The Communiqué by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was published on September 18. China News Service quoted expert’s interpretation of the communiqué: it reveals the Communist Party’s concern about looming problems.

The communiqué mentioned the current situation more than just once, pointing to “Profound changes in the global, country and party situation, which imposed a new requirement for the Party’s development” and “The entire Party should brace itself for impending danger in the time of peace, develop heightened awareness of looming problems, remain concerned for the Party, fulfill the Chinese people’s responsibility to expand the Party, be daring regarding reform and innovation, and under no circumstances be rigid or stagnant.”

Source: China News Service, September 18, 2009
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/news/2009/09-18/1874886.shtml

During the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the focal point was whether Xi Jinping would be crowned as the next leader of the Communist Party. The Chosun Ilbo, or North Korea Daily, reported some of Xi’s hard Line talks:

“China can solve the problem of feeding 1.3 billion people. That has already been the greatest contribution to the global community. Some foreigners who had nothing to do after being fed kept pointing fingers at us. China does not export revolution, does not export hunger or poverty, and does not try to stir up your lives, either. Why should you criticize China?”

Response on “How to view the Tibetan turmoil.” “There are many birds in a cage. If we drive the noisy birds out, the cage will no longer be active. We have already been immunized and seen too much. The key is how we settle our scores.”

Source: The Chosun Ilbo, September 18, 2009
http://chn.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/09/16/20090916000019.html

The creation of the International Chinese Media Alliance was announced on the closing day of the Fifth International Chinese Media Forum on September 20 in Shanghai. Chinese language media around the globe have been challenged since the second half of 2008, which is a general trend that remains unchanged. Other than a few newspapers that were hit hard by the financial crisis, nearly all Chinese language media are still running. Internet based Chinese language websites actually had a 30% traffic increase.

China News Services took the initiative to call for the creation of the Alliance. The preparatory work started two years ago and received 116 agreement letters from various countries.

Source: Xinhua, September 20, 2009.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/20/content_12084814.htm

Minister of Culture Cai Wu said on September 14th that the Ministry is actively coming up with policies to stimulate the development of the culture industry. The primary efforts are focused on these aspects: (1) improving resource integration to speed up establishing leading “culture enterprises"; (2) encouraging private capital to enter the area of the culture industry; (3) establishing large scale model concentrated culture bases; (4) improving technology-oriented creativity; (5) following the “Go Out” strategy and internationalizing the culture market; (6) building corresponding financial and human resource systems.

Source: Xinhua, September 14, 2009.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/14/content_12052037.htm

As an important component of the nation’s softpower, the Chinese think tank is striving to learn from the Western “think tank” model to increase China’s ability to deal with various challenges. One example is the formation of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE) in March and its 2009 Global Think Tank Summit in July.

Composed of mostly active and retired high ranking officials, CCIEE is trying to build its own funding sources so as to maintain independence. 

The statistics show China has 2,500 research institutes that have policy study as their core research topic, out of which, 2,000 provide services to the government directly or indirectly. Most of the think tanks are owned by the government with a small number belonging to universities or independent entities.

Source: Xinhua, September 20, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2009-09/20/content_12084960.htm