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China's Xi gets 62 percent pay rise: report
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Jan 20, 2015


China anti-terror law may 'inflict grave harm': rights group
Beijing (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 - A new anti-terrorism law under review in China could grant the government license to commit a raft of human rights abuses, a rights group said Tuesday, calling for it to be overhauled.

Human Rights Watch said the law, which was unveiled in November and is expected to be passed early this year, "would legitimate ongoing human rights violations and facilitate future abuses".

"While terrorism poses grave threats to society, overbroad and abusive counterterrorism measures can also inflict grave harm and exacerbate conflict," the US-based group's China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement.

China has been hit by an increasing number of terror attacks, which Beijing has blamed on violent separatists from the far-western Xinjiang region.

At least 200 people are thought to have died over the past year in a series of clashes and increasingly sophisticated strikes, both in the region and outside it. Information in the area is tightly controlled and difficult to independently verify.

Beijing has responded by launching a harsh crackdown in the region, with hundreds of people jailed or detained on terror-related offences following a deadly May attack on a market that killed 39 people, and four assailants.

Critics have argued that Beijing employs a too-broad definition of "terrorism" that it often uses to justify its harsh treatment of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority group that calls Xinjiang home.

Last week, state media announced that 10 Turkish citizens and nine Uighurs were arrested in November over a plot to smuggle members of the ethnic minority out of the country.

Beijing has maintained that the plot was terrorism-related, while the Turkish government so far has refrained from making any terror claim.

Human Rights Watch gave the example of Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who in September was sentenced to life in prison for "separatism" in a case rights groups say is part of a plan to silence government critics in the region.

The new anti-terrorism law, the group said, would grant the ruling Communist Party even greater powers to "define terrorism and terrorist activities so broadly as to easily include peaceful dissent or criticism" of the government's ethnic and religious policies.

It would allow any effort to defy China's restrictions on religion to be labelled "terrorist" behaviour and so "set up a total digital surveillance architecture subject to no legal or legislative control," it said.

"Harsh measures that conflate political or religious dissent with crime discourage ordinary people from trusting or cooperating with law enforcement agencies," Richardson said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and the other six members of the Communist Party's elite Politburo Standing Committee have been given 62 percent pay rises, state-run media said Tuesday, as civil servants get their first increases since 2006.

Xi's basic monthly pay will go up to 11,385 yuan ($1,832) from 7,020 yuan, the China Daily said, citing announcements by the ministry of human resources and social security.

Despite leading the world's second-largest economy, Xi's pay falls far short of US President Barack Obama, who earns $400,000 a year.

At the bottom of China's scale, the lowest-ranked civil servants have seen their pay more than double to 1,320 yuan.

Increasing numbers of officials are quitting over low compensation, the paper said, but it pointed out that basic salaries make up just one component of civil servants' monthly compensation.

Additional allowances are also provided based on their positions and duties, it said, though it did not provide breakdowns or amounts.

Civil service work in China has long offered both prestige and official perks, as well as opportunities to accrue extra wealth through the receipt of bribes and other forms of corruption.

Since becoming party chief in November 2012 and state president in March 2013, Xi has spearheaded a crackdown on corruption within the party and government that has seen low-ranking "flies" and once high-flying "tigers" brought down.

Relatives of top leaders including Xi and former premier Wen Jiabao have used offshore tax havens to hide their wealth, according to a mammoth investigation released in January last year by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In 2012 The New York Times and Bloomberg News published investigations into vast wealth said to have been amassed by family members of Wen and Xi. Neither official was accused of wrongdoing.

- 'Scientific wage system' -

Other countries' leaders enjoy significantly higher basic pay. India's government said in 2013 that its then-premier Manmohan Singh was earning around 160,000 rupees ($2,600) a month in salary and allowances -- as well as a personal staff, rent-free housing, a plane and an official vehicle.

And Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, with a population a fraction the size of China's, is among the world's best-paid heads of government with an annual salary of Sg$2.2 million ($1.64 million).

That is despite taking a 36 percent pay cut in 2012 in response to public anger over ministers' multi-million-dollar salaries. The government defends them as necessary to attract talent from the private sector and deter corruption.

Last year, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported that Xi and China's top leaders decided to cut salaries and restrict expense accounts and other perks of executives at state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Xinhua provided no amounts at the time, but the China Times newspaper said in December that executives at most central government-controlled SOEs would have their salaries cut by around 30 percent, with their pay not to exceed eight times that of average workers.

The civil service pay increases are retroactive to October 1, the China Daily said, adding that future salary adjustments will be more frequent, with the ministry saying they will take place every year or two.

"The adjustment is not only about the salary increase, but aims to establish a scientific wage system, which can measure employees' duties and workload no matter whether they work for the government or a corporation," the paper cited Yang Yansui, director-general of Tsinghua University's Employment and Social Security Research Centre, as saying.


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