In recent weeks, China has been engulfed in a wave of state propaganda centered around Lei Feng (雷锋), a familiar Party exemplar from the country’s past. A self-sacrificing People’s Liberation Army soldier, Lei Feng ostensibly dedicated himself, heart and soul, to the Chinese Communist Party and its vision.
The new Lei Feng wave comes as China celebrates both the 50th anniversary of Lei Feng’s death in 1962 and the 49th anniversary of his formal status as a Party exemplar — March 5 each year is “Study Lei Feng Day.”
For Party leaders, re-visiting the spirit of Lei Feng is apropos in 2012 not just because of the above-mentioned anniversaries, but because there has been increasing concern, and also discussion, inside China about what many see as a progressive moral slide. Chinese — or so the argument goes — have become too selfish as rapid economic change has thrust the country forward, ahead of its own core values.

What are those core values? In the Party’s view, they must be “socialist core values” (社会主义核心价值), distinct from the universal values trumpeted in the West, as best suited (they say) to China’s unique culture and national circumstances (国情).
An important part of the program of broadly-touted “cultural system reforms” coming out of the sixth plenum of the 17th Central Committee last October was the promotion of these “socialist core values.” And so — (I’m still channeling one rather dominant Party discourse here) — in the same way that institutions like Hollywood and the Western press expound and project a set of Western “universal values”, Chinese culture in the broadest sense must transmit a unique set of Chinese values, an amalgam of (often twisted) ancient traditions and Party traditions.
Enter Lei Feng.
In an announcement earlier this week, China’s Ministry of Education said it was launching a movement of Lei Feng studies through the country’s education system, in order to “deeply implement the overall demands of . . . the Sixth Plenum of the Party’s 17th Central Committee.”
Said the announcement:

Lei Feng is a paragon for the practice of socialist and communist thought and morals, a model to be studied by the whole nation. The Lei Feng spirit is an important part of the spirit of the Chinese people, evincing the traditional virtue of the Chinese people, and in tune with our era of social progress. [It] manifests the inherent advancedness of our Party, and is a vivid embodiment of the socialist core value system.

As noted on the front page of the overseas edition of the People’s Daily today, the opening day of the National People’s Congress (NPC), March 5, also marks the 49th anniversary of the study of the “spirit of Lei Feng.” According to his official diary, Lei Feng died in 1962, but it was in 1963, 49 years ago, that Lei Feng was introduced to the Chinese public through a concerted propaganda campaign.
The Lei Feng wave fits nicely with the upcoming NPC not just because the session is the first since “cultural reforms” were trumpeted last October, but because public morals and broader social governance issues are likely to take a front seat at the session.
For example, there is talk that one agenda to be discussed is the creation of what has been called a “Good Samaritan law” — in other words, legislation encouraging citizens to assist those in need by lowering the risk associated with doing so. Talk of such legislation was ignited late last year after video surfaced of a toddler in the city of Foshan run over twice in succession by passing vehicles and then ignored by passersby.
What has the Lei Feng wave actually looked like in mainland Chinese newspaper coverage? Here is a graph showing the results day by day in more than 200 Chinese newspapers since February 1.

In an article published in at least 12 Party-run newspapers today, “The Eternal Summons: Century Symphony for the Lei Feng Spirit” (永恒的召唤: 雷锋精神世纪交响曲), China’s official Xinhua News Agency likens China to a grand symphony, in which of course everyone has their part to play.
The allegorical structure, in which Lei Feng serves as “first violin” (第一小提琴手), accords well with Hu Jintao’s notion of “harmony” and the “harmonious society”, or hexie shehui (和谐社会). All Chinese must play their part, subordinating their own tunes to the greater music of national peace and purpose.
Lei Feng, the tireless hero sacrificing personal interests for the greater good of the Party and the people, is the exemplar for all players — the virtuoso, if you will, of self-effacing struggle.
Much of the Xinhua piece is structured as a call and answer, again extending the musical theme. Like this portion, which introduces the idea that each member of Chinese society should serve as a brick in the great edifice that is China:

