China to Further Cut Crimes Subject to Death Penalty
The Dui Hua Foundation came out with its annual estimate of China’s capital punishment numbers last week and once again the country topped the world, executing more people (2,400) than the rest of the world combined (778). (China does not publish death penalty figures.)
What is less known, however, is that it constitutes a fraction of that projected over a decade ago – 12,000 in 2002 and rates have been steadily but dramatically falling over the years. “…(China) has executed far fewer people since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the (Supreme People’s Court) in 2007”, the US-based rights group stated. Just the same, other researchers warn that approximations by rights groups may be prone to “exaggeration and hyperbole”.
Yesterday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that a draft amendment to China’s criminal law proposing a further reduction of nine crimes subject to the death penalty was sent for initial review by the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. Of the nine, five pertained to economic crimes including weapons and ammunition smuggling, smuggling of nuclear materials, counterfeiting, smuggling of fake banknotes, and fund raising through fraud. Other crimes covered organizing and forcing prostitution, obstruction of military duties, and rumour mongering during war-time. The vast majority of those convicted of crimes under these categories would be commuted to life imprisonment instead.
Only those found to have “gravely” violated the law during a reprieve period after initial sentencing could be executed following a Supreme People’s Court (SPC) review. Under current laws, those sentenced to death can be executed after a review regardless of whether they’ve gravely violated the law or not. Occasionally, there have been cases where people who were wrongfully executed were exonerated after others came forward to confess their crimes or when the supposed murder victim turned up alive. Last June, the SPC overturned the death sentence of Ms Li Yan, a woman who had killed her abusive husband, setting a major precedent in Chinese judicial history.
This is the second time that China’s judicial authorities have proposed a reduction in capital crimes. The last time was in 2011 when the NPC adopted an amendment to reduce crimes subject capital punishment by 13 from 68 to 55 of the original list enacted in 1979. Later that year, the SPC also ordered lower courts to suspend death sentences for two years and “ensure that (they) only apply to a very small minority of criminals committing extremely serious crimes.” The Southern Weekly newspaper reported that China’s top court had sent back 39% of death sentences meted out by lower courts in 2013 for additional evidence.
In contrast to many Western countries, capital punishment has widespread support in China, particularly for egregious non-political violent crimes, such as the recent sentencing of ‘All Mighty God’ cult members who beat an innocent customer to death at a McDonald’s restaurant in Zhaoyuan, Shandong and for the rash of mass killings perpetrated by Islamic extremist terrorists in Xinjiang and elsewhere.
Polls cited by Dui Hua and conducted in Beijing, Hunan and Guangdong in 2007 found 58% of respondents in favour of the death penalty but down substantially from the 95% in a 1995 survey carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In addition, a US-based researcher points out China imposes executions primarily for their deterrent value and that publishing low execution figures would only serve to mitigate that effect.
Interviewed by the China Daily, Li Shishi, director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee which will deliberate the bill at its bi-monthly session this week, said the positive impact of the 2011 reductions paved the way for the additional cut proposals. The draft amendment is part and parcel of the reform blueprint introduced last November that declared China would reduce the number of crimes subject to the death penalty “step by step”. Chinese criminal law experts say the move is a requirement of ongoing judicial reforms designed to better protect human rights in China.
Quebec Premier: Won’t Lecture the Chinese
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, in Shanghai on a trade mission with two other Canadian premiers, said he has no intention of lecturing his Chinese hosts on ‘human rights’. Particularly intriguing is his statement at the bottom. Yes indeed, try to provide for the citizens of and govern a country 41 times the size of Canada; Beijing’s population alone is 2/3 of Canada.
On Sunday, Couillard said he was in China mostly to talk about greater “investment and collaboration.”
Couillard said it’s important to tread lightly, since China has its own unique culture and has changed a lot in recent years.
