China Reform Monitor: No. 1175

July 11:

Satellite imagery shows North Korea's only operating oil refinery, Ponghwa Chemical Factory, is operational despite reports that China, North Korea's largest crude oil supplier, has halted oil exports. Had crude exports actually been halted, the facility would have to cease operations, Yonhap reports, thus calling into question Beijing’s claim that oil exports have been suspended. Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have soured since President Xi Jinping took office in late 2012 and the North carried out its third nuclear test a few months later. Xi, China’s first leader to visit South Korea before North Korea, has neither visited the North nor met with its leader, Kim Jong-un, although he held a series of summit meetings with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

July 13:

Liaoning authorities have approved a border trade zone with North Korea that is expected to open in October. According to the Dandong foreign trade bureau, the Guomenwan border trade zone will cover 40,000 sq. m of land, the official Xinhua news agency reports. Residents living within 20 km of the border will be able to exchange commodities with Korean traders and enjoy duty-free purchases on goods valued at less than 8,000 yuan per day. Dandong is the key hub for trade, investment and tourism between China and the DPRK. It has more than 600 border trade enterprises and trade with the DPRK accounts for 40 percent of the city's total trade. This week President Xi visited Yanbian, Jilin, a sensitive border area near North Korea, Reuters reports.

July 16:

PLA Major General Ni Rong, Deputy director of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) Border Control Department, met with the head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Border Service (SBS), in Bishkek. MPS gave the SBS equipment valued at 300,000 yuan and both sides “agreed to continue cooperation to ensure border security.” The two summarized the results of June’s “Vostok [East] 2015” joint border operation, which was intended to uncover “unlawful acts” along the border. During the bilateral operation, a combined 1,844 people and 1,289 vehicles crossed the border and “carried out checks” on 200 people in 40 camps of livestock, 24.kg reports. According to SBS Deputy Chairman Iskender Mambetaliyev: “We constantly hear that Uighur extremists commit acts of terrorism [but] we do not have any problems on our side of the border,” KyrTAg reports.

July 17:

A year after protests in Hong Kong, local authorities under pressure from Beijing have charged the protest movement’s student leaders, Joshua Wong and Nathan Law, with obstructing police officers. The LA Times reports League of Social Democrats vice-chairman Raphael Wong Ho-ming, and People Power lawmaker Albert Chan Wai-yip, have also been charged with obstructing police.

July 18:

Tuo Zhen, 55, who beginning in May 2012 masterminded a crackdown on Guangdong’s relatively liberal media, has been promoted to deputy head of the Central Publicity Department, a ministerial level position. The promotion comes as a reward for tightening the restrictions on Guangzhou’s media, SCMP reports. Months after his arrival in Guangzhou, Tuo initiated a media crisis when journalists and editors at Southern Weekly staged a protest over his censorship of the newspaper's New Year editorial. Tuo played a key role in the last-minute decision to turn the front-page editorial calling for political reform into a tribute to one-party rule. According to Qiao Mu at Beijing Foreign Studies University, “Tuo knows how to control the media outlets, be prepared for worse censorship in the years to come.