Top Story – Banks in Communist China luring in savers with 90-day notes in a desperate bid to stay afloat: The New York Times has the story on the high-interest, short life-span deposit notes, but treats them as fuel for off-the-books loaning. Now, this isn’t inaccurate as much as incomplete, for the regime-backed banks aren’t just looking to find money to lend, but need money even to operate, as this Epoch Times story details.

Son of Hu Yaobang blasts Xi Jinping’s militaristic rhetoric: The regime boss had high praise for the Party and a Party-dominated military. That led Hu Dehua, son of the late reformer Hu Yaobang, to blast Xi in a speech given in April, but took nearly three months to get out of the clutches of party sensors. The Epoch Times reports:

Hu was blunt with his criticisms of Xi’s hardline rhetoric, beginning with Xi’s speech given to Party cadres during his southern tour in January. Xi had explained that the Party must have ‘unwavering leadership of the army,’ using the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as an example of what happens when the regime fails to take control of the army and ‘the tools of dictatorship.’ When the Soviet Union was disintegrating, ‘no real men came out to fight,’ Xi had said.

Hu questioned Xi’s definition of a ‘real man.’ ‘Are the Soviet soldiers who held on to modern weapons, driving third-generation battlefield tanks toward defenseless people, opening fire at them, and charging around violently, are they “real men”?’

He continued to say that there are only two ways a ruling party can deal with a crisis, marking his disapproval of the first option: ‘We could insist on suppression, not letting people speak or discuss, not allowing different opinions, especially pointed opinions. Taking it one step further, it means no matter who is opposing me, I will drive a tank over them, this is one way. Another way is to comply with the people’s will, tell the truth to people, and ask for the popular masses to understand.’

Hu countered that the reason for the Soviet Union’s collapse was instead because of ‘the Party’s monopoly over political rights, over the economy and all the resources, over the truth.’

It should be noted that the Tiananmen protests of 1989 began in part as a mourning for Hu Yoabang, who died that spring. Hu’s son is clearly carrying on his father’s fight.

Other Internal News: Nanjing announced more stringent water regulations last year, but appears to have failed to live up to them. Locals want to know why (Epoch Times). A woman sent to a labor camp because she demanded justice for her daughter (kidnapped, raped, and forced into prostitution at 11) now seeks justice for herself as well (Epoch Times). The regime may not have time to redress angry mothers’ grievances, but it has all the time in the world to crack down on a major threat: satellite dish owners (Epoch Times).

Communist Chinese military in joint drills with Russia: It will be the largest joint military exercise in history, and it starts tomorrow (Guardian, UK). Russia was Zhongnanhai’s top source for military equipment for years.

Other International News: Japanese PM Shinzo Abe reiterates his hard line against Communist China (Epoch Times). A cadre tries using the Long Arm of Lawlessness to shield his son from the consequences of his actions; the Epoch Times reveals how it failed.

Taiwan government says it’s not trying to shut down Sound of Hop Radio: The island democracy, through its de facto embassy in the United States, insisted that the tearing down of communications towers had nothing to do with Sound of Hope Radio (Taipei Times). The Sound of Hope folks aren’t so sure, and said as much to their sister paper, the Epoch Times.

Other Taiwan News: Taiwan’s opposition party (and this author’s favorite party), the Democratic Progressives, held a “two-hour closed-door meeting, the first of nine on the DPP’s China policy” (Taipei Times). While there was some “enthusiastic discussions” (that phrase not meaning there what is does in North America), the party overall stayed firm to its opposition to “one China” – which the CCP translates as one China with Taiwan under its thumb.

Korean colony news: The CCP’s colonial regime in the north has once again “agreed to hold talks over reopening a jointly run industrial park” with democratic Korea (Washington Post). How long it will take the viceroy to pull the plug on this round is not yet known. Meanwhile, China Freedom Blog Alliance member One Free Korea is back, with a fundraising call for Daily NK, an excellent source for getting to the truth about the colonized north.