“I don’t think you need to give lessons when visiting other countries. You have to listen to the point of view of your hosts on these questions. And we must also realize the tremendous progress that has been made in China in the last 25-30 years,” he said.
“You have to see it also in the context of Chinese civilization, which is a very ancient civilization, where things are moving, but they move at their own pace.”
As well, Couillard said China could play a major role in Quebec’s economic growth.
“We need to bring in capital, we need private investment in Quebec, and there is a lot of capital available here in China and there’s interest in investing it,” he said.
Besides attracting Chinese investment, Couillard said he wants to generate interest in Quebec exports. Quebec exports to China have jumped 130 per cent since 2009 and now total $2.6 billion annually.
The Quebec delegation totals nearly 150 people, with representatives mostly from the business sector but also from educational and cultural fields.
Couillard said Quebec could learn a lot from China, especially in the context of how to combine economic development while managing such a complex country.
“We have a much less complex country… imagine here, in a country of 1.3 billion people, the challenge of ensuring harmonious development, and encouraging greater social equality.”
– Canadian Press
US Should Work With China’s AIIB: Guardian
This Guardian editorial hits the mark:
Further to a previous post, it should be emphasized that the US and its closest allies have been slow, in fact, dragging it feet, in reforming the WB, IMF and ADB. This has proved frustrating to the Chinese (and other large developing countries) so it went ahead to form the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with 20 other developing countries. Two key US allies Australia and South Korea stood on the sidelines along with Indonesia despite being invited to the founding party.
Needless to say, there remains a great need for infrastructural development in Asia. The US should not take a dim, zero-sum view of the relationship between US/EU/Japan led institutions and the AIIB. In many ways, the various development institutions can complement each other for the betterment of Asia. If the US and Japan continue to be obstinate, the AIIB will only grow in influence at the expense of multilateral financial institutions that they lead.
HK Student Protestors Were Trained By Foreigners: BBC
Here are the most relevant excerpts from the much talked about recent BBC Newsnight report on a major meeting of the Oslo Freedom Forum, which despite its name, is based in New York. At the meeting, activists disclosed that foreign-backed training of Hong Kong student protestors had been nearly 2 years in the making!
“Hong Kong protests: Activists share secrets at Oslo Freedom Forum”
While Hong Kong’s students continue their protests and stumbling negotiations with the territory’s authorities, democracy activists from around the world, who have helped organise their struggle, gather together.
‘Trained demonstrators’
…However, far from being impromptu demonstrations, it is an open secret at this meeting in Norway that plans were hatched for the demonstrations nearly two years ago.
The ideas was to use non-violent action as a “weapon of mass destruction” to challenge the Chinese government.
Organisers prepared a plan to persuade 10,000 people on to the streets, to occupy roads in central Hong Kong, back in January 2013.
They believed that China’s moves to control the Hong Kong election would provide a flashpoint where civil disobedience could be effective, and planned accordingly.
Their strategies were not just to plan the timing and nature of the demonstrations, but also how they would be run.
BBC Newsnight has been told many of those involved in the demonstrations, perhaps more than 1,000 of them, have been given specific training to help make the campaign as effective as possible.
‘New world race’
Jianili Yang, a Chinese academic, was part of the violent protests in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago. He has been advising the Hong Kong demonstrators on an almost hourly basis.
He says that the students are better organised than the Tiananmen protesters ever were, with clearer, more effective structures for their action and clearer goals about what they are trying to achieve.
Jamila Raqib, the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution in New York, a human rights organisation, says: “Protesters were taught how to behave during a protest.
“How to keep ranks, how to speak to police, how to manage their own movement, how to use marshals in their movement, people who are specially trained.
“It was also how to behave when arrested – practical things like the need for food and water, movement can last longer when people are taken care of, and also how to manage a water cannon being used against you, and other types of police violence.”
Update on China’s Aid to Combat Ebola
This is China’s fourth and largest round of aid so far and there may be more coming down the pipeline. With this batch, China will have contributed over US$122 million, by far second only to the US.
