Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai on Tuesday agreed that Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City should be allowed to raise fines for traffic violations after they complained about worsening traffic problems.

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City topped the list of traffic jams lasting more than one hour each in 2009, with Hanoi recording more than 100 of the 252 nationwide and HCMC 78, according to figures presented at a conference on national traffic safety in Hanoi Tuesday.

Nguyen Thanh Tai, vice chairman of HCMC People’s Committee, told the conference the city “dare not” report successes on preventing traffic jams and accidents as they were far different from expectations.

“Infrastructure has shown up more of its weaknesses,” Tai was quoted by newswire Dan Tri as saying.

He said traffic jams in HCMC had severely affected production and slowed down economic development of the city.

The French designed Saigon for two million people but now it is home to nine million people and five million vehicles, the vice chairman said.

Around 100 new cars and 1,000 motorbikes were registered in the city every day, but the city has no traffic management center and only 600 traffic police officers, he said.

Tai said HCMC will continue asking for higher traffic violation fines in the city. “If the government thinks it’s impossible to raise the fines nationwide, it should at least allow large cities to do that.”

He was backed by his Hanoi counterpart Nguyen Van Khoi, who said one of the most decisive solutions for the traffic problem is to strengthen the penalties.

Deputy PM Hai said the Transport Ministry is considering higher fines for traffic violations and will let city/provincial governments decide the final fines.

He asked Le The Tiem, deputy minister of Public Security, to pay attention to the requests of Hanoi and HCMC for more traffic police.

Investment in traffic projects should be considered urgent as “one day sooner can save several people,” Hai said.

More than 30 people were killed every day in traffic accidents in 2009. Figures presented at the conference showed 12,500 traffic accidents killed 11,516 people and injured 7,914 last year.

The figures were less than that in 2008 but the number of serious accidents rose by 11 and the number deaths by 45. Around 40 percent of the accidents occurred when passenger buses encroached the lanes of other vehicles, the conference heard.

Railway traffic accidents increased both in number and casualties compared to 2008 with 468 accidents killing 226 people and injuring 324 others.

Traffic accident deaths in northern provinces of Lao Cai, Dien Bien, Yen Bai, Hoa Binh, Son La, Ha Giang and Thanh Hoa rose more than 25 percent in 2009.

Reported by Xuan Toan

Vietnam will start marketing a sale of $1 billion of 10-year bonds in US dollars from Jan. 18, according a person familiar with the matter.

The sale will test investor confidence in Vietnam as the dong weakens to a record low against the dollar, inflation accelerates and foreign-exchange reserves slide.

The government, as part of a two-decade-old reform process known as ‘doi moi,’ or renovation, needs funds to build roads and power plants as the population expands.

Demand for developing nations’ dollar debt is ebbing after governments sold $10 billion of bonds overseas this year, twice as much as the $4.5 billion in the year-earlier period, according to Bloomberg data. The spread between yields on emerging-market debt and US Treasuries has widened nine basis points to 2.79 percentage points in the past week, after declining 4.16 percentage points in 2009, according to the JPMorgan Emerging Market Bond Index Plus. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

Indonesia this week sold $2 billion of 10-year bonds at a higher yield than last week’s sale by the similar-rated Philippines, after scaling back the offering and cancelling plans to sell 30-year debt.

Declining dong

The funds raised from Vietnam’s second foreign security may help ease a shortage of dollars in the country, which prompted the dong to decline 5.4 percent last year against the dollar. Foreign-exchange reserves fell to about $16.5 billion as of August, from $23 billion at the end of 2008, because of moves by Vietnam’s central bank to try to stabilize the currency, the World Bank said in a semi-annual report.

Vietnam is rated Ba3 by Moody’s Investors Service, three levels below investment grade. The government in October 2005 raised $750 million by selling 10-year bonds, then lent the proceeds to Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Corp., known as Vinashin.

Vietnam said on Jan. 13 that it plans to almost double the amount of its local-currency bond sales this year to meet spending requirements as about half of its existing debt matures. The Ministry of Finance intends to sell VND100 trillion ($5.4 billion) of debt, up from VND56 trillion originally planned. About VND70 trillion of government debt will mature this year.

An increase in supply may drive up dong-denominated bond yields, which are rising on concern that inflation will quicken, according to a report from Bank for Investment & Development of Vietnam, the country’s second-biggest lender. The Vietnamese government sold less than a third of the VND100 trillion of bonds it planned in 2009.

Source: Bloomberg

2009-09-02

Warmer China-Taiwan ties soften the impact of the Dalai Lama’s Taiwan visit.

RFA

The Dalai Lama leads a prayer gathering in Taiwan, Sept. 1, 2009.

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan—A Taiwan visit by the Dalai Lama has drawn an unusually mild response from China, which has historically condemned foreign visits by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in strong terms.

Speaking to reporters here, the Dalai Lama called the purpose of his visit “humanitarian” and “spiritual,” with the aim of prayer for victims of a natural disaster.

“From my side, I have no political agenda,” the Dalai Lama said, adding that he had no plans to meet or speak with government figures.

Typhoon Morakot, which struck Taiwan in early August, caused mudslides and massive flooding across the southern part of the island, killing hundreds.

“My main reason [for coming to Taiwan] is to see those people who lost family members and homes,” the Dalai Lama said Sept. 2, a day after leading a prayer gathering of 10,000 in a sports stadium in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeo, of Taiwan's Nationalist Party, was widely criticized for what was seen as a slow response to the disaster, and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) later invited the Dalai Lama to come to Taiwan to lead prayers for the storm’s victims and survivors.

