China Reform Monitor: No. 1126

September 21:

China wants to “to manipulate opinion on a global scale,” the novelist Murong Xuecunwrote in the New York Times. Beijing has expanded its legion of hundreds of thousands paid online commentators, known as the 50-centers, which had previously been limited to domestic Chinese forums. These “professional Internet trolls” pretend to be independent but are paid to praise and defend the government while launching extreme personal attacks on Party critics. “Only a year ago, it seemed there were just a few isolated trolls on banned, foreign-based sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now the 50-centers are spreading their vitriol beyond China. Fake accounts on Twitter spewing Beijing’s party line have been proliferating.” An article in the Beijing Daily last September offered an explanation for the expansion: “The Internet has become a main battlefield in today’s ideological war. Anti-China forces in the West attempt to take advantage of the Internet, which can be manipulated to alter the balance power to defeat China. If we don’t seize control, someone else will.”

September 23:

Chinese companies sell torture instruments, such as restraint chairs and spiked batons, to police departments in countries with miserable human rights records,Amnesty International claims. At least 130 Chinese companies are selling or manufacturing such equipment, up from just 28 a decade ago, TIME reports. Most of the equipment is going to African countries where the rule of law is poor and where the potential for abuse is high. Among the instruments dubbed “inherently abusive” are weighted cuffs, neck cuffs, electric shock batons and spiked batons. Liberia, Uganda and Madagascar are among those that have bought torture equipment from China.

[Editor’s Note: The use of torture to extract confessions is ubiquitous in China, although the government has pledged to crack down on the practice. This week, three police officers and four security personnel in Harbin, Heilongjiang were convicted of torturing seven suspects to get confessions. One of the tortured suspects died of his injuries, AP reports.]

September 25:

China is ready to invest in Crimean infrastructure, housing services, gambling and hotel industries, said Alexander Basov, head of the Crimean Chamber of Commerce. “They are interested in infrastructure - roads, utility systems, housing services, they are very interested in municipal solid waste.” China is interested in using Crimea as a transit corridor for delivering goods to Europe, Basov said. He said that Chinese investors will “enter Crimea as soon as a law on special economic zone[s] is adopted,” next month. Russia is expected to designate Crimea and Sevastopol as special economic zones with tax breaks to attract investors. Previously an autonomous republic within Ukraine, Crimea is now under Russian control and uses the Russian ruble as its official currency, RIA Novosti reports.

September 26:

The People’s Liberation Army will send a “700-personnel infantry battalion” to join the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). The new battalion will triple the number of troops China currently deployed under UNMISS, the Manila Times reports.

Inside Higher Education reports that The University of Chicago has suspended negotiations to renew its agreement to host a Confucius Institute after an interview with Xu Lin, the chief executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, in the officialJiefang Daily. In the full-page article Xu, who ranks as a deputy government minister, described an incident in late April after more than 100 faculty members at the university called for the Confucius Institute to be discontinued.