Sinovi kineskog zmaja

[bigvlada]

South China Sea: Beijing 'not frightened to fight a war' after US move

State-run media in belligerent mood after USS Lassen challenges Beijing’s territorial claims in disputed Spratly archipelago

China warns US not to ‘make a fool of itself’ over South China Sea manoeuvres.

 

Twenty-four hours after Washington challenged Beijing’s territorial claims in the region by deploying a warship to waters around the disputed Spratly archipelago, the notoriously nationalistic Global Times accused the Pentagon of provoking China.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/28/china-not-frightened-fight-war-south-china-sea-uss-lassen



 

[bigvlada]

Historic meeting of Chinese and Taiwanese presidents prompts hope and suspicion

Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou to dine in Singapore, but activists fear meeting – the first since 1949 – is mainland attempt to influence elections in self-ruled Taiwan

Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou, left, and Chinese president Xi Jinping will hold the first meeting of leaders from the two sides since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949. 

Tom Phillips in Beijing

Wednesday 4 November 2015 07.08 GMT
Last modified on Wednesday 4 November 2015 07.36 GMT


The presidents of China and Taiwan will dine together in Singapore on Saturday in what will be the first meeting of its kind since Chairman Mao’s communist troops forced their nationalist enemies from the Chinese mainland in 1949.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/04/historic-meeting-chinese-taiwanese-presidents-hope-suspicion

[akibono]

China Is Setting Up Its First Military Base in Africa

The People’s Republic of China is setting up its first military base in Africa as it continues its evolution into a global superpower. Beijing has signed a ten-year leasing agreement with Djibouti to build a logistical hub in that nation, which is located in the Horn of Africa.

“They are going to build a base in Djibouti, so that will be their first military location in Africa," U.S. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of U.S. Africa Command, recently told defense reporters according to The Hill’s Kristina Wong.

It was only a matter of time before China set up overseas bases in the region. Beijing has enormous economic interests in the region that it needs to protect. China has set up deals to supply its growing economy—which even as it slows down is expanding at close to seven percent per annum—with raw materials.

According to the Economist, China is the African continent’s biggest trading partner with trade worth more than $160 billion per year. Over the past decade, more than a million Chinese laborers and merchants have move to Africa to work. Essentially, Africa ships raw material to China, which is then exported back as finished products.

China has somewhat of an advantage in competing for business in Africa because it does not have any intention or desire to impose its values on the locals or their governments. As such Chinese investments don’t come with any strings attached in terms of human rights or governance. But there has been some backlash from African civil society groups and even some African leaders. Indeed, Lamido Sanusi—Nigeria’s former central bank governor—told the Economist that Africa is opening itself up to a “new form of imperialism.”

Beijing is apparently trying to address the criticism according to the Mail & Guardian— a South African paper. In this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) China is expected to start offering more access to capital for local African companies. Indeed, the Chinese Export-Import Bank extended $62.7 billion in loans to African countries from 2001 to 2010, according to the paper. The Chinese are also focusing more efforts on publicizing their efforts to create jobs for local Africans. It’s also making more of an effort to comply with local regulations.

The Chinese public relations offensive combined with its new base means that Beijing is in Africa for the long haul. Going forward in the years to come, Beijing could edge out Western influence in the region and secure access to the continent’s vast mineral resources for itself.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/china-setting-its-first-military-base-africa-14435

[borris_]

U Djibouti-u su vec Francuzi i Amerikanci. Sada dolaze i Kinezi. Gdje ce ih smjestiti na onako malom prostoru?

[Garnirung]

da, to je bilo pre tog plana, imali su po nekim procenama 64 miliona praznih stanova, novoizgradjenih, koje su gradili privatni developer, u glavnom u vidu potpuno novih gradova za po 1-2 miliona ljudi, I koji nikada nisu useljeni posto niko nije hteo tamo da zivi. Istovremeno se desila ogromna navala na gradove na obali, cene stanova u velikim gradovima su skocile preko 200% u poslednjih 15tak godina, slamovi su rasli itd. Kina je kao I mnoge druge zemlje 90ih privatizovala public housing i liberalizovala land i housing market, i onda su u tom proslom petogodisnjem planu odlucili da ponovo krenu da intervenisu onako, old school, sa gradnjom tih 36 miliona stanova. Po zapadnim naucnim krugovima su predvidjanja bila katastrofalna, kao to je osudjeno na propast, treba pustiti trziste da radi, evo housing bubble samo sto se nije desio, i sada vec godinama se nista ne cuje. A ljudi izgradili te silne stanove (jebo te, 36 miliona stanova ne znam da li ima ceo stambeni fond evropske unije)

 

Da se oslonim na post palikarisa, i mene je zanimala cela priča, pa sam malo kopao i krenuo da čitam vrlo zanimljivu knjigu Vejda Šeparda (Wade Shepard, Ghost cities of China - Asian Arguments)

Čovek je u Kini bio od 2005., studirao na nekom njihovom univerzitetu i na kraju napisao knjigu na tu temu.

Nisam je još završio, ali vrlo brzo se dolazi do objašnjenja o čemu se tu ustvari radi.

Za početak, tvrdi se da po tom poslednjem zakonu iz 1998. o gradnji, nekretnine se u Kini ustvari izdaju u vidu dozvole na korišćenje, a ne puno vlasništvo i to na 70 godina za stanovanje, 50 za komercijalnu upotrebu i 40 za industrijsku.

 

 

 

Who owns the land?

‘All the land belongs to the government. The government has

the right to clear the land. Take it over, and then to either build

stuff on it themselves, sell it to a developer or use it as collateral

for loans. They do all three, and they’ve made a killing doing it’,

notes Anne Stevenson-Yang in a succinct summary of Chinese

property law (Schmitz 2013). The definition of private property

in China contributes to the lack of power and legal recourse avail-

able to those who have their property requisitioned. There was no

semblance of private property from the time the Communist Party

took power in 1949 until 1978. Rural land was owned by collec-

tives; urban property was owned by the state. Then, as housing

reform picked up through the late 1980s and 1990s, a form of

leasing was initiated. While the government would still essentially

own the land, usage rights would be granted to companies and

individuals for certain amounts of time. Following a long string

of reforms, peasants were able secure the rural land that they

farm for easily extendable 30-year blocks of time, while in cities

residential property could be leased for 70 years, commercial

property for 50 years, and industrial land for 40 years.

When people in China buy a house they essentially take over

their share of the lease on the land from the developer. So, if an

apartment building is built two years after the developer leases the

land, those who move in right away will have rights to the land

for 68 more years; if a development is 15 years old, the maximum

amount of time a resident will have in the building will be 55

years; and so on.

