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

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The rumored stimulus now appears to consist mainly of an accelerated investment program into strategic emerging industries including “energy-saving and environmental protection, information technology, biology, advanced equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials and new-energy vehicles.” The official Xinhua Chinese report is here–温家宝主持召开国务院常务会议.

Chen Guangcheng wrote an OpEd for the New York Times about How China Flouts Its Laws. The Washington Post reports that Chen Guangcheng, now in U.S., is poised to play role in yet another abortion debate and become a political football. The Post writes that:

“Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is citing Chen’s work in its critique of President Obama’s record on human rights. Particularly, Romney campaign officials argue that Obama has been weak on the one-child rule, the much-publicized population-control measure that has been criticized as an under-recognized human rights abuse.”

I still hope Ray-Ban will sponsor Chen. Suggested tagline?  “Cool is good. Cool and Free is better.”

The South China Morning Post, citing the Caixin report 农行副行长杨琨被曝“协助调查”, tells us that Yang Kun, a vice-president of Agricultural Bank of China, has been detained over allegations he used clients’ money to gamble in Macao. Today’s 21st Century Business Herald has more details on this developing case, reporting in 农行副行长“出事” 牵出神秘商人王耀辉 that Yang’s detention stems from an investigation of Wang Yaohui, a prominent Beijing real estate developer and art collector. Beijing readers are no doubt familiar with Solana, one of Wang’s biggest projects. It sounds like there are a fair amount of unpaid Macao gambling debts right now, but the last thing the casinos need is the detention of their debtors, as then they will never get paid.

Following on yesterday’s discussion of Internet censorship, the Nieman Journalism Lab tells us more about Weibo information management in Reverse engineering Chinese censorship: When and why are controversial tweets deleted? China’s Internet management bureaucracy seems big and strong enough to survive the apparent downfall of the “Father of the Great Firewall.”

China has just established the China Overseas Fisheries Association “in response to increasing competition worldwide and declining domestic fishing resources.” Expect more disputes over fishing grounds. Are there enough fish in the oceans to feed the world, especially given the huge rise in Chinese consumption of aquatic products? Every time I see the seafood buffet bar at Golden Jaguar in Beijing I can not help but think we may all be screwed…

Thanks for reading, and remember the best way to see this daily post is to subscribe by email, especially if you are in China, as Sinocism is still blocked here. You can also follow me on @niubi or Sina Weibo @billbishop. Feel free to recommend to friends or donate.

