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Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

tomahawk6 said:
An attack on a US carrier by the PRC would be an act of war.Such an act would require massive retaliation using conventional weapons against PLAN,Air Force and PLA targets.Those oil drilling rigs the PRC is putting in place would be destroyed.

Yes but the loss of a Carrier would be a huge tactical and Strategic loss for the United States, not as big as say us sinking the lone Chinese Carrier though (though Taiwan is already working on anti-ship missiles, and a missile boat for that exact purpose)
 
I wonder how Chinese state media will respond to this...

China's Uighurs claim cultural 'genocide'

[aljazeera]
2 Jun 2014
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Uighur protesters in Tokyo shout slogans during a rally against Chinese government's policy in Xinjiang [EPA]

Full Article >>>
 
Part 1 of 2

E.R. Campbell said:
I don't think there ever were many Marxists in China.

Mao, and Jiang Qing, for example, were certainly revolutionaries, but, in my opinion closer to the Bakunin wing than to Marx-Lenin. Zhoe Enlai was a communist, he was close to many Russians, but his communism was strongly influenced by his time with the French socialists.

Marx and Confucius are not a good fit. But, then, neither are Confucius and Mises or Hayek. The Chinese have a very, very long tradition of trade and commerce based on e.g. uniform weights and measures and a sound currency, but economics, of whatever sort, was never a preoccupation of the upper class - they were rich, to be sure, but the aim was to become rich enough to be a gentleman who, by definition, did not think about money.  ::)

Marxist notions, like "from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs" do not fit well into China's culture, ancient or modern; nor do ideas on individualism such as we find in the Austrian or Chicago schools. The Chinese culture is familial, not individualistic or collectivist; because it is familial it is also somewhat hierarchical.

Zhou Enlai performed some radical surgery on Chinese society in the 1950s and 60s, large parts of which were, still are, welcomed by most (at least many) Chinese today; some of the ideas he used were Russian and communist, others were European/socialist and still others were, essentially, English/liberal. Zhou was, I think, a communist for non-economic reasons: I think he did believe in equality but I think he believed even more in the power of communist (Leninist, not Marxist) political structures to effect social change and I think that, the social change, was more important to him than socialist/communist economics.

We have seen some left-right-left swings in what is , really, Capitalist China in post the Mao, modern era: Deng and Zhao Ziyang were capitalists in action, socialists in name, but, largely centrists; then came Jiang Zemin who shifted China pretty far towards a 'tooth and claw' capitalism; he was followed by Hu Jintao who moderated almost everything and introduced some left wing social policies and now Xi Jinping who seems to be be quite centrist, to date, anyway.

I think you need to look at the whole period of 1912 to 1962, the era of Sun, the warlords and Mao, as another interregnum, this one between the Qing Dynasty and this new, CCP Dynasty.


Edited to add: See also this review of a fairly new book, "The History of Ancient Chinese Economic Thought," Cheng Lin, Terry Peach and Wang Fang (eds.)  2014


I'm not the only one who is having some trouble pigeon holing Xi Jinping as this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs, makes clear:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141515/peter-martin-and-david-cohen/mao-and-forever
foreign-affairs-logo.jpg

Mao and Forever
Xi Jinping’s Authoritarian Reforms

By Peter Martin and David Cohen

June 3, 2014

A year and a half into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rule, who he is and what he wants remains something of a mystery. At times, he has appeared to be a reformer in the mold of Deng Xiaoping; one of Xi’s first acts in office was to reenact the great reformer’s “Southern Tour,” which kicked off market reforms after the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square. At other times, he has appeared nostalgic for the revolutionary socialism of Mao Zedong. A few months after his trip to the south, Xi made a high-profile visit to Xibaibo, the last headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War and a sacred site for left-wing devotees of Mao.

Xi’s policies have been as contradictory as his image. He has launched high-profile drives to encourage private enterprise and stem corruption. But he has coupled them with a pledge to maintain the state as the “core” of the economy and a broad crackdown on political dissent. So does Xi intend to inaugurate a new era of reform that will bring China fully into the modern world, or does he intend to double down on statist authoritarian rule and revive Mao’s populist Marxism?

In short, all of the above. Xi’s economic reforms and his Maoist political tendencies are both tactics in a strategy meant to preserve the one-party system by reforming it. His methods attest to his recognition of contemporary China’s biggest problems: rampant corruption, a sclerotic political system, and an economic model that is rapidly running out of steam. To address those without dismantling the system that brought him to power, Xi promises to reconcile Mao, state-owned companies, and Chinese Communist Party dominance with a dynamic and open economy. He will do so by making what he calls the “two hands,” the state and the market, work together and inspiring the party to believe in itself and in its mission to serve the Chinese people.

THE HAND OF XI

Over the last decade, Xi has participated in an intense debate over the role of the state and the market at the very top of the party. On one side are those who argue that the reformist spirit established under Deng and Jiang Zemin, the party’s general secretary between 1989 and 2002, had been lost to political gridlock and powerful vested interests opposed to further reform. On the other side are those who argue that the headlong pursuit of marketization has seen the party lose its sense of purpose and created unsustainable levels of inequality and corruption.

Xi found a way to split the difference. He argued that the state and the market do not have to compete. The “invisible hand” of the market and the “visible hand” of the state, he said, can reinforce each other. As he explained in his regular column in the Zhejiang Daily, the hand of the market should “adjust” the economy, promote efficiency, and lead urban development, whereas the state should focus on social management, public services, fairness, and rural development. This theory allowed him to position himself as both a champion of the state sector and a student of Adam Smith: “This concept of marketization is very clearly explained in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, where he introduces the theory of two hands,” Xi told CCTV, China’s main television station, in 2006.

Xi put his model to work in Zhejiang, where he was party secretary between 2002 and 2007. In that province, he aimed to support private enterprise, including through a massive reduction in bureaucratic red tape (the list of items requiring government approval fell from a total of 3,000 to just 800). At the same time, he worked hard to reassure the public and officials that the state would still be important. He defended state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are seen by economic liberals as the worst offenders in China’s unsustainable model of state-led overinvestment. He explained that greater government support for private companies could improve the state sector by making it compete. SOEs could also then benefit from more private investment, and the government would get more tax revenue.

Xi’s experience in Zhejiang seemed to vindicate his model. Xi boasted that, from 1978 to 2004, 71.4 percent of Zhejiang's GDP growth had come from private enterprises, even as the total size of its state-owned assets had increased 42 times over.

Xi’s model also worked for Xi. During his stint as party secretary in Zhejiang, Xi distilled his work on economics into two books, published in December 2006 and August 2007: Work on Real Things, Walk at the Forefront and New Thoughts from the Yangtze. Both were crafted to help him win one of the world’s most mysterious elections -- the first-ever selection of a head of government by China’s “collective leadership” in the years leading up to the 2012 handover. His predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang, had been hand-picked by Deng. Before his gradual retirement and eventual death in 1997, Deng set up a system -- opaque and little-understood outside of the party -- for party elites to agree on a top leader without the guidance of the original revolutionary generation. That system meant that Xi had to win over a broad constituency of party elites to be selected. To some extent, his family ties, political patrons, deals, alliances, and favors helped do that job. But Xi also had to prove that he could be trusted with the one goal that everyone agreed on: keeping the party in power. And there, his theories proved persuasive.

