A Leader in Mao’s Cultural Revolution Faces His Past

By JANE PERLEZ

“I was too scared. I couldn’t stop it. I was afraid of being called a counterrevolutionary, of having to wear a dunce’s hat.”-- CHEN XIAOLU

BEIJING — ON the surface, at least, there is not much about Chen Xiaolu to suggest a lifetime of regret.
The son of one of Communist China’s founding generals, he enjoyed privilege at an early age and then a career as a business consultant that took him around the world. 

Now 67, he relaxes on golf courses in Scotland and southern France and eschews the dark suits and high-maintenance black hair of most affluent Chinese men for casual shirts and a gray buzz cut.
But beneath the genial exterior is a memory that has haunted him for nearly 50 years. 

There he was, back in high school, a fresh-faced member of the volleyball team and a student leader in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, ordering teachers to line up in the auditorium, dunce caps on their bowed heads. 

He stood there, excited and proud, as thousands of students howled abuse at the teachers.
Then, suddenly, a posse stormed the stage and beat them until they crumpled to the floor, blood oozing from their heads. 

He did not object. He simply fled. 

“I was too scared,” he recalled recently in one of several interviews at a restaurant near Tiananmen Square, not far from his alma mater, No. 8 Middle School, which catered to the children of the Mao elite. 

“I couldn’t stop it. I was afraid of being called a counterrevolutionary, of having to wear a dunce’s hat.”
A ripple of confessions about the Cultural Revolution from former Red Guards, most of them retired men of modest backgrounds, has surfaced in the last few months. 

But it was Mr. Chen’s decision to step forward in August with a public apology that has drawn the most attention, raising hopes that a nation so determined to define its future might finally be moving to confront the horrors of its past.
He did so, he said, not only for personal redemption but also for profound reasons to do with China’s political development that must include the rule of law.
“Many people are thinking back fondly to the good old days of the Cultural Revolution, and are saying it was just against corrupt officials,” he said in an interview. 

“But many things happened in the Cultural Revolution that violated people’s rights. The majority in China did not really experience the Cultural Revolution, and those of us who did have to tell people about it.”
Mr. Chen’s remorse stands out because of his stature, then and now. 

He is quite candid that as the son of Chen Yi, a founder of Communist China and its longtime foreign minister, he was handed the mantle of immense authority during the decisive, early days of the Cultural Revolution.
“I bear direct responsibility for the denouncing and criticism, and forced-labor re-education of school leaders, and some teachers and students,” Mr. Chen wrote in a blog post on his school alumni website in August that quickly circulated on the Internet. 

“I actively rebelled and organized the denouncements of school leaders. Later on when I served as the director of the school’s Revolution Committee, I wasn’t brave enough to stop the inhumane prosecutions.”
“My official apology comes too late, but for the purification of the soul, the progress of society and the future of the nation, one must make this kind of apology,” he concluded.
The apology has drawn a mixed response. 

Slightly more than half of the comments on the alumni website commended him. 

On Chinese websites, many questioned why it was necessary to pick over old wounds.
THE Cultural Revolution remains largely hidden from view in China as successive governments have discouraged discussion of the turmoil and terror that Mao orchestrated to perpetuate his rule but that almost brought the country to its knees.
Deng Xiaoping repudiated the Cultural Revolution in 1978, and the party has acknowledged it was a mistake, but a full accounting has never occurred.
A particularly delicate subject for the party has been the number of people killed.
In Beijing alone, about 1,800 people died during August and September 1966, the height of the frenzy, when Mao first deployed students as Red Guards to turn against the party, according to the historians Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals. 

Estimates range from 1.5 million to three million dead across China from 1966 to 1976.
A Chinese historian of the Cultural Revolution, Xu Youyu, described Mr. Chen’s apology as “very unusual” because former Red Guards — an entire generation of Chinese now in their 60s — generally justify their actions during the Cultural Revolution and prefer to emphasize their role as victims rather than perpetrators; they rarely apologize in private, much less in public.
The fateful criticism ceremony of teachers at the Zhongshan Concert Hall, near the Forbidden City, that Mr. Chen organized was brutal even before it began, said Huang Jian, the chairman of the alumni group.
On the way to the auditorium, students “wielded whips,” lashing at the school principal, Wen Hanjiang, as they frog-marched him, Mr. Huang said. 

Mr. Wen, now 89 and living in Beijing, where Mr. Chen recently visited him, was beaten on the stage, too.

Back at the school, the atmosphere darkened. 

The school’s senior party official, Hua Jia, committed suicide. 

She took her life after two weeks of beatings and being fed only bits of food in a storeroom where she was imprisoned, Mr. Chen said.
Someone told him of the suicide, and he rushed to the room to find the body on the floor.
“She used a string tied to the windowsill, put her head through the noose and then knelt down to hang herself,” he said. 

Mr. Chen offered the details quickly and quietly, a tinge of embarrassment in his words. 

It turned out, he said, she had been a loyal member of the Communist Party for 30 years.
During the early turmoil, Mr. Chen lived at home with his parents at Zhongnanhai, the sprawling compound in the center of Beijing where senior party officials were assigned traditional courtyard-style houses and luxuries existed unknown beyond the high walls.
His father insisted that the family could not discuss the Cultural Revolution at home, he said. 

“To put it simply, my father said you must participate in the Cultural Revolution but be careful and prudent.”
They maintained a “Chinese screen” of silence about the violence, he said. 

“I never told my father anything about the suicide” of Ms. Hua, he said. 

“My father knew someone could use me to target him.”
LIFE was easy at Zhongnanhai. 

The children were often summoned to watch Mao swim in one of two 50-meter pools — outdoors in summer, indoors in winter. 

There were basketball games, rowing on a lake and weekend movies.
But soon, trouble struck at the heart of the Chen family. 

In a speech in early 1967, Chen Yi dared to criticize the Cultural Revolution. 

Mao sidelined him, and the man who had greeted every foreign leader to the new China was subjected to a humiliating self-criticism session and ordered to stay at home.
After his father was disgraced, Mr. Chen stopped living at home “to keep more distance.” 

