Friday, May 31, 2013 A3
LEADING THE NEWS POPULATION
In pictures posted on the Internet women pose with placards urging principals not to abuse schoolgirls. Photos: SCMP Pictures
School sex abuse protester beaten up ................................................ Mimi Lau in Guangzhou mimi.lau@scmp.com Gender rights activist Ye Haiyan was assaulted and detained by Guangxi public security officials yesterday after returning from Hainan province, where she had protested against the sexual abuse of schoolgirls. Ye appealed for help three times on her microblog around noon yesterday, saying her apartment had been raided by about 10 women and one man while she was alone with her daughter. “There are now four to five women beating me up,” Ye said in her first post. “Please help me to call the police. There is only me and my daughter [here].” Two Beijing-based lawyers who joined Ye in the Hainan protest earlier this week said Ye was summoned for questioning by police in Guangxi’s Bobai county yesterday after she was accused of physical assault while fending off her attackers. Her supporters said they be-
lieved the attack was an attempt to silence Ye after she launched an online anti-child-abuse campaign that has received massive public support. Earlier this week, Ye and a few lawyers held cardboard placards in front of a Wanning primary school whose principal has been
charged with raping six girls. They urged perverted teachers to leave pupils alone and posted photos of their campaign online. The Hainan case triggered a national outcry, with the local authorities accused of downplaying the case and seeking to silence the victims’ parents to con-
Activist Ye Haiyan, who says she was assaulted by police in Guangxi.
trol the damage. Public sentiment was further inflamed by the reporting of at least seven other sexual abuse cases targeting children in the past three weeks. Internet users posted pictures of themselves in front of slogans, saying: “Principals. Find me if you want to get a room [a Chinese euphemism for having sex]. Please spare the primary pupils.” A relative who is caring for Ye’s 13-year-old daughter said the girl had been frightened by the attack. “She cried and didn’t understand what was happening,” the relative said. Local police approached for comment yesterday refused to answer questions about Ye. Tang Jitian , a Beijingbased rights lawyer, said police could hold Ye for between 24 hours and 15 days, in what was a deliberate attempt to silence her activism. “She has also been seen as a thorn in the side of local authorities obsessed with maintaining social stability,” Tang said. “This is not the first time she has been harassed.”
Hong Kong CRIME no longer Sixth suspect held in HKMEx probe top-ranked economy ................................................ Clifford Lo and Joyce Ng
................................................ Ng Kang-chung and Stuart Lau Hong Kong has lost its status as the world’s most competitive economy, according to the latest report by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD). Its overall ranking has dropped to third this year, overtaken by the United States and Switzerland. The institute’s research, which covered 60 economies, shows Hong Kong has performed worse in all four major areas studied – economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. The biggest fall was seen in economic performance, from fourth last year to eighth. Singapore was the only other Asian economy in the top 10 as ranked by the institute, a leading global business school based in Switzerland. But the Lion City also fell, from fourth to fifth. Chinese University economist Dr Andy Kwan Cheuk-chiu said: “The crux of the problems of Hong Kong are high property prices and rents. The business environment is getting worse and this would discourage overseas investors too.” Kwan said the government should consider pursuing new industries to drive growth, instead of depending on the socalled “conventional economic pillars” such as finance, logistics and trade, tourism and professional services. Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Professor Chan Ka-keung attributed Hong Kong’s weakening edge partly to the weak growth in major advanced markets. “Our assessment is that the Hong Kong economy, as well as the entire Asian region, has been affected by external factors,” he said. Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce chairman Chow Chung-kong was satisfied that Hong Kong’s ranking was “still very high”, despite a slight fall. But he admitted air pollution was hurting competitiveness and warned of more business closures should standard working hours be put into legislation. The IMD world competitiveness report came as the latest blow to Hong Kong. A survey last year by Transparency International – an international corruption watchdog – showed Hong Kong’s global graft-free ranking fall two places to 14th. Earlier this month, United States social concern group Freedom House also ranked Hong Kong 72nd in press freedom, down from 71st last year and 70th in 2011.
