US-China Relations - 134. page

The International Herald Leader, a newspaper under Xinhua News Agency, published an article on June 5, 2012, titled “Over 80 Confucius Institutes Established in the U.S. in 8 Years.” As of today, over 80 Confucius Institutes with 299 Confucius Classrooms have been established in the 48 states across the U.S. The Confucius Institute has opened 6,127 classes with nearly 160,000 student enrollments; it has organized more than 2,800 sessions of cultural activities with a total participation of 147,000 people.

Some American scholars criticize China, saying it is using the Confucius Institutes to export the CCP’s ideology. According to the article, this misunderstanding about the Confucius Institutes will gradually fade.

Source: International Herald Leader, June 5, 2012
http://ihl.cankaoxiaoxi.com/2012/0605/45150.shtml
 

International Herald Leader published an article about a report that the China Strategy Culture Promotion Association released on U.S. and Japanese military power in 2011. According to the article, China has been on the defensive since the theory of the “China Threat” spread in the international community. “Although the Chinese side believes that these arguments are not worth refuting, objectively speaking, they have had a minor negative impact on China’s image.” The article considers the release of the report to be an effort to strike back. It quoted Luo Yuan, a retired major general and Deputy Executive Director of the association, as saying, “We will treat them (the U.S. and Japan) the same way they treat us.” 

The article said, “Luo Yuan is viewed as a Hawk in the Chinese military. The international mainstream media often quote his tough talk. His views have considerable influence on international public opinion.” Luo expressed a concern that the report may be misunderstood and viewed as being the Chinese military’s view or as a deliberate undertaking of the Chinese military.

Source: International Herald Leader, June 11, 2012
http://ihl.cankaoxiaoxi.com/2012/0611/47141.shtml

China Review News (CRN) recently published a review of an article form the Financial Times that discussed U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s position on US-China relations. Romney’s team recently suggested that the United States “won’t lose anything” if it goes against China and there is nothing to worry about in terms of a trade war. Romney is taking a tough position against China and has been calling China a country that manipulates the currency exchange rate. His position is considered much less soft than that of the former Republican president George W. Bush. Though Romney’s China policies cause worries even among the Republicans, it seems Romney’s team is making them a core part of the campaign image that is designed to differentiate him from the White House. However some Democrats believe that this is just an election year show because Romney’s China position is against the free-market philosophy that he has also been promoting. 

Source: China Review News, June 6, 2012
http://www.zhgpl.com/doc/1021/3/2/7/102132722_2.html?coluid=59&kindid=0&docid=102132722&mdate=0606144244

On June 5, 2012, at a press conference for the release of a report assessing the power of the U.S. military, PLA Major General Luo Yuan posed 10 questions to the United States. The China Strategy Culture Promotion Association, where Luo serves as its spokesperson and Deputy Executive Director, released the report.

The 10 questions are as follows:

Who has the largest and best-equipped military? Who has the world’s biggest military budget? Who has the largest inventory of nuclear weapons? Which country is involved in the most wars at present? Which country arranges the greatest number of combined military excises around the world? Who perceives China as its enemy? Who is the target of the U.S. strategic pivotal shift to the East? Who is the target of the air and sea combat strategy? Who is implementing or preparing to implement cyberspace warfare? Who is creating roadblocks in the Sino-U.S. military cooperation?

Luo concluded that the U.S. has the most powerful military with the largest budget and has a strong hostile state of mind towards China.

Source: Huanqiu, June 5, 2012
http://mil.huanqiu.com/paper/2012-06/2789073.html

On June 1, 2012, China News reported that Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau Director Zhang Quan made some public comments about Shanghai’s air quality monitoring standards. He suggested in a news conference that it is illegal for the U.S. consulate in Shanghai to release Shanghai’s local PM2.5 air quality readings to the general public. He pointed out that the U.S. consulate measures local air quality with its own equipment. The Shanghai government does not currently release this number, but it plans to complete equipment testing in June. Shanghai is in the first group of Chinese cities that will actually provide PM2.5 numbers. The U.S. embassy in Beijing started releasing Beijing’s local PM2.5 numbers several years ago, but this is the first time a Chinese official suggested that it is illegal to do so. PM2.5 particles are air pollutants with particulate matter having a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, small enough to invade even the smallest airways. These particles generally come from activities that burn fossil fuels, such as traffic, smelting, and metal processing. 