In the summer of 1968, Mao dispersed the students to the countryside. 

Prime Minister Zhou Enlai spared Mr. Chen that fate by sending him to the army.
In 1972, Chen Yi died of colon cancer, a broken man. 

Chen Xiaolu came home from the army for the funeral. 

Out of the blue, he said, Mao turned up dressed in pajamas and a winter topcoat to pay respects to his father. 

In front of the Chen family, Mao reinstated Chen Yi in the pantheon of revolutionary greats by calling him a “good comrade.”
That afternoon, Mr. Chen drank beer with a school friend, Ji Sanmeng, and shared a poem, Mr. Ji recalled, about how his father, a hero, had endured ill treatment for the past five years at the hands of Mao and his men.
By then, Mr. Chen’s faith in Mao had evaporated, although he never said so publicly.

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Tony Abbott refuses to back down over China comments

"We are a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law..." -- Tony Abbott 

By Mark Kenny, Philip Wen

PM Tony Abbott

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop: "Australia opposes action by any side that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region."

Tony Abbott has refused to take a backward step in a deepening diplomatic spat with Beijing, declaring "China trades with us because it is in China's interest to trade with us".
The unapologetic comments came after Beijing issued an arrogant warning to Canberra to "correct" its public statements which were seen as siding with Japan over disputed territory in the East China Sea.
An escalating series of diplomatic gestures by both sides have strained relations this week after Australia called in China's ambassador on Monday.
Canberra demanded an explanation from China for its unilateral decision to declare an expanded air defence zone over disputed waters and islands claimed by both Japan and China.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop defended the government's position on Thursday, arguing Australia has a key stake in the region and therefore opposes "action by any side that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region".
Later in the day, Mr Abbott went further, stressing strategic ties.
"We are a strong ally of the United States, we are a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law and where we think that is not happening, or it is not happening appropriately, we will speak our mind," he said.
Beijing announced the expansion at the weekend, along with the instruction that civil aircraft would be required to lodge flight paths and seek permission before traversing the newly declared air defence identification zone.
The highly provocative act brought an immediate response from the US, which dispatched as many as four military aircraft, including two B52 long range bombers, to fly through the zone as a way of demonstrating that the Chinese annexure would be ignored.
With Australia's ambassador to Beijing, Frances Adamson, away on leave, China hauled in Justin Hayhurst, the deputy head of mission at Australia's Beijing embassy, to remonstrate.
Beijing also issued a series of statements complaining that Australia had taken sides and that it should act quickly to "correct" its position, if it wanted the relationship with China to remain healthy.
The new air defence zone came just days after Ms Bishop signed a joint communique with the US at the annual Australia-US ministerial consultations in Washington opposing “unilateral or coercive change in the status quo” in the East China Sea. 

It also follows a tri-lateral agreement signed with the US and Japan in Bali last month.
“It's certainly a slap in the face for the diplomatic position that Australia, the US and Japan have been taking on this issue,” Rory Medcalf, the director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, said.

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China hasn’t earned a spot on Human Rights Council

Putting China on the U.N. Human Rights Council would be like picking the fox to guard the henhouse — while it was still wiping feathers off its mouth. 

By Yang Jianli

While it is debatable whether the United States should intervene in criminal cases in China, such as that of the recently executed street vendor Xia Junfeng, it is unacceptable for Washington to ignore China’s human rights record when it can raise the issue without being accused of “interfering in internal affairs.” 

Washington will have such an opportunity when the U.N. General Assembly chooses new members of its Human Rights Council this month.
China, after a year of leave, is seeking a three-year term on the council.

It is critical for the United States to show Beijing’s new leaders that their horrific treatment of citizens matters. 

U.S. government agencies, Congress, U.N. human rights monitors and human rights organizations show the atrocious extent of Chinese repression. 

Putting China on the U.N. Human Rights Council would be like picking the fox to guard the henhouse — while it was still wiping feathers off its mouth. 

Yet the Obama administration appears to approve of doing so.
For many reasons, China is unfit to sit on a council charged with protecting human rights: As the Congressional-Executive Commission noted in its 2012 annual report, forced abortions and sterilizations are still common in China. 

The State Department’s 2012 report on human rights said that the denial of religious freedom in China remains pervasive and was particularly severe against Tibetan Buddhists, Muslim Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners and members of house churches.
China tortures its citizens. This is a violation of the Convention Against Torture, to which Beijing is a party. 

Beijing also returns refugees to North Korea, where they will be imprisoned and tortured. This is a violation of the Convention on the Status of Refugees, which China has signed.

Dungeons across China hold tens of thousands of Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols, Christians, Muslims, Falun Gong and Han Chinese who bravely seek to defend the human rights of those persecuted for their faith or ethnicity or for seeking the rule of law. 

China is the only country in the world that detains a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. 

Tibetans are driven to self-immolation by their continued oppression. 

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China annually details gross violations of human rights.
China’s brutal actions belie its claim that economic modernization would lead to decreased human rights abuses. 

Such notions are disproved by headlines about the latest outrages, such as when human rights lawyers were beaten earlier this year while seeking to visit unlawfully jailed political prisoners. 

China’s “reforms” involve change in economic and governmental institutions or minor procedural improvements. 

They do not extend to meaningful human rights reform.
President Xi Jinping’s “commitment” to the rule of law was exposed as a lie when one of China’s most prominent human rights advocates, Xu Zhiyong, was detained in July. 

The Post editorialized: “The detention of Mr. Xu suggests that the powerful machinery of the Chinese state security remains on the prowl against those who challenge the [Communist] party’s monopoly on power . . . a system in which the party-state stands above human rights, freedom and rule of law.”
Some believe that the United States cannot press China on human rights because it seeks Chinese cooperation on economic and national security issues. 

But Washington has negotiated arms-control and trade agreements with other countries, including the Soviet Union, while pressing for human rights reform.
Other nations have risked economic ties to criticize Beijing, including Norway, which awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo over China’s strong objection; Canada, which has sharply criticized Chinese treatment of Tibetans; and the European Union, which has condemned China’s human rights abuses.
To be elected to the council, candidates must get 97 votes from General Assembly members. 

