This Wednesday marks the 19th anniversary of the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. One of those gunned down in the mayhem was a young man by the name of Jiang Jielian. On the night of June 3, 1989, as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army began clearing the Square, Jiang ignored his mother’s pleas for him to stay home. He struggled out of her arms, ran to the bathroom, locked the door behind him, climbed out of the window, and headed toward Tiananmen. Jiang was shot in the back. The bullet pierced his heart and he bled to death. Twenty-four hours earlier he had celebrated his 17th birthday.

To this day, the Chinese government has not acknowledged responsibility for the killing of unarmed citizens; nor has there been an official tally of how many perished in what Chinese media refer to as “the political turbulence of 1989."

Jiang Jielian’s mother, Ding Zilin, refuses to give up hope. Her only child’s ashes rest in an alcove in the tiny apartment she shares with her husband. The 71-year-old former professor is the driving force behind Tiananmen Mothers, an advocacy group that regularly petitions China’s leaders and members of parliament for an official apology and full inquiry into the shootings. Ding’s persistence has made her a target of retaliation and intimidation. Over the years, she has been subjected to constant surveillance, frequent house arrest, and occasional detention.

Last Wednesday, Tiananmen Mothers launched the group’s official website. The digital database includes a roster containing the names and bios of 188 known victims, a virtual monument in their honor, eyewitness accounts, and testimonials from members of the group on their long and tortuous ordeal.

The website also features two maps, the result of 19 years of painstaking documentation. One depicts the route along which the killings took place, debunking former defense minister Chi Haotian’s claim that “not a single person lost his life in Tiananmen Square.” The second map indicates the specific hospital locations where some of the wounded were taken and later died. Ding Zilin had hoped that the maps would help educate a generation of students too young to remember the Tiananmen Movement, while at the same time reviving long-buried memories of additional eyewitnesses so that these can be documented as well. More poignantly, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee had hoped that the maps would “awaken the conscience of the Chinese authorities.”

Her hopes were soon dashed. Three hours after its launch, the Tiananmen Mothers website was blocked in China--as Beijing basked in praise for relaxing press and Internet censorship in the wake of the earthquake.

Since the devastating earthquake a week ago today, Beijing has loosened its grip on the press and the Internet.

Last Friday, in an effort to provide greater transparency and accountability, officials from the education and housing ministries appeared on People’s Daily Online and addressed, in real time, charges from the country’s outraged online community that corruption and shoddy workmanship were the reason why a disproportionately large number of the structures that collapsed during the quake were school buildings. Indeed, the degree of openness with which Chinese media have covered the earthquake crisis is unprecedented.

Last Friday also brought the heartening news of the release of cyber-activist Zhou Yuanzhi. The 47-year-old former tax official was detained on May 3 on suspicion of “inciting subversion.” Zhou is a prolific writer, hundreds of his articles have appeared on overseas-based Chinese-language websites. Following the 2007 publication of an expose on corruption in the shipping industry, Zhou was subjected to repeated interrogation and harassment.

It is far too early to say, however, that Zhou’s unexpected release and Beijing’s newfound tolerance for criticism in the aftermath of the earthquake signal a fundamental change in policy. On the other side of the ledger, Chen Daojun, a 40-year-old journalist detained on May 9, also on suspicion of “inciting subversion,” remains in custody. Four days prior to his arrest, Chen had published on an overseas website an article calling for a boycott of a chemical plant under construction near Chengdu, Sichuan province. And this past April, shortly after the unrest in Lhasa began, Chen expressed his admiration for the Tibetans who “valiantly resisted official oppression.”

With less than 100 days to go before the Beijing Olympics, China has stepped up its crackdown on the country’s underground Christian church. Since the beginning of May, the authorities have conducted at least eight raids on house churches. The latest such incident took place yesterday in Beijing. More than two dozen police, along with officials of the religious affairs bureau, interrupted a gathering at the Shouwang Church and took the names, ID card numbers, home addresses, and phone numbers of all church members present.

A May 8 raid was targeted at a three-day Bible study session in Qingzhou city, in the eastern province of Shandong. That gathering, attended by some 30 house church leaders from across China, was broken up by more than 20 public security personnel. The lead pastor, who is from Taiwan, was deported and banned from visiting the mainland for five years. Zhang Yongliang, a local organizer, and his step-father were detained. Musical instruments and a computer found on the premises were confiscated.

Upon his release the following day, Zhang was informed that his church had been outlawed and its music school disbanded. Zhang also faces a fine of between 10,000 to 30,000 yuan (U$1,430 to $4,290). As of this posting, Zhang’s step-father, who was punched and kicked by police during the raid, remains in custody.

On May 4, in Yanji city in the northeastern province of Jilin, pastor Hao Yuji was taken away by police in the middle of a sermon and ordered to dissolve his church. When Hao questioned the reason for his arrest, he was beaten and sustained injuries to his head and chest.

Also on May 4, authorities in Inner Mongolia shut down the Arong Zhen Ge Er Church and charged its 66-year-old pastor, Guo Jingtian, with "conducting an illegal religious meeting." Three days prior to the raid on Guo’s church, Inner Mongolian police detained two ministers of the Daqing Church and confiscated their video camera, books, and household items.

On May 2, in Chengdu City in the southwestern province of Sichuan, a gathering of 44 members of the "Bliss of Autumn Rain Church" was raided by police and officials of the religious affairs bureau. Items confiscated include bibles and hymn and prayer books. One of the church members interrogated by the authorities was Wang Yi, a legal scholar and one of three Chinese Christians who met with President Bush in Washington in 2006.

In two separate raids on May 1 and May 3, four out-of-town evangelists were detained by authorities in Jiaxiang County in Shandong province. All four remain in custody, and two of them have been accused of being members of an "evil cult."

While members of China’s underground Christian church have long been subject to persecution, the timing of the intensified campaign against them is somewhat ironic. It coincides with the May 2 release by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom of its annual report, which once again designated China as a "country of particular concern."

Even more troubling is that despite the human rights promises Beijing made when bidding for the Games, the stepped-up crackdown began just as the Olympic clock started its 100-day countdown.

With the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) poised to take the helm in Kathmandu, Sino-Nepalese relations are expected to improve greatly. On April 25, a high-level Chinese delegation visiting the country announced that Beijing plans to link Tibet with Nepal by extending a railway line from Lhasa to Khasha on the China-Nepal border in five years.

An April 28 feature piece in Global Times, a newspaper run by People’s Daily, characterizes the CPN-M’s electoral victory as "a historic sea change" that has Washington’s eyes peeled for signs that Nepal’s new government may tilt toward Beijing. Not without glee, the article states that the sea change was brought about by a victory of those once regarded by India as "rebels" and long-referred to by the United States as a "terrorist organization."

Republished by numerous China-based websites and blogs, the article notes that New Delhi had for years sided with Nepal’s royal family and had put behind bars CPN-M guerrilla leaders operating in India. Following its electoral victory, however, India announced its willingness to "unconditionally cooperate" with the CPN-M. This change in policy is attributed by the article to New Delhi’s desire both to prevent Kathmandu from cozying up to Beijing and to dissuade the CPN-M from supporting Maoist insurgents in India.

A post-9/11 United States, the Global Times piece continues, found the CPN-M particularly "heinous" for its communist orientation and guerrilla activities. According to the article, this is why Washington provided the Nepalese government with tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat the Maoists and why, even after King Gyanendra claimed absolute power for himself in 2005, the United States urged the seven-party alliance not to cooperate with the Maoists.

The article concludes with CPN-M leader Prachanda’s observation that his government has much to learn from China’s experience in socialist construction. Conspicuously absent from the text is any reference to China’s own relationship with the Nepalese royal family, including Beijing’s sales of rifles and grenades to King Gyanendra’s government while it was at the same time exporting arms to the Maoists.

Missing also from the article is any mention of the fact that although King Gyanendra’s 2005 dismissal of the country’s elected parliament was condemned by India, Britain, and the United States, China refused to do so, characterizing it as "an internal matter for Nepal." Indeed, some believe that King Gyanendra’s assumption of total power, which was followed by a trip by the King to China less than three months later, had Beijing’s blessing.

The victorious CPN-M has announced that Nepal’s new government will not seek to play either the India card or the China card. Perhaps an even more germane question is: how will Beijing play the Nepal card?

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Lin Zhao, a fearless critic of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party who was executed at the height of the Cultural Revolution. This past February, a campaign was launched in Chinese cyberspace calling on the public to gather on April 29 by her tomb in Suzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, for a memorial.

The online proposal seems to have caught the eye of the authorities. Hu Di, one of the signatories, has been summoned by police for questioning. Video cameras have reportedly been installed around Lin Zhao’s grave. A plaque marking the entrance to the cemetery has been removed, and local residents have been instructed by police not to disclose the location of her tomb.

Lin Zhao is the pen name of Peng Lingzhao. In 1957, while studying at Peking University, she was branded a "rightist" and a "class enemy" after criticizing Mao’s Anti-rightist Movement.
In 1960, Lin Zhao drafted a petition regarding the case against Peng Dehuai, the Red Army commander and onetime defense minister who incurred Mao’s wrath for his criticism of the disastrous Great Leap Forward. In October of that year, Lin Zhao was arrested on charges of "active counter-revolution" for publishing an underground magazine. Shortly after her arrest, Lin Zhao’s British-educated father, who had himself been labeled a "counter-revolutionary," committed suicide by taking rat poison.

In 1962, Lin Zhao was sentenced to 20 years in prison. While there, she continued her writings. After the authorities confiscated her pen and paper in September 1964, she used a hairpin dipped in her own blood to write poems and essays on her cell walls, clothes, and bed sheets.

On April 29, 1968, Lin Zhao’s 20-year sentence was changed to death by immediate execution. Gagged and handcuffed, Lin Zhao was shot dead at Longhua Airport in Shanghai. She was 36. Her mother and sister learned of the execution two days later when the police showed up at their doorstep demanding payment for the bullets used to kill her.

The beefed-up security at Lin Zhao’s tomb in anticipation of tomorrow’s graveside memorial is Beijing’s most recent attempt to erase her from the collective memory of the Chinese people. The majority of her writings remain sealed by the authorities. A 2004 documentary titled Looking for Lin Zhao’s Soul was limited to private showings. Filmmaker Hu Jie lost his job with the official Xinhua News Agency because of his involvement in the project. And Lu Xuesong, an instructor at the Jilin College of Fine Arts, was suspended after showing the film to her students.

What has the Chinese government got to fear from a woman who perished four decades ago? Organizers of the memorial expressed one view when they noted that "even though Lin Zhao’s country has witnessed many changes in the 40 years since her passing, the totalitarian politics that she strove to change remain the same."

In the aftermath of the crackdown in Tibet, Chinese internet bulletin boards have become virtual hate sites.

In hundreds of thousands of postings, Han Chinese hurl obscenities against Tibetans, condemn foreign governments for "interfering in China’s internal affairs," and accuse the Western media of "twisting the facts." They express "resolute support" for the government’s action. Some even call for tougher measures to deal with the "splittists" in order to defend China’s territorial glory.

In the absence of a free press, what Chinese citizens know of the Tibet crackdown is filtered through the lens of the state propaganda machine, which defines, in report after report, "the truth" of the March 14 Lhasa Incident as "a serious violent crime involving beating, smashing, looting, and burning" that was orchestrated by the "Dalai clique" in cahoots with "hostile external elements."

Through its control of the media and the Internet, the Chinese government is, in effect, manipulating the nationalist sentiments of the Han, a group constituting more than 90 percent of the population. By professing to be the guardian of territorial integrity and national pride, it is reinforcing its claim to legitimacy.

The late Chinese dissident writer Liu Binyan once said:

Nationalism and Han chauvinism are now the only effective instruments in the ideological arsenal of the Chinese Communist Party. Any disruption in the relationship with foreign countries or among ethnic minorities can be used to stir "patriotic" sentiments of the people to support the communist authorities.

While Han chauvinism is a real factor, another important element is state censorship. The Chinese government’s ability to define the incident--in fact, any incident--to fit its agenda relies on its control of the media. It is thought control in its crudest form.

Many of those who have access to alternative channels of information, however, tend to have a different mindset. Regular listeners of Radio Free Asia, for example, have been voicing their opposition to the crackdown on Tibetans. Some have expressed suspicion about the official version of events. A Beijing listener who uses a proxy server to access foreign websites applies a completely different analytical model to the Tibet issue than do the vast majority of his fellow Han Chinese: "Using Free Gate, I was able to see on the Internet that, in Lhasa, protesting monks were dealt with in a very rough manner, and that even tanks were mobilized. I think it was too much."

Race and ethnic relations are complex issues. In the United States we are witnessing in the presidential primaries an intense debate surrounding how they should be tackled. Americans of all political stripes are, however, free to engage in this debate through media outlets of the right, center, and left. It would be an understatement to say such is not the case in the People’s Republic.

Tomorrow Beijing will put on trial one of its most ardent human rights campaigners. Hu Jia, 34, faces charges of "inciting subversion of state power." Evidence to be used against him includes articles he posted on an overseas Chinese-language website and statements he made during interviews with foreign journalists.

For his work as an activist, Hu, a devout Buddhist, has been called "modern China’s conscience." He called attention to the plight of AIDS orphans whose parents were victims of a scandal involving tainted blood at public blood banks. In June 2004, he was detained for attempting to lay a wreath on Tiananmen Square to honor the victims of the 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrators.

In February 2006, Hu was abducted by agents of the Beijing public security bureau, driven with a hood over his head to a rural location, and held captive for 41 days. Although suffering from hepatitis-B, Hu was denied medication while his kidnappers interrogated him concerning a hunger strike he had joined to protest police brutality in China.

Upon his release, Hu was kept under house arrest until February 2007. During this time, his wife was tailed by security agents wherever she went. In May 2007, Hu and his wife were both put under house arrest for "endangering state security." A video diary titled "Prisoners in Freedom City" depicting their life under surveillance by China’s security apparatus can be seen here.

Hu Jia’s current trouble with the government likely stems from his call for the international community to demand that Beijing fulfill its pledge to improve human rights ahead of the Olympics. This past September, Hu and Teng Biao, a legal scholar, co-authored an open letter titled "The real China and the Olympics." The letter documents a host of human rights abuses by the Chinese government and also states that:

When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg. You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.

On December 27, as Hu’s wife was bathing their newborn daughter, security agents stormed into their apartment and dragged Hu away. He was formally charged with subversion on January 29.

On March 6, Hu’s co-author, Teng Biao, was abducted by police from his home in Beijing. Upon his release two days later, Teng stated that he was not free to discuss the matter.

With less than five months to go before the Games, Beijing seems determined to silence its domestic critics. Is there hope yet? Last week Chinese officials found themselves scrambling to improve air quality after world marathon record-holder Haile Gebrselassie indicated that he would skip the competition in Beijing because the city’s notorious smog presented a threat to his health. Will anyone object to competing in a country whose policies present a threat to their conscience?

In the run-up to Taiwan’s first-ever direct presidential election in 1996, China fired three ballistic missiles into the island’s territorial waters in an attempt to dissuade its electorate from voting for the independence-minded Lee Teng-hui. Lee won by a landslide.

Four years later, then-Chinese premier Zhu Rongji warned that Beijing was ready to "shed blood" if Chen Shuibian of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were elected leader of Taiwan. Chen won in a three-way race, ending more than a half century of rule by the Nationalist Party (KMT).

On March 22 Taiwan voters will elect a new president. Also on the ballot are two referendums on UN membership--one proposed by the DPP, the other by the KMT. The much-disputed DPP version asks whether the government should seek to join the UN under the name Taiwan. Regarded as a ploy for the self-ruled island to pursue de jure independence, it has drawn criticism from Beijing, Washington, and the EU as a threat to peace in the region.

Beijing, however, seems to have taken to heart lessons from 1996 and 2000. China’s displeasure over the referendums was not conveyed by the country’s top leaders, but instead by Jiang Enzhu, spokesman of this year’s parliamentary session, who warned last week that Chen Shuibian and Taiwan authorities would "pay a dear price" if they pursued their efforts to gain membership in the UN. And there is no sign that Beijing is gearing up to express its disapproval through military gestures.

Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao finds especially significant the remarks last week of Chinese president Hu Jintao. Hu, while calling for the resumption of cross-Strait dialogue, not only steered clear of the referendum issue but went so far as to claim that Beijing wished to "bring together as many Taiwan compatriots as possible," including those that "once harbored illusions about Taiwan independence, advocated Taiwan independence, and even engaged in activities promoting Taiwan independence."

Besides bitter past lessons, there could be other motivations for what Lianhe Zaobao describes as Beijing’s "soft approach." First and foremost, Chen Shuibian has alienated Washington by insisting on holding the referendum. U.S. opposition to the vote has been articulated repeatedly by senior administration officials, most recently by Secretary Rice last month during her visit to China. Beijing can well afford to appear magnanimous while Washington plays the role of bad cop.

