Third plenum in July, Xi Jinping goes to Europe, and South China Sea disputes
Third plenum in July, Xi Jinping goes to Europe, and South China Sea disputes
+ China launches moon probe
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THROUGH THE LENS
XINJIANG
US labor official calls on companies to exit China's Xinjiang
Reuters
International companies cannot responsibly operate in Xinjiang and should leave the western Chinese region due to forced labor concerns, a U.S. Labor Department official said on Tuesday.
The U.S. government says Chinese officials continue to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, and rights groups have pressured Western companies there to audit their operations over forced labor concerns.
China's government vehemently denies allegations of abuses.
Thea Lee, deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the Labor Department, told a U.S. congressional hearing that Beijing had made it "essentially illegal" to conduct independent human rights audits in Xinjiang.
"If it is impossible to do that, then the only responsible thing to do is not to operate in that atmosphere," Lee told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, without naming individual companies.
POLITICS & SOCIETY
China vows reforms at long delayed party conclave amid challenging economy
Reuters
The Chinese Communist Party's central committee will gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decision makers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid "challenges" at home and complexities abroad.
Plenums are important events on China's political calendar that require the attendance of all of the party's central committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with President Xi Jinping at the helm.
The central committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the last party congress in October 2022.
Further deepening reforms and promoting the modernisation of China will comprise the main agenda of the third plenum, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the party's elite political bureau, or politburo, during a regular meeting.
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Third plenums have typically focused on reforms, after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. Some closed-door meetings have left a long-lasting and historical impact on the economy.
The third plenum in December 1978 under Deng Xiaoping initiated China's economic reforms, igniting the transformation of the world's most populous nation from a centrally planned backwater to a global economic powerhouse.
In November 2013 the central committee at a third plenum vowed to let markets play a "decisive" role in allocating resources in the economy.
While a third plenum in February 2018, held atypically early that year, urged the party to "unite closely" around the central committee with Xi at the "core", and proposed the removal of a constitutional clause limiting presidential service to two terms.
Days later, China's largely rubber-stamp parliament voted to remove presidential term limits, allowing Xi to stay in office indefinitely.
China’s revised state secrets law has come into force. Here’s what to know
Al Jazeera
A revised state secrets law has come into force in China, prompting Taiwan to warn its citizens against travelling to China and rattling foreign companies amid fears the legislation could be used to punish regular business activities.
The changes to the Law on the Guarding of State Secrets, enacted on Wednesday, come as President Xi Jinping’s government steps up the focus on national security, including by updating China’s anti-espionage law and increasing the scrutiny of firms with foreign ties.
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Changes brought to the law by China’s top legislative body in February broadened its scope to include “work secrets” – information that does not amount to state secrets but could cause “adverse effects if leaked”.
The revisions also require internet companies to crack down on and cooperate with investigations into suspected leaks. In the event of a suspected state security leak, Article 34 of the revised act states that “network operators” shall “immediately stop its transmission, save relevant records, and report [the case] to the secrets administration departments or public security organs and state security organs”. The operators are also obliged to delete the information if requested.
China enlists Tencent, Weibo and Douyin to protect state secrets
Nikkei Asia
Protecting and curbing the spread of state secrets online, in an increasingly digitally focused society, is a central element of the extensive revisions to the law, which has been updated for the first time since 2010. The changes add "internet information" to the list of distribution channels that must follow secrecy requirements, joining books, newspapers and television.
"Network operators" will need to closely monitor what their users transmit and, if a leak of state secrets is suspected, remove the problematic content and save relevant records. They will also have to cooperate with investigations by state secrets administration departments or public security and national security authorities.
These provisions are believed to be aimed at internet giants like Tencent Holdings, along with such social media platforms as Weibo and Douyin, ByteDance's domestically focused sister product to its TikTok short-video app.
