Zion Church moved many of its services online. Beijing still arrested its pastor.
Mindy Belz
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Opinion | Xi Is Watching as Chinese Christians Pray
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China expels top military generals from Communist Party
China has expelled several of the country’s leading military officials from the Communist Party.
Among them is He Weidong, one of two vice-chairs of the Central Military Commission, which is led by Xi Jinping.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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Xi’s Markets Shakeup Surprised Insiders, Showing Alarm Over Rout
(Bloomberg) — Staffers at China’s main securities regulator had been working around the clock for weeks on ways to prop up the nation’s tumbling stock market when the bombshell dropped.
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Late Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that their boss Yi Huiman had been ousted, becoming the biggest Communist Party casualty of a $5 trillion selloff that’s undermining confidence in the fragile economy.
The announcement sent shockwaves across the industry and within the China Securities Regulatory Commission, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Prior to the Xinhua news, there had been no internal announcement from the Communist Party’s organization department, which typically shares key personnel changes internally before they go public, the people said.
The departure of Yi, a surprise to even high-ranking CSRC officials, underscores the growing sense of alarm within President Xi Jinping’s government over the speed and scope of the market meltdown that’s now entering its fourth year. Wu Qing, a close ally of Premier Li Qiang, is taking over as chairman of the regulator.
The CSRC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
China watchers say the move may signal additional measures to revive the world’s second-largest stock market. An earlier flurry of support in the runup to the Lunar New Year holiday, when exchanges are closed for six days beginning Friday, had failed to restore investor confidence.
“This is long overdue in my opinion, if one chief cannot do the job, then maybe we should give someone else a chance,” said Jiang Liangqing, managing director at Zhuhai Greenbamboo Private Fund Management. “At the minimum, a new broom sweeps clean and he could be more bold in taking action instead of just words.”
Anticipation of more fulsome efforts to end the rout had been mounting for days, after Bloomberg News reported that regulators led by the CSRC planned to brief President Xi on the markets as soon as Tuesday. There’s been no public disclosure yet on whether Xi had that briefing. It was not known what role Yi had, if any, in that planned briefing.
China’s latest measures, including curbs on short-selling and purchases by state-owned entities, had some effect this week as the main equity gauge jumped three straight sessions to pare declines for the year. China’s “national team” bought about 70 billion yuan ($9.7 billion) in shares over the past month, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated in a report Monday. At least 200 billion yuan is needed to stabilize the market, according to the US bank.
“Government buying might help circuit-break the downward spiral, but we think reforms, policy consistency, and plans to address structural macro headwinds are required to re-rate China equity,” the Goldman analysts wrote.
Read more: Everything China Is Doing to Rescue Its Battered Stock Market
If history is any guide, more gains may be afoot. The past two sackings of CSRC chiefs heralded extended equity rallies. The benchmark CSI 300 Index rose more than 40% in almost a two-year span after Liu Shiyu replaced Xiao Gang in 2016. The gauge jumped more than 80% over two years after Liu was ousted for Yi in 2019.
Major market interventions in China have rarely been smooth, however. And the country’s economy is facing bigger challenges than during previous market slumps: The property crisis shows no sign of ending, geopolitical tensions with the US continue to simmer and foreign investors are wary of a government that has clamped down on private enterprise.
What’s more, the CSRC is constrained by what it can do to turn markets around, notes 22V Research analyst Michael Hirson. It can’t command an intervention by the “national team” or launch some kind of stabilization fund, and can do little on its own to drive economic growth.
“Changing the chairmanship at the CSRC alone does not change anything fundamentally,” said Yan Wang, chief China strategist at Alpine Macro in Montreal. “The stock market performance is a reflection of weak growth and poor confidence. Unless Beijing addresses these issues, the stock market will likely continue to struggle.”
The tall task now rests with Wu, 58, who had been tipped last year to take over the CSRC before he was promoted to deputy party secretary for Shanghai. Before that, he worked closely with Premier Li — President’s Xi’s top deputy — who was previously party secretary in the nation’s financial capital.
