The New Dominion

This is The New Dominion’s Xinjiang News Roundup, Politics, for March 21-27, 2008. This week, discover how you, a mere 老百姓, can participate in Urumqi’s lawmaking process, breath a sigh of relief at drastically shorter meeting times, bring back the good memories with our old friend Ismail Tiliwaldi, ponder the grave responsibilities of being a propagandist, and learn how to celebrate Tomb-Sweeping Festival the right way: the civilized way.

The city government of Urumqi has officially inaugurated a program through which city residents can submit suggestions to local officials drawing up legislation plans for the period of 2008 to 2012. Previously, when city officials were planning legislation, laws would be drawn up according to perceived societal “hot spots” noticed by people’s representatives and according to suggestions from department-level governmental structures. In the interest of including ordinary citizens into the law-making process, Urumqi legislators are now encouraging people to step forward with suggestions regarding the city government, economic and societal development, dispute-settlement laws, the need to add to or update the existing legal structure, etc. All suggestions will undergo a preliminary evaluation, and those deemed valuable will move on to a special committee, a panel of legal experts, and a special subsection of the municipal people’s congress. After the approval of these three bodies suggestions will be officially incorporated into the five-year legal plan.

“You look at your watch yet again… the meeting started almost three hours ago and we’ve already seen several officials read through manuscripts of over 20 pages… and there’s still one more speaker left to go!” Never again, proclaims this article on new time saving regulations for governmental institutions, will you have to slog your way through such situations. The recently published “Suggestions on further improving office work methods” includes a formidable slew of suggestions for minimizing waste of time in governmental offices, including “no more than two leaders should give speeches per meeting, “large meetings should not include over two hours of continuous speech,” “governmental plenary meetings should not involve over 5 people,” “departmental announcements should not exceed 10 minutes, ” “reports submitted to standing committees or special committees should not exceed 15 minutes,” and more. Now is a good time to be a cog in the bureaucracy, I suppose, and one can imagine that such new regulations will give our pals Wang Lequan and Nur Bekri more time to do…well…whatever they do.

On the morning of the 25th, Ismail Tiliwaldi, the previous Chairman of XUAR, payed a visit to the members of the regional People’s Congress standing committee. Tiliwaldi exhorted members of the standing committee to earnestly implement the new guidelines and overall spirit of the “two meetings” which recently concluded in Beijing, a reference to the meetings of the National People’s Congress and the CPPCC. Tiliwaldi himself was elected at those very meetings to be the vice chairman of the 11th National People’s Congress’ standing committee, a few months after voluntarily stepping down as the chairman of Xinjiang. Having as chairman always enjoyed the support of all peoples and nationalities of Xinjiang, Tiliwaldi assured the members that he would continue to work for his homeland in Beijing and urged the members to carry out similar efforts here in Xinjiang.

The Regional Propaganda Philosophy Meeting started on the 26th and lasted for a day and a half. The manifesto for the meeting pointed out that “As we stand on the brink of a new kind of history, looking at what it means to do propaganda work, we see that our duty is significant and that are responsibility still grows larger. We must raise our banner high, thoroughly understand our surroundings, emphasize that which needs to be emphasized, and to work hard to completely implement and accomplish the obligations that comes with this year’s regional propaganda philosophy work and to continuously uncover new ways to do what is required of us.” As things usual go with these types of gatherings, the emphasis was to carry out the spirit of the most recently convened NPC and CPPCC.

The Regional Civil Affairs Bureau along with the Xinjiang Funerary Association advises all citizens to be “civilized” when carrying out Tomb-Sweeping Festival rituals this upcoming Friday, particularly by “lessening” the volume of people going out for sacrifices, avoiding traffic congestions, and controlling the propagation of unmerited superstitions. Other advice published by the Bureau includes avoiding the use of firecrackers, avoiding the burning of sacrifices (and instead buying flowers or planting trees as memorials), and scheduling transportation away from peak travel times.