China Reform Monitor: No. 1060

September 21 :

China’s Education Ministry has announced that 400 million Chinese, about one-third of the country’s population, are unable to communicate in Mandarin and many more speak it poorly. In an attempt to create national unity, Beijing continues to push Mandarin, sometimes despite strong local resistance, The Economist reports. During the 2010 Asia Games in Guangzhou broadcasters were forced to switch from Cantonese to Mandarin and hundreds marched in protest. In Tibet protests erupted when the government forced schools to switch to teaching in Mandarin rather than Tibetan.

September 24:

Within the new Shanghai Free-trade Zone, China will lift its ban on Internet access to foreign websites considered politically sensitive. Facebook, Twitter and The New York Times are among those sites that will be opened with the support of Premier Li Keqiang, who wants to make the free-trade zone a proving ground for economic reforms, the South China Morning Post reports. In late August, the State Council approved the 28.78 sq km zone in Shanghai Pudong New Area, which includes the Waigaoqiao duty-free zone, Yangshan deepwater port, and the international airport. Shanghai’s free-trade zone, the first on the mainland, would also welcome bids from foreign telecommunications companies for licenses to provide internet services, a plan supported by several former top leaders, including former premier Zhu Rongji.

September 26:

The Republic of China (ROC-Taiwan) has received 12 P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft from the U.S. with another 11 planes to be delivered in 2015, The Press Trust of India reports. The P-3C fleet, which cost almost $2 billion, will replace the ROCs ageing S-2T anti-submarine aircraft. Stationed at an air base in southern Pingtung, the aircraft will expand the range of Taipei’s anti-submarine fleet tenfold. Washington agreed to sell the refurbished P-3C Orion in 2007 to enhance Taiwan’s maritime patrol and reconnaissance capability. In response, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said: “We urge the U.S. to stop any form of arms sale to Taiwan and stop doing things that are detrimental to China-U.S. relations and the peaceful growth of bilateral cross straits relations.”

September 27:

China’s municipal debt rose 39 percent to at least $3.1 trillion by the end of last year posing a possible “liquidity risk,” The New York Times reports. Half of the debt was at risk of default last year, had local governments not supported it with transfers from Beijing. As land sales have slowed local governments have increasingly relied on loans, bonds, and equity offers, and other methods to cover the shortfall. In July, Beijing ordered an audit of local government debt although the results have yet to be made public. “There is a risk of local debt getting out of control,” said Liu Yuhui of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

In 2012 19 provincial-level governments collected 16.6 billion RMB ($2.6. billion) in fines from parents that violated the “one-child policy.” Family planning penalties are a major source of local income: Jiangxi alone collected 3.39 billion RMB, Sichuan collected 2.45 billion RMB, and Fujian was third with 2.08 billion RMB. This month China’s National Audit Office released a report on the “social support fee,” as the fines are known, which revealed systemic problems, to wit: extra children were not properly counted, there were no uniform standards of enforcement and management of the funds was poor. Last year, a movement among prominent scholars began to push the government to change or repeal the “one-child policy,” noting that in 2010 the average birthrate per Chinese household was only 1.18 children, The New York Times reports.