China Reform Monitor: No. 859

October 20:

In an effort to delay demonstrations ahead of the Asian Games, Guangzhou's top leaders have held a rare public reception where they met with a handful of the 3978 petitioners that filed complaints. Petitioners began queuing in front of the exhibition center the day before hoping to gain redress from party bosses. According to one witness, by 6 am there were over 1000 people in line to meet Guangzhou Communist Party secretary Zhang Guangning, Mayor Wan Qingliang, and over 20 other officials. The city's official press gave the event front-page coverage, praising the leaders and featuring comments from satisfied petitioners. The South China Morning Post, by contrast, reports that the gathering was merely a publicity stunt to delay the explosion of long-accumulated public anger until after the Asian Games. In June 2008, then-mayor Zhang Guangning held Guangzhou’s first such petitioners’ reception.

October 22:

According to the Jamestown China Brief, Xi Jinping's acquisition of the much-coveted military portfolio as vice-chairman of the CPC’s Central Military Committee gives the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) a more active hand in policymaking. Xi is on good terms with many senior military officers that have risen since the early 2000s to the post of major-general or above. His high-ranking PLA political allies include Liu Yuan, Political Commissar of the Academy of Military Sciences, Zhang Haiyang, Political Commissar of the Second Artillery Corps, and Ma Xiaotian, Vice-Chief of the General Staff. Hong Kong’s Apple Daily also reports that Xi will give the PLA more say in China's foreign policy, is unlikely to launch political reform, will maintain the CPC's monopoly on power, and will be hawkish on foreign affairs.

The official Islamic Republic of Iran TV News Network reports that Beijing and Tehran have agreed to expand bilateral cooperation between state prosecutors and judges. A MoU was signed between the prosecutor-generals of both countries on the sidelines of the 8th joint session of prosecutors organized under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) framework in Xiamen, Fujian. Iran is an SCO observer. At a meeting with China’s Prosecutor-General, Cao Jianming, his Iranian counterpart, Hojjatol-Islam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'I, called for the expansion of cooperation between the two countries in “the fight against transnational crime, money-laundering, drug smuggling, cyber-crime and state and non-state terrorism.” Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'I headed Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence from 2005 to July 2009 and was appointed prosecutor general in August 2009.

October 25:

Chinese goods now account for 80% of Burma’s total foreign imports, the official Global Times reports. According to China’s official statistics, bilateral trade between China and Burma was $2.9 billion in 2009-10, of which China's exports were $2.26 billion while imports from Burma were $646 million. A diverse array of Chinese-made consumer products including electronics, cement, paint, flour, iron products and soap dominated bilateral trade. By January, China's investment in Burma was about $1.9 billion. In May, however, Beijing approved new investments worth $8.2 billion, pushing the total to over $10 billion since 1988.

October 27:

Two Chinese nationals, Xian Hongwei and Li Li, have been arrested in Hungary and are awaiting extradition to the U.S., where they face charges of seeking to buy 40 microchips banned from export to China. They are accused of violating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, a U.S. government statute that seeks to curb arms proliferation. A U.S. undercover agent lured the two men to Hungary, where they were arrested at Washington’s request for attempting to buy the microchips, which can be used for military and aerospace purposes. A spokesman for China’s Embassy in Budapest said it would fight their extradition and protect their rights, Reuters reports. Hungarian authorities denied Xian and Li access to China’s Embassy before a Hungarian court forced them to accept a court-appointed lawyer.

[Editor’s Note: Washington has repeatedly accused Beijing of stealing trade secrets. In August, U.S. prosecutors charged Kexue (John) Huang, formerly a scientist at Dow Chemical, with conducting economic espionage for China's government; in February, a California court jailed Dongfan (Greg) Chung, a naturalized U.S. citizen and ex-Boeing engineer, to 15 years for passing space shuttle secrets to China; last year, Yu Xiangdong, who worked for state-owned Beijing Automotive Industry Corp, was arrested in the U.S. for stealing trade secrets from Ford.]