Missing students and tiger bones

Dear Access member,

We will soon announce changes to The China Project Access: Members will be getting more, and we’ll make drastic reductions to the free newsletter. Watch this space for details.

For today, we’ve got five things for you at the top.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief

1. Ban on tiger and rhino trade back in force, for now

Reuters reports:

China has postponed the lifting of a ban on the trade of rhino horn and tiger parts for medicine and other uses, the government said on Monday, after a storm of protest from conservation groups over a plan to water down the decades-old prohibition.

In October, the State Council issued a circular replacing a 1993 ban on the trade of tiger bones and rhinoceros horn, opening up exceptions under “special circumstances,” including medical “research”…

…The “detailed regulations for implementation” of the October change had been “postponed after study… The ‘three strict bans’ will continue to be enforced: strictly ban the import and export of rhinos, tigers and their byproducts; strictly ban the sale, purchase, transport, carrying and mailing of rhinos, tigers and their byproducts; and strictly ban the use of rhino horns and tiger bones in medicine.”

Note that the lifting of the ban is postponed, not canceled.

2. And then they came, again, for the student Marxists

“Labor activists missing in China after suspected coordinated raids,” says Reuters. Background:

• In August this year, 50 students from across China, including young idealists from the prestigious Nanjing, Peking, and Renmin universities, went to Huizhou in southern China in August to protest against the treatment of factory workers. Some of them were detained extra-legally.

• In September, the Financial Times reported (paywall) that the prestigious Peking University was threatening to close down its student Marxism society because the students were practicing Marxism by connecting with workers and organizing.

• On November 2, Reuters reported that two students at Nanjing University were assaulted and hauled away, “according to a witness and video footage, after they led protests against their university on Thursday for refusing to recognize an on-campus Marxist student society.”

• The crackdown is intensifying: The most recent Reuters report says that at least 12 student labor activists have “gone missing”:

Authorities took away at least nine activists in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen late on Friday, and three more activists were taken away on Sunday in the city of Wuhan, the sources said.

At least five graduates of Peking University, one of the country’s top universities, were among those picked up on Friday, student activists said.

• One of the graduates was “kidnapped” on the Peking University campus, according to Agence France-Presse: “An eyewitness and Peking University student claimed that more than ten people in dark-colored clothing beat Zhang before dragging him into a black car.”

• Professor Eli Friedman of Cornell University — who was involved in cooperative projects with Renmin University and their October 20 suspension after Renmin students affiliated with its Marxist society were punished — tweeted: “Info is still sketchy, but it looks like China’s preeminent institution of higher ed is implicated in the physical assault and kidnapping of its own student. Where’s Zhang Shengye?”

• “Not a coincidence — Peking University’s new Party secretary, the real head of the university, has a long history in the politics and law system, including a brief stint as party secretary of the Beijing state security bureau,” tweeted China-watcher Bill Bishop. (See our previous note on this: The death of Peking University.)

• See also: Young activists go missing in China, raising fears of crackdown / NYT (porous paywall).

—Jeremy Goldkorn

3. Trade war, day 130: Vice presidents speechify as World Bank gives China a ‘quiet endorsement’

Chinese Vice President Lǐ Kèqiáng 李克强 and his American counterpart, Mike Pence, are in a flurry of meetings with Asian leaders this week amid ongoing trade sparring in print. Li will visit Singapore for five days, during which the annual ASEAN summit will take place, while Pence’s weeklong trip — his third to the Indo-Pacific since taking office — will take him to Japan, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore.

• In an opinion piece in the Washington Post (paywall) on Friday, Pence wrote, without directly referring to China, that while “some nations now seek to undermine this foundation, the United States is taking decisive action to protect our interests and promote the Indo-Pacific’s shared success.”

• Li took to Singapore’s Straits Times (paywall) to restate Beijing’s promises of maintaining openness: “Faced with the challenges of rising protectionism and unilateralism, we need to join hands to send a positive message of upholding the World Trade Organization-centered multilateral trading system and advancing trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.”

• Trump does not seem to be interested in joining hands, however. The Wall Street Journal reports (paywall), “The Trump administration is broadening its China trade battle beyond tariffs with a plan to use export controls, indictments and other tools to counter the theft of intellectual property.”

The World Bank, meanwhile, “last week quietly provided endorsement of China’s claim of steadily opening up,” says the South China Morning Post. “In its annual Doing Business study — perhaps the world’s most comprehensive and rigorous assessment of the barriers that block access to the world’s markets — it reported that China now ranks 46th out of 190 economies worldwide.”

