History Campaign, Ant's Rectification, Platform Governance, Anti-Corruption, Zhong Sheng on 'Interventionist' US Foreign Policy
Here are the stories and pieces from the April 13, 2021, People’s Daily edition that I found noteworthy.
Page 1: The big stories on the front page today are about the Party history education campaign. First, a report stating that: “over the past few days, all regions, departments and units have conscientiously studied and implemented the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech, carried out in-depth party history learning and education…” It then talks about what specific central government-level organisations have done. This is a bit of a roll call with each organisation’s main focus and activities related to the history learning campaign being mentioned. For all those wondering about the aggressive foreign affairs work, here’s what’s reported with regard to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“When deploying learning and education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that it is necessary to grasp the historical initiative in the development of diplomacy, to recognize the general trend of the world and the historical position of contemporary China, and to improve the ability and level of responding to external risks and challenges. Focus on telling the story of the Communist Party of China, and strive for more understanding, support and recognition of the Communist Party of China and the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics from the international community.”
The report also says that “all regions, departments and units had made good use of the abundant red resources, and promoted the learning and education of party history into the mind and heart through field visits...”
This is followed by a commentary on the Party’s history learning campaign. It says that
“For one hundred years, no matter how the situation and tasks change, no matter what stormy waves it encounters, our party has always taken the initiative in history, anchored the goal of struggle, and moved forward firmly in the right direction. In a hundred years of continuous struggle, the party united and led the people to blaze a great path, build great achievements, forge a great spirit, accumulate valuable experience, and create impressive miracles in the history of the development of the Chinese nation and the history of human social progress. The party’s experience does not fall from the sky, nor is it copied from books, but the party’s experience has been accumulated through hard and stormy long-term explorations. It is full of successes and failures and gains and losses, condensed with blood and sweat. Full of wisdom and courage.”
The commentary mentions Mao, Deng and Xi, so no mention of Jiang or Hu. Also, this comparison was interesting: “In 1945, Comrade Mao Zedong made a concluding report at the Seventh Party Congress and listed 17 difficulties in one breath when he talked about ‘preparing for losses’...Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has specifically emphasized the need to increase the awareness of danger and prevent risks and challenges at many important meetings. In the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, preventing and resolving major risks was placed first in the three major battles.” To be honest, it’s a strange comparison of risk and pressures. The CCP’s position in April 1945 when Mao delivered this speech was immensely more difficult that what it encounters today.
The piece then talks about self-revolution. “Back then, the Yan'an rectification made the whole party correct its ideological and political line, broke up subjectivism, sectarianism, and party stereotypes (essentially formalism), and clarified the direction of efforts to move forward, which gave a great impetus to the victory of the Anti-Japanese War and the Liberation War.” In this context, it then talks about how “it is necessary to summarize historical experience and lessons, focus on solving the practical problems of party building, continuously improve the party’s leadership and governance, strengthen the ability to resist corruption, prevent degeneration, and resist risks, so as to ensure that our party is always in the historical process of profound changes in the world situation.”
The goal of the campaign is to embed this idea among the cadre and people: “we must deeply understand why the Communist Party of China can, why Marxism works, and why socialism with Chinese characteristics is good” in order to “clarify the historical logic, theoretical logic, and practical logic among them.”
Page 2: First, PD has re-published Ant Group’s statement after the recent fine and demands from regulators that it become a financial holding company. AP reports that “the regulators told Ant to rectify unfair competition in its payments business and reduce the balance of its Yu’ebao money-market fund — which at one point was the largest in the world. It also was ordered to break its information monopoly and to minimize the collection and use of personal data and to stop any illegal credit, insurance and wealth-management activities.”
In a statement on its WeChat account, Ant Group said that “On Dec. 26, 2020, financial regulators put forward five requirements to Ant Group for the rectification of its key businesses. Ant Group attaches great importance to the seriousness of the rectification. Under the regulators’ guidance, and in accordance with regulatory requirements, Ant Group has completed the formulation of our rectification plan.”
The plan includes:
Reconstituting Ant Group as a financial holding company.
Pivoting to “serve consumers and SMEs by focusing on micro-payments”
Setting up a personal credit reporting company
“Jiebei” and “Huabei” will be operated by our consumer finance company
It added: “We will also further enhance our corporate governance, adhere to fair competition rules, bring related-party transactions into line, strengthen risk prevention and control, create a fair market environment, and further strengthen our corporate social responsibility commitments.” This is followed by two paragraphs praising the regulators for “not only ensuring the healthy and orderly development of the industry” but also “safeguarding a fair market environment to promote higher quality growth in the future.” This last bit is crucial to note: “We will put our growth proactively within the national strategic context, continue to invest in technological innovation, enhance our compliance capabilities, beef up our global competitiveness, strive to create societal value, and contribute to the new development paradigm of domestic and international circulations.”
In PD what we also have is an interview with Pan Gongsheng from the People’s Bank of China. He talks about the Ant rectification plan and then discusses the future of platform governance in China. What he says, sounds rather ominous for China’s fintech sector:
Platform companies should focus on serving the real economy and preventing financial risks when carrying out financial business, and should not make technology a ‘camouflage’ for illegal activities.
