Rich Chinese sue Canada over immigration rules

More than 1,300 Chinese mainland millionaires have decided to take Canada’s immigration authorities to court after Ottawa’s decision to terminate its popular immigrant investor program earlier this year, which had previously attracted worldwide entrepreneurs and investors to Canada.

According to South China Morning Post, each applicant is seeking C$5million ($4.57 million) in compensation (2.5 times of the application deposit) if the government refuses to assess their cases. According to Tim Leahy, the Toronto lawyer representing the case, 1,335 of his 1,446 clients had submitted their immigration applications in Hong Kong. Virtually all of the Hong Kong applicants are from Chinese mainland.

Canada’s 25-year-old federal Immigrant Investor Program (IIP) has offered a way for many rich foreigners to buy their tickets to Canada’s educational benefits and health plan, based on the condition that they have a net worth of C$1.6-million or more and were able to lend Ottawa C$800,000 interest-free for five years.

Although the government planned to call off the program in February, the program was actually slowed down by the immigration authorities about two years ago for further movement.

According to South China Morning Post, lawyer Leahy claimed that “the immigration authorities unfairly slowed the processing of applications well ahead of its cancellation”.

Immigration data shows that more than 60,000 would-be migrants were suspended in the program’s backlog, and many of them had paid their C$2million application deposit over a year ago. Among the applicants, over 80 percent had lodged their applications via Hong Kong.

Leahy’s clients also include a small share of applicants from Ankara, London, New Delhi, Paris, Port-of-Spain, Pretoria and Singapore, besides those applying via Hong Kong.

Prior to the case, a small group of 10 applicants in Beijing had filed a group lawsuit against Canada’s immigration authorities in March, and one of them reportedly had already bought a million-dollar house in Vancouver.

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China plan to cap CO2 emissions seen turning point in climate talks

China said on Tuesday it will set an absolute cap on its CO2 emissions from 2016 just a day after the United States announced new targets for its power sector, signalling a potential breakthrough in tough U.N. climate talks.

Progress in global climate negotiations has often been held back by a deep split between rich and poor nations, led by the United States and China, respectively, over who should step up their game to reduce emissions. But the fact that the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases made unprecedented announcements on climate within 24 hours of each other sparked optimism among observers hoping to see the decades-old deadlock broken. The steps come ahead of a global meet on climate change starting on Wednesday in Germany.

China, the world’s biggest emitter, will set a total cap on its CO2 emissions when its next five-year plan comes into force in 2016, He Jiankun, chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing.

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China’s First Capitalist Firm Gets Approval for $37 Billion Deal

When China’s late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping held a meeting with the country’s near-extinct “business” representatives in January 1979, he specifically asked Rong Yiren, a legendary former textile tycoon, to “do some actual work and play a role” in Beijing’s nascent economic reform efforts.

That was China’s way of inviting the nation’s residual industrialists to help the Communists rebuild a shattered economy and restore social order after the ultra-leftist, devastating Cultural Revolution that ended in 1976.

Within just a month, Mr. Rong, also known as the “Red Capitalist” who chose to stay behind in China after the Communist takeover in 1949, responded with a proposal to set up China International Trust & Investment Corp. Now known as Citic Group, the company was set up as a vehicle to attract foreign capital and help Beijing invest overseas. Eight months later, the company was in place, with Mr. Rong its chairman and chief executive.

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As standoff over rig deepens, Vietnam’s China dependent factories worry; suppliers stay away

Like thousands of other factory owners in Vietnam, Nguyen Van Phuc relies on China for the expertise and raw materials needed to keep his production line humming. But spiking tensions between Hanoi and Beijing over maritime territorial claims are threatening that relationship and his bottom line.

Chinese technicians scheduled to upgrade his equipment are too spooked to visit following anti-China violence. His Chinese suppliers no longer accept cash on delivery, fearing an even sharper deterioration in relations would leave them out of pocket, so Phuc must now pay more from a third-party supplier.

“One hundred percent of Vietnamese companies just want to have peace to do their business,” he said at his electric cable company in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.

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China defends Tiananmen crackdown on eve of 25th anniversary

China defended the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Tuesday, the eve of the 25th anniversary, saying it had chosen the correct path for the sake of the people.

For the ruling Communist Party, the 1989 demonstrations that clogged Tiananmen Square in Beijing and spread to other cities remain taboo after the government termed the protests “counter-revolutionary”.

The anniversary of the date on which troops shot their way into central Beijing in 1989 has never been publicly marked in mainland China, though every year there are commemorations in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, as well as in self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own

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Malaysia Seeks Code of Conduct for South China Sea

Malaysia urged a rapid conclusion to creating a long-stalled code of conduct in the South China Sea, as tensions grow over conflicting territorial ambitions in Asian waters between Beijing and neighboring countries.

The call Monday by Prime Minister Najib Razak follows a tense weekend at a regional security summit in Singapore, where officials from smaller Asian nations and the U.S. traded barbs with China, with one Chinese general saying that the U.S. risked turning Beijing into an enemy.

U.S. Pacific Commander Adm. Samuel Locklear said that China had an important decision to make about its place in the security landscape of Asia.

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Chinese general reiterates principle for solving island disputes

Island or maritime demarcation disputes should be solved through coordination and negotiations between directly involved parties on the basis of respecting historical facts and international law, a Chinese general said on Sunday.

China’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the South China Sea were established through the long process of historical development, said Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), at the 13th Shangri-La Dialogue.

It can be traced back to over 2,000 years ago, or the Han Dynasty, when China started discovering and gradually maturing its administration over the South China Sea, especially the Nansha Islands and related sea area, Wang said.

The Xisha Islands and the Nansha Islands, both in the South China Sea, were occupied by Japan during World War II, and returned to China in 1946 under the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation.

After the return of these islands to China, the Chinese government in 1948 mapped out the nine-dash line, which is clearly marked in historical documents and world maps drawn by different countries, the general said.

China’s neighboring countries never raised doubts about China’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Nasha Islands, the Xisha Islands and the related sea area until the 1970s when rich oil resources were discovered in the South China Sea, he said.

China, as a signatory country to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), respects the convention which took effect in 1994. However, Wang said, China’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the South China Sea islands and islets as well as related sea waters came into being over the past 2,000 years.

The UNCLOS, which took effect in 1994, cannot re-demarcate sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction that came into being over such a prolonged period of time in history, while recognizing countries’ historical rights over seas and islands and islets, Wang said.

The UNCLOS is inapplicable to the adjustment of ownership of sea islands and islets, he said. The law governing the sea is an enormous and comprehensive law system, not merely a single UNCLOS.

Meanwhile, the adjustment is also not merely subject to a single international law of sea — there is an enormous international law system which includes the international law of sea, he said. Thus, only using the UNCLOS to argue is not workable, he said.

China has signed the UNCLOS and respects it, but the United States has not signed the convention because it feels many provisions of the convention are against it, he said.

Wang noted China’s stance in this regard is coherent and clear, that is, China advocates solving the disputes over islands and maritime demarcation through direct consultations and talks with the directly-involved parties.

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