First Aid for Every China Policy Text

First Aid for Every China Policy Text

first aid for every China Policy text

China Policy style is designed for clean and simple online presentation. We aim for the least marks on the page. We drop some established rules, particularly punctuation and capitalisation. And like all systems, we have a few exceptions.

1titles and subtitles: lowercase, unless a proper noun

2dates: number before month: 12 Dec 2015 or 12 dec 2015 or 12 December 2015; never December 12, 2015 never add -st, -th, or –rd

3numbers and currency: write out up to and including ten, but numerals for 11 and up; C¥5,000 not RMB or CNY

4spaces: always single, no double spaces after full stop or colon

5bullet points: not preceded by colon or followed by semicolon or full stop

6quotes: single (‘like this’) double quotes inside single quotes (‘like “this”’)

7Chinese names—always followed by characters, Xi Jinping 习近平

8affiliations: largest to smallest with no comma in-between e.g. NDRC Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly Bureau

913th 5-year plan: never 13th five year plan, or 13th five-year plan, or 13th 5 year plan, or 13th FYP

10exceptions: percent (one word) not %; ‘and’ not &, except R&D and M&A

we use Australian spelling—similar to UK, with a few exceptions

-ize = -ise / programme = program
-ization = -isation / license (v) licence (n)
-er = -re / defense = defence
-or = -our / judgment = judgement
-og = -ogue / sulfur = sulphur

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publications exercises

  1. Please proofread the following text with ‘track changes’ enabled, ensuring style is consistent with cp.style first aid.

limiting land grabs

The state required all 33 “3 rural land reforms” pilot zones to begin land requisition reform in late Sep 2016.

three land reforms

The 33 zones, launched in February 2015 and due to finish end 2017, pilot ways to ease the transfer of collectively owned rural land. The ’three land reforms’ are in

− Collectively-managed construction land: allowing usage rights of rural construction land to be sold, leased or traded for stock shares at the same price and under the same conditions as state owned construction land.

− homestead land: allowing transfers of homestead land within the same collective economic organisation.

− state requisition of collective rural land: creating a unified process for state land requisition, including developing fairer compensation, based on local development, average income and land type.

Land transfers are critical to both rural and urban reform. With securer rights and fairer compensation, the state hopes rural hukou holders will more willing to move to cities, buy housing and exit agriculture. Entrepeneurs, meanwhile, could more easily aggregate arable land, raising efficiency and rejuvenating a countryside dotted with unused plots.

Forcing the issue

This move addresses localities’ reluctance to change the status quo on land requisition. Before the september decree, only 3 districts were piloting requisition reforms, with fifteen piloting construction land and fifteen homestead land reforms. Strengthening legal mechanisms and standardizing compensation would check local governments addiction to arbitrarily seizing land, which they rely on to plug revenue holes and hit central urbanization targets.

Rampant land seizures have long driven rural unrest. In the name of “public interest”, local governments take it from locals often at little cost and sell use-rights to enterprises for huge gains, depriving original rights holders from sharing in the lands increased value. Rural land requisition is almost always followed by conversion, often for residential, industrial or commercial use, causing rapid loss of arable land and threatening food security. Currently, there is no other way for collectively owned land to enter urban markets.

New measures issued June 14th 2016 allow local governments to charge a 20-50% fees on transfers of collectively managed construction land rights, to make up for loss of revenue as requisition powers are curbed.

roundtable

蔡继明 Cai JiMing | Tsinghua University Centre for Political Economy Director

Allowing pilot zones to implement only one of three reform measures defeats the purpose of the experiment. Land requisition reform must be combined with reforms of collectively managed construction land transfers. If requisition remains the only channel for rural construction land to enter markets, governments can disregard legal requirements and seize more land than they need for urban public use. If the usage rights of rural construction land were freely transferable, governments would need to offer compensation on par with the land’s market value to obtain it. First THINKTANK

徐林 Xu Lin | NDRC Development and Construction Office Director General

Difficulty in obtaining urban hukou and restrictions on urban capital investing in rural land hinder urbanisation. Many migrants, unable to afford housing in megacities, move to smaller cities, leaving unused homestead plots behind. To address this, restrictions on trading homestead plots should be lifted. Zhejiang, Chengdu and Jiangsu have piloted combining capital and rural construction land, by following a variety of models such as developing rural tourism or merging agriculture, manufacturing and the service industries. This combination benefits peasants and more efficiently allocates land resources, but lacks adequate legal protection. 21st Century Business Herald

王小鲁 Wang Xiaolu | National Economic Research Institute Deputy Director

Outdated policy and limited pilots stifle progress in land reform. Sale, lease or transfer of rural land to non-rural hukou holders is forbidden, and localities’ monopoly on land acquisitions and sales leads to inefficient land usage, corruption and inflated prices. In contrast, open land markets that guarantee peasants’ legal rights would curb excessive land price growth, reinvigorate abandoned land resources and promote urbanisation, improving income distribution and reducing corruption. Localities should continue expropriating land for important infrastructure projects, but compensate locals at market prices. Hukou reform should be accelerated, and social security and public service coverage expanded to safeguard peasants’ basic living standards after transferring land. Caixin