If each U.N. democracy votes no, China will not succeed. 

U.S. resolve would help other democracies summon the courage to confront China. 

The United States has opposed other candidates for the council that have terrible human rights records, including Syria and Iran. 

Beijing’s record of rights abuses is even worse.
How could U.S. representatives at the United Nations vote to place the torture capital of the world on the international body charged with protecting human rights? 

The United States may not have been able to intervene in the case of Xia Junfeng. 

But opposing China’s candidacy for the U.N. Human Rights Council is the least Washington can do.

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Japan will stand up to China

BBC News

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says other countries want Japan to adopt a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter the growing power of China.
Mr Abe told the Wall Street Journal there were "concerns that China was trying to change the status quo by force, rather than by the rule of law".
Relations between China and Japan have been strained over recent years.
China said on Saturday that if Japan shot down Chinese drones, this would be considered "an act of war" by Beijing.
The statement was referring to reports that Mr Abe had approved defence plans that envisaged using air force planes to shoot down unmanned Chinese aircraft in Japanese airspace.
Another contentious issue between the two countries is the dispute over a group of islands.
The islands, in the East China Sea, are controlled by Tokyo, but coveted by Beijing.
But analysts say the nations' rivalry reflects the power shift created by China's meteoric economic and diplomatic rise while Japan has been mired in a two-decade economic slump.
In the interview, Mr Abe said he had realised that "Japan is expected to exert leadership not just on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific".
He promised policies to counter Japan's waning influence.
Other countries wanted Japan to stand up to China, Mr Abe said without naming any.
"There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won't be able to emerge peacefully," Mr Abe says.
"So it shouldn't take that path, and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community."
The interview comes days after Mr Abe was reported to approved defence plans to intercept and shoot down foreign unmanned aircraft that ignore warnings to leave Japanese airspace.

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Challenges to China's Sustainable Growth and Implications to Investors

By Junheng Li

When foreigners visit China, they are often impressed by the country’s spectacular hardware: the modern architecture of the coastal areas, the fancy international hotels and luxury shopping malls, a high-speed railway that runs at more than 180 miles per hour while still providing passengers with Wi-Fi access.
The continuous news cycle that contrasts China’s economic success with the lukewarm economic recovery in the U.S. and E.U. reinforces this view.

A poll released in July by the Pew Research Center shows that many people around the world believe China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower. 

China’s economy continues to chug along at more than 7.5%, with projections showing that it will surpass the American economy by 2030. 

Many Americans think that it is merely a matter of time before China takes over the world.
But what is conveniently dismissed, amidst the popular American declinism, is that China still lacks the “software” to support and sustain the impressive hardware. 

By software, I refer to the rule of law, accountability, governance, and most importantly the quality of its people, as citizens, workers and managers. 

China’s educational system has failed to produce either an honorable or an innovative labor force – defined broadly to include those who make their living by their hands and by their brains.
Investing in a business is ultimately about investing in the people who run it. 

I learned from my investment career on Wall Street that a business is only as good as its managers and its corporate leadership. 

Assessing the integrity and quality of management should be an investor’s priority in performing due diligence, especially in emerging markets such as China. 

If the manager is a crook or has serious character flaws, none of the other business factors will make the target a good investment.

***

China’s success story is based on a single economic mode, that of mass production of low-value manufacturing products using abundant and cheap labor, massive capital investment and endless economies of scale.
That growth prescription has lost its efficacy.
The country’s changing demographics make this system increasingly unsustainable, as China’s aging population and rising wage costs eat away at the abundant supply of cheap labor.
The policy of accelerated urbanization, using carrots as well as sticks to cajole 200 million sometimes reluctant rural residents into the cities, will not reverse the trend of rapidly rising cost structure.
In fact, unheeded urbanization could turn into a costly economic, human and political failure.
After all, China still has yet to deliver equal rights to approximately 250 million migrant workers in its cities, rural citizens who are denied access to many urban social services under China’s restrictive household registration system.
In addition, the environmental degradation that is a byproduct of the country’s capital-intensive, externality-ignoring development model is undeniable.
Chinese citizens are seeing their life spans cut short by the poisonous air in the largest cities – most pronounced in the capital Beijing – the worsening water quality, and the polluted soil and food grown out of it.
The weakness of China’s civil society, including the absence of free media, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, is another manifestation of how the lack of human and social capital hurts the quality of life and sustainable growth prospects. 
China’s leaders increasingly view the formation of a civil society as a threat to the government – a sort of insecurity on view in ongoing crackdown on social media and the mid-September arrest of a Chinese businessman known for promoting civil society.
These measures show Chinese society is moving in the wrong direction, with negative implications for its economy.
To upgrade and invigorate its current economic model, China has to adopt a more open, pluralistic political system.
To transition to a more value-added, service-oriented economy, the country needs a society with a judicious mix of what Albert O. Hirschman, a development economist, termed “exit, voice, and loyalty”: freedom of choice, freedom of expression and the ability to work together toward a common goal.
Last but definitely not the least, China’s ultracompetitive education system, which continues to prioritize propaganda and memorization above independent and critical thinking, weakens the country’s workforce.
Major changes—some of which will compromise the state’s tight control over its citizens—are called for to produce a labor force compatible with the advancement of the economy.
Drawn to the American values of individualism, freedom and social mobility, I left China in 1996 to pursue a liberal arts education at Middlebury College in the rural Vermont.
During the 17 years since I left China, it is astonishing to notice that education remains first and foremost a device for drilling party ideology into impressionable minds, despite the dramatic changes in the society and economy.
Textbook material exemplifies and glorifies the party—how it takes care of its people, the way a parent does for a child, and how society should therefore be appreciative and obedient, ready to put self-interest aside when the party asks.
Teaching ideology in itself is not a problem, but dictating which idea is right or wrong is a problem.
Every school in the world teaches some sort of ideology.
American schools prioritize freedom of choice and individualism, for example.
They encourage students to dare to be different, to think out of the box, to take risks, and to lead.
The products of those ideologies include some of the world’s greatest innovators, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs.

***

China today is essentially caught in a prison of its own past success—the staggering and unprecedented achievement of lifting 500 million people out of poverty in 30-plus years.
Chinese people are energized and anxious at the same time.
Outsiders are awed, and they assume past glory is indicative of future achievement.
But the country’s trajectory seems similar to that of an athlete on steroids.
As with most athletes on steroids whose temporary outperformance is likely to followed by a long period of underperformance.
To avoid this fate, China’s singular focus on fast growth and the purely quantitative bottom line in the past ought to be shifted to the quality of economic growth, of the country’s citizenry, and of the society.
Wresting control from vested interests and carrying out the dramatic reform to institutions necessary to make this shift will be difficult, but it is the only way maintain China’s spectacular economic performance.
Many transitional economies, including Japan in the 1960s and 1970s and Korea in the 1980s and early 1990s, have gone through a period of super growth and succeeded in advancing to a new model.
A rich history of the developed world gives China an advantage: it can learn from other countries’ history and avoid some of their mistakes, if it chooses to.
Within the country, a consensus is beginning to form, from the top leadership in Beijing to corporate executives to average citizens, that the country is nearing an inflection point that will force it to reflect and reform.
Yet the vested interests that have enriched themselves on the country’s old growth model have so far mostly succeeded in putting on the brakes.
This conflict of interest should send a clear message to investors: buyer beware at this tipping point of China’s growth.
Assuming that the past rate of growth is the norm for the future may only invite costly mistakes.

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Xia Yeliang: The China Americans Don't See

   

A Peking University economics professor who was sacked for his political views explains the underside of elite Chinese higher education. 
 By DAVID FEITH

The 21st-century romance between America's universities and China continues to blossom, with New York University opening a Shanghai campus last month and Duke to follow next year.
Nearly 100 U.S. campuses host "Confucius Institutes" funded by the Chinese government, and President Obama has set a goal for next year of seeing 100,000 American students studying in the Middle Kingdom.

Human Rights Watch Director of Global Initiatives Minky Worden on China's latest human rights hypocrisy
Meanwhile, Peking University last week purged economics professor Xia Yeliang, an outspoken liberal, with hardly a peep of protest from American academics.
"During more than 30 years, no single faculty member has been driven out like this," Mr. Xia says the day after his sacking from the university, known as China's best, where he has taught economics since 2000.
He'll be out at the end of the semester.
The professor's case is a window into the Chinese academic world that America's elite institutions are so eager to join—a world governed not by respect for free inquiry but by the political imperatives of a one-party state.
Call it higher education with Chinese characteristics.
"All universities are under the party's leadership," Mr. Xia says by telephone from his Beijing home.
"In Peking University, the No. 1 leader is not the president. It's the party secretary of Peking University."
Which is problematic for a professor loudly advocating political change.
In 2008, Mr. Xia was among the original 303 signatories of the Charter 08 manifesto calling for democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law in China.
"Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises," declared the charter, written primarily by Mr. Xia's friend Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate who is currently serving an 11-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power."
Mr. Xi, 53, says he had a mostly apolitical youth in Anhui province, west of Shanghai, where both of his parents were shipyard workers for China's navy.
He never considered himself a communist and says he always felt drawn to the West, thanks partly to foreign picture books from his childhood.
He imagined life as a painter or translator, and after graduating college in 1984 went to work as an interpreter for the government's Foreign Affairs Office.
His political awakening came later, in 1987-89, when he studied management at the University of Toronto, visited several European democracies—and read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose."
Friedman's writing helped make Mr. Xia a classical liberal and, by the mid-1990s, a student of economics. Today he cites F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, James Buchanan and Gary Becker among his intellectual idols.
The list also includes Xiakuai Yang, the Chinese economist—and Mao-era political prisoner—who convinced him that China cannot thrive without imitating the institutions, and not just the technologies, of the West.
Institutions like multiparty constitutional democracy, which Mr. Xia and his Charter 08 comrades demanded five years ago.
The following year, Mr. Xia went out on his own to condemn government censorship in an open letter to Communist Party propaganda chief Liu Yunshan, who now sits on Beijing's seven-man supreme decision-making body.
Last year the professor helped start an online petition demanding an investigation into the suspicious death of democracy activist Li Wangyang, and more recently he has taken to Weibo (China's Twitter) to criticize new President Xi Jinping and his signature "Chinese dream" vision of party-led national greatness.
Such is the context for Mr. Xia's firing, but Peking University insists that the matter is purely academic.
"Xia Yeliang's teaching evaluation scores were for many years in a row the lowest of the entire university," school officials said this week, adding that 25 professors have been similarly fired since 2008.
"Slander," replies Mr. Xia, who says that his evaluation scores were stronger, and that in any case the school's dismissal process was a sham based on "no written rule."
Mr. Xia says he first heard of the dismissal proceedings in June, when the party secretary of the school of economics gave him a dressing-down over the telephone: "You could make suggestions and recommendations and we can send that to the leaders," Mr. Xia recalls being told, "but you don't have to say it this way in public. This is ruining the image of the party and the government."
He had been hearing similar messages since 2009, when university authorities warned him to "take good care" of his position on the faculty (as he told the Associated Press at the time).
The state-run Global Times newspaper, for its part, denounced the professor last month as an "extremist liberal... advocating freedom and democracy," even as it too claimed that his professional troubles are entirely nonpolitical.
This claim would be easier to credit if Mr. Xia hadn't already endured years of intimidation and abuse, on campus and off: blacklisted from providing commentary on state television, fired from two research institutes, tailed by plainclothes police, detained and interrogated repeatedly, harassed by nighttime phone calls, kept under house arrest for days, constantly monitored and occasionally hacked online.
With these measures failing to silence him, denying him a livelihood is an obvious way for the government to escalate.
And why wouldn't Peking University play enforcer?
Well, perhaps the school could be discouraged if it had to pay a price—within China, where it still maintains some reputation for relative liberalism, or more likely abroad, where it has established lucrative partnerships with Western universities that supposedly cherish liberal principles.
These include Columbia, Stanford, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, UCLA, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics and the University of Toronto.
But as he waited between his June conversation with the Communist Party secretary and the university's ruling, only Wellesley College in Massachusetts took up his cause (with 40% of professors calling to make his fair treatment a condition of the school's continued ties with Peking University).
No other Western schools have raised their voices in the days since his ouster.
"I don't want to encourage them to cut off the exchanges and the cooperation," says Mr. Xia of Peking University's partners in the West.
"I don't want to be blamed by people from both sides. I think that they have the freedom to choose."
OK, but if he were among the deciders?
"If I were working in the U.S., I would say always take academic freedom as a basic principle. I don't want to sacrifice the principle to have some kind of cooperation or exchange."
He continues: "Some American faculty members and leaders like to favor the Chinese Communist Party and the government. Because those guys, when they come to China, sometimes they are treated as honored guests."
That includes, he says, fat speaking fees, grand banquets and five-star accommodations.
Of the Wellesley faculty, Mr. Xia says, "I'm very grateful for their support."
Yet clearly it wasn't enough.
"If Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia [and] Chicago did the same thing," he notes, Peking University might have held off: "The top leaders would seriously consider it."
Even now some outside pressure might help: "I don't know whether they could call me back or not, but they might try to make some kind of compensation."
Mr. Xia speaks pointedly about the broader matter of China and the West.
Westerners have a mistaken impression of his homeland, he says, "because the Chinese economy looks so good, and people are getting a better material life. But I think that we have very huge social costs. With pollution, with poisonous food, with a very bad, party-controlled ideological education system. I think that it's very dangerous."
He is scathing about what he sees in universities: "The nature of the scientific research in China is just unbearable. We expend huge expenditures for scientific research, but there's very little real scientific research done."
Some 70% of research funds, he says, goes to personal use—"travel, hotels, meals, computers, mobile phones, iPads, printers, all things you can imagine"—and professors routinely falsify invoices.
"Universities have the same problem" as the China Railway Construction Corp., he says, where officials were recently disciplined for spending $135 million on receptions for guests last year.
Which brings us back to the U.S.-China academic romance.
Chinese universities, Mr. Xia argues, "need famous foreign brand names to protect their very vulnerable capabilities for research and teaching."
The Chinese may "boast" that Peking University is one of the world's best, "but no people really believe that." 
Nowadays in China, he says, "the middle-class and rich persons and officials' children—they're sent to the U.S. to study. They know which schools are good and which are worse."
President Xi and his disgraced former rival, Bo Xilai, chose Harvard for their children.
Western academic ties provide China with "a kind of coating or makeup," says the professor.
"Because in Chinese universities we don't have real freedom of academic research, so there's no way to train great masters. Whether it's in science or in humanities and arts—no way."
Asked about China's prospects for change in light of recent events, Mr. Xia surprises with some optimism. Waiting for a Chinese Gorbachev would be like "Waiting for Godot," he argues, but there are stirrings from below, including the Internet's power to educate citizens, expose officials and organize movements; the increasing willingness of business leaders to challenge the political status quo; and the roughly 200,000 local-level protests a year against injustices such as unpaid military compensation, environmental degradation and illegal land seizures.
"Within 10 to 15 years," he believes, China's Communist Party will collapse. 
"I'm very optimistic about that."
The professor's personal situation is another story.
He'd like to continue teaching, "but I don't think any university in China would dare to accept me."
His wife works as an accountant—at Peking University, of all places.
And he accuses the administrators who fired him of threatening her job, too, by warning that his treatment could worsen if he spoke out publicly.
"I feel sorry for my family members," he says.
"In China if you want to make institutional change, you must prepare to sacrifice or pay some high cost."
It's admirable, then, that on Thursday Wellesley College said it wants to host Mr. Xia as a visiting scholar through its aptly named Freedom Project.
The brave economist could be a powerful presence in an American academy that often checks its principles at the door when it enters China.

