Free Republic

Zimbabwe’s EnablerBy Brett D. Schaefer and John J. Tkacik, Jr.The Heritage Foundation | 7/17/2008 For decades, China has been a stalwart ally of Robert Mugabe. This relationship began in the 1970s, when China armed Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) guerrillas against white rule in Southern Rhodesia.[1] Subsequently, it was no surprise when China and Russia vetoed a July 12 United Nations Security Council resolution to sanction Mugabe and key figures in his government for their role in unleashing a campaign of violence and intimidation that forced opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangarai to withdraw from last month's Zimbabwean run-off...

A high-level Chinese military source secretly disclosed last week that the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province caused a chain-reaction of explosions in the Sichuan mountain areas. The explosions destroyed Chinese army's largest armory, new weapon test bases and part of nuclear facilities including several nuclear warheads. This information is considered China's top military secret. After the earthquake, Chinese authorities had ignored the disaster victim's initial calls for help. Only after the first critical 72 hours had passed did the authorities allow international aid to be delivered to the disaster region. Military analysts believe that this delay occurred because Mianyang City...

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure." What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the...

Lawmakes are urging everyone on Capitol Hill to have their computers checked for malware after discovering that people working from inside China hacked into multiple congressional machines and accessed locations of Chinese dissidents and other sensitive data. Virginia Representative Frank Wolf said four of his PCs were compromised, beginning in August 2006. New Jersey Representative Chris Smith, said two of his machines were hacked in December 2006 and March 2007. Both congressmen, who are long-time critics of China's record on human rights, said the PCs of other lawmakers had also been breached but declined to give names. Following the attacks...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- 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. Don't Miss Kang's plea marks the third and final guilty plea in what the U.S. government has called a "significant" conspiracy to...

Commercial satellite imagery has revealed an extensive nuclear missile site in central China with nearly sixty launch pads for medium-range missiles capable of striking Russia or India, a researcher said Thursday."The US government often highlights China's deployment of new mobile missiles as a concern but keeps the details secret, so the discovery of the deployment area provides the first opportunity for the public to better understand how China operates its mobile ballistic missiles," he wrote."From these launch pads DF-21 missiles would be within range of southern Russia and northern India (including New Delhi), but not Japan, Taiwan or Guam," he...

POLICE in China have shot dead an alleged Tibetan independence "insurgent" in northwestern China, state press reports. It is the first official admission that authorities have killed anyone during recent unrest. A police oficer was also killed in the gunfight between the suspected insurgents and security officials. Xinhua said there had been a riot in Qinghai's Dari County incited by "a handful of people alleged to be insurgents seeking Tibetan independence, following anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa in March. "After a month-long investigation, the police moved on Monday to arrest the suspected leader. The suspect resisted arrest and gunfire broke out,"...

THE Canberra leg of the Olympic torch relay has been declared a success, despite skirmishes between police and Chinese guards and clashes between protesters. Olympic swimming legend Ian Thorpe, flanked by dozens of police, took the torch to the finish line in Commonwealth Park and lit the community cauldron, which quickly went out. The Chinese torch attendants moved in to relight the cauldron with the Olympic flame. Thorpe looked slightly sheepish after the cauldron went out so soon after he lit with his torch. "It was very exciting ... it was incredible,'' Thorpe said after completing his first torch relay,...

China's national offshore oil corporation declared it is willing to finalize talks with Iran on North Pars gas field. The company said it keeps holding talks with Iran's national gas company on a gas deal worth 16 billion dollars to put it into practice. The two companies signed a memorandum last year to expand gas reserves of the North Pars gas field where as the 16-billion dollar agreement was postponed to be signed through what called international sensitivities. Under the initial agreement on North Pars gas field contract, the Chinese company was to buy 10 million tons of Iran's liquefied...

Bristling at criticism in the run-up to the Summer Olympics, China is lashing back at its foreign critics — by name. Earlier this week, the state Xinhua news agency called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “disgusting.” And on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu lambasted a CNN commentator, Jack Cafferty, for his “vicious” commentary on China. “We solemnly request that CNN, and Cafferty himself, take back the malicious remarks and apologize to the Chinese people,” Jiang said at a news briefing.