Though he risked Beijing’s wrath, experts say, Ma had to allow the visit to rebuild his reputation at home, where the Tibetan Nobel Peace laureate has a large following.

Ma meanwhile denied charges made in India by the Dalai Lama's nephew that his government had placed a "gag order" on the Dalai Lama, urging him at China's request to limit his appearances and public statements while visiting Taiwan.

Beijing sees the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile after a failed uprising in 1959, as a dangerous “splittist” committed to seeing Tibet break off from Beijing.

Domestic politics

The Dalai Lama leads a prayer gathering in Taiwan, Sept. 1, 2009. Photo: RFA

But Ma has enough political capital with Beijing—which has frequently rattled sabers at Taiwan in the past—that the Chinese response this time was mild.

Beijing voiced opposition to the Taiwan visit, but it responded only by canceling several low-level exchanges with the self-governing island, which it views as a breakaway province.

In office for just over a year, Ma has overseen agreements on transportation, trade, investment, and cultural exchanges that clearly hitch tiny Taiwan to China’s growing power.

Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., said that by allowing the Dalai Lama’s Taiwan visit, President Ma Ying-Jeo risked offending China.

“But because of the problems with the response to Typhoon Morakot, his domestic political standing has been hurt seriously, which undermines his ability to continue his agenda on [improving] cross-Strait relations,” Bush said.

“And so I think it’s necessary for him to rebuild his domestic standing. And one of the ways to do that is to do things that are popular in Taiwan but may be problematic for the mainland, and just hope that they can understand.”

In return, China “calibrated” its response, said Robbie Barnett, a scholar of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York.

”It’s the first time we’ve seen Beijing have to step back from its policy of really whole-scale attack on the Dalai Lama and on countries that host him.”

“If it attacks Taiwan, it pays a price,” he said.

Original reporting by Dolkar for RFA’s Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translations by Karma Dorjee. Written in English with additional reporting by Richard Finney. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

2009-09-04

A U.S.-based leader of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square protests could soon appear in court.

AFP

Students gather at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, April 22, 1989.

HONG KONG—Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan are preparing to try a former leader of China’s 1989 student movement, a U.S. resident, for “economic fraud” after he tried to visit his ailing father in 2008.

Zhou Yongjun was a student at the Chinese University for Political Science and Law at the time of the student protests and ensuing military crackdown on June 4, 1989.

He was among a group of students who knelt in front of the Great Hall of the People on April 22 to present a list of demands to China’s leaders after the death of moderate premier Hu Yaobang.

“I am not sure of the exact date, but I heard it would be the 19th or the 20th of this month,” an employee who answered the phone at the Shehong County People’s Court said.

“The time has already been decided.”

But Zhou’s lawyer, Chen Zerui, said the court had already set many temporary dates.

“They set Aug. 25, and before than Aug. 23. No sooner than they set it, they change it again. They have the power to do this within the guidelines, however,” he said.

Evidence held

Chen said the court had withheld some documents from him, and would not let him photocopy them, meaning that he had no way to fully grasp the case against Zhou.

“We have some of the evidence, but there is some evidence that is only listed by title, with no content,” said Chen, who called on the court to let him see all the evidence against Zhou.

“The court should make evidence available to the defense attorney now that we are in the trial stage,” Chen said.

“Plus, they are supposed to supply photocopying facilities. They have not done so. I have never come across this before.”

Chen, assistant to top Beijing-based lawyer Mo Shaoping, was appointed only in late August after Zhou’s family tried to hire Mo to defend him in May.

Police responded by telling the family Zhou wished to appoint a local lawyer rather than Mo, but none could be found who would take the case.

U.S. resident

Zhou’s sister Zhou Shufen, herself a court official, said the case had generated a huge amount of political pressure for her.

“I really can’t talk about this right now,” she said. “I don’t even dare to ask about my brother’s case myself.”

Zhou, who is a permanent resident of the United States with two children, was detained in the wake of the June 4 crackdown and released in 1991 following international political pressure for the release of student leaders.

He arrived in the United States in 1992, and was granted permanent residency.

Seeking to return to China to visit his sick father, Zhuo was arrested last year in Shenzhen after repeated requests for an official permit to return to China were turned down by the Chinese embassy in the United States.

“The Hong Kong Immigration Department confiscated his passport and then told him there were some people who wanted to talk to him in mainland China,” Chen said.

“They took him to Shenzhen.”

Chen dismissed the fraud charges against Zhou.

Signal case

“This is a trumped-up charge: there has been no fraud. I have seen the letter written while he was in the custody of the Hong Kong police. [Zhou] denies that he wrote this letter.”

Zhou’s cases highlights the situation of dozens of Chinese political activists who have been allowed to leave China and sought asylum in the United States, but are now unable to get permission to return to visit relatives.

U.S.-based dissidents attended a conference Tuesday in New York calling on Beijing to allow former June 4 activists to return home.

Participant Yang Jianli said any movement from the Chinese authorities on the issue of exiled dissidents would be a breakthrough.

“It’s not just about returning to China. There are also a lot of our friends inside China who aren’t allowed to leave,” Yang said.

New Year push

New Zealand-based Chinese dissident Wang Ningze has called on fellow exiled Chinese to rush immigration barriers in a campaign entitled “I want to go home for Lunar New Year.”

“If we had freedom of movement in both directions, there would be greater communication on both sides, and I think that China’s progress would be quicker and more widespread as a result.”

Legal affairs expert Xiang Xiaoji said that preventing Chinese nationals overseas from returning home violates China’s Constitution and international law.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao and in Cantonese by Tze Jue. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

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