Second, there is a good chance that the referendums will not pass by the required margins. While Taiwan’s "national identity" was a key issue in previous elections, this time it has taken a back seat to economic concerns, as evidenced by yesterday’s televised debate between KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou and the DPP’s Frank Hsieh. This past Saturday, Hsieh, who has been trailing Ma by double digits, indicated that he might be willing to separate the referendums from the balloting for president.

Beijing’s wait-and-see approach may be paying off.

Affirmation of Vladimir Putin’s accomplishments as president was a constant theme of recent Chinese press coverage of Russia. Yesterday, as Russians went to the polls to elect a new president, Xinhua celebrated with a lengthy piece titled "Putin’s report card." It credits the Russian leader not only with his country’s improved economic performance and growing international clout, but also with instituting a "controllable democracy" that has brought order and stability to a land once teetering on the brink of anarchy.

This is a familiar narrative. Beijing has long favored combining economic reform with continued political authoritarianism. After the 1989 military crackdown on democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square, Deng Xiaoping, the "architect of modern China," justified the suppression as a necessary means of restoring stability in order to further economic progress. It is a line of argument that has been repeated by successive Chinese leaders.

In Putin’s Russia, Beijing sees its policies being vindicated. Indeed, last Wednesday a Xinhua report carried the proud heading "On Russia’s campaign trail the Chinese experience is held in high esteem; The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping becomes a manual for governing."

Chinese media have gushed over Russia’s economic prosperity, evidenced by rising incomes and punctuated by the presence of Gucci, Armani, and Prada stores in Moscow. "The Putin generation" is portrayed as self-confident, sophisticated, and awash in material comfort. More importantly, it is a generation that values stability.

Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of Chinese press coverage of the Russian presidential election was given to Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s chosen successor. Medvedev’s refusal to debate his three opponents was attributed to his being a "dedicated public servant" who had too hectic a schedule attending to his many responsibilities as first deputy prime minister. Special play was given also to Medvedev’s assertion that what Russia needs most is "strong presidential power."

Last week China’s ministry of education announced a pilot program that makes Peking opera a component of the music curriculum for grades one through nine. Scheduled to begin in March this year and to last until July 2009, each of the three cities and seven provinces selected for the program will designate 20 local schools to participate.

The repertoire consists of arias from 15 plays, more than half of which are drawn from the so-called revolutionary model operas (geming yangban xi) that dominated the stage and airwaves during the Cultural Revolution.

Revolutionary model operas, or model operas, were the brainchild of Mao Zedong’s late wife Jiang Qing, a one-time actress and infamous member of the disgraced “Gang of Four.” The plays invariably feature proletarian characters fighting heroically against the evil-doers of an oppressive feudal society. They contain melodies with such inspirational titles as “I won't quit the battle until all the beasts are killed.”

During his 1972 visit to China, Richard Nixon was treated to one of the best-known examples of the genre, The Red Detachment of Women. It is a ballet-opera that depicts uniformed women raising swords and rifles against a despotic landlord.

Since the announcement, a heated debate has erupted in Chinese cyberspace over whether Peking opera in general, and revolutionary model plays in particular, should become part of the standard curriculum.

Proponents of the program find the arrangement “highly appropriate.” They note that the syntax of model operas is contemporary and therefore easy for students in the lower grades to learn. One supporter argued that as “la crème de la crème of Chinese culture” Peking opera should be celebrated:

The Chinese people should love our own art. Woe to our nation if our people wear Western clothes, sing Western songs, and reject our own culture.

Opponents of the program countered by asking whether by the same logic preschoolers should be required to study martial arts and the oracle bone script, the earliest form of Chinese writing.

Chinese media have given minimal coverage to president Bush‘s week-long visit to Africa. While Xinhua ascribes the motivation for the five-nation trip to "strategic interests" that include military and energy security, it also acknowledges that the U.S. troop presence in Africa has been "tiny."

By contrast, Beijing seems much more concerned with Japan’s push into the continent, as evidenced by an article titled "Japanese diplomacy takes aim at Africa." The piece appeared in last Wednesday’s edition of Liberation Daily and was subsequently reprinted by Xinhua.

The article states that Tokyo has launched a new round of "diplomatic offensives" in Africa, beginning with last month’s visit to Tanzania by Japanese foreign minister Masahiko Koumura. During that visit, he unveiled a $260 million aid package to help African nations deal with conflicts and natural disasters.

The piece reports that Japan’s new diplomatic targeting of Africa includes the hosting of two major international conferences later this year. The first of these is the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, to be held in Yokohama in May. The other is the G8 Hokkaido Summit in July. Host country Japan has invited 14 non-members to participate in the forum and fully half are from Africa.

The Liberation Daily article further states that these actions are motivated by three factors. One is that, as a formidable voting bloc, Africa could help Japan achieve its goal of becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. This, in turn, would help transform the country from simply an economic power into a political one as well.

The second factor is the continent’s vast energy resources. And finally, the article explains the push as an attempt to counter China’s growing influence in the region:

The success of the 2006 Beijing Forum on China-Africa Cooperation gave China the upper hand. Green with envy, Japan launched a "diplomatic offensive" consisting of political courtship and economic aid. Japan competes [with China] and stands in [China’s] way wherever possible. Japan believes that if it succeeds in containing and countering China it will weaken China’s influence in Africa.

The main theme of the Liberation Daily piece echoes that of a number of other reports Chinese media ran recently on the inroads Tokyo has made in Africa.

One article’s caption reads "Why is Japan eyeing Africa more and more closely?" It finds especially noteworthy the visit to Botswana and South Africa this past November by Japan’s trade minister Akira Amari, during which Tokyo secured rare-metal exploration deals with both countries. While the report described Amari’s trip as "fruitful," it neglected to mention that Japan embarked on its hunt for rare metals in Africa because China’s increasing domestic demand for these minerals had led it recently to cut back on exports to Japan.

In chronicling Japanese aid to Africa, the report also noted that since the 1990s Japan has been the second largest donor country to Africa, behind only France.

In the end, however, Beijing’s apprehension over Tokyo’s overtures toward Africa may be unnecessary. The "Official Development Assistance Charter" adopted by the Japanese government in 1992 requires Tokyo to link its aid to the promotion of human rights, freedom, and democracy. Chinese aid to Africa, on the other hand, comes with no such strings attached.

Last week World Bank president Robert Zoellick announced the appointment of Peking University professor Justin Yifu Lin as the organization's chief economist and senior vice president for development economics. Lin is the first person from a developing country to hold the Bank’s top economist position, an accomplishment that makes China enormously proud. Lin’s life story is nothing short of fantastic, and it's being told and retold by the Chinese media.

Born in 1952 in Taiwan, Lin was admitted to the elite National Taiwan University in 1971 and elected student body president. After attending a winter boot camp required of all able-bodied male college students, Lin asked to be transferred to the ROC Military Academy, a move that propelled him to instant celebrity status. In 1975 he graduated second in his class. The following year, Lin entered the MBA program at National Chengchi University on a defense scholarship.

Upon receiving his MBA in 1978, Lin returned to the army and was posted on the outlying island of Quemoy, which lies within shelling distance of the mainland. As dusk fell on May 16, 1979, using two basketballs as a flotation device Lin swam 2.3 kilometers and defected to China. He left behind a pregnant wife and a three-year-old son.

Both China and Taiwan kept mum on Lin’s defection. One year after his disappearance, the Taiwanese military declared Lin "missing," and his family received the equivalent of more than $31,000 in compensation.

In China, Lin changed his first name from Cheng-yi to Yifu and earned a master’s degree in political economics at the prestigious Peking University. In 1980, Lin served as a translator for Theodore Schultz during the Nobel Laureate’s visit to Beijing. So impressed was Schultz that he arranged for Lin to enroll in the doctorate program in economics at the University of Chicago. While in the United States, Lin was reunited with his wife. In 1987, after a year of post-doctoral research at Yale, Lin returned to Beijing, where he was later joined by his wife and children.

As the first Ph.D. in economics to return to China since the country began instituting market reforms, Lin soon became a key advisor to the State Council (China’s cabinet), specializing in rural development and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises. He is also the founding director of the China Center for Economic Research, a top government think tank.

While Lin has argued that the government’s first duty is to remove all possible obstacles to the functioning of free, open and competitive markets, he also advocates a gradual approach in transitioning from a centralized to a market-based economy. This past November, while delivering one of Cambridge University’s prestigious Marshall Lectures, Lin stated that "as long as the government is responsive to the needs of the people . . . an authoritarian government can still be very effective." You can see a video of Lin at Cambridge here.

In a letter written to his family in Taiwan long after his defection, Lin stated that "based on my cultural, historical, political, economic and military understanding, it is my belief that returning to the motherland is a historical inevitability; it is also the optimal choice."

Last week Beijing pledged $1.39 billion in economic and technical aid to East Timor. The agreement was signed in Dili by visiting Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei and East Timorese prime minister Xanana Gusmao.

China was the first country to establish diplomatic ties with East Timor after it declared independence on May 20, 2002. The fifth anniversary of the establishment of formal relations between the two countries was marked with much fanfare last year. Over the years, Chinese aid to the impoverished but resource-rich country has included agricultural machinery and foodstuff such as rice and cooking oil.

In a July 2005 interview with Chinese media, Chen Duqing, then-Chinese ambassador to East Timor, stated that aid from China was to focus on five areas. One was construction, including funding for projects such as East Timor’s foreign ministry building, presidential palace, and housing for the country’s veterans. China has also sent medical teams to East Timor, with all non-housing-related expenses picked up by Beijing. In addition, it has trained East Timorese in agricultural technology and business management, and dispatched civilian police to serve in the UN peacekeeping mission to East Timor. In September 2005, the Chinese ministry of public security donated what was described as "police supplies and communications equipment" to the East Timor ministry of interior.

In the same 2005 interview, Chen declared proudly that Beijing’s assistance to Dili was "honest and sincere," even if it was less than what was donated by some other countries. In 2003-2004 annual Chinese aid to East Timor averaged around $6 million, and in November 2005 Beijing provided an additional $6.2 million in grant aid. These pale in comparison with the contributions from Portugal, Australia, and the United States during the same time period.

Beijing has played up the fact that it had long supported East Timor’s fight for independence and that East Timorese leaders regard it as "an elder brother and a most reliable friend." An April 2007 People’s Daily report quoted each of the country’s highest ranking officials--Xanana Gusmao, Ramos-Horta, and Guterres "Lu Olo"--as referring to China as "a good friend." The report also quoted then-president-elect Ramos-Horta as saying that his son was to graduate from the PLA National Defense University with honors the following July.

China has invested in both onshore and offshore energy exploration in East Timor. While returns from these investments are far from certain, last week’s pledge of $1.39 billion in aid signals that Beijing is stepping up its courtship of Dili, thereby expanding its sphere of influence in the region through the skillful use of "soft power."

Beijing’s reaction to reports that Taiwan president Chen Shuibian may be visiting the Spratlys, known in Chinese as the Nansha Islands, has been restrained. Asked to articulate China’s position at a press briefing in Beijing last week, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu gave a stock response:

"China possesses indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters. We have the resolve and capability to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will continue to be devoted to peace and stability of the South China Sea."

Conspicuously missing was any specific criticism of the independence-leaning Chen for taking what Taiwan media referred to as a trip designed to proclaim sovereignty over the disputed islands.

Taiwan’s United Daily reported on January 20 that Chen’s visit would take place in the run-up to the March 22 presidential election. Chen’s spokesman refused to confirm the report, stating ambiguously that "the president visits various troop units before the Lunar New Year each year."

Taiwan has maintained troops on Taiping Islet (Itu Aba Island), the largest island in the Spratlys, for decades. Over the years they constructed, among other facilities, a radar station and a power plant on this atoll that measures a mere 1.4 kilometer in length and 400 meters in width. Construction of an airstrip began in 2006. And last Monday a Taiwan Air Force C-130 transport plane made a first-ever landing on the islet and returned to Taiwan the same day.

Last Thursday, as Vietnam voiced strong objections to the C-130 landing, Chinese media, which had been following the development closely, cited press reports as saying that Chen would take a C-130 to Taiping Islet in advance of the February 7 Chinese Lunar New Year. Chinese media reports on the possible visit were matter-of-fact and devoid of any personal attack on Chen.

By a curious coincidence, on the same day as Vietnam’s protest the website of the Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong carried an article titled "Why are resources in the South China Sea being plundered in a reckless manner?"

First appearing in "Ordnance Knowledge," a bimonthly journal of the China Ordnance Society, the article accuses Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines of stepping up military activities in the area despite the fact that they are signatories to the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. It states further that these countries, along with Brunei and Indonesia, have reaped enormous economic benefits from oil and natural gas prospecting in the region at the expense of China. Other resources being "plundered" include the ocean’s marine life.

Chinese defense minister Cao Gangchuan wrapped up a five-day visit to Indonesia yesterday. While in Jakarta, Cao and his Indonesian counterpart, Juwono Sudarsono, agreed to expand military ties between the two countries.

Chinese press reports on the development carried the heading "Cao Gangchuan visits Indonesia; China will provide assistance to two major Indonesian military plants." The two plants are identified as the state-owned ordnance manufacturer PT Pindad and the shipbuilding firm PT PAL.

Cao’s visit reciprocated the trip to Beijing by Sudarsono in November last year, during which the two countries signed a defense cooperation agreement. In April 2005, Indonesia, the largest and most populous country in ASEAN, became the first member of the group to enter into a "strategic partnership" with China.

The Sino-Indonesian "strategic partnership" encompasses the areas of trade, defense, anti-terrorism, drug interdiction, and maritime security. Chinese media noted at the time that "for China, creating secure strategic space on its periphery is essential to the realization of its rise."

What Beijing found most attractive about this OPEC member was its energy resources. In September 2002, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) signed what People’s Daily referred to as a "landmark" deal worth $8.5 billion to purchase liquefied natural gas from Indonesia. In addition, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has invested heavily in oil exploration in the resource-rich country.

Anti-Chinese sentiment has long been an undercurrent in Indonesian politics. During the 1965-66 coup that brought Suharto to power, the ethnic Chinese community was suspected of supporting the Indonesian Communist party and became the target of mass killings. In addition, tens of thousands were expelled from their homes. In 1967 Suharto issued the "Basic Policy for the Solution of the Chinese Problem." The proposed "solution" included outlawing Chinese characters in public places and shutting down Chinese schools in order to more fully integrate ethnic Chinese into Indonesian society.

Also in 1967, Jakarta severed diplomatic ties with Beijing. Formal relations between the two countries were not restored until 1990, at a time when China was shunned by the international community following the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square.

In discussing Beijing’s "strategic partnership" with Jakarta, Chinese media took pains to note that it began to take shape only when Indonesia entered "a new era of democratization" following the 1998 riots that toppled Suharto, and during which the country’s ethnic Chinese were once again a main target.

Last week’s announcement that Beijing is to provide assistance to Indonesian military plants was not well received by China’s online population. Shortly after the story broke, angry comments began to appear in Chinese cyberspace. Some expressed sadness. Many were outraged over the decision to "arm a wolf" and help a country that "owes the Chinese people a debt in blood." A few postings declared--not without a hint of sarcasm--that "this is yet another act of great wisdom by our government" because it is all "for the sake of Malacca, where our energy lifeline lies."

From Shipping Times: Royal Navy's Flag Ship HMS Ark Royal in
the company of the Chinese Frigate Saigon, off the Isle of Wight.

"China’s new security concept is being realized through joint military exercises with foreign armed forces" is the title of a January 8 report by the China News Service (CNS), the second largest news agency in China behind Xinhua. The article has been making the rounds in Chinese cyberspace, including the website of the official Xinhua news agency.

According to the report, China participated in eight military exercises and two training drills with foreign armed forces in 2007. Those exercises were reportedly designed to prepare for terrorist attacks, while the six maritime drills this past year were characterized as "search and rescue" in nature.

First advocated by Beijing in the late 1990s, the "new security concept" is to "provide the post-Cold War world with a new security pattern." And as the title of the January 8 report indicates, participation in joint military exercises is one way through which China is to sketch out this new security pattern.

The CNS report quoted Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, as saying that these joint exercises are not to lead China into any military alliance, nor do they pose a threat to any other country. Worth noting, however, is their increased frequency. In the years from 2002 to 2006, China took part in a total of only 16 joint military drills. And yet, as the report documents, in 2007 alone there were 10.

In fact, the year 2007 is referred to in the Chinese media as "the year of military exercises." Indeed, 2007 witnessed participation in overseas joint drills by all branches of the Chinese military, as well as by the People’s Armed Police (PAP), whose main mission is internal security.

