CiCM 15th April 2024

NEWS IN CHINA

National People’s Congress Launches Agricultural Law Enforcement: The National People’s Congress has launched an inspection of the enforcement of the Agricultural Law in order to speed up the modernization of agriculture in rural areas. Inspection teams from the NPC will visit six provinces – Jiangsu, Anhui, Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan and Xinjiang from April to July to carry out on-the-spot inspections. Meanwhile, the NPC Standing Committees of Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Henan, and Hubei have been entrusted to carry out inspections within their regions. Inspections will focus on construction of cultivated land to ensure stable supply of agricultural products, strengthening the support for agricultural science and technology equipment, promoting green and low-carbon development of rural areas, protecting the rights of farmers and revitalizing the seed industry among other areas. After the inspections, a plenary session will be held in July to summarize the inspection work and prepare an inspection report. Inspections have already begun in Henan, where in Xinyang City, the inspection team investigated spring ploughing and counterfeiting of agricultural materials. The Huaibin County Agricultural Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Brigade sampled 15 townships, 7 production enterprises, and 310 dealers, and 12 samples were sent for inspection.
Action Plan Addresses the Safety of Housing and Municipal Projects: The Ministry of Housing Urban-Rural Development plans to remove currently existing safety hazards by the end of 2024. The Ministry issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Three-year Action on Tackling the Root Causes of Safety Production in Housing Municipal Projects" to reduce production safety indicators. The plan includes decreasing safety incidents, controlling the increase of safety hazards by 2025, and establishing a procedure to clear all major safety hazards by the end of year 2026. Improving organizational leadership, strengthening work mechanisms to prevent accidents, as well as implementing new processes while enhancing supervision and inspection is a part of this plan. Some of the targets mentioned in the plan include improving on-site supervision at construction sites by implementing electronic licensing systems and enhancing digital empowerment at construction sites to improve safety monitoring. Reducing illegal activities in the market, optimizing construction market activities, ensuring budget allocations for digital supervision work, and data interoperability to establish a unified national construction market have been included as well. Alongside this, the Ministry aims to strengthen the responsibility of each party involved in housing and municipal engineering projects.
China Tops World in Nuclear Power Capacity and New Unit Construction: According to the China Nuclear Energy Development Report 2024 released by the China Nuclear Energy Association, China continues to maintain its position as the world leader in nuclear power units. Currently, 26 nuclear power plants are under construction totaling 30.3 million kilowatts and 55 units are in operation across the country. Nuclear power generation has reached 433.21 billion kilowatts in 2023, the second highest in the world. Nuclear power accounted for 4.86% of China’s cumulative power generation in 2023 and nuclear power has been deemed as a new quality productive force, with tremendous potential for growth and technological advancement. Du Xiangwan, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering stressed that the country should double down on nuclear power as China’s annual output only accounts for 5% of total power output, compared to the global average of 10%.
PBOC Says China’s Financial System is Mostly Stable:: The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) recently held the 2024 Financial Stability Work Conference to summarize the achievements of 2023 and plan the next year’s work. The PBOC highlighted the stability of the Chinese financial system as well as the overall convergence of financial risks throughout 2023. The important indicators for banking, insurance, and securities institutions were all within a reasonable range. Several measures have been taken to prevent and diffuse financial risks, particularly systematic financial risk. Firstly, strengthening risk warning and creating early warning systems to identify risk early and deploy adequate measures. Stock risks have also been taken into consideration and are expected to be dealt with in a vigorous, orderly, and effective manner. There is a focus on the supervision of the financial system to monitor and bring all such activities under control in key areas like technology, advanced manufacturing, green economy, and small and medium-sized enterprises.
Chinese Citizens Traveling to or Residing in Pakistan Warned of Risks: The Chinese embassy in Pakistan issued a reminder to Chinese citizens residing in or traveling to Pakistan about the complex and severe security situation in Pakistan. They have also been advised to raise their security awareness and improve risk prevention measures. This has come as a result of the highly frequent attacks and security incidents in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. Recently, an attack was carried out on a vehicle carrying Chinese nationals which resulted in multiple casualties. The attack was brought up by the embassy. Emergency hotlines and contacts were shared and citizens have been urged to reach out to the embassies and local consulates in Karachi and Lahore in cases of emergencies. On the other hand, regulations from Pakistan's end require Chinese citizens to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) in advance before entering Gilgit-Balistan and other areas. The Chinese embassy has urged citizens to comply with the regulations of Pakistan as well as to acquire the NOC in advance.
Party Secretary of Chongqing Advocates for Construction of New Security Pattern: Yuan Jiajun, the Party Secretary of Chongqing, in an article published in the People’s Daily has advocated for ensuring construction of a new security pattern. Highlighting Chongqing’s efforts to support the “two establishments” and “two safeguards”, the provincial leader stated that national security is the top priority and the Party had absolute authority over national security work. He stressed the conscientious implementation of the "Regulations on the Leadership of the Communist Party of China in National Security Work" and the "Provisions on the National Security Responsibility System for Party Committees (Party Groups)" to improve the national security leadership system. Importantly, he stressed that “political security is the foundation of national security”, underlining the primacy of the Party and importance of resolving political risks.

SOCIAL MEDIA CHATTER IN CHINA

Case Review of Chinese Doctor Jailed for Treating Sex Worker Sparks Debate: In 2012, a rural Chinese doctor was jailed for treating a sex worker. A recent case review about the same case has sparked a debate on medical ethics and social welfare. The case was reviewed by lawyer Fu Shifeng, whose take on the case went viral. Dilemmas faced by healthcare professionals while providing treatments and care have been raised by various social media users. These dilemmas are usually raised while treating marginalized groups of people like sex workers. One person asked, “What is the duty of a doctor? Isn’t it to save people?”. Others blamed the doctor for not having a license and not reporting the patient’s prostitution business to the police. Through the case review, the complexities, ethical considerations, and dilemmas faced in the healthcare system were highlighted. Challenging social contexts more often than not raise these ethical dilemmas, shedding light on broader medical ethics and social welfare situations in China.

INDIA WATCH

South China Morning Post, in a video explainer on the use of deep fakes in politics has reported on the use of deep fake technologies to influence democratic processes like elections in India. The video essay by SCMP has been timed in response to the upcoming elections in large democracies like India and the US, citing several examples where artificial intelligence-generated videos or deep fake videos were used to influence or mislead voters. The report included the views of Indian journalists, founders of AI companies and other stakeholders to make the case that deepfakes are becoming increasingly popular and were a particular problem in India. The report makes the point that Indian political parties have embraced the use of deepfakes and deploy them for electoral gain because the use of deepfake technology has not been banned. The report points out that China was quick to draft laws about deepfakes, drawing a contrast between democracies and single party systems.