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Jiang Jinquan – New Chief Advisor to CCP Leaders

On October 30, 2020, at the press conference of the CCP Central Committee for the 5th Plenary Session of the 19th CCP National Congress, Jiang Jinquan appeared for the first time as Director of the CCP Central Policy Research Office. His appearance confirms that he has been promoted from Deputy Director.

Jiang’s predecessor, Wang Huning, held the position since 2002 and served three CCP Secretaries, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. For 18 years, Wang had been the chief advisor to the CCP leaders.

Jiang was the focus of the press conference on October 3 as the new Director of the CCP Central Policy Research Office.

The CCP Central Policy Research Office is the highest level think tank of the CCP and an agency directly under the CCP Central Committee. It is dedicated to researching political theories and policies, and to drafting documents for the Politburo. Its functions mainly include “drafting the work report of the Central Committee of the National Party Congress” and “participating in drafting the documents for large-scale Central Committee meetings.”

Jiang Jinquan has been a veteran at the CCP Central Policy Research Office reaching the position of Deputy Director in 2016. In 2018, he was seen accompanying Xi Jinping together with CCP senior leaders, above the CCP provincial heads. He was thus viewed as a member of the core Xi Jinping group.

Jiang Jinquan is an expert on CCP party development. He specializes in the theory of party development in the Central Policy Research Office. He first summarized Deng Xiaoping’s theory on party building, then studied Jiang Zemin’s party-building ideas, and later systematized Hu Jintao’s party-building activities. He was a member of the document drafting group of the 19th CCP National Congress and a member of the CCP Charter revision group. Currently, he is also a member of the CCP Central Party-Building Work Leading Group and head of its secretary group. He has been regarded as a key assistant to Wang Huning.

Source: The Storm Media, October 30, 2020
https://www.storm.mg/article/3159738

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics

Michael Lin Connected Biden with Beijing

After the New York Post reported that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) funneled money to Hunter Biden and his family, Apple Daily reported that Michael Lin (林俊良) was the broker who connected Hunter Biden with Beijing.

Lin is a talented but low-key Taiwanese businessman. He was born in a normal family and graduated from Yale University. He has worked in multiple investment firms in the U.S., mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. One of his China experiences includes working in the Internal Investment Department of the Peking University Founders Group, a large technology conglomerate in China which has the backing of Peking University and a good connection with high-ranking CCP officials.

Lin has a good connection with both the Kuomintang (a political party in Taiwan) and the CCP in Beijing. He moved to live in Beijing in 2005.

Lin co-founded the Thornton Group with James Bulger, son of William Bulger, an American former Democratic politician who served the President of the Massachusetts Senate for 18 years.

Lin was also the head of the Asian operations of the State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF). He used both the Thornton Group and the SLLF to conduct business in China, leveraging his connection between the Founder Group and Peking University, then to the National People’s Congress, and then to the top CCP leaders and officials in charge of Foreign Affairs.

Lin arranged Hunter Biden, the Vice President of Rosemont Seneca, to visit China in 2010. This was Hunter’s first trip to China. Hunter met several high-ranking officials in China’s financial institutions. Many of them later became Hunter’s business partners.

The most successful deal that Lin brokered for Hunter was the BHR Partners; that is Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd.

According to the person who supplied the information, Lin is still actively connected with the Biden family.

Source: Apple Daily, October 17, 2020
https://tw.appledaily.com/headline/20201017/U4XZ4PRGLBD6JIV2HMWJX5IK4I/

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

NY Times Chinese: China’s “Yiwu Index” Points Straight to a Trump Win

The New York Times Chinese Edition recently published an in-depth report on the campaign product sales level now widely recognized as the unofficial political indicator named the “Yiwu Index.” The NYT reporter visited the unusual markets in the Chinese town of Yiwu, where the world’s largest wholesalers of small goods are located. According to some wholesalers who were willing to talk to American media, Trump’s campaign products, from hats and banners to cups – anything that can have a logo printed on it – are selling crazily, while Biden products have nearly no orders. Sales person Ge Lu, who represents around 100 flag wholesalers, said he has received four or five Trump flag orders (per month) with each order buying thousands of flags. However, for the whole year, only one buyer has asked about Biden flags. Ms. Dai, who manufactures hats, has sold tens of thousands of Trump hats and a few thousand of Biden’s. Halloween product wholesaler Gigi Zhang has sold out all his Trump masks and so far no one has bought a single Biden mask. Yiwu has an annual small goods sales level of US$60 billion, with 70,000 wholesalers. It correctly predicted the 2016 U.S. presidential election outcome, among other elections in various countries. All Yiwu Index believers are confident about a Trump win.

The Chinese government has applied controls on displaying political campaign product samples.

Source: New York Times Chinese, October 28, 2020
https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20201028/trump-china-election/

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Chinese Workers Inundate Vietnam; Beijing Builds Border Wall to Stop them from Escaping

A Large number of foreign companies are exiting China lately and many Chinese companies are also relocating their factories to Vietnam to lower the costs. These companies have also attracted Chinese workers to work for them in Vietnam. A video posted on twitter showed that on October 20, nearly a thousand Chinese high-tech workers were gathering at the Sino-Vietnamese border in Guangxi and were ready to cross the border. All of them were supervisory level technicians. Vietnamese companies that the mainland or Taiwanese businessmen set up were the ones that hired them. A Taiwanese businessman living in Vietnam said that the Vietnam government restricts workers from China and it is not easy for people to find jobs in Vietnam. A Chinese businessman told Radio Free Asia that Vietnam is almost a democratic country now. It’s just like Shenzhen in the old days, but its policies, business environment, and the openness are much better than it is in the mainland and it draws many workers to work in Vietnam.