Police arrested a sixth mainlander yesterday during their probe into the collapse of former executive councillor Barry Cheung Chun-yuen’s Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange (HKMEx). The 76-year-old man, surnamed Chen, was arrested on suspicion of using a false instrument, a police spokeswoman said. Last night he was being detained at the police headquarters in Wan Chai for questioning. No charge had been laid against him. It brings the number of arrests to six since the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), which was monitoring the HKMEx’s finances, alerted the police commercial crime bureau to suspected serious financial irregularities at the company this month. The other five suspects – four men and one woman – are also from the mainland. Three of them have been charged with possession of false bank instruments purported to
be worth several billion Hong Kong dollars. They are Dai Linyi, 65, Li Shanrong, 49, and Lian Chunyan, 50. The three were remanded in custody and the case was adjourned to July 19. The other two are a 60-yearold man, surnamed Zhu, and a 35-year-old woman, surnamed Zheng. They have been released on bail and are required to report back to police in July. Cheung, a key adviser to Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, resigned from all his public positions – including as an executive councillor and head of the Urban Renewal Authority – last Friday after police questioned him during their investigation into the exchange. At least three senior executives of the failed commodities trading platform were understood to have been interviewed by police. The HKMEx, founded two years ago, collapsed this month after Cheung handed back its trading licence to the SFC amid poor trading and question marks
over its financial position. Cheung is the founder and chairman of the company. The SFC and the police said in a joint statement on Wednesday night that they would continue to co-operate with each other to carry out their duties efficiently and fairly in the interests of the public and in accordance with the law. This came after the South China Morning Post revealed the regulator and police had different opinions about their work. Meanwhile, Cheung yesterday responded to media reports that said he failed to declare to the Executive Council his directorship of a Shanghai company linked to Titan Petrochemicals Group. He was a former chief executive officer of Titan. Cheung said it was not necessary to declare the directorship to Exco because his post was not remunerated and he did not own more than 1 per cent of the Shanghai company’s shares. The company had also been dormant for several years, he added.
Varying responses
VAST STUDY SEEKS TO TACKLE AGE CHALLENGE Unprecedented survey of 17,000 people seeks to assess impact of social reforms on the lives of people in the world’s largest ageing society ................................................ Jeanette Wang jeanette.wang@scmp.com Alandmark study on China’s ageing population aims to provide answers to the raging debate over whether the nation will grow rich before it grows old, and if the country’s nascent social safety net is equal to the tasks ahead. The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) polled more than 17,000 people from 10,287 households in 28 provinces between May 2011 and March 2012. The sheer scope and detail of the data collected, ranging from socio-economic aspects to physical and psychological health, is unprecedented in China.
We don’t know yet what the impact of all this is on people’s lives PROFESSOR JAMES P. SMITH
The first major report from this baseline survey will be released today by Peking University in Beijing, which conducted the research together with other foreign institutes. “China is going through a period where there is enormous [social] reform going on. Health insurance is being provided to people, government pensions are just starting to come into play,” said Professor James P. Smith, a member of CHARLS’ international research team and the Distinguished Chair in Labour Markets and Demographic Studies at RAND Corporation. “We don’t know yet what the real impact of all that is on people’s lives – and this is why doing CHARLS now is so important.” The study measures the existence and impact of these social safety nets at both the household and community levels. It interviewed one person per household aged above 45 and their spouses to track the participants into retirement. The researchers will conduct a follow-up study every two years, with the second scheduled to begin this summer.
All raw survey data has been made public on the CHARLS website, which Smith says breaks the tradition in China. “It’s so unusual for a high quality dataset on China to be publicly available. It’s going to have enormous impact,” said Albert Park, one of the study’s principal investigators and a professor of economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. CHARLS joins a family of 30 other well-established international ageing studies that are the most influential studies in the world on ageing issues. China has the world’s largest ageing population: about 185 million people aged 60 and over at the end of 2011, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The UN projects the share of this elderly population will increase from 12 per cent in 2010 to 34 per cent in 2050. The median age of the population will be 49 years in 2050, up from 24 in 1950. In 2000, there were more than 12 potential workers for every person aged 65 and above. By 2050, the ratio will be about two to one. The mainland’s dramatic demographic transition to an ageing society has taken about 40 years, compared withmore than 100 years in developed countries such as Britain, the US and the Nordic countries. “People are coming of age now at a time before pension systems are very mature and wellmanaged,” said Park. “It’s not clear whether the elderly in the future are going to have enough resources to manage their needs in retirement. They are going to have less support from children too, because there are just fewer children.” Getting people to agree to do the survey – which took on average 94 minutes to complete – was probably the greatest of many challenges faced in the study. “We worked really hard,” Park said. “The richer people get, the more valuable their time is, the less they’re willing to sit down and do a survey.” Will China’s elderly head into happy retirement? The question is yet unanswered, but CHARLS will certainly play a major role in trying to find out.
