01/04/2010 Source: People’s Daily

China and Uruguay on Monday vowed to seek stronger legislative ties in an effort to bolster the overall bilateral relationship.

The pledge came out of the meeting between top Chinese legislator Wu Bangguo and President of House of Representatives of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay Roque Arregui on Monday afternoon in Beijing.

“The long-standing legislative exchanges between China and Uruguay have played a positive role in enhancing the two nations’ friendship and bilateral relations,” said Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature.

Wu called for both legislatures to continue multi-tier exchange and cooperation in various channels, learn from each other in governing the country and enhancing democracy and building of legal systems, increase consultation in multilateral legislative organizations in a bid to make new contribution to the overall China-Uruguay relationship.

Arregui, who was on his first visit to China, said the Uruguayan legislature would like to make use of its advantage to boost bilateral cooperation in politics, trade and other fields.

On broader bilateral relations, Wu said China and Uruguay had made headway in deepening political trust, boosting economic and trade relations and promoting scientific and cultural exchanges, among other things.

Wu said China appreciated Uruguay’s staunch support on issues concerning China’s core interests, including Taiwan issue and Tibet-related issues.

Stressing both nations’ status as a developing country, Wu said it was in two nations’ fundamental interest to deepen bilateral friendship.

“China would like to work with Uruguay to increase high-level exchanges, deepen trade ties and enrich people-to-people exchanges so as to usher in a new era of bilateral relations,” Wu said.

Arregui praised China’s efforts to deal with the global financial crisis and take a lead in reviving the economy, saying the endeavor benefited Uruguay and China’s other trade partners and injected a huge momentum into the world economic recovery.

Arregui said Uruguay will continuously adhere to the one-China policy.

Earlier Monday, Uyunqimg, deputy chairperson of the NPC Standing Committee, also met with Arregui in Beijing.

The week-long visit will also take Arregui to east China’s Zhejiang province and the country’s financial hub of Shanghai.

12/31/2009 Source: People’s Daily

The China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), set to open on January 1, 2010, will bring preferential treatment to product trade between China and ASEAN, an official with Ministry of Commerce said.

With the opening of CAFTA, more than 90 percent or over 7,000 products traded between China and the six members of ASEAN, i.e., Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore will be tariff-free, Zhang Kening, commercial counselor of the Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs under the Ministry of Commerce said at a press conference on Dec, 29, 2009.

12/31/2009 Source: People’s Daily

China has upheld the independence and integrity of its justice system, as would any other country, in the trial and execution of British drug smuggler Akmal Shaikh, say legal experts, refuting criticisms of China’s human rights record and lack of clemency.

Shaikh, a 53-year-old British man, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

He had been convicted of carrying up to 4,030 grams of heroin at Urumqi International Airport from Dushanbe, capital of Tajikstan, on Sept. 12, 2007.

China’s Criminal Law stipulates that the trafficking of more than 50 grams of heroin is punishable by death.

“According to China’s Criminal Law, the death sentence given to him is legitimate and it has nothing to do with human rights concerns,” said Wang Mingliang, professor of criminal law at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

“Some Western countries also retain capital punishment, and its existence does not equate to a lack of human rights,” Wang said.

Xue Jinzhan, professor of criminal law at the East China University of Political Science and Law, also in Shanghai, said the administration of the death penalty related to a country’s history, culture and other conditions.

China strictly enforced the law without discrimination in handling the case, Chinese legal experts told Xinhua.

“It’s human nature to plead for a criminal who is from the same country or the same family, but judicial independence should be fully respected and everyone should be equal before the law,” Xue said.

Wang said it could be understood that British media ran emotional stories and local people reacted with sorrow or anger as Britain did not retain the death penalty.

“But one country should respect judicial independence of another country, without any interference in internal affairs,” Wang said.

“Shaikh’s case serves as a testimony to China’s judicial justice, which deserves full respect from other countries.”

Western reports said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned Shaikh’s execution in a statement issued on Tuesday and that Brown had even personally spoken to a senior Chinese leader about the case.

