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THE ESSENTIAL EIGHT
1. China Seeks Digital Control, from U.N. to CPU – China Digital Times Over the past year, Beijing has become ever more assertive in promoting “Internet sovereignty”—its right to control the Internet within China’s borders, fitting “brakes” to ensure that it “becomes AliBaba’s treasure cave for humankind, and not Pandora’s box.” Since the start of 2015, authorities have pushed even harder to realize this vision at every level from international norms and Internet traffic down to software and the hardware it runs on.
Related: China Said to Summon Banks to Stress Safe Technology Push – Bloomberg Business Chinese regulators summoned bank officials for a meeting this month to stress the need to carry out a nationwide directive to cut China’s reliance on foreign technology, said people familiar with the matter.
Related: New Rules in China Upset Western Tech Companies – NYTimes The new rules, laid out in a 22-page document approved at the end of last year, are the first in a series of policies expected to be unveiled in the coming months that Beijing says are intended to strengthen cybersecurity in critical Chinese industries. As copies have spread in the past month, the regulations have heightened concern among foreign companies that the authorities are trying to force them out of one of the largest and fastest-growing markets. // If you are Xi, why would you not move as fast as possible to de-Americanize China’s IT stack, especially but not only due to the Snowden revelations? Remember that reducing reliance on foreign IT has been a multi-decade goal for China, via the 1986 863 Program among other initiatives. Under Xi you have a confluence of technical capabilities, indigenous industry stakeholders who will profit, the “cover” of the Snowden revelations, the US treatment of Huawei and the political will. It does not look good for many US tech firms in China, no matter how hard industry groups and the US government are willing to push.
Related: China Owns ‘Great Firewall,’ Credits Censorship With Tech Success – WSJ In a press conference this week, Ministry of Industry and Information official Wen Ku declared that China’s Internet companies owe their successes to the “good policy environment” created by the Chinese government. It’s a message that was promptly recirculated, notably on Wednesday, in a Global Times piece that said the “Great Firewall,” as the country’s sophisticated Internet filtering system is commonly known, was in fact misunderstood. “The firewall blocks certain overseas websites in a targeted fashion, rather than isolating China’s internet from the overseas one,” the column ran. The column repeated an argument often made by tech analysts: that the success of China’s biggest Internet giants — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, the so-called “BAT” of the country, with billions of dollars in market value – could be credited to the firewall. Conventional wisdom in China tech circles holds that blocking of sites like YouTube, Twitter and Google has provided Chinese Internet giants with the space they needed to grow.
媒体:防火墙造就了中国互联网发展|防火墙|互联网|VPN_
Related: Air China Likes Facebook for Marketing, Despite Ban – Bloomberg Business Facebook in December honored Air China for best use of the social network for international marketing by a company in Greater China. That’s not surprising, since the state-owned carrier has aggressively used the service to offer everything from links to its booking engine, to giveaways of models of the new Boeing 747-8 it flies between Beijing and New York, to a recipe for Rolling Donkey, a popular red bean-and-rice snack.
2. Senior leader stresses unwavering anti-graft fight – Xinhua Wang Qishan, secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), made the remarks in his work report delivered at the fifth plenary session of the CCDI held earlier this month. The full report was made public Thursday. According to Wang, with the active participation of the people, the CPC has been deepening the fight against corruption constantly, putting a check on the spread of undesirable work styles and corruption…Underlining an intensified disciplinary inspection campaign nationwide, Wang’s report revealed that a total of 2.72 million whistle-blowing letters and complaints by citizens were received by disciplinary organs last year, up from 1.95 million the previous year. Figures from the report show that there were 226,000 cases filed as a result of the complaints, with 218,000 closed. The cases led to 232,000 officials being given Party or administrative punishment, a yearly increase of 30 percent, and another 12,000 people were transferred to judicial organs on criminal charges.
