Davos, United Front Meeting & China-Russia Ties

Below are the stories that I found noteworthy from the People’s Daily’s January 20, 2021 edition

Page 1: For the first time since 2017, Xi Jinping will be addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos next week. PD has a very short piece with this announcement. But here’s what China’s foreign ministry said announcing this: “Against the backdrop of the pandemic, China will continue to contribute its wisdom and strength to global cooperation against COVID-19, world economic recovery, meeting global challenges, and improving global governance.” 

A commentary on Page 3 follows this announcement. It talks about Xi’s 2017 speech, referencing this quote:

“Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from. Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible. Indeed, it runs counter to the historical trend.”

And then the commentary says: “Currently, humanity is at a crossroads, and there is no shortage of similarities with 2017. It should be clearly recognized that in today’s complex and interdependent world, no country, institution or individual can deal with economic, environmental, social and technological challenges alone. To create a future in the face of adversity, the concept of a community of human destiny is indispensable, and it is necessary to strengthen solidarity and cooperation, and to gather global synergy to overcome challenges.” 

And then this: “It is obvious to all that under the current international situation, China’s ideas and actions are playing a driving role in the world to promote unity, aggregate strength and strengthen confidence.”

Next, there’s a piece on discipline inspection and anti-corruption work in 2020 linked to the poverty alleviation campaign. It says that “the national discipline inspection and supervision organs continued to deepen the three-year special focus on corruption and work style in the poverty alleviation field...” Some of the data shared in the piece is as follows:

• From January to November 2020, a total of 56,900 cases of corruption and work style issues in the poverty alleviation field were investigated and dealt with nationwide, and 85,000 people were criticized and dealt with education, of which 35,700 were punished. These include actions taken by the Party and government.

• From January to November 2020, a total of 104,600 cases of corruption and work style in the field of people’s livelihood were investigated and dealt with nationwide, and 149,500 people were criticized and dealt with education, of which 92,000 were punished. These include actions taken by the Party and government.

• Finally, there’s also a discussion on typical cases and Party members continuing to provide a “protective umbrella” to the underworld, which remains a concern. There’s been an ongoing campaign to deal with this. You can read more about the campaign in this excellent article by Sheena Chestnut Greitens from September 2020.

Third, PSC member Wang Yang spoke at the National United Front Ministerial Conference in Beijing on Monday. He said:

“We must focus on forging the consciousness of the Chinese nation’s community as the main line to do a good job in national work and make the ideological foundation of national unity more solid. We must focus on promoting the sinicization of religion in our country to do a good job in religious work, and better guide religion to adapt to socialist society.”

Today in celebrating the Party’s centenary, we have a piece about the Red Boat and Nanhu Revolutionary Memorial Hall in Jiaxing. It’s essentially talking about the significance of the place, while going back to Xi Jinping and the PSC’s October 2017 visit.

Page 2: Finally, a story on COVID-19 outbreak in Hebei. This one talks about Sun Chunlan’s visit to cities across the province from Jan. 15 to 18. The story doesn’t share data about infections, although those are available at the NHC website. But it says that the number of infections are “large” and that “epidemic prevention and control have reached the most critical time.” In addition, it says that “the feature of this epidemic (the current outbreak) is that it mainly occurred in rural areas, with relatively weak medical conditions and awareness of prevention and control.” There’s strict traffic control with regard to people entering Beijing, with mandatory testing being done. There’s also discussion in the piece about quarantine and tracing. The story also says that “a breakthrough has not been made in the investigation of the source of the spread of the epidemic.” Another story on the page, meanwhile, talks about another round of mass testing being done in Shijiazhuang.

Turning to the economy, there’s a piece summarising comments by Peng Huagang, Secretary-General and spokesperson of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. A few data points from what Peng said:

• “In 2020, the total operating income of central enterprises was 30.3 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.2%, and the rate of decline narrowed 9.6 percentage points from the lowest point in the first quarter.”

• “For the entire year of 2020, central SOEs achieved a net profit of 1.4 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%.”

• “In 2020, central SOEs completed fixed asset investment (excluding real estate investment) of 2.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.9% year-on-year; R&D expenditures increased by 11.3% year-on-year…”

Page 3: A story based on Hua Chunying’s comments on China-Russia relations. These are from the foreign ministry’s regular press conference. The English version is here. But keep in mind the headline, which emphasises this point that Hua makes:

“In developing China-Russia strategic cooperation, we see no limit and no forbidden zone to how far this cooperation can go.” 

Page 4: Just this one to note, which talks about the “root and soul” of China’s new development concept. The piece basically talks about improving people’s lives as being central to governance. Here’s a useful snippet from the piece, which tells you about the significance of performance legitimacy. 

“Practice shows that a country that takes ‘meeting the fundamental interests of the people’ as the measure of development will flourish, and a political party that takes ‘the people's aspiration for a better life’ as the goal of its struggle will surely endure.”

Pages 5 & 6: These continue to be dedicated to the centenary propaganda. There’s useful bits in there about the history of the Party, if you are new to any of this. But yeah, it’s not worth me exploring the content.

Page 9: On the Theory page today, pieces talked about developing and governing the digital economy, boosting domestic demand, expanding consumption and greening BRI. I didn’t find any of these interesting enough to do a breakdown. But the last piece on a green BRI has these useful bits. 

“To promote the steady and orderly development of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, China established the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Leading Group on Ecological and Environmental Protection in 2015 and identified the China-ASEAN Environmental Protection Cooperation Center as the lead agency to provide technical support, providing organizational and institutional safeguards for the work of the Belt and Road.”

Some of the other steps it talks about are: “Established the Belt and Road Construction Promotion Center to gradually establish a multi-level working system from policy coordination to project implementation management. Actively implemented the Paris Agreement and signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Environment Programme on building a green Belt and Road. Established the Belt and Road International Alliance for Green Development, launched the Belt and Road Green Supply Chain Platform, and held a series of thematic activities such as the Belt and Road International High-level Dialogue on Ecology and Environmental Protection. To provide a new bridge and link to promote eco-environmental cooperation and green development in the Belt and Road.”

Of course the impact of these steps on carbon emissions is not discussed.

Page 16: On the international page today, we note that Serbia is the first European country to use China’s Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine for a mass rollout. In addition, there’s a good, detailed piece on the EU’s new anti-terrorism policies.

The story draws from the European Counter-Terrorism Agenda, which was released in December 2020. The piece says that under this, the EU is proposing to develop a modern border control system, conduct database comparison checks on all persons entering the EU, and realise the interoperability of the border information system and the immigration management information system.

An example of how this database integration will help is this: “if someone is banned from using guns in a member state, he cannot obtain permission to use guns in other member states.” 

The piece also says: “The EU will increase the protection of public places, improve the security defense capabilities of key infrastructure such as transportation hubs, power systems, and hospitals, and strengthen aviation safety. It plans to deploy security personnel on passenger aircraft. The EU will inject 23 million euros into 10 projects to protect religious sites, public transportation systems, sports venues and other public places from threats of terrorist attacks. It also includes improving the ability to detect drone attacks.”

With regard to steps taken to moderate online content, the piece notes that the “EU has put forward rules on the elimination of cyber terrorism in its anti-terrorism agenda to avoid the infiltration of extremist ideas into certain groups. According to the new rules, social media platforms need to delete or prohibit access to terrorist content within one hour, and the competent authorities of EU member states can issue deletion orders to online platforms and take punitive measures.”