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Japan’s Sankei Shimbun reported Wednesday that North Korea may be making preparations for a possible third nuclear test. The newspaper published satellite imagery from the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear site, which it alleged showed work toward the test in progress. The daily quoted an expert as saying, “Based on what’s been shown in the photos, it is clear that North Korea is preparing for a new experiment. Chances are high that something will happen in the next six months.” The report followed comments by Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Charles Jack Pritchard, a former...

South Korea is reviewing its defense policy following North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, a process that could significantly change Seoul's military alliance with Washington, according to officials engaged in the process. Over the past week, U.S. and South Korean leaders have outlined plans to conduct war games and strategy sessions to better equip the South for combating the type of submarine attack Pyongyang is accused by international investigators to have staged in March, killing 46 South Korean sailors. For the longer term, President Lee Myung-bak's conservative government could seek to alter the alliance's command structure...

Japan proposes 'peace' tunnel to South KoreaJustin McCurry in Tokyo guardian.co.uk Friday February 15 2008 Politicians in Japan have proposed the construction of an 80-mile "peace" tunnel to South Korea that would boost trade and symbolise a recent warming of ties between the former enemies. The proposed tunnel, more than twice as long as the Channel Tunnel, would link Karatsu in south-western Japan and Pusan in South Korea, via two islands in the Japan Sea. It would be part of a 140-mile (230km) rail link passing through the Japanese islands of Iki and Tsushima, and making it possible to travel...

Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold bloodBy NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author » Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007  The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.  Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine. According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000...

Michelle Malkin found a new photo of the Korean Hostages: http://kr.news.yahoo.com/service/news/shellview.htm?linkid=459&articleid=2007080107591321223http://img.news.yahoo.co.kr/picture/2007/23/20070801/2007080107591321223_115521_0.jpghttp://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/01/south-korean-christian-hostage-crisis-rescue-attempt/ Here's a very clumsy BabelFish translation, from Korean, to English: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ko_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fkr.news.yahoo.com%2Fservice%2Fnews%2Fshellview.htm%3Flinkid%3D459%26articleid%3D2007080107591321223

A South Korean woman held hostage with 21 others in Afghanistan has pleaded for help to secure their release.The woman, who identified herself as Yo Syun Ju, told the BBC by telephone she was "sick and in a terrible situation". "Tell them to do something to get us released," she said in an interview carried out in the presence of the Taleban militants holding her captive. A group of 23 Koreans was abducted one week ago. The kidnappers have since killed one of the hostages.

Hiroshima has preserved some of its ruins from the blast The nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Japan in 1945 were the inevitable way to end World War II, Japan's defence minister has said. "I think it was something that couldn't be helped," said Fumio Kyuma in a speech at a university east of Tokyo. His comments sparked outrage from survivors of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The minister, who represents Nagasaki in parliament, said later that he was expressing the US view of events. In his speech, he said the US must have thought...

President Hu (l) met honorary KMT head Lien Chan (r) at the forum Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for closer economic and cultural exchanges between China and Taiwan. Mr Hu was speaking at a China-Taiwan forum in Beijing, aimed at improving ties between the two rival neighbours. More than 30 MPs from Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), are taking part in the two-day event. It comes just days after Taiwan, seen by China as part of its territory, rejected Beijing's plan for the Olympic torch to pass through the island. President Hu told some 500 participants...

Koreans and Japanese Ranked World's Slimmest People Koreans, many of whom are experiencing a sweeping zeal for losing weight, count with the Japanese as among the slimmest people in the developed world, a study shows. According to PopNews, a study on body mass index (BMI) released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2005 shows that only 3.2 percent of Koreans and Japanese have a BMI higher than 30. A person with a BMI figure higher than 25 is considered overweight, while a reading above 30 means obesity. The U.S. is the fattest of the OECD member nations...

Tokyo's Imperial Palace was valued higher than California in the 1980s Japan's land prices have risen for the first time in 16 years, in a further sign that the world's second-largest economy is continuing to recover.Since 1990, land prices have been sliding following the bursting of the asset price bubble. However, government figures showed that nationwide land prices rose by 0.1% last year with commercial land prices increasing by 2.3%. Strong price increases in commercial areas in major cities drove the gains. 1990s peak The major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka each saw significant increases. Commercial land...

