China Reform Monitor: No. 1095

March 24:

In March, China and Sudan signed several new agreements on oil exploration. Sudanese Finance Minister Badr al-Deen Mahmoud and Oil Minister Makkawi Mohamed Awad met with Chinese officials and executives of major companies and banks. The Export-Import Bank of China agreed to fund oil projects in coordination with the China National Petroleum Company. Owing to a decline in oil exports, bilateral trade, which totaled $11.5 billion in 2011, was only $3.3 billion in 2012, and continued to fall in the first five months of 2013. Chinese exports to Sudan fell 8 percent year-on-year to $1.7 billion, the Sudan Tribune reports.

[Editor’s Note: Sudan’s economy has taken a nosedive after South Sudan became an independent country in July 2011, taking with it three-quarters of the country’s oil reserves. Sudan’s GDP contracted 4.4% in 2012 and it currency has lost more than half its value, pushing inflation rates to record levels, especially since the East African nation imports most of its food.]

March 27:

Kong Qingdong, a professor at Peking University known for his neo-Maoist views, has relayed an unflattering, fallacious account of First Lady Michelle Obama’s visit to the university via his microblog account on Sina Weibo. The self-proclaimed descendent of Confucius described a fictitious exchange between Ms. Obama and a female student, The New York Times reports. When it was revealed that Kong fabricated the exchange he was criticized online and in newspaper commentaries. “This is the hijacking of rumors in the name of patriotism,” the Shenzhen Daily News wrote in its editorial. Kong’s made-up story has exceeded 500 re-postings, the threshold for the authorities to prosecute him for “spreading rumors” under a new law that carries a three-year jail term, yet he remains free.

[Editor’s Note: Kong was among the panelists who in 2011 bestowed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with the “Confucius Peace Prize” – China’s homegrown challenge to the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2012, he provoked outrage in Hong Kong after he described its residents as “bastards,” “thieves” and “dogs of British imperialists.”]

March 28:

Murad Bayar, Turkey’s undersecretary for state-run defense industries and the official leading the negotiations with China over the procurement of a new missile defense system, has been fired “with immediate effect,” the South China Morning Post reports. In September, Turkey’s Defense Ministry selected China’s FD-2000 missile defense system over rival offers from the Franco-Italian Eurosam SAMP/T and U.S. maker Raytheon. Ankara had said Beijing offered the most competitive terms and would allow co-production in Turkey.

Huang Ming, vice minister of Public Security, has announced a crackdown on firearms. He called the situation “serious” and urged police to monitor online forums and seize as many guns as possible. From 2009 to 2013, crimes involving guns dropped by 35 percent annually on average, the official Shanghai Daily reports.

March 30:

More than 100,000 people have rallied at a mass sit-in in front of Taiwan’s Presidential Office to protest a controversial service trade pact with China and voice their support for the protesters, mostly students, who are still occupying Taiwan’s Legislature to oppose the pact. Protesters say the deal to open 80 of China’s service sectors to Taiwan and 64 Taiwanese sectors to China was rushed through and could leave Taiwan increasingly beholden to Beijing, Reuters reports. The demonstrators, dressed in black and wearing yellow ribbons that read “Oppose Service Pact, Save Taiwan,” chanted “Protect Our Democracy, Withdraw Trade Deal” while carrying sunflowers, a symbol of the protests, which have been dubbed the “Sunflower Movement.”