July 6:
China and Myanmar have held a half-dozen top level bilateral talks since the beginning of June on topics including Burma's scheduled 2010 elections and ethnic conflict along the Sino-Burmese border, the Thailand-based Irrawaddy reports. Yesterday the junta's First Secretary and army commandant, Gen. Tin Aung Myint Oo, met with CPC Politburo Standing Committee members Li Changchun and Vice Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing. The visit came one week after Vice Premier Zhou Tienong visited Myanmar and also raised the issue of border stability along with economic cooperation with Myanmar’s leader, Gen. Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein. Gen. Fan Changlong, commander of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Jinan military region also spent 5 days in Myanmar. Gen. Shwe Mann, the joint chief of staff of the Burmese Army, Navy and Air Force, met the PLA delegation in Naypyidaw on June 8. During the same period, Myanmar’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win visited Beijing and met with his counterpart, Yang Jiechi, and briefed him on the preparatory work for the general elections.
July 7:
Using an official decision six months earlier authorizing the Ministry of Public Security to extend internet regulations to group forums and micro-blogging services, China’s censors have launched a crackdown on online group forums. Last month, police questioned two Chongqing Morning Post reporters over “inflammatory” comments on QQ group forums. This week a father whose child's death of respiratory and urinary system failure after ingesting melamine-tainted milk was sentenced to one year of “reeducation through labor” for inflammatory outbursts on an online group. On May 19, police took away Tang Lin, a villager from Fengjie, Chongqing, for questioning and two weeks later his family was informed of his sentence for “posing a threat to public security by scare-mongering,” Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis News reports.
[Editor’s Note: Shenzhen-based Tencent Inc’s QQ instant messaging service has gained enormous popularity among Chinese. Four years ago there were 24.5 million simultaneously using the service, up to 110 million this year. Each of the group forums can have up to 500 members but participation in a forum is mostly by invitation, meaning applicants are subject to group creator’s clearance screenings. It is still unclear how mainland censors infiltrate QQ forums and what kind of role the service provider plays in policing, the South China Morning Post reports.]
July 9:
CPC Chairman Hu Jintao's has laid out a series of major development goals for western China in the next decade. Beijing will direct $680 billion in investment to stimulate the economy and boost confidence in the west. China’s economic development model combines its industries’ huge domestic natural resource demand with the West’s rich mineral deposits. The new “Go West” program is aimed at “ensuring national stability and strengthening ethnic solidarity through economic development” in Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai and Guizhou, the Beijing-controlled Ta Kung Pao reports.
July 10:
At a special meeting in the early hours of June 19, the Politburo Standing Committee, the CPC’s highest body, endorsed the pro-Beijing Democratic Party's plan to allow three million-plus Hong Kong voters to elect candidates for five new functional constituency seats in 2012. Peng Qinghua, director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, played an active role in convincing state leaders to concede, the South China Morning Post reports. During a meeting between Peng and Chief Executive Donald Tsang on June 15, Tsang told of dire repercussions if the political reform package was vetoed. Vice President Xi Jinping had told Tsang in Shenzhen early last month that Beijing rejected the proposal. But Peng conveyed Tsang's views to the Communist Party's leading group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs and recommended adopting the proposal. Officials relayed Peng's views to Xi who as head of the leading group gave the green light.
[Editor’s Note: Beijing finds itself in a challenging position. It must accommodate pressure for political liberalization in Hong Kong – China’s most affluent and open city – while continuing to harshly suppress demand for similar reform in the rest of the country.]