Xi shakes up China’s military in rethink of how to ‘fight and win’ future wars
CNN
Experts on the Chinese military say the reorganization enhances Xi’s direct control over the PLA’s strategic capabilities and underscores China’s ambitions in better mastering AI and other new technologies to prepare for what it calls the “intelligentized warfare” of the future.
The restructuring follows Xi’s sweeping corruption purge of the PLA last year, which ensnared powerful generals and shook up the rocket force, an elite branch overseeing China’s fast-expanding arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.
The Information Support Force will be led by top generals from the now-defunct SSF.
SSF deputy commander Bi Yi was appointed commander of the new unit, while Li Wei, the SSF’s political commissar, will take the same role in the Information Support Force, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.
There was no mention of any new appointment for SSF commander Ju Qiansheng, who last year spurred speculation when he disappeared from public view amid a flurry of military purges before eventually resurfacing at a conference in late January.
China flexes muscle at sea as new aircraft carrier starts trials
Nikkei Asia
China's newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, set out for its first sea trials on Wednesday, the latest milestone in Beijing's military buildup as tensions simmer in both the East and South China seas.
The vessel, which is equipped with advanced electromagnetic catapults for launching fighter jets, left Shanghai's Jiangnan Shipyard at about 8 a.m., Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. The goal, it said, is to test the carrier's propulsion and electrical systems.
The maneuvers come a day after Chinese ships fired water cannons at Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.
China highway collapse: Vice Premier in Guangdong to oversee rescue efforts
AP
China has sent a vice premier to oversee recovery efforts and urged better safety measures after a highway collapse killed at least 48 people in the country’s mountainous south.
The official Xinhua News Agency on Friday said Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing had “stressed sparing no effort in carrying out rescue and relief work.”
The dispatch of Zhang, who is also a member of one of the ruling Communist Party’s leading bodies, illustrates the concern over a possible public backlash over the disaster, the latest in a series of deadly infrastructure failures. References to the collapse, which left a huge gash in the side of a cliff over which the highway was built, largely disappeared from public media on Friday.
Zhang’s presence follows calls by President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Qiang, to swiftly handle the tragedy.
Beijing steps up calls for disaster preparedness in southern China after dozens die amid severe rainfall
SCMP
Beijing on Thursday ramped up calls for local authorities to step up disaster preparedness after dozens of people died in rain-hit southern Guangdong province.
With more downpours expected in the region, central government emergency agencies have asked local departments of the water resources, natural resources and transport ministries to “closely monitor the rain and flood developments” and “strictly” implement warning and response measures.
The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management met representatives of the relevant ministries on Thursday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
The meeting was held a day after a section of highway in the Guangdong city of Meizhou collapsed, killing at least 48 people. The city – along with the province – has suffered severe downpours in the past two weeks, but there have been no official announcements regarding the cause of the disaster.
New Express Delivery Regulations Lead to Industry Dilemma
RADII
As of March 1st, newly revised “Regulations on the Management of the Express Delivery Market” have come into effect in China. These regulations mandate that express delivery companies may be fined up to 30,000 RMB (4,167 USD) for unauthorized use of intelligent parcel lockers or delivery service stations without user consent, with severe cases facing the maximum penalty.
However, the enforcement of these regulations presents a dilemma. Within the first week of the new rules being introduced, interviews with residents and delivery staff in Wenzhou showed that they weren’t being enforced. Now, almost two months later, reporting in Changsha has revealed ongoing challenges, mostly due to residents’ unawareness of the updated regulations or preference for delivery station safety. Inconsistent enforcement has led to frustration among delivery personnel who are already grappling with overwhelming workloads.
Despite the mounting workload, courier payments haven’t kept pace, as major delivery firms compete with each other by lowering prices, neglecting pay for regular delivery staff. This imbalance has sparked a wave of resignations among delivery personnel in China. Since the new rules were introduced two months ago, some Cainiao Package Locker managers have even resorted to delivering packages themselves to alleviate the mounting package backlog at their stations.
May Fourth and China's legacy of revolution
Salon
On May 4, 1919, 3,000 university students in Beijing emerged from their dormitories and lecture halls, gathered in front of Tiananmen Gate and set off the most famous protest movement in Chinese history. Angered by the weakness of the Chinese government in the face of colonial encroachment by Japan and the Western great powers, students, workers, and other opponents of imperialism had taken hold of most of China’s major cities by the next day in a defiant show of patriotic resistance and mass consciousness.
May Fourth at 105 — Protest, Resistance, Repression
China Heritage
May Fourth 2024 marks the 105th anniversary of a student protests in Beijing that have had a profound impact both on the political and cultural life of modern China.
Long ago, ‘The Spirit of May Fourth’ 五四精神 — one that supposedly reflects the idealism as well as the avowed quest for rationality and democracy of the student demonstrators of 1919 — was interpreted and reinterpreted by the Communist Party to serve its shifting purposes. For decades the Party has made a mockery of an idealistic movement that played a crucial role in its founding in 1921 and it continues to benefit from a cynical successful manipulation of student enthusiasm and patriotic outrage. Since 1949, the Party has embodied a dissembling version of the cultural conservatism and political obscurantism against which the students demonstrated on 4 May 1919.
Xi calls on youth to shoulder responsibility for Chinese modernization
China Daily
President Xi Jinping has called on the young people in the new era to strive to write their youthful chapter of shouldering responsibility for Chinese modernization.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in his messages for Chinese youth ahead of China's Youth Day, which falls on Saturday.
Xi, on behalf of the CPC Central Committee, extended festive greetings to young people nationwide in his messages.
Xi said that on the new journey in the new era, China's youth of all ethnic groups act as "spearheads and vital forces" in various fields such as scientific and technological innovation, rural revitalization, green development, social services, and defense of the country, responding to the call of the Party and the people. The CPC Central Committee has full trust in and high expectations for the youth, said Xi.
Xi stressed that this year marks the 75th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China and the 105th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. He asked young people to carry on the spirit of the movement, resolutely follow the Party, and make their contributions to building China into a strong country and promoting the great cause of national rejuvenation.
China's state media support protests on US campuses but not at home
Beijing's reaction to recent American student protests have been drastically different from how it treated domestic street demonstrations like the "White Paper" movement.
China erases memory of ‘white paper’ protests in further threat to journalism
The Guardian
In November 2022, thousands of people took to the streets across China to protest against the government’s strict Covid-19 controls in an unprecedented wave of civil disobedience. They were thought to be the largest protests since the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square demonstrations when, at its height, a million people are estimated to have gathered.
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The CPJ says Beijing is cracking down on any form of public memory of the protests. “Chen’s case sends a message to other aspiring citizen journalists that says: don’t try this, we’ll be coming after you,” says Beh Lih Yi, the head of CPJ’s Asia programme.
The Chinese state has long ranked as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists and was listed as the top offender by the CPJ last year, but the space for journalism appears to be shrinking further.
In addition to tightening its censorship, the government has ramped up its national security messaging, warning citizens to guard against foreign espionage. The party has long promulgated the idea of a threat from “foreign hostile forces” as a means to divert criticism of its leadership – a tactic also used during the white paper protests.
In recent years, it has become more common for journalists to be sentenced under “anti-state” charges, Beh says. One example is Sophia Huang Xueqin, an imprisoned #MeToo journalist who has been charged with “inciting subversion of state power”.
Chinese media withdraw from regional journalism competition
Nikkei Asia
Chinese-owned media are distancing themselves from Asia's highest-profile journalism prize amid rising domestic pressure on those seen to be "colluding with foreign forces."
Beijing-based Caixin Media, which won SOPA awards for five straight years from 2014 to 2018, has stopped submitting entries in recent years "for obvious reasons," two senior staff members at the company told Nikkei Asia. "We cannot submit, even if we get invitations from overseas organizations, we just cannot participate," said one of them.
Shanghai-based Sixth Tone, which was launched in 2016 by The Paper -- a digital news outlet run by the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group -- did not submit any entries this year, according to people familiar with the matter. It had been a finalist or winner each year from 2017 to 2023.