“It would have interfered with China’s judicial authority if the senior leader had accepted Brown’s request. How could a criminal be exempted from the death penalty only because he was British?” Wang said.

Experts said courts in China had the right to decide whether a psychiatric assessment was necessary.

“The court, based on available evidence, decided not to do the assessment, and it was strictly in line with the law,” Wang said.

China’s Supreme People’s Court on Tuesday issued a statement, saying it had reviewed and approved the death sentence against Akmal Shaikh and there was no reason to cast doubt on Shaikh’s mental state.

According to the court, the British embassy in China and a British organization had proposed a psychiatric examination on Shaikh, but the documents they provided could not prove he had mental disorder nor did members of his family have history of mental illness.

Shaikh himself had not provided materials regarding a mental illness. His legal rights and legitimate treatment had been fully granted in custody and trial, the statement said.

Shaikh was sentenced to death in the first instance by the Intermediate People’s Court of Urumqi on Oct. 29, 2008, and his final verdict came in October this year after two failed appeals.

Drug-related crimes had been recognized as serious criminal offences in most countries of the world, and China demanded severe punishment for such crimes, the statement said.

In June, eight people convicted of drug production and trafficking were executed in China. Another two men convicted of heading a gang that smuggled drugs from Myanmar into China were executed in May.

Courts across China handled 14,282 drug-related cases from January to May, up 12 percent over the same period last year. In these cases, 6,379 people were convicted and received severe penalties ranging from five years in jail to a death sentence.

12/22/2009 Source: Xinhua

China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Tuesday that annual overseas direct investment (ODI) from non-financial sectors is expected to top 42 billion U.S. dollars in 2009.

Non-financial ODI in the first 9 months stood at 32.87 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.5 percent year on year, according to the MOC.

Investment in the overseas market includes establishing marketing networks, securing advanced technologies from overseas countries and overseas acquisitions in the first 9 months, with overseas acquisition contributing to 43.5 percent of the total, said the ministry.

China reported 64.77 billion U.S. dollars of business volume in the overseas-contracted projects in January-to-November period, up 37.5 percent from the corresponding period last year.

New contracts valued at 106.5 billion U.S. dollars were signed in the first 11 months, up 20.9 percent from a year earlier.

12/21/2009 Source: China Daily

Ten days after five legal scholars claimed in an open letter that the country’s urban housing demolition regulation was “a breach of the Constitution”, the State Council Legislative Affairs Office said yesterday it is working on fixing the problem.

“We’ll speed up revising and issuing a new regulation to improve the current urban housing management system and better safeguard citizens’ rights,” said Gao Fengtao, deputy director of the office, which issued the regulation.

“The State Council is very concerned about problems caused by the current regulation and has been working on a new regulation ever since the Property Law came out in 2007,” he said. “But please, give us a bit more time because there are many issues related to this.”

Gao made the remarks after meeting nine law professors yesterday morning at a Beijing hotel to solicit opinions about a possible revision.

Four of the nine were among the professors who wrote the open letter to the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Dec 7 urging the country’s top legislature to review the legitimacy of the urban housing demolition regulation.

The regulation allows the government to seize homes and land if they are needed for important projects.

In China, the NPC drafts laws and the State Council Legislative Affairs Office issues regulations. Laws have more legal weight than regulations.

In the letter, the professors said the regulation violates the basic principle of the Constitution and Property Law.

The open letter caused heated discussion across the country, especially in the light of the death of Tang Fuzhen, from Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, who shocked the nation by setting herself on fire on Nov 13 to protest the forced demolition of her former husband’s garment processing business and living space above it.

Tang died from her injuries 16 days later at a local hospital. The building she wanted to save has been torn down.

On Monday afternoon, Xi Xinzhu, from Beijing’s Haidian district, set himself on fire in a similar incident after a demolition crew arrived to move out his family and start tearing down their home. Doctors said 10 percent of Xi’s body was burned and he remained in hospital last night.

The NPC has not made any public comments about the open letter but Shen Kui, a law professor with Peking University who was among the five who sent the letter, said yesterday the NPC forwarded relevant materials to the State Council Legislative Affairs Office and suggested a revision.

