In what is becoming a more and more frequent occurrence, an earthquake hit southwestern China’s Yunnan Province yesterday (Saturday, August 31). The earthquake, measured at a 5.9 on the Richter scale, struck near the town of Benzilan, located in Yunnan’s Deqin Tibetan Autonomous Region. 
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Category Archives: Current Events
Earthquake hits Northwestern Yunnan: Update & Implications
Filed under China, Current Events, water, Yunnan Province
Regional Roundup for Week of 8.31.2013
East By Southeast’s News Digest is back in business. A core group of the ExSE team has been busy this month working on setting up the IES Abroad Kunming Center, a study-abroad center for US College students located at Yunnan University. The center’s curriculum explores the deepening ties between China and Southeast Asia and delivers enrolled students 100 hours of Chinese language instruction per semester. The center opens for classes on Monday 9/2 and its staff and faculty are looking forward to a great semester with our inaugural group of new students.
Hopefully by the time we post the next weekly news digest, the ExSE will have undergone a complete facelift. The last five months have delivered a solid start – we’re averaging 70000 hits per month, and it’s time to make some much needed improvements on the way our content is displayed.
This week will also debut work by new ExSE bloggers – if you’d like to write for us, we’re recruiting! Contact us at eastbysoutheastmail@gmail.com.
CHINA
Wang Xiangwei–Myriad reasons behind transparency of Bo Xilai’s trial | South China Morning Post Before the leaders had set the trial date, Bo is believed to have written a lengthy letter to the Politburo, admitting to the three charges of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. He is said to have acknowledged that his misdeeds had tarnished the party’s image. The leaders are believed to have allowed such transparency of the proceedings partly because of Bo’s influence. Unlike other senior officials jailed for corruption, Bo is different. He is not only a scion of an elite Communist Party family but also seen as a flag-bearer of the leftist movement on the mainland
LA Times – Bo Xilai trial transcripts expose a privileged world of wealth The corruption trial of Bo Xilai is offering the world a peek past the vermilion walls of the Chinese leadership compounds and through the tinted glass of their motorcades into a private sphere of immense entitlement. It is a cross between reality television and a soap opera, though adapted for the 21st century with the transcripts being microblogged by the court and closely followed by hundreds of thousands of Chinese.
China Watches a Trial Unfold on Social Media – NYTimes.com The spectacle was a demonstration of how important the Internet has become in Chinese political life. For the government, it potentially offers a tool to monitor and persuade a population jaded with traditional, state-run media. By midyear, China had nearly 600 million officially registered Internet users. Even discounting duplicate and fake registrations, the number is a daunting challenge for a state that prizes its grip over information.
Bo’s trial ends, verdict to be announced later The trial of Bo Xilai, charged with bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power, concluded at 1:04 p.m. Monday at Jinan Intermediate People’s Court. The verdict will be announced at a date yet to be decided. On Monday morning, prosecutors summarized their case and demanded a heavy sentence for Bo, while the defendant made a 90-minute statement denying the charges. His lawyers also made defending statements.
Beijing’s New Tough Security Boss Cracks Down on Internet Rumors-Caijing The arrest of two Internet sensations who made names by cooking up rumors has unveiled a broad political campaign against rumor mongers, the second day after the appointment of a new deputy security minister. Local police authority in Beijing has detained four employees of an Internet marketing company, two of which are the so-called grassroots web celebrities under the handles of “qin huohuo” and “li’ er chai si” on the country’s most popular micro-blogging platform Weibo, according to the party’s mouthpiece newspaper the People’s Daily. In order to gain more popularity, the two web celebrities, identified by their surname of Qin and Yang, have resorted to creating and designing market buzz by minting and spreading more than 3,000 rumors.
China 7.5% Target Seen in Reach as U.S. Demand Picks Up: Economy – Bloomberg China will achieve the government’s 7.5 percent growth target this year as the world’s second-biggest economy stabilizes after a two-quarter slowdown, a Bloomberg News survey of economists indicates….The poll of 52 analysts, conducted from Aug. 15 to Aug. 20, points to China maintaining that pace of expansion in 2014. The survey also suggested that the central bank will widen the yuan’s trading band before year end.
China’s Lofty Goals for Shale Gas Development Just Pipe Dreams, Experts Say – Caixin Lack of innovation, technology and capital likely mean that the ambitious targets set for the next few years are not attainable Continue reading
Filed under Current Events, NEWS DIGEST
China & Southeast Asia: Unbalanced Development in the Greater Mekong Subregion
By Xiangming Chen and Curtis Stone
Integrating with Southeast Asia is a key component of China’s multi-pronged regionalisation around its borders as its global rise continues. Below, Xiangming Chen and Curtis Stone consider the ambition of China’s ‘Go Southwest’ strategy to extend its economic interests and influence into Southeast Asia, and explore how China’s regional assertion reinforces the larger trend of new spatial configurations in light of increasing globalisation. The authors show how simultaneous globalisation and regionalisation unleashes a dual process of de-bordering and re-bordering where the traditional barrier role of borders is yielding more to that of bridges, as small, marginal, and remote border cities and towns become larger centers of trade and tourism. This article examines China’s effort to engage Southeast Asia and many of China’s footprints within and beyond the cities of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Inter-country and intra-regional trade provides the starting point for examining the extent of economic integration in the GMS, and also its unbalanced development.
Going Southwest
In a coffee shop in central Vientiane on a hot summer day in 2012, two young Chinese businessmen from northwestern China, sipping ice-cold Latte, talked about the prospect of a new venture to explore copper in the mountains of northern Laos: ‘If we make $100 and they [Laotians] get $5, they should be happy’. On the outskirts of Yunnan’s capital city of Kunming, China’s fourth largest airport behind Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (also the world’s fifth largest airport in occupied area), Changshui International Airport, which is expected to have flown 38 million passengers by 2020 and 65 million by 2040, was opened with much fanfare in June 2012. While seemingly disparate, this pair of anecdotes reveals the ambition of China’s ‘Go Southwest’ strategy to extend its economic interests and influence into Southeast Asia.
Integrating with Southeast Asia is a key component of China’s multi-pronged regionalisation around its borders as its global rise continues. China’s regional assertion reinforces a larger trend of new spatial configuration as an inherent part of increasing globalisation driven by China. This simultaneous globalisation and regionalisation unleashes a dual process of de-bordering and re-bordering where the traditional barrier role of borders is yielding more to that of bridges (Chen). As a result, once small, marginal, and remote border cities and towns have become larger and lively centers of trade, tourism, and other flows. China’s effort to engage Southeast Asia leaves many striking footprints within and beyond the cities of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) facilitated Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), which was launched in 1992 and consists of China’s Yunnan Province (with the later addition of Guangxi Zhuang Auto-nomous Region), Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Trade with the GMS Countries
Inter-country and intra-regional trade provides the starting point for examining the extent of economic integration in the GMS as well as its unbalanced development. China’s trade with each of the GMS countries has grown since 1990, most rapidly since 2000 (see Figure 1). Given the size of their economies, Thailand, followed by Vietnam, led the smaller GMS countries in trade with China. However, the total volume of China-Myanmar trade rose by $5.9 billion from 2001 to 2011, while China-Laos trade increased by $1.2 billion (Figure 1). Much of China’s growing trade with Myanmar and Laos occurred through cooperation across international boundaries. The role of Yunnan and its capital city of Kunming in China-GMS trade cannot be understated. Yunnan’s GDP skyrocketed from $33 billion in 2000 to $160 billion in 2012, and the province aims to double that to $320 billion by 2017 through even stronger cross-border economic and trade ties. Kunming acts as the origin and core of economic activities that reach into the bordering countries of Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and beyond.
Weekly Digest – 8.11.2013
China
China’s Efforts to Chart Officials’ Assets Suffer Backlash – WSJ.com Amid China’s once-a-decade leadership change that concluded this spring, a handful of officials said they would make public disclosures of their assets. The pledges, spurred by extensive coverage in state-run media, fostered belief among some academics and others that Mr. Xi would increase government transparency and accountability. White-collar workers hope asset disclosures will ensure officials pay their fair share of taxes. But a Wall Street Journal examination of the modest asset-declaration programs announced in four provinces indicates details that may once have been available are again hidden.
State media hint Bo Xilai to dodge death penalty｜Politics｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com The timing of a recent article published in China’s state media highlighting the dangers of imposing the death penalty for controversial political figures could be the Communist Party’s way of sending a subtle message about the upcoming criminal trial of disgraced former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, reports Duowei News, an outlet run by overseas Chinese.
Cash-Strapped Nations Race to Attract Chinese Immigrants – WSJ.com While investor immigration programs are technically open to all, immigration lawyers say that governments are targeting anxious Chinese who are looking for potential escape plans for their families and protection for their assets in case of turmoil at home. “There is an all-out immigration war emerging for the Chinese,” said Jean-Francois Harvey, an immigration lawyer at Harvey Law Group in Hong Kong.
Coin of Realm in China Graft – Phony Receipts – NYTimes.com So widespread is receipt fraud that clerks at many hotel gift shops agree to falsify receipts so they show up as room charges. And at least one mutual fund company in Shanghai asks its employees to turn in fake receipts every month to claim half their salary — an accounting fraud that reduces tax liability for the company and the employee. In the Glaxo case, Chinese investigators say the drugmaker’s top Chinese executives worked closely in recent years with a Shanghai travel agency to falsify documents. For instance, airline ticket receipts were filed for trips that never took place and when executives listed 100 guests at a conference, perhaps only 80 showed up, making it possible to file false inflated receipts and thus embezzle from Glaxo’s London headquarters.
China Services Growth Picks Up in Sign Economy Stabilizing – Bloomberg China’s service industries showed the first pick-up in growth since March, adding to signs the world’s second-largest economy may be stabilizing after a two-quarter slowdown. The non-manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (CPMINMAN) rose to 54.1 in July from 53.9 in June, the Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said yesterday. An official gauge of manufacturing released Aug. 1 showed an unexpected expansion.
Austerity with Chinese Characteristics | Foreign Affairs With austerity the reigning buzzword in Beijing, it’s tempting to assume that China is finally joining the West’s ongoing debate about macroeconomics. In reality, China’s leaders are drawing on a vastly different intellectual history.–JOHN DELURY is an Assistant Professor at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies, in South Korea.
Can China’s deflation be positive? – MarketWatch Standard Chartered argues that the biggest reason for the fall in the PPI is due to declining producer goods, which tend to be raw materials or tools used to make other goods. This means not everyone is feeling the pain equally: Upstream firms — typically those involved in extracting raw materials — will suffer, but downstream firms could benefit from the same trend.
Filed under Current Events, NEWS DIGEST
Myanmar-China Natural Gas Pipeline Complete, But Complications Remain
Last Monday, Chinese press outlets announced the long-awaited opening of the Myanmar-China Natural Gas Pipeline. The project, which has been in construction for almost four years, is part of a larger plan to import both natural gas and oil from the Bay of Bengal, through Myanmar and into China. The twin natural gas and oil pipelines are a project of great national importance as it is expected that the output from these pipelines will ease China’s growing energy needs. It is little wonder then that the opening of the natural gas pipeline was met with such fanfare.
On the day of its opening, July 29, the announcement was the top story on China Central Television’s evening news and stories ran in national and local newspapers celebrating the pipeline’s completion. The opening ceremony itself was supposedly an affair of great jubilation as well. Xinhua News reported, “”When torches flamed in the sky of Namkham Measuring Station of the Myanmar-China Gas Pipeline, a storm of applause and cheers broke out…”
Celebratory voices were not the only ones to be heard in the days surrounding the pipeline’s completion. This editorial in the English version of the People’s Daily argued that “Irresponsible remarks on the Myanmar-China oil and gas Pipeline should stop as the scientifically feasible project has benefited multiple parties.” According to the editorial, Western criticism of the pipeline stems from a “shady mentality”. These critics are “unwilling to see an intimate relationship between Myanmar and China” and are uncomfortable with the thought of China being energy secure. Continue reading
Filed under China, Current Events, Energy, Health, Myanmar/Burma, Regional Relations
Is there state complicity in the attacks on Myanmar Muslims communities?
The government of Myanmar’s President Thein Sein, so active in its efforts to assure Western audiences that the new Myanmar will never return to the dark days of the previous ruling military junta, has so far failed to display any commitment to ending the brutal spiral of attacks on Muslim communities, carried out in town after town by suspiciously well-organized Buddhist gangs.
Thein Sein’s periodic appeals for ”an end to communal violence” are less than convincing given the absence of any government measures or plan to stem the flood anti-Muslim propaganda being freely disseminated under the noses of the authorities.
Leaflets and magazines denigrating Muslims are being churned out every day across the country.
The monk Wirathu has spread a perniciously xenophobic version of Theravada Buddhism through inflammatory sermons directed against a Muslim minority that comprises only 5% of the population in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million
Extremist Buddhist monks led by the publicity hungry U Wirathu, are preaching a brand of pure Buddhist nation-state and hatred of Islam, that cause consternation and disgust among the true devotees of peace non-violence and the path of the Lord Buddha.
Muslim shops and homes in Lashio in Shan state were the most recent victims of a Buddhist motorbike gang in June. Shan researcher Sai Latt commented “the government and the police are not doing anything at all to clamp down on extremist hate propaganda against Muslims.” Continue reading
A Perfect Storm: Kunming’s downtown floods after record rainfall, killing two
48 hours of continuously hard rain pounded Kunming’s downtown area late last week dropping more than 40 cm of water and flooding the city’s north and central business districts. Two city residents were killed and one still remains missing. Tens of thousands of Kunmingers woke up on Friday morning to find their cars submerged, and the inventories of hundreds of downtown shops were ruined. Four kilometers of Beijing Road, the city’s main north-south artery were shut down, crippling city traffic through Sunday.
Late Thursday night, the remnants of the easterly moving Typhoon Soulik clashed with the westerly wet seasonal monsoons directly above the city’s center and the rain did not let up until early Sunday morning. Kunming, which has been in a state of constant dry season drought for the past five years, had unseasonably low levels of rain this summer prior to the two day storm. The low levels likely prompted city officials to continue maintenance on the Panlong river, a canal that runs parallel to Beijing Road and serves as the city’s main drainage channel. The maintenance project cut off more than half of the canal’s waterway in key segments and when the rains hit, the canal spilled over into the city streets. Subway construction underneath Beijing Road likely blocked key drainage channels further exacerbating the situation. By Saturday, the city’s main flood manager declared a total failure of Kunming’s flood prevention system. Continue reading
Filed under China, Current Events, Uncategorized, water, Yunnan Province
China needs to change its energy strategy in the Mekong region
This op-ed was first published at ChinaDialogue and thethirdpole.net on 7/16.
At the end of this year cars and container trucks loaded with goods from China and Thailand will finally be able to drive across a multi-lane bridge spanning the Mekong River (known as the Lancang in China). The bridge will connect Chiang Rai province in Thailand to Bokeo province in Laos, effectively linking China’s highways stretching south from Beijing and Shanghai to those coming north from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
Funded by equal investment from the Chinese and Thai government, the completion of the bridge, which took ten years of planning and two years to build, is not without controversy. For many years Thailand held back investment due to an uneven distribution of benefits between China, Laos and Thailand. Also on the Thai side, the NGO Rak Chiang Khong claim the bridge negatively impacts the local Golden Triangle economy and will ruin Mekong fisheries.
The Golden Triangle Bridge serves to highlight the challenges facing China, as the country’s new leadership attempts to balance its slowing and volatile economy and deliver domestic stability by maintaining peaceful economic relations with its neighbours.
China’s regional strategy
“In 2012 China’s growth in trade and outward investment with the five other Mekong countries of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam surpassed its trade and investment growth in ASEANcountries,” said Xu Ningning, chairman of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Business Council. “Greater growth rates will continue with increases in regional cooperation and win-win investment opportunities.”
For the past three years China’s GMS provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi have posted growth rates of 12-15%, the highest of China’s localities, and arguably China’s economic rise has also helped deliver high growth rates among Mekong countries.
The end of the Cold War in the 1990s created a favourable environment for China to develop its economic cooperation strategies toward the Mekong region. The blurring and opening of once inviolable borders encouraged traders on both sides of the China-Southeast Asia frontier to appeal to local and national governments for better conditions for trade and migration. The Chinese government responded with twenty years of state-led trade liberalisation and investment policies to promote regional cooperation in state and private sectors.
China’s economic cooperation strategies towards its four Mekong neighbours has dovetailed nicely into a strategy that fits China’s current development needs. Liu Jinxin, a policy analyst and logistics expert says, “Unlike the US which leads the world in finance and IT, both high-value service-oriented industries, China is the world’s factory, producing goods to drive the growth of its growing middle class and serving export markets around the world. To survive, the Chinese ‘factory’ needs inputs like energy and raw materials.” Continue reading
Regional Roundup Week of 7.12.2013
I hope this News Digest finds everyone doing well this Friday – it’s certainly beautiful in Kunming, where the summer rains have relented for a bit. This last week had quite a few hits for ExSE. Our own blogger Red Oceans’ piece on the SCS was highlighted in the Sinocism newsletter while ExSE contributor Zhou Dequn’s article on Fuxian Lake was featured in China Dialogue. Will Feinberg’s first of many pieces in a regional timber trade series was picked up on the popular Quartz blog. In addition, ExSE blogger Colin Flahive and his work with Kunming’s Salvador’s Coffee House and a string of non-profits in Yunnan was written up in the Christian Science Monitor (link below). Way to go Colin! (Full disclosure: I frequently enjoy Salvador’s food, especially their new falafel wrap).
This next week will also be a big week for ExSE. Four of our bloggers will be embarking on an 18-day trip through Thailand and Laos tomorrow. Our travels will be done as part of the IES Kunming Regional Development Program. We’ll be starting in Bangkok with a two day cruise on a Chao Phraya barge learning about sustainable watershed management. Then we make to Chiang Mai and the Golden Triangle before floating down the Mekong to Luang Prabang and Vientiane.
We’ll be looking at the sustainability of infrastructure development sites, analyzing China’s deepening regional footprint, and thinking about the US’s Pacific Pivot. Our partners at Mae Fah Luang University in will introduce us to transboundary issues in the Golden Triangle but not before we cross into Burma for a day. Decommissioned KMT soldiers (hopefully) will welcome us into their homes where they will regale us of their days in the sun as members of the world’s most sophisticated heroin shipping network. And we’ll spend five days in tropical Luang Prabang considering the impact of rapid development on the world’s best kept secret.
We’ll try and blog something everyday, even if it’s just a short update. There’s guaranteed to be a lot of sun, a lot of fun and plenty of opportunities to learn about successes and challenges of development in the region, so be sure to follow ExSE!
China
China Pledges to Boost Financial Support After Cash Crunch – Bloomberg Misallocation of capital is hampering the restructuring of the economy and the financial sector must play a better role in helping the overhaul, the cabinet said in a seven-page statement (国务院办公厅关于金融支持经济结构调整和转型升级的指导意见-
China Allows Two More Local Governments to Issue Bonds -Caijing China has added two names to the list of a trial program which allows local governments to issue bonds directly, expanding the program to six regions in the country, said the Economic Information Daily. Shandong and Jiangsu, two neighbor provinces in east China have been given the green light from the State Council to join four local governments which got approval for bonds issues in 2011, the paper published by the official Xinhua news agency said Friday.
Foreign Capital Flows out of China on Expectations of End of QE -Caijing China has seen a monthly net capital outflow in 16 of the last 18 weeks, according to fund flow data provider EPER. EPER figures showed foreign capital registered a net outflow of $834million in the first five trading days in June, the largest since January, 2008.
An Opportunity to Strengthen U.S.-China Ties – WSJ.com At present, with the global economic recovery remaining unsteady and unbalanced, both nations face challenges as well as opportunities. China is the largest developing country in the world, and the U.S. is the largest developed one. Economic cooperation and trade will benefit our two peoples and contribute to global economic recovery and growth.
U.S., China can forge a more cooperative relationship – Washington Post This week’s China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue is an important platform for conducting high-level communication on long-term, strategic and overarching issues. The main task of the upcoming dialogue, the fifth such meeting,is to implement the extensive agreement reached at the presidents’ meeting last month, deepening dialogue and cooperation in various areas, and advancing a new-model major-country relationship.
China at the Tipping Point? | ChinaFile–Carl Minzer China may indeed be at a tipping point. But it is not clear which way it will tip. Authorities may restart legal reform as part of a comprehensive program of political and institutional transformation. Or they may refuse, risking an escalating spiral of social and political turmoil. Continue reading
Filed under Current Events, NEWS DIGEST
The Code of Conduct for the South China Sea: A Waiting Game
On June 30, 2013, following the China-ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of Brunei, China released a joint-statement with ASEAN in a post-meeting press conference, indicating that they have agreed to hold “official consultations” on a proposed Code of Conduct (CoC) to govern South China Sea “naval actions”. All parties agreed to move forward with consultations in upcoming meetings to be held in China during September later this year.
Misleadingly or mistakenly billed as a significant paradigm shift by many English language news outlets, this development should not have come as a surprise to anyone. As early as November 2012, China already issued a joint statement with ASEAN at the 15th ASEAN-China Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, marking the 10th anniversary of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and agreeing to “keep momentum of dialogue” in moving towards a formal Code of Conduct (COC). China also reiterated this commitment in April this year, following the 19th China-ASEAN Senior Officials’ Consultation.
For the casual observer, keeping track of the ins-and-outs of numerous ASEAN-China agreements and cryptic diplomatic sparring over South China Sea (SCS) disputes can be daunting. News reporting differs greatly depending on its country of origin and the same story can be told in a hundred different ways leaving entirely different impressions of what happened. The following is a breakdown of the important historical, political, and legal considerations necessary to understand what the Code of Conduct for the SCS is, why it is important, and how it may eventually come about. Continue reading
Filed under ASEAN, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Current Events, Energy, Foreign policy, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar/Burma, Philippines, Regional Relations, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, water
