September 2:
During a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, Beijing has launched a series of reforms intended to introduce performance-based pay in public institutions. The initiatives are intended to standardize allowances and subsidies, develop a motivation mechanism for public sector workers, promoting the development of social programs, and raise the standard of public welfare services. The initiative will be introduced in three stages. First, it began in public schools in January, second it will be introduced in October 2009 in public health institutions as part of China’s health care reforms, and finally it will be extended to all other public institutions beginning January 2010. The new system seeks to improve public welfare services and their distribution through public institutions, according to Xinhua.
September 3:
Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS reports that on September 10th China's Central Television will launch a Russian-language channel. The channel’s launch is part of a series of gala events dedicated to the Year of Russia in China and the 60th anniversary since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the former Soviet Union. Roughly 300 million Russian-speaking viewers in Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states will be offered fourteen shows, including five information and nine documentaries. Russian will be the sixth language that CCTV will broadcast from Beijing; others include Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. Next CCTV plans to launch a Portuguese channel.
September 6:
The regional government of northwest China's Xinjiang province has sent 2,100 officials and police officers to communities in Urumqi “to explain government policies and solve disputes.” Uighur communities will receive 1,500 cadres and Han Chinese communities in the north of the city will receive 600 – 100 bureau-level and 500 section chief-level officials, the official China Daily reports.
September 7:
Chongqing’s No 2 police officer, Peng Changjian, deputy head of the municipality's Public Security Bureau, has been detained as part of a crackdown on triads that has brought down hundreds of officers and officials in recent months, Ta Kung Pao reports. The Communist Party's top graft-busters have put Peng under shuanggui – a form of party discipline. He is accused of acting as a "protective umbrella" for two of the city's billionaire triad bosses, Chen Mingliang and Ma Dang. The South China Morning Post cited anonymous sources saying Peng took a “huge amount of bribes during his tenure as the chief of the Public Security Bureau in Yuzhong district.”
[Editor’s Note: Peng joined Wen Qiang, the Justice Bureau chief and former deputy chief of Chongqing’s police, at the detention center. Wen helped promote Peng in 2005. Wen served as deputy head of the Chongqing police for 16 years before being transferred to lead the municipality's Justice Bureau last summer. He was found to have assets worth about 100 million yuan including eight properties and 38 million yuan in cash and gold.]
Authorities in Urumqi at first imposed new traffic restrictions and then expanded the measure into a curfew in order to quell a series of small-scale tit-for-tat protests by Uighurs and Hans. Armed police are not allowing any vehicles into several parts of town and are paroling the streets in mass. Japan’s Kyoto News Agency reports the ban was extended on the seventh to a city-wide curfew banning people and vehicles from venturing onto streets after dark. The measures come as several fresh disturbances and race-based attacks have occurred in the provincial capital, Zhongguo Xinwen She news agency reports.