December 3:
Hu Haifeng, son of President Hu Jintao and former chief of Nuctech, an advanced technology company tied to Qinghua University, has recently assumed the position of deputy secretary general of the University. Hong Kong’s independent Apple Daily reports that Hu Haifeng is leaving the business world to be groomed for a top post. In July, Time Magazine reported that the younger Hu was the focus of a corruption investigation in Namibia into how Nuctech, which makes security-screening devices used in airports and seaports, won a lucrative government contract. News of that investigation was banned in China.
[Editor’s Note: In July, Singapore’s Straits Times reported that a 2006 study by several Chinese research institutions showed that almost 90 percent of the country's billionaires and top business leaders are the children of high-ranking officials. For instance, former premier Li Peng’s daughter, Li Xiaolin, is chair of China Power International Development, an electricity monopoly and his son Li Xiaopeng used to head Huaneng Power. The family of former president Jiang Zemin has moved into telecommunications, while the son of former premier Zhu Rongji, Levin Zhu, heads China International Capital Corp.]
December 4:
The official Zhongguo Xinwen She reports that Wang Yang, secretary of the Guangdong provincial party committee, and Bo Xilai, secretary of the Chongqing municipal party committee, have signed 50 billion yuan worth of contracts on economic cooperation between Guangdong and Chongqing. No details were provided on the deals.
At a speech at the Beijing Institute of Diplomacy, former Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan told Chinese diplomats they “must avoid by all means indulging in any idea of divorcing from reality and [embracing] emotions of impetuousness and conceitedness.” He called for China to continue “adhering to the strategic principle of keeping a low profile and biding our time and achieving something in a positive manner,” in comments carried by Zhongguo Xinwen She. Tang’s comments come as criticism of China’s foreign policy has been mounting in the media of neighboring countries like India, Vietnam, and Russia.
December 5:
Twenty-two Uighurs – 3 children and 19 adults – who fled China through Vietnam following violent protests in Urmuqi last July have arrived in Cambodia and are now under the supervision of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Phnom Penh. A spokesman for Cambodia’s Interior Ministry told Japan’s Kyodo News Service that the UNHCR will determine whether they are refugees or not and "only if they are not refugees, then Cambodia will have an authority to consider the case." There are concerns they could be deported back to China because Phnom Penh has close relations with Beijing, although the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh has yet to request their extradition. "Uighur asylum seekers in Cambodia would be at great risk of being detained, tortured, and even executed if forced back to China," said Sara Colm, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. Earlier this week, a court in China sentenced five Uighurs to death for participating in the anti-government demonstrations in Urumqi last July.
A reporter at the official Chinese People's Political and Consultative Conference Daily has been sent to jail for 3 years and fined 13,000 RMB for taking bribes. Although the details were murky, the Beijing-based reporter, Guo Huaimian, reportedly received 400,000 RMB from a doctor who wanted to be transferred from a county-level hospital in Jilin province to the provincial capital Changchun. Meanwhile, four journalists and an impersonator in central Shanxi province have been given 9 to 12 months sentences and been banned from practicing journalism for life after they took bribes from a mine owner seeking to suppress news of a worker’s death. The newspapers for which they worked were not mentioned. The decisions come on the heels of another court verdict giving 3 years to Chen Daojun, a freelance journalist for "inciting subversion of state power." Chen reported on a demonstration against the establishment of a chemical plant in Sichuan, the Times of India reports.
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