China Daily 每日新闻摘要——May 4th

兔斯基

No letup in anti-graft fight, Xi warns Party ‘cabals and cliques’

There will be no letup in the nation's campaign to fight against corruption, the president says

President Xi Jinping has issued a stern warning of "cabals and cliques" in the Communist Party of China and reiterated the nation's determination to press ahead with the fight against corruption.

"There are careerists and conspirators existing in our Party and undermining the Party's governance,"Xi said in a speech, the full text of which was published in People's Daily on Tuesday.

"We should not bury our heads in the sand and spare these members, but must make a resolute response to eliminate the problem and deter further violations,"he said.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, gave the speech in January at a plenary session of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which mapped out anti-graft work for this year.

He said "some officials have been forming cabals and cliques to covertly defy the CPC Central Committee's decisions and policies", and they "risk compromising the political security of the Party and the country".

"We must make it clear that our Party's fight against corruption is not a snobbish affair that discriminates between different people, and it is not a House of Cards power struggle,"he added, in a reference to the US television series.

Since the anti-graft drive was launched three years ago, senior corrupt officials have been found to have forged close relationships with groups of officials at local government level and with business tycoons in different factions with shared interests, such as the "oil clique", "secretary clique" or "Shanxi clique".

Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief; Xu Caihou, a former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission; and Ling Jihua, a senior Party official and national political adviser, headed such fractions.

Zhou was said to have formed several networks within the sectors he was in charge of, including law enforcement organs and State-owned enterprises such as China National Petroleum Corp, where a number of corrupt officials were investigated for involvement in Zhou's "oil clique".

Wang Yukai, a professor of public administration at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said such factions are likely to result in severe corruption in an entire area or industry, and the Party must adopt an "iron-fist policy" to nip the cliques in the bud.

Xi also denied in his speech that the anti-graft drive is going to wind down.

He reiterated the Party's determination to root out corruption, and stressed that the efforts should adhere to the goal of firmly curbing any increased corrupt behavior in the Party.

兔斯基

HK needs to rehabilitate its tourist-friendly image: Experts

If Hong Kong wants to attract more mainland tourists, it should focus on getting its citizens to behave well toward them and rehabilitate the city's tourist-friendly image, instead of worrying about easing travel restrictions on mainlanders, tourism experts said.

The suggestion was made after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying made it clear on Tuesday that the special administrative region's government had no plan to restore the multiple-entry individual visit scheme for people from the nearby city of Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Evidence of the falling number of mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong came during the three-day "mini Golden Week" holiday from April 30 and May 2 when there was a 40 percent year-on-year drop in the number of mainland tour groups, according to the Hong Kong Inbound Travel Association.

Lam Chi-ting, general secretary of Hong Kong Tourism Industry Employees General Union, said he agreed that the time is not right to reinstate the multiple-entry permits for residents from Shenzhen, or to loosen rules so that residents of other mainland cities can visit Hong Kong more easily.

"The city still needs time to study its capacity before welcoming more mainlanders," Lam said.

"Not to mention, Hong Kong people also need time to learn how to behave in a civil and friendly way toward mainland visitors."

He made the comments after recent news stories reported isolated incidents in which mainland visitors had been criticized and made to feel uncomfortable in Hong Kong.

Leung said before an Executive Council meeting on Tuesday that the SAR government was aware of the fact that too many mainland tourists could put undue pressure on the city and disturb the daily lives of local people.

The city has enjoyed several bumper years for tourism, with mainland visitors delivering a shopping and traveling bonanza to the retail sector, said Song Ding, a senior analyst from the Tourism and Real Estate Industry Research Center of the China Development Institute, a think tank based in Shenzhen.

But in the wake of fewer mainland tourists visiting the city and a cooling economy, Hong Kong has been attempting to lure tourists from countries including Japan, South Korea and the United States. However, Lam said there are limits to how much difference tourists from those markets can make.

The mainland contributes between 3 and 4 million arrivals to Hong Kong each month, compared with 150,000 to 160,000 monthly arrivals from other major markets.

兔斯基

Car-hailing app driver robs woman, kills her in Shenzhen





A car-hailing app driver who robbed and killed a 24-year-old woman passenger on Monday in the southern city of Shenzhen has been arrested in Baoan district on Tuesday, according to Nanshan district police.


Police received a report early Tuesday that the woman, a teacher surnamed Zhong, booked a ride from Nanshan to her school at Baoan Monday evening but she could not be contacted at 10:15 pm as her phone was switched off, the circular said.


Nanshan police launched a search and found the vehicle the woman was riding in and arrested the suspect, a 24-year-old driver surnamed Pan, at a rented room in Baoan around Tuesday noon.


The suspect said that he received Zhong's order on the car-hailing platform and picked her up around 9 pm on Monday. He said he drove to an isolated area and used a knife to force her to hand over her valuables and then killed her.


The police said the woman's body has been recovered and the case is under investigation.


Nanshan police did not release the name of the car-hailing service platform, but media reports claimed that it was the Didi Chuxing, a leading online car-hailing service provider in China.


Tuesday night, the company confirmed that Pan was a registered driver on its platform, but the license of the car he was driving that night was fake.


A family member of the woman published an online post around 7 am on Tuesday to get help in the search, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.


The woman left home after 9 pm Monday and would have reached her dormitory by around 10 pm. She also took a photo of the vehicle's license plate and sent it to her family before she got into the vehicle, the post said.


But she did not call back home till 11 pm and her phone was off, the post added. Her roommates said that she had not reached the dormitory.


The woman's husband called the car-hailing platform late Monday and discovered that the driver had cancelled the ride, and the driver could not be reached as his phone was off. The family reported the matter to police.


In late March, Hongshan district court in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, sentenced a driver of Didi Chuxing to eight years in prison for raping and robbing a female passenger.


The driver, surnamed Li, picked up the victim late at night on Oct 19 last year before he threatened her with a fake gun. The victim said she was later raped and forced to wire 25,000 yuan to the man's bank account.


In November, Haidian district court in Beijing sentenced a driver of the same company to four years for raping a female passenger in July last year.


Safety concern has been one of major issues for the rapid development of the car-hailing service in China's cities since 2014.


Shenzhen city government said it has pledged to step up efforts to regulate the emerging industry to ensure passenger safety and urged online ride-hailing companies to comply with the law, accept their social responsibilities and resolve problems quickly.


One report published by the Shenzhen Transportation Commission estimated that 1,425 drivers working for online platforms had a history of drug abuse, and 1,662 had serious criminal records before taking up their current jobs.


Earlier in April, Didi Chuxing said it had expelled an undisclosed number of drivers in Shenzhen who were found to have a history of drug use, mental illness or significant criminal records.


China has no special law on regulating the car-hailing service. In March, several ministries vowed to support the popular services as part of the country's drive to encourage green consumption, sending a positive signal that ride-sharing operators in China will gain legitimacy and see further growth in the years ahead.