 

 

What will happen when these leases expire is still a big

question. A 2007 law says that in the case of residential property

the owner will have the option to renew the lease, pending

government approval, although a new transfer of land-use rights

contract would need to be signed and, of course, another land-use

transfer fee paid. As of now, it is unclear how much people will

be charged to remain in possession of their own property. As

no residential leases are set to expire before 2060, this remains

a problem on the horizon. There has so far been only one batch

of cases where property leases have expired, and that was in

Shenzhen, the place where this leasing system was 噀rst experi-

mented with in the early 1980s. Twenty-year leases were given

out then, which began expiring in 2002. When this happened a

surprised group of business owners in the now prosperous Luohu

district were informed that they would have to pay 35 per cent of

the value of the property for a forty-year lease extension or face

losing their rights to the land with relatively little compensation.

Nevertheless few homeowners in China are worrying much

about the issue yet, especially as the projected lifespan of their

homes is so short anyway. A user, xiaobao1757, of the Chinese

news portal Netease summed up the issue: ‘I’ve never worried

about [what happens after] seventy years; what I worry about is

how many years before my home collapses. To tell the truth, of

the commercial real estate being built these days how much will

still be standing seventy years later?’ This is not an uncommon

sentiment.

 

 

Ono što je još bitnije je da se ruše i poprilično nove zgrade tipa stare 20-30 godina, a najludje je što u toj sumanutoj gradnji idu dotle da čak prave replike gradova koja imaju neka stara jezgra, koja se ruše, pa onda grade potpuno ista takva.

Razlog za toliku gradnju autor objašnjava time što je prodaja i izdavanje zemljišta najveći izvor novca za lokalne uprave, po njegovim rečima do 40 odsto trenutno. (2012. njihovo ministarstvo finansija je dalo podatak o prometu od 438 milijardi dolara od prodaje zemljišta lokalnih uprava)

 

 

To put it in stark terms,

China’s current fiscal system forces local governments to depend

on land sales, which creates a situation where cities need to keep

expanding and developing in order to be able to aord to func-

tion. Viewed in this way, China’s urbanization movement can be

likened to a runaway train.

 

Stigao sam do dela gde neki gradovi, limitirani količinom zemljišta izvode razne ludosti. Lanzhou, glavni grad provincije Gansu je pokušao dvaput da ukloni planinu visoku 1689 metara da bi dobili zemljište za prodaju i oba puta je  projekat propao, da bi treći pokušaj bio da zatrpaju deo reke, pa su sjebali vodotok, odnosno bunari iz koje su dobijali pijaću vodu su postali slani, pa su brže-bolje vratili stvari u predjašnje stanje. Imaju započet projekat iz 2012. od strane vlasti provincije da ponovo poravnaju planine da bi dobili oko 25 kvadratnih kilometara prostora, cijena sitnica, 3,65 milijardi dolara.

 

Inače se knjiga dosta bavi i socijalnom dimenzijom, jer se izmeštaju milioni ljudi, neretko i bez kompenzacija. Navodno oko 20 posto ljudi tu najebe.

 

Knjige ima na lib genesisu

[Muwan]

(another) 29 minutes of chaos
 

 

[Eraserhead]

Suspendovali circuit breaker. Bice ovo jebeno. 

 

Pulling the Circuit Breaker

Edited January 7, 2016 by Eraserhead

[bigvlada]

Stara vest, ali interesantna u svetlu izgradnje aerodroma na sprudovima. 

 

http://www.popsci.com/not-sexy-stealth-maybe-more-important-china-shows-new-cargo-planes

 

Srednji transportni avion, Y-20

 

 

The prototype "783" Y-20 makes a crowd pleasing flyby at Zhuhai 2014. Capable of carrying 66 tons of payload, large enough to fit in a tank, the Y-20 will provide China with an unprecedented level in regional, and eventually global, rapid military force projection.

 

Nosi 10 tona više od Iljušina 76 (60t vs 50t). 

 

Druga ptica kojoj su takođe Rusi bili uzor je Harbin H-680 Sea Eagle, WIG letelica iliti ekranoplan. 

 

 

Slična nosivost kao i Y-20, plus mu ne treba pista. Inspiracija je bio Lun. 

 

[Prospero]

‘A historic transition that will unfold over decades’

 

China rewrites the global rules

 

Despite worries over the end of the Chinese economic miracle and harder times because of the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, global rebalancing is happening — and quickly.

by Philip S Golub

 

 

The International Monetary Fund’s executive board announced on 30 November that the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, would soon be included in the basket of currencies that make up its Special Drawing Rights (SDR), beside the US dollar, the euro, the British pound and the yen.

The decision recognised the growing role of the Chinese currency in international trade settlements. Since the launch in 2009 of a pilot programme for cross-border RMB trade settlements in Asia, the share of Chinese trade settled in RMB has risen from 3.2% to 25%, and should, according to the Financial Times, soon reach 46% (1). Offshore centres clearing the currency have been set up in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, London and Frankfurt. The RMB is still far from world reserve status, requiring full convertibility and complete capital market liberalisation, which China is not ready for and carries significant risks. But the RMB’s rise is a “momentous event in [...] international finance”, according to a former IMF economist (2) — the beginning of a slow shift towards a tripolar world monetary system no longer exclusively centred in the West.

“Great powers have great currencies,” says Robert Mundell (3). Like the gradual rise of the dollar to reserve status in the early 20th century, the internationalisation of the RMB is part of the larger story of China’s re-emergence as a semi-autonomous core of the world economy, and as the primary driver of the movement of East-West and North-South rebalancing that is a key feature of current world politics. China’s share of world GDP, in purchasing power parity (PPP), has risen in 40 years from less than 2% to over 16%, ahead of the US. Though Chinese economic growth declined with the “great recession” after the 2008 crisis, average per capita GDP (PPP) is now expected to increase within a few years (from $9,800 to $16,000, against $250 in 1980). Longer-range projections, which showed a growth trajectory similar to Japan in the late 20th century, suggest that per capita GDP will reach current Japanese or European levels by the mid-21st century. China is gradually regaining a position in the world economy in keeping with its demographic weight.

 

Key South-South actor

It has become the core of South-South trade and investment linkage, supplanted Japan and the US as the leading trade partner of nearly all East Asian countries, and become a crucial actor in South American, African and South Asian trade. China is now Brazil’s leading trade partner, ahead of the US. There are similar trends in Chile, Argentina and smaller South American economies. South Africa’s export share to China has risen from 1.8% in 1998 to over 12%, while imports have risen from 3% to 15%. Indian exports to China have risen from 2.9% to over 10%, and imports from 2% to 12%.

This points to a re-patterning of the geography of world trade, and an East Asia-centric South-South trading system, with China at the core. Thanks to new regional and transcontinental linkages centred in East Asia, South-South trade (SST) has expanded more rapidly over 20 years than global trade. In 2013 SST was 25% of world trade, 21% of manufacturing exports, and 25% of exports of manufactures with medium and high technological intensity. Trade between developed countries fell from 46% to less than 30%. The result is a reduction of traditional single-market dependency in Latin American, sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries on Europe and the US. This has been accompanied, particularly in East Asia, by industrial upgrading: the “developing” world’s share of manufacturing value-added has risen from 8.8% to nearly 30%, and of merchandise trade from 25% to 47%.