We ask: Lei Feng, how can we follow you today in moving forward?
Lei Feng once said: tall buildings are built up one brick and one stone at a time, and we must be the bricks and the stone, doing our piecemeal bit.
In the process of building our spiritual edifice (精神大厦), if only you are willing, we can all, like Lei Feng, be a single brick, a single tile, or even a single grain of sand . . . In Nanjing, after the Sichuan earthquake, an old man named Xu Chao (徐超) who made his way by begging, even after donating 5 yuan searched for all the cash on his person and finally went to the bank to change [the smalls] into a 100-yuan bill to put in the donation box. For this old man, this was a “bare donation” sparing nothing.
True goodness cares not who you are, or what your status is, and it cannot be measured by how much money you pay out. So long as it arises from love deep in your soul, every single person can be Lei Feng.

Of course, many Chinese would argue, and have, that the country’s present woes — including rising social unrest, and what might best be characterized as a general social malaise — are not the product of a moral deficit or an insufficiency of “spirit.” Rather, they are the product of political, social and economic marginalization.
Xinhua’s romantic story about the beggar Xu Chao exposes an appalling blindness to underlying social issues. Unpack the host of questions surrounding the poor Xu and you might have an illuminating case study on social and political gaps, on institutional negligence. But here, the hot tears of ideological fervor blind the reporters to the obvious.
As incidents like that in Guangdong’s Wukan village have sufficiently shown, Chinese are not lacking in political spirit or pluck. They certainly don’t need a moral pep-a-rally or a Lei Feng love fest.
What Chinese arguably do need, and what many increasingly demand, are institutions that, rather than exacting romantic self-sacrifice, enable participation and afford protection, so that every citizen can be clear where they stand — and can do good without fear.

The following post by Consensus Net (共识网), the official Weibo account of China’s Leaders (领导者) magazine, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:46pm Hong Kong time, February 28, 2012. Lang Yaoyuan currently has just over 102,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
The post came against the backdrop of renewed use in official Party media of the image and story of Lei Feng (雷锋), a People’s Liberation Army soldier held up in official Party propaganda in the 1960s as an exemplar of duty and devotion to the Party and the socialist cause. The dusting off of Lei Feng seems to have come amidst an invigorated official campaign in China to improve public morals.

Lei Feng, such a youthful screw [in the machine] http://t.cn/zOG5GhH Through his extended use in the propaganda of the national machine, spirit of Lei Feng has already become to tool advocating the individual’s sacrifice of private interests. The greater the sacrifice, the loftier the image, the greater the spirit. This kind of neglect of private interests, which from its very origin sets moral standards against private interests as a value orientation, must necessarily go against human nature. And so it is very difficult [for such a standard] to serve in raising the level of social morals.

The post by Consensus Net included the following image of Lei Feng:

The original Chinese-language post from Lang Yaoyuan follows:

雷锋，如此年轻的螺丝钉http://t.cn/zOG5GhH在国家机器长期宣传下，雷锋精神已经演变成国家提倡个人牺牲私利的工具：牺牲越巨大，形象越高大，精神越伟大。这样一种忽视个人利益、从一开始就将道德标准与私人利益对立起来的价值导向，必然是违背人性的，也就难以起到提高社会道德水平的作用.

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

The following post by Lang Yaoyuan (郎遥远), the Hangzhou-based director of World Merchants Magazine, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 6:00pm Hong Kong time yesterday, February 29, 2012. Lang Yaoyuan currently has just under 70,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Lang Yaoyuan’s post deals with the as-yet-unexplained unblocking on February 21 of an entry about former premier Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) on the Baidu website’s encyclopedia service, Baidu Baike (百度百科). According to some Chinese-language reports outside China, the Baidu page for Zhao Ziyang, a pro-reform figure who was ousted in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown in June 1989, received more than two million visits within one day. The page has since been disabled.

