Chinese Armed Forces Adopt "New" Name? Or not

A couple of days ago, this news was spreading on my twitter feed:

China Cancels The Revolution

March 23, 2010: Without any fanfare, China has changed the names of its armed forces. Gone are the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) prefix for the navy (PLAN) and air force (PLAAF). It's now just the Chinese Army, Chinese Navy and Chinese Air Force. Since there was no official announcement, there was no explanation for why the old PLA prefix was dropped. The PLA was the original armed forces, founded in 1927, of the Chinese Communist Party. This force was initially known as the Chinese Red Army. After World War II, the PLA name was formally adopted for all the communist armed forces.
For the last two decades, China has been working to modernize its armed forces, and this name change appears to be a minor part of that.

That would be interesting because it might be preamble to a series of reforms in the military as part of the result of the discussion about "nationalizing" armed forces as my politics professor said.

Another professor at our school, an Asian international relations and security experts, said that his source told him that there is nothing to this story. "The story appears to have started with a recent blog on Chinese military affairs that showed an arm patch that only said "中国陆军"... This change is at least 5 years old."

A visiting senior Chinese military official said that "perhaps some very specific units have patches without the "Peoples Liberation" part, (e.g. Army Air corp, for instance), but that there is no truth to this whole-sale dropping of the terminology."

Case closed.

My two cents on China's judicial system

Over at my law school blog, I wrote about why I disagree with Tianjian Shi's assessment of the court system, and his explanations for the citizen's lack of "legal-resolution" mindset.

List of The-Shameful-34

List of 34 Democrats who voted AGAINST the Senate Healthcare Bill tonight

hope there are more sensible Democrats in their district to replace them.

and a big "suck on that" to all Republicans in the House.

ALABAMA Bobby Bright Artur Davis

ARKANSAS Marion Berry Mike Ross

GEORGIA John Barrow Jim Marshall

IDAHO Walt Minnick

ILLINOIS Daniel Lipinski

KENTUCKY Ben Chandler

LOUISIANA Charlie Melancon

MARYLAND Frank Kratovil

MASSACHUSETTS Stephen Lynch

MINNESOTA Colin Peterson

MISSISSIPPI Travis Childers Gene Taylor

MISSOURI Ike Skelton

NEW JERSEY John Adler

NEW MEXICO Harry Teague

NEW YORK Michael Arcuri Michael McMahon

NORTH CAROLINA Larry Kissell Mike McIntyre Heath Shuler

OHIO Zack Space

OKLAHOMA Dan Boren

PENNSYLVANIA Jason Altmire Tim Holden

SOUTH DAKOTA Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin

TENNESSEE Lincoln Davis John Tanner

TEXAS Chet Edwards

UTAH Jim Matheson

VIRGINIA Rick Boucher Glenn Nye

Obama rocks!!!

President of China Bar Association requests Supreme Court to give judicial interpretation on falsifying evidence

Over at my law school blog, I wrote about President of China's National Bar Association - Yu Ning's proposal to the Supreme Court to give judicial interpretation to Article 306 of the Criminal Law.


This of course, could be seen as a response to the Li Zhuang case, in which a prominent criminal defense lawyer was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment (on second trial) for falsifying evidence and obstructing witnessing. But besides the colorful elite political faction stories, it shows a real problem in China's legal system - if the law is unclear about what are the legal actions of lawyer during consultation, investigation and various stages/periods of representation, not only would they be under the risk of being wrongly accused, but their ability to represent their client is restrained; and if people cannot get equal and competent legal defense when they are accused, the entire criminal law system is in question.

What to watch for in the China National People's Congress meetings

This two-meeting "liang hui", I'm looking for

1. Energy and Environment: Yes, China's renewables is booming, but unless it curbs the existing coal-fire power plants, the planet will not be able take it.

2. Land reform and household registration reform policies: if there is any

3. Legal reform: the possibility of institutionalizing constitutional review

But, first, on the economy, the set 8% GDP growth target is but a 'comfortable' number which will be met, one way or another. Here is what seems to me like a sensible conclusion about China's financial outlook:

Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Meeting Of The Chinese National Congress

Taken at face value, The policy stance being put forward by Beijing should see lending curbed across the board --with the lending total new lending cap target for the year at 7.5 T Yuan (2.1 T lower than last year's realized total), higher credit and risk management standards in the banking sector and more meaningful social spending (with a targeted 8.8% increase on aggregate for the year and 12.8% for rural specific programs).

Recent anecdotal evidence suggest that the impact of policy maker's rhetoric and tightening actions have begun to cools excesses in the credit markets:

February new loans by the big four banks registered at a reported 38% month-over-month decline while total domestic lending may have halved. Although it is important to keep in mind that there is a significant skew to this data caused by the Lunar New year Celebration's timing this year, the numbers still suggests that the consecutive reserve requirement increases in January and February have had a significant impact.

· All media and anecdotal reports indicate that regional lenders have uniformly adopted the BOC's tightened mortgage policies for first time buyers (although foreign lenders like Standard & Chartered continue to offer rate discounts).

· China Business News reported today that regulators have forced seven banks to recall loans immediately that were misused for investment in the equity markets. The Shenzhen office of the Banking Regulator Commission is reportedly investigating branch offices of China Construction Bank, China Merchant Bank and Bank of China for disguised stock loans. the amounts involved are small, but the potential message is chilling for lenders who have routinely carried small non-purpose loans that have been used for stock and commodity speculation and could weigh on the market in the near term.

Another primary take away from a credit and regulatory standpoint is the impression that the government's intent is to pragmatically use banking regulation to cool industries with excess capacity and over-invested asset markets (primarily real estate) while encouraging growth in deficient industries such as green energy, pharmaceuticals and information technology. Given that there is now a large professional class of US based wall street operators who solely promote investments in China, It would be our best guess that in the coming quarters these "favored" industries will be an even hotter space for US IPOs and PE/Hedge Fund investments for the remainder of the year than they already are. One shudder's to think of what new "Green China" stocks will be foisted on the public by the reverse-shell merger cowboys.

A final data point from the conference that that intrigued us was an item in today's South China Morning Post today. The paper interviewed CIC vice president Jesse Wang Jianxi who was in attendance at the people's Political Consultative Conference. Wang said that CIC's cash holding are "relatively low" and that: "If the government decides to give additional money to CIC, we will work out a new investment strategy. If not, we will make tactical adjustments and re-balance the asset allocation flexibly...". Clearly, if Beijing is now intent on reigning in further spending by the state's investment arm, the impact of the new regime of fiscal prudence will be felt in asset markets far from coastal Chinese cities.

We continue to expect cooling credit conditions and lowered investment levels to drive Chinese equities broadly lower for the year and have recently picked up tactical coverage of the market.

Read the actual policies, 'pundits'!

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired about all the "China is getting tough" rhetoric online. Here is one recent example:

Beijing Seeks Paradigm Shift in Geopolitics
from China Brief - The Jamestown Foundation

China’s on-going tussle with the United States over issues including Taiwan, Tibet and trade is in a sense nothing new. For more than two decades, Sino-U.S. relations have periodically gone through rough patches over these and related causes of disagreement. What is new is China’s much-enhanced global clout in the wake of the world financial crisis, which is coupled with a marked decline in America’s hard and soft power. More importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is gunning for a paradigm shift in geopolitics, namely, new rules of the game whereby the fast-rising quasi-superpower will be playing a more forceful role. In particular, Beijing has served notice that it won’t be shy about playing hardball to safeguard what it claims to be “core national interests.”

Really? Gunning? I hope before 'pundits' or 'experts' hype up the U.S.-China tension, they could do one thing: READ the actual foreign policies of China! Because the only way you can be certain of a toughening in its foreign policy is when there IS real change in policy.

I was at an off-the-record Taiwan workshop last week (therefore I cannot reveal who said what). Five leading international relations / China experts went to Taiwan and China to meet with top political / military / academia people there every year. And this year, after their meetings with Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, DPP President Tsai Ing-wen, mainland Generals, etc., they came back to do a report of Taiwan-China-U.S. relations. Many scholars were present including Roderick MacFarquhar, Joseph Fewsmith, and also diplomats from the Taiwan Consulate, and Senior Colonel Yao Yunzhu, who is ranked China's Top 10 Greatest Women.

After the presenters talked about the general impression that China has displayed more confidence in all negotiations, and has responded to the Taiwan arms sale with surprisingly hard attitude even though the contract was done under the Bush administration, Senior Colonel Yao told me that the Americans are wrong to be focusing on how China's attitude has been. She said no matter how confident or even arrogant the negotiators' manners have become, if people parse through the appearance and examine the actual Chinese policies - they haven't changed much or toughened at all.

The presenters are in the consensus that the Chinese leadership have a moderate/hardliner rift that does not exist in Taiwan's leadership, but it is clear that the moderate, represented by Hu and Wen, is dominant and will continue their influence in the next several years, though the inclination of the next administration may be pressed to shift if the moderate policies don't pan out.

The presenters pointed out that China has been using suspending military cooperation or exchange visits as a diplomatic threat against unwanted foreign actions, like using summit absenteeism to counter Yasukuni Shrine visits - this really shows the limitation of China's
diplomatic maneuvers, rather than toughness. China needs to learn to how to push back on some policies in the relations, without jeopardizing other relations. The session clears up a lot of "China threats" or "US-China relation Ice Age" arguments out there.

And of course, the leadership has had ambiguous attitude about the nationalistic fervor ever since the almost-went-out-of-control protests that broke out in major cities after the 1999 US bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. To say that:

"... in his eagerness to stir up nationalistic fervor, President and Commander-in-Chief Hu may have given too much leeway to his generals to express irresponsible anti-American sentiments."

is just, forgive my bluntness, purely idiotic.

The REALITIES of all sides' policies (Taiwan, mainland China and U.S.) have been very constant, the ups and downs in tone have not escalated to worsening in actual policies in the past 10 years and do not have a reason to in the next several years either.