Related: 图解王岐山在十八届中央纪委五次全会上作的工
3. Probe into China Minsheng chief Mao Xiaofeng just tip of iceberg in banking world of corrupt alliances | South China Morning Post The investigation into the youngest-ever Chinese listed-bank president has exposed the tip of the iceberg of rampant power-for-money deals between senior officials and financial leaders, analysts say. Mao Xiaofeng, president of China Minsheng Banking Corp, has been taken in for questioning by the government graft-buster, financial news service Caixin reported. //【独家】民生银行行长毛晓峰被查 已被免党委书记
Related: 民生银行证实行长毛晓峰被查 其曾与令计划同窗新闻腾讯网 有知情人士透露，
Related: 平说-最年轻的行长落马了，
Related: Party Legend’s Son Denies He Is De Facto Head of Insurance Firm_Caixin Chen Xiaolu says report that he leads Anbang Insurance Group, which has made a slew of high-profile acquisitions recently, is false
4. Q. and A.: Roderick MacFarquhar on Xi Jinping’s High-Risk Campaign to Save the Communist Party – NYTimes.com Two years into Xi Jinping’s tenure as China’s president, many analysts consider him to be the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, the man who oversaw China’s opening to the world and its market-oriented policies after the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Roderick MacFarquhar, a scholar of elite Communist Party politics at Harvard University, goes one step further. Mr. Xi, he says, is the most powerful Chinese leader since Chairman Mao Zedong, the “Great Helmsman” who declared the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 and was worshiped almost as a god by millions of fanatical Red Guards. Yet for all of Mr. Xi’s personal power, his campaign against corruption is fraught with danger, putting at risk the future of the Communist Party he is determined to save, Professor MacFarquhar said in a recent talk at the University of Hong Kong. In an interview, he explained why.
5. BBC News – China’s super-rich communist Buddhists So what might it all mean? I put this question to Robbie Barnett, a Tibet specialist at Columbia University in New York. Barnett advises against reading too much into Xiao Wunan’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, but says it is nonetheless symbolic. “I can detect no politically significant activities in that meeting,” he says, “but it is significant as a symbolic indicator, a glimpse of a shift that might be under consideration in, or near, the policy-making heights of the Chinese system.”
Related: Dalai Lama, Barack Obama Set to Appear in Public Together for First Time | TIME Tibetan leader will participate in the Feb. 5 National Prayer Breakfast where the President is expected to attend. Obama has never appeared publicly with Tibetan leader who is viewed by the Chinese government as a dissident
Related: China offers up to $50K in cash for terror tips in Tibet – US News There has been little public knowledge of terrorism in recent years in Tibet, although more than 130 Tibetan Buddhist monks and laypeople have set themselves on fire since 2009 in protest of Beijing’s strict controls over the region and their religion, according to overseas international human rights groups. The protesters also have called for the return of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing believes to be intent on splitting Tibet from China, a charge he denies.
6. China stresses more anti-corruption efforts in military – Xinhua The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China will step up efforts to weed out corruption in the military as the anti-corruption campaign widens, according to a document released on Friday. The decision made by the Central Military Commission (CMC) asked the army to root out “chronic diseases”, seek both temporary and permanent solutions and fundamentally improve their work style, said the document. The management and supervision of middle and high-ranking officers should be highlighted, said the document, adding zero tolerance stance must be insisted upon. “There should never be any sanctuary for corrupt officers in the military.”
Related: Rotting From Within | Foreign Policy April 20123 John Garnaut from April 2012, fascinating to read again now that the corruption crackdown is intensifying inside the PLA. // What is unknown, however, is whether the Chinese military, an intensely secretive organisation only nominally accountable to civilian leaders, can develop the human software to effectively operate and integrate its new hardware. Judging from a recent series of scathing speeches by one of the PLA’s top generals, details of which were obtained by Foreign Policy, it can’t: The institution is riddled with corruption and professional decay, compromised by ties of patronage, and asphyxiated by the ever-greater effort required to impose political control. The speeches, one in late December and the other in mid-February, were given by Gen. Liu Yuan, the son of a former president of China and one of the PLA’s rising stars; the speeches and Liu’s actions suggest that the PLA might be the site of the next major struggle for control of the Communist Party, of the type that recently brought down former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai. Liu is the political commissar and the most powerful official of the PLA’s General Logistics Department, which handles enormous contracts in land, housing, food, finance, and services for China’s 2.3 million-strong military.
