Tag Archives: National People Congress

News, Politics, Government

China lawmakers know their role: 'Raise our hands'

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This is how delegates in China‘s highest legislature voted for president: Each was handed a ballot with one name on it: Xi Jinping. Each dropped it in a box.

No mark was required to vote for Xi, so calling it rubberstamping suggests more work than there actually was.

Any suspense about the choice of the Communist Party leadership was lifted in November, when Xi became the ruling party’s general secretary. Thursday’s vote by nearly 3,000 delegates for Xi’s more ceremonial title of president was a mere ritual.

“Our job is to raise our hands,” said Han Deyun, a lawyer from the megacity of Chongqing and one of the few National People’s Congress delegates who are not from the ruling party. Delegates like him are supposed to add a veneer of democracy to the proceedings.

“We raise our hands to give them legitimacy,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

This week, in a legislative session that ends on Sunday, the Communist Party is wrapping up the country’s once-a-decade power transition through what it calls election for key government posts. In reality, there’s usually one candidate per slot, all candidates are trusted insiders and the results are pre-determined.

The highly choreographed congress serves a practical purpose, installing a president, a premier and other ministers who will oversee the world’s second-largest economy. But some Chinese are tired of what they see as a hollow affair.

“The voting by the national delegates is completely meaningless,” Chinese writer Murong Xuecun said in an interview. “If they were replaced with 3,000 machines, the result would be the same. On this matter, the free will of those deputies has been taken away.”

The comments by Han and Murong Xuecun reflect a growing tendency among a minority of Chinese — especially intellectuals and often in online forums — to openly call out the contradictions in the country’s political system.

“It could be a vocal minority,” said David Bandurski, a researcher with Hong Kong-based China Media Project. “But still, that’s important.”

To be sure, many Chinese and most NPC delegates still toe the party line, as spread by a propaganda machine that touts China‘s election system as a true, advanced democracy, and presses …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

China names Xi Jinping new president after he took helm of Communist Party

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China‘s new leader Xi Jinping capped his rise to the top Thursday by adding the largely ceremonial title of president, though he will need more time and cautious maneuvering to consolidate his power and build support from a public that is increasingly clamoring for change.

The elevation of Xi to the presidency by the rubberstamp national legislature gave him the last of the three titles held by his predecessor, Hu Jintao. The move was expected after Xi was named head of the Communist Party and chairman of its military, positions of true power, last November in a once-a-decade handover to a new group of leaders that has been years in the making.

Despite being formally in charge, it will be within the party’s top ranks — in which powerful people are often divided by patronage, ideology or financial interests — that Xi will find the biggest challenges.

This will be doubly so if he follows through on his pledge to tackle the endemic graft he has pinpointed as detrimental to the party’s survival, said Willy Lam, a China politics watcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Graft is deeply ingrained in the party’s patronage-based culture and those at the top — many of whose families have benefited from their political connections — are believed to be most resistant to anti-corruption measures that diminish their prerogatives.

“He has to walk a fine line,” Lam said. “If he were really serious about going after senior cadres, he might establish his authority within the rank and file, however, that would also jeopardize his relationship with the power blocs and with the holders of vested interests.”

Xi’s accession marks only the second orderly transfer of power in more than six decades of communist rule. He was the only candidate for president in Thursday’s vote. Delegates to the country’s figurehead parliament, the National People’s Congress, voted 2,952-to-1 for Xi in balloting that amounts to a political ritual echoing the decisions of the party leadership. Three delegates abstained.

Named vice president in a vote of 2,839-80 was Li Yuanchao, a liberal-minded reformer and a close ally for decades of Hu. The move breaks with the practice of recent years, because Li is not in the party’s seven-member ruling inner sanctum, but is seen as a concession to Hu’s lingering influence and as a reward to a capable if not wholly popular official.

Xi takes charge at a time when the public is looking for leadership that can address sputtering economic growth and mounting anger over widespread graft, high-handed officialdom and increasing unfairness. A growth-at-all-costs model that defined the outgoing administration’s era has befouled the country’s air, waterways and soil, adding another serious threat to social stability.

Underlying public unhappiness with the party is a deficit in trust.

“At present, the party and the government have very little public credibility,” said Zhang Ming, a China politics expert at the prestigious Renmin University in Beijing. “The way to regain credibility is to at least show some results, but at this point that can’t be seen and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

China names Xi Jinping president, capping his rise

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China‘s new leader Xi Jinping capped his rise to the top Thursday by adding the largely ceremonial title of president, though he will need more time and cautious maneuvering to consolidate his power and build support from a public that is increasingly clamoring for change.

