"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
Xi says “mass-line” campaign just the start – Xinhua The close of the campaign is not the end of good work styles,” Xi told the meeting. The campaign, the President said, provided the Party with new experiences and a better understanding of how to organize educational activities, but the achievements were only the beginning and not set in stone. He called for the “mass line” to be a continuing aspect the Party’s ties with the people . Xi wants the responsibilities of different parts of the Party machine clarified, and ideological education combined with system building. He called for the Party to administer cadres strictly. Supervision, he said, is key to party building.
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Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung faces questions over secret $7m payout from Australian firm–The Age Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, CY Leung, has pocketed millions in secret fees from a listed Australian company in return for supporting its Asian business ambitions, a Fairfax Media investigation can reveal. The arrangement is outlined in a secret contract dated December 2, 2011 , before he was elected chief executive, in which Australian engineering company UGL agreed to pay the Beijing-backed politician £4 million (more than $A7 million).
Related: Anonymous Tip Reveals Secret Payments to Hong Kong Leader–VOA One of the authors, John Garnaut, an Asia-Pacific editor with the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne’s The Age, told VOA his team received the document “out of the blue” from an anonymous source last Sunday [October 5]. Garnaut declined to speculate who supplied a copy of the contract. But he said the timing of the leak was notable, coming eight days into an unprecedented civil disobedience campaign by pro-democracy activists who have paralyzed major Hong Kong streets and demanded Leung’s resignation. “Any information damaging to Leung was hugely newsworthy. I’m not going to argue with that,” Garnaut said.//All sorts of speculation about identity and motive of tipster…
Related: DTZ’s mystery bidder was China’s Tianjin Innovative Financial – Telegraph DTZ, the property agent, rejected an offer of 18p-a-share and full payment of its debts from a huge Chinese state-owned company just days before it wiped out its investors completely with a controversial pre-pack administration.
How Tear Gas Attack Ignited Hong Kong Democracy Protests – Bloomberg This account of the events that rocked Hong Kong is compiled from dozens of interviews with protesters, police and officials and eyewitness accounts by Bloomberg News reporters. Some declined to be identified, citing an unwillingness to be seen criticizing the city government or the confidential nature of the events. Leung’s office declined comment.
Cambridge University under fresh scrutiny over Chinese government-linked donation – Telegraph The meetings took place between 2009 and 2011 at the Raffles Hotel in Beijing and successfully solicited a donation from Wen Ruchun, the daughter of the then prime minister Wen Jiabao. Ms Wen, 41, subsequently agreed to fund a chair of Chinese Development studies through Chong Hua, her charitable foundation. The inaugural appointee was her former professor at Cambridge, Peter Nolan.
Reforms to Liberalize the Land Market Cannot Drift Off Course – Caixin Hu Shuli editorial // Land authorities have a duty to explain to landowners why they may not decide how their land is used. If restrictions are to be placed on land use for reasons of public good and the prevention of external costs, these reasons must be clearly supported by the community and conveyed to the owners. In other words, the market should still be the driver of how the land is used. The recent debate on land reform casts a shadow on its progress. We hope the government will unveil its measures for implementing its third plenum decision as soon as possible. After careful study and review, it must detail how it intends to “let the collective owners of farmland manage their own land,” by selling and leasing it.
‘Corruption in China today’ – John Garnaut and Merriden Varrall by Lowyinstitute interesting podcast
Beijing to use odd-even traffic ban during APEC – Xinhua Beijing Municipal Government also announced Thursday that the State Council has approved a six-day holiday from work from Nov. 7 to 12 for workers from government departments, institutions, and organizations in the city. However, they will be required to work Sunday, Nov. 2 and Saturday, Nov. 15 instead. The holiday is another move to reduce the number of cars on the road. Companies and other organizations within the municipality will be allowed to make their own arrangements. Zhuang Zhidong, deputy head with the municipal environmental protection bureau, said it is international practice for locals to enjoy holidays during APEC meetings, and it will also help reduce environmental pollution.
China unveils plan to better manage govt money – ecns China’s cabinet on Wednesday announced an action plan for better budget management as part of efforts to build a more transparent and more efficient fiscal and taxation system. The long-awaited decision by the State Council was seen as the first step to jump start a new round of broader fiscal and taxation reforms by 2020 as it tries to ensure all government income and spending is included under the management system.// 国务院关于深化预算管理制度改革的决定
国发〔2014〕45号
BUSINESS, ECONOMY AND TRADE
Zero Bailout Policy for Local Gov’t Debt Leaves Doubts-Caixin The central government’s latest policy on local government bond issuance has made clear that it will not bail out troubled issuers, but analysts say the announcement serves as more of a warning against reckless borrowing. The October 2 announcement released by the State Council, China’s cabinet, explicitly states, “Local governments are responsible for the repayment of bonds they issue, and the central government will follow the principle of no bailouts.” This is the first time the central government has said it will not ride to the rescue of local government failing to repay their bonds.
Chinese Return to the Waldorf, With $2 Billion – NYTimes.com The Waldorf Astoria also holds special significance in the history of United States-China relations. Every Chinese leader since Mr. Deng has stayed there, including former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. More recently, investors lined up outside the Waldorf Astoria to listen to Jack Ma, the chairman of the Alibaba Group, just before his company went public in the largest initial public offering in history. Back on April 14, 1974, Mr. Deng seemed to enjoy his first visit to New York. On that evening, at the Waldorf just after 8 p.m., Dr. Kissinger hosted Mr. Deng and other Chinese officials in his hotel suite, 35A.
The Complexities of the State-Industrial Complex – Caixin In recent decades, China has had many reforms that helped lay the foundation for further economic development. Many more, however, have stagnated and faltered, including reforms for SOEs. That is why it may still be too early to celebrate this current round of SOE reforms. The author is the head of the China Research Department of Credit Suisse Securities
经济参考网 – 房贷松绑雷声大雨点小：银行进展不一额度未定 lots of thunder, little rain since announcement of loosening of mortgages, and won’t be much with quotas allocated to mortgages? // 节前“认贷不认房”新政松绑楼市，一石激起千层浪。
黄金周保利地产“进账”70亿 部分房企欲上调年度指标_财经频道_一财网 Poly Real Estate says golden week sales beat expectations, took in 7B RMB // 央 行松贷的大红包让开发商在国庆黄金周期间来了个“幸福满怀”——
China Sales Favor Home Team as It Jilts KKR to Ontario – Bloomberg That private investment doesn’t necessarily include foreigners. China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, said it prioritized domestic investors, or those who “bring benefits to the general public of China,” when it announced the sale on Sept. 14. Potential foreign buyers were discouraged when told investors were unlikely to be offered a board seat and a say in decision-making at the unit, which runs more than 30,000 fuel stations, people familiar with the matter said. They were also confined to negotiating with Sinopec’s advisers while some Chinese investors were able to speak directly with Sinopec’s state-appointed management, the people said.// and people are surprised?
Sea, sun and easy visas lure China buyers – FT.com Until recently, Portugal’s Chinese community, estimated at fewer than 20,000, consisted almost entirely of first-generation emigrants running cut-price shops and restaurants. That image is changing. Along Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberade, the chic shopping street where Mr Kung’s offices are located, wealthy Chinese tourists and newcomers can be seen buying Prada, Gucci and Ralph Lauren. // this change in the overseas Chinese population is happening in many major cities globally
地方债新规打破银政生态圈 倒逼银行资产结构调整_财经频道_一财网 国 庆期间发布的《国务院关于地方政府债务管理的意见》（下称《
China, EU close to deal on telecoms trade dispute- sources | Reuters The EU’s trade chief is ready to drop an investigation into what Brussels says are illegal subsidies to Chinese makers of equipment for mobile telecom networks if China makes concessions.
China Outlines Plans to Ease Capital Controls, Boost Use of Yuan – Bloomberg Chinese nationals will be able to buy equities and real estate via a Qualified Domestic Retail Investor scheme, Wang Dan, a deputy director general at the central bank, said today at a conference in Beijing. There are also talks under way to give locals access to yuan capital markets in Singapore and London, she said, without giving any start dates or sizes for the programs. Agricultural Bank of China Co. announced plans today to become the first company to offer yuan-denominated Global Depository Receipts in London.