But not everyone seems convinced. “Why so tepid?” is the question Bloomberg poses (porous paywall) about the low interest from global financial players to invest in some of the newer sectors open to foreign investment:  

Many companies are taking a wait-and-see approach. The trade war continues to stoke fears that market access may be revoked. Previous joint ventures involving minority stakes that didn’t work out are still fresh in many memories.

Other trade war news — farms and automobiles

• U.S. soybean farmers hang on for dear life in Trump’s China trade war / Axios

• Frozen out of China, American farmers refuse to sell their soy / Bloomberg (porous paywall)

• U.S. farmer on trade war: ‘We are willing to suffer’ / Yahoo Finance

• Honda to shift production of SUV to China from US amid trade war / Nikkei Asian Review

• (porous paywall)

• Wool price drops 16 percent since record high in August as US-China trade battle impacts market / ABC News  

—Sky Canaves

4. Making the rent is stressing out young people in China

Over the summer, a rental crisis began unfolding in Beijing, as the average payment for an apartment in the city soared 21 percent higher than in 2017. It’s not just the capital: A new survey (in Chinese) of 2,002 people aged 18 to 35 by the China Youth Daily reveals that young people nationwide are having trouble making the rent.

• “Renting is a large financial burden” on 82.1 percent of the respondents. More than 20 percent fork over more than half their income on rent.

• Three major vexations for young people are:

  • Unreasonable rent increases and additional fees by housing agents and landlords.

  • The difficulty of getting timely and high-quality maintenance work done.

  • Fake and fraudulent rental information on the internet.

• 93.3 percent of the respondents said that they hoped the government would make affordable housing more accessible to young people. 57.9 percent want the government to establish online rental platforms that are more reliable and inexpensive.

A version of this story on The China Project includes a few translated comments from survey respondents.

—Jiayun Feng

5. State media today: Listen up, Hong Kong and Macao!

All central state media today are highlighting this story (English, Chinese):

Xinhua President Xi Jinping on Monday voiced the hope that Hong Kong and Macao will further develop themselves by embracing the nation’s cause of reform and opening-up.

Compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao are expected to continue participating in the country’s reform and opening-up with sincere patriotism and pioneering spirit, attain the greater development of the two special administrative regions (SARs) by promoting the development of the country, and jointly work for the national rejuvenation, Xi said when meeting with a delegation from the two SARs.

The delegations are in Beijing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up, but Xi’s message seems intended to warn the ostensibly autonomous regions to toe the Party line.  

Our whole team really appreciates your support as Access members. Please chat with us on our Slack channel or contact me anytime at jeremy@thechinaproject.com.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Pharma: The recession-proof industry
  Johnson & Johnson still bullish on Chinese health care industry even as US-China trade war rages on / SCMP
  “US health care giant Johnson & Johnson is aggressively looking to invest further in manufacturing and research in China to strengthen efforts to localise medical innovations for new drugs that address the needs of one of its biggest markets, amid the ongoing trade war between the two countries.”

• Medical tourism
  Arabia: the new Mecca for Chinese medical tourists? / SCMP
  “Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are hoping to cash in on the promising market” of Chinese people travelling abroad for medical procedures they can’t get at home.

• Singles Day sales
  Alibaba Singles’ Day tops US$30 billion but growth rate plunges / Reuters
  “Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding cashed a record 213.5 billion yuan (US$30.70 billion) in sales on Sunday during its 24-hour online retail frenzy Singles’ Day, but the event’s annual growth dropped to its slowest-ever rate.”
  Alibaba had another big singles day. The party may not last. / NYT (porous paywall)

• P2P problems
  China faces peer-to-peer lending scandals dilemma / FT (paywall)
  “The fast-growing P2P lending industry…has become rife with fraud. Policymakers are cautious about intervening, because they are concerned that heavy regulation could cause financial chaos among P2P companies into which millions of people have poured their savings. China’s P2P lending industry recorded transactions valued at $445bn in 2017, according to Online Lending Club, a data company.”

• Self-driving cars
  Beijing to complete a new autonomous driving test field / TechNode
  “Beijing will complete a new test field for autonomous vehicles in Daxing district by the end of this year. Re-structured on abandoned factories, coverage of the field will be over 37,000 square meters, including an eight-kilometer testing lane.”

