MCLC Resource Center

Source: Sup China (10/12/17)
Today’s reading on the 19th Party Congress and Chairman Xi
By Jeremy Goldkorn

If you can’t get enough news about President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party’s 19th Congress, the meeting set for next week when the leadership team and policy direction for the next five years will be announced, here is a selection of interesting reading:

• On Macro Polo, Damien Ma says that despite the extraordinary power that Xi has in his hands, and the official adoration of Xi that some call a personality cult, Xi will probably “still be bound by certain core ideas of how the Party-state behaves and functions.” Ma borrows “from the CCP’s preference for numerology” and call the core Party ideas “the Four Avoids and Three Imitates”:
  • Avoid the Soviet Union’s political sclerosis and collapse.
  • Avoid India’s raucous and unbridled democracy.
  • Avoid Japan’s economic bust and subsequent stagnation.
  • Avoid Latin American-style urbanization and shock therapy. Continue reading →

Source: Reuters (10/8/17)
Chinese watchdog says 1.34 million officials punished for graft since 2013
By Reuters Staff

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s anti-graft watchdog said roughly 1.34 million lower-ranking officials have been punished since 2013 under President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive.

Xi, who is preparing for a major Communist Party leadership conference later this month, has made an anti-graft campaign targeting “tigers and flies”, both high and low ranking officials, a core policy priority during his five-year term.

China is preparing for the 19th Congress later this month, a twice-a-decade leadership event where Xi is expected to consolidate power and promote his policy positions. Continue reading →

Source: Merics: Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies
Ideas and ideologies competing for China’s political future

How online pluralism challenges official orthodoxy

Unlike any other Chinese leader since the beginning of the reform era, Xi Jinping has worked on crafting a unified national ideology with the aim to strengthen the ties between China’s citizens and the Communist Party of China (CCP). The Xi leadership tries to rally support around the “China Dream,” the vision of China as a global player, and it promotes the “China Path” as an alternative to market economies and liberal democracies.

Although partially successful, the propaganda offensive has so far not yielded the desired result: a broad-based societal consensus on China’s future course. A new publication by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) shows widely differing views within Chinese society on China’s developmental model and its global role.

For their report, “Ideas and ideologies competing for China’s future,” Kristin Shi-Kupfer, Mareike Ohlberg, Simon Lang and Bertram Lang analyzed debates in Chinese social media and conducted a survey among predominantly urban Chinese netizens. Even though party-state propaganda played a dominant role, debates in online chat groups such as Weibo or Tianya Net displayed a wide range of opinions despite censorship and repression of dissent.

• Download as PDF
• Download Appendix as PDF
• Press release
• The Authors

Continue reading →

About the massive ongoing abuses against the thousands of North Korean refugees who escape to China, and about the rising protests in South Korea against China, for refusing to acknowledge them as refugees, and for sending them back (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-korea-north/china-rejects-u-n-criticism-in-north-korea-report-no-comment-on-veto-idUSBREA1H0E220140218).–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: The Conversation (October 2, 2017)
A terrible fate awaits North Korean women who escape to China.
By Hyun-Joo Lim.

South Koreans protest against China’s treatment of northern defectors. EPA/Jeon Heon-Kyun

As North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and provocative missile tests draw the world’s attention, one crucial reality about the totalitarian regime has been left largely unnoticed: as bleak as life is for most who live in North Korea, it is often far worse for those who flee – most of whom are forced to suffer horrific human rights abuses away from the world’s scrutiny. Continue reading →

Source: China Digital Times (9/28/17)
China Steps Up Ideology Drive Among Youth

The Chinese government has always made painstaking efforts to keep popular ideology in line with the Party, especially for the younger generations. In recent years, the official grip over young minds has loosened for many reasons, including the prevalence of the internet, the dominance of western media and pop culture, and the rising awareness of circumvention tools. All of these factors have made it increasingly difficult to meet the goals of a recent official campaign to “ward off Western influence” in education. In response, the Party has been struggling to ensure that its ideology is passed on to the younger generation. Te-Ping Chen from The Wall Street Journal wrote about how China has stepped up to tighten the ideological control among college students:

In a drumbeat that has accelerated ahead of October’s twice-a-decade Party Congress, President Xi Jinping’s campaign to rein in civil society, online media and speech has extended to the classroom. Continue reading →

Insightful on the ongoing uproar over Chinese influence in New Zealand, also on Anne-Marie Brady’s report “Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities under Xi Jinping,” and, generally, on Chinese tactics for co-opting people thru the longstanding “United Front” program: Scroll down for “United Frontlings Always Win” by Jichang Lulu.

http://chinaheritage.net/journal/the-battle-behind-the-front/

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>