Social Stability - 90. page

Recently, large numbers of P2P sites (Peer to Peer online Lending sites) have been shut down. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands of investors losing their investments overnight. The victims planned a petition in front of the China Banking Regulatory Commission in Beijing on August 6 but the Beijing Police Force blocked them. Nevertheless, over 2,000 victims successfully arrived at the China Banking Regulatory Commission or at a nearby location. Epoch Times published an article which provided a first-hand account of P2P (Peer to Peer Landing) victims who were at the scene. The article contains photos and videos that the victims took. Below is the translation of two of the victims’ personal stories.

One victim, Mr. Li arrived in Beijing on August 5. He stayed in a family hotel about 10 minutes away from the Banking Regulatory Commission because it didn’t require personal identification during check in. After they arrived, Mr. Li and another victim who is a college professor walked around to check out the surrounding situation. Mr. Li told Epoch Times, “August 6 was intense as they were waiting for us, which brought us little hope.” On the morning of August 6, they left around 7:30 am in the rain. The rain had almost stopped by the time they arrived across the street from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. He observed that there might have been a whole army of police officers around the financial street, with one police officer every three steps. The atmosphere was very tense and very scary. At the intersection, they saw a large number of police officers wearing gray-black raincoats interrogating pedestrians, especially those carrying backpacks. The police told them to stop and show their ID cards and swept the ID cards with the machine in their hands which contained a blacklist of petitioners’ names. They were quickly able to determine whether the person was a P2P petitioner, and then the petitioner was taken to dozens of buses parked on the street. Mr. Li and his friend found a corner to the right side of the Banking Regulatory Building and waited there for more petitioners to arrive. By 10:00 am, they realized that most of their fellow petitioners had been stopped at the train station, bus station, airport, or their home before they could leave. “There was a wide range of delays in trains and planes in Beijing on August 6. All of those were planned to target us,” Mr. Li said. He saw that the police used force to take many petitioners away from the scene. Eventually, shortly after 10, Mr. Li and his friend were also arrested. They were taken to a bus which took them to the Jiujingzhuang Petition Office in the Fentai district of Beijing. After they arrived at the petition office, the police first scanned their IDs and then sent them to individual rooms where the police or work unit from their hometown could pick them up. The guard at Jiujingzhuang told them there were over one thousand petitioners who had arrived on the buses. Beijing Police prepared 120 buses to transport the petitioners on that day, but Mr. Li thinks that the number of arrested petitioners was larger than that. One person with inside information posted a message on social media stating that over ten thousand police officers had been dispatched to deal with the petitioners. Another Petitioner Ms. Jin told Epoch Times that she was arrested at the Beijing train station while waiting for other petitioners. She was warned ahead of time that they couldn’t go to the government agencies in Beijing to file a petition but she said she still went because she was desperate. Ms. Jin said that, at the local police station, they were treated like criminals. They were told that they were inciting and spreading rumors and could be detained for crimes at any time with no explanation. Ms. Jin told Epoch Times that she went to Beijing to find out the truth. The Banking Regulatory Commission was supposed to have managed their investments. The government was supposed to have backed them. Where did the billions of dollars go? Mr. Li said the crash of the P2P lending site was a clear violation of citizen’s rights. He pointed out,“They took our money and then wanted to silence us. We were raising our voices as citizens to protect our own property.”

Source: Epoch Times, August 7, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/8/7/n10622691.htm

Because China faces issues related to its aging population, it has changed its one child policy to encourage the younger generation to have more children. However, recent statistics show the childbirth rate is slowing down. People’s Daily published an article calling for the government to establish plans to ease childbirth concerns; it has been saying, “Childbirth Is a National Matter.” However People’s Daily’s statement drew a fair amount of criticism over the Internet.