Both The Paper and Sixth Tone dropped out of SOPA membership from this year as well.
The change follows a management overhaul late last year, when Shanghai United Media Group set up a Shanghai Global News Network in October. Sixth Tone has since been a part of the network and is no longer under the supervision of The Paper, a senior executive from Shanghai United Media Group told Nikkei.
Last year, state-backed The World of Chinese was also among the mainland winners, but the publication did not submit entries this year, people familiar with the matter said.
"In the current political atmosphere, participating in overseas awards certainly carries political risks. I understand the choice made by the Chinese media, as survival is more important," said one prominent journalism professor in Hong Kong, who asked not to be named.
Labor Day isn’t the holiday it once was for China’s workers
CNN Business
Like hundreds of millions of workers in China, Hao Zeyu, an algorithm engineer at an electric vehicle maker, is getting five days off this week for the Labor Day holiday. But he’s in no mood to party.
In order to take the vacation, Hao is required to work an extra day on each weekend immediately before and after the break.
To add insult to injury, two of the official vacation days fall on Saturday and Sunday. That means just one of those five days counts as a genuine holiday.
The practice of moving workdays to weekends to create a longer vacation during major Chinese holidays is known as “tiaoxiu” or adjusted rest. Introduced in 1999 to stimulate consumer spending following the Asian financial crisis, it has been the subject of much online anger in the weeks leading up to this year’s May 1 holiday.
“I really don’t like it,” Hao told CNN. “I think this policy was meant to promote consumption at a certain stage of the country’s development, but I very much do not support it anymore,” he added.
An Influx of Chinese Tourists Is Coming to a Country Near You
Caixin
Chinese tourists are heading overseas for the extended May Labor Day holiday in near pre-pandemic numbers, accelerating a rebound of what used to be the world’s biggest travel market.
Outbound trips between April 27 to May 5, which includes the five-day break that started Wednesday, are only 7% below 2019 levels, according to ForwardKeys, a travel forecaster that analyzes air ticketing, travel agency and other industry data.
A last-minute rush has seen bookings surge at a faster pace than expected, according to the travel insights company. Meanwhile, domestic ticketing for the period has surpassed 2019 levels by 4%.
The data, together with the results of Bloomberg Intelligence’s China traveler sentiment survey, shows demand rebounding, despite worries the country’s sluggish economy was hitting consumer confidence and spending. A swift return of Chinese travelers, who spent almost $248 billion on foreign travel in 2019 before the pandemic shut down tourism, is vital to fill a big hole in the global travel industry.
“We’re now well ahead of the pace — that’s the bottom line,” said Tim Bacchus, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior industry analyst. “We’re seeing an acceleration and an increase of expectations on China’s outbound travel. It’s recovering faster than was expected at the beginning of the year.”
[…]
Destinations in Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia are among the biggest beneficiaries of the jump in Chinese travelers. Traditionally, Hong Kong and Macau are also favored, and ForwardKeys counts those trips as outbound travel.
Chinese vacationers are also favoring Japan, where a weaker yen helped to attract more than 452,000 mainland visitors in March. Chinese visitors ranked third among international arrivals in March — though their numbers were still about 35% below pre-Covid levels.
Outside Asia, Europe is favored during the extended Labor Day holiday, according to ForwardKeys. Bookings for Italy rose 19% from 2019 levels, while the U.K. is seeing a 12% gain. And Beijing’s push of travel spots in the Middle East that are part of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative is working: the United Arab Emirates was the top destination outside Asia for May holiday trips.
Gallery: Holiday Rail Recovery
Caixin
Railway passengers will take an estimated 144 million trips in China over this year’s May Day holiday, up 8.3% from the comparable period in 2023, according to China National Railway Group. The peak holiday travel period began on April 29 and will run through to May 6, a total of eight days, with passengers making an average of 18 million trips on the rail network each day.
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