It may be surprising to learn that China has a parliament. This country is, after all, a one-party state - and there are no general elections. Thousands of delegates have gathered in Beijing Still, almost 3000 delegates make up the ranks of China's legislature. Members are chosen from China's different regions. Once a year - for just two weeks - they come to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to discuss (and then inevitably approve) the Communist Party's latest set of proposals. During these two weeks, Tiananmen Square outside becomes the world's most orderly coach park. Rows...

Not everyone is in favour of a free trade deal South Korea and the US are in the final round of free trade talks, trying to reach a deal before a looming deadline.US presidential powers to fast track trade deals ends at the end of March, making agreement all the more urgent. Since talks started on Thursday they have agreed to streamline customs and anti-trust rules, but farming and automobiles remain contentious issues. Hundreds of South Koreans have protested in Seoul arguing that a trade deal could threaten their livelihoods. Seoul wants the US to immediately end tariffs that...

A protest staged by thousands of rural workers in central China ended in violent clashes last week, media reports and an official said.Several people were injured as up to 20,000 people clashed with 1,000 police in Hunan province on Friday, a local official told Reuters news agency. A report on the Boxun Chinese news website said the clash was sparked by rising public transport costs. Rural regions of China have mounting unrest in recent years. Thousands of protests were held last year amid growing discontent over the widening gap between rich and poor and corruption among officials at local...

Mr Howard will hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Australian Prime Minister John Howard has arrived in Japan on a visit which will include the signing of a bilateral security pact. The declaration is thought to include co-operation on terrorism, peacekeeping and disaster relief. The government has dismissed suggestions that the defence deal could strain ties with China. Meanwhile, Australian diplomats are due in North Korea for talks on its nuclear programme. The delegation will urge Pyongyang to abide by its agreement last month to start dismantling its nuclear facilities. Such progress could result in Australian aid,...

Did Hirohito play an active part in planning and conducting the war? Japanese emperor Hirohito expressed doubts about going to war with China in the 1930s and 40s, extracts from a diary of one of his advisers reveal. They show Hirohito was afraid the Soviet Union would intervene. The diary by Kuraji Ogura, who worked as a chamberlain to Hirohito in World War II, was found recently and parts have been published in Japan's media. The full text may help solve the debate about how much responsibility the emperor had for Japan's wartime action. South Pacific visit The document...

While Christianity's explosive growth has swept through much of the Southern Hemisphere – particularly across Africa – another dramatic story has unfolded in Asia. Some have dubbed it the "Korean miracle." About one-third of South Koreans are now Christian. Seoul, the capital, boasts 10 of the 11 largest Christian congregations in the world. And South Korea sends more missionaries abroad to spread the word than any other country except the United States. No one knows how many Christians remain in North Korea. Two-thirds of Korean Christians lived there before the war, but many fled to escape Communist rule. ~sNip Today,...

In Pictures: Robot menagerie An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer. The South Korean government has identified robotics as a key economic driver and is pumping millions of dollars into research. "The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to...

There are hundreds of dialects among China's 1.3bn people Only about half of China's population can speak the national language, Mandarin, according to the state news agency Xinhua.More men speak Mandarin than women, and more urbanites speak the language than those in rural areas, Xinhua said. For many years now, the government has tried to increase the use of Mandarin, to promote social cohesion. But China has hundreds of dialects, some of which - such as Cantonese and Hokkien - have strong regional support. In a survey of 500,000 people around the country, the Ministry of Education found that...

Summary: Controversies over the war in Iraq and U.S. unilateralism have overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: its attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power and the emergence of states such as China and India. This unheralded move is well intentioned and well advised, and Washington should redouble its efforts.

After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die. Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials. Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during...

Japan began its satellite programme in 2003 Satellite launch Japan has launched its fourth spy satellite, which will give it the capability to monitor any location around the globe.An H-2A rocket carrying the satellite lifted off from a base in southern Japan at 0441 GMT, officials said. Tokyo began launching spy satellites in 2003, after North Korea fired a missile over Japan's main island in 1998. Japan sees itself as one of the top targets of the Communist state, which last year tested a nuclear bomb. Satoki Kurokawa, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), said the...

The survey found a large rise in Christians in China The number of religious believers in China could be three times higher than official estimates, according to a survey reported by state media.A poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious. This suggests 300 million people nationwide could be religious, compared to the official figure of 100 million. China is regularly criticised for cracking down on unauthorised worship. Believers are only allowed to attend government-approved churches, mosques and temples. Correspondents say the poll's findings back up...