A chronological rundown of these drills is presented in this year-end review in China Daily, which notes that joint exercises in 2007 were marked by several "firsts."

The "Peace-07" exercise in March, for example, was the first time that the Chinese navy joined a multi-national maritime military exercise. It was also the first time its vessels participated in drills overseas without an accompanying supply ship, and the first time they used live ammunition overseas.

Among other "firsts":

In September, the PAP’s "Snow Leopard Unit" conducted an anti-terrorist drill with Russian forces near Moscow. It was the first time the PAP had taken part in such an exercise on foreign soil.

In October, China held its first maritime joint exercises with Australia and New Zealand. During this drill, according to the China Daily article, "a certain type" of Chinese search-and-rescue helicopter made its debut.

The Chinese navy also conducted drills with the navies of Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and France during an 87-day European tour that began on July 24. Especially noteworthy was the September joint exercise with the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal. It was the first time the Chinese navy had held a joint exercise with an aircraft carrier and also its first exercise in the Atlantic.

Chinese media kept a close watch on the violence in Kenya following the December 27 elections that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people and the displacement of at least 250,000.

China has substantial investments in the east African nation, including telecommunications projects, infrastructure construction, and oil prospecting by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

China is also helping the Kenyan armed forces modernize. Military exchanges between the two countries began in 1996, and April 1997 saw the delivery of the first batch of Chinese made Y-12 aircraft to the Kenyan air force. During his visit to Nairobi this past November, Chinese defense minister Cao Gangchuan pledged to president Kibaki that Beijing would continue to support the country’s military modernization.

Bilateral trade between the two countries hit a record high of $646 million in 2006. This represented a 36.1 percent increase over the previous year. In December 2007, amid the global "Made in China" recall scare, Xinhua ran this report by its Nairobi correspondent. The story discusses the fact that cheap Chinese consumer goods have been extremely beneficial to the Kenyan people, nearly half of whom live below the poverty line.

It was against this backdrop that on January 3 Xinhua and People’s Daily both ran the exact same opinion piece discussing the turmoil that has ravaged Kenya. Initially published in Guangzhou Daily, the official newspaper of the Guangzhou municipal party committee, the article characterized protests by Kenya’s opposition "Orange Democratic Movement" (ODM) over alleged vote-rigging as "street-corner politicking":

The world has seen such "street-corner politicking" before. Five years ago in Georgia, four years ago in Ukraine, and three years ago in Kyrgyzstan, there were conflicts resulting from protests by the opposition following a presidential election. Of course, in the above-stated cases, "street-corner politicking" was mostly carried out in a peaceful fashion, and these episodes were labeled "color revolutions" – because there was a hint of American intervention throughout…

The article found "no hint of Western meddling" in the Kenyan elections, but went on to attribute the subsequent turbulence to the "multi-party system that the United States has been promoting in Africa":

After Kenya gained independence in December 1963, its first president was the pro-Western Kenyatta. Under his leadership, corruption was rampant and the economy deteriorated. In 1978, Moi succeeded Kenyatta as president. Under what the West called a "dictatorship," the economy picked up. The economic growth rate in 1984 was five percent, the highest in Africa. Subsequently, Kenya began to practice American style "democracy" – the multi-party system. Domestic unrest ensued and the economy began to weaken…

Conspicuous by its absence from the piece is any mention of the tribal strife that has plagued this part of Africa for generations. The omission is puzzling, since political and economic domination by the Kikuyus in Kenya is clearly identified in other Xinhua and People’s Daily reports as a key factor in the current crisis.

Violence in Kenya appears to be subsiding as president Kibaki and ODM leader Odinga moved closer toward negotiations after their respective meetings with assistant secretary of state Jendayi Frazer. It will be interesting to see how Chinese media characterize efforts by the United States to mediate this potentially disastrous humanitarian crisis.

Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Yesterday Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda wrapped up his first visit to China since taking office in September. Chinese media hailed the trip as a perfect conclusion to the series of bilateral exchanges between the two countries during the past year. In the words of Fukuda and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, the four-day visit heralded the "arrival of spring" to Sino-Japanese relations.

In Beijing, Fukuda met with the top three Chinese leaders: president Hu Jintao, premier Wen Jiabao, and Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

On Saturday, at the gymnasium of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Fukuda and Wen played catch. The carefully staged photo op showed Wen in the same baseball jersey that he wore this past April while playing ball with students of Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University during his visit to Japan. The back of the uniform bore the number 35, highlighting the fact that this year marks the 35th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two countries.

The trip also took the Japanese leader to the northeastern port city of Tianjin, a magnet for Japanese investment and a growth engine for north China.

But what appealed to Chinese cultural pride most was Fukuda’s visit to Qufu, a city in the eastern province of Shandong famed for being the birthplace of Confucius. Chinese media noted that the pilgrimage was initiated by the Japanese side, and credited it with giving "depth" to Fukuda’s itinerary. Liberation Daily regarded it as a gesture by the Japanese leader to "show respect" and "to stress the common bond among East Asian civilizations."

That Fukuda happens also to be well versed in The Analects of Confucius did not go unnoticed by Chinese media, which reported that the Japanese prime minister not only sprinkled his speeches with quotes from the Chinese sage, but that during his stay in Qufu he wielded a brush pen and demonstrated his calligraphic skills. It was noted in particular that Fukuda penned the phrase wengu chuangxin (creating things new through learning things old), a slight modification of the famous Confucian maxim wengu zhixin (gaining insights new through learning things old). People’s Daily interpreted this to mean that the two countries are to "take a lesson from history while at the same time looking toward the future."

While coverage given by Chinese media to Fukuda’s visit was overwhelmingly favorable, a discordant note was sounded in an article titled "Japanese prime minister paying respects to Confucius; has Japan absorbed the essence of Confucianism?" The article has been circulating on the websites of various Chinese media outlets, including the Japanese edition of People’s Daily.

Dmitry Medvedev is being officially nominated today by the congress of United Russia as the ruling party’s candidate for the March 2008 Russian presidential election.

His candidacy, first announced a week ago, has been well received in Beijing, and he was referred to by a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry as "a good friend of the Chinese people." Medvedev chaired the Russian committee that recently organized the "theme years" project, which designated 2006 as the "Year of Russia" in China and 2007 as the "Year of China" in Russia.

This past February, Medvedev appeared on People’s Daily Online fielding questions from the Chinese public. In discussing the future of Sino-Russian relations following Putin’s second presidential term, Medvedev stressed the "practical necessity" for bilateral exchanges to continue at a high level. As first deputy prime minister of Russia, he was the highest-ranking foreign dignitary to appear online in the Chinese media.

In December 2005, barely a month after being appointed first deputy prime minister, Medvedev visited Beijing and met with president Hu Jintao in the Great Hall of the People. This fueled speculation at the time that Beijing was taking a special interest in Medvedev, as it was unusual for the Chinese head of state to meet with a foreign deputy prime minister.

Chinese media coverage of Medvedev has been highly favorable. Pundits on China Central Television portrayed Medvedev as "a genteel and thoughtful man" well-equipped to tackle the major issues facing Russia today. These include strengthening the social safety net and narrowing the ever-widening income gap.

In other media reports, Medvedev is characterized as "more trustworthy than Zubkov and more loyal than Ivanov" and therefore the "best guarantor" that Russia will stay on the course mapped out by Putin. It is "necessary" for the "absolutely dependable" Medvedev to succeed Putin because the continuous implementation of the "correct policy" requires "stability," a sentiment often expressed by Chinese leaders when referring to China’s domestic policy.

The 42-year old Medvedev is, however, seen as lacking in experience and in need of the support of a seasoned mentor. Analysts therefore consider president Medvedev and prime minister Putin to be "the best partnership." China Youth Daily notes that the two leaders share "three sames"--being from the same city, having attended the same university, and having the same grand vision for Russia.

Chinese media paid attention also to the December 11 television address in which Medvedev announced his support for Putin to be prime minister while paying tribute to the former KGB officer for reforming Russia’s military:

Russia is different now, much stronger and better off. We are being respected and we are being listened to. We are not being treated as schoolchildren.

Perhaps even more significant is the ample coverage given by Chinese media to a USA Today report quoting a Russian government worker’s observation that "if Putin stays, we will make the United States kneel." The quote initiated much discussion in Chinese cyberspace. While some expressed admiration for the Russian civil servant’s "guts and spunk," others warned of possible "unfortunate consequences" from "forfeiting the democratic process." One posting asked, "If someday the United States is really to kneel at Russia’s feet, who then will be next?"

The Chinese have not taken kindly to Washington’s call for a probe into alleged voting irregularities in the December 2 Russian parliamentary elections, which the Putin-led United Russia party won by a landslide.

The Chinese press attributed United Russia’s victory to the potent combination of Putin’s effective leadership, popular support, and skillful campaign tactics. People’s Daily proclaimed that the win by United Russia is, in fact, the triumph of "Putinism."

The Russian president is portrayed not as a politician seeking to cling to power, but instead as a leader committed to rebuilding his country according to the "Putin Plan," the full implementation of which is expected to take 15-20 years.

The official Xinhua news agency ran on December 6 a commentary titled "Is democracy an 'obedient child'?" The piece, published the same day in Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, asks rhetorically:

Is it possible that a leader--even a duly elected one--is regarded as undemocratic simply because he does not comply with the strategic interests of the United States?"

Russia’s democratic transformation, the article contends, had essentially followed a formula advocated by the West, including the use of shock therapy in its economic reforms:

Indeed, "shock therapy" put the Russian economy in a state of shock for more than 10 years. Under Putin’s leadership, however, Russia has come out of a state of weakness, its economy has witnessed accelerated growth, its citizens are better off, and the national spirit has been invigorated. This has led the United States and Westerners to feel that Russia is straying from their idea of democracy.

A recurring theme in Chinese press coverage of the elections is that the United States has lost its ability to influence Russian politics, and that the "Putin course" has led the country on the "road to a renaissance" by departing from a "right-turn" policy modeled after the West.

As Kevin Rudd and his new cabinet are being sworn into office today, Chinese media have given unprecedented coverage to the Australian Labor Party’s victory in the November 24 elections, and to the newly designated prime minister in particular.

Names of Western leaders are typically transliterated into Chinese characters. For example, Bush is referred to in the Chinese press as bu-shi, Blair as bu-lai-er, Brown as bu-lang, and so on. All sound somewhat alien to the Chinese ear.

Kevin Rudd, on the other hand, is known as Lu Kewen, a quintessentially Chinese name that he adopted while studying Chinese language and history at the Australian National University. Rudd endeared himself to the Chinese even more when he mentioned, during a pre-election interview with China Central Television (CCTV) conducted almost entirely in Mandarin, that his three children are all students of the language and his son-in-law is a Chinese-born, naturalized Aussie.

The Chinese take great pride in the fact that the leader of a major Western country speaks their language and has expressed a keen interest in their culture. Rudd’s interview with CCTV is characterized as a conversation that "demonstrated China’s cultural soft power," while the "Lu Kewen phenomenon" is viewed as a reflection of "China’s continuously ascending international clout."

The official Xinhua news agency found it "profoundly significant" that Australia’s "history" finally caught up with its "geography," as its voters ousted John Howard, whose Asia policy was "bogged down in history," and embraced Rudd, the widely acclaimed "China expert" who turned his "Chinese-ness" into a "campaign trump card."

Guangming Daily, run by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, attributed Rudd’s victory to his "forward-looking new thinking."

The gushing enthusiasm, however, is mixed with a certain degree of caution. People’s Daily ran on November 27 an opinion piece titled "Do not rush to label the China-expert prime minister ‘pro-China.’" The story, first published in China Youth Daily, states:

Being a "China expert" is not equivalent to being a "China lover." First and foremost, Lu Kewen is a citizen of Australia; secondly, he is the prime minister of Australia. In the eyes of Westerners, official duties and private affairs are strictly separated. Lu Kewen the "China expert" belongs in the personal realm. Being "prime minister" is Kevin Rudd’s official duty. We expect him to improve his country’s relations with China. But we cannot expect too much.

At an APEC lunch in Sydney this past September, then-opposition leader Rudd upstaged prime minister Howard by addressing Chinese president Hu Jintao in Mandarin. Howard, who had just inked a $45 billion gas deal with Hu, was left to listen to a translation of Rudd expressing his love for China and its culture.

The following day, Rudd and Hu held a 30-minute meeting conducted entirely in Mandarin. So impressed was Hu that he told Rudd: "You speak perfect Chinese and you know China inside out."

In his victory speech on November 24, Rudd referred to the United States as Australia’s "great friend and ally." Australia’s friends across Asia and the Pacific were characterized not as "allies," but instead as "partners." An indicator, perhaps, that Kevin Rudd, aka Lu Kewen, really does know China inside out.

Last Friday’s vote by Russia’s upper house of parliament to suspend compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty was characterized by official Chinese media as bringing "the Russo-American wrestle over strategic security to a critical phase."

Chinese media have followed the controversy closely since July, when Putin announced plans to suspend Russian participation in the treaty, which limits the number of conventional weapons deployed between the Atlantic and the Ural Mountains.

A November 7 Xinhua report cites "NATO’s continuous eastward expansion and U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland" as a factor contributing to the unanimous vote one day earlier by the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, to suspend CFE participation. The report ends by noting that while the Russian parliament had in 2004 ratified a 1999 revised version of the CFE treaty, not a single member of NATO has yet done so.

Conspicuously absent from the Xinhua report is any mention of NATO’s conditions for ratifying the treaty. These include withdrawal of Russian military forces from Georgia and Moldova. (Russian forces just completed their withdrawal from Georgia last week.)

Chinese media have been giving highly favorable coverage to Russia in general, and to Vladimir Putin in particular. Putin is credited with having brought about political stability, economic prosperity, and military modernization, thereby making it possible for Russia to "say ‘no’ to America."

Economic and military clout, according to an October 20 Xinhua report, has enabled the Kremlin to take certain "high profile and tough" actions during the past year. These include Putin’s speech in February to the Munich Conference on Security Policy in which he slammed NATO expansion and U.S. foreign policy, the release on March 27 by the Russian foreign ministry of the "Review of Foreign Policy" that called for a new global security structure, the tough stance taken by Moscow in the case of the poisoned spy Litvienenko, the planting of a Russian flag on the ocean floor below the icecap of the North Pole, and the strong reaction to Washington’s plans to extend the missile defense shield to eastern Europe.

Occasionally Chinese media reports on Putin are accompanied by a photo gallery of the Russian leader in various flattering poses--dancing with a Hungarian beauty, in the cockpit of a jet fighter, in a Judo sparring session as a sixth-degree black belt and the by-now world famous shot of Putin topless, which carries the Chinese caption "Russian Muscle Man."

There is something appealing to the Chinese about the muscle-flexing Russian leader, especially when he stands up to the Untied States. In July of 2006, Chinese media gleefully reported how, at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Putin responded with a "frontal counter-attack" to the U.S. president’s call for greater religious and press freedom in countries such as Iraq:

Upon those words, a dramatic scene began to unfold. Preoccupied with his "democratic missionary ideas," Bush was unexpectedly interrupted by Putin, who retorted: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly." Shocked and red-faced, Bush managed only to mutter, "Just wait."

China and Russia resolved their decades-old border disputes in 2005. That same year, Putin and Chinese president Hu Jintao launched the "theme years" project, designating 2006 as the "Year of Russia" in China and 2007 as the "Year of China" in Russia. Indeed, as noted in a report in China Daily, Putin opened his annual press conference in February with "nihao," Mandarin Chinese for "hello."

In September, during their fifth meeting this year, Putin told Hu Jintao "we have achieved a peak in Russian-Chinese relations in recent times." And that point was reiterated earlier this month by prime minister Zubkov during Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Moscow.

U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph A. Mussomeli and
Cmdr. Joseph Deleon conduct a press conference in Cambodia.

Last Wednesday, at a ceremony in the Ream Navy Headquarters in Sihanoukville, the only deepwater port in Cambodia, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation delivered to the Cambodian government what People’s Daily described as "a batch of marine equipments [sic]." The shipment included four 46-meter patrol boats, three 20-meter patrol boats, one landing ship, and one 60-meter floating dock. According to Japan’s Kyodo News, the package also included radar facilities.

Worth roughly $60 million, the equipment was purchased with a soft loan from Beijing to help Phnom Penh combat piracy, terrorism, and drug and human trafficking. China also gave Cambodia six navy patrol boats in 2005 to help fight crime and smuggling in the Gulf of Thailand.

Last Wednesday’s delivery came less than three weeks before the scheduled visit to Cambodia by the USS Essex. As noted in a November 3 People’s Daily report, the Essex is to dock in Sihanoukville from November 26 to December 2.