According to the People’s Daily article, in the 1980s, China’s one child policy resulted in 400 million fewer newborn babies, which eased the resource and environmental pressure. In 2013, the policy was changed to allow parents who are the only child in their family to have a second child. By 2015, to deal with the aging population issues China was facing, the policy was changed to allow all couples to have a second child. The statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that there were 17.23 million newborns in 2017, down 63,000 from 2016. The childbirth rate was 12.43 percent, down 0.52 percent from 2016. Many cities and provinces issued policies to increase the rate of childbirth. In urban regions, however, many young couples still chose not to have children due to the high cost of raising a child, including education, medical, and public services. However, the decrease in the childbirth rate is having a negative impact on society, including an aging population, higher labor costs, and an increase in the pressure on social security. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, the government needs to come up with a plan that will ease the concerns of the younger generation so they will be encouraged to have more children.

Following the People’s Daily‘s statement, people responded with criticism over the Internet. One posting stated, “Having a child is a basic right for a human being. The party wants to manage everything. They didn’t allow more than one child before. Now they want people to have more children. The situation is that people could afford more than one child back then, but the reality is that now, they can have a baby but are unable to afford raising the baby.” Another posting commented that there were so many tragic incidents when the Party forced women to abort their babies and never took any responsibility. “The Party never cares about the livelihood of the people.”

Sources:
1. People’s Daily, August 6, 2018
http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0806/c1001-30210179.html
2. Epoch Times, August 13, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/8/13/n10635706.htm

In July, Chinese vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology was found to have fabricated records and arbitrarily changed the process parameters and equipment during its production of freeze-dried human rabies vaccines. Substandard diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines that Changsheng produced were administered to 215,184 Chinese children. Another company, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, produced substandard DPT vaccines and sold 400,520 of them to the public. China’s drug regulator launched an investigation and arrested 15 people from Changsheng Biotechnology, including the chairman.

About a month after the outbreak of the scandal, the Chinese government offered to re-administer the vaccine without charge to people who had been previously vaccinated with Changsheng’s rabies vaccine. However, according to Radio Free Asia, few people have gone to get vaccinated and some no longer trust domestic vaccine manufacturers.

On August 10, a nurse at a hospital in Shenzhen that provides free re-administration of vaccines told the reporter that the hospital uses the vaccine of the Liaoning Chengda Company, a vaccine manufacturer not struck by the scandal. Individuals did go there to get vaccinated, but not many.

A gentleman, Mr. Zhang from Guangdong, had his child vaccinated with Changsheng’s vaccine. He said in an interview that he no longer has confidence in domestically made vaccines. If a company has not been exposed, that does not mean that it has no problem. He would rather choose to use imported vaccine.

“In my situation, I will not dare to get vaccinated again. It is useless. I really worry about domestic vaccinations. I will try as much as possible to get imported vaccines; otherwise there is no guarantee. Companies that have not been exposed may still have a problem. In the case of Changsheng, one employee exposed the problem, right? If he hadn’t done it, we would never have known it. As a matter of fact, they had detected the problem before, but they chose not to publicize it. We don’t have the right to information. So if domestic things are not exposed, it does not mean that they have no problem.”

Some netizens expressed ridicule: Is the vaccine used this time not fake? Will we still have to get vaccinated once again?

Source: Radio Free Asia, August 10, 2018
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/yf2-08102018100530.html

RFA reported that the Guangdong Lawyer’s Association issued an “Internet Code of Conduct for Lawyers in Guangdong Province.” The regulation specifies that the lawyers should “abide by the Constitution, must not deny China’s fundamental political system and basic principles, and must not endanger national security. The specific contents include the following things that lawyers can’t do: publish anything on the Internet that denies the leadership of the Communist Party of China; incite dissatisfaction with or opposition to the Chinese Communist Party and the government; initiate, support, or mobilize participation in organizations that endanger national security; publish political statements or articles that are unconstitutional; use the Internet to influence administrative, supervisory, judicial, and procuratorial organs on certain legal cases; disclose state secrets, trade secrets, and information pertaining to non-public trials; and they cannot use the Internet to publish false or distorted facts that will create social conflicts and affect social stability. The RFA article quoted comments that several dissidents living in China made. They stated that the Lawyer’s Association only serves the interests of the government and has been suppressing the freedom of the lawyers for a long time.