• Philippines, China still miles apart on shoal issue | Inquirer Global Nation
  Del Rosario did not disclose the negotiation points, but going by China’s reported “requirement”—that Chinese public service ships at the shoal not to be disturbed—the consultations would lead to, at best, temporary agreements that would allow the two sides to disengage without losing face.
  He also did not say how Manila was responding to Beijing’s demand. But he indicated that both sides did not expect to reach a lasting solution to the dispute this early.
• Traffickers target displaced Kachin on Chinese border | Democratic Voice of Burma
  A growing number of Kachin women are being trafficked over the Chinese border as criminal networks target vulnerable populations uprooted by the ongoing civil conflict, humanitarian groups have warned.
• Wang Lijun’s top aide resigns, may face probe | SCMP.com
  Wang Pengfei, a trusted police deputy from Liaoning, was thought to have helped his boss flee to Chengdu
• Graff Diamonds Postpones Planned $1.5 Billion Hong Kong IPO – Bloomberg
• 借钱修铁路：新长铁路偿债未了局 – 宏观 – 21世纪网
  此时，新长铁路已运营了7年时间，不过，本报日前从盐城市方面获悉，当地已明确7月底前实现集中兑付并计付利息。
• Group formed to aid fisheries|Society|chinadaily.com.cn
  A nationwide distant-water fisheries association was established on Tuesday in response to increasing competition worldwide and declining domestic fishing resources.
  “China consumption of aquatic products has been growing in recent years amid the rising population and rapid urbanization. However, the country’s capacity on overseas fisheries is still lagging, compared with world levels,” said Han Changfu, minister of agriculture.
• China to include fingerprints in ID|Society|chinadaily.com.cn
  China will require its citizens to register their fingerprints when applying for ID cards from January 2013 in a bid to curb counterfeit ID cards and ensure faster identification, according to the Ministry of Public Security
• China boosts strategic emerging industries|Economy|chinadaily.com.cn
• 农行副行长“出事” 牵出神秘商人王耀辉 – 机构 – 21世纪网
• Grey Area: Southern Weekend Takes on the PRC-DPRK Sea Dispute « SINO-NK
• Heard on the Street: Greek Tragedy Not Achilles’ Heel for China – WSJ.com
  A Greek exit from the common currency, and a fall in the euro’s value, might cause some hand-wringing for SAFE. But China’s support for the euro zone has not come cheap. Concessions have been extracted as China has bought into strategic assets—a port in Greece, a piece of the electrical grid in Portugal, oil from Spain.A deepening of the European crisis will not leave China unscathed. But exposure to Europe will not prove China’s Achilles heel.
• Record Year for Chinese Domestic M&A – Deal Journal – WSJ
• Panetta Heads to Asia to Back Allies, Avoid Riling China – Bloomberg
• China Stocks Seen Rising 15% by Goldman Partner on Loans – Bloomberg
  The Shanghai Composite Index is set to gain 15 percent from yesterday’s close to 2,750 by year-end as slowing inflation allows the government to loosen monetary policy and banks to lend more to companies, according to Beijing Gao Hua Securities Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s partner in China and the firm with the most correct predictions for yuan-denominated A shares in the two years to January 2012, based on Bloomberg Rankings.
• ZHAOYI 昭仪翠屋
  Jade will be/already is a better investment than gold. Zhaoyi is killing it, expect an A share listing soon
• Hong Kong’s Gold Trading in Yuan Slides 78% From January Record – Bloomberg
  Gold demand in China, the second-largest consumer, may stagnate this year, as declining prices put off investors and slower economic growth crimps sales, according to Lao Feng Xiang Co., the nation’s largest maker of gold jewelry.
• New Chinese ship causes alarm – Taipei Times
  OWER PROJECTION:By as early as 2014, the Chinese navy could have at its disposal a vessel that could dramatically change the face of an amphibious attack on Taiwan
• Currency deal ushers in a new era|Top Stories|chinadaily.com.cn
  Direct trading of yuan and yen will boost ties between China and Japan
  China and Japan will start direct trading of their currencies on Friday in a move to boost trade ties between Asia’s two biggest economies.
• 农行副行长杨琨被曝“协助调查”_金融频道_财新网
  杨琨是目前农行排名第一的副行长，这也是国有银行股改上市之后，被调查级别最高的银行高管
• Top mainland banker held in gambling probe | SCMP.com
  Vice-president of Agricultural Bank detained by party’s graft-busters over allegations he used clients’ money to run up debts at Macau casinos
• Reverse engineering Chinese censorship: When and why are controversial tweets deleted?-Nieman
  the best time to weibo something politically sensitive in China? After 11 o’clock on a Friday night, according to the data.
  “Interestingly, deletion of Sina Weibo messages tend to hit a low on Saturdays,” Tschang wrote. “I’m not too sure why that is, except that maybe censors want to take time off on weekends as well.”
• General Says He Was ‘Accurately Quoted’ But Misspoke On North Korea : The Two-Way : NPR
• 文化产业基金乱象：热钱“变相圈地”_互联网_科技时代_新浪网
• Indiana prosecuting Chinese woman for suicide attempt that killed her foetus | World news | guardian.co.uk
  Bei Bei Shuai took rat poison when her boyfriend left her, leading to the death of their unborn child. Now she’s facing life in prison