This past February, the USS Gary paid a port call to Sihanoukville. It was the first time in more than 30 years that an American military vessel had visited Cambodia. A February 26 report in People’s Daily characterized the visit as prompted by a "strong China factor."

The report begins by observing sarcastically that while the United States navy "sails the four seas in length and breadth," it hadn’t been back to "these waters of sorrow" since suffering heavy losses in 1975 in the battle of Koh Tang. It goes on to say that Gary’s visit to Sihanoukville must be motivated by something other than a desire to "relive an old experience."

The explanation the paper offered for Washington’s increasing military presence in Cambodia is that it serves a three-fold purpose. One is to obstruct Sino-Cambodian relations; i.e., to counter the so-called "string of pearls" strategy that Beijing is reportedly pursuing. Second, to help Cambodia combat piracy in the Gulf of Thailand, thereby increasing Phnom Penh’s dependence on Washington for maritime security. And third, to enlist Cambodia’s help in the search for 74 American soldiers still listed as missing in action from the Parrot’s Beak Operation in 1970.

Judging by the tone of Chinese media coverage at the time, the February visit by the USS Gary occasioned a certain amount of angst in Beijing. China has been beefing up its own efforts to strengthen military ties with Phnom Penh. It is, for example, the biggest supplier of military aid to Cambodia, including a scholarship program for the kingdom’s soldiers to receive training in China. Last week’s delivery of patrol boats is just the latest manifestation of continuing military cooperation between the two countries. In 2006, the Cambodian army had built its general hospital with Chinese assistance, and the opening ceremony was attended by the chief of general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

China has also invested heavily in Cambodia’s infrastructure. Between 1997 and 2005, Beijing provided loans and grants to Phnom Penh totaling some $600 million. In 2006, during his visit to the kingdom, premier Wen Jiabao "opened a new chapter in Sino-Cambodian relationship" by pledging an additional $600 million in aid for the construction of a hydro-electric project, bridges, and government office buildings.

That sum is, coincidentally, just one million shy of the US$601 million in annual aid Cambodia receives from the Western-financed Cambodia Consultative Group.

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa meets with Chinese workers at
the Hambantota Port Development Project site. (Picture by Sudath Silva)

On October 31, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over a ceremony held to mark the beginning of construction on the Hambantota port, 150 miles southeast of the capital city of Colombo. Also present at the event were the Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka and Chinese engineers involved in the project.

One day earlier, China’s Exim Bank had signed an agreement to provide the Sri Lankan government with a credit of $360 million for the Hambantota project, which will include a jetty, an oil terminal, a container port, a bunkering system, an oil refinery, and other facilities. The total cost is projected to be around US$1 billion, 85 percent of which will be financed by Beijing.

Official Chinese media coverage of the project has been low-key. China’s online community, however, has been paying quite a bit of attention. An article titled "India panics as China plies open its southern gate Sri Lanka," author unknown, has been posted on numerous websites and blogs.

The article begins with a statement by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang that the Hambantota port agreement is commercial in nature. It also presents information and analysis gleaned from various foreign press reports, including this Asia Times piece, which quotes analysts as referring to Hambantota as the latest addition to the geopolitical "string of pearls" that Beijing is building along the littorals of the Indian Ocean.

The "India panics" article goes on to list other so-called "pearls." It observes that from Gwadar in Pakistan to Chittagong in Bangladesh, to Sittwe and Coco Island in Myanmar, Beijing has been involved in the building and upgrading of ports, naval bases, and surveillance facilities. It states further, without elaboration, that the "string of pearls" continues beyond Thailand and Cambodia.

The March 20 opening of the Gwadar port was the subject of much attention in the Chinese press. Reports at the time emphasized how Gwadar, as an "energy corridor" that will facilitate 60 percent of the oil and natural gas transshipments between China, Central Asia, and the Middle East, has raised Beijing’s "security coefficient" and its clout in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. One such report quoted the Asia Times as saying that Gwadar is a pearl that China has cultivated since 2001 because of its strategic importance.

A little more than a week later, however, the International Herald Leader, a publication run by the official Xinhua News Agency, ran a piece to "debunk the rumor" that China is set to construct a strategic "string of pearls." Tracing this portrayal of Beijing’s motives to the Pentagon, the article characterized it as a "new wave of offense aimed at 'demonizing' China."

Subsequently, on April 3, Global Times, a daily affiliated with People’s Daily, ran a story titled "The United States still suspicious of the Gwadar Port for no reason." The piece dismissed as "pure fiction" speculation by Washington that Beijing harbored "strategic intentions" towards Gwadar. China’s investment in what is now an economically thriving fishing town is depicted as having been based on commercial, rather than geopolitical, considerations.

Perhaps.

Last Wednesday, the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India held a meeting in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. This was the first time that the trilateral forum had taken place in China.

In the joint communiqué issued afterwards, it was emphasized that trilateral cooperation among the three "is not targeted against any other country or organization."

On the same day, People’s Daily and Liberation Daily ran the exact same article titled "Who says India is being lured into the ‘NATO family’ that the U.S. and Japan are attempting to construct?" It begins:

For some time now, America’s neo-conservatives and Japan’s right-wingers beset with a menacing Cold War mentality have been peddling the idea of an "alliance of democratic countries" and the "arc of freedom and prosperity" (i.e., the so-called "value-oriented diplomacy"). Of all the important countries they are trying to rope in, India is ranked at the top.

According to the article, such talk does not upset China; however, it has "displeased" India and put New Delhi in an "awkward" position. To support this assertion, the piece quotes Pranab Mukherjee, India’s external affairs minister, as saying during his recent visits to Thailand and Korea that "China remains an important priority of our foreign policy and a key component of our ‘Look East’ policy."

The article ends by urging America’s neo-conservatives and Japan’s right-wingers to abandon their "Cold War thinking" and their attempts to draw India into their sphere of influence in hopes of containing China. Otherwise, it warns, they risk becoming "the laughingstock of history."

On the heels of the trilateral forum in Harbin came a five-day visit to China by Sonia Gandhi, the chair of India’s ruling Congress party. Last Friday she met with president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao. She is the first foreign political leader to be received by Hu and Wen following the 17th party congress. Given that Gandhi is not a head-of-state, the Indian press called the meetings "a rare honor."

To underscore the "great importance" Beijing attaches to Gandhi’s "milestone" visit, last Saturday People’s Daily and China Daily both gave front page coverage to her meeting with Hu.

The day Gandhi met with Hu and Wen in Beijing, Xinhua ran a piece titled "Indian futurist predicts: China, Russia and India together may save the world." In it, Jagdish Chandra Kapur, publisher and editor-in-chief of India’s World Affairs Journal, is quoted as saying that only by uniting China, India, and Russia can the world "be saved from the brink of collapse."

The concept of a China-Russia-India "strategic triangle" was first proposed in 1998 by then-Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. While Beijing dismissed the idea at the time, there has been increasingly favorable treatment of the notion in the Chinese media.

In recent weeks, official Chinese media have devoted much space to the life and exploits of Che Guevara, as well as events in Cuba marking the 40th anniversary of his death, which fell on October 9.

In recounting Guevara’s credentials as a revolutionary, emphasis was placed on the inspirational role Mao Zedong played in his life, especially in the area of guerrilla warfare tactics. Guevara, "the Red Robin Hood," is portrayed as having been "nervous" and "emotional" in his November 1960 meeting with Mao in Beijing, calling himself a "pupil" of the "maestro."

Considerable press coverage was devoted also to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s October 14 weekly radio and television program "Alo Presidente," which was broadcast from Santa Clara, Cuba, where Guevara is buried. The fact that Fidel Castro telephoned Chavez during the live show was recounted in at least three separate reports in People’s Daily.

The two heads-of-state reportedly condemned the "hegemonic conduct of the United States" in the course of discussing Guevara’s legacy and the history of national liberation movements in Latin America.

Effusive in their praise of the socialist icon, Chinese media reports invariably portray Guevara as an "idol," a "hero," and a "legendary revolutionary." Significantly, Xinhua characterizes him as a "driving force of socialism in 21st century Latin America" that can "energize" the anti-American populist movement spearheaded by Hugo Chavez.

Beijing has been keeping a close eye on the "left turn" of Latin America and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) proposed by Chavez, "the primary South American tormentor of the United States."

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens its 17th congress today. Expected to last approximately one week, the conclave will set Beijing’s policy agenda for the next five years.

In the run-up to the congress, People’s Daily last week ran eight articles drawing on an online discussion with Chen Xiqing, deputy chief of the CCP’s United Front Work Department. The series covered topics ranging from the prospects for "multi-party cooperation" to the growing importance of the country’s "new social stratum." During the online discussion, Chen Xiqing stressed that it is the CCP’s long-term policy to promote qualified non-party members to ministerial posts.

This past June, Chen Zhu, who has no party affiliation, was named by Beijing to be the country’s health minister. The 54-year-old molecular biologist holds a doctorate from France’s Saint-Louis Hospital University.

Two months earlier, Wan Gang, 55, was appointed minister of science and technology. Wan holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Germany’s Clausthal University of Technology. He is also the vice chairman of the China Zhi Gong (public interest) party, one of the country’s eight legally recognized minority parties. Its membership consists of more than 15,000 returned overseas Chinese and others with overseas ties.

The appointments of Chen and Wan were hailed by People’s Daily as moves demonstrating the CCP’s "great vision as the party in power." Moreover, the fact that Chen and Wan are members of the so-called "new social stratum" did not go unnoticed by the official propaganda machine.

Most of the estimated 50 million people in the "new social stratum" are educated, high-income earners who work in the non-public sector. They include private entrepreneurs, technical professionals, managers working for foreign enterprises, the occupationally mobile self-employed, and members of the intelligentsia. They generate nearly one-third of China’s tax revenue and create more than half of the country’s new job opportunities every year. Worth noting is the fact that the majority of these individuals are not members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Calling it "a force to be reckoned with," last year the party’s United Front Work Department launched a column on its website specifically targeted at "people in the non-public economic sector." Its purpose was to help shape their thinking in order to further the goal of constructing, in the well-known words of President Hu Jintao, "a harmonious society."

As the entrepreneurial spirit of the "new social stratum" continues making a critical contribution to China’s economic expansion--thereby giving legitimacy to the CCP as the ruling party--promoting members of this group to ministerial and other high-level government posts seems a practical recipe for the party to put forth. It serves a two-fold purpose. One is that it helps to meet the "increasingly greater political demands" of the "new social stratum." And second, it helps Beijing project an image of openness as it strives to make progress "in the development of socialist political democracy."

But technocratic meritocracy is not to be confused with democracy. It remains to be seen how much decision-making power these non-CCP ministers can wield. For example, Gao Qiang, Chen Zhu’s predecessor as health minister, is now only a vice minister of health. Gao, however, remains the secretary of the ministry’s Communist party committee. In the ministry’s organizational structure, the party boss outranks the minister.

Last week I reported that Chinese cyber-police were keeping a watchful eye on bloggers who were cutting and pasting foreign press reports on developments in Burma to fill the information gap left by the official media.

The cat-and-mouse game continues.

Using the keywords "miandian minzhu" (Burma democracy), my search on the popular Web portal sina.com’s blog site over the weekend generated more than 45,000 results. Each displayed a caption, the first two lines of the text, the author’s name, the time of the last update, and the blog address.

An October 5 entry carried the title "Burmese military digs mass graves, massacre imminent." The first line of the text was displayed, and it cited a report from the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma that security forces that same day had detained at least 300 monks from two temples in Rangoon. When I clicked on the link to the full story, I received the following message: "Sorry. The blog address you visited does not exist."

That same message appeared when I tried to download a number of other stories, including "actual pictures of the Burmese upheaval," "Burmese monks will be sent to prisons in the north," and an entry whose first line contained a quote from Aung San Suu Kyi, "In Burma, the pursuit of democracy…"

One blogger, "Peking Man," was so miffed by sina.com's removal of his entry "condemn the Burmese military junta’s criminal act of slaughtering the people" that he posted the following message on his blog on sohu.com:

Dear blogger: How are you! This is the blog operator… We are truly sorry that your posting was removed without your prior consent. For that we say sorry!... Thank you for your contribution to the sina blog!"

Postings that have survived censorship include a report by Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao on rallies around the world condemning the crackdown, the Chinese translation (cut and pasted from the website of the U.S. State Department) of President Bush’s September 25 speech to the United Nations vowing to tighten sanctions against the junta, and a translation of a Japanese press report on the life and death of Kenji Nagai, the Japanese journalist killed in Rangoon. In addition, a video link to C-SPAN showing the October 3 U.S. Senate hearing on Burma’s Saffron Revolution could be accessed via the site of a blogger going by the name "cavahui."

The majority of China’s bloggers continue to stand firmly behind the demonstrators in Burma. Some see in the Saffron Revolution strong parallels to the Tiananmen crackdown.

For example, a Chinese translation of the October 1 speech to the United Nations by Myanmar foreign minister Nyan Win, together with photos of the Burmese security forces and the bloodied corpses of their victims, was posted with the words "utmost restraint," "mob," "ignored warning," and "turmoil" enlarged. The heading: déjà vu.

Another blogger urged Burma’s "haughty and conceited" military junta to engage in "self-reflection," while one going by the name "Grassroots" editorialized by adding an exclamation mark in the heading of the entry "China and Russia oppose condemnation; the UN can only express regrets!"

The blog from "Jeff" declares liberty to be "an inalienable right of man" and prays for the overthrow of the junta in Burma. "Sophia" mocks the Burmese military as an army that never saw a real battle but was nonetheless "incomparably valiant and commanding" when it came to suppressing defenseless civilians.

My personal favorite is a posting entitled "reporting to work after drinking should be prohibited":

I have always had a deep trust in the official propaganda machine, from which I get all the important news. But I can’t figure out the official media these days. Burmese protesters demanding democracy and the subsequent military crackdown are major events that shocked the world. Yet there was not a single word about them on the official Chinese television news… I can only surmise that the venerable editors must have been drinking excessively during the [October 1 National Day] celebrations and that in a drunken stupor they simply forgot to include them in the line-up. A new rule is in order: editors should be prohibited from reporting to work after drinking."

Last Friday’s "global week in review" in the Chinese on-line edition of People’s Daily led with "Fukuda assuming the position of prime minister; Ahmadinejad touring the United States with flair."

Buried in the middle of the right-hand column, just below a report on the September 26 collapse of a bridge in Vietnam, a story on developments in Burma carried the heading "September 24: more than 100,000 protest in Myanmar; the government eats its own bitter fruit." The posting is linked to other Burma-related news items, none of which mentions the regime’s use of force to break up the demonstrators earlier in the week.

Domestic Chinese media coverage of developments in Burma has been, at best, sketchy. The information gap is being filled by foreign broadcasters and China’s resourceful Internet users.

For example, on the blog run by the popular Web portal sina.com, a Time magazine article recounting the bloody crackdown has been translated into Chinese.

The same blog site ran on September 29 a report cut and pasted from Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao claiming that Than Shwe and other leaders of the junta had arranged for their families to leave Burma for Laos and perhaps Macao, a development that the paper suggested could be a "harbinger of a massacre."

The prevailing sentiment among those posting comments in Chinese cyberspace may help explain why the official media have played down the situation in Burma.

Burmese monks are being praised for "sacrificing themselves" by "standing up to guns and bullets with their mortal bodies" so that "the people may become the master in their own house." By contrast, Chinese monks are being ridiculed as "heavy-jowled and potbellied" and "self-satisfied" with the little they have attained.

Another posting features foreign wire service photos of rifle-toting Burmese security forces and demonstrators demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Further down in the display is a picture of a sign with Chinese characters that read "support democracy in Myanmar; condemn the violent crackdown" and, in English, "Taiwan supports democracy in Myanmar."

While these postings managed to avoid being censored, some bloggers have registered complaints that the "politically conscientious" operator of sina.com had deleted other entries about Burma:

Had I posted criticism of domestic Chinese politics, I would not have minded so much sina’s obsequious attempts to please the government. But now even comments on foreign events and politics are being censored…

Another blogger indirectly criticized Chinese censors in the course of praising the courage of the Burmese people:

"The Burmese government monitors people’s e-mail and other means of communication and blocks access to websites that promote democratic reforms… But the Burmese people did not bow to the enormous pressure from the government… It just goes to show that the wave of justice and democracy cannot be stopped by unreasonable restrictions."

While sympathetic to the cause of the Burmese demonstrators, however, China’s on-line population does not necessarily agree with the insistence of the international community that Beijing take a tougher stance against the junta. A representative view:

The Chinese government has spoken loudly. It wants stability in Burma and for all of Southeast Asia. It wants the Burmese government to deal with the demands of its people reasonably… Turmoil in our backyard is something that we least desire.

