China Reform Monitor: No. 1002

November 20:

Hamas has fired Chinese and Iran-made rockets into Israel. These include Chinese-made WS-1E rockets with range of 40 km and Iranian-made Fajr 5 rockets and rocket launchers with a range of up to 75 km, Germany’s Der Spiegel reports, citing Israeli sources. The Fajr 5 is seven meters long and the warhead weighs over 175 kilos. The Israeli government says some 1,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza and its air force has destroyed several times more on the ground.

November 21:

Bribery and cronyism have infested China’s education system pushing the value of gifts to schools and teachers up fifty times higher than a decade ago. “Corruption is pervasive in every part of Chinese society and education is no exception,” Li Mao, an educational consultant in Beijing, told the New York Times. Nearly everything has a price from school admissions and placement in gifted classes to leadership positions in Communist youth groups and front-row seats near the blackboard. A position at Tsinghua University’s kindergarten can cost $24,000 and the going bribery rate for admission to a high school linked to Renmin University is $80,000 to $130,000. At another elite Beijing high school students receive an extra point on their admissions test score for each $4,800 their parents contribute to the school. During Teacher Appreciation Day teachers now receive designer watches, expensive teas, gift cards and even vacations.

November 23:

“Based on the overall interest of the country,” Taiwan’s government has turned down the Dalai Lama’s request to visit the island, the official Central News Agency reports. The Dalai Lama was to give a keynote speech at the 2012 Asia Pacific Regional Conference of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women on December 1-3 in Taipei, said former Vice President Annette Lu, who is president of the organization. Leaders of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have responded by accusing President Ma Yingjeou of caving to pressure from Beijing. DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang said it is “unreasonable and impolite” for Taipei to reject the Dalai Lama’s via application. Liu Shih-chung, head of the DPP’s Department of International Affairs, warned that the decision damages Taiwan’s international image because it casts doubt on the government’s commitment to democracy and human rights.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) inclusion of Taiwan as part of its national map and pictures of the island’s scenic spots in the new PRC passports are unacceptable, the Republic of China’s (ROC-Taiwan) Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement. “The move completely ignores reality, only provokes disputes and harms the basis of mutual trust,” it said. Each page in the passport has a different background motif and one of the pages shows a map of what the PRC claims as its “national” territory including mainland China, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. “The ROC is a sovereign independent country [with] its inherent territory,” the statement said, adding that Beijing should accept that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are governed separately.

November 25:

India, Vietnam and the Philippines have protested the map images on China’s new passports. In response, India’s embassy in Beijing will issue visas to Chinese nationals with a map of India showing the disputed territories of Arunachal and Aksai Chin as part of its territory, the Press Trust of India Reports. Vietnam’s passport control offices are refusing to stamp visa pages in the new passports and instead are issuing visas for Chinese passport holders on a separate paper. At the Lao Cai border crossing between Vietnam and China, Vietnamese authorities stamped 111 new Chinese passports containing the map as “invalid,” Tuoitre News reports. Philippine Inquirer reports that Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario said the images violate the provision on the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.