北京市住建委回应传言：目前仍将继续限购 CAIJING. Beijing housing officials respond to rumors that housing purchase restrictions about to be dropped, say that have not received any information about that happening…
筑底证券创新——专访中国证监会主席助理张育军_封面_
POLITICS AND LAW
The Mass Line on a Massive Famine | The China Story To take the campaign further, such as by using coercive measures to silence Yang Jisheng or other proponents of the view that a massive famine occurred in the High-Maoist era, would promote the primacy of ideology over scientific method in academic research, something which none of the senior figures in Xi Jinping’s administration has advocated to this date. In any case by July 2014, the broader Mass Line Education and Practice Movement was approaching the end of its designated lifespan (its conclusion was formally announced by Xi Jinping at the end of September), and the political wind was blowing towards new horizons: rumours were circulating that charges against Zhou Yongkang were about to be announced, suggesting that the anti-corruption campaign would shortly be moving from tigers to flies; and the rule of law rather than the Mass Line was being touted as the next focus of political work to be discussed at the Party’s summer conference in Beidaihe and then at the late October Fourth Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress. Li Shenming was also moving with the times. In April 2014, he gave up his position as Vice-President of CASS to take up a new post as Deputy Director of the Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee 内务司法委员会 of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC). In this new capacity, his latest contribution to the public opinion struggle was a full-page article published in the People’s Daily on 30 September commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the NPC in which he spelled out the perils of One Person, One Vote for the benefit of his restless Hong Kong compatriots
Supreme People’s Court’s prescription for the disease of judicial corruption | Supreme People’s Court Monitor In a build up to the National Day holiday (and since), the Supreme People’s Court (the Court) has focused some of its attention on combating the disease of judicial corruption. The prescription is in the form of three types of Communist Party documents. This blogpost highlights the prescription and speculates on the timing.
Tibet Armed Police commissar’s political status upgraded – Global Times Major General Tang Xiao, the political commissar of the Tibet Armed Police Corps, part of the Chinese People’s Armed Police, now enjoys the “treatment” of a head of a corps-sized military body, which is equal to that of officials at a provincial or ministerial level. However, it has not been announced that the Corps, which is not a corps-sized military body, will be expanded to a full corps size. Under the dual leadership of the State Council and the Central Military Commission, the Chinese People’s Armed Police is composed of internal security forces and various police forces, including border security, firefighting and security guard units
山西公安厅交管局长被带走 或涉申维辰金道铭案_网易新闻中心 head of Shanxi Traffic Police under investigation
The State Council of the People’s Republic of China nice new site
坚持中国特色解决民族问题的正确道路–观点–人民网 p1 People’s Daily Commentary Thursday on studying Xi’s speech at the late September central work conference on ethnic affairs // 一论学习贯彻习近平中央民族工作会议重要讲话精神 本报评论员
The CCP’s Solution to China’s ‘Ethnic Issues’ | The Diplomat From September 28 to 29, China’s Central Committee held a two-day conference on ethnic affairs, during which Chinese leadership promised to stimulate “leapfrog development” in China’s ethnic regions. …The conference this weekend was a sign of the new push — according to CCTV, this week’s Ethnic Affairs Work Conference was the first since 2005. As a further sign of its importance, the discussion was attended by six of the seven members of China’s top political body, the Politburo Standing Committee, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang (the only absent PBSC member, Zhang Gaoli, is currently traveling abroad). The conference made it clear that ethnic issues are a major priority for all Party members; according to the statement, each cadre is expected to set aside time to discuss ethnic issues as part of his or her regular duties.
Former party boss of China’s Guangzhou accused of extortion | Reuters The former Chinese Communist Party boss of the southern city of Guangzhou has been expelled from the party after being accused of extortion, bribery and “visiting private clubs”, state media said on Thursday, the latest official to fall in an anti-graft campaign. Wan Qingliang was placed under investigation in June on suspicion of “serious disciplinary violations”, the usual euphemism for graft.
CNPC Anti-Corruption Head Said to Be Detained for Investigation – Bloomberg China National Petroleum Corp.’s executive in charge of rooting out graft has been detained by authorities, according to two officials at the country’s biggest oil and gas producer. Wang Lixin, the head of the discipline and inspection department at the state-owned company, has been held for investigation since late September, said the officials, who requested their names not be used because the information isn’t public. At least two directors under Wang are also being investigated, they said.