Source: Radio Free Asia, August 3, 2018
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/yf2-08032018100520.html

In the past two months, a large number of P2P (Peer to Peer Lending) companies have closed in China. One report showed that 60 to 70 P2P companies closed just in one day. Tens and millions of investors are affected, including some seniors who have lost their entire retirement savings. On August 6, the P2P victims around the country planned a group petition in front of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) in Beijing but the officials planned ahead of time to block these petitioners. The Epoch Times article showed photos of the shuttle buses lined up outside of the CBIRC building that were ready to take the petitioners away. The screen shot of a notice from the Public Security Bureau of Wenzhou City showed that the top leader of the local authorities in each region was told to take responsibility for stopping the P2P petitioners from going to Beijing. Otherwise they would face serious consequences. The notice also ordered all levels of the security forces to be ready to carry out the task of monitoring the petitioners. One document from an unidentified province advised that the authorities were aware that there were 8,370 people from 32 cities and provinces who all had plans to go to Beijing; it put them all under close surveillance. One notice from a Public Security Bureau of a railway station ordered that the local security bureau must take action to prevent the petitioners from boarding the train to Beijing. The embedded videos showed police stopping the petitioners from leaving their homes or taking them off of trains or out of hotel rooms. One petitioner told a police officer that they should be clear what kind of government they are serving: “Wake up! One day what we face today will be the same thing you face tomorrow.” Another victim said, “They locked us up without even giving us a reason. The government is so dark.” Members of the police force have become the dogs of the corrupt officials. Where did tens and billions of P2P funding go? Has it become a tool for officials to launder money?

Source: Epoch Times, August 6, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/8/6/n10617970.htm

Epoch Times reported that, on July 24, a group of veterans from Yantai City of Shandong Province decided to go to Beijing to petition for their pay and medical benefits but they were blocked from entering the train station. The posted videos showed that the group first went to the Yantai Municipal government building but no one from the municipal government came out to meet with them. The group then walked to the Yantai Train station to take the train to Beijing. The staff at the ticket booth in front of the train station refused to sell them train tickets while the police force from Yantai formed a human wall in order to block the veterans from entering the train station. One representative told Epoch Times, “We are legal citizens. The Communist Party oversees the train station yet they wouldn’t even sell train tickets to us. What are their grounds? What are they afraid of? . . . All of the officials are afraid that they might be investigated for corruption. All they are concerned about is to maintain stability.” Epoch Times reported that, on the same day, a group of veterans from Zhengzhou City of Henan Province also went to the Zhengzhou Municipal government to appeal for their rights. In June, several thousand veterans from Zhenjiang City in Jiangsu Province went to the local municipal building to appeal but the police force violently beat them up. There are nine videos embedded within the Epoch Times article. They contain live footage of how the veterans were treated. For example, the one that is 22 seconds shows the human wall that the police created.

Source: Epoch Times, July 24, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/7/24/n10587165.htm

A recent Legal Daily article gave some details about the business of ghostwriting graduation theses in China.

“Due to the large demand, producing graduation theses has become an industry and many services are provided. They include ghostwriting, plagiarism checking, and plagiarism prevention.”

In March 2018, Zhang Feng (a pseudonym), a state-owned enterprise employee, became involved in the ghostwriting business to earn some extra money.

Zhang told the reporter, “Somehow I was connected to a social media account, which is like an intermediary or agent. The account would receive an order for writing a thesis, and then broadcast it to look for people who would like to fill the order. Then the order taker directly contacted the buyer to negotiate a price.”

“The buyer’s needs are varied. For example, someone placed an order for everything to be done, from designing all the way to programming. Some buyers already have a draft design and only need to have the thesis written. Some have already finished writing the thesis, but need to check for plagiarism and make any adjustments needed to avoid plagiarism. There are also some people who want to modify the paper’s format and come up a power point presentation.”

“Most of the students who have such a need are junior college students and undergraduate students. As far as graduate students, according to Zhang, most of those hiring ghostwriters are part-time MS/MA students who also have a job.”

Source: Legal Daily, July 12, 2018
http://www.legaldaily.com.cn/index/content/2018-07/12/content_7591993.htm?node=20908