China Reform Monitor: No. 807

January 25:

China’s central government has ordered the closure of thousands of Beijing-based “regional liaison offices” (i.e. lobbying firms) operated by local governments and companies within the next six months. The announcement comes amid a string of bribery and embezzlement scandals linked to the offices’ efforts to curry favor with high officials. Last February, for instance, two Henan provincial offices spent more than $96,000 on liquor for Beijing officials. Chinese refer to the liaison offices as “pao bu, qian jin,” which means “run forward,” but sounds like “go to the ministry and give money.” But the more than 5500 local-government provincial offices and over 5000 lobby firms representing state-run corporations, associations, and other entities are likely to push back. According to the New York Times efforts to reign in the offices beginning in 2006 failed because provinces are also represented on the CPC Central Committee. Provincial officials at the national level have resisted curtailing the power of officials in their home regions.

Ming Pao and Computer World magazine report that organized hackers took down several Chinese civil society and human rights websites on January 23 and 24 including the Independent Chinese Pen Centre, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, New Century News and Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch. The sites are the latest in an ongoing wave of cyber attacks on sites critical of the Beijing government’s policies.

January 26:

Police forces in Hanoi, Vietnam have uncovered a sex trafficking ring supplying young girls to brothels in southern China, Vietnam’s An ninh Thu do newspaper reports. Police have charged several suspects with "trafficking women and children." According to Hanoi police statistics, in 2009 Vietnam busted 395 human trafficking rings with 495 traffickers and 869 victims, up 5.3 percent from 2008.

[Editor’s Note: In August 2008 Scientific American estimated that there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls in China, compared with 108.5 boys per 100 girls during the 1980s.]

January 28:

The volume of Sino-Russian military-technical cooperation will continue to fall according to Anatoliy Isaykin, the head of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state arms exporter. "A decrease in the volume of military-technical cooperation with China is quite explicable. The military-industrial complex in China is developing very successfully," Isaykin told journalists. China's share in Russia's total volume of arms exports was 18 percent but could soon drop below 15 percent, Russia’s Interfax News Agency reports.

January 30:

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou stayed overnight in San Francisco en route to Honduras and the Dominican Republic to deliver aid to Haiti before stopping in Los Angeles on the way home. In San Francisco, he shook hands with hundreds of Taiwanese expatriate supporters but refrained from making public speeches. Pro-independence Taiwanese placed anti-Ma advertisements in local Chinese-language newspapers. In Los Angeles, Ma attended a dinner with Taiwanese expatriates, a breakfast meeting at the home of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and placed a telephone call to California Democrat Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Taiwan’s China Post and the Taiwan News reports.

February 1:

Guangdong will tighten "management and control" of Africans in the lead up to The Asian Games in November. Delivering a work report at the opening session of the Guangdong people's congress, Governor Huang Huahua said authorities would strengthen social management this year to control foreigners. The Games provide a good opportunity for the government to round up illegal immigrants and overstayers, a growing problem that remains underestimated, the Shenzhen Daily reports. In Guangzhou last July over 200 angry Africans besieged a police station demanding an explanation for the death of a Nigerian who jumped from a building in Guangzhou while fleeing a police visa inspection. The protest highlighted the city's sizeable African community making a living there legally and illegally.