7. China to speed up agri modernization through reforms – Xinhua China will step up reforms and innovation to speed up agricultural modernization in 2015, according to a key policy document released by the Party and government on Sunday. As the Chinese economy, under the “new normal,” shifts from high-speed to medium-to-high-speed growth, it has become a key issue to continue consolidating the position of agriculture as the foundation of the economy and to further increase farmers’ income, said the document. The “No. 1 Central Document” refers to the first major policy document of each year released by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. The is the 12th consecutive year in which the document has focused on agriculture and rural issues.
Related: 中央一号文件发布：粮食安全问题首当其冲
Related: Planting the Seeds of Agricultural Reform – Caixin Editorial How Beijing deals with its san nong problem will determine whether the country can escape the middle-income trap that awaits it. Thus, we eagerly await the release of the “No. 1 central document,” the leadership’s annual policy paper that is expected this year to continue focusing on the san nong problem, as it has for the past 11 years. The san nong problem is unusually complicated. It’s partly inevitable, given the current stage of development, and partly the result of its peculiar administrative system. Since hukou registration was introduced in 1958, the country has adopted a clearly demarcated, dual system of administering its rural and urban areas. Notwithstanding the changes made over the past three decades, the system has survived largely intact for 60 years.
8. How China’s Filthy Air Is Screwing With Our Weather | Mother Jones In an emerging body of work, NASA scientists have identified a surprising contributor to American storms and cold snaps: Asia’s air pollution. Over the past few years, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology has found that aerosols—or airborne particles—emitted from the cities fueling Asia’s booming economies are making storm activity stronger in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. These storms wreak havoc on the polar jet stream, a major driver of North America’s weather. The result: US winters with heavier snowfall and more intense cold periods.
BUSINESS, ECONOMY AND TRADE
Rhodium Group » China’s GDP – 2015 Target and Outlook China just released preliminary 2014 gross domestic product (GDP) results. At 7.4% they missed their annual target (7.5%) by a mere breath – not a huge deal practically, but significant symbolically. More important is the composition of this growth. Consumption is playing a bigger role, as investment falls from former growth rates. Services activity continues to rise relative to heavy industry. These are positive signs. Beijing is whispering a 2015 GDP target to friends and thought leaders: the number we are hearing – 7% “or thereabout” – would reflect doubling-down on nascent reforms. We extrapolate the most likely pattern of 2015 expenditure growth to see what 7% growth on top of the 2014 base would look like. This target portends one trillion dollars in new Chinese activity at the margin on top of 2014 output. Ask yourself: where will that come from?
China Factory Gauge Sinks to First Contraction in Two Years – Bloomberg Business The government’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 49.8 last month from 50.1 in December, according to data released Sunday by the statistics bureau and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing in Beijing. That missed the median estimate of 50.2 in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts and for the first time since September 2012 fell below the 50 level that separates expansion and contraction.
A U.S. Economist’s Book Turns Into a Hit in China – Bloomberg Business Lots of people inside and outside China have heard Premier Li Keqiang promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation in speeches. Far fewer know where he got the idea. It comes at least in part from the Upper West Side of Manhattan—specifically from the mind of Edmund Phelps, a Nobel prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor who wrote a 2013 book called Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change. The book has sold 100,000 copies in China, about 10 times as many as in the U.S., Phelps says.