Read more: ‘Broker Butcher’ Set to Be China’s Top Securities Regulator
Wu is well connected in China’s halls of power. He earlier headed the Shanghai Stock Exchange for almost two years and held various roles at the CSRC, earning him the nickname “broker butcher” after shuttering 31 firms over regulation breaches. He then oversaw the fund industry until 2010.
Wu also worked at the national planning committee, which later morphed into the National Development and Reform Commission. Wu, who holds a PhD in economics from the Renmin University of China, is known as a low-key technocrat who has zero tolerance for wrongdoing, a person familiar with him has said. Wu sometimes jokes he’s more fit to be a surgeon, the person said.
“Wu’s background in financial regulation suggests he might do a better job in cracking down on malicious short selling and illicit behaviors in the market,” said Sun Jianbo, president of China Vision Capital. “While that’ll soothe investor nerves in the short term by cultivating a more favorable environment, it requires more policy efforts.”
–With assistance from April Ma, John Cheng and Jacob Gu.
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TikTok banned on U.S. government devices, and the U.S. is not alone. Here’s where the app is restricted.
Hong Kong — The U.S. and Canada both issued orders this week banning the use of TikTok on government-issued mobile devices amid growing privacy and cybersecurity concerns about the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. TikTok, owned by the larger tech company Bytedance, has long maintained that it does not and will not share data with the Chinese government and that its data is not held in China.
The company also disputes accusations that it collects more user data than other social media companies and insists that it’s run independently.
But many countries remain cautious, and Shawn Henry, chief security officer for the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, told “CBS Mornings” those concerns are “absolutely valid.”“China wants to be the No. 1 superpower in the world and they have been targeting U.S. technology, U.S. personal information. They’ve been doing electronic espionage for several decades now,” Henry said, describing the hugely popular app as “another opportunity for them [China] to gain access to people’s information, to see what people are thinking about, to potentially influence the way people think” through deliberate misinformation.
Below is a look at the countries and regions that have implemented partial or total bans on TikTok so far:
United States
This week, the Biden administration gave all government agency staff 30 days to delete TikTok from federal devices and systems over data security concerns. The White House directive came after the U.S. Congress officially banned the app on all federal government devices in December.
Despite the repeated assurances from TikTok executives that the company will not do so, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the ruling Communist Party requires companies doing business in China to provide access to their data.
While the ban applies only to government devices, some U.S. lawmakers are pushing for an outright ban on the app. China lashed out at the U.S. over the ban on government devices, describing it as an abuse of state power and a suppression of foreign businesses.
More than half of U.S. states also have also banned TikTok from their government devices.
European Union
The European Parliament, European Commission and the EU Council, three top EU bodies, have imposed bans on TikTok on staff devices. The European Parliament’s ban, announced Tuesday, takes effect on March 20. It has recommended lawmakers and staff remove the app from their personal devices.
European legislators have also voiced increasing concern about the app’s data policies and its influence on young people, and as CBS News’ Emmet Lyons reported, Europe’s regulators may have more potent legal weapons at their disposal to challenge the company than some of their international counterparts.
Wide-ranging EU data protection laws, stricter than anything on the books in the U.S., for instance, could pose increasing challenges for TikTok bosses on the continent. The app is already the subject of two investigations by Ireland’s data protection regulator over alleged transfers of user data to China that may breach the country’s laws, as well as possible violations of children’s privacy.
The company may also come under a direct audit and face fines of up to 6% of the platform’s annual revenue under the EU’s new Digital Services Act, if it’s found to have failed to comply with that law.
Canada
After the U.S. announcement, Canada announced Monday that government-issued devices must not use TikTok, saying the app presents an “unacceptable” risk to privacy and security.
Employees will also be blocked from downloading the application in the future.
India
India imposed a ban on TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps, including the messaging app WeChat, in 2020 over privacy and security concerns. The ban came shortly after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops at a disputed Himalayan border killed 20 Indian soldiers and injured dozens.
