May 7 :
A Tsinghua University study has found that after graduation the salaries of government officials’ children are, on average, 15 percent higher than those of their classmates. The children of officials are also more likely than their peers to land jobs in the financial sector or in the Party or government departments. “Those whose parents are officials will definitely start at a much, much, higher level than people from regular families,” said Li Hongshan, deputy director of Tsinghua’s China Data Center, which conducted the study. President Xi Jinping’s new administration has vowed to make government cleaner and more transparent, though authorities have cracked down on activists calling for officials to disclosure their private assets, Radio Free Asia reports.
May 8:
China has agreed to “control the specifications” of goods exported to Sudan. Al-Ayyam reports that the agreement, which will go into effect next September, “is an extremely important development because Sudan’s import market has become a Chinese monopoly.” It is the latest effort by Beijing to reassure African consumers about the quality of Chinese exports to the continent. According to a Sudanese newspaper editorial: “The standards of Chinese goods that enter Sudan are terrible and they harm Sudanese consumers. They are ‘defective’ goods with very short validity dates so the Sudanese consumer has to buy the same goods again and again. Sudanese importers deliberately buy cheap, low quality Chinese goods and ship to Sudan knowing that there are no alternatives on the market so consumers have to buy the ‘defective’ Chinese goods. Good quality Chinese products go to Europe and Asia, but the goods exported to Sudan and other African countries are not strictly monitored. Sudanese authorities have to tighten supervision on imports and not allow any sub-standard goods into the country.”
May 13:
President Xi Jinping has promised to expand China’s contributions to international humanitarian efforts, the official People’s Daily reports. Xi made the commitment during a meeting with the visiting president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)Peter Maurer. “China is willing to work closer with the ICRC to offer more help to people in need and will take international responsibility and duty within its capacity. The Red Cross represents not only a spirit, but also a banner under which humanitarian activities across different borders, races and beliefs are carried out,” Xi said.
May 17:
A court in Vietnam has sentenced two student activists to 6-8 years in prison for distributing leaflets calling for anti-China demonstrations. Nguyen Phuong Uyen was sentenced to six years, while Dinh Nguyen Kha received eight years after a one-day trial. They were arrested in October in Ho Chi Minh city for handing out leaflets urging protests against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Their attorney said they meant to demonstrate “patriotism and not to oppose the government,” the Wall Street Journal reports. The sentences are the latest in an intensified crackdown against dissent in Vietnam, a one-party, authoritarian state.
May 20:
Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers in 2009 gained access to a database with information about U.S. surveillance targets, the Washington Post reports. The hackers were apparently seeking the identities of Chinese spies in the U.S. who might have been under investigation. The database might have included information about court orders authorizing surveillance on Chinese agents’ Gmail accounts. Knowing which agents are under “investigation allows them to destroy information, get people out of the country,” said an anonymous former U.S. official. Chinese operatives could have also deceived U.S. officials by conveying false or misleading information. “This is brilliant counterintelligence. You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI. Presumably that’s difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That’s essentially what we think they were trolling for,” said David Aucsmith of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.