• Cathay Pacific hack
  Cathay Pacific cyberattack far worse than thought after airline admits facing intense hack for more than three months / SCMP
  “The massive cyberattack that saw the data of 9.4 million Cathay Pacific Airways customers stolen by hackers was far worse than the airline has previously admitted.”

• Fashion
  China’s Ruyi, pretender to LVMH’s throne, plots more ‘affordable luxury’ deals / Reuters
  “China’s acquisitive apparel firm Shandong Ruyi is targeting more global deals involving ‘affordable luxury’ brands, under a push to establish the first high-end Chinese fashion empire to eventually challenge behemoth LVMH.”

• Macro, markets, and policy
  China’s deleveraging campaign takes a toll on the private sector, especially the battered property market / SCMP
  “China’s battered equity market has not done too badly since hitting a four-year low in mid-October. The Shenzhen Composite Index , which is dominated by private enterprises, is up nearly 6.5 per cent since October 18 – compared with a 0.5 per cent rise for the benchmark S&P 500 index.”
  Chinese government struggles to shake off stock market gloom / SCMP
  People’s Bank of China warns of downward pressure on economy / MarketWatch
  Beijing to stabilise the yuan, but intervention to cushion not halt currency’s decline, say analysts / SCMP

• Taking celebrities down a notch — new TV rules
  Celebrity Big Brother gets real as China orders less screen time for overhyped stars / SCMP
  The National Radio and TV Administration (NRTA) has issued new regulations for TV programs. Per SCMP summary, the rules aim “to prevent young Chinese developing an unhealthy interest in money, celebrity and fame.” NRTA also requires that performers’ pay is no more than 40 percent of TV show budgets, with the lead actor share of that budget capped at 70 percent.

• Regulation of vaccines
  China mulls US$720,000 fine for faking vaccine tests after scandal / AFP
  “Chinese vaccine manufacturers who falsify test results or break other rules could be fined up to $720,000 under a new law proposed after a scandal that fueled public fears over domestically made medicine. The law would regulate areas including production, distribution and use of vaccines, according to a draft posted Sunday on the website of China’s market regulator.”

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Tough talk in the South China Sea
  In first, Washington calls on Beijing to remove missiles from South China Sea / The Japan Times
  “The United States has for the first time urged China to remove missile systems deployed to contested man-made islands in the South China Sea, the Pentagon said Friday. The move, believed to be the first time the U.S. had directly addressed the issue, came in a statement recapping high-level talks between the two sides in Washington earlier in the day.”
  Top U.S. officials reject Chinese demand to stop military moves that ‘undermine’ Beijing’s sovereignty in South China Sea / SCMP
  Beijing seeks to block outsiders from drilling in South China Sea / Nikkei Asian Review
  “China wants to prohibit oil exploration in the South China Sea by countries from outside the region as part of a long-delayed code of conduct for the waters, sources familiar with the matter said.”

• Espionage and influence
  Beijing’s secret plot to infiltrate UN used Australian insider / Sydney Morning Herald
  Nick McKenzie, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Zach Dorfman and Fergus Hunter report:

Charming and gregarious, Sheri Yan [严瑞雪 Yán Ruìxuě] was once known for hosting soirees around the world where diplomats mingled with millionaire business executives and socialites. But her life changed forever in October 2015, when she was arrested by FBI agents in New York and accused of bribing the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, John Ashe.

• Xinjiang and Uyghurs
  Uyghur fencer makes history at Youth Olympics / RFA
  A rare bit of good news from the Uyghur world: Radio Free Asia reports that Khasan Baudunov, a Uyghur athlete “has made Kyrgyzstan fencing history at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires” by winning two medals. The report does not mention if Baudunov has relatives in Xinjiang.
  ‘We are all Chinese’: Beijing’s message on Xinjiang shifts to ethnicity / SCMP
  “China has launched a propaganda offensive to reframe discussion of the far-western region of Xinjiang in ethnic terms, with the theme ‘we are all Chinese, not Turkic.’”
  Why Chinese civil servants are happy to occupy Uyghur homes in Xinjiang / CNN

• African swine fever
  African swine fever found in animal feed raises China’s contagion risk / Reuters
  “Major Chinese animal feed maker Tangrenshen Group reported on Sunday that feed produced by one of its units had been contaminated with African swine fever, raising fears of its spread further across the country. This is the first reported contamination of feed supplies in China.”
  China reports new African swine fever outbreak in Anhui province / Reuters