That General Secretary who shed tears for our college students on the square was suddenly unblocked a few days back, and there were 2,16 million views that day. This old man, about whom for so long we could hear nothing, suddenly overnight appears again on the horizon of our awareness. Several million searches can be seen as several million tributes, so late but still not absent. At such a moment I feel how awesome (“NB”) it is to be Chinese. Chinese forget nothing.

The post by Lang Yaoyuan included the following image of Zhao Ziyang:

The original Chinese-language post from Lang Yaoyuan follows:

那位曾在广场对大学生流泪的总书记，前几天突然解禁，当天网络浏览216万次。“一个走得如此荒凉的老人，在这样一个偶然的夜里，又一次静静地出现在你我可以感知的边界。数百万条的搜索，就权当数百万次的注目礼吧，迟到了，却并不缺席。这一刻，感到身为一个中国人的NB。中国人，什么都没有忘记。”

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

State media report today that Liu Binjie (柳斌杰), the head of China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) — the agency that licenses journalists and print publications in the country and oversees ideological training campaigns for media — will serve as dean of the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication effective March 1.
Liu Binjie’s appointment to head up the journalism school at Tsinghua, generally recognized as one of China’s top universities, is explained in media reports as a routine replacement of Fan Jingyi (范敬宜), the previous dean (and the school’s first), who passed away on November 13 last year.
However, the fact that journalism schools at three of China’s top universities are now being run by former ministerial-level (正部级) officials has led to speculation on social media that Liu’s choice might be politically significant.
Liu Binjie served previously as minister of propaganda for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, and as the top Party propaganda official in China’s western Sichuan province.
The current dean at Peking University’s school of journalism is Shao Huaze (邵华泽), a former top official at the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper. The dean of the journalism school at People’s University of China is Zhao Qizheng (赵启正), the former director of China’s State Council Information Office, where controls on China’s internet are centered.
It was not immediately clear from Chinese news coverage whether Liu Binjie’s appointment would mean his replacement as head of GAPP, or whether he would hold the positions concurrently.

The following post by Sina-verified user @XiaoShanDoctorate (叶匡政), a researcher at an energy research center in Chengdu, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 10:31pm Hong Kong time yesterday, February 28, 2012. @XiaoShanDoctorate currently has just under 30,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
@XiaoShanDoctorate’s post, a re-post of a post by user @bxtv_XiaoFeng, criticizes the CCP-led cult around Guo Mingyi (郭明义), a manager at Anshan Iron and Steel Group Corporation (鞍山钢铁集团公司). Guo, previously dubbed an “Excellent Chinese Communist Party Member” (优秀共产党员), has been trumpeted as a modern-day Lei Feng (雷锋), an exemplar for all dutiful, obedient and hard-working Chinese. Fans of Guo Mingyi’s Sina Weibo account have topped six million, something Chinese internet users have questioned.

What qualification does someone whose fans are even fake have to be a moral exemplar? @bxtv_XiaoFeng: This thing is really building up! @AnGangGuoMingyi’s Weibo fan base has surpassed six million, but a great number of mummy fans (僵尸粉) are mixed in. I don’t know whether this is a propaganda strategy, but seeing it makes me a bit sick.

The post by @bxtv_XiaoFeng included the following image:

The original Chinese-language post from @XiaoShanDoctorate, with the post from @bxtv_XiaoFeng included, follows:

一个连粉丝都造假的人，有什么资格成为道德楷模？ @bxtv_小丰：事情果然闹大了！@鞍钢郭明义 的微博粉丝超过600多万，大量僵尸粉混杂其间，不知是不是宣传策略，反正看着有点恶心。现在一斤被大伙揪住了！