(Ed: The U.S. rates pollution levels according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard that is more stringent than the one used by the Chinese government. On Tuesday, for example, the U.S. Embassy reported that the level was “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” while Beijing categorized the air quality as “good.”)

Sources: China News, June 1, 2012
http://www.chinanews.com/df/2012/06-01

Washington Post, June 4, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-says-foreign-embassies-not-allowed-to-report-on-air-quality-in-beijing-other-cities/2012/06/05/gJQABHT4EV_story.html

On May 25, Xinhua reported that the State Council Information Office had just released a report called "The 2011 U.S. Human Rights Records." This report was in response to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 World Human Rights Report released one day earlier. The Chinese “Records” report accused the U.S. report of distorting the actual human rights situation in China. It suggested that the handling of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement proved that the authorities in the U.S. heavily violate (its citizens’) freedom to demonstrate and their freedom of speech. It further claimed that the United States government applies strong control and filtering of news media as well as the Internet. The “Records” also stated that U.S. citizens suffer from a high crime rate due to poor gun control and they also suffer a high unemployment rate coupled with poor unemployment benefits. The “Records” suggested that the U.S has violated the sovereignty of many other countries and the human rights in those countries. It concluded that the U.S. does not “qualify” to be the “world judge” and should stop using a double standard.  

Source: Xinhua, May 25
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2012-05/25/c_112038431.htm  

People’s Daily and Xinhua published a news report following the U.S. Department of State’s memorandum to rein in the use of J-1 visas for Chinese teachers at the Confucius Institutes. The report criticizes the U.S. memorandum for disrupting the educational activities at the Confucius Institutes across the U.S. The report used such subtitles as “unilateral halt baffling,” “political forces continuously vilifying (the Confucius Institute),” “U.S. public highly regards the exchanges.” 　

The report quoted insiders (informed sources) as saying that “the Confucius Institute class does not have the issue of accreditation because it does not count for subject credits or give degrees;” and “the memorandum is apparently a move to attack the institute. … There are indeed some political forces in American society that have, without justification, been attacking and defaming the educational activities of the institute.”

[Editor’s note: According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a Department of State "memorandum, dated May 17, states that any academics at university-based institutes who are teaching at the elementary and secondary school levels are violating the terms of their visas and must leave at the end of this academic year, in June. And it says that, after a ‘preliminary review,’ the State Department has determined that the institutes must obtain American accreditation in order to continue to accept foreign scholars and professors as teachers."]

Sources: People’s Daily and Xinhua, May 24, 2012
http://world.people.com.cn/GB/17969508.html
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2012-05/24/c_123181802.htm
Chronicle of Higher Education                                                                                                              http://chronicle.com/article/State-Department-Directive/131934

People Daily published an article written by Cheng Enfu and Yang Bin that analyzed the economic and financial strategies that the U.S. is using during the crisis. The authors are scholars from the Marxist Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Cheng is the director of the institute. The following is a brief summary the article:
 
As a capitalist country controlling a global economic and military hegemony, the U.S. will not allow the financial and economic crisis to erode its international position; it will not even tolerate the loss of the U.S. dollar’s dominance.

First, the U.S. Wall Street is utilizing its influence on the government and national regulations to further expand the position of U.S. financial monopolies over other industries and countries. For the U.S. to be injecting gigantic amounts of money to rescue the market is, in essence, a new innovative means of exploitation in which Wall Street kidnaps the government and the public to obtain extraordinary interests.

Second, the U.S. is trying to explore gaining extra interests even during the time of global economic stasis via strengthening its control over resources, carbon discharge, and intellectual property.

Third, the U.S. is still using neoliberal policies to misdirect the economic and financial reform of other countries, and to plot insidious economic and financial wars to subvert the economic and currency systems of other countries.

Fourth, the U.S. pilfers the world’s wealth by recklessly issuing dollars, transferring the losses from the crisis to others.

Finally，the U.S. may even take Keynesian military action to launch a war (including the U.S. return to Asia and emphatically strengthening the military encirclement of China) when economic and financial means alone cannot rescue them from the crisis.

Source: People’s Daily, May 23, 2012
http://world.people.com.cn/GB/17958585.html