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publications manager exercises
1. Please proofread the following text with ‘track changes’ enabled, ensuring style is
consistent with cp.style first aid.
limiting land grabs
The state required all 33 “3 rural land reforms” pilot zones to begin land requisition reform in
late Sep 2016.
three land reforms
The 33 zones, launched in February 2015 and due to finish end 2017, pilot ways to ease the
transfer of collectively owned rural land. The ’three land reforms’ are in
−
−
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Collectively-managed construction land: allowing usage rights of rural construction
land to be sold, leased or traded for stock shares at the same price and under the
same conditions as state owned construction land.
homestead land: allowing transfers of homestead land within the same collective
economic organisation.
state requisition of collective rural land: creating a unified process for state land
requisition, including developing fairer compensation, based on local development,
average income and land type.
Land transfers are critical to both rural and urban reform. With securer rights and fairer
compensation, the state hopes rural hukou holders will more willing to move to cities, buy
housing and exit agriculture. Entrepeneurs, meanwhile, could more easily aggregate arable
land, raising efficiency and rejuvenating a countryside dotted with unused plots.
Forcing the issue
This move addresses localities’ reluctance to change the status quo on land requisition.
Before the september decree, only 3 districts were piloting requisition reforms, with fifteen
piloting construction land and fifteen homestead land reforms. Strengthening legal
mechanisms and standardizing compensation would check local governments addiction to
arbitrarily seizing land, which they rely on to plug revenue holes and hit central urbanization
targets.
Rampant land seizures have long driven rural unrest. In the name of “public interest”, local
governments take it from locals often at little cost and sell use-rights to enterprises for huge
gains, depriving original rights holders from sharing in the lands increased value. Rural land
requisition is almost always followed by conversion, often for residential, industrial or
commercial use, causing rapid loss of arable land and threatening food security. Currently,
there is no other way for collectively owned land to enter urban markets.
New measures issued June 14th 2016 allow local governments to charge a 20-50% fees on
transfers of collectively managed construction land rights, to make up for loss of revenue as
requisition powers are curbed.
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roundtable
蔡继明 Cai JiMing | Tsinghua University Centre for Political Economy Director
Allowing pilot zones to implement only one of three reform measures defeats the purpose of
the experiment. Land requisition reform must be combined with reforms of collectively
managed construction land transfers. If requisition remains the only channel for rural
construction land to enter markets, governments can disregard legal requirements and seize
more land than they need for urban public use. If the usage rights of rural construction land
were freely transferable, governments would need to offer compensation on par with the
land’s market value to obtain it. First THINKTANK
徐林 Xu Lin | NDRC Development and Construction Office Director General
Difficulty in obtaining urban hukou and restrictions on urban capital investing in rural land
hinder urbanisation. Many migrants, unable to afford housing in megacities, move to smaller
cities, leaving unused homestead plots behind. To address this, restrictions on trading
homestead plots should be lifted. Zhejiang, Chengdu and Jiangsu have piloted combining
capital and rural construction land, by following a variety of models such as developing rural
tourism or merging agriculture, manufacturing and the service industries. This combination
benefits peasants and more efficiently allocates land resources, but lacks adequate legal
protection. 21st Century Business Herald
王小鲁 Wang Xiaolu | National Economic Research Institute Deputy Director
Outdated policy and limited pilots stifle progress in land reform. Sale, lease or transfer of
rural land to non-rural hukou holders is forbidden, and localities’ monopoly on land
acquisitions and sales leads to inefficient land usage, corruption and inflated prices. In
contrast, open land markets that guarantee peasants’ legal rights would curb excessive land
price growth, reinvigorate abandoned land resources and promote urbanisation, improving
income distribution and reducing corruption. Localities should continue expropriating land for
important infrastructure projects, but compensate locals at market prices. Hukou reform
should be accelerated, and social security and public service coverage expanded to safeguard
peasants’ basic living standards after transferring land. Caixin
郑振源 Zheng Zhenyuan | Ministry of Land and Resources Planning Bureau former Director
Restricting the circulation of homestead land to members of the same collective hinders
scaling rural land up. Households’ demand for new homestead land often cannot be met by
those in the same economic organisation who have settled in cities and are willing to transfer
their land. They have to turn to the village collectives to apply for new land quotas. As a
result, in many localities homestead land keeps increasing, even as the village population
falls, creating a vast number of ‘hollowed out villages’. Caijing
context
since late 2015
26 sept 2016: Ministry of Land and Resources announces ‘three land reform’ pilots will be
expanded. Pilots on marketizing collectively managed rural construction land and land
requisition reform will launch in all 33 pilot zones, with homestead land reform pilots
continuing in fifteen.
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30 august 2016: Leading Group for Deepening Reform passes ‘Opinions on improving the
separation of land ownership, contracting and management rights’
2016 jun 6: Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) issue
“Temporary measures to manage collection and use of adjustment fees for rural collectively
managed construction land revenue increases’, allowing governments to take 20 to 50
percent of the increase in the value of newly urbanized land.
5th jul 2016: Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) issues ‘Notice on operation standards for trial
rural land operation rights transfer markets’
18 mar 2016: State Council development research center rural economy research group lays
out principles for reforming rural collective property rights
7 jan 2016: MoA prioritizes rural land contract and management rights confirmation
registration and certificate issuance, and rural collective property rights reform, among other
issues in 2016
24--25 Dec 2015: “three land reforms” named a key 2016 priority at the annual Rural Work
Conference Xinhua
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2. Please rewrite the following article summaries in clear English. Ensure style is
consistent with cp.style first aid. Links to Chinese originals are provided for factchecking. Please add a succinct title.
Original article: http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1616395
Australia's most rational foreign policy strategy is to 'respect China's core interests and red
lines, and promote economic and cultural interaction', advises Yu Chansen 喻常森 Sun Yatsen
University Center for Oceania Studies executive deputy director, bashing the aforementioned
assertion on extensive discussions with not only Australian scholars but also officials. From an
overall perspective, China should prepare for when Trump's foreign policy stabilises and
Australia again wants to realign with the US, argues Yu. From an overall perspective, argues
Yu, they should do this by
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understanding the need for promoting Australia's security concerns
side-stepping ideological differences
treating China-Australian relations as a 'community of shared interest'
Trump's 'America first' suggests the USA may shirk responsibilities towards allies, and rethink
its 'Asia-Pacific rebalancing' strategy, argues Yu, noting that Australia responds by
reconsidering its pro-US stance and gradually warming up to China. Australia has been relying
on the US economy for economic growth and on China forsecurity. Going forward, Yu says
Australia leaders realise that harming relations with China will hurt the economy, and
weakening ties with the US would overturn post war foreign policy and discomfort everyone.
So they tread carefully, but in the direction of China's, argued Yu, highlighting that
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president Trumble invited China to join TPP as soon as Trump stopped talks
Australia has expressed support of the Pan Pacific trade agreements China promotes
Australia joined AAIB
Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop praised China-Australian relations at visit of
Wang Ya 王毅 Ministry of Financial Affairs minister, calling for
○ deepening collaboration in trade, innovation, capacity collaboration, energy
cooperation and cultural linkages
○ expediting docking 'opening up South Australia' with Road and Belt
○ taking the strategic partnership to a new levels
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Original article: http://www.h2o-china.com/news/view?id=253590&page=1
Appointing local Party secretary or governors as River Chief can better channel their
administrative resources to combat water pollution issues derived from the grey areas where
are hard for legislations to control, such as pollution from domestic garbage, says Chang
Jiwen 常纪文 State Council Development Research Centre. The legal bases for River Chief
system are the ‘equal environmental protection responsibility for Party and local government’
principle set in the ‘Pilot plan of natural resources audits for outgoing officials’ in 2015, and
stipulated environmental protection responsibility in the Environmental Protection Law for
the local governments, explains Chang. So far, more local governors have been appointed as
River Chiefs than Party Secretaries, noticed Chang, and Party Secretaries should be
encouraged more to take up the role to balance the responsibility between Party and local
government, he says.
Factoring in River Chief mechanism under the assessment and supervision system when
revising the Water Law and Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law in the future can
help the mechanism play a bigger role in water pollution control, suggests Cheng.
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sample signal for reference
2017: a cyberspace oddity
cp.signal: 9 March 2017
internet regulation again under scrutiny with latest Cybersecurity Law
China has begun selectively putting the controversial Cybersecurity Law into effect before its
official launch on 1 June, stepping up internet controls ahead of the 19th Party Congress in
late 2017.
one bird, three stones
The November 2016 Cybersecurity Law is a framework for tightening Party-state control over
online information and IT infrastructure, ostensibly to protect the country from internal and
external threat. It builds on 2015’s National Security Law and Anti-Terrorism Law, codifying
Xi’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ doctrine and laying the foundation for his cyber control regime.
As with many top-level policy documents, the law is vaguely worded, with subsequent
directives and regulations signalling priorities. These show the Party’s commitment to
creating a ‘harmonious’ online environment in a period of political transition (2017-18).
Longer-term plans, such as setting up a cybersecurity review mechanism, will be carried out
in a more regular manner in line with strategic policy documents such as the 13th 5-year plan
and ‘Made in China 2025’. State security is the overwhelming imperative, with local industry
protection running second; measures to protect personal data, mentioned briefly after the
Cybersecurity Law was passed, are unlikely to be prioritised.
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online media censorship
With Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) declaring 2016 a successful year for censoring
pornography and illicit content, the authorities are now targeting online media generally. Top
focuses are
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site registration: MIIT launched a multi-agency campaign end 2016, aiming to have 99.9
percent of websites officially certified, and over 90 percent registered with accurate
profiles, by end July 2017. This will compel domain name service providers to block
unregistered or blacklisted websites
streaming websites: widely anticipated regulations, effective 1 December 2016, make
online platforms responsible for content, and stipulate that content producers and video
websites must both be certified, with the latter ‘editing’ the former. On 10 February
2017, 107 drama series were pulled from Tencent Video, due to their ‘sub-standard
content’ and failure to register
webcast services: similar regulations now apply to webcam platforms, effective 1
January 2017, obliging them to check certification of webcasters and channel content. A
CAC-led enforcement campaign shut down over 30,000 accounts and closed up to
90,000 channels
online news: news websites have seen their editorial autonomy shrink even further in a
crackdown on original reporting and sensationalism. CAC launched a special campaign
against click-bait in news titles to make sure only official news is featured. Ifeng, a major
website, was ordered to shut down news production, with CAC appealing to a previously
unenforced regulation. Even Global Times, a widely circulated official tabloid, was
penalised for vulgarity, exaggeration, and condoning extremism and fabrications, in its
comment sections
app stores: after removing unwelcome apps like the New York Times, CAC has started an
app store registry, which will require developers to register at local CAC offices
promoting local tech
The Cybersecurity Law makes ‘key infrastructure’ the legal basis for favouring domestic
brands. This includes military and ‘vital’ government services networks, as well as those for
‘vital industries’ like telecom, banking and energy, although there is no definitive list..
Components for these must be sourced in China.
CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued a 24-point document on 15 January
2017 on mobile internet, with all points on international cooperation focusing solely on Going
Global, omitting mention of reciprocal access to China for international players. The list of
objectives includes
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diversified investment sources, on the condition of vetting for security
‘systematic breakthroughs’ in core technologies such as operating systems, cell phone
chips, intelligent sensors and navigation services, with more influence over standardsetting
- controlling security risks via indigenous technologies and standards, building up cyber
defence, and cracking down on internet crime
CAC released a draft security review protocol for online products and services for public
comment, per Article 35 of the Cybersecurity Law, with state media making little effort to
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mitigate the impression it could be used as a trade barrier. It remains unclear how the new
review office will be set up, or what criteria it will use; and no appeal mechanism been set.
Firms offering products or services for government procurement that are found to be related
to national security must be reviewed. Third-party agencies will assess products and services
before comprehensive review by a CAC expert panel. Regulators of key sectors such as
finance, energy and telecoms shall likely conduct parallel reviews. Party and state offices, and
those operating in key sectors, are not to procure products or services that fail review.
in the spotlight
Zhu Wei 朱巍 China University
of Political Science and Law
associate professor
A media and communication law
expert and official CAC adviser, Zhu
has been the go-to spokesperson on
cyber-related issues since Xi came to
office. In December 2015, Zhu claimed
a German blogger fell under Chinese
jurisdiction for his ‘malicious comments’ on Mao, calling on China to pursue him in Germany
and punish him for his thought crime. This earned him a name as a provocateur, despite his
more nuanced views on domestic cyber policy. In November 2016, Zhu claimed that MNC’s
gripes about the Cybersecurity Law were due to failure to understand it, or to their complicity
in data theft. They should, he said, swallow their pride and learn to obey Chinese law, or get
out.
Chen Jieren 陈杰人 China
University of Political Science
and Law research fellow
A prominent legal columnist, Chen has
credible inside sources, as in his 2014
revelation that Xi ordered family
members to quit their business
interests. He has, however, been
increasingly marginalised for his
outspokenness. In September 2015, Chen was a vocal opponent of the Ministry of Public
Security (MPS), Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) and Supreme People’s Court (SPC)
decree granting police sweeping powers to extract online data. Calling it ‘unconstitutional’, he
argued the police and judiciary had bypassed constitutional clauses on privacy protection and
due process.
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Ni Guangnan 倪光南 Chinese
Academy of Engineering
An avowed nationalist, Ni has spent his
career urging IT innovation to rival
Silicon Valley. Co-founder of Lenovo in
the early 1990s, Ni departed after
clashing with founding CEO Liu
Chuanzhi 柳传志 over strategic
direction, and found himself marginalised in the IT sector. Since Xi’s ascendency, however, he
has been restored to the mainstream, and is immersed in promoting indigenous Linux-based
operating systems. In summer 2014, he launched an officially backed challenge to Microsoft,
Apple and Google: a fifteen-company coalition to replace Windows, iOS and Android on
mobile and PC devices within a few years. Ni is also involved in the current strategy of using
anti-monopoly probes as a cover for trade barriers, frequently defending charges of ‘IPR
abuse’ against Qualcomm and Microsoft.
Context
5 mar 2017: National People’s Congress (NPC) spokeswoman says the administration takes
privacy protections seriously, pointing to the Cybersecurity Law, the Civil Code preamble, and
the upcoming E-Commerce Law
4 mar 2017: CAC Beijing office announces another crackdown on original news coverage by
major websites
3 mar 2017: scientists appeal to the CPPCC for more targeted blocking of ‘harmful or illegal
content’ on overseas websites, arguing the current system is economically harmful
7 feb 2017: Xinhua denies cybersecurity review is a trade barrier
4 feb 2017: CAC unveils its draft cybersecurity review protocol for public comment
23 jan 2017: ‘illegal VPN use’ is declared a law enforcement priority
15 jan 2017: CCP Central Committee and State Council call for promoting mobile internet
13 jan 2017: CAC says it is launching an app store registry, without offering details
30 dec 2016: CAC says that, jointly with SAPPRFT and Ministry of Culture, it inspected webcast
websites targeting uncertified performances
17 dec 2016: MPS publishes ten hacking cases as examples
16 dec 2016: CAC declares 2016 a year of success in online censorship
16 dec 2016: SAPPRFT bans sharing news programs produced by individuals online
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7 dec 2016: a nationwide inspection is launched to ensure that, by the time of the 19th Party
Congress, websites are registered accurately
5 dec 2016: four major news websites censured for sensationalist coverage
11 nov 2016: CAC hints it is working on detailed rules for personal data extraction
7 nov 2016: NPC Standing Committee passes Cybersecurity Law, effective 1 June 2017
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