03/08/2010 Source: Xinhua

Global Internet giant Google must obey Chinese laws if it still wishes to continue to operate in the country, a senior government official said.

Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, told reporters Monday in Beijing on the sidelines of the ongoing National People’s Congress, or parliamentary session.

“If Google still plans to continue its operations in China, it must abide by Chinese laws and respect the wills of Chinese Internet users,” the minister told reporters said when asked by a group of reporters at the Great Hall of the People.

Asked whether his ministry or any related government departments are engaged in discussion with Google, on Internet management policies in China, the minister declined to respond.

“On this matter, Google knows it best itself,” Li Yizhong said.

On January 18, one of the top executives of the California-based Internet search giant alarmed many and raised the eyebrows of more, by declaring that its operation in China is harassed by allegedly China-based hackers, and it was going to shut down its operations in China. It also said it objected to Chinese government policies to administer Internet content.

Google’s intent to leave China has drawn widespread ridicule and criticism from Chinese Internet users. Some analysts say that China’s own Internet search giant baidu.com could benefit, and Chinese users could do without Google.

03/08/2010 Source: Xinhua

Forced urban housing demolition, which caused several deaths and injuries last year and snowballed into a major controversy, will be strictly supervised thanks to a proposal to better protect the rights of property owners, a senior official has said.

But forced relocation will be used if necessary so that the self-interests of a handful of people will not hurt the interests of the majority, said Zhang Qiong, deputy director of the State Council Legislative Affairs Office.

Zhang, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, made the remarks in an interview with China Daily about the proposed amendment to the regulation on urban housing demolition.

In January, Zhang’s office published a draft revision to the Regulations on Property Requisition, which has long been criticized for neglecting the rights of property owners, to solicit public opinion.

The draft amendment stipulates that no violence, threat or other illegal means be used in forced relocation, such as cutting off electricity, water, heating or gas.

Zhang said the office has received over 60,000 responses, most of them suggesting that the proposed revision is more in accordance with the Constitution and the Property Law.

Responding to a common public suggestion that demolition should not proceed unless all residents agree to move, Zhang said “it is not realistic”.

“Take the rebuilding of dangerous and old houses, for example. Most people living in such poor conditions would like to move out, yet there are always one or two who would take this opportunity to ask for very high prices and refuse to be relocated”, Zhang said.

“In such cases, we tend to consider the interest of most people and use forced relocation.”

According to the draft, dangerous and old houses will be rebuilt only after 90 percent of residents give their consent. The current rule gives the government the final say.

“China is undergoing rapid urbanization, and needs a lot of land,” Zhang said. “As we have to ensure preservation of arable land, the use of urban land is inevitable.”

Zhang acknowledged that another major public concern was a clause in the amendment, which says: “To demolish housing for constructions of non-public interest, the constructors – such as real-estate developers – need to seek permission of related government departments.”

Ma Guangyuan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said this stipulation should be deleted as both the Constitution and the draft revision itself stipulate that the government can only intervene in relocation cases “for public interest”.

The draft revision, which emphasizes public interest, will be watered down by this single item that authorizes the government to permit demolitions for non-public interests, such as real-estate developers, Ma said.

In response, Zhang said the government will not back down as “a lot of disputes and conflicts have already arisen from demolishing housing for non-public interest. More problems will arise if the government leaves it to the developers and residents themselves”.

“Besides, it is very difficult to differentiate public interest from non-public interest,” Zhang said, admitting that balancing different interests is “complicated and difficult”.

“The basic idea of the amendment is that efficiency should give way to people’s rights, and we set strict limits and conditions for forced relocation ,” he said.

03/04/2010 Source: Xinhua

As the annual plenary sessions of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) are set to start on March 5 and March 3 respectively, the international community have started to cast their eyes on China.

It is known to all that China have achieved marvelous economic growth in 2009 when most economies across the world were still suffering the global financial crisis and economic downturn. But, what kind of answer sheet will China present in the year 2010?

So far, thousands of journalists and reporters from all over the world have arrived in Beijing to cover the sessions, hoping to seek clues and insight into the political life and economic prospects of China through the two important meetings.

First of all, the international community wants to probe new signals on economic policies and decisions by the Chinese government during the parliamentary sessions.

Several Western media and think tanks, such as The Choice magazine of Japan, have made comments that although the Chinese economy has seen remarkable recovery, China is still facing various challenges including trade disputes and inflation.