And, while decrying corruption in Burma, a journalist-blogger wonders "why so much is expected of China." China is caught in a delicate situation, she contends, as it needs Burma’s cooperation to curb the drug flow from the Golden Triangle. Beijing must play its cards carefully, because there is also the issue of Burma’s strategic importance to China’s energy security:

Should the Sino-Burma Oil Pipeline become a reality, China’s oil imports from Africa and the Middle East would no longer need to face the risks that come with being routed through the Strait of Malacca.

From NASA, an artist's rendering of China's
Chang'e 1 lunar orbiter.

China and Japan have both nicknamed their lunar missions after the moon goddesses in their respective mythologies. In China, the lady in the moon is called Chang’e; in Japan, Kaguya.

With the tension befitting a rivalry between such legendary beauties, the race to the moon kicked into high gear with the September 14 launch of Japan’s first lunar probe satellite, officially known as the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE).

Chinese media have provided extensive coverage of the Kaguya expedition, including field reports from Tanegashima, the remote island location of Japan’s largest space center. Feature stories have examined Kaguya’s scientific objectives and detailed how the world’s largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo flights had fallen four years behind schedule. The precise timing of the launch is seen, invariably, as a challenge by Japan to her Chinese rival.

Two days after Kaguya blasted into space, Sun Laiyan, vice minister of China’s Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), announced that China’s lunar orbiter, the Chang’e-1, had been positioned at the launch site and was slated to go into space by the end of the year.

Sun’s statement contained little new information. Beijing had indicated as early as 2005 that China’s first unmanned satellite to the moon was set for a launch in 2007, and Chinese media had reported this past March that the launch of Chang’e-1, originally scheduled for April, was to be postponed to the second half of this year. Also in March, Xinhua reported that the launch might take place in September. That remains to be seen, although there are indications that the launch may be imminent.

China Central Television announced on September 18 that production was nearing completion on a seven-part extravaganza titled "Optimum Challenge: Rushing towards Chang’e" that is scheduled to begin airing on October 1, China’s National Day.

On September 19, Jiang Mianheng, eldest son of former president Jiang Zemin and the normally low-profile vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced at a "mobilization meeting" for Chang’e-1 team members that the satellite’s VLBI orbit tracking system had entered its final phase of development.

This was followed by reports that the general public, including Hong Kong residents, would soon be able to purchase tickets, through a travel agency, to view the launch of Chang’e-1 from a hillside facing the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, located in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Tickets for the event, projected to last 16 seconds, are going for $800 yuan (US$106.67) apiece.

To say that the Chang’e-1 is a prestige project for Beijing is something of an understatement. During an August 16 on-line discussion with the Chinese public, COSTIND officials declared proudly that Chang’e-1 "is a scientific and engineering objective independently proposed by our scientists and engineers… and all scientific instruments are independently developed by ourselves." The mission also boasts many "firsts," including plans to obtain 3D images of every inch of the moon’s surface and measure the thickness of the lunar soil.

During that same on-line discussion, Hao Xifan, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration Center of COSTIND, reiterated that China’s lunar program has no military purposes and does not aim to compete with any other country.

A week later, however, Xinhua carried a lengthy piece on space warfare, predicting that outer space will be a major battleground in the future. The report attributes the prospect of a "war in the heavens" to the scramble for cosmic supremacy between Russia and the United States.

Subsequently, on September 11, PLA Daily began a three-part series on space warfare.

The editor’s introduction to the series begins:

More than 2300 years ago, the renowned Chinese military strategist Sun Wu stated in The Art of War: "The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven."

This past week saw a spate of reports in the Chinese media on the exemplary life of Gao Ming, an honor student at Peking University (PKU) who took a leave of absence to enlist in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Completing his two-year stint with flying colors, Gao is to resume his studies at PKU this November as a business major.

Internet chat rooms have been abuzz with talk about "the coolest dude at PKU." In fact, there has been so much coverage that it is referred to in the Chinese media as "the Gao Ming phenomenon."

Born in 1985 in the impoverished northwestern province of Gansu, Gao Ming lost his father in a car accident during his first year in junior high school. He and his younger brother were raised by their mother.

In 2003 Gao was admitted to Peking University, the most prestigious institute of higher learning in China. The following year, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2005, responding to an on-campus army recruitment drive, Gao became the first PKU student to enlist and was honored with a huge send-off ceremony.

In an interview with his hometown paper the Gansu Daily, Gao Ming credits his grandfather, a former soldier, with instilling in him a respect for the military profession. His own experience in the army, Gao notes, "has saturated my blood and marrow. Whatever profession or post I hold in the future, even if I take off my military uniform, I will always be a soldier!"

Gao is portrayed in various media reports as a young man of outstanding leadership qualities (being the only enlisted soldier to become a squad leader), physical fitness (finishing a 5K race in 18 minutes 17 seconds), superior intelligence (mastering in two days, as opposed to the usual one or two months, operational rules for missile testing), and admirable patriotism (having enlisted out of a "sense of responsibility" for the wellbeing of China).

People’s Daily, the organ paper of the CCP, has even featured "quotes from Gao Ming," where he is cited as saying he feels no regrets about his enlistment.

Soldiers have traditionally been accorded a low social status in China, as illustrated by the common idiomatic expression haonan bu dangbing (men of good quality do not become soldiers). The prominent press coverage given to Gao Ming is the latest expression of Beijing’s intent to change that stereotype in an effort to transform the PLA into a high-tech professional force from one traditionally comprised of ill-educated peasants.

Upgrading the quality of recruits has been a priority of China’s military modernization process since 1991, when the First Gulf War gave Beijing a wake-up call as to the importance of quality over quantity. That same year, the PLA began to recruit college students.

Universities, in turn, are offering incentives for students to enlist. For example, Gao Ming’s school will refund tuition and dormitory fees to enlistees who receive two Excellent Soldier awards. Enlistees will also be permitted to change their majors without having to take an exam when they resume their studies.

Since its inception, the PLA has served not merely as China’s defense force, but also as the military wing of the Chinese Communist Party. That is likely to remain unchanged with a modernized and better-educated force made up of a generation of Gao Mings. This past August 1, at a rally in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, President Hu Jintao made that quite clear by stating that following the command of the party is the "unshakable and fundamental principle for the PLA."

Last Thursday, Beijing announced the appointment of five new cabinet ministers. The personnel reshuffle came just ahead of the 17th party congress, scheduled to convene on October 15. The all-important gathering will set China’s policy agenda for the next five years.

One of the five appointments is the new minister of state security, Geng Huichang. Official Chinese media have provided scant information on Geng, other than that the 56-year-old native of Hebei province had served as a vice minister of state security before the promotion.

Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily, in a report titled "Under Geng Huichang, the Ministry of State Security Is to Strengthen Intelligence Work on the U.S. and Japan," describes Geng as "an expert on America and Japan" who once headed the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank that falls under the jurisdiction of the eighth bureau of the Ministry of State Security. In the same article, Geng is characterized by his colleagues as an academic who is "discreet in conduct and prudent in speech."

In a 2003 op-ed published in the Tribune, former Indian prime minister I.K. Gujral recounted how during a 1993 visit to Beijing he learned that, under the leadership of Professor Geng Huichang, South Asia specialists at CICIR were devoting their energies to the study of Islamic fundamentalism in Asia--a full eight years before the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States.

Geng, co-author of an article titled "America’s New Right-Wing Movement," is also described by observers in Hong Kong as an expert on commercial intelligence who delivered a lecture this past February on ways to protect and obtain commercial secrets. His appointment as China’s intelligence chief is seen as a signal that Beijing is set to step up economic espionage activities in the United States.

Geng’s appointment came less than two months after a controversial FBI advertisement appeared in three Chinese-language newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area soliciting assistance in counter-intelligence from the Chinese American community. Mentioning the Chinese Ministry of State Security by name, the ad ran from July 2nd to July 8th:

The FBI has many responsibilities. One of these is to protect our domestic security and civil rights. Chinese living here have often helped the FBI prevent subversive elements from penetrating and harming our country. In order to protect our freedom and democracy, we continue to seek your assistance. We would like to speak with individuals who have information about any intelligence service whose intent is to harm the U.S. We especially welcome anyone who has information about the Chinese Ministry of State Security to contact our office…

Beijing expressed indignation over the ad's "cold war mentality."

Separately, some Chinese Americans in this country found the ad’s message troubling. In response to queries from the Chinese American community, the FBI issued a press release on July 9th stating that it "is not asking members of the Chinese community to spy on one another or to spy on the Chinese government."

Chinese media reported in detail on the content of the original ad and the subsequent clarification by the FBI, and there has been much heated discussion in Chinese cyberspace about the subject.

The FBI links Beijing to roughly one-third of all economic espionage cases in the U.S. and has more than doubled the number of agents assigned to counter Chinese spying activities since 2001. The appointment of Geng as China’s new intelligence chief may signal a need for even greater vigilance by the FBI.

Chinese media do not typically devote much effort to covering developments in India. In recent weeks, however, they have produced numerous reports on the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal known as the "123 Agreement."

The August 13th issue of Study Times, the official journal of the Chinese Communist Party Central Party School, ran a lengthy piece on the strategic implications of the Agreement, under which the U.S. will provide nuclear fuel and technology to India. Aiming its criticism primarily at Washington, rather than New Delhi, the article calls the deal "a dangerous precedent" and accuses the United States of practicing "double standards" by making concessions to India while opposing efforts by Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons.

The article also presents the following take on the economic motivation behind the deal:

It goes without saying that the United States is the biggest beneficiary of the Agreement. The General Electric Company of the United States has formed with Hitachi of Japan a joint venture in India to build nuclear reactors. By GE’s estimate, this project alone will contribute to an eight-fold increase in its revenue between 2005 and 2010.

GE's current annual revenue is well north of $150 billion--an eight fold increase seems unlikely. And although China is not identified by name, the article suggests that geopolitics plays a role in the nuclear deal as well, with Washington "molding" India into a regional counterweight:

To promote America’s policy objectives and meet its global strategic needs, the United States hopes to bring India into its strategic orbit as a new partner in Asia. Its intent is to take advantage of India’s strategic location in South Asia in order to achieve a balance of power in Asia.

Official Chinese media have also been recounting with evident glee the strong opposition to the 123 Agreement by India’s leftist lawmakers. For example, this August 20th People’s Daily report, titled "Causing Discord, Indo-US Nuclear Agreement May Not Pass India’s Parliament," states:

The Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement was regarded as a virtually done deal. But then the unexpected happened – a chorus of opposition surfaced in the parliament. To this day, the United Progressive Alliance government led by the Congress Party hasn’t yet figured out where it all went wrong.

Beijing itself may hold the key to that question. The 123 Agreement has plunged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three-year old coalition government into its worst-ever political crisis, and elements within the Indian government are reported to believe that "the Left’s campaign against the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is inspired by Beijing." The Times of India, in an August 21st report titled "Chinese Whispers," notes that the deadlock between the UPA government and its leftist ally "bears Beijing’s imprimatur."

The Agreement must also be cleared by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which counts China as a member. While Beijing is obviously keeping a close eye on the development, it has not yet announced what position it will take when the 45 member states of the NSG meet to discuss the matter. Should India’s leftist lawmakers succeed in derailing the deal prior to an NSG vote, Beijing would be rescued from having to make a difficult choice that might put improving Sino-Indian relations at risk.

The online game "Incorruptible Fighter" was an instant sensation in Chinese cyberspace upon its debut on July 25th. Developed by civil servants in the city of Ningbo, in the prosperous eastern province of Zhejiang, it offered gamers a virtual world where they could hunt down, torture and execute corrupt officials, their children, and their bikini-clad mistresses. It was downloaded more than 100,000 times in its first week. The server capacity provided for the game (500 players at one time) was woefully inadequate, and on August 3rd the website announced it was taking the game offline for an upgrade.

Created with the aim of making a "lighthearted counterpoint to constant accusations of endemic corruption" in officialdom, the game’s roaring popularity seems to have touched a raw nerve. A July 31 article on the website of China Radio International (CRI) called the game "shallow, vulgar, and childish." On August 15th, the cutting-edge Southern Metropolis Daily reported that the website hosting "Incorruptible Fighter" had, in fact, been shut down "on orders from related departments."

As "Incorruptible Fighter" was giving rise to lively online debate over the propriety of this latest shot at rampant corruption, the communist party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on August 7th that 10 prosecutors from impoverished Anhui province had been punished for forging an invitation from Finland’s ministry of justice to visit that country.

The now infamous junket to Finland took place last November. Finnish immigration officials quickly determined that the document was a fake and the delegation, led by Xu Wenai, vice procurator-general of Anhui, was deported shortly after arriving at the Helsinki airport. The excursion, paid for by the Chinese government, would have taken the group to eight cities in five countries.

Xu Wenai is reported to have been removed from his post, and the organizer of the tour, Ye Bin, has been stripped of party membership and faces criminal prosecution.

While traveling abroad on phony invitations has become increasingly common in recent years, judging from the tone of Chinese media reports, this particular incident has proved to be especially offensive to the face-conscious Chinese.

Chinese nationals living in Helsinki are reported to be mortified by the prominent coverage given to the scandal by Helsingin Sanomat, the largest daily in Finland. The "face losing" factor was compounded by the fact that Xu and his traveling companions were themselves prosecutors and were caught in--of all places--Finland, ranked by Transparency International as the world’s least corrupt country.

But in China, corruption is so entrenched that in 2004 the central committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) cautioned in a policy paper that the anti-corruption drive was a "life and death struggle" for the party. In January the following year, President Hu Jintao warned that corruption was "the most dangerous factor to weaken the CPC’s ruling basis."

Perhaps even more dangerous than "Incorruptible Fighter."

Official Chinese media have given extensive coverage to the August 2nd planting of a Russian flag on the ocean floor beneath the ice at the North Pole.

Russia plants the flag, or a scene from Titanic?

Long on facts but short on emotion, Chinese criticism of Moscow’s latest attempt at territorial expansion has been muted and limited to quoting analyses in the Russian press that the fight over oil- and gas-rich Arctic seafloor may turn the North Pole into a "new battleground" between the superpowers and lead to "serious international consequences--even an escalation of the arms race and military conflicts."

Whatever angst Beijing may be experiencing over this turn of events has been expressed primarily by references to the negative reactions of U.S. and Canadian officials. For example, the following statement by the Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay is displayed in bold as the sub-heading of a Xinhua report:

This isn’t the 15th century. You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say "We’re claiming this territory."

Another Xinhua piece, "The U.S. Says Russia’s Flag-Planting under the North Pole Has No Substantive Significance," cites State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey as saying Russia’s action is legally non-binding. And an August 3rd report by Xinhua titled "U.S. sees no ‘legal standing’ for Russia flag-planting in Arctic" quotes Casey as saying:

I’m not sure of whether they’ve put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn’t have any legal standing or effect on this claim…"

Characterized by official media as "one of the important non-[A]r[c]tic countries that are nearest to the North Pole," China launched its first North Pole scientific expedition in 1999. Four years later, a second Arctic expedition took place. In 2004, China’s first North Pole research station, the Yellow River Station, was erected on Norway’s Svalbard Island. The mission of the Chinese scientists involved in building the Yellow River Station also included the construction of an Arctic GPS satellite tracking station and the creation of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the polar region.

Chinese explorations of the South Pole preceded its Arctic ventures. Since 1984 China has conducted 22 Antarctic expeditions and set up two permanent South Pole research stations--Changcheng (Great Wall) in 1985 and Zhongshan in 1989. Xinhua reported last week that renovation work on the Changcheng Station--at a cost of some $13 million--was to conclude by the end of this year and that the upgrading of the Zhongshan station was to begin soon. In 2006 alarms were sounded within the U.S. intelligence community over Beijing’s plans to install a high-frequency radar at the Zhongshan Station.

Meanwhile, China’s third Antarctic research station, this one on Dome A, the highest point on the continent, is scheduled to be completed by 2010.

The official website of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has been featuring a "hot topic of concern" on cultural diplomacy. Running concurrently on the website of People’s Daily under the title Cultural Diplomacy Propagates China’s True Image," it is a collection of articles on topics ranging from how to incorporate cultural diplomacy into the country’s pursuit of soft power to how to utilize overseas Chinese NGOs to globalize Chinese culture.

