Ladies, Gentlemen and Friends,

October is the golden harvesting season. In this great season, representatives from media outlets from around the world have gathered in Beijing for the World Media Summit. First of all, on behalf of the Chinese government and people, sincere congratulations to the World Media Summit! A warm welcome to our participating friends!

In today’s world, with the rapid development of the social economy and technologies, the transfer and acquisition of information has become faster and faster, the global media industry is facing unprecedented changes, and media is becoming more and more important in our social lives. This summit, under the theme of “Cooperation, Action, Win-Win and Development,” reflects concerns about the challenges the global media industry is facing, demonstrates the willingness of all media to enhance exchanges and cooperation and seek common development, and shows the resolve of media staff to commit themselves to promoting world peace and development. I believe, with in-depth discussions and extensive exchanges focused on the theme, the meeting will help strengthen cooperation among media organizations from around the world, boost the healthy and orderly development of the global media industry, and deepen mutual understanding and friendship among people of all nations.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The world is undergoing great development, transformation, and adjustment. With the profound development of multi-polarity and economic globalization, worldwide exchanges of ideologies and cultures are becoming more frequent and active, the concepts of open cooperation and win-win mutual benefit are being commonly acknowledged, and interconnections among nations are becoming much closer. In the meantime, the adverse impact of the global financial crisis continues, development has become more imbalanced among different areas, global issues such as climate change, food safety, and energy resource security have further manifested, untraditional safety threats such as terrorists, cross-nation organized crime, and severe pandemic diseases are still around, regional conflicts and hot issues continue to appear, and unstable and uncertain factors are increasing, creating many challenges for world peace and development.

In the face of unprecedented opportunities and challenges, the world media should keep up with the trend of the times, join hands to march forward, and make efforts to contribute to a harmonious world with lasting peace and common prosperity.

First, the media should use their distinctive assets and advantages to convey the messages of peace, development, cooperation, mutual benefit, and tolerance. All media organizations should be dedicated to the lofty cause of pushing forward peace and the development of human beings, promoting all countries to respect each other and consult with each other on an equal footing politically, to cooperate with complementary advantages economically, to learn from each other and seek a common ground while accepting differences in cultural exchanges, to increase mutual trust and cooperation in maintaining security, and to help each other for advancement in environmental protection, so as to jointly create a better future for mankind. Against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, the world’s media should comprehensively cover the measures taken and the achievements as all countries – in the same boat in times of trouble – have strengthened cooperation and worked together to overcome difficulties. This is the way the media can contribute to the recovery and healthy and stable development of the world economy.

Second, the media should uphold the ideas of equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit, and common development, to better facilitate exchanges and cooperation. The media around the world, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, abilities, and sizes, should respect and trust each other, treat others as equals, seek common ground while shelving differences, and learn from each other through exchanges. The world’s media should fully consider each other’s practical situations, respond to each other’s appeals through consultation, take into account each other’s interests, keep a balance between competition and cooperation, and strive to be mutually complementary, helpful and beneficial. They should share successful experiences, create a favorable environment for development, work together to cope with challenges, and seek common development.

Third, the global media should uphold social responsibilities to promote the true, accurate, comprehensive, and objective communication of information. In today’s world, the radiating effect of the media to international politics, the economy, society, culture, and other areas is increasing and its influence over people’s thinking, work, and life is deepening. Just for this reason, it is more important than ever before that the media should establish and uphold social responsibilities. For the media to be widely accepted and respected, and to increase their credibility and influence, they should constantly abide by basic journalistic principles, and objectively report the reality of the multi-polarity of the world, economic globalization, and diverse civilizations. They should fully reflect the main aspects and trends of development in various countries and passionately encourage the development and progress of developing countries.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Several days ago the Chinese people celebrated the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. With the unremitting efforts over the past six decades, especially over the past three decades since the reform and opening up, both China and the Chinese people have experienced historical changes. Today, China’s overall national power has significantly increased, the Chinese people live a relatively comfortable life, and the nation has burst forth in unprecedented dynamism and creativity. In the meantime, we soberly keep in mind that China is still the world’s largest developing country, and faces conflicts and problems rarely seen in terms of their scale and complexity. China still has a long way to go before it can build a well off society that can benefit more than one billion people, and achieve basic modernization and common prosperity for all of its people. China will start from its national conditions, adhere to the path of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, promote comprehensive development in the economic, political, cultural, social and ecological arenas, go all out to ensure that the development is for the people, and by the people, and that the fruits of development are shared by the people. China will unswervingly walk along the path of peaceful development and uphold an open strategy based upon mutual benefits and win-win cooperation. China will seek friendly cooperation with all countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence.