中央密集调整省级党委“大管家”_政经频道_财新网 Caixi
中央纪委西院搬家，办公地合一节省时间多“打虎”_打虎记_
More than 50 arrested by Beijing police in anti-terror crackdown in six months | South China Morning Post Beijing police arrested more than 50 suspects in the first half of the year for spreading terrorism information online, the Beijing Morning Post reported today. Police gathered more than 3,300 items of online information deemed to involve terrorism and removed 728 audio and video clips spreading terrorist ideas as part of the nationwide anti-terror campaign, the report said.
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE AFFAIRS
Abe meets with Chinese official who has ties to Xi | The Japan Times Abe’s meeting on Tuesday night with Li Xiaolin, the youngest daughter of former President Li Xiannian, who has known Xi since childhood, comes at a time when the Japanese leader is looking for his first summit with Xi, despite bilateral ties that are strained by historical issues and a territorial dispute. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday that the two met at a cultural event.
China builds military airstrip on disputed island – Channel NewsAsia The newly built facility stretches across Woody Island, part of the Paracel chain, China’s Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday (Oct 7). The Paracels are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, and tensions between Beijing and Hanoi rose this year over Chinese construction and oil exploration there. The runway is Beijing’s latest physical assertion of control in the area, two years after it declared a city named Sansha centred on Woody Island – known as Yongxing in Chinese – to administer vast swathes of the South China Sea
Dealing With the Scourge of “Schadenfreude” in Foreign Reporting on China | CHINA US Focus The government of China has felt obliged to protect the people’s vital interests by blocking publications like The New York Times that had acted as though its purpose was to sabotage those interests. This point was made by former Shanghai mayor, and now deputy head of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Xu Kuangdi, in answering a member of the America Chamber of Commerce after the speech by former president Jimmy Carter in Shanghai on September 9. That the government of China should take measures is understandable. That China has blocked such internet search portals as Google (while affording open internet access to its citizens through portals like Sohu.com) is also understandable and justifiable from the standpoint of the interests of the Chinese people.–Stephen M. Harner is a former Foreign Service Officer (U.S. Department of State), international banker, and consultant in Japan and China // wonder how his China business is going
Did Ken Livingstone Crony and Anti-Occupy Spokesman John Ross “Censor” the Global Times? | Beijing Cream Within hours of this going online – and being enthusiastically shared among Twitter’s China hands – Ross was on the line to complain. Demonstrating his commitment to Party values by attempting to get the young journalist in trouble, Ross demanded immediate expunging of negative comments about himself. “I am well used to expect such articles by people such as the Southern Media Group,” Ross fumed, “but it was a great surprise to see it in Global Times.” The reasons for Ross’s rage became abundantly clear: “This article attacks and attempts to discredit me by the typical methods of suppression of information and selective quotation,” he wrote (our emphases). Ross then demanded that several lines be removed – aka “suppression of information” – to make way for pre-approved remarks, supplied by him, inserted in their stead… a.k.a. “selective quotation” (!)
Rich Chinese immigrants’ deception costs British Columbia billions | South China Morning Post From 2005 to 2012, a total of 29,764 rich Chinese, mostly from the mainland but also from Taiwan and Hong Kong, are known to have moved to BC under the programme, which required applicants to loan Canada C$800,000 (HK$5.54 million) per family and have minimum assets of C$1.6 million. Yet in the same period, only 13,872 certificates of permanent residency were issued to applicants from greater China who nominated BC as their intended destination. This suggests at least 53 per cent of all Chinese known to have settled in BC under the IIP said they planned to live elsewhere. Immigration experts said this was mainly done to secure preferential treatment – for instance, by applying via Quebec’s independently run IIP to bypass the queue for the now-defunct federal version of the scheme.// then Canada should rescind the fraudsters right to permanent residency
China angered after FBI head says Chinese hacking costs billions | Reuters Speaking on CBS’ 60 Minutes program on Sunday, FBI Director James Comey said Chinese hackers were targeting big U.S. companies, and that some of them probably did not even know they had been hacked. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, asked about Comey’s remarks at a daily news briefing, said China banned hacking and “firmly strikes” against such criminal activity. “We express strong dissatisfaction with the United States’ unjustified fabrication of facts in an attempt to smear China’s name and demand that the U.S.-side cease this type of action,” Hong said.