Of special interest in this collection of articles is a July 27th piece titled "Cultural Diplomacy Nurtures without a Sound” by Wu Jianmin, president of the China Foreign Affairs University and former ambassador to the United Nations. Wu defines cultural diplomacy as soft power with three characteristics:

1. It has a strong ability to penetrate and spread;
2. Soft power guides hard power;
3. Soft power is something that people love to see and hear and find easy to accept…The most important thing about soft power is to make people like you. Behind this feeling of fondness lies the belief that you are offering them something good that can help enrich their knowledge, elevate their achievements…

A 2004 opinion piece in the English edition of People’s Daily mapped out the subtler approach of cultural diplomacy as a strategic component of a country’s overall diplomacy:

The cultural diplomacy, along with the political diplomacy and economic diplomacy, are regarded as three pillars for the Chinese diplomacy…The Chinese culture is to "go abroad" by insisting the government as a leading force…

This determination to "go abroad" culturally was reiterated in a 2005 People’s Daily opinion piece in a thinly veiled criticism of the United States:

The time for Chinese culture to "go global" in big strides has come. Economic globalization is not tantamount to cultural globalization; in other words, there is no, nor can there be, "globalized culture" under a single value system in the world.

As suggested in a report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), declassified this past May, one way for Beijing to push its cultural diplomacy is to establish a global network of Confucius Institutes. Since the launch of a pilot program in 2004 in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, 160 such institutes have been created all over the world, including 13 in the United States.

With the stated goal of "promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching," Confucius Institutes worldwide are operated by China’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL). While there is no overt political or ideological element in the curriculum, NOCFL’s leadership is made up of top officials from 11 departments under the State Council, China’s cabinet. They include the minister of education, the vice minister of finance, the vice minister of foreign affairs, the deputy director of the state development and reform committee, and the deputy director of the information office of the State Council.

Official Chinese media have been conspicuously silent about a July 9th clash between the Chinese navy and Vietnamese fishing boats near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Singapore newspaper the Straits Times reported on July 19th.

From the BBC.

A group of Vietnamese boats fishing in waters near the Spratlys, 350km east of Ho Chi Minh City, came under fire from Chinese naval vessels on July 9. Military sources reported that one of the Vietnamese boats sank after the attack. One fisherman was killed and several others hurt… Military sources say two of Vietnam’s Russian-designed BPS-500 fast-attack craft raced to the scene but kept their distance due to the superior firepower of the Chinese ships.

According to Pham Gia Khiem, the Vietnamese deputy prime minister and foreign minister, the details of the incident are being investigated.

Despite official silence, the news about the shooting has been circulating in Chinese cyberspace, where there have been lively discussions about the latest clash near the Spratlys, the site of a bloody 1988 naval battle between the two countries. Internet bulletin board comments have ranged from smugness over how China “fixed” Vietnam, to calls for stronger military action against “the little apprentice.”

Earlier this year, in April, 41 Vietnamese fishermen were captured by Chinese naval ships in the waters near the Spratlys. They were released after fines were paid to the Chinese government.

Tensions in the area have been running high since March, when Hanoi announced a $2 billion natural-gas project near the Spratlys involving British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, and Petrovietnam. Beijing stated at the time that Vietnam’s action “infringed on China’s sovereignty, sovereignty rights and administrative rights.”

Chinese media and China’s online community were in agreement that the proposed natural-gas project was a challenge to Chinese sovereignty--a conspiracy by Vietnam to steal energy from China.

An April 22nd article on the Chinese navy's website accused Vietnam of “trying to follow Ukraine’s example” as it “gains Western support and assistance by taking advantage of Western hostility towards China.”

Other Internet postings recalled old grievances over previous Vietnamese “provocations,” including the 2004 Spratly tours organized by Vietnamese tourism officials, the renovation by Vietnam of an old airport on the Spratlys, and the participation of soldiers stationed on islands in Vietnam's 2002 National Assembly elections.

The earlier wave of belligerence in Chinese cyberspace subsided--though did not dissipate completely--with the June announcement that British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, and Petrovietnam are to halt the US$2 billion project.

As the economies of China and Vietnam continue to grow at breakneck speed, their search for resources to meet escalating domestic energy needs has given unresolved territorial disputes in the South China Sea an added strategic complexity. The fact that official Chinese media have been mum about the July 9th shooting suggests that Beijing may wish to prevent the incident from deteriorating into a threat to regional stability. But with energy security a main objective of China’s current foreign policy, it’s anyone’s guess when the next flare-up will be.

For about two weeks now, the Chinese-language website Chinamil.com, which is operated under the auspices of PLA Daily, has been promoting with banner headlines a special feature titled “In the Middle East, There Is a Chinese Peacekeeping Engineering Brigade.” Included are previously published dispatches by Chinese reporters embedded with Chinese troops on UN peacekeeping missions.

The reports describe Chinese UN peacekeepers in Lebanon clearing landmines and removing and detonating unexploded cluster munitions. There are “soft” stories as well, including one account of a Chinese soldier postponing his wedding in order to serve in the mission.

The online display also features nearly five hours of China Central Television video footage and some 200 photos depicting blue-helmeted Chinese soldiers performing peacekeeping duties.

China joined the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (UNSCPO) in 1988. The following year it sent non-military personnel to Namibia as observers of that country’s general elections. In 1990 Chinese troops began participating in UN peacekeeping activities.

Official Chinese media report that there are currently 1,546 Chinese peacekeepers serving under the UN flag in the Congo, Liberia, Lebanon, and Sudan. And as of this June, 7,293 soldiers have participated in 17 UN peacekeeping missions across the globe, including in Cambodia, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

This Chinamil.com special feature on China's UN peacekeepers was preceded by a four-day PLA Peacekeeping Work Conference in Beijing. Speaking at the closing ceremony on June 22nd, Major General Zhang Qinsheng, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA, noted:

…the active participation in the UN peacekeeping operations is… an important measure to display China’s image of being a peace-loving and responsible big country, and likewise an important avenue to get adapted to the needs of the revolution in military affairs in the world and enhance the quality construction of the army.

As indicated by Zhang’s statement, Beijing’s participation in UN peacekeeping is an important component of its overall diplomatic effort to project an image of China as a responsible superpower. Moreover, it presents Chinese troops with “an important avenue” to benefit directly from training and access to state-of-the-art military hardware, as evidenced by this account from a Chinese military observer in West Sahara:

…Global Positioning System (GPS) was all we could depend on to found [sic] the exact locations when patrolling in the world’s biggest desert. The US Army developed the system in 1973… Chinese military observers had no practical experience on the system. But helped by their good command of English and repeated practice, Chinese military observers mastered every technical details [sic] recorded on [sic] the system’s usage handbook…

On July 2nd, the Guizhou Metropolis News reported the results of a survey conducted in a "bachelors' village" located in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou. In this village of just over 2,100 people there are more than 290 bachelors and, of the 60 single women over the age of 20, all had left for jobs elsewhere.

Republished by a number of Chinese media outlets and websites, the report details how the gender imbalance has resulted in cases of wife-snatching, wife-sharing, and wife-buying:

Last year a villager spent more than 6,000 yuan (US$789.48) to purchase a wife in the western part of Guizhou. The woman ran away only 10 days after arriving. And to this day villagers are still talking about how a 26-year-old man once married a 46-year-old woman and was nonetheless the envy of all the single men in the village.

The report also warns of a "negative social and moral impact" unless the "wife shortage" is stemmed.

Even before the appearance of the July 2nd article, Chinese media had been sounding the alarm over the worsening situation. This past January, for example, it was reported that in one community in the southern island of Hainan, fully 200 of the 260 single adults were men.

China began enforcing its one-child policy in the early 1980s. In a patriarchal society where boys carry on the family name and are regarded as insurance against old age, parents--especially those in the countryside--have a disincentive to bear and keep female infants. By some estimates, gender-based abortions and female infanticide are responsible for 60 million missing girls in China.

As this disproportionately male generation reaches marriageable age, the combined effects of the one-child policy and the attractiveness for young women of employment opportunities in urban areas have made "bachelors' villages" a growing problem.

Last Friday People's Daily, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party, ran an article titled "Addressing the ‘Gender Imbalance' is a Task which Brooks No Delay." Citing official statistics, the report states that there are 37 million more men than women in China, and for the under-fifteen demographic group there are 18 million more males than females. The report went on to say that the gender imbalance has triggered serious crimes and social problems, such as bride-buying, kidnapping, and forced prostitution.

The July 2nd story has generated considerable attention in Chinese cyberspace. A posting on the website of the influential Southern Metropolis Daily invokes the Chinese classic Outlaws of the Marshes. Readers are reminded that the overwhelming majority of the novel's 108 desperados were unattached men who defied imperial authority because they felt they had nothing to lose.

Former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui has long rankled Beijing with his assertions that the self-ruling island is an independent country.

Xue Yi is arrested at Narita Airport.

On June 7th, the 84-year-old Lee paid a visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo to pay respects to his brother, Lee Teng-chin, who is enshrined at Yasukuni along with 2.5 million of Japan's war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals. In 1945, when Taiwan was a colony of Japan, Lee Teng-chin was killed in the Philippines fighting for the Japanese navy.

This was Lee Teng-hui's third visit to Japan since he left office in 2000, but his first to the war shrine. Speaking in Japanese at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, Lee blamed the media for playing up what he called a "private visit."

Chinese media provided considerable coverage and commentary on the visit to the war shrine by "the scum of the nation." When Xue Yi, a 34-year-old Chinese national living in Japan, hurled plastic bottles at Lee at Tokyo's Narita Airport on June 9th as Lee was to board a flight back to Taiwan, he, too, was hurled into the Chinese media spotlight. Internet bulletin boards soon overflowed with praise for Xue, calling him a "hero" who embodied the "true spirit of China" by "striking Devil Lee and setting an example for China's youth."

And while Xue was in police custody after the incident, roughly 20 protestors, with prior permission from the Chinese government, demonstrated in front of the Japanese embassy in Beijing demanding his release.

After paying a fine of 200,000 yen (US$1688.19), Xue was released on June 20th. In an interview with the International Herald Leader, a publication run by China's official Xinhua News Agency, the software engineer said he had felt compelled to do what he did because "otherwise I would not know how to face myself." The interview also revealed that Xue had participated in anti-Japanese activities in China before he moved to Japan two years ago.

Despite the initial support for Xue's actions, once it became known that Xue had earlier quit his job in China for a better offer in Japan, press coverage began to wane and the tide in Chinese cyberspace turned against him. The "hero" became a "phony patriot" who "tricked the true patriots" and was "a million times worse than traitor Lee Teng-hui." A question was pointedly raised as to why someone with Xue's expertise would leave the motherland to seek a better life in a land that he claims to loathe.

Less than a month ago, People’s Daily, the organ paper of the Chinese Communist Party, announced that Sino-Japan relations had gone from "ice to nice" since the two countries’ premiers exchanged visits. This was followed by news reports that China and Japan are to step up military exchanges, beginning with a visit to Japan later this year by Chinese defense minister Cao Gangchuan and a first-ever port call by a Chinese naval ship.

Against this background, China’s official Xinhua News Agency ran an article on June 14th cautioning that Japan has achieved a major breakthrough in the development of military jumbo aircraft and has in fact overtaken China in the field.

Japan's new C-X cargo aircraft.

The article notes that Japan’s unveiling of its C-X cargo and P-X maritime patrol aircraft prototypes came shortly after China’s recent announcement of its own jumbo-aircraft program.

The article states that,

The development and manufacturing by Japan of military jumbo aircraft has a profound and lasting impact on the future aerial security in the western Pacific… The Japan Air Self-Defense Force has ordered four KC-767 aerial refueling aircraft from the United States. Once they are delivered, the range of the C-X or the P-X will increase significantly. Japan’s P-3 maritime patrol aircraft have long been stalking the airspace above the East China Sea to observe the activities of Chinese naval vessels. With the support of aerial refueling aircraft, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force will be able to spy on targets along the eastern coastal area of China for extended periods of time.

Since Beijing declared in March that "China’s dream to have self-developed jumbo aircraft is expected to come true by 2020," there has been ample coverage in official media of developments in this area, including reports on the role of private investment in the project, the selection of Shanghai and Xi’an as assembly cities for the aircraft, and possible future cooperation with Russia.

China’s aviation industry has witnessed exponential growth in recent years. In addition to the economics of satisfying marketplace demand, there is an indisputably nationalistic element to Beijing’s jumbo-aircraft program, as evidenced by this March 3rd piece in People’s Daily:

Should the development and manufacturing of the jumbo aircraft prove to be successful, its impact on the spirit of the nation will be no less significant than the "two bombs and one star," no less significant than the manned spaceship…

The "two bombs" refers to China’s successful testing of a fission bomb in 1964 and a fusion bomb just three years later. The "one star" refers to the 1970 launch and reclamation of the Dongfanghong-1 (East Is Red No. 1) satellite. And the "manned spaceship" refers to the Shenzhou V, China’s first manned spacecraft that orbited the earth 14 times in 2003.

It will be interesting to see if this latest thaw in Sino-Japanese relations survives Japan's next major industry competition to replace the country's ageing fleet of F-4 Phantoms--a competition which may have a far more dramatic effect on the regional balance of power.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates succeeded in securing guarantees from Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev for continued U.S. use of the Manas air base. During a June 5th press conference in Bishkek--the Kyrgyz capital--Secretary Gates reiterated the importance of Coalition operations at Manas and their role "in support of a larger war on terrorism."

Airman 1st Class Michael Lepla digs out a C-17 Globemaster III
at Manas air base on Jan. 28, 2006.

The next day, People’s Daily, the organ paper of the Chinese Communist party, ran a piece titled "U.S. Defense Secretary Uses anti-Terrorism as an Excuse to Cling Shamelessly to Kyrgyz Air Base."

The article describes an American military bent on overstaying its welcome in Kyrgyzstan, despite calls by Kyrgyz parliamentarians last month for the eviction of U.S. forces from Manas. The piece ends with this observation:

According to published reports, the United States currently has troops deployed in about 130 countries. History tells us that once American troops enter a country or a region, they will be unwilling to leave. Take, for instance, South Korea, Germany and Japan. After more than half a century, American troops are still stationed in these countries. Just the other day the U.S. government indicated that it would follow the South Korea model and deploy troops in Iraq for the long term.

This sentiment reflects Beijing’s growing resentment over not only the Manas air base, but with this country's global military posture more generally. As noted in a 2004 article on "U.S. occupation of Kyrgyz air base" that has been re-published by a number of official Chinese websites:

Undoubtedly, a sharp knife has been positioned to the back of China by the presence of American forces in Central Asia. Once clashes break out over the Taiwan Strait and America decides to intervene, U.S. troops stationed in Central Asia would probably launch an attack from behind our back. Manas is only a little over 400 kilometers from Xinjiang in China. It would take American warplanes just over 10 minutes to reach Xinjiang. Therefore, it can be said that Manas constitutes a direct military threat to Xinjiang and the western region of China.

For obvious reasons, China has kept a watchful eye on Central Asia. While Beijing lacks Moscow’s historical presence, it has in recent years made considerable inroads into the region. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, China has launched infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars. These include a power station, a railway line, and a highway system. And of the three major powers vying for influence in the region, China is the only one that shares a border with Kyrgyzstan.

Official Chinese media have given considerable coverage to the growing tension between Washington and Moscow. A headline in Friday’s People’s Daily asks "At What Direction is the Russian Missile Test Targeted?" After noting that "Russia has expressed strong opposition to U.S. plans to extend its missile defense shield to Poland and the Czech Republic," the article concludes that "the answer is self-evident."

People’s Daily also ran a series of commentaries in May on what it characterizes as the "saliva war" between the United States and Russia. The paper takes a shot at American democracy in this commentary published May 23:

…ever since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been methodically containing Russia… the “jungle law” still plays a role in the management of international affairs. Doesn’t this reveal that the self-proclaimed democracy by some powers is in fact a crippled democracy?

And a May 22nd commentary cautions that the U.S. missile shield is likely to result in a "wrong distribution of resources":

…throughout U.S. history, allies and enemies switch roles, as many of today’s U.S. enemy target[sic] such as Noriega, Hussein and Bin Laden were once recipients of U.S. support.

Further, a May 18th opinion piece brings China into the equation and, alongside Russia, China is portrayed as a victim of American missile defense:

Although the U.S. reason for seeking overseas anti-missile bases is to prevent or stem missile attacks by the DPRK and Iran, the existing layout is, nevertheless, targeted directly and entirely at both Russia and China, and this is precisely the reason it has aroused the strong opposition of Russia.

A Chinese General reviews Russia's Pacific Fleet at Peace Mission 2005.

China and Russia have been working to forge a closer military alliance. In 2005, the two held their first ever joint military exercises as part of Peace Mission 2005, which was to be followed by more joint exercises under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Iran--an unambiguous target of American missile defense efforts--was granted observer status to the SCO in 2005. At the SCO’s 2006 summit, in a thinly veiled criticism of the United States, Ahmadinejad called for closer regional cooperation: "We need a strong powerful organization to protect us from unreasonable outside interference."

Were Iran to acquire full membership, it would not only come under the formal protection of the SCO, but it would also form an axis with Russia and China that might serve as a geopolitical counterweight to the United States in resource-rich Eurasia.