• Missiles and military aircraft
  China’s stealth fighters show off missile payload / CNN
  “A report last year from the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggested the J-20 could pose a strategic challenge to key components of the US air fleet, such as aerial refueling tankers, as well as early warning and command and control aircraft, if armed with long-range air-to-air missiles.”
  China shows J-20 jet’s missiles for the first time at airshow / Reuters
  China’s military might get even stronger thanks to one America’s most important allies / The National Interest
  “A British defense company was granted an ‘open individual export licence’ for the sale of ‘target acquisition, weapon control and countermeasure systems’ for aircraft, helicopters and drones to China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force.”
  China’s J-10 Fighter: Now Armed with Su-35 ‘DNA’? / The National Interest
  “The fact that the J-10 TVC is powered by China’s domestically-produced WS-10B3 turbofan engine has been taken by some as an indication that China has successfully reverse engineered the Su-35’s AL-41F1S engine.”

• China’s cancer treatment crisis
  In China, desperate patients smuggle drugs. or make their own. / NYT (porous paywall)
  “Despite health insurance, terminally ill patients have to hunt around the world and on the internet for ways to stay alive.”
  How China creates cancer refugees / NYT (porous paywall)
  “A rural resident in China is 30 percent more likely to die after a cancer diagnosis than an urban resident. Three rural families trying to beat these odds — ‘cancer refugees’ — share their stories of battling the disease far from home and the financial ruin it causes.”

• Israel, China, Taiwan
  Israel and China are getting closer. Should America be worried? / The National Interest
  “Since they established official relations twenty-six years ago, Israel and China have strengthened the bilateral relationship across a number of areas…. The United States should be concerned about its closest Middle Eastern ally seeking warmer ties with China.”
  As Israel and China grow closer, Taiwan is paying a price / Haaretz (porous paywall)
  See also from last week:
  ‘Trump will be furious’: Tension between U.S. and Israel over China infrastructure projects / Haaretz (porous paywall)
  Why are Chinese investments in Israeli hi-tech making Washington nervous? / Jerusalem Post

• Freedom of expression in Hong Kong
  Ma Jian, exiled Chinese novelist, hails appearance as victory for rights / NYT (porous paywall)
  Dissident author Ma Jian urges ‘courage’ to defend free speech as Hong Kong leader denies involvement / Hong Kong Free Press
  Events canceled, editor expelled: Hong Kong’s losing freedom / AFP

• Self-immolations in Tibet
  A young Tibetan man self-immolates to protest China / Gu Chu Sum
  From an India-based Tibet news website: “According to news outlets in exile with reliable sources inside Tibet, a young Tibetan man named Dorbho staged a self-immolation in protest against the Chinese misrule in Tibet.” If confirmed, this would be the 154th self-immolation protest by Tibetans inside Tibet since 2009.

• Pollution
  Coastal villagers count the cost of southeast China toxic chemical spill / SCMP
  “Xiao Meiru and his family fear they lost a year’s earnings last Sunday after a toxic chemical leak devastated their fish farm in southeast China. Now Xiao and other families living in the coastal village of Xiaocuo in Fujian province are banding together to fight for compensation but worry they will get bogged down in protracted legal wrangling.”
  Nothing but grey skies: Beijing set to see its first smog of the winter / SCMP
  “Thick smog is set to blanket Beijing and the surrounding north China region next week, with air quality readings expected to move into ‘heavy polluted’ territory, according to official forecasts.”

• The ever-changing foreign policy of the Philippines
  Philippines, China seek pact to end stand-off over oil, gas / Straits Times (paywall)
  Manila quietly pivots back to the United States / Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

• Anti-Chinese backlash in Zambia
  Mines, money, Mandarin: China in Zambia / The Diplomat
  “China’s presence in Africa has been unfairly vilified. In Zambia, however, this criticism is unusually apt.”
  China touts ‘martyrs’ killed working on Zambia infrastructure projects as symbol of friendship / SCMP

• Myanmar
  China expresses satisfaction over Rohingya repatriation deal / Reuters
  “China is ‘happy’ that Bangladesh and Myanmar have reached a deal to start repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to Rakhine, its government’s top diplomat said on Friday.”