HONG KONG, MACAO AND TAIWAN
How China frames the news on Occupy – China Media Project The foreign conspiracy frame has been one of the most widely used in Chinese coverage (we use the word generously) of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. And not surprisingly, we see it again in today’s coverage. On page 10 today, in an article called, “Opposition Party Visits America to Work On the ‘Script’ (反对派访美策划“剧本”), the Chinese-language Global Times “exposes” the way the United States has attempted to influence affairs in Hong Kong through grant programs like the National Endowment for Democracy. Here is a list of the story frames we find in mainland Chinese coverage of the Hong Kong protests today.
Connecting and Comparing the Taipei and Hong Kong Struggles | The LARB Blog In the months leading up to Occupy Central, one of the many places Hong Kong students, who have been nothing if not eclectic in their searches for ideas and inspiration, looked for a model for action was towards the Sunflower movement and its successes. Back in June, some Hong Kong students even attempted an exact replication of the Legislative Yuan occupation, rashly staging an occupation of Hong Kong’s Legislative Assembly. Though the mimic occupation was an instant bust—students were dragged out immediately—and created internal disarray among Hong Kong activists, the conversation with their Taiwanese counterparts continued. Hong Kong students looked towards what worked and implemented it in their own struggle, while also mining for clues, tactics and symbols in their city’s own protesting past, mainland Chinese protests back to the student-led May Fourth Movement of 1919, and events in other parts of the world
The Voice of a Generation | TIME cover of Time Magazine // Joshua Wong and his fellow students have triggered a youthquake that’s shaking up Hong Kong…Off the podium, Wong is polite, prone to bringing his hands together in a penitent clasp. He was raised in a Christian family that dispatched him to rural China for volunteer teaching; some of his fellow student activists are friends from church. In 2011, when he was just 14 years old, Wong formed a group of students in Hong Kong called Scholarism to stop the territory from implementing a mainland-designed “national education” policy that ignored the Tiananmen massacre and pushed fealty to the Chinese Communist Party. After 100,000 people joined his 2012 street rally, the Hong Kong government backed off.
China’s Long Game With Taiwan Just Got Longer – Bloomberg As the British packed, pessimists feared that China would smother Hong Kong’s freewheeling atmosphere under an authoritarian blanket; optimists anticipated Hong Kong’s relative freedom spreading to the mainland. “We had high hopes that the Hong Kong model would somewhat spread,” said Susan Shirk, a State Department official in 1997 and now the director of the 21st Century China Program at the University of California, San Diego. “It hasn’t happened.”
In a Gritty Hong Kong District, Demonstrators Show a Populist Edge – NYTimes.com The face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement most seen by the world has been a polite university student encamped near the city government headquarters, but the gritty, lower-class neighborhood of Mong Kok has become a mosh pit of more freewheeling protest, attracting a bigger proportion of workers, shopkeepers, artists, agitators and some outright oddballs.
Hong Kong’s Leader, on the Protests – NYTimes.com Mr. Lee claims that China has violated its promises in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Joint Declaration, signed in 1984, never mentions the election of the chief executive by universal suffrage. Only the Basic Law — a national law of China and Hong Kong promulgated in 1990 — states the ultimate aim of electing the chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee…Both the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law state that the winner of a chief executive election will be appointed by the Central People’s Government. Nobody in Hong Kong, or abroad for that matter, can ignore Beijing’s legal authority, whether we talk about the current system of an electoral college or via universal suffrage in 2017. // is “electoral college” a term used in Hong Kong or did CY Leung use it here for an American audience?
TECH AND MEDIA
Resolution Talent Agency Folding After Chinese Funding Ends | Deadline In a shocking move, upstart talent agency Resolution has just announced to its staff that it is dissolving. Agency insiders have said for the last hour, owner Jeff Berg’s staff has been meeting with the troops — Resolution has a headcount of 50 agents and support staff — telling them that the agency has to wind down because its funding partner, Bison Capital, has not fulfilled promised funding obligations. Insiders said that because of this, the agency is shutting down, and that Berg will do his best to help people find jobs elsewhere — as well as clients and creditors who signed on to the new percentery that Berg started after he left ICM 18 months ago. “The emphasis now is to help people get jobs and create transitions,” said a source.//sounds like a sketchy deal from the start. Born of desperation?
