China’s plans to unlock what could be the world’s biggest shale gas reserves risk running further off track after 16 firms awarded exploration rights in the latest auction lacked one core skill – not one has drilled a gas well before.

Beijing is hoping shale gas can transform the country in the same way as the U.S. boom, though to date there has been little commercial production and a target of producing 6.5 billion cubic meters of gas by 2015 in the world’s biggest energy consumer looks out of reach, according to industry experts.

The lack of experience exploiting shale among new firms scrambling to enter the sector will make it an even bigger challenge to get at the gas, and if they fail to deliver China will struggle to reduce its dependence on expensive imports of oil, liquefied natural gas and coal.

One result of the geological challenges in China is that hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, may require 25-30% more water than in the United States, a thirst China is ill-equipped to satisfy. At chinadialogue, Timothe Feodoroff and Jennifer Franco outline how fracking works and how it threatens the country’s already strained water supplies.

Water contamination can result from accidental spills during truck transportation, leakages through cracked or corroded cement casing of the wells, or as fugitive gas through the rock fractures themselves. Wastewater, known as “produced water”, poses serious risks. For every million gallons of chemical-laced frac fluid injected down the drill wells, 20-40％ will be regurgitated back to the surface, bringing with it: chemicals, traces of oil-laced drilling mud, and all the other toxic substances previously trapped in the rock – such as iron, chromium, salt, and radioactive materials including Radium 226.

Most water treatment facilities today are not designed to handle fracking wastewater. As a result, much of it ends up sitting in large ponds and eventually entering rivers and streams. […]

[…] One issue in China […] is the way fracking will exacerbate “water grabbing”. To achieve the target of 229 billion cubic feet of shale gas will require no less than 485 million cubic feet of water. Yet, according to the same source, “most of the nation’s shale gas lies in areas plagued by water shortages”. A recent drilling test operation in Northern Shaanxi Province encountered complications, forcing local officials to temporarily cut a nearby city’s water supply. These risks are all the more threatening in a country that already faces major water conflicts.

Feoforoff and Franco also note a link between fracking and earthquakes in the U.S. and U.K.. Much of China’s shale gas lies under the seismically vulnerable Sichuan province, where human activity has already been blamed for the devastating earthquake that killed some 80,000 people in 2008.

At Reuters, on the other hand, John Kemp argued in January that “the problems [in China] do not appear worse than in other parts of the world, and the prize is enormous.” Caixin’s Wang Xiaocong reported on the environmental risks of fracking in November, while the benefits and drawbacks of shale gas exploitation in general were the subject of a debate at The Economist in February.

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Post tags: carbon footprint, earthquakes, energy demand, energy policy, energy security, Shaanxi, shale gas, Sichuan, United States, water pollution, water shortage
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Hu Chunhua has been appointed secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), replacing Wang Yang, the CPC Central Committee announced Tuesday.

Wang Jun will replace Hu as secretary of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC, according to the announcement.

Hu, born in April 1963, is currently a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Wang Yang is also a Political Bureau member.

Hu previously served as deputy secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC, first secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League of China Central Committee and governor of north China’s Hebei Province.

At the South China Morning Post, Mimi Lau described a range of views on Hu’s appointment and prospects:

Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a labour rights NGO in Shenzhen, said Hu lacked the track record of outstanding political achievements necessary to impress Guangdong officials.

“After spending extensive time in remote inland areas, Hu might find it hard to fit in at first in Guangdong, especially when dealing with vested interests,” Liu said. “I’m not very sure about officials from remote regions because they often appear very conservative and arrogant, but Hu might be different because he’s young.”

[…] Dr Peng Peng, a researcher with the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said Hu would have to hunker down after arriving in Guangdong because it was unlike any other mainland region.

“The press here is outspoken and the public can often complain directly to leaders,” Peng said. “In order to do a good job in Guangdong, Hu needs to be even more open-minded than Wang Yang.

“Wang Yang laid a solid foundation. Hu is much younger than Wang. I’m guessing Hu is more likely to flow with the open atmosphere in Guangdong.”

But at The Diplomat, David Cohen sounded a cautious note on the prospects for bold reform:

A Guangdong posting will give “Little Hu” a chance to burnish his reformist credentials, like Wang Yang before him. If Xi follows through on his talk of reform, that may prove to be a valuable skill. Guangdong is China’s most liberal province and frequently given to experimentation — if Xi is looking for models for national reform the leader of Guangdong may get some chances to influence the direction of national policy with some inventive provincial initiatives, such as Wang Yang’s much-ballyhooed “Wukan model.”