Having won national power, Xi was given a mandate to implement the “two hands” strategy on a larger scale. As president of China, he has tried to support the market by abolishing government approvals for many kinds of economic and business activity; reforming the financial sector, including by allowing private banking; making it easier to set up new companies; and opening up more economic sectors to competition. He has also attempted to impose financial discipline on SOEs by exposing them to greater competition and encouraging private investment in the state sector. As Xi said at the National People’s Congress in March, he expects these reforms to “not only not weaken, but to strengthen” SOEs. Two hands has thus become a central way that the Xi administration summarizes its approach to the economy. On May 27, Xi presided over a “collective study session” of the Politburo, which specified that the “two hands” should work together in a “unified, mutually complementary and coordinated” manner. The party mouthpiece, The People’s Daily, has event referred to two hands as “the core proposition of the reform process.”

Xi has also taken his economic theories to the social sphere; just as markets can support a statist economy, he has argued, civil society can work with a repressive state to support social order. In Xi’s China, citizens can contribute as “positive social forces.” Xi has pushed for new rules that make it easier to register NGOs and for NGOs to work with local governments to provide social services. He has also curbed or abolished overtly abusive practices, such as re-education through labor. But, at the same time, his government has strengthened repression. He has given no ground on freedom of expression or assembly, and he has introduced new laws against such vague crimes as “spreading rumors.”

BACK TO MAO’S FUTURE

In the years ahead, Xi will have to face what he and his predecessors have described as a potentially fatal threat to party legitimacy: corruption. He will have to find a way to control the everyday abuses of power that fuel popular outrage and protest -- bribery, forced demolitions, and wanton indifference to public health and safety. Campaigns launched by Xi’s predecessors tried and failed to solve these problems, as local officials simply refused to change their practices, trusting that “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” This time, though, Xi has looked to Mao for an answer.

Mao knew how to get people’s attention: ideological mobilization and terror. He was able to inspire millions of Chinese to fight for change, even when change meant schemes that made sense only to him and resulted in mass death and suffering. Now, faced with millions of officials reluctant to accept reform, Xi hopes to harness this kind of power to clean up the party.

Since becoming president, Xi has required officials to study Maoist theory, particularly Mao’s “mass line,” which says that the party should be both a part of the people and capable of leading them. In turn, Xi has put limits on official banquets, gift giving, and the use of official cars, and has encouraged officials to interact with the public. He has put in appearances at Beijing restaurants and on busy shopping streets and has also mandated -- and, along with his colleagues in the leadership, led -- numerous “self-criticism” sessions, in which party cadres publicly evaluate their own success in connecting with the people.

Xi has effectively asked officials under him to give up many of the perks of office. The stakes, he says, are the very survival of the party. An educational campaign based on the famous “Document Number Nine” has promoted what party theory calls a “sense of danger” about the threat of the party’s collapse due to internal subversion and foreign attempts to undermine it. For many officials, that has been enough: Local officials complain about the drastic drop off in official gift-giving across the country, and the luxury sector has taken a big hit as a result.

For those who refuse to buy into Xi’s project, though, he has launched the biggest purge in decades. His weapon of choice is the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, the party’s anti-graft organization, which Xi has greatly strengthened under the leadership of long-term friend and ally Wang Qishan. Wang has presided over the detention of hundreds of officials across the party, government, industry, and academia. Those investigated effectively disappear from the face of the earth and are subjected to horrors one survivor recently described to the Associated Press as “a living hell.”

Xi’s use of Maoist politics has limits, though. Unlike Mao, Xi has made efforts to keep political campaigns and crackdowns under control. Mao asked the public to participate in purges, setting off the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. By contrast, Xi’s political campaigns and purges have been organized by central party bodies and led by him and his Politburo colleagues. They are intended to strengthen party institutions rather than to dismantle them -- both to make the “visible hand’s” power honest enough to be accepted, and to enlist lower-level officials in implementing the economic changes Xi has called for.

End of Part 1 of 2
 
Part 2 of 2

TUNNEL VISION?

Even as Xi tackles corruption, he must also find ways to end political deadlock. Over the years, checks and balances introduced by Deng to prevent the re-emergence of Maoist dictatorship have ended up creating indecisive rule by committee. At the same time, beneficiaries of previous reforms have stood against further change. To start to fix politics, Xi has overhauled the party’s decision-making apparatus, empowering it to break through the gridlock. Not surprisingly, he has also given himself plenty of room to lead in the front.