China’s re-emergence has begun to alter the vertical North-South relations of the age of western empire and industry. This generates new dependencies: when China sneezes, emerging country partners catch colds — as with the current downturns for exporters of primary goods because of China’s slowing growth. The impact of the global crisis on China evinces the need for a sustainable development strategy focused on domestic improvements rather than export growth. Even so, we are witnessing a structural change in the global economic and political hierarchy.

 

Bye-bye Bretton Woods?

Politics has lagged behind economics, but a gradual reordering of world politics is visible in the growing voice of the South in organisations and clubs (G20), its activism in world politics, and new international institution-building efforts bypassing traditional centres of authority. Frustrated by the slow pace of change, notably in the IMF and World Bank, China has been leading the effort of global South countries to create a new system to govern the world economy. In 2013 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS) set up the New Development Bank (NDB),headquartered in Shanghai, with a capital base (money paid in and pledged) of $100bn; this will combine investment and monetary functions, serving as a lending institution for infrastructure development projects as well as a reserve facility for balance of payments issues. In 2014 China founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which, like the NDB, has a $100bn capital base (the Japanese-led Asian Development Bank has $160bn, the World Bank $220bn).

The importance of these initiatives should not be underestimated. They significantly challenge the authority of traditional rule-makers, whose ability to set the international agenda and shape the global environment is waning. The erosion of Euro-Atlantic authority is clear from the irrelevance of old clubs (G7) and the difficulty of previously dominant countries and blocs (NATO) in setting policy agendas reflecting their preferences. It is also clear from the steady decline of the legitimacy and authority of the Bretton Woods institutions, notably the IMF, whose grip on the middle-income countries of the South has loosened since the late 1990s.

Recognising the challenge, the US intensively lobbied allied states in Asia and Europe to stay out of the AIIB, arguing that it would not meet IMF and World Bank standards of transparency, environmental and social responsibility, and democratic governance. The argument would have been more convincing had the IMF not been the arm of coercive Euro-Atlantic discipline for the South. With the exception of Japan, the US proved unable to sway its closest partners. The New York Timesnoted: “The surge to join the Bank was considered a major victory for China in a rare public showdown with the United States” (4).

The decision to found the NDB and AIIB is the outcome of a movement building since the 1990s in East Asia and Latin America in reaction to IMF mismanagement of regional financial crises. The 1997-8 Asian crisis convinced many East Asian policy makers that it was time to take the future into their own hands and seek greater autonomy. The creation of the new system has huge implications: the ability to set policy frameworks and maintain international regimes through multilateral institutions is an essential dimension of power in world politics. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers wrote that October 2014 (when the AIIB was formed) “may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. [...] I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s efforts to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies [...] to stay out of it” (5).

 

Rewriting the rules

While it is implausible that the East (China) will supplant the West (the US) at the centre and apex of a new hierarchy in the foreseeable future, there is no question that power will become more diffuse. For those sensitive to the need to redress historic injustices, greater equality is desirable. Yet it also implies increased interstate competition for resources, capital, technology, status and political voice. Global rebalancing, still in an early phase, carries significant risks.

China and the US are deeply interdependent. China is the US’s main creditor and America remains a crucial market for products made or assembled in China. The long-term interest of China is to gradually reduce its massive dollar holdings that expose it to US discretionary monetary decisions. The US has a similar interest in reducing its exposure to potential sovereign decisions that would expose the dollar — and the US position in the world — to significant risk.

The Obama administration is keenly aware that China’s re-emergence is part of a “historic transition [...] that will unfold over decades”, with major consequences for the US in the 21st century. Without overtly seeking to contain China, and aiming to avoid confrontation, it wants to “manage competition from a position of strength” (6). As Obama put it in his 2015 State of the Union address: “China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. [...] Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules.”

Yet China, with other postcolonial states, is now in a position to co-author the rules. Power will have to be shared. The internationalisation of the RMB is just part of this story. While the predominance of the dollar will not be seriously challenged soon, a slow shift in global monetary relations seems inevitable. As Benjamin Cohen notes, the “most probable outcome is [like] the interregnum between the two world wars, when Britain’s pound sterling was in decline and the dollar on the rise but neither was dominant. Coming years [will see] several monies in contention and none as clearly in the lead as in the recent past. The economic and political impacts of a more fragmented currency system could be considerable” (7).

 

Philip S Golub is professor of international relations at the American University of Paris. His latest book is East Asia’s Reemergence (Polity Press, forthcoming March 2016).

(1) “The Future of the Renminbi” report, Financial Times, London, 30 November 2015.

(2) Eswar Prasad quoted by James Kynge in “Pivotal moment for the renminbi and China” in “The Future of the Renminbi” report, Financial Times, London, 30 November 2015.

(3) Robert Mundell quoted by Benjamin J Cohen in “Currency and State Power” in Martha Finnemore and Judith Goldstein (eds), Back to Basics: State Power in a Contemporary World, Princeton University Press, 

Princeton, 2013.

(4) Jane Perlez, “Stampede to Join China’s Development Bank Stuns Even its Founder”, The New York Times, 2 April 2015; and “China Creates a World Bank of its Own, and the US Balks”, The New York Times, 4 December 2015.

(5) Lawrence Summers, “Time US leadership woke up to new economic era”, Financial Times, London, 6 April 2015.

(6) US National Security Strategy 2015.

(7) Benjamin J Cohen, “The Future of Reserve Currencies”, Finance & Development, vol 46, no 3, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, September 2009.

 

[bigvlada]

Diplomacy on the Rocks: China and Other Claimants in the South China Sea

Chas Freeman April 10, 2015

 

Diplomacy on the Rocks: China and Other Claimants in the South China Sea

Remarks at a Seminar of the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)

Providence, Rhode Island, 10 April 2015

For centuries, the islands and other land features of the South China Sea were seen as places to be avoided – valueless hazards to navigation.  The waters around them were treated by fishermen as an unregulated regional commons where everybody, regardless of nationality, could find and take what they wished.   This changed in 1982 , when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea conferred rights to exclusive economic zones (EEZs) on habitable islands.  About the same time, advances in technology made seabed oil and gas resources increasingly accessible.  Nationalism and economic interests in possession of these islands then aligned.  Vague assertions of historic connections to islands, rocks, and reefs became adamant claims of ownership.

The Paracel (or Xi Sha / 西沙) Islands are now claimed with great passion by both China and Vietnam.  Some or all of the Spratly (or Nan Sha / 南沙) Islands are similarly claimed by China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.  Let me very briefly recount the tangled history of these claims.  Listen closely.  The facts belie the prevailing narratives.

It is hardly surprising that the claimants have reinterpreted their history to make it conform to the once-foreign Westphalian notion of sovereignty.  They have produced reams of paper documenting close encounters with remote rocks by the sailors of long-vanished Chinese and Vietnamese dynasties.  But whatever those sailors were doing, it had nothing to do with either asserting or violating sovereignty, which was not yet an operative concept in Asia.

