China has established a number
of port relationships in the Indian Ocean that make it possible for them
to support increased navy operations. All these ports are commercial
operations, where Chinese firms have upgraded or built commercial ports
and run them. This makes it easy for the Chinese Navy to visit (for
repairs, supplies or shore leave for the crews). So far this “string of
pearls” includes Bangladesh (Chittagong), Burma (Sittwe and Coco
Island), Sri Lanka (Hambantota), Pakistan (Gwadar) and Tanzania (
Bagamoyo). The Indian Ocean has become a major trade route for
China and this makes the security of this route a major concern. This,
however, upsets India a great deal because of active claims China has on
India (especially along the Tibet border). There’s not much India can
do about the String of Pearls as China has become a major economic force
in the Indian Ocean and offers all the nations hosting a “pearl” very
attractive economic incentives to accept Chinese port building and
management efforts.
Speaking of Tibet, China has used its economic clout in tiny
Nepal (between India and China/Tibet) to put more pressure on
anti-Chinese Tibetans. For decades the Nepalese government was
hospitable to Tibetans fleeing Chinese rule in their homeland and even
allowed Tibetan anti-China activists permission to operate in Nepal. No
more. China has been increasingly generous to Nepal over the last decade
and now those favors are being cashed in. As a result anti-Chinese
Tibetans are facing increasing restrictions in Nepal. The Chinese also
played on the traditional Nepalese fear of India (which has long
dominated Nepal, but was never able to permanently conquer it and
incorporate it into India).
The Chinese Navy has been increasing its training missions
outside coastal waters over the last six years. In that period there
were twenty of the high seas exercises in the Western Pacific, involving
90 ships. Including the ships sent to work with the anti-piracy patrol
off Somalia the ships going on high seas exercises includes about 140
vessels. The Somalia missions have been excellent training, as they last
four months (versus a few weeks for the Western Pacific operations.)
The increased Chinese Navy activity is largely to train
sailors on how to keep other countries from exercising claims to
disputed bits of land far from the Chinese coast. This issue is
particularly explosive in the South China Sea. Long-term, China expects
to win all these disputes and its growing (and increasingly active) navy
is part of that plan.
China has been forced to admit that it is suffering another
outbreak of influenza that spreads from birds to humans. This first
showed up in 2003 and was called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
epidemic). The official designation was H1N1 and the Chinese tried to
keep it secret. The news, and the disease, eventually became public
knowledge and killed over 800 people worldwide. It did not, as feared,
become a deadly pandemic, as some strains of influenza do. The new
strain (H7N9) showed up last month and it took only a few weeks for the
government to admit that SARS was back. What forced this admission was
the Internet which, despite enormous efforts to control the spread of
such news, was not able to contain the information.
Something like SARS is worrisome for Chinese, and the world.
For thousands of year, densely populated China has been the source of
new epidemic diseases. Chinese public health systems are still rather
primitive, and the government does not like to share health news with
foreigners. But what is known is that there are epidemics in China. Some
are old standbys, like Mumps are still killing on a large scale. Others
are new and unknown, like SARS. In the past, many major infectious
diseases got their start in Chinese swine, and then leaped to humans
worldwide. This is still happening.
April 15, 2013: China denied that it was sending more troops
to the North Korean border. That doesn’t mean they aren’t, just that the
official line is they are not. Locals are reporting increased Chinese
military activity along the border. This means more patrols and some
training exercises, apparently to deal with a large movement of refugees
from North Korea.
April 14, 2013: Chinese leaders told visiting American senior
officials that the two countries can cooperate to persuade North Korea
to halt its nuclear weapons program. There was no mention of exactly
what China would do but the implication was that the Chinese would do
more to get North Korea to behave and they would do some of it in
cooperation with the United States. This could be a big help to American
intelligence, because North Korea is the strictest police states on the
planet.
Establishing an espionage network there has always been
extremely difficult and apparently the Americans are highly dependent on
South Korea, and now China, for better intel on what is going on inside
North Korea. China has always had the best espionage network because
China came to the aid of North Korea in 1950 after the North Korean
invasion of South Korea backfired. Ever since then China has been a
major trading partner and some Chinese were always able to move about
more freely than any other foreigners (even the Russians, who kept North
Korea solvent until 1991). North Korea will occasionally crack down on
Chinese inside North Korea (especially those engaged in illegal stuff)
but that has never kept Chinese out of the country. To take advantage of
this Chinese intelligence officials regularly question Chinese who have
been in North Korea. By doing that they have gathered an enormous
quantity of data on what is going on. South Korea, by virtue of the
steady stream of North Korea refugees (25,000 since 1953, most of them
in the last decade) reaching South Korea, and the ability to communicate
with the several hundred thousand North Korean refugees living in
northeast China has also compiled a lot of useful stuff. The U.S. has
access to the South Korean network, but China has not been so
accommodating. If that has changed, the Americans are now in a better
position to cope with whatever new insanity the North Korean might
create.
China does not like to publicly criticize an ally and has been
low-key in its public comments to North Korea over the current
unpleasantness. But China has other ways to send a stern public message
to the North Korean leadership. China has ordered its Internet media
operatives to say what they think about what is going on in North Korea.
As a result popular Chinese Internet personalities are saying what the
government prefers not to say (that the North Korean leadership is
acting like maniacs).
Chinese Internet commentators are often local
celebrities who are allowed to spout on their website or microblog (the
tightly controlled Chinese version of Twitter) as long as they do not
say anything the government censors do not approve of. The Chinese
people understand how this works and know which blog posts are crap and
which are sincere. The jabs at the Boy General are largely sincere, with
the posters saying what a lot of Chinese think about North Korea.
