China Reform Monitor: No. 1037

May 17:

Sudan’s Minister of Finance Abd-al-Rahman Dhirar has returned from China with an agreement to “speed up the procedures for Chinese loans to Sudan and increase preferential and concessional loans and grants.” China’s Ex-Im Bank and Ministry of Commerce “pledged to increase the volume of cooperation with Sudan.” Dhirar noted that Khartoum welcomes the recent China-South Sudan cooperation agreement and its promise to help bring “economic security and stability to the two countries,” the official Sudanese Media Centre website reports.

May 20:

Hu Huaibang, Chairman of the Board of the China Development Bank (CDB) and Secretary of its Communist Party Committee, has met with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon in Beijing. During the meeting the CDB and the Chinese mining company Zijin signed a trilateral agreement on the allocation of a long-term subsidized loan worth $140 million to develop the Zarafshon gold mining China-Tajik joint venture. Rahmon also thanked CDB for issuing subsidized loans worth over $25 million to Tajik state-owned bank Amonatbonk, Avesta website reports.

May 22:

Since coming to power President Xi Jinping has repeatedly called for respect of China’s constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, the press, and organization: “No organization or individual should be put above the constitution and the law,” he said at a Politburo seminar in February, the South China Morning Post reports. Last week, however, more conservative voices pushed back including an editorial by Renmin University law professor Yang Xiaoqing in the Party’s Red Flag Magazine. Citing Marx and Engels, Yang called the “old Western” view of constitutional rule “an oppressive tool of the capitalist stage of development.” Yang argued that: “Those with capital use the constitution to trick those who have nothing. If China came under constitutional rule it would descend into chaos.” Instead, Yang called for People’s Congresses under Party leadership to represent the people and supervise the judiciary. A day later, a Global Times editorial called “constitutional rule an empty political slogan made by misled intellectuals who want to change China’s course of development. If the Western world cannot change China’s course then a small group of domestic dissenters will be even less able to do so.”

[Editor’s Note: China’s courts cannot invoke the constitution to protect citizens’ civil and political rights. When the more liberal Southern Weekly called for a realization of a “constitutional dream” in its traditional New Years editorial in January, censors replaced the text with a more muted version, triggering a rare public strike by journalists.]

May 23:

Local officials from China and Nepal have met in Kuti, Tibet to discuss “problems along the border between the two countries.” The Chinese side included the chief of Nyalam District and officials in charge of immigration, security, and quarantine. “Chinese officials stress border security at every meeting, which take place every six months,” Nepal’s Kanipur reports. On the Nepali side Dilli Raj Pokharel, the chief district officer in Sindhupalchok, led a 10-member delegation including local border security, police and immigration officials. Kathmandu is concerned that Beijing has closed border facilities that help pilgrims travel to Kuti and Mai Pokhari, as well as closed the Tatopani transit route. China used to allow residents living within 30 km of the border to cross without hindrance, but has recently cracked down on pilgrims. Nepal, by contrast, allows Chinese nationals to travel up to Barhabishe.

May 24:

China will freeze the funds and assets of “terrorist groups’ and their facilitators” according to a joint decree by the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the Ministry of State Security. According to the 24-article draft, which was put online for a month for public commentary, authorities will compile and announce a list of relevant groups and individuals. The draft directive puts into practice a 2011 decision to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts that called for freezing terrorist-related assets, the official China Radio International reports.