Government/Politics - 102. page

The Paper reported that, in order to create a “clean and healthy political ecology,” Xiamen City of Fujian Province recently carried out a campaign among 70,000 of its party members to rectify the behavior of some of the party members. Some members choose to “believe in ghosts and in god but do not believe in Marxism-Leninism (不信马列信鬼神).” The members were asked to conduct a self-check and take corrective action if they found any violations. All violations are subject to serious investigation and an accountability check. The article stated that this is part of Xiamen City implementing the party’s political tasks which include “promoting party organizations, party members and cadres at all levels of the city to safeguard (Xi Jinping)’s core leadership in a conscious manner, firmly implement the party’s political line, and strictly enforce political discipline and political rules in order to ensure the implementation of major decisions.” So far, the city has conducted questionnaires on 20 violations of political discipline and political rules, including 3 municipal cadres. Meanwhile in 2018, Xiamen City and the local districts organized 31 training programs with 2,630 participants to study the “key messages from the 19th congress and Xi Jinping’s socialist thoughts with Chinese Characteristics in the new era.” This was done so that the members could “grasp the discipline inspection and supervision work in the new era more accurately.”

Source: The Paper, January 5, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2816898

The Central News Agency reported that Zheng Yefu, a famous Chinese social scholar, recently wrote that, since its establishment, the Chinese Communist Party has brought too many disasters. In the past 70 years it has completely lost its ability to correct itself. Only by peacefully fading out from the historical stage can it meet the fundamental interests of the people. However if the public keeps quiet, the people don’t deserve to see the end of this totalitarian regime.

Zheng took the history of Taiwan’s end of the one-party dictatorship as an example. He emphasized that, if there had been no democratic party to fight against the ruling party for many years, the then President Chiang Ching-kuo would not have been able to make decisions toward a democratic transformation. Compared with today’s China, if intellectuals were faithful to their own consciences, they should have been brave enough to express their views and “China would not have become what it is today.”

Zheng Yefu is a retired professor at the Department of Sociology at Peking University. He has long observed Chinese intellectuals and social development issues and has criticized official policies. Among the public he is very highly respected. He made the above appeal in his article called, “The Causes and Difficulties of Political Reform,” which was published last month.

Although this article was not published in mainland China, overseas Chinese media reprinted it and triggered extensive discussions. Chinese netizens have also reprinted on the microblog some of the content that does not contain sensitive vocabulary. They expressed their gratitude to Zheng Yefu for this article. Some people said that Zheng is “the true spirit and patriotism of Peking University.”

According to a report from Radio Free Asia and Radio France International, Zheng Yefu said in the article that most of the party’s policies do not represent the interests of the Chinese people. Instead, the party took the opportunity to turn the private land of the people into state-owned land, and the local governments then sold the land to real estate developers at a much higher price and made countless citizens become house slaves.

He pointed out that since the party came to power, for 70 years, it has brought too many disasters to the Chinese people, and it has almost completely lost the mechanism of self-correction. “Joining the party is to earn an official title and defending the party is to safeguard its vested interests; the party is increasingly hateful towards different political views, and the fear of crisis has made the party dysfunctional.”

Zheng Yefu believes that, currently, the common interest of the Chinese people and the ruling party is for “the Party to peacefully, that is, in order to avoid violence and cause the minimum social unrest, to fade out of the historical arena.” “The only big contribution for the existing party leadership to do that can go down in history is to lead the party to decently fade out of the historical arena.”

He also mentioned, “If we (the public) do not say something and do not exert pressure, we should not, and we do not deserve to see the end of this totalitarian regime.”

Zheng Yefu pointed out that “The rise and fall of a nation rests with every one of its citizens,” which was one of the purposes of his writing the article. “There is also a humble motivation. I have written millions of words over the years. If I don’t say a word on the subject that matters to the fate of the nation, I will look down on myself.”

He mentioned at the end of the article that China has not yet reached the point where all responsibility can be pushed on the politicians. “It is because today’s scholars have not fulfilled their responsibilities. If they were faithful to their own consciences, if they were brave enough to speak their own opinions, China would not be what it is today.”

Source: Central News Agency, January 5, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201901050094.aspx

On December 27, Xi Jinping hosted a Political Bureau of the Central Committee meeting and reviewed the “Regulations on the Political and Legal Work of the Party.” The Paper published a commentary article that CCTV had originally reported. The article stated that Xi’s speech during the meeting, “further reinforced the party’s absolute leadership over political and legal work.” It called for all levels of the political and legal department to “study, understand, and implement the practice of political and legal work.” The article also commented that “promoting the rule by law is meant to further consolidate the party’s ruling status, improve the party’s ruling style, improve the party’s ability to govern, and ensure the long-term stability of the party and the country.” The article stated that, “the Political and Legal system must ensure that it is consistent with the Party Central Committee led by Xi in terms of its political stance, political direction, political principles, and political path, and that it is determined to be the guardian and the developer of the socialist country ruled by law.”

Source: The Paper, December 28, 2018
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2788729

Radio Free Asia reported that on December 27, the National Financial Work Conference was held in Beijing. The conference called for the “mentality to live on a tight budget next year” and strictly control general expenditures and spending. In addition, it proposed that there will be a substantial increase in local government special bonds, strict control of local government’s implicit debt, prevention and resolution of financial risks; promotion of economic transformation; further release of domestic demand potential; promotion of regional coordinated development; the strengthening of safeguards; and the improvement of people’s livelihood. At the same time, the meeting proposed that a larger scale of tax reduction and fee reduction will be implemented next year.

The conference also promoted the key work in 2019, which includes a pilot project on agriculture-related funds in poverty-stricken counties, accelerating the construction of poverty alleviation funds, poverty alleviation, and rural construction. At the same time, it emphasized the requirement to strengthen the international financial cooperation led by the “One Belt, One Road” project, actively participating in and leading the formulation of rules in international finance and economics, and firmly safeguarding and enhancing China’s national interests.

In the article, RFA quoted a statement an economist made. He stated that the key reason for China’s economic deterioration is the defects in the existing system. Therefore, no matter how the government strengthens macroeconomic regulations and control, it cannot solve the fundamental problem. The existing political system has resulted in a serious imbalance in the Chinese economy. The policy that allows the state to advance and the private sector to retreat has caused an abnormal development of the economy. As a result, the general public has to bear the pain from reform, including the unemployment of hundreds of millions of workers. Many small and medium-sized enterprises began to fall in the winter of 2017 with a sharp decline in revenue and no guarantee for financing.

Source: Radio Free Asia, December 28, 2018
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/jingmao/ql2-12282018100637.html

In recent years, the Chinese government has been boycotting Christmas as a holiday. On December 24, a secondary school in Anhui Province told the students to “resist the Western holidays and start with myself.” The school principal also gave a speech entitled “Christmas is a shame for the Chinese.”

At the ceremony of the 125th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, the school got one student representative to deliver a speech entitled “The Great Leader Chairman Mao.” The official Weibo account of the local Si County released important news about an event. The title was, “Resist Western Holidays and Start with Myself.”

This release mentioned that, in recent years, “foreign holidays” such as Christmas have been popular among elementary and secondary school students. Some young students “follow the trend and respect the foreign holidays. However, this runs against the school’s patriotic traditional culture education.” The release said that this year is the 125th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth. At this “special moment,” in order to further help students “to establish a correct viewpoint on life and values, and to improve students’ abilities to distinguish between right and wrong,” the middle school at Si County used the flag-raising ceremony to give the students an education in “resisting the Western holidays and starting with myself.”

The school principal delivered a speech titled, “Christmas is a shame for the Chinese.” He said that in 1860 “Christian followers of the British and French allied forces invaded our country and attacked and looted Beijing.” He added that in 1900, during the Siege of the International Legations, “Christians killed our people, leaving exposed bodies on the streets. Christians insulted our women.”

The principal also said that after the allied forces invaded China, “on the day before their Christmas Day, that is, December 24, they ran competitions on murder, arson, and robbery.” “These utterly conscienceless religious followers prayed to the Lord Jesus so that the Lord would bless them so they could kill people without sin.”

Source: Central News Agency, December 25, 2018
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201812250328.aspx

Within 4 days from December 11 through the 14th, provincial communist party secretaries and governors from Jiangxi, Yunnan, and Guangdong Provinces successively led their respective local party and government delegates to visit Huawei, China’s biggest tech company, after Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Canada. They all said that Huawei is China’s pride and they will unswervingly support Huawei’s development.

Du Jiahau, the Party Secretary of Hunan Province, said, “The more (Chinese) companies face ‘severe challenges and tests,’ the more we must increase our support and service; we must join hands with companies to ‘eliminate obstacles on the road ahead’ and continue to be stronger, better, and bigger.”

Sources: Sohu and Duowei, December 15, 2018
http://www.sohu.com/a/281965658_347856
http://news.dwnews.com/china/news/2018-12-15/60105562.html