How China will resolve such challenges and whether China could continue to be the world economy’s engine are what the international community intends to know from the sessions, during which the deputies are expected to discuss the plans and measures on boosting economy.

The new plans and prospects of improving people’s living standards China will table during the sessions is another concern from the international community.

In recent years, the Chinese government has attached more importance to improving the people’s living standards and various relevant reforms and policies have been implemented.

Earlier this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said everything the Chinese government has done is to let the people lead “happier lives” with “greater dignity.”

Just as Singapore’s newspaper Lianhe Zaobao has put it, there is a tendency in China that the government attaches more importance on improving people’s living standards and this year will be better than last year.

The international community will also pay attention to new changes in China’s political and democratic process to take place during the sessions.

A draft amendment to the Electoral Law is scheduled to present to the deputies during the NPC session for approval.

The draft requires that both rural and urban areas adopt the same ratio of deputies to the legislatures.

As a result, Chinese rural and urban people are about to get equal representation in lawmaking bodies, which means farmers will have the same say in the country’s decision-making process as urbanites.

The legislation would promote China’s democracy into a higher level, Malaysian newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh has commented.

In the meantime, China’s efforts in fighting corruption have also drawn worldwide attention.

Lianhe Zaobao said that facts have proven the determination of the Chinese leadership to wipe out corruption and the international community had spoken highly of China’s anti-corruption drive.

Why is the international community so enthusiastic about China’s parliamentary plenary sessions? The answer is simple: China and the world are relevant in development.

It is known to foreign experts that the annual parliamentary sessions are a vital window to look into China’s social and economic development, and the policy signals sent by the sessions will play a significant role in shaping China’s development and thus influencing the world at large.

Just as former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has put it, China’s stability and development benefits the world.

At present, the global economic recovery has not yet stabilized and the developed countries have yet to come out of economic downturn, so China’s policy orientation to be shown during the parliamentary sessions would allure eyes from all over the globe.

Dominique Strausse-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, once said that it was beyond all doubt that China would continue to play a vital role in boosting international and regional economic recovery.

03/04/2010 Source: People’s Daily

Toyota did not offer any form of compensation for the RAV4 models recently involved in the recall in China over accelerator pedal problems, said Xu Yiming, head of Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co., Ltd. PR department. Consumers in Wuhan questioned the company’s different attitudes in China and the U.S.

In the US, the company provides door-to-door service to consumers involved in the recall. When drivers take their recalled vehicles to the factory themselves, the company offers transportation reimbursements and a loaner car of the same model.

Sun, a Toyota RAV4 user who had just had his car fixed, said although he did not pay for the repairs, it had cost him time and gas so Toyota should be responsible for his loss.

On some online forums, many RAV4 owners are discussing the possibility of filing a class action suit in China against Toyota.

Users of other models of Toyota also expressed their concern.

Ms. Ma bought a Toyota Corolla last October. Corolla models are recalled in the U.S., but not in China. Local Toyota dealers didn’t respond to her question why Chinese consumers were not treated equally.

“Driving my Corolla, I have the feeling of riding a time bomb,” Ma said.

An employee with a Toyota dealer noted that around 800 RAV4s have been sold in Wuhan since May 2009. “Wuhan has around 2,000 RAV4s on the road.”

According to a survey conducted by a portal website, 71.5 percent of netizens surveyed said that they would never buy Toyota cars, and 64.2 percent believed that the Toyota recall crisis has had grave impact on Japanese automakers.

02/24/2010 Source: People’s Daily

According to Tianjin Municipal People’s Government Financial Affairs Office, PPF Group N.V. (herein referred to as “PPF Group”), the principal holding company of the largest investment group in Central and Eastern Europe, has received approval from the China Banking Regulatory Commission to establish consumer finance company named Home Credit Consumer Finance (China) in Tianjin. This is the first foreign consumer finance company in China.

Czech’s PPF Group, the shareholder of the approved preparatory consumer finance company, is involved in consumer finance, insurance, retail banking and other areas with assets of more than 11 billion euros, which has the world’s leading management system, professional management team and advanced management concepts.

The Home Credit Group, affiliated by PPF Group, is a consumer finance business specialist with more than 10 years of consumer finance industry experience and a huge customer base, which has succeeded in research and development of a unique business model and back-office system, leading in consumer finance market in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Far East.