China first asserted sovereignty in the modern sense to the South China Sea’s  islands when it formally objected to France’s efforts to incorporate them into French Indochina during the 1884 – 1885 Sino-French war.  Chinese maps since then have consistently shown China’s claims, first as a solid and then as a dotted line.

In 1932, France nonetheless formally claimed both the Paracel and Spratly Islands.  China and Japan both protested.  In 1933, France seized the Paracels and Spratlys, announced their annexation, formally included them in French Indochina, and built a couple of weather stations on them, but did not disturb the numerous Chinese fishermen it found there. In 1938 Japan took the islands from France, garrisoned them, and built a submarine base at Itu Aba (now Taiping / 太平) Island. In 1941, the Japanese Empire made the Paracel and Spratly islands part of Taiwan, then under its rule.

In 1945, in accordance with the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations and with American help, the armed forces of the Republic of China government at Nanjing accepted the surrender of the Japanese garrisons in Taiwan, including the Paracel and Spratly Islands.  Nanjing then declared both archipelagoes to be part of Guangdong Province.  In 1946 it established garrisons on both Woody (now Yongxing / 永兴) Island in the Paracels and Taiping Island in the Spratlys.  France protested.  The French tried but failed to dislodge Chinese nationalist troops from Yongxing Island (the only habitable island in the Paracels), but were able to establish a small camp on Pattle (now Shanhu / 珊瑚) Island in the southwestern part of the archipelago.

In 1950, after the Chinese nationalists were driven from Hainan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), they withdrew their garrisons in both the Paracels and Spratlys to Taiwan.  In 1954 France ceased to be a factor when it accepted the independence of both south and north Vietnam and withdrew from Indochina.

In 1956 North Vietnam formally accepted that the Paracel and Spratly islands were historically Chinese.  About the same time, the PLA reestablished a Chinese garrison on Yongxing Island in the Paracels, while the Republic of China (Taipei) put troops back on Taiping Island in the Spratlys.  But, that same year, South Vietnam reopened the abandoned French camp on Shanhu Island and announced that it had annexed the Paracel archipelago as well as the Spratlys.

In 1974 South Vietnam attempted to enforce its claims to sovereignty by placing settlers in the Spratlys and expelling Chinese fishermen from the southwestern Paracels.  In the ensuing naval battle at Shanhu Island, China defeated Vietnamese forces.  This enabled Beijing to extend its control to the entire Paracel archipelago, where it has not been effectively challenged since.

Five years later, Hanoi (now the capital of a united Vietnam) repudiated its earlier deference to China’s claims, adopted South Vietnam’s position, and claimed sovereignty over all the islands in the South China Sea.  In the early 1980s, as Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Taipei protested, Vietnam resumed vigorous settlement and garrisoning of the Spratlys.

From 1946 to 1950, Chinese nationalist forces maintained a garrison on Taiping Island, the only habitable island in the Spratlys.  This military presence was reestablished by Taipei in 1956 in response to the activities of a Filipino lawyer and businessman, Tomás Cloma.

In 1956, Cloma proclaimed the establishment of a new country, “Freedomland” in the Spratly Islands.  The sole function of Freedomland turned out to be issuing postage stamps to collectors.  Cloma’s announcement of Freedomland caused both Beijing and Taipei to reiterate China’s claims to the Spratlys.  Taipei sent troops to drive Cloma off Taiping Island.  Its forces are still there.

Cloma’s proclamation of Freedomland was legal in the Philippines because, as Manila noted in its reply to protests of Cloma’s actions from Beijing, Paris, Saigon, and Taipei, the Philippines had made no claim of its own to the Spratlys.  But in 1972 the Philippines did begin to make such claims.  In 1974, President Ferdinand Marcos forced Cloma to convey all his rights (whatever, if anything, these were) to the Philippine government for one peso.  That same year the Philippines occupied five islets in the Spratlys.  By 1978 it had occupied two more, plus two reefs.

Spain and the United States exercised sovereignty in the Philippines consecutively for four centuries (1543-1946) but never annexed the Spratlys.  Manila’s clam to them is based on the fact that, with the exception of Taiping Island, they were unoccupied and up for grabs.  The Philippines’ other argument for owning the Spratlys is that they lie within the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) it unilaterally proclaimed in 1978 in anticipation of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, which authorized littoral states to create such EEZs off their coasts.

Malaysia also bases its claim to the southernmost Spratlys on their location within the EEZ it proclaimed in 1979.  Malaysia seized Pulau Layang-Layang (Swallow Reef) in 1983 and established a military presence there.  It  has since reclaimed enough land to build an airfield and a small resort hotel on the atoll.

The Filipino and Malaysian cases are politically potent but legally weak.  An EEZ does not determine the ownership of the islands it surrounds.  Under the law of the sea, ownership of land features determines rights over the adjacent waters and seabeds.  “The land dominates the sea,” not vice versa.

But Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and now China have correctly understood that the key to sovereignty is not legal arguments but physical possession and control – a continuous human presence.  Whether an island generates an EEZ or simply a twelve-mile territorial sea is determined by whether or not it is able naturally to support human life.  Hence the rush to seize and settle any and all land features in the South China Sea and to demonstrate that people can live on them.

In the late 1980s, China belatedly responded to the activities of other claimants in the Spratlys.  After a bloody skirmish with Vietnamese forces at Johnson South (now Chigua / 赤瓜) Reef in March 1988, China seized seven land features and followed other claimants in building fortresses atop reefs and rocks.

Only two islands in the South China Sea were traditionally thought to meet the somewhat vague criterion of natural habitability.  These were Yongxing Island in the Paracels and Taiping Island in the Spratlys, both claimed by China for at least 130 years and held for more than a half century by Chinese forces from Beijing and Taipei, respectively.  But now there is a human encampment on every island, rock, and reef in the South China Sea where one can perch.  There is nothing more for any claimant to occupy without dislodging another claimant.

This leaves claimants with few options for settling the question of who owns what.  Altering the current pattern of possession would require either the expulsion or negotiated withdrawal of one or more of the parties.  No party wants or sees any advantage in war.  But no party’s nationalism will permit it to give up what it now has.  And all want more.

Sovereignty could theoretically be bypassed as an issue through cooperative exploitation of natural resources, as China has repeatedly proposed, but generations of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino schoolchildren have grown in classrooms with maps on their walls showing that all or most of the South China Sea is part of their country.  The peoples of the littoral states seem determined to possess whatever’s off their shores, not just profit from it.  By contrast with Brunei, Malaysia, and Thailand – which are jointly developing areas in dispute between them – in China, the Philippines, and Vietnam economic interest has so far been unable to make a dent in, still less overpower, possessive patriotism.

With neither war, negotiated compromise, nor joint development in prospect, there is impasse.  And, in the South China Sea, impasse entails the entrenching of popular hostility, arms races, and the impairment of other relationships between claimants and their security partners amidst the constant danger of war by inadvertence.  This is not a situation any party should find acceptable.  But it is the inevitable outcome of an approach aimed at preventing conflict by managing contention rather than resolving the disputes that produced it.  Instead of deterring conflict, the claimants need to remove its proximate causes and justifications.

The point of departure for doing this must be recognition that, with no land features left unoccupied, there is nothing more to be had without pushing other claimants off what they now possess.  It is realistic to accept that the status quo is preferable to attempts to upend it.  The requirement for setting aside specific claims so as to exploit resources jointly is no different.  The prerequisite for any sort of resolution is a common understanding of who claims what and how the law of the sea might extrapolate additional rights from it.

In the end, whatever the proposed solution, there is no alternative to the well-known doctrine of international law known as uti possidetis.  This is a Latin abbreviation of the phrase uti possidetis, ita possidetis, meaning “what you have, you may continue to hold,” regardless of how you acquired it.  This understanding is the legal justification both for the retention of territory acquired in war and for peaceful coexistence and acquiescence in inherited frontiers between newly independent states.  It replaces quarrels and controversies with peace, which diplomats define as “restrained tolerance of the status quo by those with the capability to alter it by violence.”

Uti possidetis allows claimants to acknowledge and live with the status quo without having to agree that its establishment was right or proper.  Its application to the land features in the South China Sea would clear the way for the clarification of boundaries on the basis of the law of the sea, supplemented by the demarcation of these boundaries through bilateral negotiations as required to draw median lines.

A total of forty-four features in the Spratlys are currently settled, occupied, or garrisoned: twenty-five by Hanoi, eight by Manila, seven by Beijing, three by Kuala Lumpur, and one by Taipei.  The political difficulty for the claimants of accepting this outcome should not be underestimated.  All sides feel cheated by it.  None is without passion on the subject.

The numbers of features occupied reflect which countries were quickest and most vigorous in seizing them.  So uti possidetis would give Hanoi by far the largest share, with Manila second.  Kuala Lumpur’s claims are already limited to what it actually possesses, so uti possidetiswould represent no sacrifice on its part.  But Beijing – which was late in asserting itself – would be left with very little.  That is a particularly difficult political problem for the Chinese Communist Party.

Since 1949, when Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic, the Party has staked the legitimacy of its rule in China on its having ended foreign disrespect for Chinese sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national dignity.  Yet, on the Party’s watch over the past forty years, almost all of the land features China long claimed in the Spratlys have been seized, occupied,  and garrisoned by other countries.  This outcome is the direct result of policies of strategic forbearance imposed by Deng Xiaoping and linked to restraint by Beijing on other even more important challenges to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, such as how to deal with Taiwan.  Accepting that China has permanently lost territory risks stimulating nationalists in both the China mainland and Taiwan to charge that the Communist Party’s recent foreign policies have undercut rather than served the mandate of Chinese nationalism.

But the alternative to a modus vivendi that accepts a status quo largely defined by other, smaller claimants is not just continuing friction and rancor in Chinese relations with these neighbors but ongoing Chinese military tension with the United States and the constant danger of war by inadvertence.  China is in no danger of being driven from its holds in the Spratlys and Paracels.  Its island-building activities are intended to establish that it’s not just there to stay but entitled to a strong role in the management of the area.  Once this is clear, will Xi Jinping have the vision and courage to say no to impatient nationalists, as Deng Xiaoping did in the interest of conciliating and avoiding conflict with China’s neighbors and the United States?

The chances of Xi and other Chinese leaders doing so would be enhanced by a less confrontational stand toward China by the United States..  The transformation of claims between the South China Sea’s littoral states  into a test of wills between Washington and Beijing has added an unhelpful overlay of great power rivalry to an already complex mix of impassioned disputes.  In 2010 the United States dramatically asserted to a regional meeting in Hanoi that it had a mandate to prevent violent changes in the status quo in the South China Sea.  At the same time, it declared that it took no position on claims there.  This was ahistorical.  It was also disingenuous and unpersuasive.

In practice, as some in the region recall, long before the United States turned against them as part of its “pivot to Asia” in 2010, America had supported China’s claims in the Paracels and Spratlys.  The U.S. Navy facilitated China’s replacement of Japan’s military presence in both island groups in 1945 because it considered that they were either part of Taiwan, as Japan had declared, or – in the words of the Cairo Declaration – among other “territories Japan [had] stolen from the Chinese” to “be restored to the Republic of China.”  From 1969 to 1971, the United States operated a radar station in the Spratlys at Taiping Island, under the flag of the Republic of China..

Neither the Paracels nor the Spratlys ever mattered to the United States at all (except as hazards to navigation) until they became symbols of Washington’s determination to curtail the rise of China’s power along its periphery.  No country with claims to the Spratlys interferes with shipping or peacetime naval transit in the South China Sea.  Nor does any party in the region have an interest in threatening commerce transiting it.  The South China Sea is every littoral nation’s jugular.  China and the other countries on the South China Sea have a far greater stake in assuring freedom of navigation in and through it than the United States does.

It is not in the U.S. interest to perpetuate the antagonisms that now inflame relations between claimants in sections of the South China Sea.  They poison Sino-American relations as well as other littoral states’ relations with China.  China’s neighbors have to live with China, and China has to live with them.

The Cold War seemed to teach the United States that safety lay in deterring conflict rather than in attempting to address its causes.  But applying this timid approach (derived from yesterday’s nuclear standoff and strategic stasis) to the dynamic situation in today’s Indo-Pacific and South China Sea perpetuates rather than controls risk and escalates rather than subdues tensions.  U.S. interests would be far better served by a bold attempt to eliminate the causes of conflict than by continuing the futile pursuit of mechanisms for managing tensions.  Having taken sides against China, the United States cannot now hope to mediate between the parties.  But it can make it clear that it would welcome, accept, and support the negotiated settlement of their differences.

Arguing for the conclusion of a code of conduct to ban land grabs and their fortification makes no sense when all land that can support fortifications has already been seized and is being built on.  Finding a way to apply uti possidetis in ways that minimize claimants’ political difficulties does make sense.  If the United States cannot be part of a solution, it should demonstrate its leadership by encouraging Asian nations to pursue diplomacy that promotes one.  Often, when diplomacy cannot immediately solve a problem, it can create a negotiating process that gives a solution time to ripen and negotiators the opportunity to craft one.

China and its neighbors should see and use American power as backing for peaceful efforts to resolve their disputes, not as an excuse for deferring or avoiding settlement of their differences.  The “rebalancing” of U.S. global strategy toward the Indo-Pacific known as the “pivot” is timely and appropriate.  But it should lower military tensions between the nations of the Indo-Pacific and thus between China and the United States, not lock these tensions in, still less escalate them. Mark Twain once advised: “If you see someone coming down the street with his arms open and a big smile on his face, turn and run like hell!”  Washington should not prove him right about this in the Indo-Pacific.

The issues of the South China Sea are too trivial to be allowed to spark armed conflict or trans-Pacific confrontation.  They are solvable, if those enmeshed in them are willing to make the effort to imagine and pursue solutions to them.  The parties need urgently to get on with this.  And they deserve American encouragement to do so.

http://chasfreeman.net/diplomacy-on-the-rocks-china-and-other-claimants-in-the-south-china-sea/

Dobro obrađena tema. 

