Studies / Reports: July 2006 Archives

By REUTERS | The New York Times
July 19, 2006

BEIJING (Reuters) - Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin has quietly emerged from retirement, an apparent attempt to influence leadership changes due next year and safeguard his own legacy, political sources and analysts said.

While many of his peers have faded from view, Jiang has kept an invisible hand on power since he was replaced by Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party in 2002, relying on loyalists in the Politburo Standing Committee.

Sources said he is anxious not to lose that leverage at the party's 17th congress next year, when the Standing Committee will be reshuffled and Hu will almost certainly be reappointed as party chief, further consolidating his power.

Hu is also expected to name an heir at the congress.

``Jiang wants to influence the 17th congress but whether he can do so is another matter,'' a retired party official who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

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BBC World News
04 July 2006

The music industry is to sue Yahoo China for allegedly providing links to pirated tracks.
"We've started the process and as far as we're concerned we're on a track to litigation," John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, told Bloomberg.com.

Yahoo China is the second largest search engine in the country, and is 40% owned by Yahoo Inc.

Mr Kennedy told Bloomberg he hoped that negotiation could still prevent legal proceedings from starting.

Last year the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, whose members include EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music, sued Baidu, the most popular search engine in China and the dispute is ongoing.

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By REUTERS | The New York Times
July 04, 2006

South Korea's biggest movie at the box office, about a tyrannical king and his two court jesters, has been banned from Chinese theatres because it has subtle gay themes, a South Korean movie executive said on Tuesday.

``The movie 'King and the Clown' could not pass the deliberation process in China because of the homosexual code and sexually explicit language in the movie,'' an official with South Korean entertainment company CJ said from its Beijing office.

The movie has taken in more than $85 million in South Korea and sold about 12 million tickets in a country with a population of around 48 million.

Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in China as recently as 2001 and is still a highly sensitive subject.

In the movie, which finished its run in South Korea earlier this year, the relations among the king and his two jesters are not well defined and there are no sex scenes, but a romance is implied.

The most heated the movie becomes is when the king shares longing looks with one effeminate clown as they put on a puppet show together.

The CJ official, who asked not to be named, said the company did receive permission from Chinese authorities to distribute the movie in China through DVD sales.

China's film censor, the State Adminstration of Radio Film and Television, was unavailable for comment.

Even though China lauded Ang Lee, the Taiwanese director who won an Oscar for the gay-themed cowboy movie ``Brokeback Mountain,'' the film has never been short listed for consideration by authorities, which is one step short of an outright ban.

The Associated Press | The New York Times
02 June 2006

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- In its battle against near-universal Chinese piracy of Hollywood blockbusters, Warner Bros.' weapon of choice is a little white price tag smaller than a postage stamp.

Last year, the home entertainment giant began selling selected movies with price tags of only $2.75 in major Chinese cities, aiming to carve out a market for relatively affordable but high-quality, legitimate versions of movies in a sea of counterfeit products selling for less than a dollar.

''The reason why piracy's come along is that there weren't enough products at the right price soon enough,'' said Tony Vaughan, managing director of CAV Warner Home Entertainment Co., Warner Bros.' joint venture distribution company in China.

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By Howard W. French | The New York Times
June 30, 2006

SHANGHAI, June 29 — Shanghai is rightfully known as a fast-moving, hypermodern city — full of youth and vigor. But that obscures a less well-known fact: Shanghai has the oldest population in China, and it is getting older in a hurry.

Twenty percent of this city's people are at least 60, the common retirement age for men in China, and retirees are easily the fastest growing segment of the population, with 100,000 new seniors added to the rolls each year, according to a study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. From 2010 to 2020, the number of people 60 or older is projected to grow by 170,000 a year.

By 2020 about a third of Shanghai's population, currently 13.6 million, will consist of people over the age of 59, remaking the city's social fabric and placing huge new strains on its economy and finances.

The changes go far beyond Shanghai, however. Experts say the rapidly graying city is leading one of the greatest demographic changes in history, one with profound implications for the entire country.

The world's most populous nation, which has built its economic strength on seemingly endless supplies of cheap labor, China may soon face manpower shortages. An aging population also poses difficult political issues for the Communist government, which first encouraged a population explosion in the 1950's and then reversed course and introduced the so-called one-child policy a few years after the death of Mao in 1976.

That measure has spared the country an estimated 390 million births but may ultimately prove to be another monumental demographic mistake. With China's breathtaking rise toward affluence, most people live longer and have fewer children, mirroring trends seen around the world.

Those trends and the extraordinarily low birth rate have combined to create a stark imbalance between young and old. That threatens the nation's rickety pension system, which already runs large deficits even with the 4-to-1 ratio of workers to retirees that it was designed for.

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