Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
China has been criticised in some quarters as the party-spoiler at last year’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. Its steadfast refusal to allow international monitoring of its emission level led to a collapse in reaching a meaningful international agreement. The earlier euphoria over China’s far-reaching announcement on emission reduction targets had all but disappeared. It seems that many commentators believe that China is pursuing an economic development strategy at all costs.
But there are also voices emanating from China that strongly urge Beijing to take this historic opportunity to tackle the challenge of climate change and assert China’s global leadership in green and renewable technologies. One of the leading voices from the chorus is Hu Angang of Tsinghua University. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
On January 27, the Chinese State Council announced the establishment of China’s National Energy Commission under the leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao and the vice-Premier and his heir-apparent, Li Keqiang. This announcement came as a much-anticipated move by Beijing to coordinate and devise a comprehensive national energy policy.
The members of this commission certainly reflect that grand ambition. They are an all-star cast of the most important and influential ministers from the State Council such as that of the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
The 2009 arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu was a watershed event in the Sino-Australian relationship. Beijing’s unexpected intervention in the name of national security demonstrates not only how grave were perceptions of its disadvantage in the iron ore trade but also the murkiness of its laws regarding state secrets and the operation of the market. Determined intrusion from Beijing, especially by the Chinese intelligence services, could only happen with the blessing of top echelons of China’s political process.
But what could have made the Chinese government take such dramatic action at such a highly sensitive time in the iron ore negotiations and given the broader global ramifications that an intervention like this would inevitably have? Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
The Hollywood blockbuster Avatar is breaking box-office records in China and cinemagoers have been treated to a visual feast from the Shangrila-like moon of Pandora. At the same time, the savagery depicted in the film about the demolition of the natives’ home has also resonated with the Chinese. A young literary commentator wrote that ‘For audiences from other places, barbaric eviction is something they simply can’t imagine – it is the sort of thing that could only happen in outer space and China.’
Much like the Na’vi people from Pandora, forcibly evicted Chinese residents have fought back literally, with bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails against camouflaged hired thugs from real estate developers. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
Early last year, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post reported that Beijing is allegedly amassing a war chest of 45 billion yuan to fight a battle over China’s image in the international arena. This has not yet been confirmed by any official sources in China, but the signals from Beijing are lending credence to this report.
Major state-owned media giants such as China Central Television (CCTV), the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency are all expanding their services and international presence. The People’s Daily-owned Global Times launched its English edition in December last year. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
One of the hottest television dramas currently on air in China is called ‘Woju’, translated as snail home, alluding to the tremendous burden of carrying the dream of home ownership in China. The series has sparked a nationwide debate on the housing affordability issue. Newspaper editorials, online discussion forums and gossip around the dinner table are all about skyrocketing house prices and their impact on social stability, especially regarding the younger generations.
In a recent Green Book on housing development in China, published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), many commentators argue that the housing affordability issue has reached a breaking point. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
The departure of Hu Shuli and her editorial and journalist teams at Caijing magazine finally ended months of speculation on the future of her tenure at this influential business publication. What was once the most innovative and vibrant newsroom manned by a staff of 300 and led by the charismatic Hu has become only a ghost of its former self. The magazine barely managed to put out the latest issue with the assistance of a constellation of specially invited writers, while the editor-in-chief confessed publicly that this issue will fall short of readers’ high expectation of the magazine.
The obvious question to ponder is what will become of this great publication, which enjoys an unrivalled reputation for its investigative journalism and outspokenness on various sensitive issues in China. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU and Tsinghua
The Chinese press has been saturated recently with the coverage of a sensational trial in the mountainous mega-city of Chongqing, where hundreds of gangsters and corrupt officials have been brought before the dock to face the music. The trial has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster: sexual scandals involving dazzling starlets and brawny gigolos, a web of underground casinos, and the complicity of corrupt police officers. The powerful mayor of Chongqing, and a member of the politburo, Bo Xilai told the press that the activities of mafia were so rampant that they were left with no choice but to react.
According to official statistics released by authorities in Chongqing, 1544 gangsters have been detained and over 1.53 billion Yuan in illegal assets have been seized. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU and Adelaide
While Australians are basking in the collateral glory of Tasmanian-born Professor Blackburn’s newly minted status as a member of the scientific Pantheon, the Chinese press is also having a field day with the news that yet another Descendant of the Dragon has snatched the coveted prize. The press, from the party mouthpiece to the tabloids, is saturated with coverage of Charles Kao’s exploits and his development of fibre optics is lauded as a wonder-technology that underpinned the modern telecommunication revolution.
This temporary indulgence in shared glory quickly turned into another, more profound, but by no means new, question: when would China produce its first indigenous Nobel Prize winner? And more importantly, why is our education system incapable of nurturing great scientific minds? Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU and Adelaide
It was the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post that first dropped the bomb that tectonic change had just occurred in the upper echelons of the influential Chinese business magazine, Caijing. The general business manager, Daphne Wu, tendered her resignation along with eight of her nine senior colleagues. This was only the first crack in the dyke, with a mass exodus of editors and investigative journalists occurring shortly thereafter. The inevitable Götterdämmerung will be when the charismatic and influential managing editor Hu Shuli leaves the magazine that she founded more than a decade ago.