[Prospero]

Crackdown in China: Worse and Worse

 

Orville Schell

April 21, 2016 Issue

 

 

 

“As a liberal, I no longer feel I have a future in China,” a prominent Chinese think tank head in the process of moving abroad recently lamented in private. Such refrains are all too familiar these days as educated Chinese professionals express growing alarm over their country’s future. Indeed, not since the 1970s when Mao still reigned and the Cultural Revolution still raged has the Chinese leadership been so possessed by Maoist nostalgia and Leninist-style leadership.

 

As different leaders have come and gone, China specialists overseas have become accustomed to reading Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tea leaves as oscillating cycles of political “relaxation” and “tightening.” China has long been a one-party Leninist state with extensive censorship and perhaps the largest secret police establishment in the world. But what has been happening lately in Beijing under the leadership of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is no such simple fluctuation. It is a fundamental shift in ideological and organizational direction that is beginning to influence both China’s reform agenda and its foreign relations.

 

At the center of this retrograde trend is Xi’s enormously ambitious initiative to purge the Chinese Communist Party of what he calls “tigers and flies,” namely corrupt officials and businessmen both high and low. Since it began in 2012, the campaign has already netted more than 160 “tigers” whose rank is above or equivalent to that of the deputy provincial or deputy ministerial level, and more than 1,400 “flies,” all lower-level officials.¹But it has also morphed from an anticorruption drive into a broader neo-Maoist-style mass purge aimed at political rivals and others with differing ideological or political views.

 

To carry out this mass movement, the Party has mobilized its unique and extensive network of surveillance, security, and secret police in ways that have affected many areas of Chinese life. Media organizations dealing with news and information have been hit particularly hard. Pressured to conform to old Maoist models requiring them to serve as megaphones for the Party, editors and reporters have found themselves increasingly constrained by Central Propaganda Department diktats. Told what they can and cannot cover, they find that the limited freedom they had to report on events has been drastically curtai

 

The consequences of running afoul of government orders have become ever more grave. Last August, for instance, a financial journalist for the weekly business magazine Caijing was detained after reporting on government manipulation of China’s stock markets and forced to denounce his own coverage in a humiliating self-confession on China Central Television (CCTV). And more recently media outlets were reminded in the most explicit way not to stray from the Party line when Xi himself dropped by the New China News Agency, the People’s Daily, and CCTV.

 

“All news media run by the Party [which includes every major media outlet in China] must work to speak for the Party’s will and its propositions, and protect the Party’s authority and unity,” Xi warned. In front of a banner declaring “CCTV’s family name is ‘the Party,’” Xi urged people who work in the media to “enhance their awareness to align their ideology, political thinking, and deeds to those of the CCp Central Committee.” Then, only days later the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced new regulations banning all foreign-invested media companies from publishing online in China without government approval.

 

But the crackdown has hardly been limited to the media. Hundreds of crosses have been ripped from the steeples of Christian churches, entire churches have been demolished, pastors arrested, and their defense lawyers detained and forced to make public confessions. And even as civil society has grown over the past few decades, a constraining new civil society law is now being drafted that promises to put NGOs on notice against collaborating with foreign counterparts or challenging the government.

 

At the same time, independent-minded researchers at think tanks and outspoken professors at universities worry about the “chilling effect” of Xi’s policies on academic life in both China and Hong Kong. Feminist activists demonstrating against sexual harassment have been arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” while human rights lawyers have been swept up in a mass wave of arrests for “creating public disorder,” and even for “subverting state power.”

 

But what has been perhaps most unexpected about this trend is the way that Beijing has begun to extend its claim to control people and organizations beyond its borders. Despite its stubborn defense of the sanctity of sovereignty, its agents have begun reaching overseas to manipulate the foreign dialogue by setting up hundreds of Confucius Institutes, newspapers, magazines, and even TV networks that answer to the Central Propaganda Department and the CCP.

 

The Chinese government is also denying visas to “unfriendly” (buyouhao) foreign journalists and scholars; blocking foreign websites with which it disagrees; demanding that public figures like the Dalai Lama, Hong Kong activists, or Chinese dissidents be refused foreign platforms; threatening the advertising bases of overseas media outlets that challenge its positions; and now even abducting foreign nationals abroad and “renditioning” them back to China where it forces them into making televised confessions. It is hardly surprising that Chinese have started whispering about a new “climate of fear” (kongbude qifen), what Eva Pils of King’s College London School of Law calls “rule by fear.”

 

What is most striking about these new tactics is their boldness and unrepentant tone. Instead of denying or apologizing for them, the CCP seems to proudly proclaim them as part of a new Chinese model of development, albeit one that has no use for liberal values from the West. In the new world of resurgent Chinese wealth and power, what is valued is strong leadership, short-term stability, and immediate economic growth.

 

Sitting at the very epicenter of this new nationwide campaign to more tightly control and rejuvenate China through a combination of more muscular leadership, regimented thought, and deeper loyalty to Xi is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Long one of the Party’s most powerful, secretive, and feared internal organs, the CCDI is dedicated to “maintaining Party discipline.” But when Xi came to power and appointed Vice-Premier and Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan as its secretary, he also charged it with launching an unprecedented new anticorruption campaign.

 

Wang is the “princeling” son-in-law of former Vice-Premier Yao Yilin. The son of a university professor and himself a student of history, he has headed up the China Construction Bank and also creatively handled China’s financial and commercial affairs under Hu Jintao when he worked closely with US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson to guide the early years of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the US and China. That period is looked back on as a particularly constructive one between the US and China. Why Wang gave up this portfolio to become an anonymous grand inquisitor is unknown, but his friendship with Xi, formed when both were “sent down” (xiafang) as youths to the same dirt-poor region of Shaanxi province in the early 1970s, may help explain his willingness.

 

According to Li Ling of the University of Vienna, who has written about the CCDI, “the party disciplinary system was and remains primarily a means for consolidating the authority of the Party Central Committee and preserving party unity.”²But since Wang took over in 2012, its already significant network of twelve branch offices have along with the Central Commission expanded their number of investigations from twenty in 2013 to more than a hundred in 2016 to make it one of the most important organs in Xi’s effort to bolster China’s one-party system. Its work is considered so important that it is even allowed to hire and fire outside the Organization Department, the centralized clearing house that controls other high-level appointments.

 

As an old-style Leninist party in a modern world, the CCP is confronted by two major challenges: first, how to maintain “ideological discipline” among its almost 89 million members in a globalized world awash with money, international travel, electronically transmitted information, and heretical ideas. Second, how to cleanse itself of its chronic corruption, a blight that Xi has himself described as “a matter of life and death.”

 

The primary reason the Party is so susceptible to graft is that while officials are poorly paid, they do control valuable national assets. So, for example, when property development deals come together involving real estate (all land belongs to the government) and banking (all the major banks also belong to the government), officials vetting the deals find themselves in tempting positions to supplement their paltry salaries by accepting bribes or covertly raking off a percentage of the action. Since success without corruption in China is almost a non sequitur, officials and businessmen (and heads of state-owned enterprises are both) are all easily touched by what Chinese call “original sin” (yuanzui), namely, some acquaintance with corruption.