China introduces 370 reform measures in 2014 – Xinhua China’s central authorities rolled out 370 reform measures in 2014, unprecedented in both scale and intensity,according to a Xinhua News Agency report published late Tuesday. The report took stock of China’s reform throughout last year, the starting year for comprehensively deepening reform. It said China had generally accomplished the 80 reform objectives set by the central leading group for this overhaul in 2014.
Chinese beer industry hit by anti-corruption campaign | Business Spectator Chinese beer production has declined for the first time in the last decade as a result of bad weather, weak consumer demand and the country’s anti-corruption campaign reports Caixin.
Alibaba meets with China regulator, controversial report retracted-Reuters The head of China’s commerce regulator met with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd chairman Jack Ma on Friday to discuss combating fake products, the official Xinhua news agency reported, with the two adopting a conciliatory tone after a row over illegal business on the Internet company’s platforms. The meeting took place the same day the regulator, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), backtracked on an earlier report that had excoriated the Chinese online commerce company for not doing enough to suppress counterfeiting on its websites.
Alibaba Finance Arm Plans 2016 Initial Public Offering – Bloomberg Business nice timing for this leak, before market open Friday after a rough Thursday for Alibaba’s stock
Alibaba Arm Seeks to Use Police Face Scans for Banking – Bloomberg Business Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s financial arm is seeking regulatory approval to access the Chinese national police’s database so consumers can open online bank accounts with a mug shot. // and this kind of application could be useful for enforcing real real-name registration online, though not every yet has smartphone with a camera
A night out with the Chinese billionaire builder suing local governments – Fortune “This is the first time in China’s five-thousand-year history a private company has sued the government!” says Yan Jiehe, founder of China’s biggest private construction company, Pacific Construction Group, jabbing his hand into the air for emphasis. Dressed in a dark suit on Wednesday night, he’s standing beside a row of banquet tables at Pacific’s Beijing office, getting ready for dinner with some county officials from Inner Mongolia who want to build new roads. But first, he proudly explains why he’s suing his customers—China’s local governments.
腾讯新闻-八部委密集发声“托楼市” looks like government taking more moves to “stabilize” the property market // 去年12月底至2015年1月，李克强总理，央行行长周小川、
北京公积金连缴5年可贷款限制取消:从未设5年之限-地方频道-
POLITICS AND LAW
China’s anti-graft watchdog updates inspection results – Xinhua China’s anti-corruption watchdog published on Sunday a detailed diagram to explain the corrective measures taken by inspected governments and institutes after the second round of inspection. The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) carried out its second round of anti-corruption inspection from July to September in 2014, which covered 10 provincial regions, the General Administration of Sport, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China FAW Group Corporation. // 读图看2014年第二轮巡视整
China Warns Against ‘Western Values’ in Imported Textbooks – NYTimes Meeting in Beijing with the leaders of several prominent universities, Education Minister Yuan Guiren laid out new rules restricting the use of Western textbooks and banning those sowing “Western values.” “Strengthen management of the use of original Western teaching materials,” Mr. Yuan said at a meeting with university officials, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “By no means allow teaching materials that disseminate Western values in our classrooms.”
Chinese Law Prof Blog–Shen Kui and his Three Questions to the Minister of Education Just when you start getting depressed about the way things are going in China, along comes Shen Kui (沈岿), an associate professor and vice dean at Peking University Law School, to show that at least some of China’s thinking people are not going to take the government’s policy of intellectual anesthesia in higher education lying down.
1989 Cables Offer New Detail, and Questions, on Tiananmen – NYTimes.com But perhaps the most explosive assertion — that the top level of China’s leadership sought to transfer money to Switzerland — has raised questions among scholars of the period. The Swiss ambassador cited in the cable has denied that any such discussion with Chinese leaders took place.
