8th May 2010

The Lion Awakes 

News at a Glance

今天的中国新闻

A compilation of Headlines + Brief Summary from Chinese & International Publications relating to China.

Just 5 Minutes each day to be up-to-date on the News of China

Combined with Kaixin’s boutique SITE SEARCH ENGINE, it is a unique source of knowledge about China"

China News Archive

From 2008

China Daily

DPRK willing to return to nuclear talks, says Kim

Leader gives positive signals, but still no timetable for six-nation dialogue.

BEIJING - Pyongyang is willing to return to the Six-Party Talks on nuclear disarmament, the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) declared on Friday as he wrapped up his fifth visit to China.

Top leaders of China, DPRK hold talks in Beijing

President Hu Jintao (R) meets with Kim Jong-il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 5, 2010. [Xinhua]

BEIJING - Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chinese president, held talks in Beijing with Kim Jong-il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The Wall Street Journal

Shhh, the World’s Most Notorious Dictator Is Visiting — Don’t Tell Anyone

5th May 2010

China this week is playing host to the world’s most notorious head of state, but people who rely on China’s major state media outlets for news could be forgiven for not knowing.

Just as the government in Beijing has refused to acknowledge that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is in China — a fact that pretty much anyone outside China and North Korea who cares has known for several days — so too its major state-run news outlets appear to have a blackout on information about the visit.

Kaixin - You were saying???

DPRK leader 'on China visit'

By Ai Yang and Cheng Guangjin
Updated: 4th May 2010

BEIJING - The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong-il arrived in China on Monday, foreign news agencies have reported.

But neither the Foreign Ministry nor the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China confirmed the visit on Monday, a public holiday in China.

Development is key during Kim's visit

DPRK leader believed to have toured industrial zone, met local officials in Dalian

Updated: 8th May 2010

Beijing - The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong-il reportedly toured an industrial zone and met local officials in northeastern China during the second day of his close-lipped visit to the nation on Tuesday, with economic development and inter-Korea relations high on his agenda.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) based Yonhap News reported that Kim entered China by a 17-carriage train on Monday and spent the night in Dalian, a northeast port city known as a model of market reforms.

Hu's Russia trip of vital significance

MOSCOW - The upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Moscow for the 65th anniversary of the end of Russia's Great Patriotic War is of vitally realistic and historical significance, Chinese ambassador Li Hui Said.

"History is a mirror that can reflect the future. President Hu's upcoming visit highlights the importance of remembering the past while cherishing and protecting the hard-won peace against the recurrence of warfare tragedy, and of enabling people all over the world to share the achievement of peace and development," Li said.

Rural home appliance subsidy boosts sales 5 fold

BEIJING - China's subsidy program for home appliance purchases in rural areas continued to boost sales in the first four months of the year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Friday.

Sales of subsidized home appliances in China's rural area surged 510 percent year-on-year to 41.7 billion yuan ($6.13 billion) during the period, a statement on the ministry's website said.

Rural residents bought 20.84 million sets of subsidized household appliances in the January-April period, up 370 percent from a year earlier.

In April alone, 4.8 million sets of subsidized home appliances were sold, up 170 percent from a year earlier, with sales totaling 10 billion yuan, up 260 percent.

Sales of subsidized televisions, refrigerators and computers in the four months totaled 3.2 billion yuan, 3.2 billion yuan and one billion yuan, respectively, the statement said.

China launched the subsidy program in February last year to spur rural consumption to buoy the nation's economic growth amid the global economic downturn.

Govt pledges support for FDI

BEIJING - China regards all foreign enterprises with operations in the nation as equal with their local counterparts, and the government will make all efforts to assist and support foreign businesses, Ma Xiuhong, vice-minister of commerce, said on Friday.

Ma made the remark during the Symposium for Multinational Companies 2010 taking place in Beijing.

The Chinese government launched guidelines on how to improve the environment for foreign direct investment in early April.

However, during Friday's forum, representatives of some multinational companies operating in the country expressed concern about the implementation of the rules and regulations mentioned in the guidelines.

Anti-terrorism cooperation enhanced between China and Pakistan

China and Pakistan will continue to cooperate in fighting terrorism and maintaining the stability of central Asia, a visiting Pakistani official said Friday.

