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The CCP Provided a Downgraded Reception for Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou

Taiwan’s former President and former Kuomintang Chairman Ma Ying-jeou arrived in China on March 27 to worship his ancestors. Political observers take his reception in China as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) countermeasure to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s trip to the U.S. at the same time.

Reports showed that the CCP provided a much lower level of reception to Ma than what he had expected:

The CCP called him “Mr. Ma Ying-jeou” instead of “President Ma Ying-jeou.”
Ma did not receive a “Presidential treatment” at the airport. Ma’s team expected to see Ding Xuexiang, member of the Standing Committee of the CCP Politburo, a state-level official to welcome Ma there. Instead, Chen Yuanfeng (陈元丰), Deputy Director of the State Councils’ Taiwan Affairs Office, a Deputy-Ministerial level official, came to meet Ma at the airport.
Ma planned to bring six secret service agents, each with a gun and a bulletproof jacket and Ma himself would wear another (the seventh) bulletproof jacket. However, Beijing only allowed Ma and his guards to carry 3 guns, 2 bulletproof briefcases, and 3 bulletproof jackets. (meaning Ma would not be able to wear one). Beijing also didn’t allow them to bring any radio and anti-listening bug devices with them.

A commentator pointed out that the CCP treated Ma not as a former president, but rather as a former provincial governor, since it wanted to downgrade Taiwan to the level of a province.

Source:
1. Liberty Times, March 27, 2023
https://news.ltn.com.tw/news/politics/breakingnews/4252848
2. China Times, March 23, 2023
https://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20230323004426-260407?chdtv

Briefings | | March 29, 2023 | @CS Geo-Strategic Trend Government/Politics

Beijing Interfered in the Canadian 2022 Local Election

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) reported that, last year, China’s Vancouver Consulate interfered in the election of Vancouver’s mayor and the election of its city council .

A CSIS report on January 10, 2022, summarized that Tong Xiaoling, then China’s Consul-General, discussed how to “groom” the Chinese diasporas to get political positions in order to advance Beijing’s interests. In the middle of November 2021, Tong said they needed to try all of their efforts to increase the minority’s vote ratio. She stressed this was necessary because candidates would rely on those votes (to be elected). Tong also expressed that they needed to get a specific person (Tong had her eyes on who to select, but the CSIS report didn’t disclose his name) to enter the Vancouver city council.

It appeared that the CCP had also interfered in the election of Vancouver’s mayor. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sanctioned Member of Parliament Michael Chong for criticizing Beijing, then Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart cancelled his meeting with the CCP diplomats and strengthened ties with Taiwan. Both Tong and the Chinese language media criticized Kennedy. Some Chinese language media called him the “Cold War Mayor.” In the election for mayor, Kennedy lost to Chinese diaspora candidate Ken Sim by a small margin – 37,000 votes.

Source: Epoch Times, March 16, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/3/16/n13951845.htm

Briefings | | March 23, 2023 | @CS Geo-Strategic Trend Government/Politics

Travel Data and Other Sources May Indicate Beijing’s Claim of1.4 Billion Population Is a Fake Number

The Chinese New Year period is the peak travel time for Chinese people. During this period, people working in different cities (including migrant workers) return to their hometown and then afterwards come back to the cities where they work. Also many people travel for tourism.

According to China’s Ministry of Transportation, in the 40-day Chinese New Year period (15 days before the New Year and 25 days after), there were 4.7 billion person-times (if a person rode the train 3 times, it would be counted as 3 person-times) travelling in China in 2023. That number was .57 billion in 2019 (the last year before COVID spread). Travel went down by 924 million person-times.

This could indicate a huge population loss (t could be in the hundreds of millions) in China due to COVID, but the Chinese Communist Party just hid the information.

There are other sources indirectly supporting the suspicion. In June 2022, hacker “ChinaDan” obtained data from the Shanghai Public Security Bureau’s database of individual information. The database had information (name, birth date, address, picture, phone number, etc.) of only 970 million people.

