CSG news update -- 2007-05-24

[China Study Group <chinastudygroup@gmail.com>]

China Study Group news update

China's one-child policy spurs riots
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-riots24may24,1,5223703.story?coll=la-headlines-world
LA Times | 2007-05-24
Ching-Ching Ni
BEIJING — During a recent family planning drive, villagers say, officials chased people down the streets and into the fields of a southern province searching for violators of China's one-child policy.  Men and women were rounded up for forced sterilizations, the villagers reported. Expec...

China concedes little at US summit
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1e91d272-096f-11dc-a349-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html
Financial Times | 2007-05-23
Krishna Guha
China on Wednesday agreed to a new aviation deal with the US and offered limited concessions in financial services at the conclusion of top-level economic talks in Washington.  The financial sector opening will help foreign companies access China's booming stock market, but fell short of the f...

U.S. to China on Pet Food: The Market Will Be the Enforcer!
http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3205539
ABC News | 2007-05-23
David Kerley
U.S. and Chinese officials held their first high-level face-to-face meeting since pets in North America were sickened or killed by pet food contaminated with tainted wheat gluten imported from China. Several U.S. Cabinet members and top Chinese trade officials completed two days of talks in Washingt...

Blocked by U.S., China finds it own way to space
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/23/news/china.php
International Herald Tribune | 2007-05-23
Jim Yardley
BEIJING: For years, China has chafed at efforts by the United States to exclude it from full membership in the world's elite space club. So, lately, China seems to have hit on a solution: create a new club.  Beijing is trying to position itself as a space benefactor to the developing world - t...

The language of Chinese soft power in the US
http://atimes.com/atimes/China/IE24Ad01.html
Asia Times | 2007-05-23
Will Wachter
NEW YORK - The main entrance to the China Institute in New York City looks like most other brownstones on the Upper East Side, distinguished only by its imposing red door. These days this door is open to welcome visitors down a short hallway that leads to two small galleries of Chinese art, currentl...

China and Blackstone: A marriage of two manias
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/23/business/sxpesek.php
Bloomberg News | 2007-05-23
William Pesek
It would be fascinating to see what Mao Zedong would make of China's $3 billion investment in Blackstone Group. Here you have the world's most-watched Communist nation investing in perhaps the most capitalist of Wall Street vehicles: a private-equity firm. China is doing so with foreign-exch...

Hukou system set for change
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-05/24/content_879187.htm
China Daily | 2007-05-23
Xie Chuanjiao 
China's hukou, or household registration system is to be gradually reformed. New policies are under study allowing freer migration between cities and rural areas, the Ministry of Public Security said.  Sources with the ministry confirmed that "legal and fixed residences" will become a fundamen...

China Calls for Cooler Heads Over Product Safety
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-health.html
Reuters | 2007-05-23
China called for cooler heads to prevail in a widening scandal over the safety of its products on Wednesday, accusing critics of exploiting concerns about specific cases to put barriers in the way of Chinese exports in general.  In the latest incident, the Dominican Republic has banned the sale of...

Chinese government decides to subsidize all rural poor
http://english.people.com.cn/200705/24/eng20070524_377380.html
People's Daily | 2007-05-23
Xinhua
 China's State Council, or the cabinet, on Wednesday held an executive meeting on expanding a rural subsistence allowances system that will satisfy the rural poor's minimum requirements for living.  The meeting, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, decided to cover all needy people in rural area...

Big US unions court Chinese counterparts
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cf0b4eca-087b-11dc-b11e-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html
Financial Times | 2007-05-23
Richard McGregor, Geoff Dyer
The leaders of the first US union federation to visit China said on Tuesday they had formed a tentative partnership with the country’s sole legal labour body in an effort to raise the standards of workers in both countries.  The visit by the US Change to Win Federation, which represents seven un...

Residents protest demolition of traditional Beijing hutong
http://www.chinaworker.org/en/content/news/186/
China Worker | 2007-05-23
Vincent Kolo
The Dongsi Batiao hutong in the northern part of Beijing’s old city is the scene of a battle between residents reluctant to move and the city’s Housing Construction Bureau. 80 families have been ordered to move out by 26 May, when their homes are set for demolition. But the area – with buildin...

China's ”McScandal” shows the need for real trade unions
http://www.chinaworker.org/en/content/news/169/
China Worker | 2007-05-23
Vincent Kolo
Fast-food giants McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Pizza Hut have been caught underpaying their young workforce in China by as much as 40 percent below the – abysmal – legal minimum wage.  A series of exposés in China’s state-run media has shone the spotlight on rampant labour ...

Stake sale plan for top state firms
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=1&art_id=44987&sid=13712582&con_type=1&d_str=20070522&sear_year=2007
The Standard | 2007-05-22
The mainland is willing to sell minority stakes in big state firms to strategic investors, a senior official said in remarks published Monday.  The 160 centrally administered state-owned enterprises control vast swaths of the economy.  The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commis...

Chinese activists looking to Africa
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0521/p01s02-woap.htm
Christian Science Monitor | 2007-05-21
Peter Ford
Amos Kimunya could hardly have been blunter.  As the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDA) here last week celebrated China's booming aid and trade with Africa, the Kenyan finance minister verged on the undiplomatic.  "The question we have to ask ourselves" as China plows bill...