When the Olympic torch was carried through Paris, the Chinese scored a propaganda coup when a group of Tibetan protesters attacked a young woman in a wheelchair who was, at that time, bearing the torch. One of the protesters got through the French police and actually wrestled the woman for the torch, but she fended him off until he was pulled away by policemen. This photo of the attack by the protester, who sported a Tibetan flag on his head, was widely publicized around the world, especially in China: The pretty young woman, Jin Jing, became an instant heroine: A...

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda. He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay. Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him...

BEIJING (AFP) - China bluntly told the world Olympics chief Thursday to keep out of politics, in a tart exchange on human rights following days of protests that have shadowed the Olympic torch around the world. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said the Games were in "crisis" following the demonstrations, and urged China to respect its pledge to improve its rights record before the event begins in August. China fired back that Rogge should keep politics out of the Olympics, which Beijing hoped would showcase its much-touted "peaceful rise" to power -- but which have instead become a public...

PARIS (AP) — Security officials canceled the final run of the Olympic relay through Paris after chaotic protests Monday, sending a snuffed-out torch to its destination on a bus in a humiliating concession to protesters decrying China's human rights record. The bus stopped right outside the final stop, a stadium, so a runner could finish the last 15 feet of the relay. At least two activists got within almost an arm's length of the flame earlier in the day before they were grabbed by police. Another protester threw water at the torch but failed to put it out before being...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday denounced protests that dogged the Beijing Olympic torch relay through London, while state media announced impending trials of people accused of rioting in the Tibetan capital. Protesters opposing a security drive in Tibet and demanding the mountain region's independence turned Sunday's London leg of the torch's journey into an obstacle course of angry disruptions -- not what China wanted for its "journey of harmony". At least 35 people were arrested and the wedge of police guarding the Olympic torch at one point were forced to hustle it on to a double-decker bus when about...

BEIJING (Reuters) - A melee in Tibet's capital appeared to have been sparked by attempts by police to carry out security checks, indicating the tension and volatility remaining in Lhasa weeks after an anti-government riot. A mobile phone text message to Lhasa residents from the local police said security checks carried out on Saturday had "frightened citizens" and caused panic in the city centre. "Please obey the law and please follow the rules, don't create rumors, don't believe rumors, don't spread rumors," read the text message, which was reprinted by the Free Tibet Campaign and International Campaign for Tibet. "Severely...

TORONTO—A rally that was billed as promoting "anti-violence" turned hostile on Saturday as flag-waving Chinese denounced Tibetans who they blamed for the recent turmoil in Tibet in which 100 are said to have died. Close to 1000 Chinese were in Toronto's Dundas Square for the afternoon event, many of them students. "Dalai Lama die there!" some Chinese shouted at a group of Tibetans who had gathered across the street from the square to protest. "Leave Canada!" others urged. Tibetans say the Chinese rally was designed to incite hate against them. The event was promoted in Chinese-language press as a rally...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark: The Danish People's Party urged Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday to protest against China's crackdown in Tibet by canceling Denmark's participation in the Beijing Olympics. The party's group chairman, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, said China's alleged cover-up of its crackdown on Tibetan protesters should lead the Danish government to cancel this country's participation in the games. "It is unheard of that the official Denmark should rubber stamp the Chinese regime's assaults of minorities by participating in the Olympic spectacle, and the prime minister can no longer dodge the debate," Dahl said. "Most recently we have listened to...

BEIJING - One policeman was killed and several others injured in riots Monday in western Sichuan province, China’s state media reported. The official Xinhua News Agency gave no other details regarding the riot. Xinhua also said that 381 people involved in protests in another Sichuan county, Aba, had surrendered to police, according to local authorities. The Communist leadership has faced the biggest challenge to its rule in the Himalayan area in nearly two decades after protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa exploded into violence on March 14, sparking sympathy protests in the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai....

BEIJING -- The Beijing government has released "most wanted" photographs of suspects captured on film during the recent Tibet riots and carried on Chinese versions of Yahoo! and MSN, prompting further criticism of the role international webcos play in tracking down dissidents. The "most wanted" also ran on Chinese portals such as Sina.com and news.qq.com along with a hotline for informants to call. Of the 24 named in the manhunt list, two have already been caught. These sites have not come under the widening restrictions on Internet use in China, which has played havoc with email access, as well as...

