Congressional China Caucus

Hong Kong Protests: Occupy Central Founders to Surrender to Police. “Three founders of the pro-democracy protest group Occupy Central with Love and Peace called on Tuesday for students to end their occupation of city streets, even as student leaders vowed to continue protests. The middle-aged leaders of the Occupy movement first raised the idea of using civil disobedience in the former British colony to press for democratic reforms last year, but student protest groups have been at the forefront of the two-month-long street demonstrations—and student leaders on Tuesday quickly rejected the idea of abandoning their encampments. In an emotional plea on Tuesday, the Occupy leaders said they feared clashes between protesters and police were escalating at a dangerous pace and urged the students to stand down. The Occupy leaders also said they planned to surrender to police on Wednesday over their role in the mass demonstrations. “In past few days, we can see the police are increasingly out of control. We don’t know how much more violence they would impose on occupiers. We hope occupiers retreat from the protest sites,” Occupy leader and law professor Benny Tai told a press briefing, jointly attended by the other co-founders of the Occupy group, Chan Kin-man, a sociology professor, and the Rev. Chu Yiu-Ming. By surrendering to the police, “we will bear the legal consequences and hope the students will retreat,” Mr. Tai said in a prepared statement. Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former head of Hong Kong’s Catholic Church and a core supporter of the Occupy group, said he would surrender to the police together with the trio Wednesday. No pro-democracy lawmakers announced plans to turn themselves in.  Mr. Chu, 70, the eldest of the Occupy leadership trio, tearfully recounted the sorrow he felt over seeing images of police beating young protesters with batons and forcibly dragging away the demonstrators to stop their actions.  “This all made me, this old man, deeply sad. Many times, I knelt down on my knees to pray for God to protect us. And I hope all participants of this movement could safely go home,” he said.” http://online.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-protests-occupy-central-founders-to-surrender-to-police-1417508139

Taiwan’s President Resigning As Party Chief After Election Losses. “President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan will step down Wednesday as chairman of the governing party, the Kuomintang, following its landslide defeat in local elections, the party announced Tuesday. Mr. Ma, who is more than halfway through his final four-year term, will formally announce the decision Wednesday at a meeting of the party’s standing committee, the Kuomintang said. “Facing such an unprecedented defeat, as party chairman I am willing to carry the greatest blame,” Mr. Ma said in a statement issued by the party. “I am not reluctant to give up this post. What I truly care about is what’s best for the Kuomintang.” The Kuomintang suffered heavy losses in voting for more than 11,000 local government posts on Saturday, leaving it in control of just six of Taiwan’s 22 counties and municipalities; it had previously controlled 15 of them. The losses, which triggered the resignation of Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah, included the capital, Taipei, and Taichung, both key party strongholds. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party, or D.P.P., took control of 13 municipalities and counties, including four of Taiwan’s largest cities. Ko Wen-je, a surgeon, won the Taipei mayor’s race as an independent but had the support of the D.P.P. The victories by the party and its allies suggest it could have a strong chance of winning the presidency in 2016.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/world/asia/taiwans-president-resigning-as-party-chief-after-election-losses.html?_r=0

Chinese Firm Gets Big Cache of U.S. Government Documents in Unprecedented Exchange Over Wind-Farm Dispute. “The Justice Department has delivered hundreds of previously concealed documents to a Chinese firm that President Obama had blocked from buying Oregon wind farms because they are near a sensitive military base. The delivery to Chinese-owned Ralls Corp. of 3,487 pages of government material tied to the dispute was completed Friday under a July federal appellate ruling that Obama’s unexplained 2012 rejection of the sale had denied the Chinese-owned company constitutional due process. Analysts said it was the first time the government had given a foreign purchaser documents underlying the deliberations of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a secretive inter-agency committee, known by its acronym CFIUS, that vets such sales for national security risks. Christopher Brewster, a Washington lawyer with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who represents Chinese and other firms seeking to buy American companies, said the document dump was significant even though the materials were unclassified. “Much of this (material) will be inconsequential, but not all of it,” Brewster told McClatchy. “So this is still pretty big. CFIUS has not previously been required to fork over the documents it relies upon in its decisions.” Brewster and other experts said the move would likely spawn more foreign companies’ objections to CFIUS, which President Gerald Ford established in 1975, or at least more demands for the rationales behind its decisions. “What we can expect is more challenges when CFIUS seeks to impose mitigation agreements,” Brewster said. “CFIUS is headed into a brave, new world.” CFIUS, whose work is classified, is chaired by the Treasury secretary and made up of the heads of the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State and Energy, along with the Attorney General. Short of rejecting a foreign purchase outright, CFIUS often requires the buyer and/or the target company to take certain actions to protect U.S. national security -- called mitigation steps -- in order for the sale to be completed.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/26/248313_chinese-firm-gets-big-cache-of.html?rh=1

Once A Cop, Now An Outcast: A Chinese Tale of Abuse and A Craving For Justice. “For 12 years, the dark blue police uniform has stayed in Tian Lan’s closet. She held onto it after she was arrested for accusing two fellow officers of corruption, through beatings in interrogation and during a prison sentence that followed. She kept the uniform even as she lost her family and savings and began sleeping under a bridge. The uniform reminds her, she said, of who she used to be — an enforcer of Chinese law — and what she has become — one of its many victims. “I used to believe in the system, in its fairness,” said Tian, 56, who lives in a squalid village alongside hordes of others trying to appeal their cases in Beijing. “I was naive.” China’s legal system is so broken that a separate government agency — called the petition system — has been set up just to handle the millions like Tian who flock to its cities each year, alleging abuse and begging for intervention. An appeal of last resort, the petition system draws China’s most desperate and bitter. The clearest-eyed among them include those who share Tian’s fall from official position — former judges, court officials and police officers, now reduced to hopeless rounds of petitioning. They know how China’s secretive legal system works but have experienced the painful ways in which it doesn’t. They describe a system in which arrests are arbitrary, prosecutions are motivated by special interests and court rulings are dictated by political leaders. Distrust in the law has grown so widespread that China’s Communist Party leaders this fall announced sweeping judicial reforms after decades of dithering.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/once-a-cop-now-an-outcast-a-chinese-tale-of-abuse-and-a-craving-for-justice/2014/12/01/243ee950-5dde-11e4-827b-2d813561bdfd_story.html

The Caucus Brief is a daily publication for Members of Congress and Hill Staffers on China news and information compiled by the office of Congressman Randy Forbes, Founder of the Congressional China Caucus.  Email alex.gray@mail.house.gov with tips, comments, or to subscribe/unsubscribe.