Amid Graft Fight, Communist Party Wants Count of ‘Unnatural Deaths’_Caixin Governments institutions around the country have been ordered to compile data on Communist Party and government officials who have recently died of “unnatural causes,” as the number of apparent suicides in officialdom rises. The order to start counting and providing details appeared on government websites in at least nine provinces, including Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong and Sichuan. A number of local officials said the survey covers the period from the party’s 18th National Congress in November 2012 until the end of last year.
Watchdog: Sales of paintings, calligraphy cover up bribery-China Daily likely to hit the domestic art auction market this year…hear several banks stopped offering art-related investment services at end of 2014 // President Xi Jinping told government officials to quit positions in art groups, including calligraphy and painting associations, according to the website of People’s Daily. Retired officials are also prohibited from holding positions in the associations, the website said. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection expressed concerns on Wednesday over government officials moonlighting in social organizations and called for a crackdown on “refined bribes”, in which calligraphy and painting serve as a conduit for corruption.
Comments Used in Case Against Pu Zhiqiang Spread Online – NYTimes.com A selection of Mr. Pu’s postings on Sina Weibo, China’s once vigorous microblog service, has spread on the Internet and among human rights advocates, giving the first clear insight into the police’s grounds for charging him with three crimes: provoking disturbances, inciting ethnic hatred and inciting the splitting of the country. (Mr. Pu also faces a separate charge of illegally obtaining personal information.)
完整版：视频还原周秀云等人与警方冲突全程 CCTV runs video from the Shanxi incident that led to death of a woman at police hands. Lots of mistakes made on both sides, grim
As Muslim Uighurs Flee, China Sees Jihad Risk – WSJ Mehmet is among hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs) who have fled China in recent years, often heading for Turkey via Thailand and Malaysia, say Uighur migrants, activists and government officials from countries along that route. Their flight is presenting China with many of the same fears that have plagued Western nations as they try to prevent their Muslim nationals from being radicalized or trained to fight overseas.
孔丹：我是实事求是派，我是中国道路派-凤凰新闻 intere
China opens second circuit court – Xinhua The Second Circuit Court of China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) was inaugurated Saturday in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province in the country’s northeast. According to the SPC, the court will mainly handle major administrative, civil and commercial cases that will be heard by the SPC in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. The First Circuit Court of SPC, covering the provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was inaugurated in Shenzhen, Guangdong Wednesday.
Diverse work of disgraced top Chinese official Ling Jihua’s wife ‘all linked to his power base’ | South China Morning Post Gu Liping’s jobs ranging from NGO work, entrepreneurial mentorship and even journalism were all tied to the China Youth League
中纪委重视网络反腐 连续两年增加网络管理人员 |财经|经济|公司新浪财经新浪网 CCDI increasing its Internet staff // 中纪委在行政编制总数保持不变的情况下，
习近平主持深改领导小组会议：深入开展改革督察新闻腾讯网
环球时报：求是网点名贺卫方不能等同反右重演|贺卫方| 点名_凤凰资讯 Global Times says don’t over-interpret recent Red Flag attack on He Weifang and Chen Danqing // 《求是》
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FOREIGN AND DEFENSE AFFAIRS
RIP Air-Sea Battle? | The National Interest The fact that the strategic community is debating the right way to respond to A2/AD and China’s growing military capabilities is a testament to Air-Sea Battle’s success—and why the future of ASB is of critical importance. -J. Randy Forbes
China’s Lawful Position on the South China Sea | The Diplomat Researchers at a key government-funded institute in China appear to have contradicted their director to lay out a moderate, or at least undecided, position for China on the so-called nine-dash line in a recent edition of Eurasia Review.
