Government/Politics - 112. page

In the online alumni group of a Sino-foreign joint university program in Beijing, news has been spreading about the university stepping up its political education. A former student, who became a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member during college, responded with a “thumbs-up” and said that some foreign teachers once forced their political views upon him and if such a thing were happening today, he would report the foreign teacher to the school.

Voice of America (VOA) did not specify the name of the school or the program, but did mention that the institution cooperates with many U.S. and U.K universities, adopts Western textbooks, and that most of the teachers are foreign. The Communist Party has been quite active in this institution.

In addition to recruiting Party members, the school organizes student CCP members and cadres to participate in “red education.” One year, they traveled to Jiangxi, the center of Communist movement during the revolutionary period from 1927 to 1949. They put on the uniform of the Red Army, carried a rifle, and symbolically walked a segment of the Long March of the Red Army.

One former student, Lin Yuzhou (a pseudonym is used per the interviewee’s request), is also a CCP member. Lin told VOA that she did not think that the content of Western coursework is in conflict with the ideology of the Communist Party. Lin believes that joining the Party is a “very glorious matter and offers a strong sense of belonging.” Many of her fellow students also wanted to join the Party and people’s motivation may be different. “Families or teachers may influence them or they may want to have more choices for their future in China. Government agencies or large state-owned enterprises may give priority to CCP members,” she said.

Staff members of a number of Sino-foreign cooperatively-run schools and institutions told the media that the CCP’s Central Organization Department and the Ministry of Education have, in recent years, been emphasizing the establishment of Party organizations in these schools. They also retain seats for Communist officials on the school’s management board. There are currently more than 2,000 Sino-foreign cooperative education projects in China, most of which are affiliated with local Chinese universities.

The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, an overseas campus of the University of Nottingham, situated in the city of Ningbo in the coastal province of Zhejiang, is one of the few such universities which is an independent legal entity. On the first day that the campus was open, the school established its Communist Party Committee, with the Vice President as the deputy secretary of the Committee. On July 2, 2018, Stephen Morgan, who has served as Nottingham Ningbo’s associate provost since 2016, was removed from its management board for criticizing the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and for being a critic of broader party-backed initiatives in the university, but he has remained on the faculty.

A few days ago, in the Sino-foreign cooperative project where Lin Yuzhou has studied, there was a student CCP branch secretaries and overseas contacts training session. The Party secretary of the college asked these contacts to pay close attention to the ideological dynamics of overseas Party members and maintain timely communications with the college.

Source: Voice of America, July 2, 2018
https://www.voachinese.com/a/china-joint-universities-20180702/4463991.html

According to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Organization Department, at the end of 2017, CCP membership reached 89.5 million, 117,000 more than the year before. The number of the Party’s grassroots organizations increased to 4.6 million, 53,000 higher than the year 2016.

It is said that the CCP has been exerting quantity control so that the annual growth rate of the membership fell by 1.5 percent. In 2017, about 2 million people became new CCP members. Among them, about 1 million or 50.8 percent are working “at the front line of production and work,” 860,000 or 43.4 percent hold a college degree or above, and 1.6 million or 81.4 percent are under 35 years old.

Among the existing 89.5 million CCP members, 43.3 million or 48.3 percent hold a college degree or above, 23.9 million or 26.7 percent are female, and 6.5 million or 7.3 percent are from ethnic minorities.

The grassroots CCP organizations continue to expand across every corner of the country. 99.7 percent of government organizations have CCP organizations installed in them and the proportion among non-governmental institutions is 95.2 percent. About 92.8 percent of the state-owned enterprises and 73.1 percent of the non-public enterprises are covered by CCP branches.

Source: Xinhua News Agency, June 30, 2018
http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018-06/30/c_1123059502.htm

On June 25, Hong Kong Oriental Daily News published a commentary report that was titled, “Beijing Assisted Pyongyang to Resist the Peaceful Transformation.” Below is a translation of the commentary.

Following the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, Kim Jong Un made his third visit to China in less than 100 days. During his meeting with Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping delivered the following three commitments: No matter how the international and regional situations change, the firm position of the Chinese government and the Party to engage in the development of China-DPRK relations will not change; the Chinese people’s friendship with the Korean people will not change; and China’s support for socialist North Korea will not change. Among the three “no change” commitments, the first two are relatively vague but the last one, “China’s support for socialist North Korea will not change,” carries more substance. It means that, on the issue of the reunification of South Korea and North Korea that may take place in the future, Beijing will be on the side of socialist North Korea. This is in response to the fact that, when the U.S. and South Korea have tried to denuclearize in the Korean Peninsula and achieve permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, some people have always wanted to use force or “peaceful transformation” to get rid of the Pyongyang regime. The U.S. and South Korea have always wanted Pyongyang to repeat how West Germany reunited with East Germany.

This is the biggest concern for the Kim family. For more than 20 years, Pyongyang has been desperately trying to develop nuclear weapons with the purpose of just protecting the regime’s lifeblood. For this reason, they will not hesitate to fight a nuclear war. Now that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons, it uses its military power to protect its regime while warning Uncle Sam not to act irrationally. Going forward, Pyongyang should be particularly on guard against the “sugar cannonballs” that the U.S. and South Korea have launched when dealing with peace issues. In this regard, the former Soviet Union and the European Socialist camp suffered painful lessons. China, on the other hand, has had very rich political, economic, military, cultural, and diplomatic experiences and opposing methods. Therefore Kim Jong-un should seriously learn and consult with China.

As for Beijing, it ought to understand Kim Jong-un’s concerns fully and should try to dispel his worries. Only in this way can Pyongyang “put aside burdens and move forward with lightness.” Then it can deal with the U.S., Japan, and South Korea to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and secure a peaceful environment for a long time to come.

This kind of situation is in line with China’s strategic interests and will help China win more time and space for peaceful development before it can come back to counter the U.S..

Source: Oriental Daily News, June 25, 2018
http://hk.on.cc/hk/bkn/cnt/commentary/20180625/bkn-20180625000424038-0625_00832_001_cn.html

Xinhua reported that the Central Foreign Affairs Working Conference was held in Beijing on June 22 and 23. It established the guiding position of “Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era,” which provided a new direction for diplomatic work. During his speech, Xi summarized China’s achievements in foreign diplomatic relations over the past five years and proposed ten diplomatic thoughts. They included “safeguarding the authority of the Central Administration and strengthening the Party’s uniform leadership in diplomatic work” and “China should actively participate in leading the reform of the global governance system and create a more comprehensive global partnership network.” According to Xinhua, the participants included seven members of the Party Standing Committee, Vice Chairmen Wang Qishan, the members of the entire Politburo, the Secretariat of the party, and the highest ranking leaders of the following: the National People’s Congress, the State Councilor, the Central Publicity Department, the Central Foreign Liaison Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Development Committee, the leaders of the reform commission, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Joint Chiefs of the Central Military Commission.

The Duowei News article quoted reports from The Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper, which reported that the participants at the conference were not allowed to take notes and the discussions were not fully disclosed. According to Nikkei, Xi told the participants that “we shouldn’t feel lost in the chaotic international climate” and that “China needs to understand our position and role in the changing world and scientifically set foreign policy guidelines.”

An Epoch Times report commented that the conference was held just as the U.S. is changing its China policy, a possible Trade War will take place between China and the U.S. and the Western world has started to guard against China’s infiltration. It is unusual for Beijing to hold such a high level conference on Foreign Diplomacy work. The intent of this meeting was to set the direction for foreign diplomatic work, which must be consistent with the Central Administration and ensure a unified coordination of action among the different departments.

Source:
1. Xinhua, June 24, 2018
http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018-06/24/c_1123026158.htm
2. Duowei, June 25, 2018
http://news.dwnews.com/global/news/2018-06-25/60066517.html
3. Epoch Times, June 24, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/6/24/n10509002.htm

According to Securities Times Online, Hainan Province recently introduced a Three-Year-Plan (from 2018 to 2020) to improve the Hainan Tourist Business using international standards. The goal is to increase foreign tourism by 25 percent and reach over two million tourists by 2020. The Plan would also create a special Internet zone for foreign tourists in cities like Haikou and Sanya and allow them to use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The news caused anger among Internet users in China. They criticized the Plan because it discriminates against Chinese citizens and uses a double standard to treat Chinese citizens as second class citizens. The link to the Plan can no longer be found on the official website of Hainan Province (http://www.hainan.gov.cn) and an article that the Paper.com published on this topic was also disabled. According to an article that Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported, the Plan will advertise Hainan tourism using WhatsApp and Wechat. It will also produce a Hainan tourism TV program to be aired on the BBC, CNN, and CNBC with over 2,000 minutes of air time.

The full article on the Plan can be found on WordPress.com: https://wo3ttt.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/%E6%B5%B7%E5%8D%97%E6%8B%9F%E5%AF%B9%E5%A4%96%E5%9B%BD%E6%B8%B8%E5%AE%A2%E5%BC%80%E6%94%BE%E4%BA%92%E8%81%94%E7%BD%91-%E7%BD%91%E7%BB%9C%E7%82%B8%E9%94%85-%E6%B6%88%E6%81%AF%E8%A2%AB%E5%88%A0/

Sources:
1. Security Times Online, June 22, 2018
http://kuaixun.stcn.com/2018/0622/14336897.shtmlto

2. RFA, June 22, 2018
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/meiti/hj-06222018105712.html

Voice of America (VOA) reported on the results of a survey conducted on 532 European companies that are members of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. The survey found that European companies with operations in China are dealing with a difficult business environment. Close to 50 percent of the companies that took the survey said that the environment has gotten worse in the past year; 20 percent of the companies said that they were the victim of forced technology transfer; close to 50 percent of the companies believed that the trade barriers in China will get worse over the next five years; and 25 percent of the companies believed that they would never see China’s market “open in any significant way.” The areas that these companies complained about the most include the uncertain legal environment, higher labor costs, and regulatory problems, as well as the “Great Firewall.” According to the article, some companies felt that China didn’t make progress in certain areas but rather it had taken a step backward. The examples were the introduction of the new Internet Security Law which forced these companies to spend more money on company registration fees, as well as using a low efficiency VPN system. The VOA article quoted a statement that the President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China made. He said that the trade tension between China and the U.S. resulted from China because it is not fully open and hasn’t carry out the speedy reform that it had promised. … China claims that it is the leader in globalization but its Internet Security Law is creating problems for these foreign companies.

Source: Voice of America, June 20, 2018
https://www.voachinese.com/a/news-eu-chamber-of-commerce-on-china-20180620/4446674.html