was “an unintentional omission or a deliberate concealment.”
海军坠毁飞豹其中一名驾驶员殉职 年仅25岁_网易新闻中心 PLAN pilot dies after crashing during nighttime training exercise…should expect to see more accidents as the PLA engages in more realistic training
Chinese navy sails out for 2014 RIMPAC – Global Times The fleet departed from military harbors in southern city of Sanya and eastern city of Zhoushan respectively. It is the first time for the Chinese navy to take part in RIMPAC. At the sendoff at Sanya, Xu Hongmeng, a deputy commander of the navy, said the mission was an important part of the efforts to build a new model of relations between China and the United States and their militaries. The mission is significant in diplomatic terms as it will help relations between China and nations in the south Pacific, Xu added.
Chinese vice FM says new security concept needed to solve Asia’s security problems – Xinhua Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin stressed on Monday the need for a new security concept to solve Asia’s security problems under the new situation. Liu made the remarks at a joint interview with Chinese and Myanmar media, citing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent advocation of an Asian security concept with common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security at its core. Liu warned that Asia is facing increasing security challenges that are both traditional and non-traditional with reminiscences of World War II and the Cold War still lingering.
beehive.govt.nz – McCully announces next Ambassador to China congrats to a longtime Sinocism reader and supporter // Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has today named John McKinnon QSO as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to China. “New Zealand’s relationship with China has become one of our most important,” says Mr McCully.
Clinton gives inside account of US turmoil after helping blind activist Chen Guangcheng | South China Morning Post Clinton said she moved to counter “breathless news reports” that the US refused him asylum and blamed “election-year politics”, criticising Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney whose campaign said that the Chen case marked “a dark day for freedom”. Clinton said that Dai Bingguo, then state councillor and considered the force behind China’s foreign policy, had told the US side that they “had made a big mistake in trusting Chen” and called him a “manipulative criminal”. But Clinton said she wanted to comply with Chen’s wishes and told Dai she faced a “political firestorm” over the case.
HONG KONG, MACAO AND TAIWAN
Macau Further Restricts UnionPay Card Use at Casinos: SJM – Bloomberg The banking regulator has ordered jewelery shops and pawnshops that operate on casino floors to remove their UnionPay card terminals by July 1, SJM Holdings Ltd. (880) said. Chinese gamblers skirt the mainland’s currency controls by using the cards to buy expensive goods which they return immediately for cash. The Monetary Authority didn’t immediately reply to an e-mail or answer calls seeking confirmation.
TECH AND MEDIA
Angelina Jolie Hurts the Feelings of the Chinese People – China Real Time Report – WSJ Years after her husband angered Chinese authorities by appearing in a film about Tibet, Ms. Jolie earned the country’s ire – or hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, to borrow a phrase beloved of state media—with an impolitic answer to an interview question while in Shanghai to promote her latest movie, DisneyDIS +1.03%’s “Maleficent.” Asked by the Associated Press to name her favorite Chinese director, the Hollywood A-lister named “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” director Ang Lee. “I am not sure if you consider Ang Lee Chinese, he’s Taiwanese but he does many Chinese-language films with many Chinese artists and actors, and I think his works and the actors in his films are the ones I am most familiar with and very fond of,” she said.
China’s ZTE Taking Staff From BlackBerry, Motorola Mobility – WSJ Inside ZTE’s human resources department, a special team is tasked with recruiting talent from BlackBerry. While the team has so far recruited fewer than 20 people, it plans to hire more, a person familiar with the situation said. Most of the new hires from BlackBerry, which include senior engineers, are currently based in Canada, but they may later move to the U.S. or China to play greater roles for ZTE, the person added.
Huawei tries to be a healthy “sapling” in competition with “big trees”: interview – Xinhua Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, a Shenzhen-based Chinese telecommunication giant, is trying to get more business momentum in the U.S. market by joining hands with local partners. “By continuously strengthening cooperation with local partners, Huawei is gradually expanding the visibility and credibility in the U.S. market”, said Shen Jingyang (Victor Shen), the CEO of Huawei Enterprise USA Inc.
Microsoft to cooperate with Qihoo 360 amid security concerns in China: Xinhua | Reuters Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) will work with Chinese Internet security specialist Qihoo 360 Technology Co (QIHU.N) on mobile Internet and artificial intelligence technology, state media reported, as the U.S. software giant fights security concerns in the country. Microsoft and Qihoo on Monday signed a deal to “cooperate in mobile Internet products” and “technology exchanges in artificial intelligence”, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Microsoft Search Technology Center Asia.