 

Although secret investigations, censorship, and political trials are nothing new in China, what is unique about the CCDI’s part in Xi’s anticorruption campaign is its explicitly extrajudicial status. The investigations it launches take clear precedence over the judicial processes that police, lawyers, and judges would normally carry out in democratic societies. The CCDI is unencumbered by any such legal niceties, except when show trials are needed at the very end of a case so that a formal sentence for, say, corruption, can seem to have been delivered “according to law,” a phrase the CCP tirelessly uses as if incantation alone could make it true. But by then, of course, “guilt” has long since been established and all that is usually needed is a little legal theater to give the CCDI’s investigation an air of legitimacy.

 

Besides investigating corruption and violations of “Party discipline,” the CCDI has one other more nebulous charge: to “achieve an intimidating effect” on wrongdoing, as its website described it in 2014. In other words, it hopes “by killing a few chickens to frighten the monkeys” (xiaji jinghou), as the ancient adage puts it, in hopes of discouraging other potential malefactors. The commission has even launched a new website and smartphone app that allows whistle-blowers to upload incriminating photographs and videos of officials caught violating new sumptuary rules or even in flagrante delicto.

 

As if the CCDI’s own investigative arm, the Discipline Inspection Supervision Office (Jijian jianchashi), was not up to the ambition of Xi’s purge, the Party has now also breathed new life into a second organ, the Central Inspection Patrolling Group (CIPG, xunshizu). It was originally set up in 2003 to investigate “leading cadres” whom the CCDI may have shielded owing to its own nepotism and cronyism. With each of their teams headed by a retired ministry-level official and reporting to the Central Committee’s new “Central Leadership Inspection Work Leading Group,” the CIPG has grown quickly into an important and feared investigatory unit within China’s already extensive security apparatus. Although it technically reports directly to the Party Central Committee, like the CCDI, its day-to-day activities are under the command of Wang Qishan, making him the capo di tutti capi of China’s secretive investigations units.

 

When a “tiger or fly” comes under suspicion by either investigative branch, the suspect can be detained for what is called “double designation” (shuanggui), meaning that they give themselves up for investigation at a designated time and place, but only by the CCDI. Kept in isolation—often under an around-the-clock suicide watch by multiple “accompanying protectors”—there are only murky limitations on the length of time a suspect can be held and no provisions for habeas corpus, legal counsel, or appeal. The object of shuanggui, according to the scholar Li Ling, “is to destroy the detainees’ psychological defense system so that he or she will ‘start to talk.’” Although some reform measures have recently been taken, in the past forced confession and physical abuse, even torture and death, have not been uncommon. Because any investigation comes with strong presumptions of guilt, shuanggui is usually as much a verdict as the start of an evidentiary process. Needless to say, few things strike more terror in the hearts of officials than news that they, or their “work unit” (danwei), are on the CCDI’s hit list.

 

“The CCDI’s anticorruption campaign is chillingly evocative of the draconian repressions launched by the Eastern Depot during the Ming dynasty,” one historically minded corporate consultant told me. She was referring to a period in imperial history that represented a high tide of Chinese despotism. As most Chinese know from histories, popular novels, and TV dramas, the Ming dynasty was characterized by factionalism, intrigue, paranoia, intimidation, fratricide, and extrajudicial ruthlessness. Trusting no one and fearing treason everywhere, the Yongle Emperor (reigning 1402–1424) sought to protect the throne with an elaborate network of internal surveillance and espionage.

 

When, like Xi Jinping, the Ming emperor decided that his existing security apparatus, the so-called “Embroidered Guard” (jinyiwei), was inadequate to the task of protecting his reign against subversion, he set up the infamous “Eastern Depot” (dongchang) and put it under the leadership of loyal palace eunuchs. Here secret files were maintained on all officials, just as today’s “dossier” (dangan) system keeps files on contemporary Chinese. With its epic history of forced confessions, torture, and grisly assassinations, this Ming dynasty security apparatus became a “diabolical force behind the throne,” writes historian Shih-shan Henry Tsai, “a monstrous secret police apparatus” whose “power grew like a giant octopus, extending to every corner of the empire.”

 

However, so rife with paranoia was the Ming court that later emperors came to distrust even the “Eastern Depot” and so set up the “Western Depot” (xichang) as well, yet another security organ outside of regular bureaucratic channels. The proliferation of security organizations under Xi Jinping today is hauntingly suggestive of this Ming precursor.

 

Moving away from the “consensus-style leadership” that came to distinguish China since Mao’s repressive rule, Xi Jinping has not only recentralized power, but just as Ming emperors abolished the position of prime minister, he has marginalized the position of the modern-day premier. Instead, he has set up a series of new “leading small groups” (lingdao xiaozu) and made himself head of the most important ones (covering such fields as military reorganization, cyberhacking, economic reform, maritime rights, etc.). More than prima inter pares, Xi has become what Party propaganda organs now grandly tout as the “core” (hexin) of the Party. As a well-known Chinese cultural figure recently complained in private, “Our leadership now has an indelibly ‘dictatorial personality’ (ducaide xingge).”

 

As popular as Xi’s battle against corruption has been among ordinary people—a 2014 Harvard study showed him as having the highest approval ratings of any world leader—it has had an undeniably chilling effect on anyone hoping to speak truthfully to power. And with its evolution from an anti-corruption drive to a far broader purge of political and ideological rivals, many fear that China is now regressing into a period of neo-Maoism.

 

Such fears were only reinforced when over the New Year’s holiday Xi made a televised pilgrimage to Jinggangshan where Mao had set up his first revolutionary base in 1927. Here Xi was seen paternalistically “at one with the masses,” sharing a meal with peasants in front of a reverential poster of Chairman Mao. And his trip has generated a great many photographs, news clips, fawning pop tunes, and videos all extolling the benevolence of “Uncle Xi” (Xi dada).

 

Then in late February, he ordered a yearlong socialist education campaign, especially designed for those comrades who might be experiencing “wavering confidence in communism.” He particularly recommended careful study of Mao’s 1949 essay “Methods of Work for Party Committees.”

 

The notion that the “Mao Zedong Thought” that had dominated the Cultural Revolution would ever make a comeback in China had long seemed as unlikely as it was unwelcome. But now that China is sliding ineluctably backward into a political climate more reminiscent of Mao Zedong in the 1970s than Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, more and more educated Chinese are making allusions to such frightening periods of Chinese history as the Cultural Revolution and the Ming dynasty. And more and more of them are also seeking to financially anchor themselves abroad by finding ways to park assets outside their country, making it hardly surprising that China has been hemorrhaging foreign currency, with $1 trillion said to have fled the country last year alone.

