China Reform Monitor: No. 1073

November 25:

A group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party has released a Uighur-language audio speech by its leader, Abdullah Mansour, in which he said last month’s deadly car crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square was carried out by its mujahideen, or holy warriors, and was only the beginning of attacks on Chinese authorities. “This lays bare the terrorist essence of this organization and it also allows those people who recently suspected the nature of the incident to clearly see the truth,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in comments carried by Reuters. He said the Chinese government will “continue the assault” on the group.

November 26:

University officials in Xinjiang said their institutions were a frontline in a “life and death struggle” for the people’s hearts in the battle against separatism and that college students would not graduate unless their political views are approved, Reuters reports. “Students whose political qualifications are not up to par must absolutely not graduate, even if their professional course work is excellent,” said Xu Yuanzhi, the party secretary at Kashgar Teachers College, which has been an epicenter for ethnic unrest. “Ideology is a battlefield without gun smoke,” Xinjiang Normal University President Weili Balati said.

November 29:

The State Bureau for Letters and Calls, the government body that handles complaints, will stop ranking provinces based on the number of petitions received, its deputy director has announced. The change comes after a petitioner who travelled to Beijing from Hebi, Henan seeking justice for housing demolitions, stabbed to death one of the men hired to intercept him, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports. After being forced into a van with three other petitioners, Gong Jinjun, 57, fatally stabbed one of eight “interceptors” hired by Henan authorities to transport him home before his case could be heard. Gong had travelled to Beijing several times in the past four years to seek redress over a housing demolition dispute, but was repeatedly intercepted and held in a “black jail,” or secret detention center, with other petitioners. The practice of ranking provinces based on the number of petitions, which was started in 2005, is blamed for having further incentivized province officials’ brutal suppression of petitioners.

December 3:

Shenyang Aircraft Corp. has begun mass production on the Shenyang J-15 – a carrier-based fighter jet for China’s first aircraft carrier the Liaoning – and is already handing them over to the military. The planes have been repainted for service, the J-15 crews have completed their training, and are battle-ready, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency reports. “The mass production and delivery of J-15 jets not only breaks apart the slander and doubt of some foreign media, it also serves to further boost the progress and level of training for the Liaoning,” wrote the Global Times.

December 6:

A “media delegation” from Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party has returned from a trip “to China to learn strategies to consolidate its hold on the public mind through control of internet and social media platforms [and] counter western propaganda,” Zimbabwean Independent reports. The delegation, which was led by ZANU-PF party spokesman Rugare Gumbo, was “lectured on how to control the social media and censor methods of communication to maintain its hold on information and power. The delegation went for an exchange program with the CPC to exchange ideas on how to modernize the print and electronic media in information dissemination,” said a source. Gumbo said his trip was meant to “explore ways of exchanging and improving ideas among the information departments.” The visit comes amid what appears to be ZANU-PF preparations for a crackdown on Zimbabwe’s free press.

[Editor’s Note: In the run-up to the July 31 elections, ZANU-PF sent all provincial chairpersons to China to receive “ideological and mass mobilization training from the CPC with regard to elections where they were told that their party must embrace change or die.”]