China Reform Monitor: No. 1138

December 16:

Beijing has demoted 1,000 senior officials with one or more immediate family members living overseas who refused to return to China. The demotions are a new phase in the campaign against the so-called “naked officials,” which began in January, reports theNew York Times. The CPC organizational department announced 3,200 “naked officials” it deems as a high risk for embezzling state money and fleeing the country. It said strengthening oversight will “protect the country’s national security and interests and maintain the image of the party.” Beijing has called on officials to have their family members relinquish their foreign passports and residence permits, or give up their posts. According to the Ministry of Commerce, between 1978 and 2003, more than 4,000 corrupt officials fled the country, taking at least $50 billion with them. In 2014, Operation Fox Hunt repatriated 335 corrupt Chinese officials.

December 18:

Beijing is determined to reduce a drop in foreign visitors, a number that has steadily declined since 2012. Last year 129 million people visited Beijing, a 2.5 percent decline. Measures are under consideration, including extending visa-free entry from 72 to 96 hours, the official China Daily reports. Beijing began a 72-hour visa-free entry program for visitors from the U.S. and 44 other countries in 2013 and is exploring extending visa-free entry to all foreign tourists. The Ministry of Public Security has expressed concerns that it would be difficult to keep track of foreign visitors if the visa-free policy were extended to all countries. Last May, Beijing was voted the world’s second-worst city on the website TripAdvisor. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Beijing will start a “massive tourism promotion” on New York City taxis and TV stations. China’s outbound tourism, by contrast, has skyrocketed. This year, more than 100 million Chinese visited a foreign country.

December 22:

After more than two weeks and 800 miles, water from the Han River, a Yangtze tributary, has arrived in Beijing via the central route of the South-to-North Water Diversion project, the official People’s Daily reports. Water collected from Hubei’s Danjiangkou Reservoir will provide nearly a third of the capital’s annual water needs, but the $32 billion central section is not a complete solution to extensive pollution and overpopulation. Each year, Beijing consumes 950 billion gallons of water, about half of which came from underground sources, causing water tables to drop about 42 feet since 1998. An official from the Department of Water Resources told the New York Times: “Beijing has around six billion cubic meters of over-pumped aquifers that need to be replenished. Merely relying on the central route won’t solve the shortages. The solution should be to conserve water and control the size of Beijing’s population.” In May, Beijing increased the cost of water 25 percent, although to encourage conservation the price could be doubled. Another problem is that pipeline networks in big cities, including Beijing, are old and leaking.
[Editor’s Note: The central route is the second of three designed to transfer water from China’s south to its arid north. The first of its three projected sections – an eastern route running from the Yangtze to Shandong – began operations last December. A third “western section” is still in the planning stage.]

December 23:

China is sending 700 combat troops (121 officers and 579 soldiers) to South Sudan to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission in what the Guardian calls “a change to its policy of non-interference in African conflicts.” The infantry battalion will be equipped with drones, armored carriers, antitank missiles, mortars and other weapons “for self-defense purposes,” the official China Daily reports. Beijing has been unusually proactive in diplomatic efforts to pacify South Sudan, where it has invested heavily but where civil war has slashed oil production by a third. With more than 27,000 military personnel deployed around the globe, including 2,027 posted in conflict zones, China is the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the five UN Security Council permanent members. Previous Chinese peacekeepers were engineering, transportation, medical service and security guard corps.

December 26:

China has officially approved the construction of a new Beijing airport with the ability to accommodate 72 million passengers annually by 2025. The new $13 billion facility, which will handle 620,000 flights per year, is being built in southern Beijing over a five-year construction period, Channel News Asia reports. Beijing’s current international airport is the world’s second busiest, but also one the most delayed, with only 18 percent of flights leaving on schedule in 2013. About 42 percent of Beijing departures suffered delays of 45 minutes or longer. Airbus predicts that by 2023 China will oust the U.S, as the world's biggest domestic air traffic market by passenger numbers.