As CBS News’ Arshad Zargar reported at the time, it was the first deadly border clash between the Asian giants in decades, but the tension had been simmering for months. India has a growing middle class and is expected to eclipse China this year as the most populous nation on Earth.
The companies were given a chance to respond to questions about privacy and security requirements on the apps at the time, but the ban was made permanent in January 2021.Taiwan
In December 2022, Taiwan imposed a public sector ban on TikTok after the FBI warned that TikTok posed a national security risk.
Government devices, including cell phones, tablets and desktop computers, are not allowed to use Chinese-made software, which include apps like TikTok, its Chinese equivalent Douyin, or Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle content app.
Taiwan is a tiny, democratically governed island that functions independently but sits just 110 miles across the Taiwan Strait from China. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to exert control over the island, by force if necessary.
President Biden told “60 Minutes” late last year that Taiwan makes its “own judgments” about its independence and the U.S. wasn’t “encouraging… their being independent,” but he said he would use American military power to help defend the island if China were to launch “an unprecedented attack.”
Pakistan
Pakistani authorities have temporarily banned TikTok at least four times since October 2020, citing concerns that app promotes immoral content.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers banned TikTok and the Chinese game PUBG in 2022 on the grounds of protecting young people from “being misled,” but like its neighbor Pakistan the country made no reference to security concerns.
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Jiang Zemin, Chinese president who led 1990s economic reforms, dies at 96
Greg Baker/AP
Beijing — Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who led his country out of isolation after the crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and supported economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth, has died, state TV said. He was 96.
Jiang died in Shanghai, state TV reported on its website.
A surprise choice to lead a divided Communist Party after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, Jiang saw China through history-making changes including a revival of market-oriented reforms, the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Even as China opened to the outside, Jiang’s government stamped out dissent at home. It jailed human rights, labor and pro-democracy activists and banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which it viewed as a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
Jiang gave up his last official title in 2004 but remained a force behind the scenes in the wrangling that led to the rise of current President Xi Jinping, who took power in 2012. Xi has stuck to Jiang’s mix of economic liberalization and strict political controls.
Ng Han Guan/AP
Initially seen as a transitional leader, Jiang was drafted on the verge of retirement with a mandate from then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to pull together the party and nation.
But he proved transformative. In 13 years as Communist Party general secretary, the top position in China, he guided China’s rise to global economic power by welcoming capitalists into the Communist Party and pulling in foreign investment after China joined the WTO.
He presided over the nation’s rise as a global manufacturer, the return of Hong Kong and Macao from Britain and Portugal and the achievement of a long-cherished dream: winning the competition to host the Olympic Games after an earlier rejection.
A former soap factory manager, Jiang capped his career with the communist era’s first orderly succession, handing over his post as party leader in 2002 to Hu Jintao, who assumed the presidency the following year.
Jiang tried to hold onto influence by staying on as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the party’s military wing, the 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army. He gave up that post in 2004 following complaints he might divide the government.
Even after he left office, Jiang had influence over promotions through his network of proteges.
He was said to be frustrated that Deng had picked Hu as the next leader, blocking Jiang from installing his own successor. But Jiang was considered successful in elevating allies to the party’s seven-member Standing Committee, China’s inner circle of power, when Xi became leader in 2012.
Portly and owlish in oversize glasses, Jiang was an ebullient figure who played the piano and enjoyed singing, in contrast to his more reserved successors, Hu and Xi.
He spoke enthusiastic if halting English and would recite the Gettysburg Address for foreign visitors. On a visit to Britain, he tried to coax Queen Elizabeth II into singing karaoke.
“Jiang had faded from public sight and last appeared publicly alongside current and former leaders atop Beijing’s Tiananmen gate at a 2019 military parade celebrating the party’s 70th anniversary in power. He was absent from a major party congress last month where former leaders are given seats in recognition of their service.
Jiang was born Aug. 17, 1926, in the affluent eastern city of Yangzhou. Official biographies downplay his family’s middle-class background, emphasizing instead his uncle and adoptive father, Jiang Shangqing, an early revolutionary who was killed in battle in 1939.
