China Reform Monitor: No. 1155

March 10:

Addressing about 250 Hong Kong and Taiwan academics and businessmen, Eric Chu Li-luan, the first serving chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang to visit Hong Kong after 1949, highlighted the recent exodus of Hongkong residents to the self-governed island. Chu said the number of Hongkongers moving to Taiwan has increased from 1,643 in 2005 to 7,498 last year, as did the number of Hong Kong visitors to Taiwan, which jumped from 355,000 ten years ago to 1.25 million last year. He said Taiwan welcomed visitors but, like Hong Kong, had no plan to allow in more mainlanders. Chu said Taiwan, as a “democratic society,” would support democracy in Hong Kong. Chu, who is visiting Hong Kong as the mayor of New Taipei City, had dinner with Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.

March 11:

Local authorities in Xinjiang are in the midst of a plan that began last year to dispatch about 200,000 officials to Uighur areas in an effort “to curb the spread of religious extremism.” “We organized sports games and cultural events,” said Xinjiang deputy CPC chairman Gela Yishamudin. “The second batch of 70,000 officials has already been sent to the villages.” According to Xinjiang deputy party chief Che Jun, “95 percent” of terrorist ploys in the region had been foiled. In Beijing, Xinjiang Communist Party boss Zhang Chunxian mentioned last week’s knife attack at a Guangzhou railway station that left nine people injured, but did not speculate on who was responsible. Three witnesses told SCMP the three attackers, one of whom was shot dead by police, appeared to be Uighurs.

March 12:

Myanmar’s parliament has accepted a $39 million loan from China for police vehicles and boats. An opposition lawmaker questioned parliament’s decision to boost police spending after a violent cracking down on unarmed demonstrators in Letpadan, Pegu. The Letpadan incident, where police beat up and arrested dozens of students, was the third heavy-handed police operation to suppress student protests in a week. China’s Exim Bank will provide Myanmar a 20-year loan at 4.5 percent interest, plus 0.8 percent in charges and fees. “To ensure public security, rule of law and stability the ministry is enlarging the current structure of the Myanmar Police Force. Since more police are recruited, more vehicles and vessels are needed,” said Deputy Home Affairs Minister Brig-Gen. Kyaw Zan Myint. The opposition NLD opposed the Chinese loan because the interest rate was higher than what Japan offered. It is unclear if the new loan will be used to procure vehicles and boats from Chinese manufacturers, theIrrawaddy reports.

March 13:

Over the last few years, as more Chinese students clamor for a U.S. education, less Americans are studying in China. American students that go to China now stay for less time and do more travel than language study. The number of U.S. students studying in China fell 3.2 percent in 2012-13 to 14,413, even as total study-abroad numbers rose. At Middlebury College, last year’s total Chinese enrolment was the lowest in a decade. Between 2002 and 2006, Chinese language study at U.S. universities leapt 50 percent and it grew 16 percent between 2006 and 2009. The University of California Education Abroad Program’s student enrollment in programs in China is now less than half its 2010-11 level. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese studying in the U.S. jumped 16.5 percent in 2013-14 to more than 274,000. As firms in China now hire mostly locals – many which have studied abroad – the demand and compensation for foreigners who speak Chinese has plummeted, Channel News Asia reports.

March 14:

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force has sent fighter jets to patrol the China-Myanmar border after a Myanmar warplane dropped a bomb on a sugarcane field in Lincang, Yunnan killing four Chinese and wounded nine. In response, the PLA dispatched “several batches of fighter jets” to “track, monitor, warn and chase away,” Myanmar military planes flying close to the Chinese border, said a PLA spokesman. The Air Force has strengthened surveillance over the China-Myanmar border recently, he said. The PLA will enhance its response in order to “safeguard sovereignty of the national territorial air space.” Earlier this week, stray fire from fighting between Myanmar’s government forces and a local ethnic Chinese army damaged a house in China, the official Global Times reports.