The elevation of Xi to the presidency by the rubberstamp national legislature gave him the last of the three titles held by his predecessor, Hu Jintao. The move was expected after Xi was named head of the Communist Party and chairman of its military, positions of true power, last November in a once-a-decade handover to a new group of leaders that has been years in the making.

Despite being formally in charge, it will be within the party’s top ranks — in which powerful people are often divided by patronage, ideology or financial interests — that Xi will find the biggest challenges.

This will be doubly so if he follows through on his pledge to tackle the endemic graft he has pinpointed as detrimental to the party’s survival, said Willy Lam, a China politics watcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Graft is deeply ingrained in the party’s patronage-based culture and those at the top — many of whose families have benefited from their political connections — are believed to be most resistant to anti-corruption measures that diminish their prerogatives.

“He has to walk a fine line,” Lam said. “If he were really serious about going after senior cadres, he might establish his authority within the rank and file, however, that would also jeopardize his relationship with the power blocs and with the holders of vested interests.”

Xi’s accession marks only the second orderly transfer of power in more than six decades of communist rule. He was the only candidate for president in Thursday’s vote. Delegates to the country’s figurehead parliament, the National People’s Congress, voted 2,952-to-1 for Xi in balloting that amounts to a political ritual echoing the decisions of the party leadership. Three delegates abstained.

Named vice president in a vote of 2,839-80 was Li Yuanchao, a liberal-minded reformer and a close ally for decades of Hu. The move breaks with the practice of recent years, because Li is not in the party’s seven-member ruling inner sanctum, but is seen as a concession to Hu’s lingering influence and as a reward to a capable if not wholly popular official.

Xi takes charge at a …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

AP PHOTOS: China's congress tightly orchestrated

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Each spring, thousands of people from China‘s farthest reaches stream into the country’s capital to attend the biggest event on the political calendar, the National People’s Congress. It’s a tightly orchestrated affair that rarely veers from the script, a challenging assignment for any photographer trying to capture interesting and compelling images of the event.

After years of covering these annual legislative sessions for The Associated Press, I decided to try something different this year. In an effort to present a fresh, new perspective, I turned to technology from the past. In this case, a film camera.

Infused with vibrant, saturated colors and a grainy texture that carries a hint of nostalgia, film photography conveys a richness in tone that tends to be missing in today’s digital images. Shooting the often staid political meetings on film adds a sense of timelessness — accentuating the feeling that these scenes have played out before.

To create a cinematic quality, I used a Hasselblad XPan camera that produces a panoramic format nearly twice as wide as the traditional 35mm frame that most photojournalists use. The panoramic view captures more details — the people, the colors, the layers, and the spaces. It captures what’s happening at the margins, not just at the center of the scene.

For example, one panorama shows delegates from the Xinjiang region of western China having group discussions, while their secretaries chat and a female official shields her face from the camera with a notebook.

In another, soldiers dressed as ushers guard a curtained corridor, with an anti-explosive device at one end of the frame and a huge vase at the other — a fitting metaphor, perhaps, for the historical and political events playing out around them.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Automobiles

Report: China considering upping hybrid car incentives

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By Zach Bowman

Toyota dealer in China with salesmen on phone

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Bloomberg reports China may be set to step up subsidies for hybrid and fuel-efficient new automobiles. The country’s industry minister, Miao Wei, said, “New-energy vehicles are the future. Fuel-efficient cars are now,” while speaking with reporters at the National People’s Congress. So far, the Chinese government hasn’t had much luck talking buyers into fuel-efficient models. Last year, the country forecast total electric vehicle sales to reach 500,000 by 2014, but 2012 only saw 13,000 models sold. Rather than adjust those targets, some analysts believe China will extend incentives to hybrid vehicles as well.

China just concluded a three-year pilot program that gave buyers the equivalent of $9,650 toward the purchase of an EV and $8,045 for plug-in hybrids. Standard hybrids, meanwhile, only saw incentives of $482.73. But that may change as the country moves toward its target of selling a combined five million EV, plug-in and hybrid models by 2020. If China does increase its hybrid incentives, the news may help Toyota more than any other company. Like other Japanese automakers, Toyota has seen sales slide off in the wake of an ongoing territorial dispute between the Chinese and Japanese governments. But stronger incentives may make the Toyota Prius, the world’s most popular hybrid, attractive enough to overcome those hurdles.

China considering upping hybrid car incentives originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog

News, Politics, Government

No more lobster: China's new leader bans official extravagance

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Pack your own toothbrush. That’s an order.

