China Reform Monitor: No. 994

October 2:

On the 50th anniversary of China-India war India’s Defense Minister A.K. Antony told the Press Trust of India that after 15 rounds of border negotiations, talks with China are now in their “final stages.” “The pending resolution of the border dispute is important to avoid major tensions in the border.”

October 4:

The Republic of China’s (ROC-Taiwan) Vice Defense Minister Andrew Yang has held talks with the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at the Pentagon. In a rare move, following their meetings the U.S. Department of Defense released a photo on its official site showing Carter greeting Yang. The two discussed “sensitive” bilateral military issues, the China Post reports. Yang and an ROC military delegation are visiting the U.S. to attend the annual U.S.–Taiwan Defense Industry Conference. Before his meeting with Carter, Yang met with senior U.S. officials from the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

October 7:

Women hoping to attend China’s universities must score higher than men to get in and face widespread gender quotas that favor men in certain majors including sciences, law enforcement and languages. A woman, for instance, requires a score of 632 to become a science major at the China University of Political Science and Law while the bar for men is 588. To gain admission to the University of International Relations, a woman needs 628 points while a man needs 609. Policies favoring men began before 2005 in response to the rising numbers of women getting into universities and their overall better performance than male students. The practice is common at police or military-affiliated universities and language schools, The New York Times reports. The Education Ministry said that quotas favoring men in some majors are in the “national interest” and that “colleges may adjust the enrollment ratios of men and women.”

October 8:

Congressional investigators will turn over evidence of cyber-espionage involving Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies to the FBI, said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Committee investigators received “numerous allegations” from U.S. companies that equipment bought from Huawei sent unauthorized data to computers in China, Rogers said at a news conference to release the results of an 11-month investigation into Huawei and ZTE. The report recommends that the U.S. government and firms avoid using Huawei and ZTE equipment for tasks involving sensitive data, The Washington Post reports. Rogers said the firms’ close ties to Beijing pose a threat to U.S. national security. The report did not advocate a boycott of all Huawei or ZTE products, but it did recommend the government block mergers of U.S. firms with them because of the risk of espionage.

October 9:

In the past five years China’s anti-corruption bodies have punished more than 660,000 officials for disciplinary violations, the official China Daily reports. Of that number, more than 24,000 officials were transferred to courts for serious crimes. This week Guangzhou’s discipline inspection commission arrested six officials for corruption. They include the head of the city’s vehicle management agency, who took more than 3 million yuan in bribes from a car inspection company to certifying substandard vehicles. The South China Morning Post reports that among those arrested is the head of Zengcheng Licheng hospital, who allegedly paid 50,000 yuan in bribes to health department officials and took 390,000 yuan from the Zengcheng Suikang pharmaceutical company in return for favoring them as a drug supplier.