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Japan ready to be more assertive against China

Japan Prime Minister Abe envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China's power.
By Gerard Baker, George Nishiyama

TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he envisions a resurgent Japan taking a more assertive leadership role in Asia to counter China’s power, seeking to place Tokyo at the helm of countries in the region nervous about Beijing’s military buildup amid fears of an American pullback.
In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Abe also defended his program of economic reforms against growing criticism that the package lacks substance—though he offered few details of new programs, or a timetable, that anxious foreign investors have been seeking.
“I’ve realized that Japan is expected to exert leadership not just on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific,” Mr. Abe said, referring to his meetings with the region’s leaders at a series of summits this month.
In his continuing attempt to juggle his desire to enact economic-stimulus policies with the need to pay down Japan’s massive debt, the prime minister said he was open to reviewing the second stage of a planned increase in the sales tax in 2015 if the economy weakens after the first increase is implemented in the spring.
Less than a year after taking office, Mr. Abe has already emerged as one of Japan’s most influential prime ministers in decades.

He has shaken up the country’s economic policy in an attempt to pull Japan out of a two-decade-long slump, and plotted a more active diplomacy for a country whose global leadership has been crimped by a rapid turnover of weak prime ministers.
In the interview, Mr. Abe made a direct link between his quest for a prosperous Japan, and a country wielding greater influence in the region and the world.
“Japan shrank too much in the last 15 years,” the leader said, explaining how people have become “inward-looking” with students shunning opportunities to study abroad and the public increasingly becoming critical of Tokyo providing aid to other countries.
“By regaining a strong economy, Japan will regain confidence as well, and we’d like to contribute more to making the world a better place.”
Mr. Abe’s views expressed in the interview reflect his broader, long-standing nationalistic vision of a more assertive Japan, one he has argued should break free of constraints imposed on Japan’s military by a postwar pacifist constitution written by the U.S.—and that has also been hampered by economic decline.
Mr. Abe made clear that one important way that Japan would “contribute” would be countering China in Asia. 

“There are concerns that China is attempting to change the status quo by force, rather than by rule of law. But if China opts to take that path, then it won’t be able to emerge peacefully,” Mr. Abe said. 