• Proof That Military Chips From China Are Infected? | Defense Tech
  true or not this story has legs
• Sergei Skorobogatov’s page on the QVL research project
  We never said that Chineese have put a backdoor inside Actel’s chips and it does not say so in our papers. It is as though people have put 2+2 together and made 4 or 5 or 6 depending on what their agenda is. We believe that other chips will have backdoors and since a US chip has them and you can do lots of things that give you a vast amount of control over the devices then is there any reason to suggest other manufacturers have not done the same. The US military have been looking at the issues of hardware assurance and part authenticity for a good number of years.
  Also that fact that since it is possible now to scan for backdoors in a way that was not possible before, people will start to take a look at this area whether to use it to remove IP or to use it for other purposes.
• Alibaba: One Million Aliyun Phones Sold Since Launch | Tech in Asia
  Alibaba has announced that its Aliyun OS phones have surpassed the one million sales milestone, almost exactly 10 months after its launch last summer. The custom-made, Linux-based mobile operating system – which can also run Android apps via virtualization – was conceived as a cloud-oriented system that would allow app developers to create cloud apps that are instantly update-able in the manner of a web app. It launched initially only with the Tianyu K-Touch W700 hardware, which got refreshed as the W800 (pictured above; priced at 1,499 RMB) earlier this year in-line with v2.0 of Aliyun.
• 温家宝主持召开国务院常务会议 – 高层动态 – 新华网
  温家宝主持召开国务院常务会议
  讨论通过《“十二五”国家战略性新兴产业发展规划》和
  《全国游牧民定居工程建设“十二五”规划》
• 中学老师骂学生：无钱无权无户口 随时可以滚蛋_新闻_腾讯网
  你们家无权无势无钱， 你就是一个‘三无’人员，你随时可以滚蛋！ ”23 日，有微博爆料称， 北京22 中学初二学生言覃在学校遭老师辱骂。记者29 日获悉， 该校校长已当面向学生家长道歉。言覃今年13 岁。
• 广西华银铝业排泥库发生泥浆泄漏 正积极封堵三处疑似泄漏点_图片频道_新华网
  sludge pond bursts in guangxi..grim pics
• China gives nod to strategic industries to aid growth | Reuters
  China’s cabinet on Wednesday approved a blueprint to promote seven strategic industries by 2015 as part of efforts to reform the economy and underpin long-term growth.
  The strategic industries cover energy-saving and environmental protection efforts, next generation information technology developments, biotech, industrial materials, advanced equipment manufacturing and new energy sources, including for the auto sector.
• China restates opposition to military intervention in Syria | Reuters
  China on Wednesday reiterated its opposition to military intervention in Syria amid outrage of the massacre of 108 people, nearly half of them children, and called again for all sides to support mediation efforts by peace envoy Kofi Annan.
• China has power, ambition and wealth but no strategy says new study – 05 – 2012 – News archive – News – News and media – Home
  China does not have a coherent global strategy to match its growth, concludes a new report from the London School of Economics and Political Science.It finds that China’s foreign economic policies are confused or even contradictory because they are driven by domestic politics and priorities rather than by any grand strategic plan.This means that China may not be in full control of its overseas investments and resources, while muddled attempts to increase its regional power may be making America stronger.
• Double Jeopardy: Crime and China’s Communist Party – China Real Time Report – WSJ
  China’s announcement this week that the country’s former railway minister had been expelled from the Communist Party for corruption casts a spotlight on a significant flaw in the country’s pursuit of rule of law in criminal cases: More than 80 million Chinese people, including those at the top of the power structure, enjoy a different set of rules.
• 福利房成央企员工隐性收入新招 转手即赚几百万-搜狐新闻
  在寸土寸金的央企“闲置土地”上盖起的福利房通常以近市场价十分之一的价格卖给央企员工。因此，每每传出央企员工福利分房的消息都会引起广泛的关注。
• China’s options: the beyondbrics debate | beyondbrics
  Three experts looked at the future of the Chinese economy for beyondbrics. And what did they see?
  Shen Minggao, of Citigroup, predicts that the government responding soon to the economic slow down with a stimulus. “The longer the policy is delayed, the greater the magnitude of loosening will likely be.”
  But Charles Dumas, of Lombard Street Financial, and Victor Shih, of Northwestern University, both argue that China needs fundamental economic reform because export-driven growth is running out of steam
• Chinese citizens to get US$26 a day for wrongful imprisonment｜Society｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com
  The sum is equal to the average daily income of urbanites in 2011, according to a statement issued by the Supreme People’s Court.
• Ambassador to China Gary Locke Talks Chen, Drama In China – The Daily Beast
• Global Times: reform alone cannot fight corruption – China Media Project
  The May 29, 2012, lead editorial in the Global Times addresses corruption and political reform.]
