China Reform Monitor: No. 1125

September 16:

“The draft amendment for Beijing’s anti-smoking regulations is disappointing,” the official Shanghai Daily reports. The previous draft, unveiled in April, called for banning smoking in all indoor public places, workplaces, public transport vehicles, open-air areas of kindergartens, schools, children’s centers and historical sites. The revision, by contrast, only bans smoking in “shared indoor public places” and calls for smoking areas to be created in universities, stadiums, fitness centers, medical institutions, tourism sites, parks, hotels and airport waiting lounges. “By banning smoking only in ‘shared’ indoor public areas, the legislators are giving officials with their own offices a chance to smoke,” said Wang Qingbin, an associate law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law. If the latest draft remains unchanged, he said “a haze of secondhand smoke may continue to hang heavily over Beijing.”

September 17:

British banking giant HSBC’s Korea Chief has said Seoul will become the company’s regional trading hub for Chinese currency, reports Yonhap news. “We believe that given its geographical proximity to China and the importance of its economic and trade links with China, Korea can become one of the most successful renminbi centers in Asia and globally,” he said. Earlier this year presidents Xi Jinping and Park Geun-hye agreed to launch a yuan-won direct trading market. In August yuan-denominated deposits in South Korea reached a record $19.97 billion, accounting for nearly 30 percent of South Korean foreign currency deposits.

September 18:

Next month, China and North Korea will open a major suspension bridge across the Yalu River. The Chinese-funded 3 km, 2.2 billion yuan ($357 million) bridge, which links Sinuiju, North Korea to Dandong, Liaoning on the other side, will open during a joint trade fair in Dandong. The city currently handles more than 70 percent of bilateral trade and is set to become even more important after the bridge is opened, Yonhap reports.

September 19:

Beijing has begun rewarding marriages between Han and minority peoples, such as Tibetans and Uighurs, as an instrument to resolve ethnic tensions. Beginning last month, officials in Qiemo County, Xinjiang began paying 10,000 yuan per year for five years to newlyweds in which one party is Han and the other is an ethnic minority. There will also be other benefits, including in housing and government jobs. The 2000 census showed that only 1.05 percent of Uighurs and 8 percent of Tibetans had married members of other ethnic groups, while only 1.5 percent of the Han population is joined in an inter-ethnic union. In late August, a senior official in Tibet urged more inter-marriages to promote “ethnic unity” and commended 19 mixed couples for contributing to “the happiness and harmonious nature of our motherland,” the China Post reports.

September 21:

More than 1,000 PLA troops and 1,500 Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) are involved in a tense stand off in a 3 km arc in Tibley, Chumar along the disputed China-Indian border. India’s Pioneer reports that Chinese troops arrived in nine vehicles and are being resupplied by airdrops. Indian forces, which are being resupplied by road, have been ordered to stay until the Chinese troops withdraw completely from the region. Two flag meetings earlier this week between local commanders could not resolve the issue resulting in a tense confrontation between Modi and Xi during their summit. Modi was informed of the Chinese incursion just before dinner with visiting Chinese leader Xi Jinping prompting “him to draw Xi apart and for the next 12 minutes let him have it,” the Times of India reports. During Xi’s visit Modi exhorted him on at least four occasions “to pull his troops back.”

Meanwhile, scores of Chinese shepherds have pitched tents and erected protest banners at a grazing ground near Chumar against construction of a canal. Indian shepherds are confronting them and have also erected tents. Chinese and Indian herders use the pasture to graze their sheep, but the Chinese usually return to their side once grass starts withering in September. This time, however, they are refusing to go back.