Yet China is unwilling, or unable, to actually replace the
current North Korean government. That attitude may be changing. Since
the Cold War (and Russian subsidies that kept the economy afloat) ended
in 1991 China has picked up some of the slack. China has since become
unhappy with the incompetent leadership in North Korea as the Kim
dynasty refuses to undergo the kind of economic reform that has kept the
Chinese Communists comfortably in power. Staging a coup in North Korea
has always been a possibility but the paranoid (for good reason in this
case) North Korea leadership has made it difficult for China to recruit
enough North Korean officials to make this feasible. That said, the
potential is still there and China could still go this route.
Many North Koreans believe that the Chinese will take over if
it appears that the North Korean government is about to fall apart or
otherwise become dangerous to China. The Chinese plan apparently
includes installing pro-Chinese North Koreans as head of a new "North
Korean" government, and instituting the kind of economic reforms they
have been urging the North Korean to undertake for over a decade. The
Chinese do not want North Korea to merge with South Korea, nor do they
want North Korea to collapse (and send millions of starving refugees
into northern China) into chaos. China and South Korea both want North
Korea to stay independent, and harmless. Thus China is willing to
unofficially annex North Korea, knowing that the South Koreans would go
along with this as long as the fiction of North Korean independence was
maintained. South Korea won't admit this, but most South Koreans know
that absorbing North Korea would put a big dent in South Korean living
standards. That is more unpopular than any other outcome. While all
Koreans would like a united Korea, far fewer are willing to pay the
price.
April 9, 2013: The former head of the state owned Chinese
railroad, Liu Zhijun, was indicted for corruption. This misbehavior was
long suspected, especially after some embarrassing accidents (especially
one involving the high profile “bullet train”) and the public demand
for answers soon led to discoveries of corruption, lots of corruption.
While the government is officially behind anti-corruption efforts it is
no secret that many powerful officials are able to be obviously corrupt
(living far beyond their official compensation) and are not touched by
investigations. This is becoming a widespread popular issue that the
government refuses to acknowledge. Those Chinese that press this issue
publicly are arrested. The government is willing to go after lower
ranking officials, but senior people only get prosecuted if their
illegal activities become widely known. This attitude is very unpopular
with most Chinese and the government is slowly being forced to deal with
it. Another issue creating growing public unrest is the air pollution
in urban areas. This is believed to cause over a million premature
deaths a year and the censors are not able to keep Chinese from knowing
this, or discussing it. Senior officials can buy expensive air
filtration systems for their homes and offices, but they and their
families cannot completely escape the dirty air. Solution would be
expensive and politically unpopular and public pressure is making
avoidance of the issue untenable.
April 7, 2013: China made its first public criticism of North
Korea regarding the extreme bellicosity the North Koreans (threats of
war against South Korea and the United States) have been indulging in
lately. China tried letting North Korea know of their displeasure
quietly, but that had no noticeable effect.
April 4, 2013: Responding to increasing incidents of luxury
cars carrying military license plates getting involved in accidents or
criminal acts China has made it illegal for anyone to put military
plates on most civilian cars. This is yet another effort to crack down
on the manufacture and use of fake (or real) military ID by civilians.
The new rules are meant to halt incidents where the kin of corrupt
military officers driving around family luxury cars equipped with
military plates.
Two years ago
China increased the penalties for civilians caught using
military uniforms, or forged military documents (including license
plates). Penalties were increased to ten years in jail for this sort of
thing. Previous penalties (often aided by a bribe or two) amounted to a
slap on the wrist. The problem, especially the use of forged license
plates, is believed to cost the government over $150 million a year in
lost taxes and fees. These rules were aimed mostly at criminals, but
there are more embarrassing incidents involving the children of generals
and admirals.
It was seven years ago that China first made a major effort to
deal with this problem (gangsters pretending to be soldiers). In China,
the military is something of a state-within-a-state. Civil officials,
including police, are discouraged from interfering with military
personnel, unless they are very obviously doing something illegal. This
extends to off-duty military personnel driving military vehicles.
Actually, any vehicle with military license plates qualifies. Several
gangs discovered that stolen, or counterfeit, military license plates
conferred a bit of immunity on whoever was driving a vehicle with such
plates. Eventually, the police caught on. So, back in 2006, the
government mobilized 20,000 personnel from the army and police to man
checkpoints, and check for counterfeit or stolen military plates. In two
months, this effort seized over a thousand stolen or counterfeit
plates. In addition, 775 vehicles were seized and 123 people were
arrested.
The gangs often supplied the names of the officers who owned
the stolen plates, to better enable the new owners to get past military
or police security while using the stolen plates. As a result of all
this, new procedures were enacted, to make it more difficult to use
counterfeit or stolen military plates. The gangsters and corrupt
officers found ways around this, and the fakes continued to flourish.
Despite past new laws and orders to "crack down" the use of fake
military ID problem continues. The fact that public exhortations to
enforce the old laws, and the new punishments, was ignored, tells you
something about the resilience of corruption in China. This is another
reminder to the Chinese people that their government is not very good at
fighting corruption. The average Chinese gets reminded of this in a
very personal way on a regular basis.
April 3, 2013: Last year, for the first time since 1998,
world military spending declined (by about half a percent to $1.75
trillion). Even the U.S. cut spending by six percent. But Chinese
spending increased, as it has for two decades, and is now north of $100
billion.
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