Las Vegas Sun
Feb. 27, 2010
The Associated Press

China warned the U.S. on Thursday against any future arms sales to Taiwan and reaffirmed its decision to suspend military exchanges over Washington’s plan to sell $6.4 billion in military hardware to the island.

China demands that the U.S. “speak and act cautiously” to avoid further damaging ties and upsetting relations between Beijing and Taiwan, Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Huang also said there had been no change in Beijing’s decision last month to put off military contacts to protest the Obama administration’s decision to sell helicopters, missiles and other weapons to Taiwan.

“The U.S. side bears full responsibility for the current difficulties in exchanges between the Chinese and U.S. militaries,” Huang said.

Huang’s comments follow the publication this week of a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report stating that Taiwan’s air defenses against China were likely inadequate.

Many observers saw the study as justification for the possible sale of advanced fighter jets to the self-governing island democracy. China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has vowed to conquer it by force if necessary.

Such U.S. reports are an outgrowth of a law _ passed 30 years ago when Washington cut ties with the island to establish relations with Beijing _ requiring the United States to ensure Taiwan has an adequate defense against Chinese threats.

China resents all U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, seeing them as interference in its internal affairs. In response to the latest sale, Beijing, for the first time, also threatened commercial retaliation against the aerospace companies that make the weapons offered in the latest deal.

Speaking at a regular news conference Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang repeated China’s claims that the Taiwan arms sales undermine Chinese security and demanded the U.S. take action to repair ties.

“The people who tied the knot should untie the knot,” Qin said.    more …

I have confirmed with my friend in Communist China that this web site has been blocked by Communist China’s national Internet firewall.  Therefore, no one in Communist China can access this web site.  This is one more indication of the government’s desire to block any form of dissent n their dictatorial government.

Epoch Times
By Fu Ming & Mi Lan
Sound of Hope Radion Network Created: Feb 24, 2010 Last Updated: Feb 24, 2010

Forgotten by society and determined to sing out, over 60 homeless petitioners held their own “Chinese New Year Gala” on Feb. 5, a symbolic inversion of the dazzling and gaudy official affair held by the state broadcaster CCTV every year.

The petitioner’s version of the Chinese New Year Gala features plainly dressed citizens singing without accompaniment directly at a camera. Hailing from provinces around the country, they are introduced by a young host before coming forward to pour out their grievances through song.

“Because I’ve petitioned for so many years and not received an official response, I collected my experiences and composed a song. There is no fairness for people on earth, so I can only speak to the Heavens,” said one middle aged woman before beginning to belt out her troubles.

Their “celebration” touched a raw nerve with public security officials, however. Soon after the petitioners had uploaded a video of their gala performance to the Internet, police went looking for several of the individuals involved.

A Sound of Hope radio reporter interviewed Mr. Luan Qingyang, one of the organizers now in hiding. “Staff from our Municipal government and from the provincial levels came to my home on New Year’s Eve, and on New Year’s Day. They monitored the place I used to live for the whole night yesterday,” he said.    more …

The New York Times
February 25, 2010
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — A top Chinese military official reaffirmed China’s resolve to punish the United States over its decision to sell weapons to Taiwan and suggested on Thursday that there would be even greater consequences should Washington fulfill a longstanding request by Taiwan for advanced fighter jets.

The official, Huang Xueping, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, warned the United States to “speak and act cautiously” if it wanted to avoid further damage to bilateral ties, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Mr. Huang said that earlier threats to suspend military cooperation and exchanges between the countries “remain unchanged,” but he did not elaborate on what such sanctions would entail.

In previous statements, the Chinese government has said that it would cancel visits between top military leaders and retaliate against American companies engaged in weapon sales to Taiwan.

In recent weeks, Chinese officials and editorials in the state-controlled media have been fulminating over the Pentagon’s $6.4 billion arms package to Taiwan, which would include Black Hawk helicopters, communications equipment and 114 Patriot missiles. Earlier this month a group of high-ranking military officers urged China to dump some of its holdings in United States Treasuries.

The arms deal, announced last month but in the works since the George W. Bush administration, falls under a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1979 that requires the United States to make “arms of a defensive character” available to Taiwan.