Hundreds of monks, nuns and local Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China to demand the return of the Dalai Lama have been turned back by paramilitary police who opened fire to disperse the crowd. Local residents of Luhuo said two people – a monk and a farmer – appeared to have been shot dead and about a dozen were wounded in the latest violence to rock Tibetan areas of China. The demonstration began at about 4pm local time when about 200 nuns from Woge nunnery and a similar number of monks from Jueri...

CHENGDU, China - China attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sunday for her recent meeting with the Dalai Lama, accusing her and other "human rights police" of double standards and ignoring the truth about the unrest in Tibet.(snip) The Chinese government has sought to portray itself and Chinese businesses as the victims of the riots.(snip) The violence has turned into a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it had been hoping to use to bolster its international image. The Chinese government over the weekend was trying to give its own version of the events while clamping...

The monks of Kirti monastery in Aba, Sichuan, western China, are said to have found a 16-year-old schoolgirl among up to 23 Tibetan protesters killed when Chinese police opened fire last Sunday. Lhundup Tso, the youngest reported victim of the Chinese crackdown, still had her school satchel strapped to her back. Her body was taken to the monastery with the other dead to document what Tibetan officials claim was a massacre. They fear it may be one of several carried out by Chinese armed police in an attempt to put down the largest Tibetan uprising in almost 20 years. Tso...

With restive Tibetan areas swarming with troops and closed to scrutiny from the outside world, China's government turned up efforts Saturday to put its own version of the unrest before the international public. Information barely trickled out of the Tibetan capital Lhasa and other far-flung Tibetan communities, where foreign media were banned and thousands of troops dispatched to quell the most widespread demonstrations against Chinese rule in nearly five decades. The Chinese government was attempting to fill the vacuum with its own message. It disseminated footage of Tibetan protesters attacking Chinese and accusations of biased reporting by Western media via...

DHARAMSALA, India (CNN) -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday criticized China for its crackdown on anti-government protesters in Tibet and called on "freedom-loving people" worldwide to denounce China. The Dalai Lama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi greet each other Friday in Dharamsala, India. "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," Pelosi told reporters. "The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world." She made the comments during...

'100 Dead' In Anti-China Protests In Tibet By Sky News SkyNews - 9 minutes agoChina has locked down the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and set a deadline for rioters to surrender following the worst violence in 20 years. Beijing said that 10 people had been burnt to death during a day of unrest, while Tibet's government-in-exile in India warned that the number could be much higher. In a statement from its northern India base, it said: "We have unconfirmed reports about 100 people had been killed and martial law imposed in Lhasa." The government said it was "deeply concerned" by...

China is to impose stricter rules on foreign rock and pop stars after singer Bjork caused controversy by shouting "Tibet, Tibet" at a Shanghai concert. Her cry followed a powerful performance of her song Declare Independence. Talk of Tibetan independence is considered taboo in China, which has ruled the territory since 1951. China's culture ministry said the outburst "broke Chinese law and hurt Chinese people's feelings" and pledged to "further tighten controls". "We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future," the ministry said in a statement...

China fabricated terror plots: Uighur leader by Jitendra Joshi WASHINGTON (AFP) - Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer Monday accused China of fabricating alleged plots against the Olympics, and even of scheming to carry out its own terror attacks, to blacken her community's name. ADVERTISEMENT "It's completely untrue. All these allegations are falsified," the separatist figurehead, who joined her US-based husband in 2005 after six years in a Chinese jail, told AFP through an interpreter. "The real goal of the Chinese government is to organize a terrorist attack so that it can increase its crackdown on the Uighur people," the 61-year-old...

SHANGHAI -- First in an occasional series looking at the increasingly close connections between China and California. -- Midway through the first half of the exhibition soccer match this week, the local all-stars were advancing against David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The crowd at Shanghai Stadium stood up and roared. In a VIP suite, Jamie Lee hardly noticed the action on the field: She was too busy schmoozing with Chinese reporters. "One of these days, you should come to L.A. and watch a Galaxy game," Lee, chief rep of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau in China,...