Median time respondents have taken to complete each module (minutes) <50 50–59 60–69 70+
SCANDAL
Age group Start Coverscreen The researcher had to first verify the survey household
Demographics Respondents were asked to provide the birth date and place, residence and migration, hukou information, 20 education and min marital status
Family Personal information of all family members except that of the respondents and their spouses
Health care Self-rated health status, mental 40 health and min cognitive capability
Health status A series of biomarkers was collected from each respondent, including height, weight and general physical performance
Household 60 min income and assets The financial respondent* was asked about household income, expenditure and assets
Individual income and assets The main respondents and their spouses were asked 80 about their min ownership of assets and personal income
Work and retirement Detailed information on retirement, pensions, job status, and social insurance programmes 100 min *financial respondent is the person with most knowledge about family income and expenditures Source: China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study
SCMP
DIPLOMACY
Japan to woo Africa as China looms Tokyo seeks to boost economic ties with African nations at forum and counter Beijing’s influence ................................................ Agence France-Presse in Tokyo
South African singer and Unicef goodwill ambassador Yvonne Chaka Chaka shakes hands with Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe. Photo: AFP
Japan will this weekend welcome dozens of leaders from Africa as it looks to boost economic ties and wrestle resources and market share away from an increasingly assertive China. The five-yearly Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) – co-organised by Japan, the United Nations, the World Bank and the African Union – will bring together leaders from more than 40 African countries. Japanese and African officials said the fifth TICAD forum, which was first held in 1993, would emphasise the need to boost trade and investment, in an attempt to transform the relationship from an aid-led one to a business partnership. Japan “recognises the need to strengthen ties with African countries” against the backdrop of growing interest from rivals such as China and South Korea, said Japanese trade ministry official Yasunori Nakayama. “The growth of the middleclass in Africa ... shows the importance of the continent as a business partner” in providing new markets for Japanese firms strug-
[Japan] recognises the need to strengthen ties with [Africa] YASUNORI NAKAYAMA, TRADE OFFICIAL
27.8b
$
The value, in US dollars, of Japan’s trade with Africa in 2011
gling with a contracting customer base at home, Nakayama said. Despite relatively long-standing connections, Japan’s importance to Africa has slipped behind that of China, whose more aggressive approach has given it five times the trading volume and eight times the direct investment. TICAD as a forum is not unique; the European Union, China, India, South Korea, and Turkey have similar ventures to court African leaders in the scramble for resources and market share. But Japan feels the China effect keenly. Japan’s ambassador to TICAD, Makoto Ito, said there was a vast difference in approach between how Tokyo went about investing in Africa and how Beijing did it. “China is not tied” to the OECD Development Assistance Committee rules aimed at reducing poverty and improving human rights, he said. “Japan’s development assistance has always had and will always have an emphasis on African ownership” of that development, he said. The three-day conference, which begins tomorrow would see Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announcing development aid programmes, Ito said. This would include a reaffirmation of an earlier pledge to
double rice production in subSaharan Africa from 2007 levels to 28 million tonnes by 2018, and supply hand-me-down coastguard ships to countries surrounding Somalia as part of a global effort to tackle piracy, he said. Other programmes would focus on education to train skilled workers, as well as dispatching former senior officials from Japanese trading houses to act as advisers to African governments in infrastructure projects, he said. Ito tacitly admits that there is a measure of self-interest in Japan’s interest in Africa. “Economic growth, and quality of economic growth is important for peace and stability in the region ... because it is often the case that the root cause of a person becoming a terrorist or a backer of terrorism is joblessness and poverty,” Ito said. Abe is expected to participate in security talks during the threeday summit, which will look at governance and stability in the Sahel region of northern Africa. He will also hold more than 40 bilateral summits with African leaders and other co-sponsors – each is expected to last just 15 minutes. On the sidelines, Japan’s trade ministry and its trade promotion affiliate body will host a business exhibition that will gather firms from Africa and Japan.