This trend should also give us some pause before rooting for Wang or Hu as reformers — neither of their records shows particularly bold action before traveling to Guangdong, so to some extent Wang’s liberal policies in the southern province may simply reflect institutional momentum. In fact, besides his time in Tibet, Little Hu initiated a harsh crackdown at the first signs of protests in Inner Mongolia in the spring of 2011. Some felt Hu had overreacted but he did not shirk from his decision, recently telling the Financial Times, “When we deal with mass incidents, there is no question we will take compulsory measures . . . We will be tough when we need to be tough, and we will be soft when we need to be soft.”

Reuters’ Sui-Lee Wee outlined Hu’s earlier career:

In Inner Mongolia, Hu Chunhua, also known as “Little Hu”, has been referred to as a future president. While there, Hu Chunhua oversaw rapid economic growth and dealt successfully with protests last year by ethnic Mongols.

Hu Chunhua came to Inner Mongolia following a brief stint in Hebei, the arid province which surrounds Beijing, where he was rapidly moved after a scandal over tainted milk in which at least six children died and thousands became ill.

Hu Chunhua remains something of an enigma, even in China. He has given few clues about his deeper policy beliefs. One of the best known things about him is that he does not appear to dye his hair jet black like many politicians.

In meetings with the public, Hu Chunhua comes across as low key and self effacing, in line with an image of a loyal, humble Communist Party member. People who have met him describe him as relaxed, easy-going and spontaneous, unlike stiffer party leaders.

Hu and newly appointed Chongqing Party chief Sun Zhengcai were both elevated to the Politburo last month, and are likely to rise further to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2017 and the presidency and premiership in 2022. (See Cheng Li’s profiles of the two men at the Brookings Institution.) None of this can be taken for granted, however: neither of their predecessors, Wang Yang and Bo Xilai, has followed the trajectory widely anticipated even at the start of this year. The Associated Press’ Didi Tang focused on Wang Yang, Guangdong’s previous Party chief, whose next assignment has not yet been revealed:

Xinhua gave no indication of Wang’s next job, but China watchers said he is likely to be named a vice premier when China’s legislature meets in the spring.

Wang, 57, is seen as a politically liberal figure. He failed to win a seat on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee when new leaders were installed last month but was named to the lower-ranking Politburo.

[…] Wang was seen at Xi’s side when the general secretary visited Guangdong in early December. Li Cheng, an expert on China’s elite politics at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institute, said the appearance of the two together was to show the solidarity of the party leadership, because Wang is not considered to be in Xi’s camp in China’s factional politics.

“It’s a symbol of unity,” Li said.

Hu’s replacement in Inner Mongolia, Wang Jun, has extensive experience related to the autonomous region’s heavy mining industry. Wang was appointed governor of coal-rich Shanxi province following an accident which claimed more than 270 lives at an iron mine in 2008, and had previously headed the national work safety agency. His acting replacement in Shanxi is Li Xiaopeng, son of former premier Li Peng. New Party chiefs for Zhejiang, Shaanxi and Jilin were also announced on Tuesday, with appointments for Fujian and Guangxi following the next day. The blizzard of new posts sent a “subtle message”, according to a Global Times editorial, which hailed the new provincial leaders as offering the public a fresh start.

The Party secretary is the very top leader in a province. The prominence of this position differs from Western systems and is the key to ensuring that the Party rules the country’s political system.

[…] The population and economic scale of many provinces exceed those of middle-sized countries. As China is undergoing rapid development and social conflicts, the difficulties in managing a province can be much greater than managing a global power.

[…] Party secretaries should make efforts to improve communication with the public. We are looking forward to those who are outspoken and can interact with the public.

A new political style has been showcased by the Party’s top leadership. These new provincial leaders are expected to emulate it in solving local problems.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Communist Youth League, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, hebei, Hu Chunhua, Hu Jintao, Inner Mongolia, jilin, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, Shaanxi, Shanxi, tainted food, Tibet, Wang Yang, Wukan, Xi Jinping, Zhejiang
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“That’s why I feel so unfairly treated. If I had wanted to make money I would never have published the books,” sobbed Liu, shaking as he clung to the metal bench. For over 10 years, Liu said, he had bought, printed and sent out books to promote and research environmental protection – and spent 200,000 yuan (US$32,000) of his own money. “They say I made over 70,000 yuan in profit, but that’s nowhere near what I spent. I made up the rest from my own salary. If I wanted to make a profit, I would never have done anything so daft.”

[…] Gesturing and smiling, the prosecutor retorted that “there is no requirement for an operation to be run for profit for it to be an illegal business – not all businesses are run for profit.”

[…] Liu broke down again at the end of the hearing, as he complained of the injustice of being imprisoned with robbers, murderers and fraudsters. “And the so-called crime was mine, I’m very sorry that others have been dragged in.” With that he stood and bowed deeply to his three co-defendants, managers and employees of the printers.

[…] Before he was arrested, Liu wrote on his microblog: “If one day the authorities speak to me, please don’t worry, as I have only spoken the truth. If one day I am detained, please don’t protest, as I have not broken the law. If one day I have some accident, please don’t be sad, just bury me under a tree and let me fertilise the seeds of truth.”

Supporters believe that Liu has fallen victim to a political prosecution and overly broad law. From Caixin:

A wide interpretation of illegal businesses has resulted in the prosecution of other well-known activists in the recent past. Prior to Liu’s indictment, the author Xie Chaoping had been charged for illegal business activities upon publishing his own book The Great Relocation. Under scrutiny from the media, officials of Weinan, Shaanxi Province, dropped the charges after public ridicule.

“Even while the memory of Xie Chaoping’s case remains fresh in our minds, here comes charges against Liu Futang,” said Zhan Jiang, media professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. More than this, the extent of activities falling under “illegal business” in the Chinese Criminal Law is far too broad, said Zhan.

While the Haikou prosecutor’s office is calling this a case purely related to economic crimes, many believe that Liu’s persistent environmental campaigning may have led to his prosecution.

[…] “The government first dug through his past, primarily scouring the projects he had approved before retiring to see if he had left loopholes, but they couldn’t find anything incriminating,” a friend of Liu’s said.

South China Morning Post reported last month that environmental activists have rallied around Liu. 26 NGOs and 96 individuals signed a statement which read, in part: “How the court handles this case serves as a test for the wisdom and conscience of Hainan, and will also decide the public’s willingness to be involved in environmental protection in the future”.

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Post tags: environmental activism, Hainan, illegal trading, Shaanxi, trials, writers, xie chaoping, Zhan Jiang
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If Chinese factory workers are feeling frustrated with life, that is likely to get worse before it gets better, as the economy faces a volatile period captured in an August story in Southern Weekend headlined “The First Layoff in the Last Ten Years.”

The riot at Foxconn—or any of the other five hundred “mass incidents” that China records on an average day—has implications far beyond Apple. Labor activists say that they are happening more often this year than last. A little over a week ago, six thousand workers at a Flextronics Technology factory in Shanghai went on strike for severance pay. In June, it was a hundred workers in a mini-uproar at another Foxconn plant. They are no longer simply calling for better wages. “Many of the protests this year appear to be related to the country’s economic slowdown, as employees demand the payment of overdue wages from financially struggling companies, or insist on compensation when money-losing factories in coastal provinces are closed and moved to lower-cost cities in the interior,” as the Times put it.

It was largely business as usual on Tuesday, writes The Financial Times’ Kathrin Hille, but observers say that more issues will likely resurface despite Foxconn’s attempts to improve conditions. Her interviews revealed many of the work-related frustrations of employees at the Taiyuan plant, from the obvious (unpaid wages to lack of overtime during the upcoming National Day holiday) to the less-than-obvious:

Another staff member, who asked not to be named, says many felt inspired by the anti-Japanese protests across the country earlier this month.

“It is so rare in China that you can demonstrate when you’re unhappy about something. It felt like the right moment,” he says.

In an interview with Gawker, China labor scholar Eli Friedman spoke at length about evolving labor conditions in China, including the ongoing shift in geographic concentration by companies such as Foxconn:

The major thing that Foxconn has done, which is to some extent indicative of a broader trend, is a lot of capital relocation from these coastal areas, like Shanghai and Shenzhen, into the interior. They’re doing that for that a number of reasons: the cost of labor and land are cheaper. In the interior the local governments are more excited about trying to attract investment—if you’re in Sichuan Province on the west, you’d get more tax breaks; you get the government mobilized to try and find workers for you. So a lot of these factories are moving into the interior.

Workers will now, to a greater extent, be living in the same place they work. Whereas now migrant workers come from interior and western provinces to the coast. And when they’re in these big cities in the coastal areas they don’t have access to public goods like education, health care, housing and subsidies. But if they’re back in the interior, they might be more in their own community, and things might be a little bit more stable.

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Post tags: anti-Japan demonstrations 2012, Apple, Foxconn, labor rights, labor unrest, mass incidents, riots, Shaanxi, unpaid wages
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Amid the online scrutiny of his watch collection, Yuan Dacai admitted to purchasing five, but netizens identified a few more.

“Watch Brother” Gone, “Watch Uncle” in Crosshairs: Last month, Shaanxi Provincial Work Safety Administration Chief Yang Dacai became infamous for smiling at the scene of a terrible road accident that killed 36. Netizens found photos of Yang wearing various luxury watches—many more than he could afford on his public salary. Now relieved of his post, “Watch Brother” has drawn attention to Shaanxi Vice Governor Li Jinzhu, a man some claim covered up Yang’s corruption.

- Li Jin(zhu) (李金（柱）)
- (Li) Jinzhu（李）金柱
- Governor Li (李省长)
- Vice Governor Li 李副省长
- Watch Brother (表哥)
- Watch Uncle (表叔): Netizens’ new nickname for Li Jinzhu.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet censorship, Li Jinzhu, official corruption, Sensitive Words Series, Shaanxi, sina weibo, weibo, Yang Dacai
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The Taiyuan plant, which employs about 79,000 workers, makes automobile electronic components, consumer electronic components and precision moldings. An employee told Reuters the plant also makes parts and assembles Apple’s iPhone 5.

In a statement, Foxconn cited police as saying about 40 people were taken to hospital for medical attention and a number were arrested.

The company said the incident escalated from what it called a personal dispute between several employees at around 11 p.m. on Sunday in a privately managed dormitory, and was brought under control by local police at around 3 a.m.

Taiwan-based Foxconn is the world’s largest contract maker of electronic goods and has come under fire along with Apple for the labor conditions at its China factories, though a report released last month found that conditions were improving. The New York Times reported that unconfirmed photographs and video emerged on social media showing riot police and smashed windows at what is believed to be Foxconn’s Taiyuan plant:

Geoffrey Crothall, spokesman for the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit advocacy group in Hong Kong seeking collective bargaining and other protections for workers in mainland China, said workers in China had become increasingly emboldened.

“They’re more willing to stand up for their rights, to stand up to injustice,” he said.

The same Taiyuan factory was the site of a brief strike during a pay dispute last March, Hong Kong media reported then.

Social media postings suggested that some injuries might have occurred when people were trampled in crowds of protesters.

See also “Meet China’s Factory Workers” from CDT.

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Post tags: Apple, Foxconn, labor conditions, riots, Shaanxi, Taiyuan
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The money has already been handed over by officials in the family’s home township of Zengjia, near the city of Ankang in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. “The signing of the agreement means neither party should raise any question related to the issue again,” Xinhua quoted a local official as saying.

[…] Mr. Deng, who had previously said he planned to file a criminal complaint against the local government, said on Wednesday that the family wouldn’t be pursuing criminal charges after the settlement.

Zhang Kai, the family’s attorney, said they had given up on the criminal case because they didn’t expect to get the necessary help from local law enforcement. “Although they have the right to press charges, if the prosecutors don’t fulfill their responsibilities, it’s impossible to do,” he said.

The settlement will not end the fierce discussion that has arisen around the case. Evan Osnos described the argument over China’s family planning policy at The New Yorker, with money weighing heavily both for and against the status quo.

[… Last] week, a group of Chinese government researchers called, in the name of economic sense, to ease the one-child policy as soon as possible in order to mitigate the impact of a rapidly aging population and a decline in the nation’s number of working-age citizens. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” three researchers from a state-backed think tank wrote on Tuesday in the China Economic Times. (h/t Bloomberg.) The economic effects are no mystery: China is facing a wave of retirements and does not have enough people to replace them. The workforce is on pace to decline by 17.3 per cent. Boosting the fertility rate to 2.3 children per woman, from the current level of roughly 1.6, would cut that dropoff in half by 2050.

But will it relax the policy? Not overnight. The forces arrayed against that change are considerable. The sociologist Li Jianxin, of Peking University, has warned of the coming demographic danger to the economy, but has concluded: “Our top decision makers haven’t realized the seriousness of the problem,” Li told the Global Times this week. There is another reason to expect change to be slow: it’s a money-maker: “To some extent, the expensive fines for extra babies have become a convenient means for local authorities to reap huge profits,” Li said.

With doubtful prospects of a renewed supply of fresh workers, some have suggested that existing ones be kept on longer. But pushing back the retirement age would be hugely unpopular, as Adam Minter explained at Bloomberg.

Nevertheless, He Seping, director of the Social Security Institute at the ministry, presented a specific reform proposal at a Beijing academic seminar […]. According to the plan he laid out, starting in 2016, on alternating years, a single year would be added to the current retirement age so that by 2045 the uniform retirement age would be 65. Theoretically, at least, the delay would allow more money to be paid into the system to support current retirees and address the worker-retiree imbalance.

[…] On July 3, Youth Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Youth League, the traditional power base of President Hu Jintao, published a scathing critique of the reform proposal by popular essayist Shusheng Xiang. […]

It said, “Though the delayed retirement proposal was opposed by the public, some who don’t need to pay social security themselves still advocate delayed retirement.” The piece continued, “If the policy designers can’t give up their own interests, then the people may ask: ‘Why do we have to always be the ones to suffer?’”

The rising cost of raising children, meanwhile, may be all the financial incentive many parents need to avoid having more than one child. In his survey of the debate at NPR, Frank Langfitt talked to a building painter from Jiangsu who has three children—legally.

Zhang, smoking a cigarette at a picnic table outside a KFC, says his son’s formula and snacks alone were taking up a huge chunk of his average monthly wage of $126.

“I really feel like I’m being suffocated,” he continues, echoing many parents who complain about the high cost of child-rearing in China today. “Honestly, my wife and I can hardly buy any new clothes in a year. It is too hard to raise a child. I can’t afford it. I certainly would have preferred to have had only one child.”

Zheng Zhenzhen, the Chinese demographer, says people like Zhang are typical. She has surveyed more than 2,000 women of child-bearing age in Jiangsu. Most didn’t want another child.

“We found that having less children is a very widely observed norm,” says Zheng. “Even the farmers, they don’t want too many children, just one or two.”

See also Global Times’ account of the difficulties faced even by those who are legally entitled to second children and, from China Real Time Report, Stanley Lubman’s explanation of the law on forced abortion and the poor prospects for holding abusive officials to account.

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Post tags: aging populaion, demographics, family planning, forced abortions, legal system, living expenses, one-child policy, pensions, retirement, Shaanxi
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The recent controversy over forced abortions, which grew after officials in Shaanxi province forced a woman to abort her 7-month old fetus and graphic photos surfaced online two weeks ago, has reportedly grown uglier. The South China Morning Post reports today that the woman’s husband went missing Sunday evening after local officials and other residents of Zhenping county had spent days harassing the family:

Deng Jiyuan, the 29-year-old father of the aborted fetus, had been constantly followed by local officials and thugs, his family said. A large banner had been put up in their town calling them traitors and demanding they leave. Deng’s family at first thought he had fled but are now worried that might not be the case as they were unable to contact him yesterday, his sister, Deng Jicai, told the South China Morning Post.

She said the harassment started when her brother said he planned to go to Beijing for a television and online video interview about the abortion. He was then watched, followed, stopped and even beaten during several attempts to leave for the capital.

Deng Jicai said the family had been followed everywhere for more than a week, including to the hospital where her brother’s wife, Feng Jianmei, is staying. She said four or five men even followed her brother when he went to the toilet. “They followed us and said they would take us by car wherever we want to go,” she said. “We feel like prisoners.”

The harassment worsened after the family gave an interview to the German weekly magazine Stern on Friday. On Sunday, more than 40 men and women arrived at the hospital holding two banners reading “Beat the traitors soundly and expel them from Zengjia township”.

To recap, Feng Jianmei, seven months pregnant with her second child, was arrested on June 2, brought to the hospital and given an injection to induce labor after she failed to pay a 40,000 yuan (US$6,275) fine. She miscarried on June 4. Local authorities claim they acted within their rights to enforce China’s family planning policy, often called the “one-child policy.” But while the deputy mayor reportedly apologized to the family and pledged to punish the local officials responsible for the incident, comments and images on the web indicate a different response. The above photo made the rounds on both the Chinese and English-language blogs, including ChinaSmack, which translated the following microblog post detailing the online smear campaign also allegedly underway against the victim and her family:

On the 24th, @假装在纽约 once again posted a microblog message: Looked at the Zhenping discussion forum on Baidu, the local government has already organized a large amount of “water army” [individuals or companies that can be paid to post comments on the internet to help shape public opinion], its filled with abuse and rumors against the Deng family——that doctors exposed documents showing it was the Deng family who agreed to abort the baby; that Sister Jicai [a family member of Feng Jianmei] who is depending on selling out her country will soon enter the Japanese AV [adult video] industry as a “dark horse“; that the Deng family agreed to Japanese media interviews, going over to the Japanese, enemies of the country, no different from Chinese traitors; that no one in Zhenping county’s history has ever enjoyed better post-birth care than Feng Jianmei… The Shaanxi Forced Abortion case that has caused a sensation is once again creating waves on microblogs.

The Ministry of Tofu also translated the following Weibo post from Deng Jicai, the victim’s sister:

“I feel like crying but have no tears. Where is justice? Zengjia Township, where I was born and brought up, how can I still love you?I just don’t understand in what way I have committed treason! I don’t know what you mean by calling me a ‘traitor.’ My lord, in what way I have sold the People’s Republic of China? I didn’t beg you for pity for my miserable sister-in-law. I didn’t ask you for even the slightest bit of sympathy. Just get lost! Let us go home!!!”

At Tea Leaf Nation, David Wertime reflects on the incident and the netizen sentiment that has erupted in response:

You read that correctly. A local government is alleged to have staged a protest against its own citizen–only, that is, after robbing the citizen of a child just a month and a half away from entering the world.

If @作家草军书‘s assertion (retweeted from an earlier but less widely-circulated tweet by @假装在纽约) is true, it certainly proves the local government in Zhenping is truculent, not to mention tone-deaf. Also noteworthy is the scope of netizen reaction. Not only has this tweet been retweeted nearly 50,000 times and garnered over 21,000 comments, it has netizens commenting on government rot at the highest levels.

Despite the ugly scenes from Zhenping county, and perhaps in response to it, Bloomberg reports Tuesday that the Chinese Communist Party is tolerating the debate on the one-child policy. The state-run Global Times published an editorial on Monday asserting that China’s family planning policy needs reform:

Policymakers do need to reflect upon and readjust the policy. Over recent decades, the Chinese population has witnessed changes in its structure again. One of the most prominent changes is the growing aging population. It is necessary to prevent a horror scenario as the one-child generation is no longer able to support that of their parents as they grow older.

The government is already aware of this, and has loosened the one-child policy under specific conditions. For instance, if both parents are only children, they can have two children. Families with extraordinary pressure to take care of the elderly can also be exempt from the one-child limitation.

This loosening tendency should continue. Even in rural areas today, people have far different mentalities about giving birth. Younger Chinese couples understand that they should provide a good education and healthy environment for their children, and many have already dropped the idea of giving birth only to have a son.

After all, the essence of the family planning policy is to adjust the timing and scale of population trends, rather than rigidly limit the number of children.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abortion, forced abortions, microblogs, netizens, one-child policy, online public opinion, Shaanxi, social reform, Zhenping County
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Another key question is how much internal unity there really is, given that the Communist Party is splintering into unofficial groupings. Xi Jinping is from the princeling faction — the children of the communist elite. The man tipped to be his premier, Li Keqiang, is from the more populist faction, who hail from humbler backgrounds and may have risen up through the Communist Youth League.

Brookings’ Li describes the new reality as “one party, two coalitions” — in other words, “populists versus elitists, or Communist Youth League versus princelings” — requiring leadership by consensus. Political analysts frequently cite Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party — in which the factionalization has become institutionalized — as an example of how China’s Communist Party could develop.

“You do see this kind of factional infighting become increasingly transparent, and Chinese society, Chinese intellectual community and Chinese leadership becoming more diversified or pluralistic,” says Li. “That’s a welcome development, but it also poses serious challenges.”

In Part 2 on Tuesday, Lim traces Xi’s princeling roots from his ancestral family home in Shaanxi province, where his father, Xi Zhongxun, suffered for many years amid China’s Mao-era political turmoil before rising as the architect of Deng Xiaoping’s special economic zones:

His son, Xi Jinping, also suffered: He was labeled a “reactionary student” when he was just 14 years old, according to the state-run Shaanxi Farmers’ Daily newspaper.

Despite that, the younger Xi — China’s current vice president — spent much of that time trying to join the very Communist Party that was persecuting his father, applying as many as 10 times before his application was accepted in 1974, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, citing an article said to be written by Xi himself.

“At that time, if you want to have a career, you do need to have that ticket,” says Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explaining how joining the Communist Party was the only chance of social mobility in the political context of that era.

From age 15, Xi Jinping was sent to live in the countryside, spending seven years in a remote Shaanxi village, first as an ordinary farmer, then as a low-level official.

“He told Chinese official media many times that was his formative experience. He learned a lot of things: humanity, humility, adaptability and endurance,” Li says. “Certainly it also gave him a chance to understand rural China.”

See also a rundown of profiles published about Xi Jinping in the lead-up to his U.S. trip, and read more about the 5th generation of CCP leaders that he belongs to, known as “princelings,” via CDT.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP 5th generation, Hu Jintao, leadership transition, political reform, princelings, Shaanxi, Xi Jinping, xi jinping u.s. visit 2012
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For 10-year-old student Xie Xiaoyuan, just getting to school is an ordeal. On a recent day, her frostbitten ears are testament to just how difficult the trip is.

“I get up at five o’clock,” she says, “then I comb my hair and start walking.”

Xie navigates a mountain path in China’s remote Shaanxi province in the dark, trudging through snowstorms and mudslides. Then she has to get a bus for about 10 miles. She hasn’t time to eat breakfast.

“For lunch, I spend 15 cents on two pieces of bread and a drink,” she says.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch — or so the economic theory goes. But that’s no longer the case for Xie and the 25,000 poverty-stricken children in China who now receive a free meal, thanks to the “Free Lunch for Children” charity campaign set up by a Chinese journalist.

Indirectly, his efforts have led to the government announcing it will provide nutritional support for 26 million of China’s poorest children every day.

While childhood obesity expands in China’s cities, China Daily reported last year on “chronically underfed” children in poor rural areas. One post at Ministry of Tofu showed a group of rural children on their long and perilous daily trudge to fetch water in drought-hit Sichuan, while another used images of empty chairs to vividly illustrate the lives of families split by economic migration.

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Post tags: food supply, nutrition, poverty, poverty alleviation, rural children, rural education, schools, Shaanxi
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Visitors to Wang Baoying’s new house must tread softly or they will frighten her son. The four-year-old boy is not afraid of strangers. He is terrified his home will fall down.

This is not just the fear of a childish imagination. Wang’s concrete home – built this year to resettle migrants from China’s latest and greatest hydro-engineering project – wobbles when she walks. Her neighbour’s floor has completely collapsed. Another’s bedroom is tilting. There are cracks on many of the walls ….

The former farmer is one of 345,000 people who are being relocated in a desperate bid to ease Beijing’s drought crisis with a transfusion of water from the Yangtze basin, 1,277km to the south. Her old home and farmland will soon be flooded by the central leg of three vast channels that make up the £40bn South-North water diversion, a 50-year project to replenish the arid north of China. According to US diplomatic cables released via WikiLeaks last week, the project is plagued by pollution and misconceived.

Though Wang cried when she left her home in Xichuan, village leaders and propaganda slogans assured her the sacrifice was necessary for the nation. Migrants have also been promised new homes, compensation and farmland. But the reality, as many are discovering, is shoddily constructed housing, money that has been skimmed by officials, no jobs and a cold welcome from existing locals who are reluctant to share their property.

The article is accompanied by a set of photos showing the affected area. Previously via CDT, ‘China’s Biggest Relocation Project Yet‘ examined similar relocations in Shaanxi, while ‘China’s Coal Rush Leaves Three Million Living on the Edge focused on those displaced by mining in Shanxi.

Sources:

China water resettlement: ‘Honest folk have lost out’ – guardian.co.uk
China’s South-North water diversion resettlement – in pictures – guardian.co.uk

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Post tags: corrupt officials, dams, dams resettlement, Henan, jonathan watts, Shaanxi, Shanxi, south-to-north water diversion project
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In the best-case situations, those who get moved end up with nicer homes, indoor plumbing, access to services and cleaner living conditions. The dark side is that frequently the relocated become internal migrants mired in debt, without farmland or income.

“Eventually, every forced migrant in China becomes a refugee,” said Chen Zongshun, author of an investigative book about the 1.5 million people relocated for the world’s biggest hydropower project, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.

A study this spring says demolition and forced relocation are the biggest flashpoints for social unrest in China, even more than toxic pollution or labor issues. With an estimated more than 180,000 protests per year in China, that’s certainly not lost on a government that now spends more on domestic security than its military budget.

While officials have finally admitted to problems with the Three Gorges Dam, including the relocation of local residents, the largest resettlements are yet to come:

In order to transform this stretch of the Qinling mountains prone to earthquakes and landslides to a safe urban zone, and to channel the river north, the Shaanxi provincial government will move more than 2.5 million people off the rivers and mountains. In the north of the province, another half-a-million people are slated for relocation.

That 3 million is twice the number of people resettled to make way for the world’s largest dam, at the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River.

Shaanxi’s relocation plan, tied in part to China’s massive South-North Water Diversion Project, will change the geographic heart of the country. The Han River, which runs through these mountains, is a key tributary of the Yangtze. It’s one of three channels being diverted to deliver trillion of gallons of water per year north ….

The final fate for nearly everyone in this region seems uncertain. Many don’t know if they must move, while those who do know fear monthly bank payments and losing their farms, when they already own houses and land.