The move triggered the meeting between the legal experts and the State Council Legislative Affairs Office yesterday.

“They (the scholars) offered many valuable opinions about the revision,” Gao said after the meeting. “We will go on to hear opinions from relevant officials and individuals before we make a final draft public.”

Shen praised the response from the NPC and the State Council.

“Most experts agree on general principles but more discussions are needed for some details,” he told China Daily. “We all agree that the government should only confiscate land if it is in the public interest. The question is, how do you define public interest?”

Shen said discussion at the meeting also covered acceptable procedures for confiscating property and offering compensation.

He said everyone agreed compensation should be decided by the market and not by the government, as it is now.

Despite the fact that some details remain undecided, the revision of the regulation is likely to be another example of how civil input can push forward legislation.

In 2003, three scholars wrote an open letter to the NPC, calling for the scrapping or revision of a regulation allowing the relocation of urban vagrants and beggars. The letter followed the death of Xu Zhigang, a young college graduate, who was tortured and died in an asylum in Guangzhou.

The regulation was later abolished.

12/07/2009 Source: Xinhua

China’s economic recovery is alluring back overseas investors who had withdrawn from the country under the tide of the global financial crisis.

In Qingdao, an eastern China port city, the number of overseas investors coming to make investment in the Chengyang District has been on the rise since June, said deputy head of the district government Li Guixi.

Li said, the district approved 146 foreign-funded projects in the first ten months, and involved contracted foreign investment totalled 280 million U.S. dollars, up 2.2 percent year on year.

Li said Swarovski, the world’s leading producer of precision-cut crystal, invested more than 100 million U.S. dollars in Chengyang to build its first factory outside Europe in July.

However, just one year ago, foreign investors were busy evacuating from the district, leaving thousands of workers jobless and their wages unpaid.

Speaking of his ex-employer’s evacuation, Cao Kejun, 59, still broods over his unpaid wage.

“Had I found that boss from the Republic of Korea (ROK), I would like my 600 yuan (about 87.8 U.S. dollars) back,” he spoke with a strong Shandong accent.

His ex-employer, a ROK investor of a suitcase and bag factory in Qianwangtuan Community, Chengyang District, northern Qingdao, took an overnight evacuation back to his home country ahead of the financial crisis, abandoning DeBest, his factory, with 500 jobless workers.

Two more ROK investors in the community left without a notice about 11 months ago, leaving 420 more people jobless, said Qi Xide, who was in charge of management of enterprises in the community.

Due to the global crisis, the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to China began to slow down in the fourth quarter last year, and as of July this year, the FDI China received had decreased year on year for 10 consecutive months, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

In November last year, the Chinese government adopted a massive economic stimulus package, including raising export tax rebate and other measures, to halt the drastic FDI decline and combat the crisis, which turned out to be effective in boosting economy.

The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 8.9 percent year on year in the third quarter, accelerating from 7.9 percent in the second quarter and 6.1 percent in the first. In the third quarter last year, it increased 9 percent year on year.

With favorable policies and the economy picking up, investors that once had doubts in China’s economy and business environment had come to discuss investment with the local governments, said Li Guixi.

Nationally, the latest data had shown that China saw a third consecutive monthly increase in FDI in October by attracting 7.1 billion U.S. dollars, up 5.7 percent from the same period last year.

Young-Su Park, the China president of a ROK company, expressed great confidence in further growth of China’s economy, which he said means greater demand for infrastructure investments.

His company, Leading Solution, which mainly produces air-conditioners and farm machineries, had just invested 48 million U.S. dollars for a new farm machinery factory in Chengyang, capital of northeastern Liaoning Province.

“Investors have reasons to leave, and now they find reasons to come back,” said Park.

In Qianwangtuan of Qingdao, the old building of DeBest is now taken by a new ROK-funded factory.

“With three new foreign-funded factories going into operation this year, workers are starting to work overtime again,” said Qi, the administrator.

Cao, just like his ex-colleagues, has found a new job. He is now working as a cleaner in the Qianwangtuan community and earns 600 yuan a month.