At the end of a two-day trip to China, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, said China promised to provide a $184 million loan for the purchase of equipment and anti-terrorism training courses for Pakistani forces. He met with China's Minister of Public Security, Meng Jianzhu on Friday.

"China has been very helpful … and China also donated 2 billion yuan for the equipment of our police, he said. "Anti-terrorism cooperation efforts between the two countries are well underway."

Taiwan-themed business street opens in Beijing

BEIJING: With the opening of a Taiwan-themed business street on Friday in Beijing, fans of Taiwan's architecture, food, handiwork and music may find them, in their original forms, just there.

The street, 500 meters long, is named "Taiwan Street," the first one in Beijing, although there are already several such streets in other cities in the Chinese mainland.

The street is located in Shijingshan District near the west end of Chang'an Avenue.

With 12 buildings and ten pavilions, the street features an exact replica of a century-old house in Taiwan, and a restaurant featuring the music of the island's most famous popular singer Teresa Teng.

More mainland regions to gain travel access to Taiwan

TAIPEI - Mainland residents in six more provinces and autonomous regions will be allowed to travel to Taiwan, sources with the mainland-based Cross-Straits Tourism Exchange Association (CTEA) have said.

The six regions are the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, according to CTEA president Shao Qiwei.

Black organ market rakes on poverty and hope

In Thursday's news report, a middleman in eastern Jiangsu, surnamed Wang, bragged how he fostered 190 underground donors in the past two years and successfully channeled over 30 transplant cases. Another in northeastern Shenyang assured that he could secure an organ donation in three days, and could even offer an extra donor as a backup.

So far the only organ donation regulation in China is a toothless bylaw which forbids, rather than criminalizes, organ trafficking as illegal business operations. Legal specialists said the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Caixin Online

Hong Kong and the Yuan's Internationalization

An Interview with Joseph Yam, former chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority

The Wall Street Journal     China RealTime Report

Economists See Pick-Up in Inflation in China

A raft of Chinese economic indicators for April due Monday and Tuesday are expected to indicate inflationary pressures continued to build last month while new loan growth, industrial production and fixed asset investment activity stayed solid. The median forecast by economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires was for a 2.7% rise in China’s consumer price index, the main inflationary gauge, in April from a year earlier, up from a 2.4% rise in March, while the forecast for the producer price index was for a rise of 6.5%, up from a 5.9% rise a monthe earlier.

Data may add pressure on Beijing to adopt more broad-based tightening measures such as higher interest rates.

Yiyi Lu: A Country Ever More Difficult to Govern

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, discusses the continued rise of popular protests in China. Ms. Lu is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute and an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

What political scientists call “contentious politics” have become commonplace in China. There are daily reports of petitions, protests and confrontations between citizens and the authorities

It is well known that local authorities often try to suppress protesters rather than addressing their demands. The media have detailed many illegal acts of suppression carried out by local authorities. In recent days, for example, domestic media have run a series of reports on two cases of local authorities forcibly sending petitioners to mental institutions. In one case, the victim had been kept in a mental institution for six and a half years.

The New York Times

Red China, Green China

China is busy turning the global challenge of climate change into a national opportunity, but it needs another decade to advance its technology to the point where superior manufacturing and lower costs will secure its dominance of the clean-tech sector. By giving China more time to develop its capacity while neglecting our own, America is not just losing the clean-tech race, it’s forfeiting it.

The Age

Question marks as Chinese Premier proclaims reform agenda

JOHN GARNAUT, BEIJING 
 
CHINESE Premier Wen Jiabao sat down with students from Peking University this week to talk about fairness, justice and democracy.

Mr Wen's words are more memorable, however, because his government has systematically blocked or neutered the sorts of reforms and institutions necessary to ensure justice and democracy, leaving citizens with few legitimate avenues to raise or redress their grievances.

Asia Times Online

Down and out in China
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - As China basks in the spotlight of hosting another international extravaganza - the World Expo, which opened May 1 in Shanghai - it is worth noting that a homeless man named Cheng Guorong is one of the most popular figures on the Internet in the country so far this year.

Actually, while most netizens would immediately recognize Cheng's strikingly handsome face and strange sartorial flare, they probably would not know his real name. For months, Cheng, a vagabond in the city of Ningbo in eastern Zhejiang province, was regarded as the "coolest man in China".

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