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

The following post by Ye Kuangzheng (叶匡政), a Chinese poet and scholar, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:45pm Hong Kong time yesterday, February 27, 2012. Ye Kuangzheng currently has just under 125,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Ye Kuangzheng’s post is simply a re-post of a string of separate posts on China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), which will go into full session early next week. The posts, by @LiuZhongshi @LinShaX and @ZhuoShuiQingShenZl, are critical of public security spending in China and the NPC as an empty body merely trumpeting the foregone decisions of the Chinese Communist Party:

//@LiuZhongshi: The people are treated like enemies! //@ZhuoShuiQingShenZl: The government is inactive, so the propaganda leaders are very busy; popular anger runs deep, so they emphasize that society is very harmonious; morals are lacking, so they soak us in great love; public order is great, so they mobilize vast police forces.//@LinShaX: The police forces they’ve mobilized now cost hundreds of thousands more than what America spends on its army, all for the sake of protecting the world’s best-known “great meeting of cheerleaders.”

It is not clear what @LinShaX is referring to in the line about U.S. military spending. China revealed last year, however, that it now spends more on internal security than it does on national defense.
The original Chinese-language post from Ye Kuangzheng, with posts from @LinShaX and @ZhuoShuiQingShenZl included, follows:

//@刘忠世:待民如寇仇！//@浊水清尘zl: 政府无为，所以宣扬领导都很忙；民怨很深，所以强调社会很和谐；道德沦丧，所以渲染我们有大爱；治安很好，所以动用强大的警力。//@林傻X：动用的警力比美国现役陆军的总数还多十几万，只是为了维护世界上最著名的“啦啦队大会”

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

Chinese news media reported this week that Yunnan province in the country’s southwest will possibly face its worst drought in a century this year, and three cities in the province are already rationing water supplies. In the following cartoon, posted by artist Cao Yi (曹一) to QQ.com, the member of a Chinese ethnic minority group from Yunnan stands holding out a dish full of cracked, dry earth.
南方周末【云南，渴啊！】 中国水资源最丰富省份之一，云南，2012年春天迎来了又一个干旱开年。过去三年旱情叠加，让气象部门预测，云南可能遭遇“超百年一遇的干旱”。

Back in April 2011 Chinese economist Mao Yushi (茅于轼) set off a firestorm with a strongly worded criticism of Mao Zedong (毛泽东) posted to Caixin Online. This week Mao Yushi has again raised eyebrows, this time with a darkly frank assessment of China’s property market in an interview with Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily.
In the interview, Mao Yushi argues that one key reason behind rising property prices in China in recent years has been a lack of good investment alternatives for China’s rich, fueling a boom in properties used largely for investment purposes but unaffordable for the vast majority of Chinese.
Citing a high rate of vacancy in Chinese properties (“possibly as high as 50 percent”), Mao suggests China’s property bubble must collapse, with properties losing at lease 50 percent of their value.

[ABOVE: Properties in Guangzhou’s Xian Village are vacated to make way for new property developments. The sign encourages local villagers to reach settlements on compensation for demolished property as early as possible. Photo by David Bandurski]
“Is there no remedy?” the Southern Metropolis Daily reporter asks towards the end of the interview. Mao Yushi answers by suggesting a tax on vacant properties, which he says might encourage a dramatic drop in rental prices and make apartments available to migrant workers. [Readers can click here to follow the conversation about Mao Yushi’s arguments on Sina Weibo.]

