SINOWEEKLYPLUS

Decoding Foxconn’s Shanghai IPO; Chinese media handles a revenge killing case in unusual fashion

SinoInsight 1
On Feb. 22, a day after the Lunar New Year holiday, the Politburo Standing Committee held a meeting to listen to a presentation on the planning of Hebei’s Xiong’an New Area.

OUR TAKE
Xiong’an New Area, a personal initiative of Xi Jinping, is a new state-level district where high-tech research and development industries and facilities are located. The Xi administration created the district in part to ease Beijing’s population overload and address China’s manufacturing decline. For a briefing on Xiong’an New Area to be the first item on the Politburo Standing Committee’s agenda right after the New Year holidays suggests that the Xi administration is placing a great emphasis on its development.

SinoInsight 2
Gao Jingfeng, the deputy director of the leading group on judicial reform, said during a Supreme People’s Procuratorate interview series that the procuratorial organs corrected many major cases of justice miscarriages since 2013, according to state media reporting on Feb. 22. Guo added that criminal procedure reforms in 2017 were focused on four areas, one of which was preventing and correcting miscarriages of justice.

OUR TAKE
Gao’s statement follows unusual publicity on the Zhang Koukou murder incident (see the next entry for details). The official rhetoric indicates that the Xi administration is serious about cracking down on judicial malfeasance.

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