China hopes to launch its second moon-orbiting satellite in 2009, state media reported Friday, as the country steps up its space programme. The news came after scientists regained contact with the country's first lunar satellite Chang'e-1 following a four-hour blackout, Xinhua news agency said. Ye Peijian, the chief commander of Chang'e-1, did not elaborate on his announcement of the follow-up mission. Change'e-1 is currently making a three-dimensional survey of the moon, and collecting data on the make-up of its surface, the report added. The control centre lost contact with the satellite for four hours on Thursday, as it moved into...

U.S. defense analysts now consider the Chinese air defense network to be the most dangerous system in the world. The Chinese system is considered more dangerous than the formidable Russian system. The reason for China's great leap forward into first place is due to the wholesale use of U.S. commercial products that make the Chinese air defense network flexible, easy to upgrade, and though to exploit. The Chinese investment into its air defense network is calculated to be one-tenth the cost of the U.S. expenditures. The low cost is attributed to what one analyst described as "Cisco in Chinese." Chinese...

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian. On Jan. 18,...

February 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. Mark Miravalle's sobering book, The Seven Sorrows of China, gives, in heart-wrenching detail, accounts of the brutality of the one-child policy and its effects on the Chinese people.Dr. Miravalle's account of his often intense experiences as he travels through modern China provides a disturbingly realistic picture of life outside of Beijing. The following is an excerpt from Part III of Dr. Miravalle's book, entitled The Third Sorrow: Abortion Without Conscience: The Indoctrination of a Nation: "The most alarming," he writes, "the most depressing, the most Copernican revelation of all that I have been...

An aggressive, non-stop campaign by China to penetrate key government and industry databases in the United States already has succeeded and the United States urgently needs to monitor all internet traffic to critical government and private-sector networks “to find the enemy within,” SANS Institute Director of Research Alan Paller told SCMagazineUS.com. “They are already in and we have to find them,” Paller said. Paller said that empirical evidence analyzed by researchers leaves little doubt that the Chinese government has mounted a non-stop, well-financed attack to breach key national security and industry databases, adding that it is likely that this effort...

China's new employment law effective Jan. 1 attempts to provide greater protection and benefits for more workers. But what we are already seeing is the creativity of employers to find ways to circumvent the new rules to avoid being saddled with higher costs. Over the last 12 years, in an avalanche of economic opportunity, about 200 million farmers in China have migrated to the cities, taking manufacturing, trade and construction jobs. (Incidentally, there are about 300 million more of these workers ready, willing and able to migrate over the next 20 years). This mass migration has overwhelmed the regulatory authorities...

There are few more startling embodiments of climate change than the current health of China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi. As is now customary in discussions involving global warming, the following statistics are liable to alarm. The surface area of Poyang Lake has shrunk to 50 square kilometers from its peak of more than 3,000 during the summer--it is 1.67% of its size six months ago. Some perspective is needed. A spectacular fluctuation in the lake's area from the summer flood season to the winter dry period has long been commonplace. However, the Jiangxi...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi Oil Tanker Co. launched its first new ship in 27 years Monday, and delivery of two more tankers is expected within three months. ADVERTISEMENT The Dijlah — the name for the Tigris River in Arabic — was inaugurated in the southern port city of Basra, officials said. The 14,000-ton capacity, Chinese-built ship will help ease export problems Iraq has encountered as its beleaguered but vital oil industry begins to recover from years of war and neglect, officials said.Basra Gov. Mohammed al-Waili led the ceremony and said the Dijlah would help spur growth in Iraq's oil industry.Iraq's...

What could the USS Kitty Hawk and Citigroup possibly have in common? I'll start with the aircraft carrier because I'm still stewing over what happened when the People's Republic of China abruptly denied the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying ships and submarines their routine, scheduled Thanksgiving berth in Hong Kong, where hundreds of crew members' families had gathered (at considerable expense) to celebrate the holiday with their loved ones. First, there was the nasty act itself. News accounts speculated about the "reason" -- was it President Bush's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama? Our latest arms agreement with Taiwan?...