Chinese DM scorns WSJ on China-U.S. military exchanges – Xinhua On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Pentagon, facing political pressure, delayed a decision on a major new military exchange with China until the two countries could reach an agreement on rules for airborne encounters. China and the United States have actively developed a new model for military ties in 2014, featuring new progress in high-level exchanges, institutional exchanges, and joint training and exercises, said spokesperson Yang Yujun. He said the “two mutual trust mechanisms”, referring to a mutual reporting and trust mechanism on major military operations and a code of safe conduct on naval and air military encounters between the two sides, had become the highlight of China-U.S. military ties. // The Nelson report (Twitter screen shot ) also said the WSJ story “wrong in both thrust and particulars”
Defense.gov News Article: U.S., China Announce Defense Talks US DoD press release, seemingly in response to the WSJ story Pentagon Pauses New Exchanges With China // The meeting, the spokesman said, is an important component of the broader program of engagements between the two nations’ militaries, which seeks to foster sustained and substantive dialogue, deepen practical cooperation in areas of mutual interest, and focus on enhancing risk reduction. This year’s talks, he added, will emphasize the positive momentum sustained in the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship over the past year, which included historic agreements to establish new confidence building measures between the two militaries, and endorse the robust program of engagements planned for the rest of the year.
President Xi stresses diplomacy by military exchanges – Xinhua Military exchanges will play a bigger role in China’s diplomatic activities, President Xi Jinping said on Thursday. The Communist Party of China places high value on “diplomacy through military exchanges,” which has played a significant role in promoting China’s overall diplomatic work and safeguarding national security, Xi said at a meeting of military officers. He said military authorities should unswervingly follow the Party’s “absolute leadership” in performing military diplomacy, strengthening international military exchanges in accordance with China’s overall diplomatic and security strategies.
Japanese air patrols over South China Sea would be ‘welcome’: Pentagon | The Japan Times Such an operation by the MSDF “in the South China Sea makes sense in the future,” Adm. Robert Thomas, top commander of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, was quoted as saying in a recent interview with Reuters. // China not happy with this
Did An Armed Chinese-Made Drone Just Crash in Nigeria? | Popular Science This January 25, 2015 photo appears to show a Chinese made CH-3 drone, owned by Nigeria, which has crash landed upside down. The two AR-1 ATGMs attached to its wing pylons suggest that Nigeria is turning to drone strikes as the bloody war against Boko Haram continues.
Atomic bomb-test veterans seek higher compensation – People’s Daily Online Fifty years ago, more than 100,000 veterans from across China were shipped into the deserts of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to provide the labor at the test sites for China’s first atomic bombs. Since their retirement, the veterans, as well as some of their children, have fallen ill. But even though the Chinese government has granted benefits to some of them, some of the veterans are questioning whether the the government is doing enough.
TECH AND MEDIA
Xiaomi just wandered into a 100-year-old border dispute between China and India – Quartz Xiaomi has big plans for winning over Indian smartphone users, but that might mean losing fans at home. This week, the Chinese smartphone maker’s vice president Hugo Barra posted a much-criticized photo on the Chinese microblog Weibo of the launch of its latest Mi4 phone in Delhi. The problem? Behind Barra is a map of China and India that marks a still disputed area along the two countries Himalayan border, the focus of a Sino-Indian border war in 1962, as belonging to India. The post, which was quickly deleted, caught the attention of Chinese bloggers who were incensed that a Chinese company would go against China’s official territorial claims.
N.B.A. Signs Deal With Chinese Internet Giant – NYTimes.com The N.B.A. announced a five-year deal Thursday with the Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Limited to carry games, highlights and other league content on its digital platforms. The deal is worth at least $500 million, said a person briefed on the details of the agreement who was not authorized to speak publicly about it. The deal will start on July 1.
China to step up anti-graft drive in media and broadcasting sector | South China Morning Post rumor going around that at a January 13 event in Beijing for retired cadres, the head of China Film Group and his deputies were publicly accused of all sorts of misdeeds // Li Qiufang, head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection team at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, said her team had studied common manoeuvres – especially “unwritten rules” – of corrupt officials in the industry and found out that situations that involved buying television dramas, holding large-scale gala performances and opening satellite channels were hotbeds for graft.