But the relationships between Russia, China, and the United States are complex and fluid. At the time of Peace Mission 2005, observers noted that the joint Sino-Russian exercises not only sent a warning to the United States but also presented an opportunity for Beijing and Moscow to inform each other of their respective military capabilities.

In asserting that last week’s missile test by Russia was meant to send a signal to the United States, People’s Daily may have neglected the distinct possibility that the test was also meant to send a message to Beijing.

Last Friday, the Pentagon released its "Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2007."

The English-language media have widely reported how a Sunday editorial in People's Daily by staff writer Xi Laiwang blasted the Pentagon report as "exaggerating, misleading, and one-sidedly playing up the 'China threat.'"

The Sunday editorial is actually a rehash of a dispatch published in the Chinese-language edition of People’s Daily on Saturday with the byline "Xi Laiwang, correspondent to the United Nations." The original article ran under the title "Is there no exaggeration in the 'Report on Chinese Military Power'?"

In it, Xi notes that at a DOD press conference on May 24th (the day before the release of the annual report) Secretary Gates "made a point of reporting happily" that the report on Chinese military power does not contain any "arm-waving" or "exaggeration of the threat."

Xi continues:

But after a careful reading of the 50-page "report," people will have no difficulty discerning that it is not dissimilar from previous annual "reports." It makes the same reckless criticisms of China’s security strategy, strategic military thinking, and military capability…One might say that the "report" greatly exaggerates the "Chinese military threat."

Xi further claims that the Pentagon report characterizes China as a "hostile country with a Cold War style."

Also worth noting is that on the same day that the Pentagon released its report, Xinhua re-published a commentary by Chinese Air Force colonel Dai Xu that had originally appeared in zhongguo guofang bao, a newspaper run by the PLA.

Titled “Chinese colonel: the only way to avoid a new military generation gap is for the PLA to spur into action to catch up,” Dai describes military modernization as a "life-and-death race that concerns national development and national destiny."

Dai argues that China cannot afford to lag behind in the "global military transformation," which, he says, "has entered its final stage of qualitative changes." He defines the "global military transformation" as "a World War carried out during a time of peace without the smoke of gunpowder."

Dai quotes Li Hongzhang, the Qing dynasty official who represented China in several humiliating diplomatic negotiations, as having observed that "foreigners take heed of power, not reason." Dai asks, "What does the word 'power' refer to? It refers to military power. To be powerful means to have reason on your side; to possess real strength means to have dignity."

That these nationalistic sentiments are shared by many of China’s netizens is suggested by the hundreds of angry postings on Chinese Internet bulletin boards, like this one found at the popular Web portal sina.com:

Revitalize China for the good of our nation.
Bolster our defense capability.
May the day soon dawn when we are truly feared by our enemies.

Raul Castro meets with Chinese defense
minister Cao Gangchuan this month.

The latest issue of Study Times, a weekly published by the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, carries a lengthy article titled "China's Military Diplomacy." The author, Lieutenant-General Zhang Qinsheng, is deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA with responsibility for the PLA's foreign affairs.

Zhang writes that "international security cooperation" is the guiding theme of Chinese defense policy and further states that "a modernized military that pursues a defensive strategy with the purpose of maintaining peace and achieving open cooperation has even more justification for advancing onto the world stage."

He offers frequent assurances that, despite China’s having formed military relations with more than 150 countries and established military attaché offices in 107, the "substance and nucleus" of its policy remain "defensive in nature."

Zhang notes that China has participated in a number of joint military exercises since 2002, but he also emphasizes Beijing's increasing involvement in international humanitarian missions: "The means to accomplish peacekeeping cannot be limited to 'hard power.' Political wisdom and strategic artistry are even better embodied in the application of 'soft power.'"

The Study Times article is an expanded version of a February interview with Zhang published in China Daily. During that interview, while claiming "Chinese defense policy is always defensive in nature," Zhang defended the PLA's modernization drive by explaining that "China has never joined any military alliance, never sought military expansion, nor built overseas military bases."

Zhang was less contentious when he met with Admiral Timothy Keating, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, in Beijing on May 11 (just a few days before publication of the Study Times piece). During that meeting, Zhang "positively appraised exchanges between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the US Pacific Command."

As noted by veteran China-watcher Willy Lam, President Hu Jintao, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, has made military diplomacy an increasingly important element of China's foreign policy, evidenced by the frequent high-profile trips taken over the past few years by leading military officials. Just this month, defense minister Cao Gangchuan visited Cuba, Argentina, Chile and Greece. These examples of military diplomacy reflect Beijing’s global strategy and have not only military, but significant economic, security, and political implications as well.

On May 9th, citing sources at the 301 military hospital in Beijing, the Times (London) reported that Chinese vice premier Huang Ju had died of pancreatic cancer. A short while later, Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, which has close ties to Beijing, also reported that Huang Ju had passed away.

Within the hour, and after the State Council--China’s Cabinet--took the unusual step of denouncing these reports as “totally unfounded,” Phoenix TV retracted and apologized for the story, calling it “purely a rumor.”

The Times followed by reporting both the government’s denial and the fact that its sources “expressed surprise at the denial of his death.”

The next day, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao reported that Huang Ju was in a coma and on life support at the PLA General Hospital (i.e., the 301 military hospital) in Beijing and that the State Council’s press office had issued an urgent bulletin to all media outlets, including websites, instructing them to use the “standard-issue Xinhua script” and to comply with Xinhua editorial guidance as to how news related to Huang was to be presented.

Meanwhile, official Chinese media have made no mention of the condition of the man who ranks number six in the country’s political hierarchy and who, as executive vice premier, is in charge of national economic and financial affairs.

Huang Ju, aged 69 and a member of the Shanghai clique, is a protégé of former president Jiang Zemin. With Jiang’s active support, Huang, a former mayor and party chief of Shanghai, was promoted to the Politburo’s standing committee in 2002.

Jiang Zemin, Huang Ju, and Chen Liangyu (who succeeded Huang as party chief of Shanghai) have formed the clique’s “iron triangle.” In September 2006, Chen Liangyu was ousted as Shanghai party boss for his involvement in a social security fund scandal. Whether Huang Ju was involved as well is unclear; however, there has been speculation that Huang was next in line to get sacked.

Huang’s demise--literal or figurative--would constitute a heavy blow to the Shanghai clique in its ongoing struggle with incumbent President Hu Jintao for control of the policy agenda. Reports of Huang’s death occur only months before the crucial 17th Party Congress, when Hu is expected to replace many of Jiang’s men with his own. The timing of the Party Congress may explain the sensitivity and confusion surrounding news reports of Huang’s condition.

Last month, ostensibly to further the goal of greater transparency, Beijing unveiled its long-awaited “Regulations on Government Information Openness.” These are scheduled to take effect in May 2008. Under the new regulations, the government will maintain its right to prevent release of state secrets. The health of a leader has traditionally been treated as a state secret. It remains to be seen whether, after May 2008, cases such as Huang’s will be reported any differently.

From Hong Kong's Apple Daily: Wen Jiabao on the left and president Hu Jintao knocking the Shanghai
clique over like dominoes, which show from left to right Chen Liangyu, Huang Ju, and Jiang Zemin.

Study Times, a journal run by the Party School of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, published in its May 1, issue an article titled “National Security in the Information Age.” The author, Gen. Xiong Guangkai (Ret.), is president of the China Institute for International Strategic Studies. Xiong is also the former deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA and, as military intelligence chief, helped shape China’s security policy.

To American readers, Xiong is perhaps best known for his 1995 threat to use nuclear weapons on Los Angeles if the United States intervened to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion; however, there is some indication that the substance of the conversation was simply misreported.

Xiong begins his Study Times article with the statement “information security has become an integral part of comprehensive national security,” and adds “the development of information technology… has presented national security--perhaps even international security--with many challenges.”

He cautions that “the abuse of the information network is likely to affect the political stability of the nation” and “ethnic separatists and religious extremists are using the Internet wantonly to provoke incidents and seriously jeopardize regional security.”

Xiong ends with a call for “greater international cooperation to ensure information security.” He proposes that the following steps be taken: 1) Promote the establishment of a “new order for international information security” based on equality and mutual benefit; 2) Promote the formation of international laws and regulations that can be applied widely; 3) Promote the building of a long-term, effective mechanism for international cooperation in information security.

China watchers in Hong Kong have noted that coming from someone with Xiong’s clout, these statements likely signal Beijing’s intention to pursue a greater global leadership role in information technology.

This is consistent with the September 2006 announcement in People’s Daily that “China has successfully built its next generation Internet with Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), replacing Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), to become the world leader in this field.”

In March 2006, while reporting that China was creating a new set of domain names based on Chinese characters, People’s Daily suggested that the move would mean “Internet users don’t have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States.”

Industry experts contend that China’s Next Generation Internet (CNGI), to be showcased at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is the centerpiece of China’s plan to take leadership away from the United States in Internet development. In fact, CNGI has been written into China’s 2006-2010 Five-Year Plan. Of course, China's status as the world's leading threat to information security may cause some to wonder if this is about "greater international cooperation," or just another in a series of sophisticated public relations campaigns to come out of Beijing.

An April 24th piece in the PLA Daily cautioning against the “corrosive effect” of foreign culture has been republished by several Chinese-language newspapers and websites, including People’s Daily, the immensely popular infotainment website sina.com, and china.com.cn, which operates under the jurisdiction of the press office of the State Council--China’s Cabinet.

The piece features interviews by PLA Daily reporter Zhang Xinyang with Xue Xiang of the department of strategy at the Chinese Academy of Military Science and Wang Ding, director of the political department at the Tianjin General Detachment of the People’s Armed Police.

It begins with a statement by Zhang that “like political, economic and military security, cultural security is an integral part of a country’s national security system.”

Wang Ding warns:

Using a variety of tactics, hostile Western forces are engaging in unbridled propaganda to promote the Western, capitalist world view, outlook on life and value system… Taking advantage of relevant agreements of the World Trade Organization, they export vast quantities of movies, television programs, books, and other cultural products. As they reap enormous economic profits, they also export their cultural values and generate an unmistakably negative impact on our social and cultural life…

This thinly veiled attack on the United States follows closely Washington’s decision earlier this month to file formal complaints against China with the WTO over alleged IPR violations and restrictions on market access for U.S. movies, DVDs, books, and music. China has vowed to “fight until the end” against these American complaints.

Xue Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Military Science cautions in the interview that globalization has made it “singularly difficult to defend against the corrosive and destructive effect of foreign culture,” and that “satellites, radio and television broadcasts, and the Internet…have created a series of problems for national cultural security; for example, the Internet has provided a platform for advanced countries to export culture to developing countries…thereby magnifying the negative impact of Western values… We must build a line of defense against foreign cultural corrosion.”

The expression “foreign cultural corrosion” heavily populated Chinese cyberspace this past January, when China Central Television’s English news anchor, Rui Chenggang, led an online campaign to have a Starbucks outlet removed from the Forbidden City because it constituted an “affront to Chinese culture.” A fluent English speaker, Rui Chenggang spent the 2005-2006 school year as a visiting fellow at Yale. His exposure to Western culture appears not to have had an especially “corrosive” effect on him--or perhaps such activism is precisely what the regime most fears.

This past Friday, the Chinese-language website eastday.com, operating under the direct supervision of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist party’s Shanghai branch, carried a commentary titled “An Absurd Logic: the Beijing Olympics and Darfur.” The author, Wang Weinan, is a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He writes:

Recently, in the Western world, a man and a woman inexplicably linked the 2008 Beijing Olympics to Sudan’s Darfur issue. First there was the March 21st statement by Bayrou, chairman and presidential candidate of the Union for French Democracy, who had been trailing consistently in third place in the polls. Out of the blue, he said at a rally:

“The Chinese government has been giving unprincipled protection to the Sudanese government... France should not participate in the (Beijing) Olympics.”

A week later…perhaps inspired by Bayrou – but then, it could have been an“original idea” she herself came up with – former actress and good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund Ms. Mia Farrow published an article in the Wall Street Journal in which she blamed the Darfur problem on China and called for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Wang goes on to declare that these “hideous” attempts to “vilify China” and “politicize the Games” have “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” And he ends the piece with this:

The “appeals” by Mr. Bayrou and Ms. Farrow did not exactly get much applause. On the contrary, no sooner had Bayrou finished yelling “boycott the Beijing Olympics” than the French public began taunting and jeering him…As for Ms. Farrow of the United States, let’s not forget that she was once an actress in Hollywood. Let’s treat her remarks as if she were trying to return to her prior profession (chongcao jiuye) by putting on a show.

The Chinese idiom, “chongcao jiuye,” used to describe Farrow’s actions refers to someone who, out of desperation, returns to a prior, often morally dubious, vocation. One of its earliest usages was in connection with the famous prostitute Sai Jinhua, who “returned to her prior profession” upon the death of her first husband.

It is hard to imagine that the author of the commentary, a researcher at the venerable Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, would be unaware of the genesis of the expression and the meaning it connotes.

What did Mia Farrow do to deserve such hostility?

Farrow’s op-ed piece, titled “The Genocide Olympics,” was co-written with her son Ronan Farrow, a law student at Yale. In it, they urged corporate sponsors of the Beijing Games to recognize that “one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil is their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics.”

They also cautioned Steven Spielberg, an artistic director for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Games, against helping to “sanitize Beijing’s image,” warning that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games.”

Four days after the Journal piece was published, Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao asking the Chinese government to use its influence on Khartoum. Soon thereafter, on April 6th, assistant foreign minister Zhai Jun traveled to Sudan, visited three refugee camps, and urged the regime to show flexibility and accept UN peacekeepers.

On April 16th, Sudan agreed to the deployment of UN helicopter gunships and 3,000 peacekeepers in Darfur.

During his visit to Sudan in February, President Hu Jintao reportedly urged al-Bashir to consider allowing the deployment of significant UN forces. However, it seems even more likely that by striking where Beijing is currently most vulnerable, Mia Farrow can claim credit for this latest breakthrough.

Mia Farrow in Darfur. Courtesy of Nasser Nasser / AP

The New York Times reports that there's a lot more talk about democracy in China nowadays:

Communist Party journals and the state-run news media have published a stream of commentaries by retired officials and academics on “political system reform” and the need for “socialist democracy,” including a bold-sounding call for China to mimic Switzerland’s worker-friendly democratic governing style.

Read the whole piece. Left unmentioned is the fact that the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing are leading to all sorts of cosmetic changes. You have to wonder whether substantive reform is likely to benefit or suffer, as China seeks to polish its image in anticipation of the world spotlight. (After all, in at least one case, a nervous regime killed dozens of protesters rather than be 'embarrassed 'on the olympic stage).

Of course, Henry Rowen of the Hoover Institution says that China isn't due to be 'partly free' until 2015, so I guess we ought not get our hopes up.

Splashed across the cover of the April 6th edition of the Chinese-language weekly Yazhou Zhoukan (published in Hong Kong under the auspices of the Ming Pao Group) is the provocative caption “Another Kind of Color Revolution.” The reference is not to a political movement along the lines of Rose Revolution or Orange Revolution, but to a grassroots campaign on a larger scale and of perhaps even greater significance: China’s Green Revolution.

The issue’s feature article, titled “Environmental Crises Have Given Birth to a New Democratic Movement in China,” details the concerted effort by the general public, NGO volunteers, lawyers, journalists, and a few “enlightened” government officials to bring about democratic initiatives through the cultivation of environmental consciousness.

Pan Yue, vice minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), is one of those "enlightened" officials. It was under Pan’s stewardship that SEPA launched three “environmental protection storms” in an effort to curb rampant pollution. The most recent, initiated in January, saw SEPA hit four cities with “regional permit restrictions” and threaten to close scores of power plants--some operated by the country’s four major power companies--unless they complied with pollution guidelines.

Yue, 47, is the son of a military engineer, and his ex-wife is the daughter of Liu Huaqing, a veteran of both the Long March and the Korean War and the former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. Pan’s maverick flair is often attributed to this “princeling” background.

In an interview with Der Spiegel in 2005, the year SEPA launched its first “environmental protection storm,” Pan declared that “the faster the economy grows, the more quickly we will run the risk of a political crisis if the political reforms cannot keep pace.” In the same interview, Pan bemoaned the fact that “five of the ten most polluted cities in the world are in China.”

A long time proponent of environmental activism, since 2004 Pan has also been a vocal supporter of the concept of a Green GDP, a measure which deducts the cost of resource depletion and other environmental damage from China’s current GDP. In September 2006, China issued its first Green GDP. But last month the country’s National Statistics Bureau postponed plans to publicize a second Green GDP report because, it said, the method that had been used was both “theoretically and methodologically immature.”