“No Medicine Can Cure [China’s] Property Market”
Southern Metropolis Daily
February 27, 2012
Southern Metropolis Daily: Recently, a number of projects in Lucheng (绿城) in Zhejiang province have been sold, exposing the existential crisis facing privately-run property enterprises. How do you view this phenomenon?
Mao Yushi: How can property enterprises make so much money? The direct reason is that property prices keep going up. Property buyers make money, and property sellers make money too.
Beginning in the second half of last year, you can already see the situation (in the market) changing. But many property developers haven’t yet seen these changes. So now properties are difficult to sell, money can’t be borrowed, and so (they) see the capital chain being broken.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Why is it that this phenomenon is quite common among private enterprises, but the situation at state-run property enterprises is somewhat better?
Mao Yushi: The difference between state-run and privately-run enterprises is in the ability to access money. But the larger climate dictates that the property sector faces huge dangers, whether state-run or privately-run. I said this the year before last. My friends in the property sector don’t like to hear me say it. They say why don’t you help us out. I say, if I help you this does you harm. Unfortunately, very few people understand this.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Many privately-run enterprises have been influenced heavily by macro-adjustments. Where is the development bottleneck here?
Mao Yushi: It’s about financing.
Southern Metropolis Daily: So because they have no cash, these private enterprises face a shrinking space?
Mao Yushi: The major banks don’t service small and medium-sized enterprises. This is the same around the world. The United States has more than 8,000 banks, the vast majority of these small banks. That is why there is no serious financing problem for small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Where is the future space for development for privately-run enterprises in China?
Mao Yushi: If the problem of financing is not resolved there a large space for development doesn’t exist. The biggest source of financing for private enterprises right now is private lending (民间借贷). Now the government plans to chop this [source of financing] off, and the public response has been loud. Because if private lending is not available, this will further strengthen the monopoly of financing by state enterprises.
Southern Metropolis Daily: [Economist] Lang Xianping has said before that once private property developers are out of the picture, property prices will get even higher. What do you think about that view?
Mao Yushi: The problem for small and medium-sized enterprises is about financing, and the problem of financing doesn’t have much to do with property prices.
The Property Bubble Will Burst Sooner or Later
Southern Metropolis Daily: Some people already think that the property market [in China] has already entered an era without a sense of direction, and that the inability to come to a consensus about the property market is the fundamental cause of chaos in the market. Do you support that view?
Mao Yushi: No. I think there are a number of reasons why the property sector has become what we see today. One reason is that income distribution in our country is uneven, and the gap between rich and poor is too pronounced. Even if prices go up further, the rich can afford it, and so they don’t care how high prices go. Secondly, the rich have no good channels for investment. If there were good channels for investment, they would no longer go and buy property. Third, there are government controls on land. The government’s regulations concerning a bottom line (红线) for arable land protection at 180,000 mu [or 12,000 hectares] are extremely misguided. Land [availability] is the reason property prices are expensive, and insufficient supply (of land) drives property prices up.
Southern Metropolis Daily: On the one hand, property prices have risen significantly. On the other hand, the rate of empty properties in many areas is quite high.
Mao Yushi: In fact, the (the reason driving property price increases) isn’t because there is so much demand from people. Right now [as you say] many properties are empty, but I think in some cases properties have been empty for more than a decade.
Southern Metropolis Daily: You’ve said before that the greatest risk to China’s economy this year is the property market. Where specifically do you see [this danger] emerging?
Mao Yushi: Many properties standing empty spells a bubble. In my view, the biggest risk for China’s economy this year and next is the bursting of the property bubble. China’s situation, I’m afraid, is unique in the world, because there are so many empty [residential] properties, no one living there. This is the biggest bubble [you can imagine]. A sea of properties, and no one living in them. This is a frightening (thing).
Southern Metropolis Daily: Do you think the property bubble will burst this year?
Mao Yushi: It’s hard to say, but it will burst sooner or later. How could it not burst? You would have to have people living in all of these properties for the [problem of] empty homes to be absorbed. Is that possible. I don’t think it’s possible. Well then, the only road possible is the bursting [of the bubble]. What does bursting mean? It means the steady fall of [residential] property prices.
Southern Metropolis Daily: How far do you think property prices will fall if the bubble bursts?
Mao Yushi: I think 30 percent is too little. Dropping 50 percent is more like it. Actually, 50 percent isn’t really that high. Three years ago, property prices in Beijing went down that much.
Southern Metropolis Daily: According to your thinking, empty properties give rise to a bubble. Well then, in your view, are residential properties by nature supposed to serve a residential function?
Mao Yushi: The ultimate purpose of residential property is that it be lived in.
Southern Metropolis Daily: The only function of homes is to be lived in, so if it’s not this function [they are serving], then we can say something has gone wrong with [the] property [market]?
