News

Former Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao recently traveled to Yancheng City in Jiangsu Province to personally deal with the case of two Falun Gong practitioners, the sons of a senior Party official, who were detained and tortured, according to sources familiar with the reason behind the trip.

Most of the time the headline news about corruption in China involves a male cadre and one or more mistresses—sometimes with lewd videos thrown in the mix. Recently however, twelve female communist officials have been caught stealing public money and using it to visit beauty parlors. The trend has been dubbed “beauty corruption” by the media.

The rats acted like they owned the place. So thought Ms. Yi Lian when she moved her family in 2003 into a 196 square foot apartment in a tenement in a city in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang Province.

In an article recounting her 10-year experience in this building published on the Falun Gong website Minghui, she explained that this modest apartment at least allowed the family the security of having their own place to live. Their home had been demolished the year before by developers.

When given the chance, officials of the People’s Republic of China continue to rush for the exits. During an eight-day period from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7 when two holidays were celebrated, over 1,100 public servants who traveled abroad did not return, according to a statement issued on Oct. 15 by the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Central Organization Department.

The showdown between rival factions in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has become fiercer as the 18th Party Congress draws near, when a new leadership will be sworn in for another decade. Members loyal to former Party head Jiang Zemin are said to be fighting a desperate battle with the incumbent leaders and their plan for a measure of democracy inside the Party, in order to save themselves from being eliminated.

On Oct. 6 and 7, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Bijie City in Guizhou Province. With just one month before the start of the 18th National Congress, Wen’s visit was seen as support for Hu Jintao’s “scientific development concept,” in what observers see as a demonstration of strong support for Hu and Wen before the 18th Party Congress scheduled next month.

The Communist Party in China enforces a regime of Internet censorship so strict that when there’s a gap—especially a big, obvious, gaping one—observers are apt to conclude that it simply must have been deliberate.

So when, soon after it was announced on Sept. 28 that ousted Politburo official Bo Xilai was being expelled from the Party, searches for highly sensitive political terms like “live harvest” and “bloody harvest” were allowed on several popular websites, analysts began trying to figure out what it meant.

Bo Xilai, the former Politburo member and Party chief of the province-level city of Chongqing and the central figure in the Chinese regime’s most serious political crisis in recent memory, has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party, according to state media.

Bo was found guilty of “severe disciplinary violations” in a report prepared by the Party’s internal investigative agency. On Friday high-level officials adopted the report’s findings and Party media announced Bo’s expulsion.

New residency and work requirements for migrant workers make it harder for their children to go to college.

China has a system of residential permits, called hukou, which prevents Chinese citizens from moving their residence freely. Migrant workers are especially affected by the hukou system in that it often causes difficulties for them getting their children educated. The obstacles they face may now become bigger.

A major pharmaceutical company in China has been discovered to be using waste oil in its antibiotic products recently, attracting criticism from the public and experts.

Joincare Pharmaceutical Industry Co., Ltd, based in the economic zone of Shenzhen, was shown to have purchased 16,200 tonnes of “gutter oil,” also called waste oil, from a Henan-based supply company from early 2010 to July 2011, worth 145 million yuan ($23 million).