The Sinocism China Newsletter – February 1, 2016

Bill Bishop , February 2, 2016 11:26am

THE ESSENTIAL EIGHT

1. China’s military regrouped into five PLA theater commands – Xinhua Xi, also chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), presented the flags to top officers of the five theater commands at a ceremony in Beijing. Commander Liu Yuejun and political commissar Zheng Weiping of the Eastern Theater Command; commander Wang Jiaocheng and political commissar Wei Liang of the Southern Theater Command; commander Zhao Zongqi and political commissar Zhu Fuxi of the Western Theater Command; commander Song Puxuan and political commissar Chu Yimin of the Northern Theater Command; and commander Han Weiguo and political commissar Yin Fanglong of the Central Theater Command all received flags. The CMC Vice Chairman Fan Changlong announced the appointment of leaders for the five theater commands, which was endorsed by Xi. CMC Vice Chairman Xu Qiliang presided over the ceremony.

Related: 中国人民解放军战区成立大会在北京举行-新华网 CCTV Evening News on the new PLA Theater Commands… Xi said to have issued a 训令

Related: D-Day for PLA: China launches new theatre commands in drive for modern military | South China Morning Post The PLA has officially abandoned its decades-old seven military regions, replacing them with five new theatre commands in its bid to establish a modern, integrated force. But ground force personnel still dominate the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army’s new zones, a move one analyst said would help ensure stability in the transition.

Related: 社评:“战”字代替“军”字的意义大于七改五_评论_环球网 中国军队很多年不打仗了,外国舆论谈中国军力,更容易想到“东风”战略导弹、潜艇、航母建造计划等等,想中国军队本身少了。今天的外军将领们大多没同中国军队交过手,加上中国没有一个“好莱坞”来虚构很牛的军哥形象,中国军队给世界的印象应当说不算深。或许有一些国人觉得这样的“低调”挺好的。他们大概还希望国家多谈“铸剑为犁”,最好让军人们也经常抱着和平鸽拍照示人。五大战区的成立是一次革命性变革,一个“战”字,是对军队本质和军人气概拔地而起的张扬,是原力的释放。世界对2月1日以后的中国必进一步刮目相看。

Related: 解放军建立东南西北中五大战区_国内_新京报网 中国人民解放军战区成立大会1日举行。中央军委主席习近平向东部战区、南部战区、西部战区、北部战区、中部战区授予军旗并发布训令。同时,各战区司令员政委亮相。五大战区10位军政主官有何特殊之处?

Related: 2016 PLA Reform-Junyu.org 2016 PLA Reform Vocab List

2. Isolating China: Why the Latest U.S. Freedom of Navigation Operation May Have Already Succeeded – Lawfare The avowed legal purpose of these U.S. FONOPs is to win acquiescence for the U.S. (and majority) view of international law that innocent passage of military ships does not require prior permission. The sub silentio strategic goal of these FONOPs is to isolate China from its regional neighbors. Thus far, at least, it looks like the Wilbur FONOP has succeeded in making progress on both goals.

Related: The South China Sea Arbitration Case Could Exacerbate Disputes in the South China Sea | The Diplomat The current international system is increasingly demanding countries to participate in international affairs and consult with each other. It disapproves of harboring prejudice and biased treatment of any country, and discourages the arbitrary exercise of supra-national legal authority to serve individual national political agendas. Without these principles, in this contemporary society where we live together and our interdependence deepens more than ever, the cause of global governance towards democracy and the rule of law would unfortunately suffer from a hard time. Wu Shicun is president and senior fellow of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

3. Light Government Touch Lets China’s Hui Practice Islam in the Open – The New York Times in many parts of the officially atheist country, religious restrictions make it a crime to operate Islamic schools and bar people under 18 from entering mosques. Asked about the Chinese government’s light touch here, Liu Jun, 37, the chief imam at the Banqiao Daotang Islamic School, offered a knowing smile. “Muslims from other parts of China who come here, especially from Xinjiang, can’t believe how free we are, and they don’t want to leave,” he said, referring to the far-west borderlands that are home to China’s beleaguered Uighur ethnic minority. “Life for the Hui is very good.”

