The first quarter in 2010 saw an increase of 20 million Internet users in China, with the total reaching 404 million. About 191 million use online social networking services. As of Feb. 25, IPV4 addresses amounted to 235 million, the second largest in the world. There were over 3.22 million websites at the end of 2009, up 12.3% from a year ago.
Source: Xinhua, April 23,
2010 http://news.xinhuanet.com/tech/2010-04/23/content_13408048.htm
The Journal of China’s Academy of Social Science, a government think tank, published an article stating that the external appreciation of the RMB might lead to domestic inflation. The Chinese RMB is facing two challenges: one from the international market to appreciate and the other from domestic market to depreciate. There are three reasons. First is that the settlement system for Chinese exports prohibits the free flow of foreign exchange – all exchange earned by exporters must be sold to the State at the official rate. The State has increased the money in circulation by 15,000 bn RMB for the $2,400 bn foreign exchange reserves. Second is that the relaxed monetary policy has led to staggering loans reaching 9,500 bn RMB. Third is that the various bank deposits represent potential purchasing power.
Source: China Review News, April 22, 2010
http://www.chinareviewnews.com/doc/1012/9/7/0/101297006.html?coluid=7&kindid=0&docid=101297006
Cai Wu, the Minister of Culture, discussed preferential policies to encourage and support the export of Chinese culture products and services. These would include marketing, technology and customs services. “China’s culture products and the dissemination of the international competitiveness of power have yet to be further enhanced.” Cai stated that for every show the State sends overseas, China imports 10 shows, and that the annual total income from all shows sent to and performed oversees is less than that of a popular overseas circus. Chinese companies are encouraged to establish an overseas presence by investment or by setting up branches. Minister Cai indicated that the State will support hosting various expos, participation in arts and film festivals, and booking shows.
Source: Huanqiu, April 28, 2010
http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2010-04/796483.html
China’s navy has nine access paths to go to the ocean, but only three or four paths on the east side of China, between Japan and Taiwan, can be used frequently and do not require notification to other countries, the International Herald Leader reported. The U.S. and Japan have beefed up their military and surveillance capabilities to closely monitor and contain China’s navy. The report quoted an anonymous Navy official’s suggestion: China should use these ocean access channels more frequently and familiarize itself with the environment, build large surface ships to cover submarines to go to the ocean during wartime, and improve its capability to control these key access paths.
The report is a comment on the Japanese media’s heavy coverage of ten of China’s navy ships, including two submarines appearing in international waters between Okinawa and Miyako Island on April 10.
Source: International Herald Leader, April 26, 2010
http://news.xinhuanet.com/herald/2010-04/26/content_13424980.htm
The “Internet of Things” refers to utilizing the Internet and modern technology, such as RFID, censoring, GPS, and scanning, to identify, locate, track, and manage object movement. Deng Shoupeng, the Vice Chairman of the China Federation of IT Promotion pointed out at the “2010 Wireless Communication Application Conference,” that 2009 is the first year that China has entered the “Internet of Things” market. In 2010, the “Internet of Things” market in China will have reached 200 billion Yuan, including IC, censor, software, and other related industry chains. The size will grow to 750 billion Yuan by 2015.
Deng listed five areas in which China is currently lacking: standards, core technology to support the "Internet of Things," coordination among regions and industries, policies and regulations, and people who understand both the Internet and business.
Source: Xinhua, April 22, 2010
http://news.xinhuanet.com/internet/2010-04/22/content_13399614.htm
Reform of the cadres’ personnel system is an important task that the 17th National Congress initiated. It was specifically explained and planned in the fourth plenary session (of the 17th Congress) “Resolution,” which demonstrated that further advancing reform is an extremely important and pressing task for us to strengthen the foundation of the Party’s rule and accomplish the Party’s mission as the ruling party. …
As our country gets more involved in globalization, we not only must face intense competition in the economy, science, and technology, but we also must face intense competition in ideology, the system, and politics. The competitiveness of the cadre personnel system is the key element in the competiveness of a country’s political system. To win over the preemptive stance in international competition in politics, we must further advance the reform of the personnel system, so as to provide a system that guarantees a high quality of cadres and leaders. …
Based on the guiding spirit of the 17th National Congress of the CCP and the fourth plenary session of the 17th National Congress, to carry out the reform of the personnel system, we must stick to the principle of the “Party taking control of the cadres.” It cannot be changed at any event. The authority to appoint personnel is one of the most important authorities for a ruling party. During the reform, giving up this principle of the “Party taking control of cadres” is equivalent to giving up the ruling authority and the ruling position of the Party. …
The “Resolution” of the fourth plenary session asked us to further advance the personnel system reform from five aspects. … There are tasks in eight areas. The first one is to establish and perfect a system to select, appoint, and nominate cadres. The second is to perfect the evaluation system. The third is to select cadres openly and encourage candidates to assume certain positions to be able to compete with one another. The fourth is to advance the reform of cadre training and education. The fifth is to perfect the selection system for young cadres and future-generation cadres, and establish a training and selection chain for the Party leaders from the grass roots level. The sixth is to develop a system of management which embodies both discipline and warm care. The seventh is to enhance communication among the cadres. The eighth is to improve morality in selecting candidates, and improve the credibility of the selection process.