Mao Yushi: That’s not the way to view this situation. In the property market there should be speculative property (投机房), but the ratio should not very high. Homes can sit empty. But I’ve heard friends in the property market say the rate [of empty properties] should stand around 8-10 percent. Right now, it’s not even 30 percent, but possibly as high as 50 percent. With so many empty properties, can trouble be avoided?
Government Intervention is No Match for the Power of the Market (市场威力)
Southern Metropolis Daily: But looking at the situation this year, it seems that in some regions, owing to restrictions on property purchasing or prices, prices on the property market have gone down?
Mao Yushi: Not necessarily. Right now, the fall in property prices isn’t necessarily due to price or purchasing restrictions. I think its that the whole macroeconomy has met with trouble. I wrote an article before in which I said that now that buying restrictions were over the (government) should rely on the market here on out. Once the bubble bursts, the government should rely on the market. You tell me, what is the use of restricting prices and purchasing?
Southern Metropolis Daily: You’re totally against price and purchasing restrictions?
Mao Yushi: Totally against them.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Ok, what about property taxes (房产税)?
Mao Yushi: I don’t support them either. I’m in support of high taxes on investment gains (投资收益)?
Southern Metropolis Daily: What’s wrong with places like Chongqing and Shanghai charging property taxes?
Mao Yushi: Limits on purchasing and property taxes are limits placed on people buying homes, and I think they’re no good. Property taxes are not a way of dealing with the market [as a whole], but rather should be a normal form of tax, an normal part of the operation of the real-estate market.
Southern Metropolis Daily: So everyone has misunderstood property taxes?
Mao Yushi: We should have property taxes, but they are not a tool to tackle high property prices . . .
Southern Metropolis Daily: On November 10 last year, Zhongshan [in Guangdong province] issued an order on price restriction (限价令) capping property prices at 5,800 yuan/square meter up to December 31, 2011. But after the new year, the cap was raised to 6,590 yuan/square meter.
Mao Yushi: This is completely without reason. Price caps are an even bigger mess than purchasing limits.
Southern Metropolis Daily: But home buyers really benefitted.
Mao Yushi: The most important is balance. This kind of forced price drop will cause unhappiness among developers, and what happens later when no one goes and develops properties?
Southern Metropolis Daily: In fact no clear official document was released for this price standard in Zhongshan. [The government] simply refused to register any property [for sale] that was above this price.
Mao Yushi: Regardless of whether or not there was a document, price limitations are wrong. This just suggests that the government doesn’t want to take responsibility as it carries out a wrong-headed policy. We have a Commodity Price Law by which prices are determined by the market and not interfered with by the government. How do they decide 6,590 yuan/square meter is suitable and not 6,600 yuan/square meter?
Southern Metropolis Daily: The government calculated it on the basis of GDP growth of 13.5 percent last year.
Mao Yushi: Hitching price limits up to GDP makes even less sense.
Southern Metropolis Daily: What if they were connected to average disposable incomes?
Mao Yushi: That makes no sense either. The government needs to have an understanding of economics. They shouldn’t manage so much, but should let the market freely make adjustments.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Do you encourage people to purchase property?
Mao Yushi: In the current market environment I don’t advise people to buy property. Seeing as prices (for property) will drop, what reason would there be in buying something whose price will go down?
Southern Metropolis Daily: But you’ve said before that the government should encourage people to buy property.
Mao Yushi: There’s nothing wrong with the government encouraging people to buy property. But the government needs to open up land supply, expand avenues for investment, etcetera, and not apply limitations on property purchasing to bring prices down.
Charging a Tax on Empty Properties Could Help Dilute the Property Bubble
Southern Metropolis Daily: So what do you think should be done about China’s economy this year? Will there be any loosening of adjustments for the property market?
Mao Yushi: On this, let me just say that government adjustments are of no use. They are negligible compared to market forces. What the government can do is open up investment opportunities, allowing those with money to put that money in investments rather than purchasing property. This is what the government should do first and foremost. But it’s already late. In my view, the bursting of the property bubble is something that cannot be avoided.
Southern Metropolis Daily: It must burst? Is there no remedy?
Mao Yushi: (Things for several seconds) Let me offer one suggestion. Charge a tax on empty properties, and the result will be that rental prices drop dramatically. Then workers from outside the city could afford to rent apartments. If that were done I think it might have some benefit for the property market.
Of course, some people say this would be difficult to do, because it’s difficult to tell whether a property is vacant. But in my view, even if it’s very difficult, even if the costs of doing it are high, it is something that really needs doing, because the income would be very high. . . I think it could be done.
So a property that before could be rented for 2,000 could be rented for 1,000 [a month]. But seen from another angle, (this suggestion) does somewhat interfere with personal freedoms. But I think this is a matter of no alternative, otherwise the losses later will be even larger. When the property bubble bursts down the road, the properties will be worth even less.
Southern Metropolis Daily: Isn’t this suggestion of yours also a form of government regulation of the market?
Mao Yushi: It amounts to interfering with the market, but why is there a need to interfere? Because there is already a bubble. What use is restricting purchases? The purpose of [this] adjustment [I’m suggesting] is allowing people to live in these empty properties.