“So it shouldn’t take that path, and many nations expect Japan to strongly express that view. And they hope that as a result, China will take responsible action in the international community.”
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to requests to comment on Mr. Abe’s assertions. 

In the past, the Chinese government has said that Mr. Abe’s government was in danger of leading Japan toward a revival of right-wing militarism.
Mr. Abe’s comments come amid a period of heightened tensions between the two Asian giants, as high-level diplomatic contact has virtually dried up amid a territorial dispute in the East China Sea. 

While the conflict preceded Mr. Abe becoming prime minister in December 2012, Beijing has accused him of aggravating ties with assertive rhetoric defending Japan’s claims and ramping up Coast Guard defense of the Senkaku islands.
His remarks also follow months of active diplomacy that has taken him to summit meetings with heads of state in virtually every country in the region—with the notable exceptions of China and South Korea—which has its own strained ties with Tokyo.
In December, he intends to host in Japan the leaders of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. 

The event is intended to mark 40 years of Japan’s ties with the bloc that includes countries from Thailand to Indonesia to the Philippines to Myanmar, but also to further elevate Japan’s role as a leader in a region where China has also sought influence.
Mr. Abe’s pursuit of a more expansive role was on full display at a pair of summits in Southeast Asia this month, where he openly took sides in public comments with the Philippines in a South China Sea territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing. 

Mr. Abe’s role in those meetings was amplified by the absence of President Barack Obama, who canceled his participation in the Indonesia and Brunei summits amid budget paralysis back in Washington.

Some leaders expressed concern that Mr. Obama’s absence symbolized a pullback in U.S. participation, and influence, in the region, as domestic political divisions undermine the American leader. 

Mr. Abe declined to answer directly a question about whether he was concerned about a decline in the clout of Japan’s close ally. 

“In the world today, there are many things which only the U.S. can take care of. And in this context, the U.S. takes leadership and we expect the U.S. to do so going forward.”
Mr. Abe has accumulated unusual power for a Japanese leader, steering his party this year to unified control of parliament, riding the popularity of his economic program, dubbed Abenomics. 

A quick dose of stimulus—easy money from the Bank of Japan, and new public-works spending—has given Japan the fastest-growing economy and stock market of the advanced economies this year.
But now Mr. Abe’s economic program is at a turning point. 

The next phase involves debating politically difficult economic reforms and deregulation measures, like making it easier for companies to shed workers, or reducing farmers’ protections. 

He is facing increasing criticism from local media, economists and global investors that these “pro-growth” plans are too vague.
Mr. Abe said the government had submitted related bills to the parliament, stressing that what mattered were the results.
“I am aware of the various criticism over my growth strategy. It may lack the flashy sort of features, but I think what is important is the outcome.”

He said he expected the economy to be dragged down by the tax increase effect from April to June, and the key would be how it recovers afterward.

“I would like to watch carefully how much it can recover in July, August and September. And then I’ll make an appropriate decision.”
But Mr. Abe stopped short of shedding light on whether he would proceed with some key measures seen vital for growth.
On whether to review a 40-year-old system providing income support for rice farmers, long blamed for their low productivity, the prime minister said he would let experts discuss the issue first.
And on slashing the corporate-tax rate, one of the highest among advanced economies, which critics blame for the low foreign investment in Japan, Mr. Abe said his ruling party is the one in charge of setting tax policy.
Asked about whether he would proceed with a plan to raise the sales tax again to 10% in October 2015, Mr. Abe said he would first review the impact of the increase to 8% in April from the current 5%.

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In China, everyone is guilty of corruption

Your business can't survive a day if you are not corrupt.

By Lijia Zhang

Police stand guard outside the court where disgraced politician Bo Xilai was sentenced to life in prison in September.

• Use of guanxi or connections part of everyday life
• Businessmen say they can't survive unless they are corrupt
• China needs to focus on rule of law not "rule of men"

Another "tiger" has been caught. 

Last week, Ji Jianye, the mayor of my hometown Nanjing, a major city in eastern China, was arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes worth about 20 million yuan ($3.3 million)
After taking power in March, President Xi Jinping launched a high-profile anti-corruption campaign, vowing to catch both tigers and flies -- big and small corrupt officials. 

China has seen plenty of such campaigns, arising and subsiding like summer storms.
But this one appears to be the most vigorous since China opened up; when corruption became rampant in the new market economy and officials started to trade power for financial gains.

Author and social commentator Lijia Zhang

Much as I appreciate our president's determination, his battle feels like an attempt to "put out a big fire with a glass of water," given how corruption has reached every corner of our society.
Chinese public opinion surveys identify corruption as the most hated social problem, yet everyone is also guilty of it.
Last year, when my father fell seriously ill, we took him to a decent hospital close by but were told the beds were fully occupied. 

As always, we turned to our guanxi -- our network of connections -- for help.
Fortunately, a relative, a not so senior but well-connected official, managed to secure a private room at the hospital, which is reserved for ranking leaders. 

In return, the relative agreed to get the son of the hospital director into the most desirable school in Nanjing.

Corruption hurt Communist Party

On China: Reform

On China: Tigers and flies

I became aware the weight of guanxi shortly after I was thrust into adulthood: At 16 I was dragged out of the school to work at a military rocket factory.
Two months later, when Spring Festival came, my mother requested that I visit my boss' home with gifts she had prepared.

Naive and embarrassed, I refused. 

Mother angrily predicted: "You'll never go far in life if you don't know how to la guanxi!" 

The verb la means to pull or to develop. 

Sure enough, I never got any promotion during my decade-long stint at the factory even though I acquired a degree in mechanical engineering.
For any Chinese businessman, guanxi is essential. 

Recently, I met up with a long-lost friend, with whom I marched in the Nanjing streets back in the spring of 1989 and shouted "Down With Corruption" -- one of the complaints that had sparked the unprecedented Tiananmen Square democratic movement.
More than 20 years later, this friend spends 90% of his time running his high-tech company. 

His youthful idealism has gone and his waistline has expanded considerably. 

