Online letter threatening Xi shows party foes still oppose reforms

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The unprecedented public threats to Chinese president Xi Jinping, recently circulated in an open letter on the Internet, demonstrate that internal opposition to the present direction of the Chinese leader’s reforms is still very stubborn and may be hard to eradicate before the party congress gets underway next year.

The unsigned letter titled “Loyal Party Members Urge Xi Jinping to Resign in Open Letter” faults the president for all his policies, from the economy to international affairs, without giving a real or detailed analysis of the situation. But it states that Xi’s failures are common knowledge. The letter doesn’t mention the ongoing anti-corruption campaign which receives praise from common people, but is loathed by some senior officials.

Mafia-style letter

The message starts ominously, very much in Mafia style, using direct intimidation. It demands Xi’s resignation “out of consideration for your personal safety and that of your family”— i.e. saying, either you resign or we are going to kill you and your family. The public threat of violence against a top Chinese leader from within the party is unprecedented. Neither Mao Zedong nor Deng Xiaoping nor Jiang Zemin nor Hu Jintao ever received such public death threats from those identifying themselves as party members.

The letter in question bears no signatures but carries the anonymous label “loyal party members.” It is not clear how many people are backing the letter in a party that is being at least partially purged by Xi’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign. As the letter was publicly distributed, it means that the group is weak, can’t muster enough clout within the party, and hopes to stir up trouble outside the party and abroad.

http://atimes.com/2016/03/online-letter-threatening-xi-shows-party-foes-still-oppose-reforms/

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1. China to impose new tax on imported e-commerce

In what can only been as a move by the government to prod Chinese citizens to buy domestic goods, China said it plans to impose new tariffs on cross-border e-commerce that would significantly increase the cost of many items such as food, health care products and low-price cosmetics.

Starting April 8, buyers of all imported goods purchased online must pay most of a 17% value-added tax and a consumption tax, if applicable, according to a policy released March 24 by the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and the State Administration of Taxation.

This is up from the “postal articles tax” currently in effect, with rates ranging from the most common 10% to 50%. In addition, goods imported in bulk through other channels will be subjected to an additional tariff.

The new rules will also eliminate a duty-free exemption for goods whose tax payable does not exceed 50 yuan. Packages whose value exceed 2,000 yuan and goods mailed to one person in excess of 20,000 yuan every year will be taxed more heavily as general trade items, according to Chinese news website Caixin Online.

http://atimes.com/2016/03/china-to-impose-new-tax-on-imported-e-commerce/

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2. Battle between Xi Jinping and propaganda chief plays out in Chinese media

If my understanding of the current censorship crackdown in PRC is correct, western commentators focused on the deepening of Xi Jinping’s control over the media may have missed the point somewhat. It appears likely that Xi Jinping is primarily concerned with neutralizing control of a rival, Liu Yunshan, over the PRC propaganda apparatus, and Xi’s heightened control over media messaging is a consequence, rather than cause, of the current uproar.

To recap, there have been three relatively high-profile censorship kerfuffles involving PRC media in the last few weeks: the “resignation letter” posted on an obscure Xinjiang website; the higher profile Caixin report/spiking/report of spiking concerning an NPC delegate’s complaints concerning heavy-handed government messaging; and the big one, the so called “Yes Man” commentary posted on the website of the anti-corruption “Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.”

US hackers involved?

The resignation letter is probably a piece of psyops, possibly abetted by the US. Nobody believes that the website’s managers knowingly put this thing up, it doesn’t read write like a genuine cadre whinge, and a focus of the investigation has been interrogation of the site’s technical personnel. Maybe a US hack (there is strong circumstantial evidence that the US has recruited black hat hackers enmeshed in FBI investigations to organize hacking campaigns against PRC websites); maybe an inside job; anyway probably a piece of BS that embarrasses and angers the CCP more than anything else.

I’ll address the Caixin matter in the context of the “Yes Man” piece as I see it.

http://atimes.com/2016/03/battle-between-xi-jinping-and-propaganda-chief-plays-out-in-chinese-media/

Mr. Lee is always informative.