In 2021, overseas media reported that internal data from the Ministry of Public Security showed that China had only 780 million ID cards at that time (an ID card is mandatory for every Chinese citizen who is over 16 years of age). According to China’s Seventh Census in 2020, 81 percent of the people in China were 16 or above. Assuming all the 780 million ID cards are for these people, then the total population would be 960 million.

Source: Epoch Times, March 11, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/3/10/n13947106.htmoii

Briefings | | March 19, 2023 | @CS Economy/Resources

The CCP’s New Control over the State Council and the People’s Congress

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published a “(Communist) Party and State Organization Reform Plan (党和国家机构改革方案)” on March 16. The Epoch Times commented that the essence of the Reform Plan is to “strengthen the party central committee’s centralized and unified leadership,’” to further consolidate power under the CCP and to use the CCP’s organs to oversee and manage the state functions.

Item one of the plan is to establish the CCP’s Central Finance Committee (中央金融委员会) to “study and review major policies and issues in the financial field.” The CCP will dissolve the State Council’s Financial Stability and Development Committee (国务院金融稳定发展委员会) and move its responsibilities and place them under the office of the new party committee. Item two of the plan is to create the CCP’s Central Finance Working Committee (中央金融工作委员会) so as to “unify the party’s work in the financial field.” These two items set the structure for the CCP to define financial policies and manage work directly. The State Council will establish the Bureau of Financial Supervision and Administration (国家金融监督管理总局) as an execution vehicle.

Item three is to establish the CCP’s Central Technology Committee (中央科技委员会), to let the party “provide centralized, unified leadership” over the technology field, including resolving major strategic, directional, and overall issues, defining national strategic technological tasks and significant research projects, managing national labs, and coordinating military-civilian technology fusions.

Item four is to establish the CCP’s Central Social Work Department (中央社会工作部), to oversee the party’s development work throughout the whole country and in every economic structure (in the public and private sectors) and every industry. It also “provides guidance on working on people’s complaints (信访工作).”

Item five is to establish the Office of the (CCP’s) Central Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Work (中央港澳工作办公室), which also uses the name of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, but that state council office is no longer a separate office by itself.

Item six is to establish the National People’s Congress Representatives Work Committee (全国人大常委会代表工作委员会), which is responsible for allocating representative quotas and reviewing qualifications, directing and coordinating representative’s research work, managing representative’s proposals, and other related functions. Thus, the party is directly managing the congress representatives.

Source: Epoch Times, March 17, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/3/17/n13951999.htm

Briefings | | March 19, 2023 | @CS Government/Politics

People’s Lives: Self-Employed Chinese Are Quitting the Social Security Program

Facing a big shortage in the government’s medical insurance system (partly due to COVID spending and partly due to corruption), many local governments have adjusted the medical insurance funds: The first adjustment was to cut the monthly payments to individual healthcare accounts for those who are company employees. The second was to cancel the monthly payment to self-employed people.

This triggered the public’s concern about the government’s changing its policy at will.

As a result, many self-employed people recently decided to quit their participation in the government’s social security program. The reasons: One, they cannot afford the monthly contribution of 1,492 yuan, while many of them have a monthly income of only three or four thousand yuan. Two, the government keeps adjusting the benefit payout plan. Some local governments extended the minimum contribution period from 15 years to 25 or 30 years, and there is a rumor that the government may defer the retirement age to 65. This means the participants will have many more years to contribute but fewer years to receive benefits. On a simple calculation without adjusting for inflation, paying 1,492 yuan per month for 20 years will end up contributing 358,000 yuan in total. If the retiree starts to receive a social security payment of 2,000 yuan per month at age 65, he needs to live to age 80 to break even, but the average age for Chinese is only 77. Thus many people may end up receiving less than what they contributed. Therefore, they would rather keep the money in their own account instead of putting it in the government’s account.