Military officials descending on China‘s capital for the country’s biggest political event have been told to bring their own toiletries. Legislative delegates arriving at the airport no longer find welcoming teams of photogenic, waving women, and police aren’t clearing their way through Beijing‘s traffic snarl. Once feted with banquets of lobster and sharks’ fin, the delegates now serve themselves at drab buffets, and stay in guesthouses instead of luxury hotels.

China‘s new leader Xi Jinping has declared a ban on official extravagance, and that has banished some of the usual pomp from this year’s gathering of the National People’s Congress.

“There’s basically no more meat for breakfast now. We’re eating at buffets as if we’re traveling with an ordinary travel agency that has put us up in a hotel with no star grading,” said Han Deyun, a lawyer from the southwestern megacity of Chongqing who has been a congress delegate for 11 years. “Lunch and dinners are also simpler, four or five hot dishes, but no seafood.”

Wednesday’s lunch offerings for the Beijing delegation featured the relatively mundane egg drop soup, boiled corn, stir fried bokchoy and sticky rice with pork.

Widespread corruption and the lavish lifestyles of officials — who often drive luxury cars, own multiple villas and send their children to elite foreign universities — have become the biggest sources of public anger at the ruling Communist Party. They serve as a stark reminder of the unfairness of a system that’s enabled a small fraction of people with high-level political connections to accrue massive wealth.

Xi has seized on the issue since coming into office in November, warning that the graft threatens the party’s survival and ordering officials to cut out the excesses. He’s been depicted as eating only four dishes and a soup — down from the usual 10-or-so-course meals — while on inspection tours and has demanded that elaborate welcoming ceremonies and traffic diversions be done away with.

The anti-graft fight also featured prominently in the government work report that opened the congress Tuesday, though it remains to be seen whether Xi’s administration can introduce deeper, more painful, reforms such as requiring all levels of China‘s officialdom to declare personal assets.

To be sure, canceling banquets and the like are not the solution to rooting out graft. Anti-corruption experts point out that correcting official profligacy attacks only the symptoms.

And not all delegates to this week’s legislative meetings have even gotten the anti-extravagance message: Some high-profile members of a government advisory panel — mostly celebrities or entrepreneurs — have been spotted toting designer handbags and belts. But it’s a lot less than in recent years, when volunteer corruption hunters on the Internet posted photos of officials wearing Swiss watches and designer suits.

Daniel Wu, a luxury aficionado who studies photos of officials and their watches, said that while he’s seen fewer fancy timepieces this year, he attributes it to image-minding rather than any willingness to sacrifice the perks of power.

“Everyone has become more cautious and Xi’s new government keeps …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

China's Xi rides high hopes ahead of presidency

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China’s fawning state media, jaded social media commentators and even poor corn and cabbage farmers agree: new Communist Party chief Xi Jinping is off to a good start.

“General Secretary Xi doesn’t put on any airs. He talks like an ordinary person,” said 69-year-old farmer Tang Rongbin. The new leader visited Tang’s sparse, dimly lit farmhouse in Luotuowan village in December, bearing gifts of cooking oil, flour and a blanket.

Xi has styled himself as an economic reformer, an iron-fisted graft-buster, a staunch nationalist and a no-frills man-of-the-people — spurring expectations for change. But as he prepares to be appointed to the largely ceremonial role of president, pressure will be growing on him to deliver.

China faces rising public anger over endemic corruption, a burgeoning rich-poor gap and the degradation of the country’s air, soil and waterways. Slower economic growth and territorial disputes, especially with Japan, add to the tension.

Mounting protests over environmental issues, land seizures and high-handed officialdom point to the underlying social discontent. Days before the party conclave that brought Xi to power last year, thousands of protesters in the eastern city of Ningbo faced off against riot police outside government offices, calling on officials to halt a chemical plant expansion.

“I think there has been a revolution of rising expectations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on party politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “People realize they can get away with even demonstrations to make their wills heard.”

Joining the clamor for change this past week were dozens of prominent intellectuals who signed a petition urging the government to ratify an international treaty on protecting human rights and the rule of law. Also, a group of about 100 parents of gays and lesbians urged lawmakers to legalize gay marriage.

The annual session of the national legislature, which opens Tuesday, will complete the once-a-decade handover of power that began in November when Xi and his leadership team assumed the top positions in the Communist Party. At the end of the session, Xi will take the title of president from his predecessor as party leader, Hu Jintao.