In the course of advancing the reform and opening up drive and building socialist modernization, the Chinese government always gives top priority to the media’s development, encourages and supports the Chinese media to play important roles in different areas, such as getting close to reality, life and people, developing innovative concepts, contents, forms, methods, and means, increasing its affinity, attraction, and inspiration to people, upholding social integrity, understanding social conditions and public opinion, guiding (public views on) social hot issues, diverting public emotion, doing well at media supervision, and guaranteeing the people’s right to be informed, to participate, to be heard, and to oversee. The Chinese government supports Chinese media to strengthen its exchanges and deepen its cooperation with foreign media in areas of news broadcasting, human resources, information technology, business development, and so on. Now, more and more foreign media, including the ones represented by most of our friends here, send resident reporters to China, and the number of journalists who visit China temporarily has increased dramatically also. The reporting on China by foreign media covers more and more information and areas, with richer and richer content, playing an important role enabling all people around the world to understand the development and changes in contemporary China. We will continue to make government affairs public, enhance information distribution, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of foreign news organizations and reporters, and facilitate foreign media coverage of China in accordance with China’s laws and regulations. We sincerely hope that the media in the world can make new contributions to increasing the understanding people around the world have of China and to consolidating and developing friendship between the Chinese people and the people throughout the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is the inevitable choice for the media around the world to share the same fate with the world’s people and with the development of the era. I believe that through the joint efforts of our participating friends, this summit will certainly achieve great results in strengthening exchanges and deepening cooperation among different media around the world, and will make a significant contribution to the development of the global media industry.

Thank you everyone.

Endnotes:
 [1] World Media Summit Website
http://www.worldmediasummit.org/english/2009-03/19/content_16005787.htm
 [2] Xinhua News Agency, October 9, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2009-10/09/content_12201034.htm

The Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs Advises on Countermeasures in the Battle against Gangsters and Advancing it to a New Level

As reported by Chinapeace (http://www.chinapeace.org.cn/, the website of the Central Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs), the Committee on Political and Legislative Affairs recently published an article “Advice on the Battle against Gangsters and Advancing it to a New Level.” It was said in the article that all the relevant departments in all areas must continue to do well in everything relating to this battle; they must maintain a high and attacking position against gangsters and make sure that the battle is advancing to a deeper level.

We have heard that since this battle was officially announced in February 2006, relevant departments in all areas have used various effective ways and have dealt a great blow to the gangsters’ criminal activities. As of today, 1,221 gang organizations have been eliminated, 12,850 other evil forces (groups) have been eliminated, 87,396 suspects related to these criminal activities have been captured, 104,610 various types of criminal cases have been pursued, and 2,586 different kinds of guns have been confiscated.

The committee pointed out that gangsters are still very active and, in the near future, there will be a lot of criminal activities. Especially since we are affected by the economic crisis, the number of pessimistic factors and social conflicts has obviously been increasing. This, to some degree, contributes to the growth and development of gangsters. In this situation, further continuing the battle against gangsters is a realistic need in order to actively deal with their new directions and changes and to maintain the stability of society. It is also a requirement in order to prevent the gangsters growth in the economic field and for the economy to develop well and quickly. Lastly it is a strategic decision to prevent the gangsters from penetrating the political world and to strengthen the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship position in China.