Low Price, High Hopes For a Phone – NYTimes.com Well, a unicorn just galloped onto the horizon. This month, OnePlus, a start-up based in Shenzhen, China, will begin taking pre-orders for the One, a fantastic low-price phone that tech enthusiasts across the globe have been lusting after for months.
China’s Booming Mobile Gaming Market with 330M Users — China Internet Watch The number of China’s mobile gaming users was already over 0.33 billion in H1 2014 and it is believed that there is still great potential in online gaming market with its rapid growth in users according to Nielsen. Total number of mobile gaming users on smartphones reached 190 million in 2013 according to iResearch. In H1 2014, total revenue of China mobile online gaming market exceeded more than RMB12.52 million (US$ 2.03 million) with a an increase of 394.9% YoY
军队推信息安全 国产芯片提速_财经频道_一财网 CBN says new PLA information security guidelines will be fillip for domestic microchip development…China been working on this for decades, not easy // 作为国产应用中关键的一环——芯片，
融合创新 一体发展（深入学习贯彻习近平同志系列重要讲话精神） Depu
Dalian Wanda Plans Fund to Lure Movie Business to China – WSJ Dalian Wanda Group Corp., in its aim to build a Chinese version of Hollywood, said it plans to set up an annual fund of one billion yuan, or about $160 million, to lure movie producers to a planned multibillion-dollar studio project. Wang Jianlin, chairman of the property-and-entertainment conglomerate and one of China’s richest men, said the company would work with the private sector to annually provide the funding for film and television production at the Oriental Movie Metropolis, a studio project on which Wanda broke ground last year.
SOCIETY, ART, SPORTS, CULTURE AND HISTORY
90后诗人坠楼身亡疑自杀 留诗《我弥留之际》 “worker poet” Xu Lizhi suicides by jumping from Shenzhen building on 10.1…some reports say was at a Foxconn site // 昨日，成都商报记者获悉，
媒体揭放生“利益链”:放生越多死亡数量越多_网易新闻中心 B
北大清华两校同日首发《章程》 突出“政校分开”_新闻_腾讯网 本报讯（记者 雷嘉 董鑫）北大的学术委员会有学生代表加入，
Culture of last hunting tribe in danger–Xinhua For Gu and others from the Aoluguya Ewenki tribe, dubbed “the last hunting tribe of China,” such trips have become routine following the tribe’s relocation to a township near Genhe City, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, from the mountain forests eleven years ago. For a decade, nomadic life has been the only choice to keep their ancient culture alive. Compared with the damp, silent forests, the nationality township, less than 4 km away from the city proper, is abuzz with northern-Europe influence. The ethnic construction there is not only the home to people like Gu, but thousands of tourists eager to catch a glimpse of his mysterious cultur
Having babies from abroad – People’s Daily Online Instead, Tang chose the California Surrogacy Center agency as his first option after reading the detailed introduction on its website. Compared with many other agencies that he could contact only via e-mail, the center has a consulting office in Beijing, Tang said. The couple visited the office on the 11th floor of the Nanyin Building near the West Third Ring Road in Beijing on a Friday morning. A consultant named Liu Jia hosted the couple. She said the office is only for consultations. Other procedures, including health checks, contractual arrangements, surrogacy and delivery of the baby, are done in the US. // and the kid is a US citizen?
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Yunnan Earthquake Raises Fears on Hydropower Projects – Caixin Discussions over whether the Ludian earthquake was triggered by two giant hydropower projects being built in the region have been a hot topic since Nature, a renowned scientific journal, drew public attention to the matter. It published an article in September, citing the research work of Fan Xiao, a Chinese quake expert, which suggested that there was a correlation between the timing of the reservoirs being filled to a rise in seismic activity in the southwestern region. Liu Baojun, a geologist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is among the experts who say reservoirs can indeed be linked to earthquakes. However, he and many others say they cannot tell whether Fan is right because they do not have enough data.
Wood May Be Key to Low Death Toll in China Earthquake – China Real Time Report – WSJ When the earth rumbled just before bedtime in China’s Yunnan province on Tuesday and authorities set their highest-level emergency alert, many braced for heavy casualties. But two days later, the official death toll from the magnitude 6.6 quake in Jinggu County stood at just one person. The area’s sparse population is one reason. Another, according to Chinese officials: the prevalence of wood-framed homes, an uncommon building structure in China.