China Focus: Is China in an age of Internet oligopoly? – Xinhua Industry insiders said that BAT’s rapid mergers and acquisitions have left startups with little room to compete. Concerns have been raised over whether innovation and user’s rights may both fall by the wayside as the Internet behemoths become too big to fail.// 巨头圈地：互联网时代筑起“柏林墙”
Behind the Fall of China’s Greatest Newspaper | Foreign Policy Censorship and commercial pressures have driven the once-revered Southern Weekly to the margins.
SOCIETY, ART, SPORTS, CULTURE AND HISTORY
Chinese gang at MSU? Prosecution in assault trial says yes-Detroit Free Press They call themselves Chengguan. They have stickers on their vehicles that resemble police badges. One admitted member drives a Mercedes-Benz. Prosecutors have called the group of Chinese students at Michigan State University a “gang” that intimidates other Chinese students both to gain notoriety and for other reasons that are not as clear.
The Little Red Book Turns 50 – Caixin The first official edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao appeared in May 1964, with a preface that referenced Lin’s suggestion that “in order to truly master Mao Zedong Thought, one has to repeatedly study several of Chairman Mao’s most basic viewpoints. One should even learn by heart a few key sentences, repeatedly study and make use of them.” The original Quotations was not, however, the iconic Little Red Book we all know – early editions were bound in white paper and were not all that little; some editions were blue. A printed-paper edition from 1964 (included in Schiller’s collection) even contained an error in a calligraphic dedication commissioned of Lin Biao that was not corrected until the second edition.
The Unwelcome Villager – Roads & Kingdoms Like many Chinese, when I was growing up I felt fear, hate, and confusion toward the Japanese. But I also remembered the time I spent with a person who sparked my fascination and, ultimately, love for the same country. I couldn’t help but think: What would she feel if she was still in China today? And what hardships had she experienced during the sixty years she lived in a small Chinese village surrounded by people who regarded the Japanese as enemies and cruel barbarians?
China running against light competition for the 2022 Winter Olympics – LA Times In mid-February, the International Olympic Committee’s Evaluation Commission will conduct an inspection in Almaty, followed by one in Beijing in late March. A final decision is due to be rendered at the end of July at an IOC gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE AND HEALTH
Shenzhen’s Circuit Breaker for Power Pricing – Caixin Shenzhen has been picked as ground zero for a Chinese government initiative aimed at letting market forces, rather than power transmission companies, determine what end-users pay for electricity.
AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ISSUES
China’s Rules Smother GMOs, Researcher Says- WSJ While Beijing keeps most foreign GMOs out, it is keen to develop its own genetically modified products. However, Huang Dafang, the former director of the country’s Biotechnology Research Institute – and a strong GMO advocate — says that the government is going about it the wrong way. “The approval process for GMOs is too lengthy, there are too many steps,” Mr. Huang, also a professor at the state-backed Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said Wednesday at an industry conference.
BEIJING
Chinese Lawmaker’s Illegal Beijing Dig Goes Horribly Wrong – WSJ Beijing city planners accuse Mr. Li, a National People’s Congress representative for Jiangsu province, of building a 32-feet-deep basement under his courtyard that they say caved in, taking neighboring homes down with it. Reached by China Real Time Friday, a staff member with Beijing’s Municipal Commission of Urban Planning said the commission had informed state media that the property owner was in breach of planning rules, though an official notice wasn’t yet available.
北京老牌KTV相继关门歇业 业内：因严查公款吃喝_网易新闻中心-网易新闻客户端 on the shrinking of Beijing’s KTV industry in the wake of the corruption crackdown
China Investigates Ex-Head of Unit Meant to Tidy Beijing Air – Bloomberg Business China is investigating Lu Haijun, the former chairman of a company designated to help clean up record-breaking air pollution in the country’s capital, along with other leading cities.
JOBS AND EVENTS
Career Opportunities – Council on Foreign Relations The Research Associate will work under the direction of the Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program.
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