The committee pointed out that we must raise our understanding and pay close attention to those who are in leadership positions. Different levels of the Communist Party Committee members and different levels of governments need to take on the political responsibility of cracking down on gangsters, and effectively strengthening the leadership for the battle against these criminal forces. They must show a clear position in supporting this battle and eliminate resistance in the political law departments. They must care and support the development of different levels in the “office of battling gangsters,” and developing professional teams. They must make sure that the force is there, the money is there, and a strong momentum is there. They must insist on and perfect the responsibility system of “one leader with total responsibility,” supervision, accountability, and periodical reporting. Supervision needs to be strengthened and the system of “one vote rejection” for the social security comprehensive management (Editor’s Note: the “one vote rejection” system refers to rejecting the leader’s promotion or merit award if he does not meet the comprehensive management goal assigned to him) needs to be used well. Detailed methods such as warnings, warning conversations, yellow card warnings, and one vote rejection need to be perfected. For those who, due to their ignorance of the importance [of their work] or their ineffective work, cause gangsters to succeed in what they are doing and lead to severe consequences, one vote rejection must be used. Those advanced groups and individuals who contribute a lot in the battle against gangsters need to be rewarded. We must further propagandize the strong will of the party committee and the government in battling gangsters and create a good social environment for cracking down on gangsters.

The committee emphasizes that we must increase the force of striking and have a more clear emphasis on the targets. Relevant departments in all areas must insist on the principle of “a gangster must be eliminated and an evil force must be proscribed completely,” with each area’s own realistic situations, advancing in the work of attacking gangsters and firmly restraining the growth of gangsters. One must focus on the most important parts, and increase the force of searching and resolving. We must strike hard against those gangs that have infiltrated the areas of construction, transportation, and mining, especially those have who gotten into major national projects; we must strike hard against those gangsters who have disrupted agricultural economic growth, and control village governance; we must strike hard against those gangsters who manipulate the activities of pornography, gambling, and drug abuse and trafficking; and we must insist on fixing all the major security issues that are mainly related to the gangsters. Different levels of Discipline Supervision and Investigation departments, Communist Party Committees, and Political and Legislative Affairs Committees need to be strengthened in digging out those gangsters who are “under the umbrella (of corrupt government officials),” and coordinate and supervise this work well. They must make sure that the investigation of the “under the umbrella” cases and other criminal cases are going on at the same time. One needs to make sure to completely destroy the financial foundation of the gangsters in order to prevent them from emerging again.

The committee emphasized that we must further strengthen prevention and comprehensively treat this issue. The Communist Party Committee members and the local governments must coordinate all areas, insist on preventive issues, and resolve problems with many approaches simultaneously. We need to work hard on all areas including striking, prevention, education, transformation, management,  improvement, and so on. We can integrate various types of methods, including political, economic, administrative, legal, cultural, educational, and so on, to comprehensively treat the criminal activities of the gangsters. We have to do our best to eliminate the soil that helps the gangsters grow and develop. We need to strengthen the supervision of the fields that gangsters are prone to control, including the fields of construction, transportation, mining, entertainment, and others. We need to perfect the system for allowing businesses to enter a field, and strengthen law enforcement, inspection, and supervision. We must firmly prevent phenomena such as forced demolition of people’s homes, illegal mining, business monopolies, and forced trading. The communication between the official branches, including police, justice, jails, forced labor camps, and the residential branches, such as street and community authorities, needs to be enhanced. They can closely cooperate and work with each other. This way the supervision of the people discharged from prisons and forced labor camps can be improved. We need to improve the employment assistance for special groups of people who are currently unemployed and others who just moved into the area, as well as the social security services for these people. We must actively service and manage the migrant population and also do well in crime prevention work regarding the young. We can place the battle against gangsters together with combating corruption and upholding integrity, and further reinforce the education, management, and supervision of leaders. This way we can strictly prevent the gangsters from penetrating into the party organs and government branches and prevent the gangsters from acquiring “safety umbrellas.”

The committee asked us to take another step in perfecting a long-term effective system and building a solid basis. All branches in all areas need to carefully summarize the experiences of battling gangsters and make this battle systematic, standardized, and legal, and, in a timely manner, promote this system into the actual work. We must continue to emphasize the leadership teams’ coordination and instruction and perfect the system of joint meetings among different branches. This way communication and coordination can be improved. We need to actively explore in order to construct a working mechanism between the political branches and judicial branches, and also between these two branches and other branches such as industry, commerce, taxes, construction, territory, finance, culture, and so on. This way we can form a group force, prevent crime, and fight the gangsters together. We need to look at reality, refine all the methods, and constantly perfect the supervision system regarding the processes of investigation, prosecution, trial, and enforcement against the criminals who are gangsters. We need to strengthen the professional forces of investigation, prosecution, and trial in criminal cases against gangsters and continue to work hard on constructing a special force for criminal investigation in related police and security organizations.