  Re-posting the editorial yesterday, major web portals, including QQ.com, rewrote the headline of the Global Times as: “China Must Permit Some Corruption, the Public Should Understand“.The altered headline itself prompted a great deal of debate on Chinese social media. “QQ.com has spoken the true import of the Global Times editorial,” one user responded.
• New CCP chiefs of Beijing and Chongqing unofficially named｜Politics｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com
  huh?//
  Hu Chunhua and Zhou Qiang, the party secretaries of Inner Mongolia and Hunan province, have been unofficially appointed the future party chiefs of Beijing and Chongqing respectively ahead of the Communist Party’s 18th National Congress, reports our sister newspaper China Times.
• Renminbi’s mysterious rise: trade finance or interest rate arbitrage? | beyondbrics
  While the renminbi accounts for just 0.34 per cent of all international payments, this year it has accounted for 4 per cent of global issuance of letters of credit (LCs), instruments used to finance trade.
  Or to put it another way, the renminbi is one of the least-used currencies in the world when it comes to all payments, in sixteenth position, but it is now the third-biggest currency for LCs, after the dollar and the euro (see chart.) ..For a start, it suggests that Hong Kong banks have a large exposure to mainland banks sitting on their balance sheets and that discounting LCs has been a big driver of revenues in recent years.But there is a broader point too. If international trade in the renminbi is largely driven by financial arbitrage, as the extraordinary use of letters of credit implies, then Beijing’s plan to internationalise the renminbi is not exactly going according to plan.
• “Greece-Proofing China” by Yu Yongding | Project Syndicate
  For starters, Chinese officials should be under no illusion that the country will be immune to financial contagion. A “Grexit” would hit European banks that hold peripheral eurozone countries’ sovereign bonds. Shock waves from the deleveraging would, in turn, spread to emerging markets like China.
• Online ham sales piggyback on series’ success – Xinhua | English.news.cn
  A Bite of China has triggered an online-shopping craze for food.
• Chinese Women Step Forward in the Backwaters – IPS ipsnews.net
  For years Gou Suqin had to rely on her husband’s meagre migrant’s income from the city to support their rural family. Now, following a 10,000 RMB (1,500 dollars) microcredit loan from UN Women, 50-year-old Gou runs a successful musk deer farm. She now earns 60,000 RMB (9,000 dollars) a year – or six times as much as her husband.
• Chen Guangcheng, now in U.S., poised to play role in yet another abortion debate – The Washington Post
  Conservatives are seizing on the high-profile story of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist who recently arrived in the United States, hoping that the spotlight on his human rights work will bolster their efforts to curb abortions domestically and in China.
  Antiabortion groups, including National Right to Life and the Susan B. Anthony List, are highlighting Chen’s work exposing forced abortions and sterilizations in China in hopes that it will help them with their current priority in the United States, passing legislation banning abortions performed because of a child’s gender. Chen’s plight also has led congressional Republicans to plan hearings this summer on China’s one-child policy
• Cyberthreats turn into megabucks for defense companies – Tony Romm and Jennifer Martinez – POLITICO.com
  As Congress boosts spending on cybersecurity and mulls over new data safety requirements on private industry, some companies stand to get rich.Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other defense and tech companies have been lobbying Capitol Hill about the growing cyberthreats to national security and corporate America, but they also make millions of dollars each year selling a variety of cybersecurity programs, tools and solutions to government and business.
• Senior Chinese official urge artists to create more works on ethnic unity – People’s Daily Online
  Zhou Yongkang (front), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, visits a touring exhibition of paintings of Xinjiang life in Beijing, capital of China, May 29, 2012.
• Rubber Inventory Rising in China as Slowdown Cuts Demand – Bloomberg
  Rubber stockpiles in China’s Qingdao port, the main shipment hub for the commodity used in tires, are starting to expand as demand slows in the world’s largest consumer, said the Qingdao International Rubber Exchange Market.
  “Demand from downstream tire makers seems to be weak at the current stage, so destocking has slowed down,” said exchange chairman Li Xiangou, who correctly forecast in March that high inventories may pressure prices.
• Zhang Ziyi hits back at claims she slept with Bo Xilai for money｜Politics｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com
  The Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi has slammed rumors claiming that she had sex with Bo Xilai, the deposed former party secretary of Chongqing, and made 700 million yuan (US$110 million) from sleeping with other Chinese officials. Zhang said she will seek legal action over the claims, reports our sister newspaper China Times.

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