This is not the first, and probably won’t be the last, setback for “Hurricane Pan.” In a January 15th interview with the Economic Observer, republished on the website of People’s Daily, Pan railed against what he called a “protectionist regional mentality” and conceded that each subsequent “environmental protection storm” would require ever more strenuous effort.

With his various initiatives, Pan Yue is said to have ruffled the feathers of many, including those of former premier Li Peng, whose son, fellow "princeling" Li Xiaopeng, heads Huaneng Power International, China’s largest power producer and one of the targets of Pan Yue’s “storms.” For the past 13 years, Pan Yue has been unable to rise above the vice-ministerial level. Given the powerful enemies he's making as vice minister of SEPA, some observers view his prospects for further advancement as slim.

Just last month, the surprisingly competitive French presidential candidate Francois Bayrou threatened a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics if China continued to protect the Sudanese government from the international community's attempts to intervene in Darfur. Bayrou said that the Olympics were now "a political issue because China decided to bring its protection to the Khartoum regime."

The Chinese were outraged that Bayrou would make such an accusation. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that "the people who put forward those remarks are not very clear on China's position on the Darfur issue."

In what must be an effort to clear up that position for ignorant foreign leaders, the People's Daily now reports that "China and Sudan vowed in Beijing Monday to boost military exchanges and cooperation in various sectors."

"Military relations between China and Sudan have developed smoothly," said Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan at a meeting with Chief of Joint Staff of Sudanese armed forces Haj Ahmed El Gaili.

China and Sudan have enjoyed profound friendship though the two countries are far apart, said Cao, who is also vice chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission and state councilor.

China cherished the traditional friendship with Sudan and would like to further promote bilateral cooperation in various fields, said Cao.

Haj Ahmed El Gaili appreciated China's long-term support to Sudan. He said the Sudanese armed forces want to maintain and strengthen cooperation with the Chinese side so as to lift bilateral ties to a new height.

And now that that's been cleared up, I'm sure that we can all watch the Beijing Olympics with a clear conscience.

Between March 24th and 26th, Beijing announced new party secretaries for four provinces (Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Shandong, Qinghai) and two cities (Shanghai and Tianjin). Of the six appointments, that of political rising star Xi Jinping, 53, to be secretary of the Shanghai branch of the Communist Party, has generated the most coverage in the Chinese media. In a March 27th report titled “Xi Jinping’s Shanghai Mission,” Xinhua characterized him as having the “perfect resume” to oversee China’s wealthiest city.

Xi Jinping is the son of Xi Zhongxun, a founder of China’s Communist guerilla armies, and later a prominent supporter of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. The younger Xi is known for instituting pro-business policies while serving as party boss in prosperous Zhejiang province. As governor of Fujian, he advocated limited government intervention in commerce and courted Taiwanese investors by establishing the first guild for Taiwanese businessmen on the mainland.

Coming to the position with a J.D. from the elite Qinghua University, it is hoped that Xi Jinping will clean up corruption-ridden Shanghai. Xi’s predecessor, Chen Liangyu, was sacked last year for his role in the misuse of $474 million worth of social security funds.

Xi Jinping has his work cut out for him. On March 28th, a mere four days after his appointment, a group of local citizens issued an open letter to Xi after being evicted from their homes to make way for a development project. They demanded the ousting of incumbent mayor Han Zheng and other top city officials for alleged collusion with real estate developers and organized crime elements.

On the same day, another group, this one comprised of citizens whose houses had been demolished for the site of Expo 2010, announced plans to stage street protests over what they called “unfair compensations” for their property.

But Xi Jinping should be used to dealing with protestors. In 2005, while Xi was serving as party boss, Zhejiang province was rocked by a string of what are referred to in official parlance as “mass incidents.” One of these saw some 30,000 villagers near Dongyang city protest over pollution by local chemical factories.

Then in July, as many as 15,000 residents of Xinchang stormed the site of a pharmaceutical factory after a fatal explosion at the plant contaminated a local river.

In August, in the town of Meishan, thousands of residents demanded the closure of a polluting battery factory.

In each of these incidents, armed police and anti-riot gear were deployed to quell the protestors. At the time, Hong Kong media speculated that the negative publicity would jeopardize Xi's political future. That appears not to have been the case.

This past Friday, on the last day of the annual convocation of the National People’s Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao fielded questions from Chinese and foreign journalists in a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Broadcast live on state television, Wen’s meeting with the 1,200 journalists lasted nearly two hours. The questioners included representatives of AP, the Wall Street Journal, People’s Daily, NHK, China Central Television, and Financial Times.

The carefully choreographed event was moving along nicely until the reporter from Le Monde asked the premier about democracy in China. The English edition of Xinhua, which carries only a thumbnail sketch of the event and does not specify either the identities of the questioners or even the questions themselves, quotes the premier's response: “The essence of China’s socialist democracy is to let the people be masters of the country and enable them to oversee and criticize the government. . . China will take into account of [sic] its own conditions and build a democracy in its own way.”

The Chinese edition of Xinhua, which carries a "full transcript" of Wen’s press conference, gives a more detailed account of both the questions and answers. According to the Chinese transcript, the Le Monde reporter asked,

“Recently you published an article in People’s Daily. In it you stated that the socialist system and socialist democracy are not mutually exclusive. You also stated that the initial stage of socialism was to last another hundred years. Does that mean that China does not need democracy in the next one hundred years?"

Xinhua’s Chinese transcript records a lengthier, albeit still incomplete, reply from the premier. Neither reproduces the second part of the journalist’s question, nor Wen’s reply to it. The French reporter asked if Wen had read a book recently published in Hong Kong in which the deceased former premier and party chief Zhao Ziyang is quoted as calling for political reforms. To this question, which was translated into Chinese during the live television broadcast of the news conference, Wen gave a terse response: “As for the book you mentioned, I don’t think there is any connection between that and what I have talked about because I have not read it.”

While in office, Zhao Ziyang had pressed for economic reforms. During the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement, he was sympathetic toward the demonstrators and was opposed to using force against them. After the military crackdown, Zhao was removed from office and placed under house arrest until his death in January 2005.

At the height of the 1989 protest, Wen Jiabao was Zhao’s chief of staff and accompanied his boss during a visit with protesting students at Tiananmen Square. Wen is believed to have secured his political ascension only by subsequently distancing himself from Zhao.

Taking a cue from Xinhua, other websites, including the hugely popular Web portal sina.com, deleted all references to Zhao in their reports on Wen’s press conference.

Writing in the English-language China Daily, Xu Guangyu, a council member of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, offers his "point of view in the hope of clearing away misunderstanding" about the massive spike in China's declared defense budget.

Says Xu,

The growth is primarily caused by the sharp increase in the wages, living expenses and pensions of 2.3 million People's Liberation Army officers, civilian personnel, soldiers and army retirees. The pay rise came in the latter half of 2006.

Large numbers of officers from battalion level down and non-commissioned officers received the sharpest pay rise 100 percent. . . .

The pay of the officers from the regimental level up, civilian personnel and army retirees has also been increased by 80 percent.

At the same time, all rank-and-file soldiers' living allowances and board expenses have also been increased. . . .

The US military's per capita budget in 2007, for instance, is $383,000, the highest in the world. Next comes Britain ($324,000), followed by Japan ($175,000), Germany ($148,000) and France ($146,000).

In contrast, China's per capita spending on its soldiers is only US$19,540.

I spoke with John Tkacik of the Heritage Foundation to get a better sense of this issue, and Tkacik says he has "no doubt" about the veracity of Xu's claim that this latest budget has seen pay raises ranging from 80 to 100 percent for officers and NCOs. He says "there's no question they are trying their best to keep personnel" from leaving the army to seek higher paying jobs in the booming private sector. Still, Tkacik says that "virtually the only things in the public budget are related to personnel and pay." Further, the "increases in the public defense budget are pretty much mirrored in overall defense spending." Meaning that weapons procurement likely benefited from a similar jump in spending.

All of this obscures the fact that a dollar goes a lot further in China than it does in the United States. A significant portion of the $383,000 that the United States spends per soldier goes to things like health care, which is vastly more expensive in this country, but also of a vastly superior quality. If one assumes that the Chinese "black budget" is similar in size to the published budget--which is a big assumption, it may be much larger--one still needs to take into account purchasing power parity, which Tkacik says is likely on the order of 4 to 1. That is, for every $4 the United States spends on defense, the Chinese need spend only $1 to get the same return on personnel or equipment.

So when you double the $19,540 the Chinese are spending to account for the unpublished "black budget" and multiply by four to account for purchasing power parity, you get a number closer to $156,000, putting China very near Japan in terms of per capita spending. Tkacik says the best guess from the CIA is that the Chinese are spending close to 4.5 percent of GDP on defense spending. China's GDP in 2006 was estimated at $2.5 trillion, which is really more like $10 trillion when one accounts for purchasing power. Do the math, and you get a number that is much closer to the U.S. defense budget, approximately $450 billion compared to the Pentagon's FY 2008 budget of $647 billion. Considering China's force levels are easily twice those of this country, $156,000 looks like a pretty solid guess on per capita defense spending--nearly half what the U.S. spends for each active duty soldier, sailor, Marine, and airmen.

The Chinese are catching up.

Tim Johnson, the China correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, posted this picture yesterday on his blog China Rises. Johnson says,

the photo was taken here in Beijing last week at the National People’s Congress. And it didn’t get published much for obvious reasons. . . . My office assistant found three postings on websites making reference to “sleepy legislators” and censors had blocked all of them. When she used special software to get through the Great Firewall, this is what one internet user had posted: “Why did they fall asleep? Because people on stage just talk and talk empty stuff. . . . The delegates are only there to praise and praise what the speakers say.”

According to Xinhua, delegates no longer "praise and praise" what the speakers say, rather "In recent years, however, changes have taken place . . . Praises are now coupled with suggestions and criticisms." I'm sure as soon as the delegates woke up they suggested rubber-stamping the legislation before them and criticizing the United States.

Later this week, China's legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), is expected to pass a law concerning property rights. It will mark the first time in the history of the People’s Republic that legal protection will formally be provided for private property. The bill, initial drafts of which were written in 1993, is currently going through its eighth reading.

Supporters of the legislation consider it long overdue, as China’s thriving private sector now accounts for some two-thirds of GDP. In a March 8th article, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po cited Chinese sources as saying that the lack of legal protection for private property had resulted in capital flight worth tens of billions of dollars.

Opponents of the bill, led by Gong Xiantian, professor of Marxist legal theory at National Beijing University, succeeded in derailing it at last year’s NPC session with an open letter that criticized the proposed legislation as unconstitutional and betraying the fundamental principles of socialism.

The government seems determined to prevent debate from jeopardizing the bill’s safe passage this year. On March 8th, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper reported that publication of the March 5th issue of Caijing, China’s leading economic journal, was delayed due to pressure from higher-ups to pull its cover story, an examination of the property law debate. Eventually published on March 9th, the edition carried on its cover a story about the recent turbulence in the stock market.

But this is, after al, the age of the Internet. On the evening of March 4th, just hours before the hard copy of the original March 5th issue was to be released, a condensed version of the original cover story was published in the magazine’s online edition and picked up by a number of business websites. As of last Friday, all traces of this story had been erased. Those searching for it are met with messages such as “The information you requested does not exist; please try again" or "Erroneous information: the article you requested does not exist, or has been deleted by the web master.” Needless to say, the item is long gone from Caijing magazine’s official website.

According to a Chinese journalist who subscribes to Caijing and who read a condensed version of the originally planned cover story, the article featured interviews with two legal experts and an economics professor. It detailed the history of the much-debated and frequently revised bill, characterizing the controversy surrounding the proposed legislation as a tug of war between different power groups.

Meanwhile, Gong Xiantian, the professor of Marxist legal theory whose open letter criticizing the bill has been co-signed by more than 700 scholars and government officials, is griping about government censorship. According to a March 9th report in the Hong Kong tabloid Oriental Daily, the party committee of Gong’s employer, National Beijing University, has repeatedly asked him to stop soliciting signatures. The same article cites Gong as saying that domestic media in China are prohibited from reporting opposing views: “And they say this is a socialist democracy? It’s even worse than a capitalist democracy.”

On March 2nd, it was reported by both People’s Daily and the semi-official Hong Kong China News Agency (HKCNA) that the J-10 jet fighter is to be showcased in the “Peace Mission 2007” joint military exercises between China and Russia. The weeklong drill, scheduled to begin on July 18th in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, east of the Ural Mountains, is to be attended by presidents Putin and Hu Jintao. It will mark the J-10’s maiden appearance on foreign soil. This announcement comes less than two weeks after the first overseas deployment of the American F-22, to Kadena Air Base in Japan.

The HKCNA report cites analysts as saying that with a changing global security environment, joint military drills such as these can help promote understanding among the armed forces of different nations. The report acknowledges that the last joint exercise between the "two former socialist states"--Peace Mission 2005--had led to concern that the exercise was targeted at the United States and Japan.

A February 12th posting on the Xinhua website cites Russian sources as saying that Moscow was not receptive to the Chinese proposal of dispatching 2,000 troops to “Peace Mission 2007,” as only 450--500 Russian military personnel were expected to participate. The posting went on to say that details were to be hammered out in March.

The J-10 project received on February 27th the prestigious 2006 Special State Scientific and Technological Progress Award at an elaborate ceremony in Beijing.

One day before the award ceremony, the cutting edge Southern Metropolis Daily, best known for its investigative reporting, carried a commentary titled “The J-10 Fighter Plane and Diplomatic Clout.” The author, Ni Lexiong, professor of political science at the Shanghai Institute of Political Science and Law, suggested that advances in defense technology should enable China to adopt a more assertive diplomatic posture.

Quoting the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Zi, who said that “one should not reveal one’s sharpest weapon to the world; what one shows the world should not be one’s sharpest weapon,” Ni suggested that the high-profile unveiling of the J-10 should be regarded as a sign that there are more deadly weapons in the pipeline. He speculated that it may be as few as five years before the sophistication of Chinese jet fighters is on a par with that of the most advanced world powers. Ni went on to say that “land domination and maritime domination both rely on air domination. Developing at an accelerated pace advanced jet fighters and other aeronautical weaponry is an intelligent defense strategy.”

The J-10

On February 21st, sina.com, the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, carried a story titled “U.S. Air Force General Says China, Iran and Venezuela Should Be Regarded as Threats.” It discusses an article--“China, Iran Top USAF’s Threat List”--recently published in Defense News that describes in detail remarks made by General Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, at a February 8th Air Force Association conference.

Shortly after the story was posted, reader comments began pouring in. By Tuesday morning China time, there were more than 3,500 of them. The overwhelming majority bristle with rage. Below are translations of two representative responses.

The opinion of the four-star general speaks volumes about the hostility the U.S. harbors towards China. It would be great for China if Iran had nuclear weapons. The more countries there are with nuclear weapons, the better it is for China, because it would decrease the odds of a direct China-U.S. conflict.

The United States is deploying F-22s in Okinawa. Treacherous indeed are its intentions. We should act tough, like Russia. Aim medium-range missiles at the Okinawa airport where the F-22s are. If the F-22s invade our air space and violate our sovereignty, our medium-range missiles will strike the airport… By deploying the F-22s in Okinawa the United States is trying to provoke China and disrupt the regional security balance. That is intolerable. We should demand that the U.S. withdraw its F-22s; otherwise, we will deploy medium-range missiles in North Korea, or Venezuela, Cuba and Iran.

In a similar vein, the February 26th edition of People’s Daily published an article titled “In the Face of the ‘China Threat Proposition,’ China Cannot Choose to Remain Silent.” The piece was authored by Jin Yinan, deputy director of the Strategic Research Department at the PLA National Defense University, which operates under the direct jurisdiction of the Central Military Commission. Jin’s work bears the subheading “China never issues threats to others; China is never intimidated by threats from others.”

Jin Yinan contends that the “China Threat Proposition” has been circulating since the late 19th century, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882--a time when China was actually on the decline. Therefore, he argues, it is a notion that defies logic: “The United States has its military deployed around the world. Its aircraft carriers are cruising all over the globe. Its military budget accounts for half of total world military expenditures. It has more satellites in outer space than do all other countries combined. The United States Navy has announced its intention to control 16 strategic sea lanes, seven of which are in the Atlantic…two in the Mediterranean…two in the Indian Ocean…and five in the Pacific… This pretty much covers all major waterways in the world. Since the end of the Cold War, in addition to its so-called ‘surgical strikes,’ the United States military has engaged in the following large-scale operations, all of which can be characterized as wars: the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War.”

The article concludes with a declaration: “We have no choice. We must be pro-active, especially when others are trying to smear us. We cannot give up our right to speak… We Chinese never issue threats to others; we Chinese are never intimidated by threats from others.”

That should be a relief to any Taiwanese who mistakenly thought that the 900 ballistic missiles pointed at them from mainland China were meant to serve as some kind of threat.