China considers the island part of its sovereign territory and it warns that it would use force if necessary to prevent Taiwan from becoming an independent nation. The two have been rivals since 1949, when the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek lost the Chinese civil war and fled across the Taiwan Strait.     more …

Council On Foreign Relations
Interviewee:
Robert J. Barnett, Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Columbia University
Interviewer:
Deborah Jerome, Deputy Editor
February 17, 2010

Robert Barnett President Barack Obama’s scheduled meeting with the Dalai Lama this week drew harsh criticism from China, as did news of a $6 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan. The meeting occurs at a time when China is both more confident on the global stage and more concerned about a restive Tibet and other domestic issues, says Tibet expert Robert Barnett of Columbia University. “Both sides will want to avoid any serious rupture,” says Barnett, but a better understanding of each other’s positions would help.

All American presidents since 1990 have met with the Dalai Lama, yet President Obama’s scheduled meeting Thursday has drawn a sharp warning from China that the visit will undermine U.S.-China relations. Is China more irritated about this visit than it has been previously?

There is certainly a higher level of angry rhetoric from Beijing. There was even a possible threat (People’sDaily) on February 3, when Zhu Weiqun, a party official at vice-ministerial level, said that a U.S. meeting with the Dalai Lama “would be both irrational and harmful, [and] if a country decides to do so, we will take necessary measures to help them realize this.”

But in fact, behind the scenes, Beijing was far more disturbed by the previous presidential meeting, President George W. Bush’s presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama in October 2007–because that was the first and only time a U.S. president and the Tibetan leader had met in public.

So for Chinese diplomats, the real objective for the last six months or so has been not to stop the meeting, which their experts knew was impossible, but to get it to be private. That’s been achieved, because the meeting will take place in a private room, the White House Map Room. But that’s an obscure issue of protocol that, as the White House knows, makes a lot of difference to Beijing officials but none to American or Tibetan perceptions of the meeting. For China, the symbolic details matter, but for Tibetans in Tibet, it’s only whether the two people meet that is meaningful.

But there are other factors behind the angry rhetoric. China changed its Tibet policy because of its shock at the public meeting with President Bush in 2007. It upgraded Tibet to a “core interest” and began much more aggressive efforts to stop foreign meetings with the Dalai Lama.    more …

World Politics Review
By: David Axe
Feb 17, 2010

The last two weeks have seen a mixed message from Beijing regarding U.S.-Chinese military ties. The ambiguous signals are indicative of China’s continuing fixation on Taiwan and its uncertainty regarding its place among world powers.

In January, the U.S. moved forward on a long-delayed, $6.4 billion arms deal for Taiwan that includes assault helicopters, surface-to-air missiles and mine-hunting vessels. The deal had initially been approved by the Bush administration in 2008, but the new administration under President Barack Obama was slow to issue the individual contracts necessary to provide the weapons.

Under the terms of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. is required to provide for the self-defense of the island, which neither China nor the U.S. officially recognizes as an independent country. Taiwan and China split in 1949 following a bloody civil war.

Beijing has vowed to reunite China and Taiwan, by force if necessary. In 1996, the U.S. Navy sailed two aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait in reaction to Chinese threats against the island. Since then, China has spent billions of dollars buying submarines and anti-ship missiles meant to counter American carriers. But Chinese investment has not, as yet, produced a military capable of conquering Taiwan.

Citing the arms deal’s “serious harm and impacts on Sino-U.S. military relations,” Beijing announced it would cancel planned visits between U.S. and Chinese forces. This is China’s standard reaction to any U.S. military cooperation with Taiwan.

But Beijing’s move to sever military ties failed to halt joint U.S.-Chinese security patrols in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. And Beijing said it would allow the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to visit Hong Kong this week.

The mixed message is indicative of China’s internal confusion regarding its place in the world, according to security experts interviewed by World Politics Review. The experts were unanimous in describing Taiwan as Beijing’s overwhelming strategic priority. But they said the Taiwan fixation is complicated by China’s parallel efforts to become an otherwise responsible member of the regional security framework for Asia.     more …

The New York Times
By MARTIN JACQUES
Published: February 16, 2010

LONDON — The spats between the United States and China appear to be getting more numerous and more serious.

The Chinese strongly objected to Washington’s latest arms deal with Taiwan. President Obama accused the Chinese of currency manipulation, while at Davos, Larry Summers, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, made an oblique attack on China by referring to mercantilist policies. The disagreement between China and the United States at the Copenhagen climate summit in December has continued to reverberate.