President Roh has seen his popularity fall sharply Twenty-three South Korean lawmakers have left the ruling Uri party to form a new political group to fight elections later in the year.The move leaves the conservative opposition Grand National Party (GNP) as the largest group in parliament. Correspondents say the breakaway MPs want to distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular President Roh Moo-hyun ahead of December elections. A recent opinion poll put the Uri party's approval rating at just 10%. In contrast, the GNP is enjoying public support of around 50%, the same poll found. Resignation offer In a statement,...

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that the United States and Japan are expected to upgrade their joint operation plan for a possible contingency on the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese newspaper said the countries agreed on military cooperation in case of an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula, a missile attack on Japan or the launching of an operation to protect Taiwan from China. The Asahi Shimbun quoted local government officials as saying that under the new agreement the US would be authorized to launch attacks on North Korea from bases and ports in Japan. In addition, the report said, Japanese...

TOKYO, June 5 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has imported about 150 tons of high-strength aluminum from an unidentified Russian exporter as part of its nuclear weapons program, Japan's Asahi Shimbun reported Sunday, citing U.S. intelligence sources. The amount of high-strength aluminum is enough to produce about 2,600 gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium, the report explained. Identifying the U.S. sources simply as former ranking Washington officials and officials involved in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks, the Japanese paper said such moves by the North have further escalated the international standoff over its nuclear ambition. Separately, Pyongyang is known to...

A contest for China’s soul is now underway in that giant country, pitting two powerful forces and two very different stances toward the outside world against each other. The outcome will have a major impact on whether China succeeds in becoming a nation capable of having truly constructive and durable relations with the outside world.On one hand, China’s economic revolution has helped position it in the world as a confident powerhouse of trade, a more responsible global powerbroker, and even as a reassuring military presence. On the other hand, China remains trapped by a past and a mindset steeped...

TOKYO : A Chinese navy submarine stalled apparently after a fire broke out aboard the vessel while it was submerged in the South China Sea, a Japanese newspaper said. The submarine was being towed Monday above the water by a Chinese vessel towards the Yulin Naval Port on China's Hainan Island, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing Japanese and US defense sources. Japanese and US authorities have been monitoring the vessel, a Ming-class diesel-powered hunter-killer submarine. It was not clear whether there were any casualties, said the top-selling newspaper. The accident occurred Thursday in international waters about halfway between Taiwan and...

China and Japan are discussing their bitterly disputed gas fields, amid increasingly troubled ties between East Asia's two most powerful nations. The talks in Beijing come a week after a senior Chinese official cut short a trip to Tokyo due to a row over Japan's controversial Yasukuni war shrine. Japan and China are increasingly competing over natural resources to feed their economic growth. Both sides claim ownership of the energy-rich area of the East China Sea. TROUBLED WATERS China and Japan's exclusive economic zones (EEZs) coincide Have never agreed a maritime border Also dispute ownership of Senkaku/Diaoyu islands The Japanese...

SEOUL: Some 1,000 South Korean students marching towards a US military base to protest against America’s North Korea policy clashed with riot police on Sunday. At least 10 students were injured, police and a witness said. The march towards the base in the centre of Seoul was called by a major students’ activist group demanding the US scrap a policy it says heightens tensions with North Korea. Medical staff arriving by ambulance treated students for broken noses and cuts on their faces and arms, a Reuter’s photographer said. Nearly 30 students were taken into police custody, he added. A police...

Japan will deploy several of its most advanced fighter aircraft to Okinawa in response to the increasing military threat from China, a newspaper said yesterday, while a Japanese official confirmed the plans. The deployment of two dozen F-15J Eagle fighters to Japan's southernmost prefecture -- which at its nearest point is only 180km away from Taiwan -- will be completed by the end of 2009, the Japanese-language daily Sankei Shimbun reported yesterday. The presence of F-15Js on Okinawa would significantly increase Japanese military capabilities in the Taiwan Strait. Currently, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), Japan's air force, maintains 24...

Japan deploys Patriots near Tokyo to guard against N. Korean strike  One of the Patriot (PAC-3) missile air defense artillery brigades would be deployed at Fuchu Air Base in Tokyo. The new Patriot missiles can intercept and destroy ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and enemy aircraft. Japan is preparing to deploy Patriot-3 missiles at its military base in the Tokyo metropolitan area to intercept any ballistic missiles from neighboring North Korea. The unit must be located near Tokyo because their maximum intercept range and altitude is 30 kilometers, giving them only seconds to intercept ballistic missiles headed toward one of...