This story would be unremarkable had it not been for the semi-deified status of Hu Shuli as the most influential financial journalist in China and Caijing’s reputation as one of the very few trusted media sources in a country dominated by party mouthpieces. Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai
Taiwan was recently hit by one of the worst natural disasters in its history, with Cyclone Morakat leaving behind a trail of human tragedy and physical destruction. Amongst international aid, Beijing offered generous assistance to the victims and donations also flowed in from the Mainland public.
This rare moment of cross-Strait solidarity quickly turned sour when the Dalai Lama visited Taiwan as an invited guest of opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mayors and legislators in Southern Taiwan. With the furore over Rebiya Kadeer’s antipodean visit still fresh in mind, this visit was bound to attract Beijing’s ire.
Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai
In the April-May edition of Survival, Denny Roy put forward a very interesting argument on the dangerous future of China’s democratised foreign policy. He argued that the Communist government in Beijing is actually a force of moderation between nationalism-fuelled public opinion and foreign policy-making. Though democratisation may bring about many positive changes in China, peaceful resolution of serious international disputes is not among them. This interesting hypothesis can certainly be extended into the realm of minority policy in China.
When we discuss the Tibetan or Xinjiang issues, the focus is usually on China’s religious and cultural repression of ethnic minorities or its appalling human rights record. The international stardom of the charismatic Dalai Lama and the rising profile of ‘Ribeya Kadeer as a dragon fighter’ further cement China’s image as a harsh colonial master engaging in discredited 19th century-style imperial practices.
Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai
The city state of Singapore has been an endless source of fascination for Chinese leaders since the time of Deng Xiaoping. Its legendary efficiency, its miraculous transformation ‘from the third world to first’ and above all, the iron grip of the People’s Action Party on power through non-lethal means are lessons that Beijing may be thought keen to emulate. Singapore has more to offer beyond fraternal sharing in Machiavellian power tricks. Despite its small size, the Singaporean government is a big player in the world of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). The Singapore Government undertakes investment through Temasek Holdings and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. The better known of the Siamese twins is Temasek, one of the oldest and most respected sovereign wealth funds around, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Temasek has recently undertaken a radical restructuring of its top management by recruiting a top corporate heavy hitter, Charles ’Chip‘ Goodyear, the U.S.-born former chief executive of the Australian mining giant, BHP Billiton, to replace its incumbent Ms Ho Ching, wife of the current Singaporean Prime Minister. The decision was made after a whole string of disastrous investments in failing Western financial institutions that saw its total assets decline from US$ 134 billion to US$ 84 billion. More importantly, the Economist commented that ‘Mr Goodyear is the kind of A-list executive who will help persuade the countries receiving potential investment that Temasek really is independent of the government’.
Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, International Relations, ANU
The recent arrest of Australian mining executive Stern Hu under an alleged espionage charge has brought China’s elusive secrecy laws under intense international scrutiny. The allegation is very serious and sparked outrage amongst rights-conscious Australian journalists and politicians. There is puzzlement over how an Australian business executive in the middle of a sensitive commercial negotiation could get involved in espionage against China.
This requires a closer look at China’s State Secrecy Law (comparable to the Official Secrets Act of Australia) [English translation by US Congressional Executive Commission on China]. This legislation was enacted by the National People’s Congress (NPC) in 1988 and came into effect on the first of May 1989. In Article 2, Chapter 1 of the State Secrecy Law, state secrets are rather loosely defined as matters concerning ‘national security and interests’. Article 8 of Chapter 2 further elaborates what may constitute state secrets, apart from the usual inclusion of political, military and diplomatic matters and decisions. The most conspicuous part of the definition, and that most relevant to Stern Hu’s case, is Section 4 of Article 8, which classifies ‘secret matters relating to national economic and social developments’ as state secrets.
Read more…
Author: Peter Yuan Cai, ANU
The tug-of-war between the Anglo-Australian mining giant and the Chinese steel mills over iron ore negotiations has entered unchartered waters with the arrest of Rio executive, Stern Hu, for alleged espionage. This dramatic turn in events has the potential to cast a long dark shadow over the Sino-Australian relationship.
Despite Rio and Canberra’s expression of ‘surprise’ over the arrest of Hu by the Chinese security services, there have been forebodings of trouble in the trade for some time. The Minister for Industry and Information Technology lamented in a State Council news conference last year, ‘we cannot make the same mistake a second time’, referring to the disorganisation and trouble in the iron ore market.
Analysts had been expecting the traditional tactic of ‘kill a chicken to frighten the monkeys’ by punishing small-time traders dealing in iron ore without a government-issued import permit.
Read more…