Deputies to the National People’s Congress will rubber-stamp appointments of senior officials to the State Council, or Cabinet, to run economic and foreign policies; Xi and other party leaders finalized the personnel changes at a closed-door meeting last week. The No. 2 party leader, Li …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Chinese province to halt labor camp sentences

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A southern Chinese province has suspended labor camp sentences, becoming the first in the country to take steps to phase out the much-criticized system.

The move, which is expected to extend to the rest of China this year, is considered a key step in reforming China‘s judicial system. Critics have condemned the labor camp system as arbitrary because it allows police to lock up government critics and other defendants for up to four years without trial.

Chinese state media reported Wednesday that Yunnan’s top law enforcement official Meng Sutie announced that the province will no longer send people to labor camps on grounds of threatening national security, petitioning by causing unrest and smearing the image of officials.

The province also will suspend labor camp sentences for people charged with other offenses such as drug use and prostitution, Meng said.

Those in the camps will be released after completing their terms, said Meng, as quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.

“We believe this is a good thing, and we raise both our hands to show our support,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a Chinese lawyer who represents Ren Jianyu, a local official sentenced to two years in a labor camp after criticizing the government.

Ren’s case fueled calls to abolish China‘s labor camps, which were initially set up in the 1950s to detain accused counterrevolutionaries or other critics of the Communist government but were later expanded to punish prostitutes, drug addicts and other minor criminals, as well as petitioners seeking to redress their grievances.

The labor camp system has been widely condemned by lawyers and human rights activists as outdated and open to abuse, especially in locking away those who criticize officials or government policies.

In January, the ruling Communist Party Politics and Law Committee head Meng Jianzhu said China would stop handing down labor camp sentences this year but that the proposal must first be approved by China‘s legislature, the National People’s Congress, which will meet in March.

Yan Zhichan, director of Department of Justice in the southern province of Guangdong, said at the end of January that her province had made preparatory work to end the labor camp system once this is approved nationally.

…read more
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Smog thick enough to cancel flights hits Beijing

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Dangerously high pollution levels shrouded Beijing in smog Tuesday for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting the city government to warn residents to stay indoors.

The outlines of buildings in the capital receded into a white mist as pedestrians donned face masks to guard against the thick, caustic air. The U.S. Embassy reported a level of PM2.5 — one of the worst pollutants — at 526 micrograms per cubic meter, or “beyond index,” and more than 20 times higher than World Health Organization safety levels over a 24-hour period.

The Beijing city government advised residents to stay indoors as much as possible because the pollution was “severe.” It said that because there was no wind, the smog probably would not dissipate quickly.

Visibility was less than 100 meters (109 yards) in some areas of eastern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Air China cancelled 14 domestic flights in or out of the Beijing airport, and an airport in the eastern city of Qingdao was closed, cancelling 20 flights.

The disruptions came in the first week of the country’s peak, six-week period for travel, linked to the Feb. 10 Lunar New Year. Every year, China‘s transport system bursts at the seams as tens of millions of people travel for the holiday, in the world’s largest seasonal migration of people.

Celebrity real estate developer Pan Shiyi, who has previously pushed for cities to publish more detailed air quality data, called Tuesday for a “Clean Air Act” and said he would use his status as a delegate to the National People’s Congress to propose such legislation.

In less than three hours, his post was forwarded more than 2,300 times and received 14,184 votes, with 99.1 percent in favor.

Beijing also had exceptionally high pollution two weeks ago, with the U.S. Embassy readings of PM2.5 reaching as high as 886 micrograms per cubic meter.

____

AP researcher Flora Ji contributed to this report.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Justice Postponed For China's Communist Politico, Movie Actress

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By Simon Montlake, Forbes Staff Ever since his removal from political office last March, Bo Xilai has been waiting for his day in court. First, it was his wife Gu Kailai standing trial for the murder of a British consultant (guilty). Then his former police chief Wang Lijun stood accused of abusing his power (guilty). The third and final act will be Bo’s trial. Last week a pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong reported that the trial would begin Monday in Guiyang. This now appears to be false. Another newspaper said that a trial would likely follow the National People’s Congress held in March. In any event, there is no reason for haste, since Bo’s political career is over. Cynics might ask why a trial even matters, since a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion. But how the trial plays out, and the severity of the sentence, carries weight within the party, where Bo’s rise and fall resonates. It also has implications for new leader Xi Jinping‘s anti-corruption drive, since this is ostensibly a story of ill-gotten gains, though it speaks more broadly to the abuse of political power in China. Xi said last week that no cadre would be spared, leading to speculation over a ‘big fish’ (or ‘tiger’) arrest.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest