China Reform Monitor: No. 1107

May 23:

China and Russia and have signed a 30-year, $400 billion contract to supply 38bn cubic meters of natural gas to China annually. Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller refused to give details on pricing, saying it was “a commercial secret,” but Aleksandr Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Gazprom management committee, confirmed it was higher than $350 per 1,000 cu/m, RIA Novosti reports. “These days, every housewife wants to know the gas price, but this is inappropriate,” Medvedev said. The National Post reports that “it is widely believed that the terms greatly favor China because Putin was so desperate after his Ukrainian adventure to get a deal done that he left tens of billions of dollars on the table rather than admit he had come up with nothing in his face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.” Payments under the contract will be made in dollars and Moscow has arranged an advance of $25 billion.

May 28:

In an effort to “elevate the quality of residents in southern Xinjiang” Beijing has announced a plan for the speedy construction of boarding schools in rural areas. “To promote bilingual education and interaction between ethnic groups” students in southern Xinjiang, which is the homeland of China’s Uighur minority and has high dropout rates, will now receive free high school education. Beijing is rallying local officials’ support for its ethnic policies. Mullah Abdurekep, president of Xinjiang Islamic Scripture College, for instance, said in comments carried by the official People’s Daily: “the Party’s ethnic and religious policies have guaranteed the happy lives and religious freedom of all Muslims in Xinjiang. I will continue propagating the policies to my students and let them know that national unity is the lifeline of all ethnic people.”

The deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Company, Hassan Peyvandi, has said China will finance seven new petrochemical projects in the country worth $5.4 billion. “Chinese financiers have opened seven new projects on petrochemical industry in Iran which costs 3.5 to 4 billion euros and soon some more projects would open by Chinese financiers," Peyvandi said. He told Iran’s Mehr News that 13 more projects would be established in the near future.

May 29:

More than 250 officials in Guangdong province whose spouses and children have emigrated overseas have been penalized with demotions or “position adjustments” as part of a campaign to stamp out the practice, which is closely linked to corruption. The Organization Department of the Guangdong Provincial CPC Committee has “completed applying the policy to almost all such personnel,” resulting in the demotion of 127 officials in Dongguan and the reassignment of 128 officials in Jiangmen. According to regulations issued in January, these officials, known in Chinese as luoguan or “naked officials,” are now ineligible for promotion. In Guangdong, nine senior officials including the former deputy party chief of Dongguan were discovered to be luoguan and were given two options: bring their families back to China or face “position adjustment,” the official China Radio International reports.

[Editor’s Note: The children and relatives of louguan Chinese officials are infamous in southern California for their ostentatious lifestyles. Many suspected children of louguan have run into problems with the law including a fatal Ferrari crash with a 21-year old driver last month, the LA Times reports, and a police chase of an 18-year old UC Irvine student in February, NBC reports.]

June 4:

Moscow and Beijing are “very likely” to agree the construction of a second gas pipeline from Russia to China, Sergey Ivanov, President Vladimir Putin's chief of staff told the Interfax news agency. “Given China’s economic growth rates it is very likely that a contract on the construction of a western gas pipeline route can also be signed in the near future.” The proposed pipeline would run across Russia’s Altay region in the Siberian Federal District and into western China. Ivanov saying that the project would be “huge,” he said, “no-one has any doubts that it would be worth tens of billions of dollars,” ITAR-TASS reports