Related: In China, rise of Salafism fosters suspicion and division among Muslims – LA Times In some ways, Linxia, in northern China’s Gansu province, is a city united. About 60% of its 250,000 people are Muslim. On a frigid Friday afternoon in December, its street life grinds to a halt. Hundreds of men wearing scruffy beards and white caps pack into the tile-clad Xinhua Mosque for afternoon prayers. An imam chants Koranic passages in throaty Arabic. A speaker crackles, and a flock of birds takes flight. It’s also a city divided. There are the mainstream Muslims, locals say — and then there are the Salafis.

4. China Is Said to Force Closing of Women’s Legal Aid Center – The New York Times As word spread of the closing of the Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling and Service Center, many women’s rights advocates expressed shock. The center was highly symbolic for having been born of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, a moment when China, struggling to be accepted internationally after the 1989 military suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, loosened controls on civil society activities.

Related: 单仁平:西媒炒作众泽关闭事件是为看热闹 _评论_环球网 西方媒体近日集中报道了北京众泽妇女法律咨询服务中心2月1日关闭的消息,并指责中国政府“打压民间团体”。美国总统参选人希拉里1月31日在推特上声援该中心创办人郭建梅,有分析认为希拉里欲用女权议题为她的民主党候选人初选造势。

5. China’s Rights Struggle Is No Longer an ‘Internal Affair’ | The Diplomat And when the stonewalling starts (as it almost inevitably will) about these being “internal affairs,” the logical response will be that, obviously, in these cases they aren’t. They involve non-Chinese, people whom foreign governments have a moral and legal obligation to take care of and support. If it does prove true, too, that Chinese state agents have been unilaterally acting abroad, that makes them international actors, and exposes part of their work to international norms and criticisms as never before. The bad news over the last few months is that we seem to be seeing a wholly new form of the Chinese state acting outside its borders in ways which are opaque, arbitrary, and worryingly predatory. The good news is that never before has the Chinese state line about “non-interference in the affairs of other countries” been so thoroughly eroded

Related: Why critics of China aren’t safe anywhere – The Washington Post OpEd Jerome Cohen, a professor at New York University law school and leading expert on law in China, links the kidnappings with the crackdown at home and China’s disregard for international norms in territorial disputes — all of which, he said, “have gravely damaged Xi Jinping’s reputation for respecting the rule of law.”

Related: China’s Anti-Corruption Dragnet Catches More Than Financial Criminals-RFA A recent announcement by China’s police force that it has set up a special unit to nab so-called “fugitives” who fled the country is prompting  fears that the ruling Chinese Communist Party is expanding its law enforcement activities far beyond its borders. Beijing’s overseas fugitives’ bureau will “help China to bring fugitives hiding overseas to justice and to retrieve stolen funds,” the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement last week.

6. Watching Big Brother: A Q&A with Chinese Political Cartoonist Badiucao » The LARB Blog I believe that the Chinese space for political cartoonists in the mainland has already closed. In the era when Weibo [a Chinese counterpart to Twitter] first launched, online satirical cartoonists were very active. We could see Kuang Biao, Dashixiong, and dozens of other cartoonists commenting on current events.  But now, I almost never see domestic cartoonists’ work.

7. A Deep Divide Emerges in China: How Do Intellectuals Relate to the State? | The Diplomat Last week, a debate erupted on Chinese social media with regard to an opinion piece written by Professor Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute in Singapore. In his article, Zheng argues that China has already entered a “shortage of knowledge” era and seems to blame the whole intellectual stratum for the failure to come up with practical and creative knowledge. Unsurprisingly, Zheng’s essay has generated a storm on China’s most popular social media outlet, Wechat. Many are criticizing Zheng for being unfair to Chinese intellectuals within mainland China 

8. Why China hacks the world – CSMonitor.com Moreover, with Xi’s desire to turn China into a “great cyber power,” Beijing will continue to pursue a strategy of exerting sovereignty over cyberspace, which is bound to create friction with Washington. The challenge for the two sides from here will be to identify some rules that will keep tensions low – and keep a full-scale cyberwar from erupting. Excerpted from “The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age,” by Adam Segal.

You can read the rest of today’s newsletter here.

Bill Bishop

Author and curator of the daily Sinocism newsletter.