Seoul angry after Japan says Washington distrusts South Korea Wed May 25, 4:44 AM ET South Korea has lodged a protest with Japan after a Japanese official said Tokyo was cautious about sharing North Korea-related intelligence with its neighbour because Washington did not trust Seoul. Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi made the remarks to visiting South Korean lawmakers in Tokyo earlier this month, according to media reports here. Yachi was also quoted as telling the group that Seoul had been neglecting its alliance with Washington although unity between South Korea, the United States and Japan was the key to...

SEOUL, May 25 (Yonhap) -- A coalition of U.S. human rights groups is pushing a law bill that calls for hefty punitive tariffs on Chinese imports unless Beijing stops repatriating North Koreans fleeing their oppressive communist regime, a U.S. scholar said Wednesday. "China should not have a cost-free policy of supporting Kim Jong-il," Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the Yonhap News Agency by telephone from Washington. "If they continue to do so, they will have to pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of relations with the U.S." Horowitz accused China of backing North...

China's Mrs Fixit reignites row with Japan By Richard Spencer in Beijing (Filed: 25/05/2005) Diplomatic hostilities between China and Japan exploded into life again yesterday after a Chinese politburo member known as Mrs Fixit snubbed her hosts by ending a visit to Tokyo a day early. No reason was given for Wu Yi's failure to meet Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese prime minister, thereby missing talks supposed to improve relations between the economic giants. But it became clear that the snub was deliberate when the Chinese media reopened a campaign of vilification against Mr Koizumi. The countries have been at loggerheads...

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Sunday it was confused by U.S. policy toward the reclusive communist state, but it did not rule out returning to six-nation negotiations over its nuclear weapons program. In the statement, a Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed a May 13 meeting between State Department representatives and North Korean officials at the United Nations and said conflicting remarks by U.S. officials only "confuse" the U.S. position at a time when the communist state is "cautiously considering" the American position. The statement Sunday, monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, comes amid a flurry of efforts to...

Plans for North collapse discussed May 24, 2005 -- Contingency plans for a military response to a collapse of the North Korean regime ¡ª an issue that caused a diplomatic flap between Seoul and Washington earlier this year ¡ª were quietly discussed by U.S. and South Korean officials this month at a three-day meeting of the United Nations Command in Seoul, the JoongAng Ilbo has learned. No firm policy decisions were reached at the closed-door sessions, which took place May 10 to 12 at Yongsan Garrison, according to a participant in the meeting, who characterized it as essentially a brainstorming...

Japan, U.S. Forces To Craft Joint Crisis Response PlanJapan Times, May 20, 2005http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050519b4.htmJAPAN -- Japan and the United States basically agreed Wednesday to establish a joint response plan that includes measures to deal with military emergencies in Japan, on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait, government sources said.The agreement will be confirmed at a bilateral defense chiefs' meeting planned in early June in Singapore and made formal in top security talks between the two countries' defense and foreign ministers in July or later, the sources said.The joint response plan, which would specify which airports and harbors the...

China indignant at Japan's move on disputed islands www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-19 19:12:12 BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhuanet) -- China Thursday expressed anger with several Japanese citizens' registration of permanent addresses on the Diaoyu Islands, saying that China "will never accept" any of Japan's unilateral moves on the islands. The Japanese government announced Tuesday that 18 Japanese citizens have registered permanent addresses on the islands, a group of islets in the East China Sea. Asked to comment on the issue, Kong said China's stance on the Diaoyu Islands was "clear and consistent." "I reiterate that the Diaoyu and surrounding islands have been parts...

BEIJING (Kyodo) Russia will prioritize China over Japan as the recipient of oil supplies from an oil pipeline project linking eastern Siberia with the Russian Far East, departing Russian Ambassador to China Igor Rogachev said Thursday. "I think that . . . first of all, oil will go to China," Rogachev told reporters. "And then, maybe (on the) second round, it will go east" to other countries, including Japan, he said. Both Japan and China have tried to persuade Russia to favor it in the planning of the pipeline's route. In what appeared to be a victory for Japan, Russia...

Japan hopes to remove a big source of friction with China by speeding up the disposal of tens of thousands of chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese forces at the end of the second world war. Tokyo will build a dozen disposal plants in China and begin processing leftover weapons in three years, said the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. The decision to quickly complete the work, started in 1997, comes after a sharp deterioration in relations amid Chinese claims that Japan has refused to acknowledge the brutal nature of its occupation. The approval by Japanese education authorities of a history textbook that...

