China Reform Monitor: No. 877

January 27:

The Southern Daily Group, publisher of some of China’s well-respected Southern Weekend and Southern Metropolis Weekly newspapers, has dismissed prominent newspaper columnist Chang Ping for writing about corruption and political reform. “The paper thought some of his work was inappropriate,” Zhuang Shenzhi, said in an interview with the New York Times. Chang, 42, has a reputation for writing about politically sensitive topics, including democracy, media censorship, the failures of government policy and Tibet. “I will keep writing,” Chang said, “I won’t stop.”

February 3:

In January 2011, its first month of operation, the Russia-China oil pipeline transported some 1.32 million tons of crude oil from Russia's far east to China and maintains a daily capacity of 42,000 tons. So far, the pumping facilities have withstood the severe cold and there have been no production accidents, the director of the Mohe administration station told the official China Daily newspaper. According to a bilateral agreement, the 1,000 km long pipeline will transport 15 million tons of crude oil from Russia to China per year from 2011 to 2030. The pipeline, which originates in Skovorodino, Russia runs for 72 km before entering China at Mohe, Heilongjiang, running for another 927 km before terminating in Daqing.

February 7:

To ensure that hundreds of millions of migrant workers were paid before the Lunar New Year holiday, five State Council agencies including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security instructed subordinate departments, private enterprises and contractors to take all necessary steps to prevent back-pay disputes. The announcement also said local governments should immediately pay wages to migrant workers involved in disputes. Private enterprises that refused to pay workers might have their holdings sold and be banned from applying for new investment projects. The edict comes in response to the growth of labor disputes throughout the country. In Shaanxi, for instance, 114 migrant workers were beaten up for demanding payment of their salaries and most recently, on January 16, Liu Dejun, an unskilled worker in Xinglong, Heibei died after drinking pesticide in front of his boss who refused to pay him 3,200 yuan in back-pay. Liu's family paid for his medical care, which depleted their resources, forcing them to return to Liu’s former boss for a loan, the South China Morning Post reports.

February 9:

Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports that China is “investing far greater funds in Russia's Far East than the Russian Government” and called the imbalance “Beijing’s clear state policy to assimilate new territories.” The newspaper cites an official Xinhua press report on investment in the Russian Far East claiming that Chinese investors have established 34 special Chinese economic zones in Russia’s Amur Oblast, Maritime Kray, Khabarovsk Kray, and the Jewish Autonomous Region, where they have invested a total of $3 billion mostly in resource extraction. Chinese entrepreneurs also hope to open industrial and agricultural zones in Russia, including processing zones, stock raising, construction, timber cutting, and wholesale markets. To oversee the construction and development of China’s industrial and agricultural zones in Russia, the Heilongjiang provincial administration has created a special leading group. The Russian paper reported that in 2011, Moscow’s total transfers to these regions' – $170 million for Amur Oblast, $74 million for the Jewish Autonomous Region, $234 million for Khabarovsk Kray, and $344 million for Maritime Kray – are under one third China’s investment.

Facebook has opened a Hong Kong office to serve the city’s 3 million users and the Taiwanese market. The move is part of the company’s larger push into East Asia, which also included the opening of offices in India and Singapore last year. The social networking site is banned on the mainland, but speculation that it plans to enter that market was fuelled in December when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg visited Beijing and met top technology executives. In comments carried by the South China Morning Post, Facebook's commercial director for Asia-Pacific, Blake Chandlee, was unwilling to discuss what the new office meant for the company’s China business: “There are lots of reasons why I don't want to talk about China. Today, Facebook is available in Chinese in a number of different dialects. We always want all users around the world to have access to Facebook. In some places they do, some places they don't, whether it be temporarily or permanently.”

[Editor’s Note: Given the organizational role that social media played in the recent insurrections in Egypt, Tunisia, and Iran it seems highly unlikely that Facebook will have free access to China’s nearly 300 million internet users in the near future.]