CRN: Capital Market Firewall Required for RMB Internationalization
Japanese Embassy: Living in Beijing is Like Taking Part in an Experiment on Animals
An Estimated 80,000 Prayed at Yonghe Temple on the Chinese New Year
According to CCTV, an estimated 80,000 people went to Yonghe Temple, a Buddhist temple located in the northeastern part of Beijing, to burn incense and pray on Chinese New Year’s Day. According to People’s Daily, people have established a pattern of going to Yonghe to burn incense and say their prayers every Chinese New Year’s Day. Some of them even lined up overnight in front of the temple so they could be the first to burn the incense.
Due to the large number of incense-burners, the metro stop at the Yonghe Temple in Beijing was shut down. People had to walk an additional three kilometers to get to Yonghe Temple. By midnight on New Year’s eve, there were more than a thousand policemen on site. Each four of them stood hand in hand to form a “human wall divider” to cut the long lines of the crowd into small groups of about one hundred people each. There were about 10 meters distance between each of the “groups.”
Source: People’s Daily, February 11, 2013
http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2013/0211/c70731-20478188.html
Chinese Railway Ministry Refused to Disclose the Available Number of Chun Yun Train Tickets
Chun Yun, the Chinese New Year’s travel season, usually starts 15 days before the Lunar New Year and ends 25 days afterwards. It is China’s busiest travel season of the year. Between January 8 and February 16 of 2012, the total volume of tickets using all means of travel was over 3 billion. One of the major issues in railway transportation is the difficulty of purchasing train tickets.
Two Beijing lawyers recently requested that the Ministry of Railways disclose the available number of railway tickets for sale during the Chun Yun period. The Ministry of Railways refused the request, claiming that information about railway ticket sales falls under the domain of the railway transportation enterprises and is therefore not applicable as government information. Some people questioned the black-box operations of the Ministry of Railways.
One economist questioned the logic of the response. "Generally speaking, Chun Yun is a major social issue. The government has a greater responsibility than corporations do to be transparent to the public. The enterprises subordinate to the Ministry of Railways are monopolistic enterprises; they are thus different from normal private companies in a highly competitive sector. The response is very strange and does not pass the logic test. … Information of this kind should be open and there is no reason to hide it."
A lawyer told Radio Free Asia, "It is a problem with the whole system. All authorities shirk their responsibilities. It is not just one single ministry; it is the whole government system that is shirking its responsibilities."
Source: Radio Free Asia, February 8, 2013
http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/zg-02082013112753.html
Canadian Singer Sang a Revolutionary Opera Piece at CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala
Thomas Glenn, a Canadian opera singer who won a Grammy Award in 2012 for best Opera recording, sang a Revolutionary Beijing Opera piece at Chinese Central Television’s (CCTV) 2013 Spring Festival Gala.
The Spring Festival Gala, also known as Chun Wan, is one of the government TV network’s flagship programs. It provides a live broadcast every year on the Chinese New Year’s Eve to billions of Chinese people, domestically and overseas, who are celebrating the Lunar New Year at home, most of whom have their TV turned on. The four-plus-hour-long gala, put together after almost a year-long preparation, with the programs carefully selected and heavily censored, served the purpose of propagandizing the ruling regime’s accomplishments over the past year while entertaining the audience.
At CCTV’s official website that hosted the program, a subtitle identified Glenn as a student of the Confucius Institute, a language-teaching facility sponsored and driven by the Chinese government. According to the Confucius Institute’s website, since 2004 it has launched over 300 Confucius Institutes and 500 Confucius Classrooms in five continents. The Revolutionary Opera Piece, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, is one of the eight Revolutionary operas, or model operas, (Chinese: 样板戏; pinyin: yàngbǎnxì) planned and engineered during the Cultural Revolution by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife. They are commonly viewed as typical propaganda pieces for the Communist Party.
Source: China Central Television, February 10, 2013
http://chunwan.cctv.com/2013/02/10/VIDE1360474568955538.shtml
China’s State Media Closely Follow the Cyber-War Strategy of the United States
China’s state-run media Xinhua published a news article on February 6, 2013, about U.S. Defense Secretary Panetta’s speech at Georgetown University. The article particularly focused on Mr. Panetta’s answer to a question regarding cyber attacks. It said that Mr. Panetta issued a warning about the threat of a cyberwar and said cyberspace would inevitably be one of the future battlefields.
Yunnan Province Stops Sentencing People to Forced Labor Camps
Meng Sutie, the Yunan Party Secretary of Politics and Law, announced that Yunnan would cease processing “cases of re-education through labor,” effective immediately. It has been common in China for the authorities to suppress opponents of the government by administratively sentencing them to forced labor camps as punishment. Meng, as Yunnan’s top law enforcement official, made the announcement on February 5, 2013, “Throughout the province, Yunnan will cease to approve and review all cases of re-education through labor for three alleged actions: endangering national security, constantly petitioning the authorities to redress officials’ abuse of power, and vilifying a leader’s image. The processing of cases based on other grounds will be suspended and will be handled in accordance with relevant laws; re-education through labor will not be used."
Source: Xinhua, February 7, 2013
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-02/07/c_124332693.htm