For more than a decade, Xi has argued that China needs a strong, visionary leader. In Zhejiang in 2003, he wrote at length about the role of a “number one” in a system of collective leadership. He said that the party secretary should be “the personification of the Party Committee and the government” and that his role would be to take different voices among the leadership and “turn them into a song.” In turn, other leaders must always “pay attention to upholding the authority of the Party Secretary.”

Trying to rise in a system deeply suspicious of centralized power, Xi had to be careful discussing these ideas. He avoided talking directly about national leadership, using essays on provincial government to explain his plans. He has also taken pains to emphasize his commitment to the basic principle of collective leadership. The number one should be “no more than a finger, at most a thumb” in the fist of the leadership, he has written.

Even so, since entering office, Xi has centralized authority under top party leaders, especially himself. Most notably, he has created a series of small leading groups and committees on economic reform, national security, cyber security, and military reform, which are independent of the government and chaired by Xi. These groups place him at the center of most policymaking and provide him with a platform to issue decisions that cannot be stymied by vested interests in the Chinese bureaucracy.

Xi has also deployed a weapon that, ever since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the dismantling of Mao’s cult of personality, has made Chinese leaders uneasy: vision. Days after assuming office, he took the new Standing Committee to the “Road to Revival” exhibition at China’s National Museum. Standing in the exhibition hall, he asked, “What is the Chinese dream?” and then provided an answer: “I believe that realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, is the greatest dream of the contemporary nation.” Further, unlike his predecessors, whose jargon-laden speeches were intelligible only to party insiders, Xi has used his appearances to speak to the people, tapping into popular nationalism and presenting his reforms as the key to China’s rise. His rhetoric implicitly paints his opponents as unpatriotic.

The elites who chose Xi appear to have endorsed his ideas about strong leadership. He was certainly given sharper tools to promote his program than his predecessors ever were. He inherited a streamlined Politburo Standing Committee -- the top tier of party decision-making -- which was reduced to seven members just before he took over. He was also almost immediately handed the top party, military, and government positions, which his predecessors had to wait years to enjoy. However, the actual balance of power inside these secretive institutions is unclear from the outside. What is certain is that, in order to use two hands to rebalance the economy, Xi has amassed a great deal of power. Meddling with the balance of power in autocratic systems is always dangerous, so he must find ways to do so without alienating party elders and his own colleagues.

RAISE AND RAZE

Xi believes that the great debate about China’s political system is over. As he told a European audience in March, China has “experimented with constitutional monarchy, imperial restoration, parliamentarism, a multi-party system and presidential government, yet nothing really worked. Finally, China took on the path of socialism.” Despite some missteps along the way, “The uniqueness of China’s cultural traditions, history, and circumstances determines that China needs to follow a development path that suits its own reality. In fact, we have found such a path and achieved success along this path.”

Xi has convinced the Chinese Communist Party that he knows the next steps. He has been given broad powers to implement “two hands” economics and neo-Maoist politics, united by strong leadership and potent nationalism. To make party rule last, his government has promised to fix it. This means delivering real improvements to people’s lives by reforming the economy and stopping petty officials from looting it. But a strong state sector and a powerful repressive apparatus are also central to his vision.

Xi’s “all of the above” approach is held together by a simple idea: keeping the party in power. But to do so he is imposing painful reforms, exposing state industries to competition, attacking many of the privileges of party membership, and changing the balance of power at the top. If this project loses the confidence of China’s elites, it may upset the balance of power that holds the system together and provoke a crisis. In the history of the Soviet Union, two leaders attempted to undertake such broad reforms to revitalize a stagnant system. The first, Nikita Khruschev, set off a wave of uprisings across Eastern Europe and nearly started a nuclear war. The second, Mikhail Gorbachev, brought about the dissolution of the Soviet party-state. Reforming an authoritarian system is a high-stakes gamble. This project is designed to ensure the survival of China’s political system in the 21st century -- but if it fails, it may fatally undermine it.