Then there was the spat over Google’s claims that cyber attacks against the company had originated in China. The U.S. is increasingly critical of China’s opposition to sanctions against Iran. Now Beijing is fuming over the meeting this week between Mr. Obama and the Dalai Lama.

For the most part, however, the issues of contention are not new. The Chinese reaction to the Taiwan arms deal was entirely predictable, the only novelty being a threat of sanctions against the firms involved. Beijing’s response to the Dalai Lama meeting in Washington is equally predictable.

Mr. Obama’s statement about currency manipulation and the comments by Mr. Summers about mercantilism are a little different. True, they are not entirely new — the Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, accused the Chinese of currency manipulation a year ago. But since then, the U.S. administration had until now chosen to be more discreet.

Google and climate change are relatively new disputes. But we should not be surprised by them. China’s rise means that it is now involved in areas of the world and on issues where previously it had little or no stake. As China becomes a global power it is bound to come into conflict with the United States on a number of subjects.    more …

BBC News
By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Shanghai

One of the richest private entrepreneurs in China is to stand trial accused of bribery, insider trading and illegal business dealings.

The confirmation of the indictment laid against Huang Guangyu on Friday has come from state media.

Mr Huang founded Gome, China’s largest chain of electronics stores.

He was arrested on suspicion of share manipulation in November 2008, a month after he had been labelled China’s richest man.

He was placed under investigation and two months later, resigned as the director and chairman of the chain of 1,200 electronics stores he had built up from nothing.

He has been held in detention ever since.

Suspicion

The charges now laid against him are more wide ranging than those detailed at the start of the investigation.

The indictment said accomplices will join him on trial in Beijing, without naming them.

Two senior police officials have been accused of bribery in connection with the case.

The trial will be watched closely by the business community in Beijing. It will be the highest profile case yet involving a private entrepreneur in China.     more …

guardian.co.uk
By:  Zhang Hong

In contrast to Google’s stand against online censorship, Gates’s ‘business as usual’ comments betray China’s internet users

I am not surprised by Bill Gates and his close partner Steve Ballmer downplaying Google’s decision to retreat from China. I assume this is a business comment intended to placate the Chinese government and help Microsoft’s Bing search engine in the Chinese market.

Microsoft’s biggest failure has been its ignorance of new search engine technologies. This means its current biggest rival is Google – while people believe Microsoft has become too stuck in its ways to catch up with new technological trends. Bing is Microsoft’s rival to Google and China has the world’s largest number of net users. So it’s commercially correct for Gates and Ballmer to blame Google for being too sensitive.

However, they might be too optimistic about China’s internet environment, especially concerning online censorship.     more …

Epoch Times
By Gu Yunyin

A 55 year-old Sichuan man, Tan Zuoren, has been sentenced to five years in jail plus three years deprivation of political rights by the Chengdu Intermediate Court. This conviction for inciting subversion of state power comes after his arrest while probing into the details of the shoddy “tofu waste” school buildings’ as revealed through the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Mr. Tan’s legal counsel and wife plan to appeal.

The trial started at 9:30 a.m. and lasted for five minutes, in which Mr. Tan’s wife and two daughters were not allowed to enter the courtroom. Additionally, the over 200 supporters from Qinghai, Hunan, Beijing and other cities gathered outside the court were dispersed by local Chengdu police.

Before the trial, journalists from Hong Kong and Taiwan, attempting to conduct interviews, were interfered with by local police and had their cell phones taken away and not returned until video footage inside had been deleted.

Pu Zhiqiang, Mr. Tan’s defense lawyer, told The Epoch Times, “He was indicted for two reasons; one is for his publishing an article called “Witness The Last Beauty” to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on fireofliberty.org. Another is because he suggested a blood donations campaign for the Sichuan earthquake victims in Tiananmen Square to keep the June 4th spirit alive and was interviewed by Sound of Hope radio station.” According to Pu, Beijing authorities regard those activities as hazardous to its power, so he was charged with the crime of “inciting subversion of state power.”

Democracy activist Chen Yunfei and Chengdu writer Ran Yunfei, both of whom had previously expressed support for Mr. Tan, were under house arrest and unable to attend the trial.

Mr. Ran derided the sentence as “ridiculous,” yet unsurprising, given that the authorities “are capable of doing anything.” At the same time, he said “I cannot accept this kind of outcome at all.”    more …