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Food and wine
  Li family of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Dairy behind record price of HK$850,000 for white truffle at Italian auction / SCMP
  “The Li family of Kowloon Dairy forked out a record HK$850,000 (US$108,975) for an Italian white truffle at a charity auction on Sunday night that saw the city’s business top brass once again beat culinary bidders for the rare delicacy.”
  China’s sweet spot above the clouds woos wine lovers of the world / SCMP
  “French expertise is transforming farmland in the foothills of the Himalayas into a vineyard which is setting out to prove that a great wine could be made in China.”

• Chinese languages
  Not Mandarin / LARB China Channel  
  An invitation to speak “other Chineses” by Will Sack, who writes: “There is no such thing as dialects. Or, perhaps there are only dialects, spread along a disjointed spectrum. Either way, the difference between national language and ‘dialect’ grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

• Photography — LGBT in Taiwan
  Leslie Kee’s ‘Out in Taiwan’ captures the diversity of Taiwan’s LGBT+ community ahead of historic referendum / Hong Kong Free Press
  “Renowned Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee has photographed nearly 200 LGBT couples and individuals for a series of black-and-white stills.”

• Military buffs
  Meet the ‘professional’ air buffs willing to pay over the odds to get far from the madding crowd at China’s biggest air show / SCMP
  China has a large community of military buffs (军迷 jūn mí) who obsessively follow the latest military technology, especially when it’s homegrown. This article looks at a few military buffs who forked out the equivalent of US$1,000 to attend the country’s biggest air show with “professional” credentials.

• The burden of educating children
  Chinese parents lament losing sleep over children’s homework / SCMP
  “Chinese parents are complaining that they have too much homework to do, despite government guidelines to lessen schoolwork for elementary schoolchildren. The burden is falling on parents as they help their children print, bind and even check and correct their assignments.”

• Racism in Hong Kong
  Essay: Race and justice — being white-passing in Hong Kong / Sarah Denise Moran on Medium
  “People tell me, ‘You don’t look Filipino’…and expect me to take it as a compliment.”

VIDEO ON SUPCHINA

Viral on Weibo: Five-story ‘building’ cruises on a river in Chongqing

It actually was a floating restaurant that needed to relocate. Two barges helped it move forward.

FEATURED ON SUPCHINA

Live-blogging Alibaba’s insane Tmall Double Eleven Gala

Before the craziness began at midnight for China’s annual 11.11 Singles Day shopping extravaganza was Alibaba’s Tmall Double Eleven Gala (双十一天猫晚会), which is a pageant hosted in a stadium all about consumerism. Honestly, it should be a national holiday. The China Project was there with a live blog to record the insanity as it happened.

Kuora: Why does the Chinese Communist Party believe it is essential to China?

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t suffer the existence of opposition because it’s an autocracy, and autocracies don’t suffer the existence of opposition groups. But that’s probably a bit of an unsatisfying answer. Why does the Communist Party believe that its monopoly on power is essential to China’s continued stability, wealth, power, and prestige?

Friday Song: Taiwanese pop star Jolin Tsai satirizes pop culture in ‘Play’

Although the title of the 2014 pop jam by Jolin Tsai 蔡依林 (cài yīlín) is “Play,” the accompanying lyrics and video reveal that, in fact, she’s here to do anything but. “Play” is a satire of celebrity, pop culture, and an industry that makes unbelievable amounts of money off music that can sometimes seem empty.

SINICA PODCAST NETWORK

Sinica Early Access: Shadow banking, P2P lending, and pyramid schemes: Lucy Hornby on China’s gray economy

This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Lucy Hornby, the deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing and a veteran guest on the show. The two discuss shadow banking in China and its history; the cat-and-mouse relationship between regulators and shadow financiers; the advent of fintech and the proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms; and Lucy’s reporting on a pyramid scheme involving selenium-infused wheat in Hebei.

• Sinica Early Access is an ad-free, full-length preview of this week’s Sinica Podcast, exclusively for The China Project Access members. Listen by plugging this RSS feed directly into your podcast app.

The Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, episode 69

This week on the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief: Car sales in China, a high-tech stock board in Shanghai, the arrest of Lai Xiaomin 赖小民, Xiaomi’s move to enter the British market, Doug Young on this year’s Import Expo in Shanghai, and more.

• Subscribe to the Business Brief on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher.

PHOTO FROM MICHAEL YAMASHITA

Drainage tubes

In this 1991 photo, workers weld giant drainage tubes for the Manwan Dam, a large hydroelectric dam built on the Mekong (Lancang) River.

—Jia Guo