Social Stability - 143. page

Xi Jinping, China’s Vice President, the expected incoming paramount leader of the Chinese Communist Party, led a central government delegation to Lhasa to attend the celebration of “the 60th anniversary of China’s peaceful liberation of Tibet.” In his speech at the celebration, Xi called for the promotion of advanced socialist culture and a patriotism-based national spirit, as well as sticking to, consolidating, and expanding the patriotic united front and “carrying the struggle against the Dalai group’s separatist activities to a deeper level.” Xi praised all those who are stationed in Tibet – the PLA, the armed police, and law enforcement – as “loyal guards and strong pillars who defend the country, safeguard Tibet’s socialist development, and maintain Tibet’s social stability.”

Source: Xinhua, July 19, 2011
http://tibet.news.cn/xwzt/xzhpjf60/qzdh/wzzb.htm

  Beijing Daily recently reported that the Communist Party branch in Dongcheng District was building a grass roots structure based on a grid format, dividing the District into grid cells. The 17 streets in the District have 589 cells in which 822 Party units were created. These units further include 1,565 Party Groups that reach 37,452 Party members. The grid structure is designed to do better “social service management,” enabling Party members to have a deeper reach. Party members in each grid cell are to note down detailed information about the resident families in the cell, such as some family’s low-income status or whether some household has a water leak. It is believed that this is a new model for community self-management. 

Source: Beijing Daily, July 17, 2011
http://bjrb.bjd.com.cn/html/2011-07/17/content_426162.htm?div=-1

Xinhua published an article featuring stories of how Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members and branches inside foreign invested companies in Shanghai helped the companies pull through difficult times during the global financial crisis. A few large corporations including the U.K.’s Hamworthy, the U.S.’s Medtronic, Walmart, and Hamilton Sundstrand, Korea’s Samsung, and Finland’s Nokia Siemens Networks, have CCP branches in place in their China subsidiaries.

According to the article, “In 2004, Shanghai Foreign Service Co., Ltd, (abbreviated SFSC, a subsidiary company of Shanghai World Expo Group, which specializes in human resource management for foreign investment companies in Shanghai) assumed the function of manageing its 3,900 Chinese Communist Party members. Among the 550,000 employees of foreign invested companies, almost 10,000 are CCP members. As of end of March this year, under SFSC, there awere 407 stand-alone CCP branches in individual foreign invested companies and 88 CCP branches jointly across foreign invested companies.”

“There are more than 6,000 foreign invested companies in Suzhou City, with over 1,000 CCP organizations in place. Statistics indicate that, at the end of 2010, there were 7,300 CCP organizations in ‘two new’ types of organizations, managing 110,292 CCP members, accounting for one third of the city’s total membership.”

[Ed. note: The “two new” types of organizations refer to new economic and social organizations. Before the economic reform, CCP organizations existed in virtually all units of Chinese society. Since the reform, many new economic and social organizations, such as foreign invested companies, appeared and there were originally no CCP organization in place.]

Source: Xinhua, July 15, 2011.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/2011-07/15/c_121671880.htm.

According to officials from the Public Security Bureau (PSB) of the Shenzhen Municipality, to prepare for the security work of the 2011 Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, they have installed more than 30,000 networked category I cameras, covering all the major public spaces and important Universiade stadiums. A total of 41 game sites, 22 training sites, and 3 backups were prepared for the 2011 Summer Universiade. For the opening and closing ceremonies of the Universiade, the Shenzhen PSB implemented very strict security measures; they also set up specific security teams for the ceremonies.

Source: Nanfang Daily, July 14, 2011
http://gd.nfdaily.cn/content/2011-07/14/content_26673126.htm

Chen Hong, a 28-year-old man, set up the website "www.ibribery.com," that accepted anonymous tips about the corrupt behavior of government officials. Within ten days after the launch on June 9, 2011, the website attracted over 200,000 visitors. The site published numerous postings regarding bribery involving government officials, police officers, and physicians. However, according to the city’s local paper Jinghua Daily, officials from Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate stated that websites such as "www.ibribery.com" “do not conform to the law.” Chen initially thought the website would help the government, but that did not seem to be the case. On June 19, he shut down the website fearing that the website caused trouble and he did not want it to be seen as a threat to the government.

Source: BBC, June 22, 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/chinese_news/2011/06/110622_china_bribery_battle.shtml

The Vice President of China’s Supreme People’s Court, Zhang Jun, recently said in a training session that the “People’s Court should accurately apply the relevant articles in Amendment VIII to the Criminal Law. … (It should) heavily sentence those who should be handed a heavy sentence according to law; and show no mercy in death sentence cases with immediate execution according to law.” The crimes subject to harsh punishment include “crimes that seriously endanger the social order and people’s lives and property such as endangering state security, organized terrorist crimes, and ‘evil’ forces’ crimes, especially those criminals who are extremely hostile to the state and society, who do not target any particular person or population, and who have committed particularly serious offenses.” 

Since June 10, the township of Xintang in Zengcheng, a county-level city in Guangzhou nicknamed "Jeans Town" for its apparel manufacturing industry, has fallen into chaos after local police bullied a pregnant woman from Sichuan and pushed her to the ground. Although it was confirmed that the woman was unharmed and did not suffer a suspected miscarriage, protesting migrant workers from Sichuan Province held massive demonstrations out of their anger over local authorities’ unfair treatment and blackmail by law enforcement, a typical manifestation of the widespread social injustice in China. As many as 50,000 protesters attacked and burned government buildings and police vehicles, resulting five deaths and nearly one hundred wounded. The local press reported that nearly 150 migrant workers who were at the demonstration were placed in police custody.

On Sunday (June 12), authorities mobilized a division in the Guangzhou Military Region and deployed nearly 30 combat trucks and 1,500 riot police to quell the unrest. A curfew and military control of the town will be in place for the whole week. As of June 14, the Internet, fax, and phone lines have been cut off. The authorities notified local people not to “cook up stories and spread rumors.”

Source: Voice of America, June 14, 2011
http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/201210614-Authorities-high-alert-123799564.html

By U.S. standards, skyscrapers are buildings taller than 152 meters. According to a Xinhua article, China now has over 200 skyscrapers under construction, a number comparable to existing U.S. skyscrapers. China already has five out of 10 of the world’s tallest buildings. In the coming three years, China will see one skyscraper finished every five days. Five years from now, the number will be quadruple that of the U.S. 

The concern is overinvestment, as half of the top 50 of China’s skyscrapers are in the real estate business. Skyrocketing housing prices result in pressure to sell or rent the units. Meanwhile, small-to-middle sized cities are leaping forward. The southwest city of Guiyang is planning 17 skyscrapers, and Guangxi Province’s Fangchenggang, with a population of one million, will build a 528-meter-high financial center. 

The article mentioned Andrew Lawrence, a former Deutsche Bank economist, who invented the “skyscraper index.” In his research, Lawrence observed that major downturns in the economy occurred shortly after skyscrapers were completed.

Source: Xinhua, June 9, 2011
http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2011-06/09/c_121510519.htm