Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘China’ Category

China foresees Olympics unrest

Posted by patriot on July 5th, 2008

We’ll see how the summer games go…

A senior Chinese security official says the Beijing Olympics are threatened by sabotage and unrest, state media says.

Authorities also moved to sack officials blamed for a riot that torched a police headquarters.

The trouble in Guizhou province in the southwest on Saturday came as China seeks to quell any signs of unrest ahead of the Games in August.

Vice Minister of Public Security Yang Huanning told police officials that the Games would be a target for forces hostile to China’s ruling Communist Party.

“The current international and domestic situation is full of complications,” Yang told the meeting, according to the People’s Public Security News.

“Especially as the Beijing Olympic Games draw near, a range of anti-China forces and hostile forces are striving by any means and redoubling efforts to engage in trouble-making and sabotage.”

China’s quake aftershock — 5 million homeless

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 10th, 2008

Beijing grapples with a post-emergency emergency of epic proportions:

At the relief operations center in China’s mountainous Qingchuan county, government workers are still in emergency mode nearly a month after the devastating May 12 earthquake. Powerful aftershocks, heavy rains and dangerous “quake lakes” keep them from devoting all their attention to their primary task: getting the county’s residents into tents.

But even as they work to provide temporary shelter, officials are looking ahead to an even more formidable problem: When the ground stops shaking and the dust settles, this county alone will have 250,000 people who will need new homes.

It is not just a question of rebuilding what was here. Some towns lost not only their buildings but also the land they were standing on and scarce cropland when landslides hit from both sides, said Xiang Zhichun a young public affairs worker.

“A lot of crops were buried, polluted and spoiled,” said Xiang. “After the earthquake there is not enough flat area to live.”

Qingchuan is but one corner of a disaster area roughly the size of Kentucky. And its population accounts for just a fraction of an estimated 5.5 million people left homeless by the earthquake. The number of homes needed may go even higher, suggest some analysts, based on Beijing’s announcement last week that some 15.5 million people have been “relocated” because of the quake — a number that the official Xinhua News Agency published without elaboration.

Educating The Enemy

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 4th, 2008

I once heard that the Japanese ships that attacked Pearl Harbor were built with U.S. scrap steel:

Do we have a responsibility to shell out some $8 billion per year in taxpayer money to educate over 60,000 communist Chinese students in American universities? That is, the very students who return to China to take jobs, factories and even entire industries away from American workers?

Apparently so, according to the U.S. State Department division that panders to wannabe Chinese students.

In a 2005 speech given by Donald Bishop, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, Bishop eagerly told prospective students how to game the American educational system for an essentially free education at taxpayer expense. He told them how to secure student visas, which programs to apply for, and how to get additional money to maintain themselves while in the United States.

Each year, over 20,000 new communist Chinese students join the other 40,000 students already present at American universities. Eighty-two percent (almost 50,000) of these are graduate students in mathematics, sciences and engineering. Those students who get Teaching or Research Assistant jobs find that tuitions are further reduced, in some cases to zero. Such opportunities are not available to undergrads.

Woman admits to spying for China

Posted by patriot on May 29th, 2008

Gee, how many more spies are there?

A Chinese woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping a spy provide the Chinese government with U.S. military secrets about arms sales to Taiwan.

Yu Sin Kang, a Chinese citizen living legally in the United States, admitted serving as an intermediary for the delivery of classified information from agent Tai Shen Kuo to the Chinese government.

Kang, 33, faces up to 10 years in prison when she is sentenced August 1 in federal court in Virginia.

Kang’s plea marks the third and final guilty plea in what the U.S. government has called a “significant” conspiracy to obtain sensitive information on U.S. weapons destined for Taiwan.

China and Russia sitting in a tree… (you know the rest)

Posted by patriot on May 23rd, 2008

Well, the two countries certainly have become cozier…

China and Russia sharply condemned U.S. missile defense plans Friday, taking a harder common line that reinforces an already strong strategic partnership during Dmitry Medvedev’s first foreign trip as Russian president.

Pushing forward their robust energy cooperation, Russia also signed a $1 billion deal to build a uranium enrichment facility in China and supply low-enriched uranium for use in China’s nuclear power industry over the next decade.

Rivals throughout much of the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have forged close political and military ties since the Soviet collapse, seeking to counter the perceived U.S. global domination. They have spoken against the U.S. missile defense plans in the past, but Friday’s declaration by Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao sounded tougher than before.

China: supply and demand is driving up oil prices

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 21st, 2008

Its simple supply and demand:

Soaring oil prices have not slowed China’s consumption of oil as statistics show that China’s apparent consumption of crude oil and refined oil products both hit record highs in the first quarter of the year.

According to statistics released Tuesday by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association (CPCIA), China’s apparent consumption of oil products composed of gasoline, diesel and kerosene rose by 16.5 percent year on year to 52.73 million tonnes in the first three months, and crude oil, rose by 8 percent to 91.8 million tonnes.

The “apparent consumption” represents the sum of net imports and output and could be taken as an index for the real oil consumption excluding inventory.

Solidarity in China

Posted by patriot on May 20th, 2008

Communists, unite!

One of the most destructive moments in Chinese history is bringing together — at least temporarily — this vast nation of more than a billion people, made up of disparate ethnic groups stretching across five time zones.

When millions of Chinese paused for three minutes of silence Monday, they personified the surge in patriotism and charity that has swept this country since a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake leveled large sections of Sichuan province in southwestern China.

Moments after the observance ended, chants of “Go, China, Go!” broke out in Tiananmen Square, where a Chinese military crackdown in 1989 left hundreds dead.

China preparing for nuclear war

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 12th, 2008

Analysts say Beijing getting ready for ops – beyond Far East:

Defense analysts for the British intelligence service MI6 believe China is preparing for the “eventuality of a nuclear war.” The conclusion follows evidence that Beijing has built secretly a major naval base deep inside caverns which even sophisticated satellites cannot penetrate.

China ‘may lease foreign fields’

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 2nd, 2008

China could lease overseas farming land to beat rising food prices, according to reports from Beijing:

Soaring grain prices have encouraged the ministry of agriculture to consider the scheme, according to the Beijing Morning newspaper.

Chinese enterprises would lease or even buy farmland in Latin America, Australia and the former Soviet Union.

The land in production could replace Chinese farmland lost to rapidly growing cities and industrial zones.

Follow the money: Olympic protest movement turns its sights on to sponsors

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 23rd, 2008

Taking a play from the Al Sharpton book of getting what you want:

The linked rings on every Chinese Coke bottle and the leaping athletes on each McDonald’s paper bag testify to the power the world’s biggest corporations believe this summer’s Olympics wields.

But having spent huge sums, the companies sponsoring the Beijing games are about to find themselves the targets of a new, more vigorous war on China’s human rights record by campaigners boosted by the success of protests along the torch relay route.

Yesterday a coalition of Tibetan groups warned Coca-Cola that it would be “complicit in a humanitarian disaster” unless it used its influence to ensure Tibet was dropped from the torch route. And tomorrow, Dream for Darfur will launch a critical “report card” on sponsors of the games.

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