The Asia Pacific region is set to become the biggest naval warship market in the world with expenditure to reach 15 billion dollars annually by 2007, organisers of a regional military conference said Monday. India, China and South Korea were the major drivers of the growth.

N Korea to open talks with South North Korea says it has taken 8,000 rods from its Yongbyon reactor North and South Korea are to hold talks next week after a 10-month suspension.The North proposed the resumption, it said, "to put relations between the two Koreas on a normal track". Seoul accepted on Saturday, saying it wanted to discuss North Korea's nuclear programme, as well as relations between the two countries. The meetings, expected to begin on Monday, come as the world mounts pressure on Pyongyang to rejoin multi-party nuclear talks. On Friday, Japan proposed resuming the international talks,...

What is Japan’s potential military might? Can Japan be a military superpower again? This is one question that rarely is asked when one looks at the Asian landscape, mostly because India and China have caught most of the headlines. Japan arguably has the second-best navy in the Pacific, centered around four helicopter-carrying destroyers, nine guided-missile destroyers, 34 destroyers, and 18 diesel-electric submarines. A large number of these ships (two of the guided-missile destroyers, 13 of the destroyers, and nine of the submarines) have entered service were since 1995, making this a very modern force. The rate of ship construction has...

A senior Chinese diplomat,Yang Xiyu on Thursday accused the Bush administration of undermining efforts to revive negotiations with the North Korean government and said there was "no solid evidence" that North Korea was preparing to test a nuclear weapon. Mr. Yang said that when President Bush referred to the Chinese diplomats had been whispering for months: personal attacks against Mr. Kim by Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top administration officials had caused a "loss of face" for North Korean officials and created big obstacles to reaching any negotiated solution.He urged the Bush administration to find some...

China to 'react strongly' to N. Korea nuke test: lawmaker By Naoko Aoki BEIJING, May 12 Kyodo - (EDS: MORE DETAIL THROUGHOUT) Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee's International Department, told a senior Japanese opposition lawmaker on Thursday that China would ''react strongly'' to a North Korean nuclear weapons test. Yoshito Sengoku, chairman of the Policy Research Committee of the Democratic Party of Japan, told reporters that Wang made the comment, which implies China's opposition to such a test, during a meeting in Beijing.

Anti-Japan rallies dampen one-third of Japanese business plans in China 48 minutes ago TOKYO (AFP) - The recent violent anti-Japanese protests in China have made more than one-third of Japanese companies scrap or put off their plans to set up business in the country, a according to a survey. The survey by Teikoku Databank, a private sector think tank, found that of 848 companies that had plans to begin operations in China, 275 or 34.6 percent of them had put their projects on hold and another seven firms dropped plans altogether. Fifty-four companies said they did not know what to...

Sunday May 8, 9:56 AM China announces plans to mark 60th anniversary of end of World War II China announced plans for events to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, but there was no word on whether Japanese officials were invited to attend. The announcement highlighted lingering tensions over the war, which erupted into violent protests last month in several Chinese cities by demonstrators who accused Tokyo of trying to minimize abuses committed during its conquest of Asia in the 1930s and '40s. China will hold an exhibition and seminar, broadcast television programs and issue...

The armistice, signed in Panmunjeom, was signed by military commanders from the North Korean People's Army and the Chinese People's Volunteers, but not from South Korea or the United States. The U.S. and South Korea both accept the armistice to this day because they were part of the United Nations Command (UNC), which included 16 member nations in all that had sent troops to the region following North Korea’s invasion of the South in June 1950. The UNC is a signator to the Korean armistice. (SOURCE: Wikipedia) Should the U.S. accept direct talks with North Korea over the latter’s nuclear...

TOKYO - After first scoffing at requests to pay for damage to Japan's Embassy and consulates from recent anti-Japanese riots, China has quietly reversed course and promised to restore the buildings to their previous condition, a Japanese official said Wednesday. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing assured Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa in Beijing that the damaged buildings would be restored, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda."China is saying that it will repair (the damage), and I think it's a big step forward," Hosoda told reporters.Hosoda said that Li offered to fix damage to the Japanese Embassy and the ambassador's...

BEIJING, May 10 - China on Tuesday ruled out applying economic or political sanctions to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, appearing to undercut a crucial element of the Bush administration's evolving North Korea strategy. The announcement comes just as American intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test. Echoing President Bush's public comments, the Chinese said in a briefing on Tuesday that they still hoped that talks with North Korea would succeed in disarming the country, even though it has boycotted those talks for 11 months. Liu Jianchao, China's...