China Reform Monitor: No. 839

July 10:

The Central Propaganda Department, the United Front Work Department, and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission have issued a joint directive entitled “Opinions Regarding the Further Conduct of Initiatives and Activities to Advance Ethnic Unity.” Hong Kong’s Beijing-run Ta Kung Pao newspaper reports that the goal is to “protect social stability, the socialist legal system, the unity of the motherland, and protecting unity among the nationalities.” Specifically, the new decree overturns a policy that had ordered fewer arrests and death penalties and more leniency in cases involving criminals from ethnic minorities. The new directive stresses “education about patriotism and ethnic unity in schools and incorporating ethnic unity education into the entire process of national education.” It also orders authorities to “strike resolutely and hard against criminals who deliberately incite disharmony in ethnic relations and destroy ethnic unity.”

July 15:

Numerous city newspapers in mainland China are facing a serious new challenge: they can no longer be the first to print reports on areas beyond their locality. This month, municipal newspapers received a Central Propaganda Department prohibition demanding that they stop “monitoring other areas.” Newspapers in different provinces had formed a “news agency alliance” that allowed them to swap stories and avoid direct confrontations with local officials and censors. According to the new directive, however, except for stories written by a paper's own reporters news must come from approved official reports. The directive also prohibits any negative reporting about the public security services and unapproved reports on “sudden incidences.” Now if a newspaper in one location wants to report on a story elsewhere it cannot initiate a story and instead must wait a day after a newspaper in that area reports it or run the official Xinhua account. The directive is already facing push back from some city newspapers. Hong Kong’s Ming Pao reports that at least one head of a city paper has communicated his dissatisfaction in the hope authorities will reverse the directive.

[Editor’s Note: On March 1, led by the Economic Observer News [Jingji Shicha Bao], 13 newspapers carried a joint editorial urging reform of the household registration system. High-level leaders were furious, identified the “news agency alliance” among city papers as the culprit, and issued the new directive.]

July 18:

China and India’s dispute over the issuance of visas to residents of the Indian controlled areas of Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir continues. The Times of India reports that for the last couple of years, China had been stapling a visa in a separate sheet in applicants passports, a policy the Indian government refused to recognize. In response, Beijing is now denying visas to those from areas it also claims. For the people of all other Indian states it pastes the visa in the passport, as is common practice.

July 19:

China is using Russian know-how to develop and build its next generation fighter aircraft, Aleksandr Fomin, first deputy head of Russia’s Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service, said on the sidelines of the Farnborough air show in England. “It is a fact. We handed over a large amount of know-how to China. It is not surprising that it repeats itself in Chinese products," he said. Fomin also said that Russia did not deliver China its most sophisticated fighter, the Su-33. “If our Chinese partners have them, they were not received from Russian sources," Fomin said. "We have an agreement on the protection of intellectual property rights. If we uncover copyright violations, we will deal with this within the framework of the agreement," he warned in comments carried by Russia’s Interfax News Agency.

July 20:

Mao Zedong Thought’s resurgence in China today has reached business schools. Since the U.S. credit crunch and worldwide financial crisis, the official China Daily reports, “courses such as Western economics and Western management have become a rare thing at business schools and, instead, Maoism is back on the books.” Peking University and Beijing Huashang Institute of Management are among those management and business schools that have expanded classes that offer Maoism courses. “Maoism,” said the state-run newspaper, “is widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology in the Communist Party of China (CPC).”