Continuing to train cadres and improve their quality is another important task required by the 17th National Congress. … First, we must enhance the training in ideology, arm the cadres with the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, strengthen education in the Party’s principles, and remain firm in our ideology. Second, we must improve the training in capabilities, especially competence in strategic planning, handling mass work and public service, and in maintaining social stability. Put emphasis on improving the ability to handle urgent issues, the ability to guide public opinion and use new types of media, and to conduct work with minority and religious groups. Third, we must establish the concept of training cadres based on our needs. … Fourth, we must continue to foster open competition, making the Party academy and administrative schools the main channel, and main battlefield in the training; at the same time, we must make higher institutions such as universities an important place to train cadres. Fifth, we must treat the cadre’s moral training as an urgent task.
Looking at the status quo of our cadre teams and the requirements for future development, we must do well in three areas. The first is to strengthen the nurturing of Party culture and train cadres through practice. … Second is to do well in the development of future cadre teams. Put emphasis on educating and nurturing them, and assigning them specific tasks as well, particularly training in and the practice of the Party’s principles. We must do well in the development of future cadre teams for important positions. We must do better in selecting and training female cadres, minority cadres and cadres from outside the Party. … Third is to explore and establish a system wherein the upper level Party organization selects cadres from lower levels, and establishes a selection and training chain starting from the base level [the lowest level]. It is our emphasis to guide the base level cadres in the right direction, and we should establish and perfect the method of selecting cadres for townships from the village level, selecting cadres for the county level from the township level, and increase the percentage of public officers from lower levels. When there is a vacancy in the local Party and the politics division at the county level or above, those cadres who have had experience at the base level will be the first group of candidates. We should select and appoint college graduates to be village cadres, and make sure they are willing to stay, and can do well at their job.
For the Party to take control of the Party, the key is to take good control of the Party cadres. For the Party to be strict in administration, the first thing is to strictly manage the Party cadres. …
According to the “Resolution,” we must do well in four areas in the exchanges among Party cadres. First, we must center on scientific development, and greatly promote the exchanges between different areas, and between the local level and the central organizations. We must continue to select good cadres and talented young cadres who have worked in the eastern developed regions to serve in the western regions, and send those good, or promising cadres working in the mid-west to work in the eastern developed regions to train them. We must continue to select good cadres from central organizations to take positions at local levels. We must do well in the exchange in issues like exploring the west, reviving the old industrial districts such as the northeastern regions, developing the central region, the development of key projects and the backbone industries of our country, and supporting Tibet and Xinjiang, etc. Second, we must promote exchanges among cadres and leaders holding key positions. During the past several years, we have had exchanges among the Party and politics division, the secretary of the discipline division, the directors of organization departments, directors of the people’s court, directors of the procuratorate, and directors of the police department. Next, we should establish a system to appoint cadres to a place that is not their hometown, especially for those key positions. Third, we must promote exchange and rotation among intermediate level cadres. Cadres should rotate in those positions that mange human resources, finance, discipline and legislation. … Fourth, the exchange channel between administrative organizations and enterprises should be refined. We must do research to come up with a method to accomplish this kind of exchange.
Endnote:
[1] Study Times, November 30, 2009
http://www.studytimes.com.cn/WebPage/ny1.aspx?act=0&id=3087&bid=1
Xinhua recently reported that nine government units, namely Peoples’ Bank of China, the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture, the State General Administration for Radio, Film & Television, the State Administration of Press & Publications, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Securities & Futures Commission, and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, jointly released a guidline on financial industry support of the culture industry. The report called for successful implementation of the guidline in three areas: (1) widely publicizing the policies; (2) establishing a smooth bridge between financial and culture industries; (3) carefully performing groundwork.
Source: Xinhua, April 22, 2010
http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2010-04/22/content_13402020.htm
The International Herald Leader, under Xinhua, recently published an article discussing the fact that Foreign Policy Magazine is now grouping Venezuela, Iran and Russia into a new acronym, “VIRUS.” Foreign Policy believes these countries are a threat to the U.S. and the entire order of the West.
The author of the International Herald Leader article suggested that the U.S. is fond of labeling other countries, such as the “Axis of Evil” label that the earlier administration came up with. However the author thought the U.S. is only pretending to have moral superiority because the label “Totalitarian Dictatorship” does not apply to Saudi Arabia and “Democratic Bridgehead” won’t apply to democratically elected Hamas. The article concluded that the labels may reflect U.S. policy directions, and that some of them are worth monitoring.
Source: Xinhua, April 22, 2010
http://news.xinhuanet.com/herald/2010-04/22/content_13402389.htm