According to the National Labor Union’s statistics, in the year 2021, China had over 200 million self-employed people. Only 48.6 million, or 24 percent, participated in the social security program.

Sources:
1. 51.ca website, February 21, 2023
https://info.51.ca/articles/1186931
2. Radio Free Asia, February 21, 2023
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shehui/gt2-02212023020155.html

Hot Topics | | February 28, 2023 | @CS Economy/Resources Government/Politics

Economy: City Investment Corporations Cannot Pay Their Obligations

In China, many local governments have set up their own investment companies. These companies usually use the land as collateral to get loans from banks to invest or finance the construction of infrastructure projects or government-subsidized housing.

However, due to the collapse of the real estate industry in China, many of these city investment corporations are short of money and some cannot even pay their obligations.

Phoenix Finance reported that in the past year, people buying government-subsidized housing reported the delay (or even failure) of delivery of those houses. This has happened in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province; Qingdao City, Shandong Province; Zhengzhou City, Henan Province; and Baoding City, Hebei Province.

Chengyang District, Qingdao City, Shandong Province provided an apartment subsidy to attract skilled/talented people to come to the city. On a jointly-owned housing program (government pays a portion to reduce the purchase cost for the talent they are bringing in), the talent paid 1.5 million yuan (US$220,000) but the Chengyang Municipal Investment Group did not pay the government portion of 760,000 yuan, and thus the talent could not get an apartment. (After the Phoenix Report, Chengyang Municipal Investment Group said they had gathered enough money to pay for their dues.)

People pointed out that this showed the government has run out of money. These investment companies cannot raise more money because land is no longer hot property – builders are not willing to buy land from the government (thus paying the land transfer concessions) anymore.

Since November 2021, the number of bonds issued by the city investment corporations that missed the payback on the due date has increased from five per month to around 20 per month.

An unconfirmed report said that to sell their apartments, some city investment corporations assigned quotas to their employees and tied it to their annual reviews.

Source:
1. Phoenix, February 2, 2023
https://fengcx.com/news/detail/56084949.shtml
2. Sohu, February 3, 2023
https://www.sohu.com/a/636924623_100162316
3. Sina, February 4, 2023
https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/zqgd/2023-02-04/doc-imyemynm3699818.shtml

Hot Topics | | February 14, 2023 | @CS Economy/Resources Government/Politics

People’s Lives: Organ Harvesting Happened in China 30 Years Ago

Mr. Guo Zhigen (郭志艮), a resident at Qingtao City, Shandong Province, told the Epoch Times that he has heard about an organ harvesting case that happened 30 years ago.

In April 1991, Mr. Guo stayed in the Hospital Affiliated with Qingdao University in Qingdao to treat his aplastic anemia. One summer afternoon, on his way to the bathroom, he heard someone crying when passing the nephrology department (hematology and nephrology departments were in the same area at that time). He asked the patient what happened and was told that the patient was going to receive a kidney transplant the next day and was worried about the result since he signed a document to relieve the hospital from accountability. The patient looked like an official under 40-years-old.

The patient’s family member also told Mr. Guo that the police had a “body confiscation team.” Police had already matched both the blood of the person to be executed and the recipient. On the day of execution, the police would ask the dead person’s family members for all sorts of documents to prove their relationship to the dead. As long as there was a document they didn’t bring with them, the police would then refuse to acknowledge their connection to the dead and they then declare the dead person’s body as unclaimed. The “body confiscation team” could then take it to sell to hospitals.”

According to Mr. Guo, the hospital performed two liver transplants on the next day. The operation for the patient he met went well, but the other patient died on the operating table. Qingdao’s newspaper reported that the kidney transplant was successful.

According to published information, the hospital affiliated with Qingdao University was among the first group of hospitals in China to do kidney transplants. It did the first kidney transplant in 1982.

Source: Epoch Times, January 31, 2023
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/23/1/31/n13919567.htm

Hot Topics | | February 5, 2023 | @CS Government/Politics Social Stability

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