Home Credit Consumer Finance (China) owns registered capital of 30 million euros, and will carry out related businesses in two phases of consumer loans and consumer finance, and obtain customers through the cooperation with retailers to distribute loan products and provide personal consumption loans for customer groups. Industry insiders claim that this will boost household consumption and play an active role in promoting economic growth.

02/24/2010 Source: Xinhua

China’s top legislature Wednesday began to deliberate the amendment to the Administrative Supervision Law, aiming to enhance supervision of the country’s civil servants.

The draft was submitted by the State Council to the three-day bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which started Wednesday, for its first reading.

Supervision Minister Ma Wen said when briefing lawmakers about the draft amendment that it aimed to improve the supervisory and offence reporting system so as to fight corruption and work inefficiency.

The draft states that its targets only people working in government departments, with lawmakers, political advisors and judicial staff excluded.

It says supervision bodies should offer advice on removing government officials, suspending officials from duties and improving the anti-corruption mechanism.

The current Administrative Supervision Law, which took effect in May 1997, has played an important role in “ensuring government decrees be implemented, safeguarding administrative disciplines, promoting clean governance and boosting governance efficiency,” Ma said.

The draft also provides details about the offence reporting system.

It says supervision departments should apply real-name reporting and should not make public the reporting information so as to protect informants.

02/11/2010 Source: Global Times

China’s Foreign Ministry Tuesday brushed aside speculation of state-linked spying activities in the United States, calling the charges fabricated with a hidden agenda.

“Some people have always favored making up Chinese spy stories for sensationalism,” ministry spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu told reporters in Beijing.

The remarks came as a US district judge sentenced Monday a Chinese-born former Boeing engineer to 15 years in prison for keeping classified documents at home and trading data related to aerospace and defense technologies to China, a ruling that the judge described as a signal to China to “stop sending your spies here.”

Dongfan Greg Chung, a naturalized US citizen and the first person convicted under the 1996 Economic Espionage Act, denied passing sensitive information to China.

“I was planning to write a book. Those documents were going to be used for my reference,” said the 73-year-old engineer, who was born in China and lived in Taiwan before moving to the US in 1962.

US District Judge Cormac Carney said he handed down the sentence even without knowing exactly what information Chung passed to China, the AP reported. “But what I do know is what he did, and what he did hurt our national security, and it hurt Boeing,” the judge said.

Chung was arrested in September, 2006. He was convicted last year on charges of economic espionage and acting as an agent of the Chinese government for more than 30 years.

Investigators said they found 300,000 pages of documents with information on the space shuttle and military hardware such as the Delta IV rocket, the F-15 fighter, the B-52 bomber and the CH-46/47 Chinook helicopter. The FBI claimed that it also discovered letters, lists and journals detailing Chung’s contacts with Chinese officials.

Chung worked for Rockwell until it was bought by Boeing in 1996 and stayed with the company until he was laid off in 2002, before being rehired a year later as a consultant, the AP reported.

Chung’s attorney, Thomas Bienert Jr, said at the trial that his client might have violated Boeing policy, which forbids employees with access to key data from taking documents out of the office, but he didn’t break any laws by doing so, and the US government couldn’t prove Chung had passed any restricted information to China, the AP reported.

Defense attorneys argued that much of the material was already available on the public record, the Los Angeles Times said. The attorney said his client would appeal, the AP said.

The sentencing seems to shed light on the overly guarded mentality adopted by the US with respect to China in high-tech issues.

Chen Liangyao, an information-engineering scholar at Fudan University, cited his personal frustration at meetings with US academics and complained that the US sets too many limitations on technological exchanges with its Chinese counterparts.

“US authorities remain skeptical of our civilian-purpose research,” Chen said.

Unlike many US companies, such as Boeing, that have both military and civilian operations, most Chinese companies and academic institutions have no connection with the military, Chen added.

A senior Chinese aerospace expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said academic exchanges with European counterparts are much smoother than those with the US.

“The US (side) seems to be very vigilant compared with the Europeans,” he said.

Military strategist Dai Xu argued that, “Frequent accusations of spying and cyber attacking are means for the US to defame China.”

China arrested iron-ore giant Rio Tinto’s Shanghai office manager Stern Hu on charges of stealing state secrets last year.