The following post by Xie Wen (谢文), an IT expert and former general manager for Yahoo! China, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 8:16am Hong Kong time today, February 28, 2012. He Bing currently has just under 124,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Xie Wen’s post was made in response to a post from Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (胡锡进) that was also deleted from Sina Weibo and is included in the Xie Wen re-post. Hu Xijin currently has 1.78 million followers on Weibo, according to numbers by Sina.

They can begin by not deleting [Weibo] posts. //@HuXijin: It’s because the leadership status of the Chinese Communist Party is not like that of political parties in the West that when it makes errors the impact on the country is also greater. Therefore, aside from scientific and democratic decision-making, oversight mechanisms for the CCP must be strong and effective, and should move steadily to widespread and substantive participation by the public. This sort of oversight can only be a process of innovating Chinese politics. It’s very tiring, yes. But exhaustion is the price of the development and prosperity of China.

The original Chinese-language post from Xie Wen, with the Hu Xijin post included, follows:

可以从不删贴开始。//@胡锡进: 正因为中共非同西方政党的领导地位，它犯错比西方政党犯错对国家的影响同样更大。因此除了决策的科学民主化，对中共的监督机制必须是强有力的，应逐渐加入民间广泛、实质的参与。这种监督只能是一次中国政治的创新过程。很累吧。累是诺大中国发展、繁荣而且不乱的代价。

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

The following post by He Bing (何兵), deputy director of the School of Law at China University of Politics and Law, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 2:16pm Hong Kong time today, February 27, 2012. He Bing currently has more than 156,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
He Bing’s post dealt with the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature and nominal highest state body, which meets in full session just once a year. The Standing Committee of the NPC went into session in Beijing today. The full session of the annual NPC will begin on March 5.

3,000 National People’s Congress (NPC) delegates meet, something unlike anything seen anywhere else in the world. Great forces are mustered, wasting the wealth of the people. How is it that what is clearly a big mistake isn’t reformed? I suggest collapsing the whole NPC into the standing committee [of the NPC), shrinking it down to about 300-500 people. This is a basic precondition of the normal operation of the National People’s Congress.

The original Chinese-language post from He Bing follows:

三千名人大代表开会，全世界绝无仅有。兴师动众，徒耗民财。这样明显的错误，为何不改？建议将人大与常委会合一，压缩至三百到五百人。这是人大机构能够正常运转的基本前提。

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.