郑振源 Zheng Zhenyuan | Ministry of Land and Resources Planning Bureau former Director

Restricting the circulation of homestead land to members of the same collective hinders scaling rural land up. Households’ demand for new homestead land often cannot be met by those in the same economic organisation who have settled in cities and are willing to transfer their land. They have to turn to the village collectives to apply for new land quotas. As a result, in many localities homestead land keeps increasing, even as the village population falls, creating a vast number of ‘hollowed out villages’. Caijing

context

since late 2015

26 sept 2016: Ministry of Land and Resources announces ‘three land reform’ pilots will be expanded. Pilots on marketizing collectively managed rural construction land and land requisition reform will launch in all 33 pilot zones, with homestead land reform pilots continuing in fifteen.

30 august 2016: Leading Group for Deepening Reform passes ‘Opinions on improving the separation of land ownership, contracting and management rights’

2016 jun 6: Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) issue “Temporary measures to manage collection and use of adjustment fees for rural collectively managed construction land revenue increases’, allowing governments to take 20 to 50 percent of the increase in the value of newly urbanized land.

5th jul 2016: Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) issues ‘Notice on operation standards for trial rural land operation rights transfer markets’

18 mar 2016: State Council development research center rural economy research group lays out principles for reforming rural collective property rights

7 jan 2016: MoA prioritizes rural land contract and management rights confirmation registration and certificate issuance, and rural collective property rights reform, among other issues in 2016

24--25 Dec 2015: “three land reforms” named a key 2016 priority at the annual Rural Work Conference Xinhua

  1. Please rewrite the following article summaries in clear English. Ensure style is consistent with cp.style first aid. Links to Chinese originals are provided for fact-checking. Please add a succinct title.

Original article:

Australia's most rational foreign policy strategy is to 'respect China's core interests and red lines, and promote economic and cultural interaction', advises Yu Chansen 喻常森 Sun Yatsen University Center for Oceania Studies executive deputy director, bashing the aforementioned assertion on extensive discussions with not only Australian scholars but also officials. From an overall perspective, China should prepare for when Trump's foreign policy stabilises and Australia again wants to realign with the US, argues Yu. From an overall perspective, argues Yu, they should do this by

‐ understanding the need for promoting Australia's security concerns

‐ side-stepping ideological differences

‐ treating China-Australian relations as a 'community of shared interest'

Trump's 'America first' suggests the USA may shirk responsibilities towards allies, and rethink its 'Asia-Pacific rebalancing' strategy, argues Yu, noting that Australia responds by reconsidering its pro-US stance and gradually warming up to China. Australia has been relying on the US economy for economic growth and on China forsecurity. Going forward, Yu says Australia leaders realise that harming relations with China will hurt the economy, and weakening ties with the US would overturn post war foreign policy and discomfort everyone. So they tread carefully, but in the direction of China's, argued Yu, highlighting that

‐ president Trumble invited China to join TPP as soon as Trump stopped talks

‐ Australia has expressed support of the Pan Pacific trade agreements China promotes

‐ Australia joined AAIB

‐ Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop praised China-Australian relations at visit of Wang Ya 王毅 Ministry of Financial Affairs minister, calling for

○ deepening collaboration in trade, innovation, capacity collaboration, energy cooperation and cultural linkages

○ expediting docking 'opening up South Australia' with Road and Belt

○ taking the strategic partnership to a new levels

Original article:

Appointing local Party secretary or governors as River Chief can better channel their administrative resources to combat water pollution issues derived from the grey areas where are hard for legislations to control, such as pollution from domestic garbage, says Chang Jiwen 常纪文 State Council Development Research Centre. The legal bases for River Chief system are the ‘equal environmental protection responsibility for Party and local government’ principle set in the ‘Pilot plan of natural resources audits for outgoing officials’ in 2015, and stipulated environmental protection responsibility in the Environmental Protection Law for the local governments, explains Chang. So far, more local governors have been appointed as River Chiefs than Party Secretaries, noticed Chang, and Party Secretaries should be encouraged more to take up the role to balance the responsibility between Party and local government, he says.

Factoring in River Chief mechanism under the assessment and supervision system when revising the Water Law and Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law in the future can help the mechanism play a bigger role in water pollution control, suggests Cheng.

sample signal for reference

2017: a cyberspace oddity

cp.signal: 9 March 2017

internet regulation again under scrutiny with latest Cybersecurity Law

China has begun selectively putting the controversial Cybersecurity Law into effect before its official launch on1 June, stepping up internet controls ahead of the 19th Party Congress in late 2017.

one bird, three stones

The November 2016 Cybersecurity Law is a framework for tightening Party-state control over online information and IT infrastructure, ostensibly to protect the country from internal and external threat. It builds on 2015’s National Security Law and Anti-Terrorism Law, codifying Xi’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ doctrine and laying the foundation for his cyber control regime.

As with many top-level policy documents, the law is vaguely worded, with subsequent directives and regulations signalling priorities. These show the Party’s commitment to creating a ‘harmonious’ online environmentin a period of political transition (2017-18). Longer-term plans, such as setting up a cybersecurity review mechanism, will be carried out in a more regular manner in line with strategic policy documents such as the 13th 5-year plan and ‘Made in China 2025’. State security is the overwhelming imperative, with local industry protection running second; measures to protect personal data, mentioned briefly after the Cybersecurity Law was passed, are unlikely to be prioritised.

online media censorship

With Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) declaring 2016 a successful year for censoring pornography and illicit content, the authorities are now targeting online media generally. Top focuses are

- site registration: MIIT launched a multi-agency campaign end 2016, aiming to have 99.9 percent of websites officially certified, and over 90 percent registered with accurate profiles, by end July 2017. This will compel domain name service providers to block unregistered or blacklisted websites

- streaming websites: widely anticipated regulations, effective 1 December 2016, make online platforms responsible for content, and stipulate that content producers and video websites must both be certified, with the latter ‘editing’ the former. On 10 February 2017, 107 drama series were pulled from Tencent Video, due to their ‘sub-standard content’ and failure to register

- webcast services: similar regulations now apply to webcam platforms, effective 1 January 2017, obliging them to check certification of webcasters and channel content. A CAC-led enforcement campaign shut down over 30,000 accounts and closed up to 90,000 channels

- online news: news websites have seen their editorial autonomy shrink even further in a crackdown on original reporting and sensationalism. CAC launched a special campaign against click-bait in news titles to make sure only official news is featured. Ifeng, a major website, was ordered to shut down news production, with CAC appealing to a previously unenforced regulation. Even Global Times, a widely circulated official tabloid, was penalised for vulgarity, exaggeration, and condoning extremism and fabrications, in its comment sections

- app stores: after removing unwelcome apps like the New York Times, CAC has started an app store registry, which will require developers to register at local CAC offices

promoting local tech

The Cybersecurity Law makes ‘key infrastructure’ the legal basis for favouring domestic brands. This includes military and ‘vital’ government services networks, as well as those for ‘vital industries’ like telecom, banking and energy, although there is no definitive list.. Components for these must be sourced in China.

CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued a 24-point document on 15 January 2017 on mobile internet, with all points on international cooperation focusing solely on Going Global, omitting mention of reciprocal access to China for international players. The list of objectives includes

- diversified investment sources, on the condition of vetting for security

- ‘systematic breakthroughs’ in core technologies such as operating systems, cell phone chips, intelligent sensors and navigation services, with more influence over standard-setting

- controlling security risks via indigenous technologies and standards, building up cyber defence, and cracking down on internet crime

CAC released a draft security review protocol for online products and services for public comment, per Article 35 of the Cybersecurity Law, with state media making little effort to mitigate the impression it could be used as a trade barrier. It remains unclear how the new review office will be set up, or what criteria it will use; and no appeal mechanism been set. Firms offering products or services for government procurement that are found to be related to national security must be reviewed. Third-party agencies will assess products and services before comprehensive review by a CAC expert panel. Regulators of key sectors such as finance, energy and telecoms shall likely conduct parallel reviews. Party and state offices, and those operating in key sectors, are not to procure products or services that fail review.

in the spotlight

Zhu Wei 朱巍 China University of Political Science and Law associate professor

A media and communication law expert and official CAC adviser, Zhu has been the go-to spokesperson on cyber-related issues since Xi came to office. In December 2015, Zhu claimed a German blogger fell under Chinese jurisdiction for his ‘malicious comments’ on Mao, calling on China to pursue him in Germany and punish him for his thought crime. This earned him a name as a provocateur, despite his more nuanced views on domestic cyber policy. In November 2016, Zhu claimed that MNC’s gripes about the Cybersecurity Law were due to failure to understand it, or to their complicity in data theft. They should, he said, swallow their pride and learn to obey Chinese law, or get out.

Chen Jieren 陈杰人 China University of Political Science and Law research fellow

A prominent legal columnist, Chen has credible inside sources, as in his 2014 revelation that Xi ordered family members to quit their business interests. He has, however, been increasingly marginalised for his outspokenness. In September 2015, Chen was a vocal opponent of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) and Supreme People’s Court (SPC) decree granting police sweeping powers to extract online data. Calling it ‘unconstitutional’, he argued the police and judiciary had bypassed constitutional clauses on privacy protection and due process.

Ni Guangnan 倪光南 Chinese Academy of Engineering

An avowed nationalist, Ni has spent his career urging IT innovation to rival Silicon Valley. Co-founder of Lenovo in the early 1990s, Ni departed after clashing with founding CEO Liu Chuanzhi 柳传志 over strategic direction, and found himself marginalised in the IT sector. Since Xi’s ascendency, however, he has been restored to the mainstream, and is immersed in promoting indigenous Linux-based operating systems. In summer 2014, he launched an officially backed challenge to Microsoft, Apple and Google: a fifteen-company coalition to replace Windows, iOS and Android on mobile and PC devices within a few years. Ni is also involved in the current strategy of using anti-monopoly probes as a cover for trade barriers, frequently defending charges of ‘IPR abuse’ against Qualcomm and Microsoft.