Hope this shuts up those uninformed critics, Western and African!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/24/us-health-ebola-china-idUSKCN0ID1MB20141024
China’s Contributions to the Ebola Fight
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has already killed over 4,500 people and threatens to turn into a full-fledged pandemic if the international community fails to coordinate efforts to combat the deadly disease. Since the initial infections, China has donated food, materiel, drugs and medical equipment to the affected countries, not to mention sending hundreds medical and other professionals there to help train locals and treat the diseased. But, that has not prevented unwarranted criticism about China’s ‘lagging’ contributions from the Western media and certain quarters, including Africans ignorant of the extent of China’s actual commitment and involvement.
UK’s Telegraph, for instance, charged: “China is a major investor in Africa…but both the government and private sector have been relatively slow in using their financial muscle to fight Ebola”. Negatively comparing China’s efforts to Cuba’s which is deemed completely altruistic, Nigeria Labour Congress officials accused China of failing to make “practical demonstration of support” while Chinese companies extract huge profits from Africa. Similarly, albeit acknowledging Chinese government support, Brett Rierson, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) representative in China, blasted China’s uber-rich and corporations for not stepping up to the plate. “Where are the Chinese billionaires and their potential impact? Because this is the time that could really have such a huge impact”, Mr Rierson lashed out.
While Mr Rierson’s criticisms of China’s hyper riche may have some merit and this author joins him in that call, the suggestion that the Chinese government has been slow to act is simply false. At a UN General Assembly meeting last week, China’s deputy permanent representative Wang Min pointed out that China has been lending a helping hand from the very outset. “In April, August and September, humanitarian aid with a total amount of 234 million RMB (US$38.2 million) has been provided to West African countries, including protective supplies, food, and cash assistance”, he said. This figure presumably includes the most recent donation of US$6 million in food aid (same as Japan) to the WFP to help alleviate food shortages in the three worst-hit countries Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
At the recently held Asia-Europe Summit Meeting in Milan, Italy, visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang committed at least another 100 million RMB (US$16.32 million) in additional aid, including motorcycles, 10,000 prevention care packages, and 150,000 sets of personal protective equipment, reported the Xinhua News Agency. China’s contributions and pledges thus total US$54.52 million which compare favourably to Britain’s (US$18.8 million), France’s (US$7.4 million), Italy’s (US$8 million) and Spain’s paltry US$540,000 contributions to the UN’s main Ebola relief fund. Additionally, China will send dozens more doctors and other experts to help train about 10,000 health care workers and community prevention and control personnel. Thus far, China has dispatched the largest number of medical personnel to the affected areas of any major donor country. The US has contributed the most to the UN fund with more than US$200 million along with US$12.67 million for the WFP’s Ebola effort.
It is also not entirely true that Chinese corporations have not pitched in despite major Chinese investments in stricken countries. Liberia’s ambassador to China Dudley Thomas disclosed to Reuters that a large Chinese construction firm active in his country has donated US$100,000 to his country’s cause and the Liberian government was/is in talks with other large Chinese investors, including the state-owned private equity China-Africa Development Fund.
In the global race to develop a Ebola drug, last week, Sichuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd. sent several thousand doses of its drug JK-05 to affected countries. Developed in collaboration with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), the drug has been approved in China for emergency military use and is seeking approval for general use in China. The Chinese drug is similar to the Japanese influenza drug Favipiravir which analysts say is an encouraging sign. In terms of human clinical trials, JK-05 (proven effective on mice) lags behind US-developed drugs ZMapp and TKM-Ebola which have been tested on monkeys and prescribed for Ebola patients. However, should the Chinese drug prove to be an effective cure, it would serve to greatly boost China’s medical soft power in Africa, the largest destination for Chinese foreign direct investment and where over a million Chinese nationals currently reside and conduct business.