“The rich people are getting richer, the poor are worse off and the difference between us is growing,” said Pingchuan Mayor Yang.

Shaanxi was also the site of the Sanmen Xia dam, whose construction in 1956 marked the start of a decades-long ordeal for displaced local residents and the writer Xie Chaoping, who faced harrassment and detention for recording it.

The GlobalPost series also includes a video report “in which [a] man in [a] house about to fall off a cliff praises [the] Harmonious Society” which is pushing it over the edge:

Sources:

For development, China moves millions – GlobalPost
China’s biggest relocation project yet – GlobalPost
Video: Relocating Shaanxi province – GlobalPost

© samuel wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dams resettlement, refugees, relocation, sanmenxia, Shaanxi, Three Gorges Dam
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Mr Gao’s older brother, Gao Zhiyi, 57, issued a missing person notice pleading for any information. “August 14 is the end of his five-year sentence and he should be released,” said Mr Gao.

“Our biggest concern now is whether he is still alive. I am worried they have already murdered him. Otherwise why should his family not be told anything about him?”

Mr Gao, who was born into absolute poverty and lived in a cave in Shaanxi province, taught himself law and passed the bar in 1995. In 2001, he was even named as one of China’s top ten lawyers by the Ministry of Justice.

However, he fell foul of the Chinese government after taking on a series of cases involving members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and China’s underground Christian churches.

Reuters reports that the authorities have claimed to have no knowledge of Gao’s whereabouts:

Police officers have told Gao Zhisheng’s family that he is missing or they ignore pleas for information, said Gao Zhiyi. “I’ve tried calling many times, but get nothing,” he added ….

“I’m an ordinary citizen, and there’s nothing I can do,” Gao’s brother Gao Zhiyi wrote in the missing person appeal. “If anyone knows something, please tell his family, and we will certainly show our gratitude,” he wrote.

For more on Gao Zhisheng, see the CDT archives.

Sources:

Gao Zhisheng’s family appeal for his release – Telegraph
Family of missing China rights lawyer seeks news on whereabouts – Reuters

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Post tags: activists, Christianity, detention, Falun Gong, Gao Zhisheng, lawyers, Shaanxi
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The price for a parking space has hit a record 400,000 yuan ($61,963) in Xi’an, where the average price of a new home is 5,398 yuan per square meter. Even the average price of a parking space in Xi’an, 170,000 yuan, is 31 times greater than the average square-meter price for residences, by far the biggest differential of seven cities surveyed.

“It’s about time the sale of parking spaces was regulated,” said Zhang Jigang, director of property market supervision in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province. “Some developers have been making excessive profits and this has affected social stability ….”

The situation is worse in big cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou. In some high-end communities in Beijing, the cost to own a parking spot has reached 800,000 yuan ….

More than 23,000 parking spaces were created in Beijing in 2010 – but 700,000 new cars hit the road there.

Shanghaiist lists a number of other factors conspiring to turn car ownership in China into a profoundly mixed blessing.

© samuel wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: auto market, automobile industry, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shaanxi, urban planning, xian
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Liangjiahe is the foundation of a by-the-bootstraps creation myth that Mr. Xi has long cultivated. In an essay for a 2003 book Mr. Xi said his seven years here led to a life transformation. Using standard Marxist-Leninist-Maoist language, he wrote about learning to serve the people.

We “mustn’t stand high above the masses nor consider the masses as our fish and meat,” he said. He went on: “The hard life of the grass roots can cultivate one’s will. With that kind of experience, whatever difficulties I would encounter in the future, I am fully charged with courage to take on any challenge, to believe in the impossible and to conquer obstacles without panic.”

The village is in a narrow valley about 70 miles from Yan’an, the city in the northern province of Shaanxi that served as the Communist Party’s revolutionary base for 12 years during the Chinese civil war. Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, a native of Shaanxi, helped build the base and became a venerated party leader. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution, and his son was sent here from Beijing at age 15 to toil in a work brigade.

The village comprises 100 households, twice as big as in Mr. Xi’s day. The people’s homes are caves built into the dry hillsides. The elders farm fields of corn, pumpkins and potatoes; younger people have left for cities seeking work. A fine yellow silt covers the landscape, the signature feature of the Loess Plateau. Mr. Xi once wrote that he was “a son of the yellow earth.” Donkey carts plod down the road. Women shuffle home with bundles of wood lashed to their backs.

Read more about Xi Jinping and about the Cultural Revolution via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP 5th generation, Cultural Revolution, Shaanxi, Xi Jinping
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