First: in talking about the "visible hand of the state" regulating the "invisible hand of the market" Xi sounds an awful lot like Barack Obama or Stephen Harper or even Lee Hsien Loong, the PM of resolutely capitalist Singapore. We can go all the way back to Adam Smith to find the notion that unregulated capitalism was counter to the best interests of society at large.

Second: there was, and still is, some wisdom in Deng's "checks and balances," and to the "school of hard knocks" philosophy within the Chinese Communist Party. It is, indeed, a cumbersome system ~ but so is Westminster style parliamentary democracy and so, too is US style representative government. It is important to understand that, for the better part of 2,500 years the Chinese have been chasing an elusive model of governance: a meritocracy. They have never found it; but we Britain, Canada and the USA, have never managed to make liberal democracy (or conservative democracy, for that matter) have not found what we are seeking, either.

Third, and finally: it is not always useful to compare China to any other country or culture. China IS different, very different and while we can see similarities in how China does things versus, say, 19th century Britain and 20th century America and, yes indeed, Russia, the Chinese outcomes are not always the same. There are so many constants in China ~ a scholar told me, and I agree, that while a 21st century American would have trouble discussing politics with an 18th century 'founding father," and while a 21st century Brit would find life incredible in, say, 1066, a 21st century Chinese person could talk with an ancestor from, say, the year 1 AD, and many of their cultural ideas and even, for people from villages, experiences would be similar.
 
Somehow I don't picture any Tiananmen-era political dissidents as ever being supporters of this kind of terrorism...

From Agence-France Presse via Interaksyon

Hong Kong airlines on alert following attack warning
By: Agence France-Presse
June 6, 2014 8:36 PM

HONG KONG - Two Hong Kong airlines said Friday that they received a warning from Taiwan about a possible bomb attack targeting a flight to the southern Chinese city.

Details on the nature of the threat were scant but the alert comes at a time of heightened tension on the Chinese mainland as Beijing responds to a spate of suicide bombings and stabbings by suspected Uighur separatists.

The warning also came the same week tens of thousands of people rallied in Hong Kong to remember the dead on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the only major commemoration that takes place in China.

The South China Morning Post, quoting an unnamed Taiwanese law enforcement officer, said a female carrying a bomb planned to fly from mainland China to Hong Kong on either Friday or Saturday, through a flight operated by Cathay Pacific or its Dragonair unit.

(...EDITED)
 
Company says Tibetan filmmaker released from Chinese prison after 6-year separatism sentence

By The Associated Press

BEIJING, China - Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen, who made a 2008 documentary about Tibetan nomads expressing discontent over China's rule, has been released from a Chinese prison after serving a 6-year sentence for separatism, his production company said.

Wangchen, 40, was freed Thursday in the western city of Xining, capital of Qinghai province, Switzerland-based Filming for Tibet said in a statement on its website. It said he was then driven by police to his sister's home about two hours away.

Wangchen was arrested in March 2008 and sentenced to six years in prison in late 2009 on charges of trying to split the country.

(...EDITED)

Yahoo Celebrity news
 
Makes one wonder what will happen to the freedoms Hong Kongers enjoy when the "one country 2 systems" arrangement expires in HK on 2047...  :o

Tens of thousands join Hong Kong Tiananmen rally

[Yahoo! News]

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(AP Photo/Cyrus Wong)

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(AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
 
S.M.A. said:
Makes one wonder what will happen to the freedoms Hong Kongers enjoy when the "one country 2 systems" arrangement expires in HK on 2047...  :o


My guess is that by 2047 HK has more not less freedoms: I think Beijing will have to offer HK more for two reasons:

    1. As part of a 'package' set up to entice Taiwan into a voluntary (re)union; and

    2. Because, even without adding Taiwan to the equation, Beijing needs HK as a safety valve, as an example of what might happen in China.