As a result, China is building a two-meter-high wall along the Sino-Vietnamese border to prevent Chinese residents from leaving China. The Sino-Vietnamese border runs about 1300 kilometers (808 miles). People commented that the “US is building a wall to prevent people from entering (illegally), while the CCP is building a wall to prevent people from escaping!”

Source: Radio Free Asia, October 22, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/jingmao/ql1-10222020063212.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Chinese Netizen Punished for Accessing Wikipedia Website

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported a social media post showing the screenshot of a notice from China’s Zhejiang provincial government that penalized a netizen for bypassing the great fire wall to browse the Wikipedia website. The police were able to locate and arrest the individual.

The facts, as shown in the notice, are about Zhang Tao, was the netizen who the police charged with the illegal activity. “From the first half of 2019 to October 2020, Zhang searched and downloaded the circumvention software LANTERN, with which he repeatedly bypassed the fire wall to access the Wikipedia website illegally to query information.”

The notice also stated that on Saturday October 24, the police seized Zhang and took him from a building for investigation. The police believed that Zhang used mobile circumvention software to access international networks in order to obtain information. It was an “unauthorized use of illegal channels for international networking.” The police imposed administrative penalties on Zhang under article 6 and article 14 of China’s “Implementation Rules for Provisional Regulations of the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information.” The police also issued an admonition and warning to him, ordering him to disconnect from the international network immediately.

The RFA reporter called the Zhejiang provincial government and asked, “How can you tell whether an Internet user was browsing the Internet illegally?” The answer was, “All activities circumventing the fire wall to browse anti-Party and anti-social content” are illegal.

The California-based China Digital Times found that there were nearly 70 cases of punishment for “bypassing the fire wall” as shown on the Zhejiang provincial government’s website.

Source: Radio Free Asia, October 29, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/wiki-10292020090454.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Counterfeit Digital Currency Surfaced in Pilot Cities

On October 25, at the 2nd Bund Finance Summit in Shanghai, Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the Bank of China, disclosed that counterfeit digital currency has appeared in pilot cities such as Shen Zhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an New Area, and Chengdu. The central bank is facing issues with the prevention of people counterfeiting digital currency. The general public was shocked about the news. People commented that they believe that paper money is much safer than digital currency because digital currency is easier to counterfeit than paper money and the cost of counterfeiting is lower. The Central Bank rushed to introduce digital currency even though the technology is still pre-mature.

The Bank of China has been studying digital currency since 2014. They kept a low profile from the outside world for a number of years. However, as more information has been made public recently, it has triggered high expectations on the launch of digital currency. Even though the officials have repeatedly emphasized the advantages of digital currency over traditional paper money, they have obviously ignored the problems that would come with the digital currency.

Source: Radio Free Asia, October 28, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/jingmao/QL1-10282020042449.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

CCP Tightens Media Control during the Fifth Plenary Session

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) cyber censorship authorities have further tightened their grip on the media in order to create a stable and peaceful political and public opinion atmosphere for the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP held in Beijing between October 26 and 29.

On October 22, China Digital Times, a California-based bilingual news website covering China, published the instructions that Beijing had issued for the Fifth Plenary Session.

This notice issued to the media detailed the requirements for propaganda control. It covered five concerns: “political rumors,” “national leaders,” “ideology,” “stability maintenance,” and “others.” The topics under close scrutiny included “harmful political rumors and information involving slander and attacks from abroad,” “exploitation of high-level infighting and power struggles, the next generation leadership, information on the successor (to Xi Jinping),” “harmful information that attacks, ridicules, and spreads rumors about leaders and important speeches,” “harmful information about leadership personnel changes, such as factional infighting, and the inner circle of Xi Jinping,” “publishing information on Hong Kong independence, Taiwan independence and the speeches of people supporting Hong Kong and Taiwan independence,” “harmful information that attacks our country’s political system, social system, the Party and the state,” and “Complaints about the Fifth Plenary Session.”

The notice also prohibits Internet platforms from highlighting reports involving vicious criminal cases, massive social unrest, campus incidents, as well as unauthorized use of overseas news.

Source: Voice of America, October 27, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/Tightening-media-control-has-become-new-political-normal-in-China-before-major-events-20201027/5637612.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

As Street Vendors Reappear, Retail Stores Are Closing Down

Several videos posted on Twitter show that the retail stores on the street or in shopping malls in large cities like Shanghai, Guangdong, and Shenzhen are closed. At the same time, the once officially banned street vendors have begun to re-appear in the larger cities like Beijing, an indication that the Chinese economy is heading towards depression.

The videos were posted on different twitter accounts. They show that many retail stores on Nanjing Road in Shanghai and Luohu Commercial City in Shenzhen are closed due to an increase in e-commerce shopping and the COVID 19 pandemic. The once prosperous commercial districts that used to be packed with retail stores are like empty cities right now. In Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, there were not only few visitors and customers at an annual International Commodity Fair, but also, few exhibitors participated in the fair. The organizers had to use cardboard to block sight of the empty booths. In Heilongjiang in the northern part of China, a video showed a street with few people. The person who was taking the video said, “What happened? It is only five or six o’clock in the afternoon right now. All the stores are closed. There are not that many people on the street.” In Beijing, the city started to allow street vendors to sell on the street again even though the city was previously against the street vendor idea. One economist commented that allowing street vendors means that the economy is not doing well. Even though these street vendors will not help to improve the overall economy, if the street vendors were still not allowed, there would be more people unemployed. They could become a possible source of social instability.

Source: New Tang Dynasty Television, October 26, 2020
https://www.ntdtv.com/b5/2020/10/26/a102972176.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources