27 Japan gives a visa to Uighur separatist despite China's protests

(1) Kashgar demolition on video
(2) Japan gives a visa to Uighur separatist despite China's protests
(3) Hackers post Chinese flag on Melbourne Film Festival's website, over Uighur film
(4) Campaign to stop Aussie firms using imported steel heats up
(5) Rudd rejects union push for Protection from imports
(6) China steel imports face 24% EU duties
(7) Protesting Chinese steel workers kill manager
(8) Migration scammers still in business

(1) Kashgar demolition on video

From: peter.myers@mailstar.net Date: 29.07.2009 06:25 PM

You can see the demolition of the Silk-Road city of Kashgar in this Foreign Correspondent report (ABC TV Australia):
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200907/r407668_1922800.asx

(2) Japan gives a visa to Uighur separatist despite China's protests

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-07/28/content_8479227.htm

China unhappy with Japan giving visa to separatist

By Wang Linyan (China Daily)

Updated: 2009-07-28 07:19

Chinese officials Monday expressed their strong disapproval over Japan permitting a visit by a Uygur separatist this week.

Rebiya Kadeer, leader of World Uyghur Congress who the government believes was behind the July 5 riot in Xinjiang and a series of protests at Chinese embassies worldwide, is scheduled to visit Japan today. She plans to give a news conference on Wednesday and deliver a speech to Japanese citizens, Japanese media reported.

Japan has issued a visa to Kadeer, according to officials from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, media reported.

"We are extremely dissatisfied that the Japanese government, in disregard of China's repeated protests, insisted on allowing Kadeer to visit Japan to carry out anti-China, separatist activities," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday.

On the same day, China's ambassador to Japan, Cui Tiankai, denounced Kadeer's visit.

"How would Japanese people feel if a violent crime occurs in Japan and its mastermind is invited by a third country?" Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted Cui as saying.

Calling Kadeer a "criminal", Cui warned that Kadeer's visit should not be allowed to damage Sino-Japanese relations.

"There are many important matters for the two governments," Kyodo quoted Cui as saying. "We must prevent bilateral relations from being disturbed by a criminal."

Unlike Japan, India has denied a visa to Kadeer, who wanted to meet Indians sympathetic to her movement, the Indian newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday.

She had applied to the Indian embassy in Germany for a visa sometime early this year, before the July riot.

"We have an understanding with the Chinese government that we will not allow Indian soil to be used for political activities against China," the newspaper quoted an Indian senior official as saying.

Kadeer, who lives in the US, aims to use her Japan visit to garner international support and bring pressure to the Chinese government, said Liu Jiangyong, a scholar on Asian studies at Tsinghua University.

"Her visit to Japan is an organized move with a political purpose. She seeks to make a breakthrough in Japan, which neighbors China," Jiang said.

Jin Canrong, deputy dean of International Studies School at China's Renmin University, said Japan allowing Kadeer to visit is an "extremely unfriendly" move towards China.

"Japanese officials worry that their citizens will think they are weak if they deny Kadeer's visit. But more importantly, they did so to meet the country's need to restrain China's rise," Jin said.

(3) Hackers post Chinese flag on Melbourne Film Festival's website, over Uighur film

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-07/28/content_8479251.htm

Kadeer film prompts hacker attack on website
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-28 07:25

The website of the Melbourne International Film Festival is back to normal after hackers posted a Chinese national flag on the site in protest against the planned appearance of Rebiya Kadeer.

The attack came after four films produced by the Chinese mainland pulled out of the event in protest over the documentary about Rebiya Kadeer, who the Chinese government believes was behind the deadly ethnic riot in Urumqi on July 5.

Earlier this month Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang criticized the screening and Kadeer's planned appearance, saying: "Everyone knows the kind of person Rebiya is. We are firmly opposed to any foreign country providing her with a stage for her anti-China separatist activities."

Festival spokeswoman Louise Heseltine said a hacker put a Chinese flag on the website on Saturday and left English messages demanding festival organizers apologize to all Chinese for including Kadeer in the program.

The website host discovered hundreds of other attempts to hack into it, Heseltine said.

The documentary, 10 Conditions of Love, premiered at the festival Sunday. There were no disturbances at the screening, Victoria state police spokeswoman Senior Constable Kendra Jackson said.

Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) officials on Sunday said they had contacted a Chinese citizen in China who claimed responsibility for the hacking.

The hacker sent an e-mail in which he denied any link to the government, saying he was motivated by anger at the screening of the Kadeer documentary, ABC reported.

Festival director Richard Moore said the website had been slowed by the hacking and online ticket sales had suffered.

"We have received over the last two weeks virtually a mini tsunami of e-mails that I can only describe as being vile," Moore told ABC. "It's part of a concerted campaign, and I think people who are behind it will try to ramp it up even more."

Moore said a Chinese diplomat two weeks before the festival openly told him to withdraw the Kadeer film.

The documentary's director, Jeff Daniels, blamed the Chinese government for the protests.

But he also admitted certain content in his film might not be accurate and the viewpoint of the film was not neutral, according to Xinhua-run International Herald Leader.

China Daily - AP

(4) Campaign to stop Aussie firms using imported steel heats up

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/campaign-to-stop-aussie-firms-using-imported-steel-heats-up/1574054.aspx

Illawarra Mercury

BY BRETT COX

22/07/2009 9:04:00 AM

Australia's steel union is planning to increase pressure on the Federal Government in the lead-up to the ALP national conference on July 30 amid the threat of overseas competition.

Steel procurement policy is expected to be high on the agenda at the conference, with the union claiming the Government has done little so far in response to the Australian Workers' Union Steel Plan, launched in April.

Unions have this week increased their protectionist push leading up to the conference after revelations over the redevelopment of the Carlton Football Club's Princes Park stadium in Melbourne, partly funded by the Victorian State Government. The project is using cheap Chinese steel rather than Australian product.

# SLIDESHOW: Port Kembla No 5 blast furnace reline winds up

Australian Workers' Union Port Kembla branch secretary Andy Gillespie said although the problem was less of a concern in the Illawarra, the continued use of imported steel in major projects around the country made workers "pretty cynical about the Federal Government's policies".

"This issue is going to be high on the agenda at the national conference," Mr Gillespie said.

Mr Gillespie yesterday phoned senior representatives of the union, based in Victoria, to see what could be done.

Australian Workers' Union national secretary Paul Howes expressed concern that taxpayers' money was being sent overseas when Australian steel jobs were under threat.

There is speculation in some circles that the Federal Government may use the conference to announce a support package in response to the Australian Workers' Union Steel Plan.

In recent weeks union heavyweights and government officials have been discussing ways to help the ailing sector.

On releasing the steel plan, the union warned that up to 500,000 Australian jobs could be lost if the Federal Government failed to support the industry.

Industry Minister Kim Carr recently told the Mercury the Government was considering the steel plan but any action would need to comply with World Trade Organisation rules.

A moderate rise in demand for BlueScope Steel product last week led to the company announcing it would restart its No 5 blast furnace.

But the unions and BlueScope warn there is a long way to go before output increases to pre-recession levels.

comments

I would ring up and complain to companies using cheap steel from China but my calls go to a call centre in India. I can't go out to complain because I refuse to buy non Aussie made clothing. It's cold and I'm naked.
Posted by Paddy, 22/07/2009 7:27:45 AM

Most of the Street (smart) poles in Sydney are made in a foundry China, and bought into Australia There should be clauses enforce in all building contracts that there be all Australian Content. Australian companies that have moved their operations and manufacturing overseas, Should be excluded from all public and government tenders Just because these firms are listed on the ASX does not make them Australian If it good for the America to protect their job it should be good for us
Posted by Icepick, 22/07/2009 10:49:19 AM

PH, we have never had trouble with Aussie made steel, but the rubbish coming out of Asia is another story. Stainless steel that rusts (316), high tensile that is just within tolerances ( according to their assay) Loctite that doesn't lock, precision tools that are a joke, I can go on & on. At the end of the day, we are required to work to Australian manufacturing standards but with inferior materials, so when something goes wrong, which it will, and someone is killed who will be to blame. So PH next time you drive over a bridge pray to God that it was made with good old Aussie steel.
Posted by Beachcomber, 22/07/2009 11:01:44 AM

(5) Rudd rejects union push for Protection from imports

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/get-real-rudd-tells-unions-20090727-dxo9.html

Get real, Rudd tells unions
Phillip Coorey
July 27, 2009

Kevin Rudd has shot down a push by unions to give preferential treatment to Australian companies and businesses, saying similar behaviour caused the Great Depression.

As union bosses ramped up their "buy Australian" demands yesterday before Labor's national policy conference this week, Mr Rudd stepped in.

"We need to avoid any form of protectionist measure which invites retaliatory protectionist measures from economies around the world, and that's what would happen," he said.

"The mistake of the Great Depression in the early 1930s was this: economies believed that the way to get themselves through was to shut their economies down and close their borders to imports from abroad. What happens? The entire global economy shrinks. We're not about to repeat those mistakes here."

The unions will press ahead regardless, promising colourful scenes at the conference.

Senior sources said the unions would fail. Power structures had changed in Labor, with a clearer line now between union and non-union forces.

"The Government's position will get up everywhere," one powerbroker said.

Key union demands include using Australian products such as steel in Government-funded infrastructure projects, and that the Government choose Australian goods and services, even if they cost up to 25 per cent more than international competitors.

The ACTU secretary, Jeff Lawrence, said Mr Rudd's weekend warning that unemployment would continue to rise after the recovery began showed that more assistance to workers was warranted.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Australian Workers Union have put aside factional differences and will vote as a bloc at the conference.

The AMWU national secretary, Dave Oliver, said "the best way to maximise jobs is to have a focus on maximising local content" and cost of a good or service should not be the only factor.

Jobs and the spin-offs they entail should also be considered. "It's got to be a holistic approach."

A push at the conference by the gay lobby for greater partnership rights is likely to meet some success, but not gay marriage.

Labor's policy supports nationally consistent, state civil union schemes. Only Tasmania, the ACT and Victoria have civil unions and a conference source said there would be policy progress this week in having other states adopt them.

(6) China steel imports face 24% EU duties
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-07-28 08:04

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-07/28/content_8479687.htm

BRUSSELS: The European Union decided on Monday to impose definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese steel wire rods for five years, further straining bilateral trade relations.

A meeting of foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc approved without discussion the measure of imposing a definitive anti-dumping duty up to 24 percent on China's imported steel wire rods. The definitive measure came after temporary duties were slapped in February following European producers claimed that Chinese producers had sold their products in low prices and hurt their businesses.

The imposing of definitive anti-dumping duties needs the approval of all 27 member states.

The European Commission, the EU's executive body, launched last year an anti-dumping probe against steel wire rods from China, Moldova and Turkey following a complaint lodged in March, 2008 by the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries (Eurofer), a Brussels-based industry body representing major EU steel producers such as ArcelorMittal and ThyssenKrupp.

The EU anti-dumping investigation normally takes no more than a year, and in any case must be completed within 15 months, after which the EU governments will have the final say on whether to impose definite five-year anti-dumping duties.

However, the commission may impose provisional duties within 60 days to nine months during the investigation period, which may last for six to nine months.

After that, the commission decides whether to impose definitive anti-dumping duties.

Since last year, the EU lodged a series of anti-dumping probes against steel and iron product imported from China out of baseless claims, straining bilateral trade relations.

China's Ministry of Commerce has voiced regret over the anti- dumping applications and hoped to solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations. It also hoped the commission would refrain from adopting anti-dumping measures.

European steel users are also opposed to any imposing of anti- dumping measures, fearing that they would face supply shortage if the EU takes anti-dumping measures against Chinese steel products.

(7) Protesting Chinese steel workers kill manager
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/chin-j28.shtml

By John Chan
28 July 2009

In another sign of the explosive social tensions in China, thousands of workers at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group in the northeastern Jilin province beat the newly-appointed manager to death last Friday in an angry protest against a government-backed takeover by a privately-owned steel company.

Last Wednesday, the Jilin provincial state asset committee decided to sell its majority stake in Tonghua to Jianlong Heavy Industry. On Friday morning, thousands of workers led by redundant and retired workers blocked local highways and a rail line supplying raw materials to the mill and halted all seven furnaces. Workers clashed with 1,000 police and paramilitary officers who were called to break up the protest. Three police cars were smashed and more than 100 people were injured.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported that 30,000 workers joined the riot, while the official Xinhua newsagency claimed there were only 1,000.

At nightfall, Chen Guojun, Jianlong’s new general manager, arrived and ordered workers to return to work. Chen reportedly declared that he would cut the 30,000 workforce to 5,000. According to a local police officer who spoke to China Daily, this infuriated the workers. “Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying most of them will be laid off in three days,” he said.

Workers refused the order to return to work, battered Chen with boots when an argument broke out and pushed him from a second-storey office. He died later, as 10,000 workers reportedly prevented police and ambulance officers from rescuing him.

Workers were also incensed by the fact that Chen was paid three million yuan ($US 440,000) a year—about 300 times their average wage—while workers retired from the plant received as little as 200 yuan ($29) a month.

The protest was only ended at 10 p.m., after the provincial government announced on television that it would permanently shelve the privatisation plan. Workers lit fire crackers to celebrate. Xinhua reported that the provincial authorities halted the merger to “prevent the situation from expanding” into a broader movement by workers in northeastern China, where large sections of state industry were shut or sold in the 1990s.

The incident exposed the ticking time bomb produced by the combined impact of the global economic crisis and the ongoing dismantling of state-owned enterprises for the enrichment of China’s new capitalist elite.

In 2005, Jianlong became the second largest shareholder of Tonghua after the provincial government sold 49 percent of its stake. Far from making Tonghua more efficient, the new management under Jianlong made major losses last year and cut central heating in winter to Tonghua workers and their dependents. Thousands of Tonghua workers staged a protest in March over the cutting of wages. In response, Jianlong withdrew its investment.

However, when Tonghua made a profit again in June ($US6.2 million)—largely due to the Beijing government’s stimulus packages—Jianlong returned, this time seeking a 65 percent stake. The Jilin government immediately agreed, as part of the national government’s policy of consolidating the steel industry in the hands of larger conglomerates.

The privatisation of Tonghua was typical of the plundering of state assets—through collusion between the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the capitalist elite that the regime has cultivated—at the expense of the working people.

Jianlong’s owner, Zhang Zhixiang, was China’s 10th richest man in 2008, with a fortune of $2.9 billion. Set up in 1999, Jianlong owns 17 businesses in steelmaking, resources, shipbuilding and machinery, and last year ranked 158th in China’s largest 500 companies. The state-owned Tonghua was the 244th largest enterprise, with an annual output of seven million tonnes of steel.

Because of the global slump, China’s steel industry has been increasingly embattled. China’s annualised steel production rate in June only reached 545 million tonnes—a record level—as a result of stimulus packages in infrastructure building and subsidised car and home appliances production.

China accounts for 60 percent of global steel production and buys two-third of the world’s sea-borne iron ore. However, the three big international mining corporations (Brazil’s Vale, the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto and Australia’s BHP Billiton) only agreed to a cut in 2009-10 prices of 33 percent—less than the 40 percent cut Beijing wanted. Burdened with extortionate price hikes in recent years by these mining giants, the pricing dispute is a matter of life and death for Chinese steel companies.

China’s top 27 steel producers lost a total of 9.6 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in the first half of 2009—compared with profits of 36.3 billion yuan in the same period last year. In order to increase its bargaining power over iron ore prices, Beijing issued a plan in January that by 2011, the top five producers should account for 45 percent of China’s steel output—up from 28.5 percent. Hence the official backing for the Jianlong takeover, despite the hostility of workers.

The intense pressures on the steel industry—the bedrock of China’s manufacturing-based economy—are also reflected in this month’s arrest of Stern Hu, the Chinese iron ore head of Rio, allegedly for stealing commercial information that put Chinese steel makers at a disadvantage in the iron ore price negotiations.

The protests by Tonghua workers are only the tip of the iceberg of the unrest generated by the intensifying exploitation of the working class. The London-based Financial Times warned on Monday: “The violent riot in northeast China late last week involved up to 30,000 workers, a reminder of the ongoing sensitivity about lay-offs from state companies in industries targeted for consolidation. The government laid off about 50 million workers in state enterprises in the 1990s, equal to the combined workforces of Italy and France at the time, but many companies still retain bloated staffing rosters.”

The restructured state-owned firms have kept redundant workers on their payrolls, but only on poverty-level allowances, making them the new urban poor in China. When private owners completely take over state enterprises, however, they cut off even the last lingering support to redundant workers, which was a major factor behind the angry eruption at Tonghua last week.

The violent protest was driven by the same underlying processes that sparked the riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi on July 5 after two Uighur workers were killed in a Guangdong toy factory. Uighurs and other oppressed minorities are being used as cheap labour under conditions where plunging export orders have eliminated some 20 million jobs, even as 20 million job seekers and 7 million college graduates try to find work this year. Amid rising job losses, a disgruntled Han worker spread a rumour that Uighur workers had raped two girls at the factory, which led to the ugly brawl.

While the ensuing military-police repression in Xinjiang drew more international attention, protests are constantly erupting in China over social inequality, official corruption, rising unemployment and the lack of basic social services like healthcare. Liu Kaiming, executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen, told Bloomberg News: “Many ordinary people in China are now filled with pent-up frustrations as they see their livelihoods diminish with the economic crisis. It’s spreading from north to south, and many tiny disputes can easily be inflamed into major clashes.”

According the National Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Human Resources, the number of labour disputes rose 98 percent to 237,000 cases last year from 2007. This appears to be a gross under-estimate. The March issue of the Hong Kong-based Trend magazine reported that there were 546,470 labour disputes across China from last September to March—a seven-fold increase from the end of 2007. In the export-dependent coastal provinces like Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangsu, the increases were 10-fold.

The magazine also noted that in the first two months of 2009, more than 500 private businessmen and senior executives were murdered, as a result of not paying, or cutting, wages or because of the intensifying exploitation of workers. The latest protest by Tonghua workers indicates that class relations in China are reaching boiling point.

(8) Migration scammers still in business

Date: July 28 2009

Erik Jensen

http://www.smh.com.au/national/migration-scammers-still-in-business-20090727-dyr8.html

THE company behind what may be one of the largest immigration rackets ever reported in Australia is still in business four months after it was investigated because the Department of Immigration is not certain it has sufficient evidence to prosecute. The Workplace Ombudsman is unable to warn potential migrants of the allegations against the labour hire firm.

The department alleges that an unnamed company – which the Herald can reveal is Regional Labour Supply – was involved in the production of false work documents and had supplied illegal labour along the east coast.

It is also alleged by a former manager of the company and a former union official that workers sourced through the company were underpaid, stripped of their passports, kept in houses with as many as 16 people and sent to work with false documents.

"You’re looking at going back 100 years in the way they were getting treated," the former Queensland secretary of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, Russell Carr, said of the workers. "It was like something you would read about out of the Third World."

On March 11 the department raided meatworks across three states. As many as 100 people were thought to be working on false or invalid visas – 82 were located, 45 were placed in immigration detention and eight left the country. Offices were raided and fake passports seized.

The department is investigating one man in relation to the racket. Officials would not name him, but the Herald understands he is Scott Shi, the former director of the Auburn-based Regional Labour Supply. Despite evidence from the raids, no action has been taken against Mr Shi or Regional Labour Supply.

"We are confident we’ve significantly disrupted the operations of the identified labour-hire intermediaries who are the subject of a major ongoing investigation," a spokesman for the Department of Immigration said. "It’s not our job to shut down these operations … it is still under investigation but we have been in liaison with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to gauge if, in their opinion, we have enough evidence to press charges."

A former manager at the company’s Biloela office, who refused to give his name, said workers – many of them on tourist or student visas – had their passports taken when they joined the company. He said the original passports were kept in Sydney and the workers were supplied with photocopies.

In the time he worked for Mr Shi he did not see a single visa or work permit. "That’s not my concern. My job was just getting them work," he said. "After a few months they ask for actual passports. I was told the passports were kept in Sydney."

The former manager said he rented three house for the 30 people he managed. As many as 16 were kept in one house, he said. The Herald understands the Department of Immigration began its investigation after a complaint from the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union.

Mr Carr, who was the Queensland branch secretary in the months before the raids, said he had received letters from migrant workers made to pay $200 for the Q-fever vaccinations required to work in an abattoir.

In another instance, all workers had their pay docked by $20 when a tyre burst on the bus used to ferry them between work and their crowded homes.

The migrants were paid a fraction of the wages given to Regional Labour Supply by the meatworks, Mr Carr said, and were not told how much tax they contributed.

"He wasn’t giving them pay slips. He was informing them by mobile when they got paid," Mr Carr said. "They didn’t pay correct tax or super. They didn’t know what tax they were paying."

Mr Shi declined the Herald’s invitations to interview him.