After graduating from the electrical machinery department of Jiaotong University in Shanghai in 1947, Jiang advanced through the ranks of state-controlled industries, working in a food factory, then soap-making and China’s biggest automobile plant.
Like many technocratic officials, Jiang spent part of the ultra-radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution as a farm laborer. His career rise resumed, and in 1983 he was named minister of the electronics industry, then a key but backward sector the government hoped to revive by inviting foreign investment.
As mayor of Shanghai in 1985-89, Jiang impressed foreign visitors as a representative of a new breed of outward-looking Chinese leaders.
He was preparing to retire when Deng picked him in 1989 to replace party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who was purged due to his sympathy for the Tiananmen protesters and held under house arrest until his death in 2005.
A tough political fighter, Jiang defied predictions that his stint as leader would be short. He consolidated power by promoting members of his “Shanghai faction” and giving the military double-digit annual percentage increases in spending.
Foreign leaders and CEOs who shunned Beijing after the crackdown were persuaded to return. When Deng emerged from retirement in 1992 to push for reviving market-style reform in the face of conservative opposition after the Tiananmen crackdown, Jiang followed.
He supported Premier Zhu Rongji, the party’s No. 3 leader, who forced through painful changes that slashed as many as 40 million jobs in state industry in the late 1990s.
Zhu also launched the privatization of urban housing, igniting a building boom that transformed Chinese cities into forests of high-rises and propelled economic growth.
After 12 years of negotiations and a flight by Zhu to Washington to lobby the Clinton administration for support, China joined the WTO in 2001, cementing its position as a magnet for foreign investment.
AP/Ron Edmonds
Despite a genial public image, Jiang dealt severely with challenges to ruling party power.
His highest-profile target was Falun Gong, a meditation group founded in the early ’90s. Chinese leaders were spooked by the group’s ability to attract tens of thousands of followers, including military officers.
Activists who tried to form an opposition China Democracy Party, a move permitted by Chinese law, were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on subversion charges.
“Stability above all else,” Jiang ordered, in a phrase his successors have used to justify intensive social controls.
It fell to Jiang, standing beside Britain’s Prince Charles, to preside over the return of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, symbolizing the end of 150 years of European colonialism. The nearby Portuguese territory of Macao was returned to China in 1999.
Hong Kong was promised autonomy and became a springboard for mainland companies to go abroad. Meanwhile, Jiang turned to coercion with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing says is part of its territory.
During Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Jiang’s government tried to intimidate voters by firing missiles into nearby shipping lanes. The United States responded by sending warships to the area in a show of support.
At the same time, trade between the mainland and Taiwan grew to billions of dollars a year.
China’s economic boom split society into winners and losers, as waves of rural residents migrated to factory jobs in cities, the economy grew sevenfold and urban incomes by nearly as much.
Protests, once rare, spread as millions lost state jobs and farmers complained about rising taxes and fees. Divorce rates climbed. Corruption flourished.
One of Jiang’s sons, Jiang Mianheng, courted controversy in the late 1990s as a telecommunications dealmaker and later the chairman of phone company China Netcom Co.
Critics accused him of misusing his father’s status to promote his career, a common complaint against the children of party leaders.
Jiang Mianheng, who has a Ph.D. from Drexel University, went on to hold prominent academic positions, including president of ShanghaiTech University in his father’s old power base.
Jiang is survived by his two sons and his wife, Wang Yeping, who worked in government bureaucracies in charge of state industries. -
Former China President Unexpectedly Led Out Of Party Congress — CNN
Chinese President Xi Jinping at left looks on as former Chinese President Hu Jintao is assisted to … [+]
Former China President Hu Jintao was unexpectedly led out of the closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress in Beijing today from his chair next to his successor Xi Jinping, CNN reported, citing meeting video.
Li’s departure was “a moment of drama during what is typically a highly choreographed event,” the network reported. “The circumstances surrounding Hu’s exit are not clear.”
Hu was led out “shortly after foreign media came in,” the Associated Press said.