With a ghost of a smile, he blames it on the excessive dining, drinking and occasional visits to prostitutes that are part of the tiresome game of guanxi. 

"Your business can't survive a day if you are not corrupt," he told me.
He has to smooth every step of his business with gifts or outright bribes: From obtaining the business license, to entertaining potential clients, to receiving 15% of the tax deduction that a high-tech company is entitled to. He estimates that 3% to 5 % of operating costs goes to guanxi.
Such practices drive entrepreneurs to seek senior officials as their patrons because politicians in China have the power to approve projects and allocate resources.
The relationship between the now disgraced politician Bo Xilai and businessmen Xu Ming, the founder of Dalian Shide Group, was typical of such patron-client relationships. 

Xu, a large man, allegedly fattened his pockets through his guanxi with the Bo family as he funded the family's jet-set life style.
Xu was detained shortly after Bo's arrest and testified against Bo at his trial in August, although Xu has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Local media reports suggest that authorities are investigating similar ties between the newly disgraced Nanjing mayor and Zhu Xingliang, the richest businessman in Suzhou, a city near Nanjing, who has also been placed under house arrest.
And politically, China produces its top leaders more or less based on patron-client ties rather than meritocracy. 

Both President Xi and Bo are "princelings" -- the children of senior leaders, the most powerful and influential group in China. 

Nepotism, a form of corruption, has feudal roots.
In fact, I believe the whole corrupt practice of guanxi is rooted in China's long tradition of renzhi -- rule of men rather than the rule of law.
President Xi has called for a curb on official extravagance: No red carpet treatment, no luxury banquets and no fancy office buildings. 

But these are the symptoms not the root of the problem.
To stamp out corruption, he will have to not only observe the rule of law but also introduce genuine political reforms that would allow checks and balances, transparency, and independent scrutiny. 

Such remedies, although proven elsewhere, may be too strong for him to take.
I don't doubt that the authorities will net more tigers. 

But there will be hundreds and thousands more at large and countless flies, thriving in China's politically and culturally rich breeding ground for corruption.

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Worries Over China's Ambitions Mark Southeast Asian Meeting

Japan, the U.S. and the Philippines urged their Asian allies to push for the rule of law in resolving territorial disputes with China at a regional summit in Brunei.
By TOKO SEKIGUCHI And ABHRAJIT GANGOPADHYAY

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, chatted with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the way to an Asean dinner Wednesday in Bandar Seri Begawan.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei—Japan, the U.S. and the Philippines urged their Asian allies to push for the rule of law in resolving territorial disputes with China at a regional summit here Wednesday, underscoring the extent to which security issues can still overshadow broader economic and trade relations in the region.
Security quickly came to the fore at the gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations annual summit and meetings with Asia-Pacific powers, following a separate international gathering on economic and trade issues in Indonesia earlier this week involving many of the same countries. 

China's growing commercial and naval power in recent years has unnerved many smaller countries in Asia, and has also prompted the U.S. on several occasions over the past few years to urge all nations in the region to ensure the free navigation of shipping through the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Worries over China's longer-term ambitions were again on the minds of many of the delegates at the two-day Asean and East Asia Summit meetings, which will also include leaders and officials from Russia and Australia, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. 

Mr. Kerry is attempting to ease concerns sparked by the partial government shutdown in Washington that caused President Barack Obama to scrap his plans to attend the summits.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe encouraged Southeast Asian leaders to present a united front in negotiating territorial rights in the South China Sea, which are claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, and where relations between Beijing and the Philippines in particular have grown increasingly testy in recent months.
"We're very concerned about changes in the status quo brought on by force in the South China Sea," Mr. Abe said, reiterating what he had separately told Vietnamese and Indonesian leaders earlier in the week when they met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.
Vietnam previously has complained about Chinese fishing vessels interfering with oil exploration in its waters, while the Philippines is angered by a growing Chinese presence at Scarborough Shoal off the coast of its main island Luzon, and which Manila claims is within part of its territory. 

Its president, Benigno Aquino III, also pressed the idea of establishing firm guidelines on how to resolve the competing claims over the South China Sea, known as the Code of Conduct, and the Philippines earlier this year filed a case with the United Nations challenging the legality of China's claims.
Describing the expanse of water as "this sea known by many names"—a nod to the sometimes rancorous arguments on what to call it—Mr. Aquino said that "our development as a region cannot be realized in an international environment where the rule of law does not exist."
The U.S.'s Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, speaking in a meeting with Asean, agreed. 

"A finalized Code of Conduct, in which all parties abide by a common set of rules and standards, is something that will benefit the entire Asia-Pacific community of nations—and beyond," he said.
China's Premier Li Keqiang said during Asean-China talks that the two sides shouldn't let the South China Sea issue get in the way of the broader relationship between Beijing and the Southeast Asian trade bloc, but it also subtly reminded other countries that in its view, the dispute is a matter for the contestants alone.
Security analysts such as Ian Storey at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, though, have suggested that the tensions between Japan and China could prove a potentially more destabilizing flashpoint than the South China Sea.
Political ties between Asia's two largest economies have been strained for over a year since Japan nationalized the Senkaku Islands and maintains they have always been Japanese territory. 

The Chinese contest their ownership and continue to send patrol boats to area waters despite Japan's repeated protests. 

The Japanese government acquired the islands from private Japanese owners during the country's previous administration.
During his nine months in office, Mr. Abe has yet to sit down with his Chinese counterpart, while in China, consumer boycotts have occasionally been launched against Japanese products.
In addition, Mr. Abe, while characterizing the relationship as "one of the most important" for Japan—China is Japan's biggest trading partner—and insisting he's open to dialogue, hasn't toned down his criticism against China's growing military might.

"We have an immediate neighbor whose military expenditure is at least twice as large as Japan's and second only to the U.S. defense budget. The country has increased its military expenditure, hardly transparently, by more than 10% a year" over the past two decades, Mr. Abe said in thinly veiled reference to China during a speech at the Hudson Institute in New York last month.

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Kerry, in Asia, Urges Focus on Law in China Disputes

By JANE PERLEZ
From left, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam; Secretary of State John Kerry; the sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah; and President Thein Sein of Myanmar, in Brunei.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei — Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged Southeast Asian leaders on Wednesday in their efforts to resolve maritime disputes with China based on international legal principles, rather than by making individual deals as China would prefer.
Mr. Kerry arrived in Brunei to substitute for President Obama at the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, and the broader East Asia Summit meeting of 18 countries on Thursday. Mr. Obama canceled his appearances because of the government shutdown in Washington.
“A finalized code of conduct, in which all abide by a common set of rules and standards, is something that will benefit the entire Asia-Pacific community of nations — and beyond,” Mr. Kerry told the leaders.
Mr. Kerry was referring to the recent stepped-up efforts by the Asean countries to persuade a resistant China to agree to a legally binding code of conduct that would govern the peaceful resolution of disputes.
In particular, Mr. Kerry was throwing American support behind the Philippines, a treaty ally of Washington, in a legal case it brought this year against China over the Scarborough Shoal, a reef about 120 miles off the Philippine coast that China claims.
China has excoriated the Philippines for initiating the arbitration case, which is now before a panel under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
China has refused to recognize the challenge, and in a show of anger, some senior Chinese officials have declined to meet their Filipino counterparts and China has refused to invite the Philippines to certain meetings.
“The United States has been very happy to see Asean’s efforts to push forward on the negotiations toward a code of conduct,” Mr. Kerry said.
In a direct criticism of China, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Mr. Kerry that the “Chinese consistently indicate their view that ‘difficult issues’ that might fall outside the comfort zone of any member need not be discussed” at Asean meetings.
“That is not a view that is held by the United States, or, I believe, many if not most of the East Asia Summit member states,” the official said. 

China has serious territorial and maritime disputes with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
The shipping lanes in the South China Sea are estimated to carry more than half the world’s trade, and substantial deposits of oil and gas lie in the seabed.
On the sidelines of the Asean meeting, Mr. Kerry met for 75 minutes with the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, and discussed Syria, North Korea economic issues and the South China Sea, a State Department official said.
At the start of the session, Mr. Li referred to China as still a developing country, something Chinese officials do frequently.

Mr. Kerry suggested that the description was not quite accurate.

“We think you are a little more developed than you may want to say,” Mr. Kerry said.
Echoing Mr. Kerry’s theme, the president of the Philippines, Benigno S. Aquino III, made an impassioned argument to the Asean leaders that the rule of law should decide the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
“Our development as a region cannot be realized in an international environment where the rule of law does not exist,” Mr. Aquino said. 

“The challenge that confronts one is a challenge that confronts all.”
China claims the waters and the islands of the South China Sea within the so-called nine-dash line, a boundary that was drawn by China in the 1940s but is not recognized by any other country.

The line covers 80 percent of the South China Sea.
To counter China, Mr. Aquino said the Philippines had adopted a two-track approach that was “both peaceful and rules-based.”
First, he said, the Philippines was advocating the expeditious adoption of a code of conduct. 

Second, the Philippines would continue to pursue the arbitration.

“Both tracks are legally binding and both are anchored in international law,” Mr. Aquino said.
Last month, under pressure from Asean countries, China called a meeting in the city of Suzhou to begin discussions on the code of conduct.
The Chinese agreed at the meeting to consultations on the code of conduct, but stopped short of agreeing to negotiations. 

A statement by the Foreign Ministry after the Suzhou meeting said that the code should be developed “gradually.”
China has criticized the United States for unreasonable involvement in the South China Sea, saying the United States is not a party to the disputes. 

Last month, Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said the intrusion of countries outside the region complicated the issue.

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Philippines urges China: Respect rule of law

“To be viewed as a responsible state, China must adhere to and respect the rule of law.”

By Sara Susanne D.

THE Philippines will maintain a “positive, peaceful and stable relationship” with China despite the tension between them in the West Philippine Sea, but urged Beijing to respect Manila’s maritime territory, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said in a speech released on Tuesday.
“I wish to stress that the Philippines is committed to undertake all that is possible to cultivate constructive relations with China in spite of these issues in the West Philippine Sea,” del Rosario said during the 2nd Annual Dinner of the United States-Philippine Society in New York.
“We maintain that our disputes in the West Philippine Sea are not the sum total of our relations.”
But Del Rosario urged China to treat all nations, including the Philippines, “with respect for equality and sovereignty”.
He said that, as China became stronger and more powerful, the Philippines hoped it would become a more “responsible state and a positive force in the region”.
“To be viewed as a responsible state, China must adhere to and respect the rule of law,” Del Rosario said.
Earlier, during the 64th celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese ambassador to the Philippines Ma Keqing urged the Philippines to work with them to “remove the existing obstacle” so it could create an atmosphere for better diplomatic relations.
When asked about Foreign Affairs’ reaction to Ma’s its spokesman Raul Hernandez answered: “We extend our warmest greetings to the People’s Republic of China on its 64th national day celebration. Thanks.”
Tensions in the resource-rich West Philippine Sea had always been present, but it wasn’t until April last year when the row between Manila and Beijing became intense over the Scarborough Shoal.
An agreement was reached for both countries to leave the shoal, but it was only the Filipino-manned vessels who adhered to that agreement. 

The Chinese vessels stayed and were reported in the process of building facilities there.
Beijing has since controlled the reef, which is within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. 

Beijing has been claiming the whole West Philippine Sea based on its nine-dash-line map.
“The core issue of the dispute is China’s claim of indisputable sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea under its nine dash line position. This claim is expansive, excessive and in gross violation of international law,” Del Rosario said.
“China’s continuous and overwhelming naval and maritime presence in the area is also contributing to the rising regional tensions,” he said.
China’s excessive claims pushed the Philippines to bring its dispute with China before the Arbitral Tribunal.
Del Rosario said that, before they brought their case before the Arbitral Tribunal, the Philippines had undertaken many efforts to peacefully engage China to settle their disputes.
“However, these were unsuccessful,” Del Rosario said.

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