May 7:
Censorship is on the rise at China’s educational institutions. Guo Yan, a lecturer at a Guangdong vocational training school for judicial police officers, was transferred to a lab administrator position and required to write a self-examination after she touched upon several politically sensitive issues in a lecture on April 29, Ming Pao reports.
May 9:
China, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have held an anti-terrorist drill codenamed Tianshan II in Kashgar, Xinjiang to help coordinate “decision-making and command,” “rescue of hostages by force” and “mop-up operations.” During the exercise, security forces from the three countries conducted a manhunt for separatists who had set up a training camp on the Chinese side of the border after hijacking a tourist coach. The passengers were “rescued” when a Chinese anti-terror unit managed to control the bus while officers both on the ground and in the air “gunned down” the terrorists. “The drill was conducted considering the present anti-terror condition. There are signs that terrorists belonging to the East Turkestan movement have returned to China through Central Asia,” said Meng Hongwei, a deputy minister of public security. A video of the drill and summary is available on the official Xinhua website. The previous Tianshan I drill was conducted in 2006 and similar anti-terror exercises were conducted with Russian forces in 2007 and last year, the South China Morning Post reports.
May 10:
Press kits prepared for mainland Chinese journalists often include a red envelope containing cash for “travel expenses,” the South China Morning Post reports. Hong Kong Journalists’ Association chairwoman Mak Yin-ting says the practice has long been a serious problem and the amount of money involved is increasing. Li Datong, an editor at the official China Youth Daily, said, “the culprit is the Chinese system, which makes journalists do this or that, following orders from above and depriving them of their sense of honor and their self-esteem. This system has rendered society's moral values useless.” Partly because of a lack of competition, journalism remains a low-paid profession on the mainland and many reporters make 5,000 Yuan ($771) or less per month. Wang Zhuo remembers being given a red envelope on her first assignment. “I was stunned by what I saw,” she says. “I thought it was ugly. And it happened right inside the Great Hall of the People. I'd never learned about that at school. I was told by an older reporter to just take it. He said that if I gave it back, it would make all the other reporters feel bad.”
May 12:
On the China-governed side of Heixiazi/Bolshoy Ussuriyskiy Island on the China-Russia border, work is nearly complete on a new tourist infrastructure. Chinese workers are pouring concrete, laying reinforcement slabs along the bank, and have finished a bridge connecting continental China with the island. The Chinese are also dredging the river on their part of the island (which was split between the two countries during a border settlement) and building a pier, a multistory border control post with offices and living quarters, garages, and a technical observation point. The Russian side, however, claims China’s development is increasing the river’s current velocity and soil erosion. The Russian bank of the river has contracted 30 to 35 meters over the past two years and every year the water advances 10 to 15 meters. A road running along the bank disappeared under water over a year ago, hundreds of trees have been enveloped, and the Russian border-guard technical observation point is under threat. Yet, despite the threat to the Russian side and the Russian Finance Ministry’s allocation of $5.4 million to strengthen the embankment and build infrastructure, no construction work is being done there at all. “This is a direct fault of the regional authorities,” the Russian presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Vladimir Pysin said in comments carried by Russia’s Interfax News Agency.