 

When in 1978 the twice-purged Deng returned to power to lay out an ambitious reform agenda that allowed post-Mao China to enjoy greater liberalization in both its economic and political life, there was great relief. And during the relatively tolerant decade that followed, prior to Tiananmen Square in 1989, it was possible to imagine that with the passage of time China would not only become more market-oriented, politically open, and committed to the rule of law, but more in the world. Such optimism was only reinforced by such notions as China’s “peaceful rise” propounded later under Hu Jintao.

 

However, since Xi Jinping’s investiture such roseate hopes of a China slowly evolving away from its Leninist past have become increasingly remote. Indeed, in recent weeks, just as China’s annual “Two Meetings” (the National People’s Congress and the People’s Political Consultative Congress) were being held in Beijing, Xi’s efforts to command greater Party discipline and to censor the media began to provoke surprising levels of popular protest, including a flurry of unprecedented public challenges to both his policies and authority posted on the Internet. For example, an open letter by New China News Agency reporter Zhou Fang criticized censors for their “crude” and “extreme” violations of online freedom of expression. “Under the crude rule of the Internet control authorities,” Zhou wrote, “online expression has been massively suppressed and the public’s freedom of expression has been violated to an extreme degree.”

 

Zhou’s letter spread like wildfire online before being taken down by censors. Another online letter appeared in the government-linked news site “Watching” (Wujie). It was signed by an anonymous group labeling themselves as “loyal Communist Party members” and not only accused Xi of launching “a cult of personality,” but publicly urged him to step down from office. “You do not possess the capabilities to lead the Party and the nation into the future,” it declared.

 

His authoritarian style of leadership at home and belligerent posture abroad are ominous because they make China’s chances of being successful in reforming its own economy—on which the entire world now depends—increasingly unlikely. At the same time, because they seem bound to make the Party more dependent on nationalism and xenophobia, Xi’s policies also seem destined to prevent Beijing from being able to recast its inflamed relations with its neighbors around the South and East China seas. Finally, because such policies also grow out of a deeply paranoid view of the democratic world, they make it extremely difficult for China to effectively cooperate with countries like the US on crucial areas of common interests such as antiterrorism, climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation.

 

Whatever may come, China is undergoing a retrograde change that will require every person, business, and country dealing with it to make a radical reassessment of its willingness to seek convergence with the rest of the world

Mora neki red da se zna...

[Desmond Bojčinski]

Čitam pa mi nije jasno da li kontam, Kina uvodi zlatni standard za Juan, danas gram zlata vredi 39 dolara, vrednost se menja dva puta dnevno, Kako oni to misle da održavaju cenu, i ko da im prizna tu vrednost?

[akibono]

Join the Red Dragon Army, hip-hop style 

 

[hazard]

Ovo je malo manje gej od one pesmice o petogodišnjem planu...doduše možda i nije, ne razumem tekst.

[Prospero]

brate  

 

čajna-botovi

sima i mićan da odrade neki jv sa pekingom

 

China Fakes 488 Million Social Media Posts a Year: Study

Shai Oster beijingscribe
May 19, 2016 — 9:30 AM CEST
 

China’s government fabricates about 488 million social media comments a year -- nearly the same as one day of Twitter’s total global volume -- in a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates, according to a study.

Three scholars led by Gary King, a political scientist at Harvard University who specializes in using quantitative data to analyze public policy, ran the first systematic study of China’s online propaganda workers, known as the Fifty Cent Party because they are popularly believed to be paid by the government 50 Chinese cents for every social media post.

Contrary to popular perception inside China, the Fifty Cent Party avoids engaging in debates with critics and doesn’t make fun of foreign governments. Instead, it mostly works to distract public attention away from hot topics by highlighting the positive, cheering the state, symbols of the regime, or the Communist Party’s revolutionary past.

"In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense -- stopping an argument is best done by distraction and changing the subject rather than more argument -- but this had previously been unknown,” King said in an e-mail.

Although those who post comments are often rumored to be ordinary citizens, the researchers were surprised to find that nearly all the posts were written by workers at government agencies including tax and human resource departments, and at courts. The researchers said they found no evidence that people were paid for the posts, adding the work was probably part of the employees’ job responsibilities. Fifty Cent Party is a derogatory term since it implies people are bought off cheaply.

About half of the positive messages appear on government websites, and the rest are injected into the 80 billion social media posts that enter China’s Internet. That means one of every 178 social media posts on China’s micro blogs is made up by the government, the researchers said.

The team based their findings on leaked archives of 2013 and 2014 e-mails from the Internet Propaganda Office of Zhanggong, a county-level district of nearly half a million people in Ganzhou City, in Jiangxi, a province in southeast China. The archive included a mix of multiple e-mail formats, programs and attachments that required King and his team to build customized computer code to crack the archive and deploy automated text analysis and extraction. 

They pulled out 2,341 e-mails of which more than half contained a Fifty Cent post, totaling 43,797 posts that formed a benchmark for identifying other propaganda posts. They were able to identify Fifty Centers by cross referencing names from leaked e-mails with online social media profiles.

They found the name, contact information, and even photographs of many of the authors but chose not to disclose them because it didn’t serve an academic purpose, they said.
The timing of the posts showed coordinated control. Typically, the Fifty Cent Party workers would go into action right after some kind of social unrest or protest and try to distract public opinion with a wave of social media that researchers said was “interesting, but innocuous and unrelated topic.”

For example, they found 1,100 posts touting the China Dream, local economic development following the July 2013 riots in Xinjiang, or pegged to senior politicians’ gatherings in Beijing.
“Many revolutionary martyrs fought bravely to create the blessed life we have today! Respect to these heroes,” read one post cited in the study.
People also criticized the West and drew favorable comparisons to China.

“On one hand, the US publicly asserts that if China does not perish the West will wither; on the other it tells the Chinese people: your government is problematic, you have to overthrow it so you can live better lives than you do today. I can ask, is there a more ridiculous and contradictory logic than this?” another poster wrote.

After analyzing the database they created from the leaked accounts, researchers used machine learning to find other Fifty Cent posts in other parts of China. Volunteers in China set up Weibo micro blog accounts to try to contact Fifty Centers to verify if they worked for the government.

“Of course, the difficulties of interpreting these answers is complicated by the fact that our survey respondents are conducting surreptitious operations on behalf of the Chinese government designed to fool users of social media into thinking that they are ordinary citizens,” the researchers said in their paper, “and we are asking them about this very activity.”

They researchers said they deduced the rules for the messages: First, don’t engage in controversial issues. Second, stop discussion about potential collective or street protests by active distraction. Allowing some dissent serves the purpose of letting the regime gauge public opinion on local leaders, they concluded, while complete censorship only serves to stir up anger.

“The main threat perceived by the Chinese regime in the modern era is not military attacks from foreign enemies but rather uprisings from their own people,” they said.
Revealing a paternalistic approach, the guiding policy of China’s Fifty Cent Party appears to be that distraction is better than conflict. “Letting an argument die, or changing the subject, usually works much better than picking an argument and getting someone’s back up (as new parents recognize fast),” they wrote.