AGRICULTURE
Dim Sums: Rural China Economics and Policy: Financing China’s New Great Leap in Agriculture China’s “modernization” of agriculture is just getting underway. “Modern” modes of production that developed since the mid-20th century depend on mechanical equipment, sophisticated buildings, irrigation systems, scientifically-bred plants and animal stock, greenhouses, laboratories, as well as highly-trained farmers and technicians. This requires massive investment. To make the investment financially viable, modern agriculture also must rely on a large scale of operation to spread the fixed costs over large volumes of output…Without an efficient system for financial intermediation, the accumulation of capital in agriculture is slap-dash, capricious, and possibly fraught with danger.
China to Battle GMO Crop Fear From Field to Dinner Table – Bloomberg China, the world’s most-populous country and the biggest consumer of rice, soybeans and wheat, has begun a campaign to push genetically modified organisms as it seeks to expand food supplies. While no domestic grain crops are bioengineered, President Xi Jinping has endorsed the technology used to boost output everywhere from the Americas to Africa. China’s Ministry of Agriculture said Sept. 28 it would use media, seminars and street advertising to combat the perceived risks.
Xi’s Remarks on GMO Signal Caution – China Real Time Report – WSJ “What Xi Jinping said doesn’t amount to a policy change, which has been quite consistent since the 1980s, if in fact a little slower now,” said Huang Dafang, senior researcher and professor at the Biotechnology Research Institute, a unit of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences charged with developing the technology. “Other people may take various angles on it because they’ve never heard Xi make such comments before. We have, so it’s not a surprise to us.” The release of the compendium by the Communist Party was part of a formal documentation of Mr. Xi’s recent speeches, rather than a deliberate policy signal, Mr. Huang said. Chicago corn prices have been unmoved since the disclosure of Mr. Xi’s remarks, ebbing slightly in recent days to $159 a metric ton due to expectations of a robust U.S. harvest, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dim Sums: Rural China Economics and Policy: China Eager to End Price Support Policy The abandonment of price supports comes six years after the “temporary reserve” was introduced and ten years minimum prices for rice and wheat were introduced. Price support programs were first introduced during a period of excess supply and low prices. Since then, Chinese prices have been ratcheted upward until they are well above international prices. Now China faces a situation of excess domestic supplies and high prices. Officials have been purchasing grains, cotton, oilseeds and sugar to prevent prices from falling and now have record-high inventories of commodities. Yet, with prices above world prices, imports are pouring in, adding to the excess supply in the Chinese market. Hence the eagerness to do away with the programs.
FOOD AND TRAVEL
Tibet hosts record number of holiday tourists – Xinhua From Oct.1 to 7, the region hosted 296,000 overnight tourists and 449,000 one-day travellers. The total number of tourists grew 12.8 percent compared with the same period last year. Tourism revenue hit 337 million yuan (54.8 million U.S. dollars) in the past week. On Oct. 3, 124,000 tourist arrived, the most for any single day. With its rich and relatively untapped tourist resources, the southwestern region received 12.9 million domestic and overseas tourists last year, up 22 percent from the previous year. Tourism brought it 16.5 billion yuan of revenue in 2013, or more than one-fifth of the local economy
BEIJING
Beijing issues smog alert – Xinhua Beijing issued a yellow alert for air pollution on Wednesday with smog forecast to continue for the next three days. Due to the weather, pollution was predicted to remain heavy in Beijing until Saturday, said the Beijing heavy air pollution response office. Earlier on Wednesday, the Beijing Meteorological Observatory issued a yellow alert for smog. It is the first yellow smog alert in Beijing since the beginning of July. Tianjin and Hebei also issued a yellow alert.
Tour of Beijing tour of Beijing bike race that starts friday still going on in the smog?
Beijing’s heavy smog derived from straw-burning? – Xinhua The Henan provincial environmental protection bureau said pollution discharged from the 7,893 straw burning sites it has monitored in the past week has accumulated in the air, which lacked flow. Farmers in north China region traditionally burn straw after autumn harvest, and plough to dig the ashes into earth, which they believe fertilizes farmland. People in Beijing, however, are not quite convinced burning straw is the chief cause of the smog. Burning straw was far more prevalent 20 years ago in north China’s rural areas at a time when smog was rarely heard of in Beijing.