Meng Jianzhu: Maintain an Active Attacking Mode and Advance the Battle against Gangsters to a New Level

On July 7, 2009, the Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs held a video and telephone conference on further advancement to thoroughly eliminate gangsters. Meng Jianzhu, a State Council member and a member of the Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs, stated that all localities and all departments must accurately understand the new trends of gangsters’ criminal activities, and take the newly encountered problems during the fight against gangsters seriously. From the attitude of maintaining social harmony and stability and consolidating the party’s ruling foundation, they should fully understand the special importance of advancing the special fight on eliminating gangsters, and earnestly strengthen job responsibility and the sense of urgency. With the spirit of being responsible to the party and the people, they should solidly advance the special fight against gangsters and greet the 60^th anniversary of the new China with a fine job performance.

It is reported that since February 2006, when the Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs extended the special battle against gangsters across the nation, all localities and all departments have organized carefully and arranged thoroughly to initiate swift and fierce attacks against gangsters, and have made tangible progress. The public security bureaus across the nation have investigated a total of 1,221 gangster organizations, wiped out 12,850 evil forces (groups), captured more than 87,000 suspects, investigated, and solved over 100,000 criminal cases, and seized more than 2,500 different kinds of guns; the procuratorial agencies indicted over 1,000 gangster groups; and the People’s court tried 689 gangster-related cases, all of which have powerfully suffocated the gangsters.

Meng Jianzhu pointed out that since our country is in a historic period of economic transition and social transformation, the breeding ground and the environment for gangsters still exists, and the gangster’s criminal activities are still relatively active. Under this circumstance, further promoting the fight against gangsters is necessary to positively respond to the new trends and changes in the gangsters’ crimes and to maintain social harmony and stability; is demanded in order to firmly curb the gangster’s expansion into the economic area and to serve economic development; and is needed in order to firmly prevent gangsters from infiltrating the political sphere and to consolidate the party’s governing base.

Meng Jianzhu emphasized that all localities and all departments should adhere to the “Gangsters must be eliminated; root out gangsters” principle, further strengthen various fighting jobs, and resolutely prevent the gangsters’ spread and development. They should emphasize the focus points, determine to eradicate the tyrants, adhere to the coordination of supervision, and crack down sharply on major underworld organizations. They should persist in completely wiping out, rooting out the “protective umbrella” and destroying their economic foundation. They should stick to the law, pay attention to the cases’ qualities and improve their attack technique.

Meng Jianzhu urged that all localities should be under the unified leadership of the party’s committees and governments. On one hand, they should emphasize cracking down; on the other hand, they should emphasize prevention; with political, economic, social, cultural, and other methods and means, they should integratively manage the problems of gangster’s crimes, and eradicate the ground and conditions for fostering the gangster forces to the maximum extent. He stressed that all levels of Party committees and governments should conscientiously strengthen their organization and leadership during the fight against gangsters, strictly monitor work responsibilities, focus their efforts on propaganda, earnestly strengthen the development of special forces, and ensure the advancement of the fight against gangsters.

Endnotes:
[1] Xinhua, July 29, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2009-07/29/content_11792006.htm
[2] Xinhua, July 8, 2009
http://news.xinhuanet.com/legal/2009-07/08/content_11670845.htm

{Editor’s Note: In June 2006, Beijing released an eight-episode TV documentary series: Preparing For Danger In Times Of Safety – Historic Lessons Learned from the Demise of Soviet Communism. It was a research project conducted by the government think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Afterwards, the Chinese Communist Party instructed party members across the nation to watch the series and launch serious discussions. The script of the prelude of the documentary quotes Hu Jintao’s words, “There are multiple factors contributing to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a very important one being Khrushchev throwing away Stalin’s knife and Gorbachev’s open betrayal of Marxism-Leninism.” The full text of the narratives has been translated. What follows is the fifth episode.}

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