China Reform Monitor: No. 1185

September 22:

A knife attack on September 18 at a coal mine inAkesu, Baicheng county, Xinjiang left at least 40 casualties, including five dead police officers. Several of the attackers escaped and remain on the run. Local police told Radio Free Asia: “The attack started at security gate of the colliery, which was watched by some 20 security guards at the time. The residence of the colliery owner was the second target and, at the end, [the suspects] attacked police as they approached the area to control the situation.” The attackers called the police station to report their own attack and when officers arrived they used trucks filled with coal to ram the police van and then assaulted the injured officers with knives. Neighboring farmers “took control of the dynamite at the colliery,” which allowed them to do “severe damage” to police, security guards, mine owners and managers, Han businessman and factory owners said.

September 23:

“Chinese capital helps Zimbabwe cushion Western sanctions,” said Minister of Welfare for War Veterans Christopher Mutsvangwa in comments carried by the official PLA Daily. Speaking at a symposium on Sino-Zimbabwe relations organized by the Confucius Institute at the University of Zimbabwe, he said: "We need to access capital on a multi-billion dollar scale to get our economy forward and that is why the architecture of the Chinese financial system has become important.” Mutsvangwa, who was Harare’s ambassador to China in the early 2000s, said economic relations are “building on the two countries' strong political ties forged during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle in the 1960s and 1970s.” China’s FDI into Zimbabwe rose from $460 million in 2011 to $601 million in 2013, extending primarily in mining, agriculture, energy, manufacturing, transport, telecommunication and tourism.

September 24:

The government has ordered all provincial-level regions to set up a "journalistic ethics committee" to catch “paid journalism, reporting of mistruths and blackmail with the threat of negative stories” and should expand their work to cover new media, the official Shanghai Daily reports. All regions must set up committees by year’s end, according to an official statement, which said the committees would "strengthen journalistic ethics” and “ensure media groups fulfill their social responsibilities." Nineteen model ethics committees have been operating since 2013 poring over journalist's work, and naming and shaming those guilty of misconduct.

September 25:

President “Xi keeps a tight grip on authority and does not divest power,” over foreign policy, the New York Times reports. Xi keeps colleagues and advisers at a distance and “relies mainly on his own knowledge and instincts in making decisions.” In past decades, foreign officials could speak with senior Chinese officials or aides and trust that those people were proxies for their leaders. With Xi, those channels do not exist. “One of the problems we have in U.S.-China relations now is that we basically don’t know these people,” said David M. Lampton at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “I don’t think we have a very good understanding of who below Xi Jinping speaks for him.”

September 30:

At least seven are dead and over 50 injured when 17 letter bombs exploded in Liucheng county, Guangxi 300 km from the Vietnamese border. The coordinated attacks came from packages sent to 13 public places just before 5 pm at the start of the Oct. 1 National Day holidays, including a hospital, local government office, shopping mall, prison, vegetable market, disease control center and supermarket. Local police have are inspecting over 60 additional suspicious packages, BBC reports. Local police claimed terrorism was not to blame, called it a "criminal" matter, and quickly arrested 33-year-old Mr. Wei. The massive explosions left wide-scale destruction. Photos showed smoke rising from a half-collapsed building, a vehicle on its side in a rubble-filled street and victims covered in blood and dirt, the Globe and Mail reports.