SOCIETY, ART, SPORTS, CULTURE AND HISTORY
These questions from the 2014 Chinese college entrance exam will melt your mind!: Shanghaiist Last Saturday marked first time ever that the Chinese college entrance examination, Gaokao (高考) was hosted at the same time as its US counterpart, the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test). Although two tests are in completely different formats, they both have one section in common, the essay/composition. We’ve compiled a list of Gaokao composition topics from different regions in China this year and translated them into English to give you a sense of just how damn cryptic they are.
Look: Nifty Chinese test-cheating devices put the KGB to shame: Shanghaiist A shutter coin that acts as a remote control to turn on a camera that’s built into glasses (main pic). The glasses cam allegedly sends pics of test questions to an outside party, who sends the answers back.
Young heroes make the People’s Daily front page – Xinhua | English.news.cn Two young Chinese men who fought a knife-wielding attacker on a bus made the front page of the People’s Daily, which is usually reserved for major national events and leaders. The Sunday edition of the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), featured a picture of Liu Yanbing, one of the young men, lying in a hospital bed with his head bandaged. The photo was placed prominently on the paper’s front page…The two youngsters, who were scheduled to take China’s college entrance exam, or gaokao, days later, were seriously injured during the fight and were unable to attend the annual exam.
深圳11岁小学生临终前捐器官救人_新闻_腾讯网
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Q. and A.: Yang Yong on Documenting the Damage to China’s Rivers – NYTimes.com As a geologist for a state-owned company, Yang Yong saw firsthand both the beauty of China’s rivers and the damage done to them by the country’s rapid development. In 1992, he set out to document the degradation of China’s waterways on his own, and has since widely explored rivers across China, particularly in the south and west of the country. His photographs of the Jinsha River, the Yangtze River’s upper reach, which flows through Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces, show vividly how that critical waterway has been harmed by the development of mining and hydropower. In an interview, he discussed what led him to this line of research, what his exploration of China’s rivers has revealed and how rapid development affects people living along these waterways.
Tackling malnutrition among China’s rural babies – FSI Stanford “Anemia acts like an invisible drag on the Chinese economy,” says Scott Rozelle, director of the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). REAP is a part of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment. Rozelle and his colleagues spearheaded a survey of 1,800 babies in Shaanxi province that shows the scope and impact of malnutrition throughout the region. Their findings will soon be published.
China Tries to Electrify Clean Car Market as Consumers Yawn – China Real Time Report – WSJ Charging stations also will be scattered every 38 kilometers along the 1,500-kilometer expressway from Beijing to the southern province of Hunan, which forms the major part of the highway linking the Chinese capital to Hong Kong. Separately, a story on the People’s Daily website said 1,000 public fast-charging stations for electric vehicles will be built in Beijing within this year…Amid these baby steps comes news sure to disappoint those hoping the country will be able to meet its electric-vehicle target. In June, the number of applicants for license plates for new-energy cars in Beijing dropped about 30% compared with February.
Chinese natural-gas demand to nearly double: IEA – MarketWatch China’s power, industrial and transport sectors will drive overall Chinese gas demand to 315 billion cubic meters in 2019, an increase of 90% over the forecast period, the report said. While China will remain a significant importer, half of its new gas demand will be met from domestic resources, most of them unconventional. Chinese production is set to grow by 65% to 193 billion cubic meters in 2019 from 117 billion cubic meters in 2013, the report said.
BEIJING
北京社科院蓝皮书建议居住证对接户籍 高积分优先落户-财经网 Beijing CASS issues bluebook, suggests difficult measures for migrants to qualify for Beijing Hukous // 蓝皮书建议北京在居住证制度中规定户籍对接办法。
京津冀将明确大气承载红线 北京明年或收拥堵费_网易新闻中心 Beijing-
Beijing launches new bid to ‘civilise’ residents ahead of Apec summit | South China Morning Post The campaign, labelled “Embracing Apec Wonderful Pekingese-Citizen Civilised Behaviour Promotion,” also promises to crack down on jaywalking, drink driving and drivers refusing to stop at zebra crossings. The Beijing municipal government said in a press release that it aims to encourage “civilised orderly and courteous transport, to improve people’s overall quality to display (their) wonderfulness.”