US industrial conglomerate Honeywell has announced that it will move the headquarters of its electronic materials business from the United States to Shanghai to better position itself for further growth in Asia. The company also announced that Shanghai UOP Ltd, the largest molecular sieve adsorbents manufacturing plant in Asia, has completed an expansion to boost capacity to meet growing demand in China. Shanghai UOP is a subsidiary company of Honeywell China. "The relocation of the electronic materials' global headquarters to Shanghai will further underline Honeywell's emphasis on China as an important platform to drive Honeywell's globalization," Honeywell China's CEO Shane...

BEIJING (Dow Jones)--General Motors Corp. (GM: GM (29.26, +0.48, +1.7%) expects the value of its auto parts purchases in China to rise an average of 25% annually between 2005 and 2010, Bo Andersson, vice president of GM's global purchasing and supply chain group, said Friday. Andersson didn't give specific figures for the U.S. auto giant's parts purchases in China, but said the company's global parts purchases were growing fastest in China, where GM employs about 200 people in Shanghai to find and work with local suppliers. He declined to say what proportion of GM's auto parts purchases China accounts for....

In a series of nearly unanimous votes, the House yesterday said President Clinton failed to act in "the national interest" earlier this year when he gave permission for a Chinese satellite launch to a U.S. aerospace firm with close Democratic ties, and moved to block him from approving similar exports. With all but a handful of Democrats joining the House GOP majority, legislators rebuked Clinton's handling of a critical aspect of U.S.-China policy -- commerce in militarily sensitive technology -- just a month before he is to make a long-planned trip to Beijing. One of the measures, effectively banning all...

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese espionage posed "the single greatest risk" to U.S. technology, a congressional advisory panel said on Thursday and called for efforts to protect industrial secrets and computer networks. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission also called in its annual report to Congress for closer work with China to promote energy security and deal with environmental problems such as climate change and pollution. The panel urged the U.S. Congress to examine "military, intelligence, and homeland security programs that monitor and protect critical American computer networks and sensitive information, specifically those tasked with...

Trade jitters, anti-China sentiment rouse voters By Andrea Hopkins Wed Nov 14, 1:56 PM ET It could be expected that Iraq would play a big role in the 2008 U.S. election campaign. But if recent populist rallies are an indication, another country may be rousing even more anger from voters: China. In all corners of an overflowing convention room this week in the industrial Rust-Belt city of Pittsburgh, voters, union officials and company executives alike railed against unfair trade -- and demanded U.S. politicians do something. "Our government refuses to stand up to the Chinese and make a level playing...

Yahoo to pay Chinese families It settles with relatives of journalists jailed for dissent after it revealed their names to police. By Alex Pham Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 14, 2007 A week after lawmakers shamed its executives as moral "pygmies," Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday reached an out-of-court settlement with the families of two Chinese journalists thrown into jail for dissidence after the company disclosed their identities to local police. Yahoo promised to pay the families' legal bills and to create a fund to "provide support to other political dissidents and their families," but the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company wouldn't...

Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said. Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said. The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner's knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said. The affected hard discs are Maxtor Basics...

China has been in the news a lot lately. First there were the stories about Intellectual Property theft (copyright infringements); then the discussions of the poisoned pet food; and now there are all kinds of recalls involving products containing unacceptable levels of lead.(*) But now the New York Times has printed a story which seems to contain the worst of both worlds – unregulated Chinese manufacturing, not of consumer goods, which can be returned, but drugs, which are meant to be ingested. Forget the old saw “How do you get the (diethylene glycol laced) toothpaste back into the tube?” –...

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books on international affairs, including America's Coming War with China: A Collision Course over Taiwan (2006). The People's Republic of China continues to send worrisome signals about its security strategy. As the tone of cross-straits relations grows increasingly strident, China's latest military reshuffle and ongoing lack of transparency about its military budget are creating new tensions with both the United States and its neighbors in East Asia. In the lead-up to the opening of the Communists' 17th National Party Congress...

Such good sports, the Chinese are: US Internet search engines in China were being hijacked and directed to Chinese-owned Baidu, analysts said Wednesday, speculating that this may be retaliation for the White House award to exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama. Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on Internet search, said Chinese users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft websites were being directed to the Chinese search engine. "It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft...

Google ignored Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but today they have a special logo up to commemorate an event that must be near to their hearts—the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite.