China Reform Monitor: N0. 1154

February 25:

South Africa’s State Security Agency documents leaked to Al Jazeera reveal that Pretoria believes Beijing was behind break-ins at a nuclear facility in 2007 and stole nuclear technology. Two groups of armed men cut through a fence surrounding the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Center, disabled alarms, and shot a man who interrupted them. He was left in a critical condition while the attackers escaped with a laptop computer stolen from a control room. They were never caught. Afterward, China moved ahead in its development of the same new technology that was being researched at Pelindaba, known as a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor. The secret briefing explained: “It is suspected that the thefts and break-ins that took place were to advance China’s rival project called Chinergy, China has developed and are one year ahead of PBMR project though they started several years after.” South Africa abandoned its pebble-bed plans in 2010. The documents contradict official South African officials who dismissed the break-ins as “a piece of random criminality.” China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner, and the CPC is the ruling ANC party’s close political ally.

March 4:

Five thousand residents of the Hui Muslim village of Tianmu on the bank of Tianjin’s Beiyun River are protesting the Communist Party secretary of their village, Mu Xiangyou, and his years of corrupt property land deals. Villagers said Mu made “sales” without informing the village committee. Tianmu residents have filed petitions with Beijing over Mu’s property deals, which cost them 3,000 mu (494 acres) of farmland, leaving them with just 100 mu (17 acres). Some 7000-8000 mu (1,150 acres – 1,318 acres) of collective land was also transferred illicitly from local residents to developers and used for national-level infrastructure projects. “This is collective farmland we are talking about, held by the whole village, and yet he just takes it over and sells it whenever he chooses,” one Tianmu resident told Radio Free Asia.

March 10:

Uighur militants that joined Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East have been arrested after they returned home to Xinjiang, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports. Yesterday, at the National People’s Congress in Beijing, the region’s Communist Party boss Zhang Chunxian told the annual plenary session of the Xinjiang delegation: “I believe there are extremists from Xinjiang who have joined IS. We have recently arrested some groups who returned after joining the group. The risk is real. It has already happened. Xinjiang cannot stay out of the fight.” Zhang said he would fight IS influence and stop more Uighurs from joining. About 100 militant Uighurs have already travelled to the Middle East for training and some remained to fight, said Wu Sike, China’s special envoy on Middle East Affairs. China’s deputy security minister, Meng Hongwei, said more than 300 Uighurs have joined jihadi groups in Malaysia.

March 13:

A leading student group during last year’s Occupy Central campaign has opened its books to rebut Beijing’s claims that it was foreign funded, the SCMP reports. The Federation of Students’ Tommy Cheung Sau-yin said: “The disclosure serves as a rebuttal to those who ‘uglify’ Occupy as a foreign-funded campaign and accuse us of receiving millions in illicit donations from unknown sources.” The Federation’s financial report shows it spent about 220,000 HKD ($28,260) on last year’s pro-democracy protests – mostly on equipment, leaflets, and supplies, including food. The Federation also provided HK$332,000 ($42,800) for the students’ class boycott leading up to the protests. The group’s income for the period was HK$1.18 million ($144,131), all of which it spent. It received some HK$600,000 ($77,351) in donations, with nearly two-thirds coming during the 79-day boycott, mostly from Hongkong residents. Its second largest income source was member dues. Another student group, Scholarism, also funded the protests, along with other pan-democratic parties and Occupy Central with Love and Peace, the coordinating group.

March 15:

Hong Kong Executive Council member Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, a top aide to Chief Executive Leung, has suggested new teachers be put through “state education” training in China. Last week, she said incoming teachers should spend a month in the mainland “learning about the nation in order to be qualified,” the SCMP reports. To imbue locals with a stronger sense of national recognition, Hong Kong ought to “seize on” young teachers, she said. President of the Professional Teachers' Union, Fung Wai-wah, criticized Law for attempting “control of the mind.” Bernard Chan, who, like Law, is a National People’s Congress deputy, said: “It’s important for schools to make their own choices.” Fears of brainwashing students were behind the 2012 protests that forced Leung, then at the start of his term, to scrap plans to teach national education in schools.