The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opened a major four-day economic meeting in Beijing yesterday, with efforts to narrow the widening divide between rich and poor likely to dominate the agenda.
The plenary session of the party's central committee will "discuss suggestions" on the 2006-2010 five-year economic development plan, with a view toward "building a harmonious society," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Against a background of widespread corruption and growing income disparities between rich and poor, President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has been emphasizing the "harmonious society" theme over the past year.
Last month, state media cited a government study as saying the most affluent one-fifth of China's population earns 50 percent of total income, with the bottom one-fifth taking home only 4.7 percent.
Reforms launched in 1978 have fueled decades of enormous economic development that have transformed Chinese society. Its economy grew by a blistering 9.5 percent in 2003 and last year.
But its rural population -- about 800 million people -- has for the most part been left out of the boom, and many in that group have been protesting widespread graft, industrial pollution and illegal seizures of land for development.
The protests have been growing in regularity and aggression.
Clashes between police and citizens are becoming more violence as thousands -- sometimes tens of thousands -- of unhappy laborers or farmers demonstrate to air their frustration.
Officers often beat and jail protesters, who are also growing bolder in their retaliation against authorities.
Last year, the government logged 74,000 major protests nationwide, a stunning figure in a country so determined to curb potential unrest that it puts dissidents under house arrest around sensitive political anniversaries and tightly watches Internet content.
The closed-door plenum at the Soviet-era Jingxi Hotel in Beijing will be a test of whether Hu, 62, has fully consolidated power after replacing Jiang Zemin (江澤民), 79, as Party chief in 2002, state president in 2003 and military chief last year.
It is Hu's first plenum without his influential predecessor holding some form of office, although Jiang has stacked the Party's upper echelons with his allies.
One focus will be on whether Hu can manoeuvre protege Li Keqiang (
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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