The week-long gathering on Saturday selected 205 party leaders of its central committee for the next five years. The meeting comes amid geopolitical tension with the U.S. over Taiwan and Beijing’s close ties with Russia, and has been watched by governments, businesses and investors globally for signs of China’s future policy directions.
Hu, 79, was seated next to Xi “when he was approached by a staff member,” CNN said. “While seated, Hu appeared to talk briefly with the male staff member, while China’s third most senior leader, Li Zhanshu, who was seated to his other side, had his hand on the chair behind Hu’s back,” CNN reported.
“Hu then appeared to rise after being lifted up by the staff member, who’d taken the former leader by the arm, while Kong Shaoxun, head of the party’s secretariat came over. Hu spoke with the two men briefly and initially appeared reluctant to leave.”
“At one point, while Hu was still seated, Xi appeared to place his hand over a document that Hu was attempting to reach for preventing him from doing so,” CNN said.
Chinese state-run media, as it has all week, lauded the meeting today, without explaining why Hu was led out.
“The congress noted that the establishment of Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era has set the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on ‘an irreversible historical course,’” Xinhua News Agency reported today.
The party’s powerful Politburo and standing committee will be named on Sunday and meet the domestic and foreign press, Xinhua said.
The congress until today had been notable for consistency of policy statements (see related post here).
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Russell Flannery, Forbes Staff
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China deletes reports of 14-year-old girl’s death in COVID quarantine facility in Ruzhou
Beijing — Chinese censors on Friday scrubbed from the internet reports that a teenager had died in a quarantine facility after the case sparked anger and prompted citizens to question the country’s “zero-COVID” policy. China is the last major country committed to a zero-tolerance anti-coronavirus strategy, responding to dozens of outbreaks with lockdowns and sending entire neighborhoods out to makeshift quarantine facilities.
The public has chafed against virus restrictions, sometimes responding to fresh lockdowns with protests, while scuffles have broken out between citizens and officials.
Posts circulated on Chinese social media this week saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care.
The reports caused renewed anger at a sensitive time for the country’s rulers. China‘s political elite are holding a key Communist Party meeting in Beijing this week, expected to secure a historic third term for President Xi Jinping, with the country’s propaganda and security apparatus on high alert for any source of instability.
Unverified videos on the Chinese version of TikTok appeared to show a person lying in a bunk bed suffering seizures, while others in the room screamed for help.
“At the start the kid was fine… then she went (into quarantine) for four days and had a high fever and now she’s gone,” a woman described in other videos as the child’s aunt tells viewers, crying.
The woman says the girl “had convulsions, vomiting and a high fever, and didn’t get medical attention in time,” complaining that local health authorities did not respond to calls while the child was in critical condition.
AFP could not independently verify the videos, and calls to Ruzhou city’s propaganda, health and COVID prevention departments on Friday were not answered.
Chinese media, which have given cursory attention to similar lockdown-related scandals in the past, were noticeably silent this week on the Ruzhou case.
By Friday afternoon, censors had removed nearly all traces of the incident from the Chinese internet, disabling Weibo hashtags for “Ruzhou Girl” and “Girl from Ruzhou dies in quarantine,” and removing most of the videos mentioning the girl’s alleged death.
The hashtag page for “Ruzhou Girl” had recorded 255,000 views and 158 posts on Friday morning, according to the official statistics at the top of the page, though only four posts remained visible before the page was blocked completely later in the day.
Ding Ting/Xinhua/Getty
“Have the lessons of Shanghai been forgotten so completely?” one of the last remaining posts on the page asked, referring to the megacity’s lockdown in the spring that left people without adequate food and supplies.
The poster demanded to know why “there wasn’t even a doctor to care for a girl who needed to see one.”
The incident comes a month after 27 people died in a traffic accident while they were being ferried before dawn to a quarantine facility in rural Guizhou province.
And in the lead-up to the Congress, censors removed virtually all references to reports of a rare protest in Beijing, that involved banners denouncing President Xi, as well as the COVID policies.
