China Reform Monitor: No. 916

[Editor’s Note: Beginning on August 7 CRM editor Joshua Eisenman will be on location in China for one-year where he will teach Chinese political economy to New York University’s Stern School of Business students in Shanghai and conduct his dissertation field research for his PhD in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles.]

August 11:

The Chinese government’s handpicked 11th Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, 21, is visiting the famous Labrang monastery in Xiahe, Gansu along with a formidable police entourage for several weeks of prayer and meditation. The Chinese Panchen Lama has spent most of his life in Beijing but officials, mindful of the legitimacy gap, have increasingly sought to raise his profile among monks and ordinary Tibetans. In preparation for the Panchen Lama’s arrival, foreign tourists were forced to leave Xiahe and hundreds of armed police were deployed. A crowd was forced to greet him with prayer flags and smiles and monks were told to welcome him at a reception hall. The monks obliged but they also expressed displeasure by talking loudly during the ceremony. “If this was the real Panchen Lama, the whole town would have lined up for hours just to see him. In this case, the only people who really wanted to see him were Chinese tourists,” according to a Tibetan expert quoted in the New York Times.

[Editor’s Note: The Labrang monastery houses more than 1,000 monks, most loyal to another young man designated by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. That boy, Gedhun Choekyi, then 5, disappeared just days after his selection was announced in 1995.]

August 13:

A Russian diplomat, the head of a Russian bathroom fixture company, and his translator have been freed after angry factory workers in Hangzhou, Zhejiang took them captive for five days over an outstanding debt. Vice Consul Evgeniy Gryaznov, General Director of the Russian company Advento, and his translator managed to reach the diplomatic mission’s car and escape the plant where they were being held, the Voice of Russia reports. After telling their Chinese business partners of their company’s impending bankruptcy, they were seized by plant owners and workers who demanded they repay their nearly $500,000 in outstanding debts owed to the company, the Moscow Times reports.

August 15:

Under pressure from Uzbekistan, China has reneged on its promise to finance and build the Ayni hydroelectric power stations on the Zarafshon River in northern Tajikistan. In response, the Tajik news agency Asia-Plus reports that Iran has agreed to build the projects. A preliminary agreement was reached during the Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Tajikistan last January and another agreement is set to be signed during his return visit in September.

A Tibetan Buddhist monk protesting Chinese policies immolated himself to death publicly in a predominantly Tibetan area of Sichuan, the New York Times reports. It was the second such act in the area in the past five months and reflects growing resistance to Chinese repression of loyalty to Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The monk was heard calling, “We Tibetan people want freedom,” “Long live the Dalai Lama” and “Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet,” after he drank gasoline, doused himself with it and set himself alight on a bridge in the Daofu town center. The repression of pro- Dali Lama sentiment has worsened since Tibetans in Daofu and elsewhere defied a government ban on celebrating the Dalai Lama’s 76th birthday on July 6.

August 16:

In several areas along the Chinese border North Korea has installed surveillance cameras and reinforced barbed wire as well as conducted probes into family members of defectors and banished them to remote locations. The crackdown, which South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports is an attempt to stem the flow of defections and curb Chinese influences, came after dictator Kim Jong Il called for a thorough inspection of border residents during his visit to Sinuiju last month. During the trip, Kim branded residents of neighboring Dandong, Liaoning, as capitalists and said the way Sinuiju residents dressed reflected “foreign influences.” The crackdown, which also includes Hyesan, across from the famous Changbai Mountian, is aimed at sealing the porous border through which North Koreans continue to escape to China. The crackdowns have also caused jitters among North Korean officials. In June, a security official committed suicide in Hyesan after being accused of aiding defectors and of smuggling goods across the border.