October 13:
A group of 23 retired high-ranking CPC cadres and propaganda officials have published a strongly-worded open letter to China’s leadership calling media censorship unconstitutional and saying it should be abolished. The letter begins by citing Article 35 of the 1982 PRC Constitution that enshrines freedoms of speech, publication, assembly, association and demonstration for all citizens. Then it points out that for 28 years these constitutional rights have been denied. The letter condemns the CPC’s central propaganda department as the "black hand" with a clandestine power to censor even Premier Wen Jiabao's repeated calls for political reform and press freedom made in Shenzhen last month and in an interview on CNN a couple of weeks ago. "What right does the Central Propaganda Department have to place itself above the CPC Central Committee and the State Council?” the authors ask. They also called for an end to cyber policing, government-paid nationalistic commentators, website blocking, and restrictions against publications from Macau and Taiwan. The two top signatories are both in their 90s; Li Rui, former secretary of Mao Zedong who was sacked after disagreeing with him; and Hu Jiwei, former publisher of the People's Daily, the South China Morning Post reports.
[Editor’s Note: Open letters of this kind rarely lead to any reform, but can land the authors in trouble with the authorities. However, in this case, the high profile of the signatories and their advanced age means they are unlikely to be punished. For the last few weeks, the party propaganda authorities' deletion of Wen’s points on political reform have been a hot topic of discussion in Beijing and Shanghai.]
In Minhou, Fujian police and party officials from Fujian’s land and resources bureau and construction bureau who attended the demolition of twenty seven homes and illegally built businesses witnessed citizens resist using bricks, liquefied petroleum canisters, and homemade firebombs. Authorities dispatched over 400 helmeted and shielded policemen, as well as demolition personnel from the urban administrative enforcement squad who used fire hoses to topple and remove the resisting residents, Ming Pao reports.
October 15:
Using bogus e-mails claiming to come from South Korean government officials Chinese hackers have stolen a "considerable volume of classified documents," lawmaker Lee Jung-Hyun of the ruling Grand National Party told the South Korean parliament. The secrets pertained to Seoul’s defense and foreign affairs, the South Korean intelligence agency said. Hackers sent e-mails using the names of South Korean diplomats, presidential aides, and other people familiar to other officials with attached files containing viruses disguised as important documents. When a recipient clicked on the attachment, the virus started downloading documents from the victim’s computer and sending them to China. In June, Seoul’s intelligence service investigated a major "distributed denial of service" cyber attack on the main government website by hackers traced to China. Similar attacks originating from China-based servers also briefly crippled U.S. and South Korean government and commercial Web sites in July 2009, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
October 18:
China’s Vice President Xi Jinping was appointed vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the CPC, solidifying himself as China's next leader. The promotion was seen as critical for him to succeed President Hu Jintao in 2012. Hu and his predecessor also held the same position for a number of years before they rose to the top post. Xi currently assumes the sixth-highest position among nine members of the standing committee of the Communist Party's central political bureau, the highest CPC decision-making body. The five ranked ahead of him, including Hu, are all slated to retire in 2012, when they reach the informal term limit of 10 years, reports Yonhap news agency.
October 19:
Finding a good job continues to be difficult for China’s recent university graduates, particularly those in second tier cities. Japan’s Daily Yomiuri reports that about 6.3 million of them are still looking for work. Large communities of young working poor who cannot find regular jobs after graduating from universities are sharing cheap, cramped lodgings in city suburbs. Their discontent has become a source of growing public concern. The employment situation for young people is particularly bad in Chengdu and Xian where thousands of people took to the streets to voice their anti-Japanese sentiment. Those born in the 1980s were strongly affected by the patriotism and anti-Japan propaganda taught in schools during the 1990s. Some university students in Chengdu called for an anti-Japan demonstration on Internet bulletin boards several days before the protest. The Internet police quickly deleted the message, but could not keep up as the message was reposted on one site after another.