China Reform Monitor: No. 1081

January 15:

A floating bridge has been built across the Heilongjiang River linking Luobei Port in Heilongjiang with Amurzet, Russia. The 1,080-meter bridge, which was opened to traffic in January, has 37 pontoons allowing trucks to cross the river all winter long. Previously, winter freight traffic could only across the river when the ice was thick enough to drive, while in the summer trucks were ferried cross. The bridge will handle 100,000 metric tones of freight per day, the official People’s Daily reports. Located on the northeastern edge of Heilongjiang, Luobei is a major port for passenger and freight transport along the China-Russia border.

January 17:

The number of Sina Weibo users in China fell 9 percent last year to 281 million amid a crackdown on online “rumor-mongering.” Chinese have switched to mobile instant-messaging services, which offer privacy and are free from the legal trouble that public remarks on Weibo or other online chat rooms and social media websites can bring. Approximately 37 percent of former Weibo users turned to the mobile instant-messaging service WeChat, which allows people to communicate with only their close friends, the South China Morning Post reports. There were 532 million instant-messaging service users by the end of 2013, 64.4 million more than in 2012.

[Editor’s Note: In September, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a judicial interpretation that anyone would be held criminally liable for false online posts viewed more than 5,000 times or shared more than 500 times. Authorities have targeted and detained a number of influential opinion leaders on Weibo.]

January 18:

Former Premier Wen Jiabao has defended his innocence and integrity in a letter dated December 27 to Hong Kong resident Ng Hong-mun, a former deputy to the National People’s Congress and a veteran columnist. In an article in Ming Pao, Ng revealed that Wen had written him: “I have never been involved and would not get involved in one single deal of abusing my power for personal gain because no such gains whatsoever could shake my convictions.” Pressure has been mounting on the former premier as Zhou Yongkang, another retired Standing Committee member, has come under investigation for corruption. Wen remains under a cloud after The New York Times reported in October 2012 that his family and relatives accumulated $2.7 billion in assets during his tenure in office. The family has not followed through on its threats of a lawsuit against paper.

January 19:

The CPC Central Committee and the State Council have jointly issued their first joint policy document of 2014 dubbed “No.1 Central Document.” The pronouncement on rural reform declares the need to “develop modes of agriculture to solve the problem of limited land and scarce water [and] yield more high-quality and safe farm products,” the official CCTV reports. It calls for improved food security and rural governance, “a new, more innovative rural finance system,” and “a long-term mechanism for sustainable agriculture development and new agricultural management systems.” These measures will be taken with an eye toward “consolidating urban and rural development.”

January 21:

Chinese Internet users are now required to register their real names to upload videos to online video sites, Reuters reports. The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television implemented the new rule to “prevent vulgar content, base art forms, exaggerated violence and sexual content in Internet video having a negative effect on society.” China’s online video sites, including Youku Tudou Inc. and Renren Inc., boast 428 million users. China has attempted to implement similar real-name registration rules when buying SIM cards for mobile phones and signing up for mobile messaging and microblogs.