Edited at add:

Mine is a minority view and here are links to two articles in The Economist which take a dimmer view: Murky Business: Prospects for agreement on Hong Kong’s political future do not look bright, March 8, 2014 and Marking the Past, Fearing the Future: Amid poignant commemorations of June 4th, there are growing concerns about democratic rights in the territory, June 7, 2014.

Obviously I believe I'm closer to be being correct, but ...  :dunno:
 
Seems the local brands like Chang An aren't that attractive to China's noveau rich and reportedly growing middle class in the prosperous coastal areas...

Yahoo Finance

Mobius: Everybody wants a BMW in China

Orders for foreign cars have surged in China, so much so that the likes of luxury German car maker BMW (XETRA:BMW-DE) are struggling to keep up with demand from the region's growing middle class, according to Franklin Templeton's Mark Mobius.

The executive chairman of the Templeton's emerging markets group said BMW was doing an "incredible job" in China. The firm's Chinese production arm Brilliance China Automotive (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 1114-HK) is the largest holding in his $3.3 billlion emerging market investment trust, with 8 percent of the fund's assets invested in the car maker.

(..EDITED)

"They can't make these fast enough and they are tripling production," said Mobius, speaking at a Franklin Templeton event in central London.

(...EDITED)
 
Now here's a group from which you don't hear much from these days: PLA veterans of the botched 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

  China's Vietnam veterans fighting new battle
By Tom Hancock
AFP - 9 hours ago

Yiyang (China) (AFP) - Marginalised and misunderstood, Chinese Vietnam veterans -- who fought in a little-celebrated war against their southern neighbours -- risk beatings and prison in a new battle with government officials.

Teng Xingqiu is one of thousands of retired Chinese soldiers staging an increasing number of protests over unpaid benefits and unnerving Communist authorities.

"The police told me they hoped I'd die in jail," said Teng, whose activism resulted in him being sentenced to three years in prison in 2009.

(...EDITED)


AFP
 
An update that may have an influence on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty policy:

Beijing sets its sights north:

Defense News

China's Arctic Ambitions Fuel Yuan Diplomacy
Jun. 10, 2014 - 12:29PM  |  By WENDELL MINNICK 


(...EDITED)

n a report released in March by the Center for a New American Security, China’s maritime strategy was dubbed “tailored coercion.” The method described a pattern of “dialing up and dialing down coercive diplomacy” or “forceful persuasion,” and blending it with positive engagement, such as trade and investment. The strategy spans legal, economic and military realms.

Yet China is not a littoral state of the Arctic. However, Russia has been working on promoting joint development projects with China in the Arctic, said Dustin Kuan-Hsiung Wang, an Arctic specialist at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

China has also been in discussions with Russia to allow Beijing to invest in Arctic resource development. China also needs Russia’s navigation experience in Arctic waters as the ice begins to clear for cargo transport.

China only has one icebreaker, the MV Snow Dragon, and is expecting delivery of its second icebreaker from Aker Arctic Technology of Finland in 2016.

Beijing is expected to begin an indigenous build program for icebreakers in the near future, said Dean Cheng, a China military specialist at the Heritage Foundation. China’s approach to the Arctic “will parallel their approach to the East and South China Seas — establish a constant, large-scale presence, and then argue that, by dint of their very existence, they have a right to be at the table in any administrative effort.”

(...EDITED)
 
I keep harping on the theme that China is different: so different in so many ways that it is very, very hard for us to understand the Chinese and that makes it hard to understand how they make decisions and, even more important, how they value things and ideas.

One of the profound cultural differences is the way the Chinese approach education, especially university entrance.

I was struck by two concurrent things in recent days one in America and one in China.

