Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com While the official Chinese media have claimed that the trial of former Politburo member Bo Xilai testifies to the Xi Jinping leadership’s commitment to fighting graft, it is unlikely that “tigers” among venal cadres will be nabbed any time soon. There is a well-known mutual protection clause” within […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com It’s a case of plus ça change with President ’s nine-month old campaign to rectify the “work style” of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through means including cracking down on big-time corruption. Earlier this week the protagonist of the one of worst scandals in PRC history – former minister […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping marked his 60th birthday last weekend by launching a Mao-style “mass line political education” campaign in an apparent effort to raise the moral standards of the 83 million members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com New Chinese leader Xi Jinping has flatly ruled out political reform in an unpublished internal speech during his recent tour of the quasi-capitalist Guangdong Province. According to a transcript of the speech obtained by East-Asia-Intel.com, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary bitterly accused party members who favored […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com General Secretary and Commander-in-chief Xi Jinping is set to continue the “pro-Russian” policy of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership becomes more nervous than ever over Washington’s perceived “anti-China containment policy.” While meeting with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in Beijing on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Xi Jinping, newly anointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has lost no time laying down what will likely be a leitmotif of his 10-year tenure: promoting “constitutional Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This so-called “Back to the [Chinese] Constitution” movement will be kicked off after fellow […]
Sol W. Sanders Perhaps more than Westerners, Chinese have a gambling streak. Even during the darkest hours of Maoist oppression and pretended Puritanism, Beijing tolerated gambling on its southern flank in the Portuguese colony of Macau. Now reincorporated into China, in 2012 the world’s largest casino, holding the country’s only legal gambling monopoly, raked […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Just 11 years after then-President Jiang Zemin took the unorthodox step of admitting private businessmen into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an unprecedentedly large number of “red capitalists” are set to be inducted into the Party’s policy-setting Central Committee. According to the official media, at least 24 non-state-sector […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Since territorial disputes erupted between China and Japan in the early 1970s over the Diaoyu islets (called the Senkakus in Japan), Beijing has stuck to late patriarch Deng Xiaoping’s famous dictum: “Leave the question of sovereignty for the next generation; let’s put the emphasis on joint [economic] development.” […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com For years, analysts of domestic Chinese politics have been pondering this important question: With riots and protests increasing to more than 150,000 incidents a year, how close is China from an Arab-style mass uprising that could result in the destruction of the dictatorial Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Even […]