Li Ximing, as he appears in journalism and scholarly literature.

BEIJING (AP) — Li Ximing, Beijing’s Communist Party boss during the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests, has died at 82, Chinese state media reported Tuesday.

Li, a longtime bureaucrat in the power and water conservancy fields, died Saturday in Beijing of an unspecified illness, the official Xinhua News Agency said. No other details were given.

Li had been a leading member of the group of conservative veteran cadres who supported the military assault on the student-led protests in the capital’s central Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in the action, most of them ordinary citizens seeking to block the troops’ advance.

The defiance and resulting bloodshed marked the last serious challenge to the party’s authority. …

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his government must assume some responsibility for the latest milk powder scandal in which at least four infants have died and tens of thousands fallen ill.

Many Chinese milk companies were implicated and a few of them apologized this week for their involvement in the latest in a grim series of food- and product-safety scandals to blight the “made in China” brand.

China’s Health Ministry said 5,824 infants were still being treated and six were in serious condition.

“We feel that although problems occurred at the company, the government also has a responsibility,” Wen told the magazine Science…

A deputy in the National People’s Congress withdraws from a beauty contest amid public criticism:

BEIJING: A Chinese lawmaker has quit a beauty contest after critics accused her of debasing politics by participating in the pageant, state media said yesterday.
Ms Yuan Jing, 22, who ranked second out of 1,000 contestants in the Miss Chinese International Pageant held by a Hong Kong television station, insisted she had not withdrawn under pressure, Xinhua news agency said.

‘I’m too busy to continue the contest. I have a heavy workload,’ she was quoted as saying, citing her political duties.

At the upcoming Plenum, party leaders will face ‘contradictions within the people’:
“For the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao leadership, the party is pretty much over. After the coming-out extravaganza of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hoped to extend the festive mood through to late September for the launch of the country’s third manned space flight, the Shenzhou VII, and then the week-long October 1 National Day celebrations. Yet the Politburo under President Hu and Premier Wen will have to face the music during the third plenary session of the CCP Central Committee (CCPCC), which is due immediately after the National Day festivities. The Hu-Wen team’s worst headache could come from CCPCC members from the regions, who will be lobbying aggressively for Beijing to loosen up its tight monetary policy as well as to boost transfer payments and preferential policies for provinces and cities hard hit by economic doldrums, such as the closure of medium-sized factories and falling property prices. Moreover, the “warlords”—a reference to resourceful regional party secretaries, governors and mayors—have continued to resist the central authorities’ (zhongyang) decade-long objective of streamlining the grassroots bureaucracy…”

China announces an ambitious new space launch:
“BEIJING (AFP) — China’s rulers are looking to catapult overflowing pride and patriotism from the Beijing Olympics into another stratosphere when the nation’s first ‘taikonaut’ walks in space this month.
Amid high inflation and other economic concerns, analysts say China’s space programme offers the communist leadership an important platform to maintain a popularity boost given to them by staging a successful Olympics.
‘China’s space programme reflects the power and legitimacy of the Communist Party,’ Morris Jones, an Australian space analyst and writer who has closely studied China’s space efforts, told AFP.”

The life of Bao Tong, a dissident and friend of the ‘89 students, still on the outs with China:
“Bao Tong, a former member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, fell out of favor and wound up in prison. Now he lives under house arrest in Beijing, watched by the government because he continues to push for more democratic freedom.
Nowadays, it isn’t easy to visit the old man who, less than 20 years ago, was one of China’s most influential politicians. His former friends and colleagues now try to prevent him from meeting foreigners. They also try to keep him from talking to Chinese journalists and historians. Not even his friend, philosopher Liu Xiaobo, is permitted to see Bao Tong, who is considered a threat…”

Nicholas D. Kristof looks at the bad reception his Tibet commentary has gotten in the Chinese media:

“Just on the former day of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, ‘New York Times,’ an American newspaper, published an article titled ‘An Olive Branch from the Dalai Lama’ by Nicholas D. Kristof, a journalist who once worked in China. The article introduces the Dalai Lama’s new opinions about Tibet…
If the Dalai Lama has any new ideas indeed, he should communicate with the central government directly instead of conveying his comments by western media. The proposition from a western journalist not only makes people disbelieve its authenticity but also doubts the Dalai Lama’s sincerity. Does he wish to solve the issue or just to strengthen public relations among the western world for another time?”

China Media Project surveys the paltry coverage given to the death of Hua Guofeng, once the party leader:

“Former premier Hua Guofeng (华国锋), the party leader eventually outmaneured in the late 1970s by the more charismatic Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), passed away quietly last week. Hua was given scarcely a nod from international media, who were busy, understandably, covering the Games in Beijing.

The response from China’s media was understated too, with a few notable exceptions from more freewheeling commercial media.

In official party papers, Hua was inevitably given a small, namecard-sized treatment last Thursday in the front page space Chinese journalists refer to as the ‘paper’s rear-end’ (报屁股) — that is, usually, the lower right-hand corner. The text was uniformly the official Xinhua News Agency release:

Comrade Hua Guofeng, a distinguished Chinese Communist Party member, a tested and faithful champion of communism, who previously held important posts in the party and government, passed away on August 20, 2008, at 12:50pm in Beijing, due to an illness that did not respond to treatment. He was 87 years old.

Coverage at the official People’s Daily was typical, devoting a small box with a photo of Hua and the Xinhua release…”

“There are debates in China, and sometimes they’re very fierce debates… One of the first deputies ever to vote no in a People’s Congress was Wu Qing.

“I twice voted no. I remember a man behind me who said in a very loud voice, ‘that’s the woman who cast dissenting votes.’ I didn’t look around. I thought he was a brat. Many people shook my hand when I left, saying ‘Wu Qing, you really make me feel democracy in China.’ ‘So why didn’t you vote against?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ they said, ‘it’s a long story.’”