“I’m Not Supporting the Demonstrators”: Kenny G
The Western press tried to make much hay about Kenny G visiting the Occupy Central blocked Admiralty area and taking pictures with demonstrators yesterday suggesting his support for them. Well, Kenny immediately came out with a denial. Prior to Hong Kong, he had been on tour throughout mainland China.
Jazz superstar Kenny G said he was used that he was showing support for the demonstrators in the Occupy movement.
Kenny G had a brief visit in Admiralty yesterday and he took photos with some supporters.
But he later posted on social media saying he was walking around Hong Kong and “happened to walk by the protest area”.
“I am not supporting the demonstrators as I don’t really know anything about the situation and my impromptu visit to the site was just part of an innocent walk around Hong Kong,” he wrote.
The musician also deleted the photos taken with demonstrators at the protest site.
– the Standard (HK)
Are Uighur Militants Seduced by Jihadist Ideology?
This International Business Times article is both right and wrong about the inroads that radical jihadists are making in Xinjiang as a number of in-depth Chinese media exposes readily indicate.
http://www.ibtimes.com/al-qaeda-wants-xinjiang-islamic-caliphate-uighur-leaders-say-no-1710279
It’s right on the mark regarding Al Qaeda’s propaganda and disinformation offensive on Xinjiang portraying the central government’s policies as wholly oppressive against Islam and the Uighurs:
“The first issue of Resurgence, an English-language magazine produced by a media wing of al Qaeda, As-Sahab, includes an article about the Islamic community in East Turkistan, as they call the territory the Chinese call Xinjiang, titled “Did You Know? 10 Facts About East Turkistan.” As pointed out by the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, the article features many inaccuracies about the area and China’s rule over it to further their belief that the Muslim religion and its followers are threatened by Han Chinese. For example, it claims that teaching the Quran is illegal in China, when in fact China recognizes Islam as one of the country’s five official religions. Though restrictions have been put on government officials practicing Islam, the country does not have a blanket ban on practicing the religion…”
But, the article is way off when it cites the president of the US based Uyghur American Association who suggests that extremist jihadi literature has had little impact in Xinjiang. In fact, over the recent past, a number of perpetrators of mass violence influenced by extremist propaganda have launched indiscriminate attacks, sometimes fairly large scale, on innocent civilians, Uighur, Han, Hui, and other ethnic minorities included, along with police constabularies in several Xinjiang counties and cities, plus a farmer’s market in provincial capital Urumqi and at the Kunming (capital of southwest Yunnan province) Train Station.
A small minority of disgruntled Uighur youth, especially hailing from the poverty-stricken southwestern Xinjiang, have been targeted by Al Qaeda and other extremist groups for indoctrination and recruitment. Radical Uighurs have been captured by US and allied forces in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo (then later released to third countries) and have travelled to as far as Indonesia for terrorist training (see a previous post). Most ominous is that Chinese nationals recently caught by Iraqi forces point to a number of Chinese youths, Uighur or otherwise, joining ISIS and other radical Islamist groups. The Chinese Foreign Ministry estimates that at least a hundred Chinese nationals are now fighting for ISIS.
Tibetan Nomads Have Choice in Settlement Program: NPR
In contrast to the pervasively negative and distorted portrayals by Tibetan independence support groups of China’s Tibetan and other ethnic nomad settlement programs as oppressive, coercive, and damaging to the traditional nomadic way of life, here is a fairly balanced report by a veteran NPR reporter who visited a family of former Tibetan nomads in Yushu, Qinghai Province.
The government provided the family with a comfortable apartment but the father has decided to go back to his nomadic life. So, it’s not a matter of settlement in towns or else. Tibetan families have the choice of putting one foot in towns and the other in their traditional ranges.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/10/14/356012331/chinas-nomads-are-caught-between-two-worlds
Canada Should Sign an Extradition Treaty With China
A ‘coup’ of sorts for China’s efforts to nab corrupt officials who have fled overseas with US$ thousands of millions in ill-gotten gains happened today in Australia (reported by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH)). The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has agreed to extradite and seize assets of corrupt officials in joint operations with their Chinese counterparts. China has made immense efforts over the past few years to arrest suspects of economic crime residing in Western countries that are often reluctant to hand them over due to suspicions about the Chinese judicial system. The US, Canada, and Australia (along with Singapore, the Netherlands, and others) are regarded as favourite havens for Chinese criminals with Canada called a “paradise for Chinese fugitives”.
Done in conjunction with China’s ‘Fox Hunt’ campaign, part of anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan’s strategy to ferret out corrupt officials resident abroad, the AFP has consented to a priority list of economic criminals, either naturalized citizens or permanent residents of Australia, who have over time laundered funds under the guise of legitimate investment or as business migrants. Describing many of their dealings as “very carefully planned”, Commander Bruce Hill, the AFP’s point man in the operation, linked many to the ‘naked official’ phenomenon where officials send their spouses and children abroad mostly as a way of shifting assets offshore. Chinese experts estimate there are some 1.2 million such officials who have transferred at least hundreds of US$ billions overseas since the late 1990s.
China has extradition treaties with 38 countries but none with the US, Australia, or Canada (the treaty with Australia has yet to be ratified). Short of a formal treaty, the Australian attorney general can consider extradition requests under the UN Convention against Corruption, to which both Australia and China are signatories. Chinese judicial authorities have disclosed that over 150 economic criminals, mostly corrupt officials, are currently resident in the US but numbers of fugitives living in other countries remains unclear. The Xinhua News Agency reported that since 2008, some 730 suspects from 12 countries have been extradited on charges of embezzlement, corruption, money laundering, and other economic crimes.
Last year, Canada and China carried out lengthy negotiations on an agreement to share assets that Chinese economic criminals were able to illegally funnel to Canada but Canadian Ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques made clear in an interview with the China Daily that while major cases are discussed annually between the two police authorities, there are no plans to conclude a bilateral extradition treaty! In 2010, Chinese police signed a cooperation memorandum with their Canadian complements to fight cross border crime and in the summer of 2011, Lai Changxing, for over a decade China’s most-wanted fugitive, was finally extradited back to China after exhausting all avenues of legal defense in Canada.
In the absence of a treaty, the Lai Changxing case was nonetheless a major milestone in extradition between the two countries. All in all, it took the Canadian judicial system 12 years to release Lai after his initial application for refugee status in 1999 claiming the charges of corruption lodged against him were politically motivated. As a condition of his transfer, the Chinese authorities had to issue a diplomatic statement that he would not be tortured or executed and that Canadian officials could have access to him although not necessarily to attend closed trial hearings. A year later, Lai was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to life imprisonment by Chinese courts.
Given the successful extradition and prosecution of criminals such as Lai showing China’s commitment to combating judicial abuse, it is incomprehensible why the Canadian government is still not willing to put discussions toward a formal treaty on the front burners. Earlier this year, the Harper government decided to scrap a 28 year-old investment immigration program to attract wealthy foreigners. Most of the applications under the program came from well-healed Chinese mainlanders, about 45,000 of them, that were thus abruptly cancelled. At the same time, however, the Australians are ramping up their own Significant Investor Visa scheme, 90% of the applications for which come from mainland China. A new “premium” investor program was introduced this month under which applicants investing A$15 million could obtain permanent residency status after just one year. Aware of potential pitfalls, the government emphasized that it would “strengthen integrity measures” to ensure that the new program would not be misused.
With key countries dragging their feet or simply refusing to sign and/or ratify extradition treaties with China while introducing plans to entice wealthy Chinese, you can be sure the flow of corrupt officials to those ‘safe harbours’ will only continue if not rise, especially given the increasingly stringent anti-corruption environment back home.
So, Canada, do your part to better deter corrupt Chinese officials.