All financial activities should fall under financial supervision.
Finally, the regulators and firms should “adhere to both development and standardization. Strengthen supervision in accordance with the law, standardize market order, prevent market monopoly, protect data property rights and personal privacy; at the same time, grasp the laws of platform economic development, improve financial service experience, and consolidate and enhance the international competitiveness of platform enterprises.”
He concluded with this: “The financial management department will, as always, adhere to the ‘two unvawering,’ i.e., create a fair and competitive market environment, continue to support private capital to carry out financial technology activities in accordance with the law.
Next, a report about quarterly lending data. Xinhua English reports that “China's new yuan-denominated loans totalled 2.73 trillion yuan (about 416.3 billion U.S. dollars) in March, down by 103.9 billion yuan year on year, central bank data showed on Monday. In the first quarter of 2021, new yuan loans hit 7.67 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 574.1 billion yuan, the People's Bank of China said. Loans in the household and corporate sectors increased by 2.56 trillion yuan and 5.35 trillion yuan, respectively.”
Page 3: As has been the case, this page has carried reports about foreigners praising the Party. This continues today too. But moving away from this, there are other stories. First, a short report on the appointment of Liu Xiaoming, former ambassador to the UK, as a special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs. Liu has also served as the ambassador to the DPRK from 2006 to 2010; so he understands the issues well and has served in the West too. Read SCMP’s report on this.
Next, interestingly today the pick from the MoFA press conference was with regard to Japan potentially deciding to “discharge nuclear waste water into the sea.” Zhao Lijian said that “properly disposing of the wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is related to the international public interest and the vital interests of neighboring countries. It should be handled carefully and properly to ensure that with the participation of all parties involved, it can effectively avoid further damage to the marine environment, food safety and human health.” The English readout from the ministry’s website does not contain this bit: “I noticed that the Japanese side often asks other countries to fulfil their international responsibilities. Now the international community is watching Japan, and the Japanese side cannot turn a blind eye or listen to it. This matter is of great importance...”
Finally, a Zhong Sheng commentary on the need for the US to reflect on its human rights. It begins with this: “The world has to ask whether the word ‘human rights’ really exists in the dictionary held by the so-called ‘human rights teachers’ in the United States.” The key point that it picks on are the immigration issues at the US-Mexico border, focussing on the detention of children of migrants. This was covered in detail in a report on the international page yesterday.
This is the core argument of the piece, i.e. the US undermines international norms of non-interference and state sovereignty.
“It is well known that the U.S. government has been insensitive to the human rights situation of refugees at the border; today, despite the rhetoric of ‘humane and effective.’ there is no effective action...The frequent refugee crises along the US border are entirely the evil results that the US has sown. For many years, under the banner of ‘human rights over sovereignty’, the United States has ignored the principles of respect for national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs as stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations, interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, imposed unilateral sanctions on the developing countries concerned, and even hit out at sovereign countries, leading to serious humanitarian crises.”
The piece then cites Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as having said that US “interventionist foreign policy towards its neighbors in Central America for decades has led to poverty, violence and turmoil in regional countries, and has led to desperate border immigration.”
From here, the author moves to racism, slavery, “ethnic cleansing” of Native Americans, etc. “On the issue of human rights, the United States seriously lacks the power of self-reflection and repair, and the result can only be the anger of the people - the recent emergence of the powerful ‘Black Lives are Lives’ campaign and the ‘Stop Hating Asians’ march illustrates this point; not long ago, at the forty-sixth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, representatives of 116 countries and relevant international agencies put forward 347 human rights improvement opinions to the United States in various forms, which also illustrates this point.”
Finally, some international propaganda on poverty alleviation; a new exhibition on this has opened in Gwangju, South Korea.
Page 11: Two stories related to the anti-corruption crackdown. First, China's Supreme People's Procuratorate has ordered the arrest of Shi Wenqing, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Jiangxi Provincial People's Congress, for suspected bribe-taking.
Second, Dong Hong, former deputy head with the central disciplinary inspection team, has been expelled from the Party for “grave violations of Party discipline and laws.”Dong apparently “lost his ideals and convictions and was dishonest and disloyal to the Party.” Xinhua English reports that “an investigation found that Dong had violated the eight-point frugality code on Party and government conduct. He did so by entering private clubs in disregard of rules and attending banquets that may have compromised the fulfillment of his duties. Dong also took advantage of his posts to seek benefits for others in business operations and project contracting. He accepted large amounts of money and gifts in return.”
Page 17: Yesterday’s international page had criticism of the US and UK on human rights, racism, etc. Today, we have a report about Australia. It says that “according to a survey recently released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, one-third of Australian teenagers polled claimed that they had recently suffered discrimination in various forms such as race, appearance, and gender.” This was actually first reported in late March in the Australian press. So by any editorial standards, this is not a new story. But it is factual and serves a narrative; so why not, eh?