In America, in New York, efforts, including legislation, are being made to "broaden the diversity" of elite high schools. The problem is that entrance, now, into e.g. New York City's world famous Stuyversant High School is based solely on academic achievement ~ the smartest, hardest working kids get in, kids with lower marks, who did less well in math and science and English exams don't get in. The result is a disproportionately high number of Asia kids (Chinese, Vietnamese and Indians predominate) and too few Hispanic and, especially, Black kids. The solution: change the rules, make academics count for less.

In China, last week, 10 million kids wrote the brutal tough National College Entrance Exam, called the gaokao.

Business Insider has a photo-array of 24 pictures and a few words about the exams. It's worth a look.

I have often said that corruption is one of China's major problems. The gaokao, itself, and university admission in general, is one of the (few) bright spots. Cheating is difficult, policing is rigid and favouritism, even for the most powerful, is difficult to apply in univresity entrance. One of the reasons that there are so many rich Chinese kids studying in America is that the rich and powerful can now afford to send their children to Harvard and Yale if they don't do well enough in the gaokao. (In fact Xi Jinping's daughter, Xi Mingze, is at Harvard after spending a year at Zhejiang University. Now, Zhejiang University is a first class school, but it is not in the very top tier - Xi Jinping, himself, studied at Tsinghua University, one of the top two in China. My guess is that had his daughter qualified, in the gaokoa for either Tsinghua or Peking University or even, perhaps, Fudan, she might have stayed in China. Zhejiang is one of the top 10 in China but it's not at the very top.)

I can think of few things that more starkly differentiate China from America (and Canada) than their and our approaches to advanced education.
 
:facepalm:

China's army eases curbs to draw more educated recruits: paper
Reuters
June 16, 2014

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The People's Liberation Army has lowered the minimum height requirement for recruits, raised the maximum weight limit, reduced eyesight standards and even begun taking on recruits with once-taboo tattoos.

The PLA has also removed mental illnesses including schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder, as barriers to recruitment, it said.

(...EDITED)


Reuters/ Yahoo
 
There are several references, today, to Xi Jinping encouraging his family to divest themselves of some of their assets as he prepares to unleash the promised, and long overdue, attack on official corruption.
 
Official design model pics at the link below:

China Defense blogspot

Sunday, June 15, 2014
Chinese Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier (CVN): Design Finalized

China-Defense Forum members were somewhat astounded today when pictures were released on Chinese internet forums of what is certainly a model of the first Chinese nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) on display at an official event in Zhongshan. 

While it being just a model might not seem that significant to many, there are telltales about the model in these pics that indicate it's genuine.  In fact, it represents a final design for the new CVN has been approved by PLAN for production.

(...EDITED)

The hull number 18 falls in line with previous expectations that the first "all-indigenous" Chinese carrier design would be nuclear-powered and is expected to be the "002 Class".  As the currently in-service CV LIAONING is hull number 16, this seems to imply hull number 17 will be the 001A class, a Chinese-built KUZNETSOV-class CV.
 
More headaches for the CCP:

Canadian Press

Hong Kong votes in unofficial democracy referendum, alarming communist leaders in Beijing
The Canadian Press

HONG KONG - Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers voted Friday in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that has alarmed Beijing and sets the stage for a possible showdown with the government, with mass protests aimed at shutting down the Chinese capitalist enclave's financial district.

Tensions are boiling over in Hong Kong, which came back under Chinese control in 1997, over how to choose the city's next leader.

Since the end of British colonial rule, Hong Kong's leaders have been picked by an elite pro-Beijing committee. Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kongers to choose their own chief executive starting in 2017.

Organizers of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement said that in the first six hours, about 165,000 ballots were cast on proposals for electoral reform. They hope at least 300,000 people will take part...

(...EDITED)
 
A result of the unofficial poll in Hong Kong noted above:

Next on China’s 'My Way' List: Hong Kong
The Fiscal Times

By Patrick Smith
21 hours ago

Push is rapidly coming to shove between China and Hong Kong, which bills itself as the “World City.” If the world doesn’t sit up and take notice soon, the political future of the autonomous territory could be imperiled and things could end badly all around.

Beijing’s paper has provoked a firestorm in the territory. Advisedly or otherwise, it was published in response to one event and in anticipation of another:

• It followed by a week the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre and Beijing’s declaration of martial law in 1989. Hong Kongers always mark the occasion; this year up to 150,000 peaceably poured into the streets.

• It arrived 10 days before Occupy Central (the liveliest of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy groups, named for the territory’s business and financial district) opened an online referendum on the question of a directly elected chief executive, as the post-colonial governor is titled.

Beijing and the Hong Kong government both condemned the unofficial poll as illegal. When the online mechanism immediately suffered an apparent cyber-attack, Occupy Central did not hesitate to accuse the mainland of sabotage. In response, the group opened 15 polling stations around the territory and extended the vote by a week.

At the same time, the paper reflects a genuine assumption that to be Chinese is to love the motherland. In this, it is a measure of Beijing’s disconnect; it cannot see that an affection for China that is prevalent among Hong Kong people does not mean they want to be mainland citizens.


The Fiscal Times / Yahoo
 
The charm offensive to lure Taiwan into the fold continues:

Reuters

Chinese official looks to charm Taiwan during landmark visit
BY BEN BLANCHARD AND MICHAEL GOLD
BEIJING/TAIPEI Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:13pm EDT

(Reuters) - China's top official in charge of Taiwan ties will make a landmark visit to the island this week to try to woo Taiwanese who remain suspicious about a pending trade pact as well as meet a senior figure from the pro-independence opposition.

Zhang Zhijun, director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, will be the first head of the body to visit the self-ruled and democratic island, where defeated Nationalist forces fled after losing a civil war to China's Communists in 1949.

His trip from Wednesday to Saturday will focus not on the affluent capital Taipei but on the poorer middle and south, which have benefited less from trade with China and where pro-independence sentiment can run deep.

(...EDITED)
 
Another Chinese mega-project:

World's next tallest tower: Super green, very pink

[cnn] - June 24, 2014
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Less than a year after construction was halted on a world-beating 838-meter tower in Changsa in central China (just days after it began) architects have revealed plans to build something even bigger.

At one kilometer (0.6 miles) high, the largest of the two Phoenix Towers planned for Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, will be the tallest in the world if completed on schedule in 2017/2018.

The towers will also be crazily futuristic and super environmentally friendly.

And pink

(...EDITED)
 
China accuses Japan of endangering warships with destroyer, submarine hunter

Ridzwan Rahmat, Singapore
IHS Jane's Navy International
25 June 2014


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PLAN ships last transited the Osumi strait in April 2012. (IHS/David Playford)


China has accused the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) of endangering its vessels on 22 June as they sailed from the Pacific Ocean to the East China Sea.

A People's Liberation Army (PLA)-sponsored media outlet said that the Hatsuyuki-class guided missile destroyer Asayuki (DD 132) and a P-3C anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft "tailed" its convoy of three vessels as they sailed through the 30 km-wide Osumi strait.

The PLAN convoy consisted of two Jiangwei II (Type 053H3)-class guided missile frigates, Mianyang (528) and Sanya (565), and one Fuqing-class replenishment vessel, Hongzhu (881).

"The Japanese side has been tracking, monitoring and interfering with the Chinese ships and planes at close range for a long time, which has endangered the Chinese ships and planes and is the root cause of sea and air security problems between China and Japan", the media report said.


The Chinese Ministry of National Defence admonished the JMSDF manoeuvres as interference in routine Chinese military activities and called on their Japanese counterparts to ensure that there would be no repeat of such incidents in the future.

The Ministry has also warned that China reserves the right to take further action should it happen again but it has stopped short of elaborating about what such measures would entail.



IHS Jane's 360
 
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