Results tagged “standingcommittee”

Yesterday's copy of the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting observation: that few of China's top political and business leaders these days have white hair:

It is possible that could have something to do with genes, but something else is involved, too. For aging men of influence here, the dye job appears to have become as commonplace as the Mao suit once was.

Continue reading "WSJ: Nary a white strand of hair in the Politburo Standing Committee"

PLUS LEE KUAN YEW AND HIS ROLE IN SINO-SINGAPORE RELATIONS The last week has seen top leaders zipping between China and Singapore to cement ties and sign new deals. Let's take you through the high-profile visits one by one before diving deeper into more detail (Warning: Long article!): Goh Chok Tong visits new Shanghai party chief and the Singapore-Suzhou Industrial Park Last week, Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong swung by Shanghai to visit her...

Shanghai is back in Beijing's good books. Or so an article published by the People's Daily two weeks ago indicates, claims the Associated Press. The article, titled "Glad to hear the new good tidings from Shanghai", lavished praise on Shanghai for it's recent successes. "A golden breeze refreshes Shanghai; one important, auspicious event after another" gushed the lead article. It is a sign, claims AP, that the fallout from last year's pension scandal has started to settle. As AP points out:

...such propaganda is a cue that top communist leaders have come to a consensus that the scandal was confined to a few "bad elements" and that China's biggest and richest city has Beijing's support.

Will this finally be the end of the Shanghai clique? The death of Huang Ju, a former Shanghai mayor and party secretary and now former member of the Standing Committee of the Politboro, spells trouble for Jiang Zemin's already waning influence on the Hu administration. Having ascended to the role of vice premier of the State Council in 2003, Mr Huang had long served as the figurehead for the "Shanghai Clique", a group of politicians joined by their love of all things Shanghai (and Jiang Zemin). Were Raekwon the Chef asked to sum up the situation, he might say something like this: "The Shanghai Clique forms like Voltron and Huang Ju was the head."

OK, so it's a bit difficult to type like Elmer Fudd, but you can always find inspiration by trying Google in Elmer Fudd language.

After seeing this story on the Chinese legislative body, the National People's Congress Standing Committee, deciding not to criminalize sex-selective abortion, Shanghaiist was admittedly surprised that this practice had not actually already been outlawed. Turns out that currently, selective abortion is only in violation of much less stringent family planning regulations which have no clear provisions for any sort of punishment. These regulations do have a significant effect on clinics practicing selective abortion, but still a very limited reach when it comes to individuals actually getting the abortions. Some of the reasons the lawmakers shied away from this decision are understandable:

A friend of Shanghaiist collects hammers. She has dozens. Every time that a workman in her building begins knocking in nails at 3am, she strides down to the offending apartment and confiscates his tools. This happens a lot.

Sexual harassment, which apparently had been legal in China, is now on its way to becoming a crime, according to Xinhua: