Authoritarian China + US Spratly Is., war in S. China Sea?

[B]

First Orwellian City....in China

The first city in the world based on Orwell's 1984 will be Shenzhen in China, a city of 12 million people. All residents will have to carry a powerful computer chip with personal information such as work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, landlord's phone number, reproductive history, travel history, financial records. According to the International Herald Tribune of August 13, 2007, the project is described by security experts as the "world's largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime."

In addition at least 20,000 police surveillance cameras will be installed in the city. They will be guided by sophisticated computer software from a U.S. financed company. Shenzhen reportedly has already 180,000 indoor and outdoor closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and government agencies and the police will have the right to link them on request into the same system as the 20,000 police cameras, according to China Public Security.

Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China Public Security says: "We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like IBM, Cisco, HP, Dell - these are all very good partners with us. All of these U.S. companies work with us to build our system together."

Western security experts have suspected for several years that Chinese security agencies could track individuals based on the location of their cellphones, and the Shenzhen police tracking system confirms this.

According to the same article by IHT, the Chinese government has ordered all large cities across the country to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moveed to a city but not yet acquired permanent residence.

China may be regarded as the ideal test ground for the establishment of Orwellian societies. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, partial efforts towards the Orwellian society have already been made. The European Union is slowly preparing the infrastructure for Orwellian societies by the introduction of various population control measures. The U.K.-based StateWatch has been regularly reporting on these developments.

An Orwellian society is one in which all activities of every human being are being monitored by state agencies, including the police. An Orwellian society is the final nail in the coffin of democracy and human rights and will mark a turning point in the history of humankind.

Elias Davidsson
15 August 2007

[TonyGosling]

see also
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/6990/

latest
http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=Shenzhen+big+brother&scoring=n


China's 'Big Brother surveillance' to dwarf UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/16/wchina 116.xml
By Richard Spencer, Beijing Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:52pm BST 15/08/2007

China has launched an ambitious "Big Brother" surveillance programme using everything from closed circuit television systems that can recognise faces to identity card computer chips to monitor its population.

A high-tech security company has been awarded a contract for the first phase of a scheme to encode computer chips for the residence permits all Chinese citizens must carry, starting in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.

The government will use the chips to control the whereabouts of its hundreds of millions of migrant workers. But they will also store data on the number of their children under the one-child policy, education records and ultimately medical and credit histories.
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The company is already setting up television systems throughout the city armed with "intelligent surveillance" software that can recognise faces.

Police hope eventually to combine the two systems to provide complete surveillance.

Shenzhen is being used as a testing ground for part of an all-encompassing security system known as the Golden Shield Project. This also includes computer and mobile phone monitoring through the so-called "Great Firewall" of internet censorship.

Shenzhen is the most developed city in China, having been turned from a village 30 years ago into a pioneer of the country's "special economic development zones".

It now has a population of more than 12 million - almost twice as many as Hong Kong, on whose border it lies and which it was set up to imitate.

Per head it is the richest city in China but it suffers from widespread crime and prostitution. Virtually all its population has migrated from elsewhere, a major social issue in China, where residence permits assigned at birth dictate where you can live.

The closed circuit television system and residence card chips will be provided by China Public Security Technology, run by Chinese entrepreneurs but registered in Florida.

More than 20,000 new cameras will be installed, according to the New York Times. They will be integrated with 180,000 already set up.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, was the first to test the new system when he passed through immigration at the Shenzhen port on his return from a visit to Hong Kong.

But the extent of Golden Shield has alarmed human rights groups, who say it extends control over all aspects of people's lives to authorities subject to little or no accountability.

Some of the data the authorities intend to retain on the new identity cards includes the owner's police record; employment history; landlord's telephone number; educational record; medical insurance status and ethnicity.

While Britain is known around the world for its surveillance culture due to the soaring numbers of CCTV cameras, human rights activists said the scale and sophistication of the Shenzhen project dwarfed the UK.

"I don't think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it is quite controversial," said Dinah PoKempner of Human Rights Watch.

The US has announced that it is to expand the use of spy satellites for domestic surveillance, turning its "eyes in sky" inward to combat terrorism and eventually for law enforcement.

[acrobat74]

What happened to those benevolent Chinese secret societies that were having banksters for breakfast?

Are they still coming to the world's rescue?

Now would be a good time for them to intervene, as it looks their Shenzhen members are getting chipped

[conspiracy analyst]

Chinese buy into conspiracy theory

Word is spreading, even as the owned and controlled mainstream strives to play down its significance. Now a new Chinese book detailing the private ownership of national banks and the power of the plutocrats has become a huge bestseller in China



Richard McGregor in Beijing – Financial Times September 25, 2007


The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six US presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and even environmental destruction in the developing world.

In a new Chinese best-seller, Currency Wars , these disparate events spanning two centuries have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Even today, claims author Song Hongbing, the US Federal Reserve remains a puppet of private banks, which also ultimately owe their allegiance to the ubiquitous Rothschilds.

Such an over-arching conspiracy theory might matter as little as the many fetid tracts that can still be found in the west about the “gnomes of Zurich” and Wall Street’s manipulation of global finance.

But in China, which is in the midst of a lengthy debate about opening its financial system under US pressure, the book has become a surprise hit and is being read at senior levels of government and business.

“Some senior heads of companies have been asking me if this is all true,” says Ha Jiming, the chief economist of China International Capital Corp, the largest local investment bank.

The book also gives ammunition, however hay-wire, to many in China who argue that Beijing should resist pressure from the US and other countries to allow its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate.

The book’s publisher, a unit of the state-owned CITIC group, said Currency Wars had sold nearly 200,000 copies, with an estimated 400,000 extra pirated copies in circulation as well.

Mr Song, an information technology consultant and amateur historian who has lived in the US since 1994 and is now based in Washington, says his interest was sparked by trying to uncover what lay behind the Asian crisis in 1997.

After he began blogging some of his findings, his friends suggested he find a publisher for a longer work. He professes himself surprised by the book’s success.

“I never imagined it could be so hot and that top leaders would be reading it,” he says during a book tour in Shanghai. “People in China are nervous about what’s going on in financial markets but they don’t know how to handle the real dangers. This book gives them some ideas.”

The thing that most shocked him, he says, was his “discovery” that the Fed is a privately owned and run bank. “I just never imagined a central bank could be a private body,” he says.

The Fed does describe itself “as an unusual mixture of public and private elements”. While its seven governors are all appointed by the US president, private banks do hold shares in its 12 regional reserve banks.

But Mr Song ignores the government’s role and argues that the Fed’s key functions are ultimately controlled by five private banks, such as Citibank, all of which have maintained a “close relationship” with the Rothschilds.

Mr Song is defensive about his focus on the Rothschilds and what the book depicts as their Jewish clannishness.

“The Chinese people think that the Jews are smart and rich, so we should learn from them,” he says. “Even me, I think they are really smart, maybe the smartest people on earth.”

Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is not impressed. “The Chinese have the highest regard for what they see as Jewish intellectual and commercial acumen, with little or no concurrent culture of antisemitism. This claim, however, plays to the most discredited and outmoded canards surrounding Jews and their influence. That it should gain currency in the world’s most important emerging economy is a great concern.”

The book has been ridiculed in internet postings in China, for exaggerating the lingering influence of the Rothschilds and being a re-write of existing conspiracy theories in the west.

Mr Ha puts the book’s popularity down to the decade-long stagnation in Japan and the Asian financial crisis, which he says had a profound impact on many Chinese policymakers.

Such officials remain deeply suspicious of advice from western countries to open up the financial system and float the currency. “They think it is just a new way of looting developing countries,” Mr Ha says.

Mr Song himself has been commissioned to write a number of new books to capitalise on his success, on the yen, the euro and also on China’s financial system.

But in conversation, he sounds hesitant about the line his future tomes might take. “This book may be totally wrong, so before the next one, I have to make sure my understanding is right,” he says.

“Before this book, I was a nobody, so I could say anything I liked, but now the situation has changed.”


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/70f2a23c-...00779fd2ac.html

__________________

[TonyGosling]

Call me cynical but this pro-West power shift in Beijing seems to be shaping up for an Anti-Syria vote at the UN - an attempt to isolate Russia

The Truth About Bo Xilai
He challenged China’s oligarchy – and lost
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/04/01/the-truth-about-bo-xilai
by Justin Raimondo, April 02, 2012
.......When Bo put 800 mobsters on trial, and cleaned up Chongqing, he was literally putting the Communist party in the dock, as dozens of party officials who had taken bribes and worse were exposed to public view. Instead of supporting Bo, the generally pro-Western “liberal” intelligentsia denounced him for subverting “the rule of law” and what they saw as an attack on civil liberties. Yet there are no civil liberties in a one-party authoritarian state, and the rule of law is completely absent: there is only the iron law of oligarchy, which is essentially lawless. Before Bo’s rise, the ordinary citizens of Chongqing were subjected to the “law” of the jungle, in which the most ruthless gangster with the best political connections had the “freedom” to exploit and rob.
China is undergoing a generational changing of the guards, with the “red princelings” waiting in the wings to take power from their fathers: Bo, himself a princeling, represented a challenge to that. That he is going down to the jeers of “liberal” intellectuals in China, and the cheers of Western journalists, is one of the ironies of an age where “left” and “right” don’t mean much anymore.
All sorts of highly improbable stories are now arising, which – coincidentally, of course – blemish Bo’s former record as a fighter against official corruption. Having been stripped of his post, it appears he will lose his seat on the Politburo, and the lesson here is clear for any other aspiring populist leader who dares challenge the Beijing bureaucrats: don’t do it. What Western observers should take away from all this is that the Chinese gerontocracy is as brittle as an over-baked fortune cookie, and living in fear of the populist giant that shows worrying signs of restlessness, especially in the still-impoverished countryside.....

Wife of disgraced politician held over British businessman's death in Chinese hotel room
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wife-of-disgraced-politician-h eld-over-786610
It was thought Neil Heywood died after a drinking binge but Chinese politician Bo Xilai’s wife and an aide are now suspects
The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician was yesterday held on suspicion of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood over money.
It was thought Mr Heywood, a friend of politician Bo Xilai, died after a drinking binge.
But Chinese state media said Xilai’s wife Gu Kailai and an aide were suspects.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-28/home/31247493_1_princel ing-faction-china-democratic-party

[TonyGosling]

Poisoned to tip China against Russia and help precipitate world war three more like


Briton in China murder riddle 'poisoned by cyanide drops': Sensational new claims about expat's mystery death in hotel
Neil Heywood was 'poisoned to cover up adultery and £800m wire transfers'
Websites claim Chinese official has confessed that he prepared the poison
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129870/Neil-Heywood-death-Bri ton-China-poisoned-cyanide-drops.html
By Hazel Knowles and Jonathan Petre

PUBLISHED: 22:03, 14 April 2012 | UPDATED: 12:38, 15 April 2012

A British businessman found dead in a Chinese hotel was murdered on the orders of a fallen Communist Party chief, according to new reports.

The extraordinary accounts – published on respected Mandarin-language websites yesterday – claimed to expose a sex-and-money scandal behind China's biggest political crisis in a generation.

The websites described how Old Harrovian Neil Heywood, 41, died from cyanide poisoning after allegedly having an affair with lawyer Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, seen until recently as a future leader of China.


British expat Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing, western China, in November

British diplomats in China were under pressure last night to explain why they did not ask questions sooner about the mysterious circumstances of Mr Heywood's death.

It was alleged yesterday that Mr Heywood was murdered after helping Mrs Gu to siphon nearly £800million of assets overseas.

He was poisoned last November in a hotel room in the mega-city of Chongqing by a henchman of city party leader Mr Bo, using a lethal dose of potassium cyanide – a poison that kills within minutes in tiny doses, according to the claims.


More...
Widow of murdered Old Harrovian expat fears for her life and begs British embassy to help family flee Beijing
Champagne, shisha parties and VERY little work: How Oxford tutors complained about playboy son of Chinese 'murder' couple
RIGHTMINDS: The murky suspicions about Neil Heywood's death show that something quite profound is happening in China

A single teaspoon of potassium cyanide is 50 times the fatal dose and shuts down body cells, rendering victims unconscious in ten to 20 seconds and dead within minutes, leaving the appearance of death by cardiac arrest.

A city official has allegedly confessed that he prepared the poison and handed it to an employee of Mr Bo, who administered it to Mr Heywood on the party chief's instructions, according to the accounts.

It is not known how the poison was given to Mr Heywood – who is understood to have lain dead for up to 36 hours before being discovered by a hotel cleaner – but a tiny drop put into a drink would have been enough to kill him.


Then – in a scene worthy of a thriller – Mrs Gu, 53, is said to have wept as she met with Mr Heywood's wife Wang Lulu in a cafe two days after the murder and begged her to agree to have her husband quickly cremated.

Police chief Wang Lijun, who later turned whistleblower and fled to a US consulate seeking asylum, allegedly ordered his officers to record Mr Heywood's death as a heart attack. Bo had those officers who refused to do so imprisoned and tortured, according to the blog accounts.

In the latest twist, it now appears that Bo's playboy son Bo Guagua may be seeking asylum in the US. According to reports, he has left his Boston home with a police escort after a group of Chinese men were seen watching his flat.

What appears to be the inside story of the biggest political crisis in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre emerged yesterday on suppressed internet sites linked to Chinese dissidents, four days after Beijing announced that Bo had been officially ejected from the ruling Politburo.

That same announcement revealed that Mr Bo's wife Gu and family employee Zhang Xiaojun had been arrested and were 'highly suspected' of the murder of Mr Heywood, although it gave no details of how he was killed.


Since the scandal broke, China has routinely suppressed accounts of it, with search engines frozen and pages blocked whenever anyone tried to seek out details of the key players. But yesterday, the country's censors appeared to be turning a blind eye and allowing the descriptions of Mr Heywood's murder and the sex-and-money scandals that allegedly led to it to circulate widely.

The move – suggesting the government is encouraging or even planting stories about the Heywood affair – implies that the accounts are officially sanctioned, or that officials are intent on spreading black propaganda to crush any residual support for Mr Bo. However, sources close to the situation say that internet rumours so far have been '95 per cent accurate'.

Many of the key claims over the scandal circulating on the internet in China – including Mr Bo ordering the killing, the way Mr Heywood was poisoned, the huge transfers of money overseas and the previous crimes and affairs of Mr Bo – originate from the US-based anti-Communist Boxun website, which is routinely blocked within China.


However, Boxun's articles are frequently recirculated on micro-blogs within China, which themselves are closely monitored by Communist Party censors and shut down when they relay information considered too sensitive.

Last night, the unconfirmed accounts of Heywood's murder were continuing to run on a variety of reputable and widely-read websites within China, including a major legal site and the political website chinathinktank.cn.

Charismatic 62-year-old Mr Bo's political career was effectively brought to a close with Tuesday's announcement of his suspension and his wife's arrest over Mr Heywood's murder.

A month earlier, he was deposed as Chongqing party leader after police chief Wang fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, seeking asylum and implicating Mr Bo and his wife in the crime.

The family of Mr Heywood, a suave middle-class Englishman who became close to one of China's top political dynasties, was originally told he had died of a heart attack triggered by excessive drinking, despite the fact he rarely touched alcohol.

Father-of-two Mr Heywood met Mr Bo when he was mayor of the north-east city of Dalian in the Nineties and became an unlikely confidante, mentoring Mr Bo's indulged son Bo Guagua and helping him get a place at his alma mater, Harrow.




Mr Heywood is then believed to have helped manage the family's finances as Mr Bo moved to jobs in Beijing then Chongqing, but fell out with Bo's wife Gu in 2010 when she became paranoid over anti- corruption investigations into her family's finances.

Their relationship disintegrated when Mrs Gu reportedly asked Heywood to swear allegiance to the Bo family and divorce his Chinese-born wife Wang Lulu, who is now reported to be desperate to flee China. Mr Heywood refused and, fearing for his safety, considered taking wife, son and daughter back to Britain. Then, in November, he was summoned to a meeting with the Bo family in Chongqing and ended up dead in a hotel room, having earlier reportedly told a friend he had lodged details of the Bo family finances with a lawyer in Britain as a security.

Despite his downfall, Mr Bo remains hugely popular in Chongqing and Dalian – the cities he treated as personal fiefdoms – where many supporters believe Mr Heywood's murder and Mrs Gu's arrest are an elaborate set-up by his political enemies.

There were false rumours of an attempted coup in Beijing by his allies when he was ousted as Chongqing leader in March, and China's leaders remain desperate to quell party infighting ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership switch this autumn, giving them a strong incentive to discredit Bo.


If true, however, the accounts circulating on China's internet yesterday expose an astonishing scandal engulfing a man who, until recently, expected to step up to the elite nine-member Politburo Standing Committee in the autumn reshuffle. They also raise the possibility that Mr Bo, who despite being ousted and held under effective house arrest has not so far been accused of any crime, may soon be charged with involvement in Mr Heywood's murder, a crime that carries the death penalty in China.

One account claims Mr Bo was a philanderer who slept with more than 100 women, including TV presenters and models, during his time as Dalian mayor from 1993 to 2000.

Billionaire chemical tycoon Xu Ming – a supporter of Mr Bo who is now also under investigation – is alleged to have sought out young women for Mr Bo to sleep with, according to the account.

Mr Bo's former police chief Wang Lijun is said to have secretly videoed Bo with some of his lovers when his philandering continued in Chongqing, and to have compiled a dossier of evidence against him that he handed over to the US consulate in Chengdu in February.

The account described Mr Bo as being 'drunk with power and in thrall to his own personality cult, regarding himself as behind only the first Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang and Mao Zedong as the greatest man in Chinese history'.

It alleges that Mr Bo and his wife Gu had been involved in the murder of a number of other people in Dalian and Chongqing, and claimed Mr Bo had received the equivalent of nearly £100million in bribes during his time in Chongqing alone.

A separate, online account containing a number of the same key facts alleges that Mr Heywood was responsible for transferring eight billion yuan (nearly £800million) in assets to overseas accounts on Mrs Gu's behalf.

Describing Mr Heywood's poisoning, the account says a hotel- room attendant found his body on November 14. 'Several policemen were involved in the case,' the account said, adding: 'Wang Lijun asked them to write "heart attack" in the report. The police refused. Wang Lijun told Bo Xilai this. Bo was furious and put the police who refused into prison and tortured them.'

Describing the meeting between Mr Gu and Mr Heywood's wife Wang Lulu at a Chongqing cafe two days after the murder, the account says: 'Police cleared the cafe and stood armed outside the door. Gu wept. Eventually, Wang Lulu agreed they would not do an autopsy and accepted the conclusion that he had died from excessive drinking and to the cremation of the body.'

Accounts say a British diplomat, along with two Chinese policemen, attended Mr Heywood's cremation in Chongqing.


Bo Guagua was sent to the famous Harrow School where he was mentored by Neil Heywood

The heightened speculation over the murder will renew the anguish for Mr Heywood's wife and children, who live in a gated residential compound north of Beijing, where rent is £3,000 a month upwards.

Mr Heywood's work for the Bo family is believed to have at least partly funded his comfortable lifestyle. Both children attend British-run Dulwich College in Beijing, where annual fees are about £20,000 per child.

The scandal comes just months before a new president and premier take power in China, a process that takes places in stages from October onwards and which the Communist Party wants to be smooth and orderly.

Mr Bo's fall, however, has triggered the most intense in-fighting in decades as his former allies are sidelined and rival candidates jostle for the seat Mr Bo was expected to take on the Politburo Standing Committee that effectively runs China.

The downfall of Mr Bo and the arrest of his wife have meanwhile left China on edge, with many people convinced he is the victim of a set-up and supporters in Dalian and Chongqing braced for a feared round-up of his former comrades.

When rush-hour traffic ground to a halt in Dalian on Friday afternoon, rumours swept the city that investigators from Beijing had sealed off roads to arrest business associates of the disgraced former mayor.

'Whenever someone gets too popular in China, the government finds a way of bringing him down,' a taxi driver said. And a teacher who has worked in Dalian for four years said: 'Everyone thinks the government was behind this. They wanted to cut down the tall poppy.'

Advertising executive Qiu Tian, 37, said: 'Bo was arrogant and made a lot of enemies. But he did a lot of good for Dalian and we miss him.'

Online forums also reflect an instinctive suspicion of the official line on Mr Heywood's death.

'This is nothing to do with getting justice for the Englishman's family,' one person wrote. 'It's about making sure the political career of Bo Xilai is dead.'

[TonyGosling]

"Life definitely improved" under Bo, said the 41-year-old mother and former farmer. She lives in one of Bo's public housing projects and has a benefits plan from her second job cleaning the city's light-rail trains. "Now I have my own nest and don't need to worry about having to move out when the landlord gets unhappy."
Wang is a beneficiary of an economic model championed by Bo in a municipality whose population of 29 million is larger than that of any U.S. state except California. Bo sought to balance the fastest municipal growth rate in the country with measures to stop millions of rural migrants being left behind by China's industrial boom.
Combining multibillion-dollar government projects with a welcome mat for foreign investors and public morale programs, the so-called Chongqing model may be overshadowed by the downfall of Bo, whose wife is under investigation for murder.
"Because Bo Xilai is in political trouble people are starting to demonize the Chongqing model," said Bo Zhiyue, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's East Asia Institute, who is no relation. "They are ignoring the genius of this. Bo's fall is a major loss for the city and also in a sense for the nation because the model has implications for how to manage the nation as a whole."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/19/bloomberg_ articlesM2PYW71A74E901-M2RI7.DTL

[TonyGosling]

wow!


The Framing of Bo Xilai

Or: How the East was won
by Justin Raimondo, April 13, 2012
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/04/12/the-framing-of-bo-xilai/

Murder and politics – they go together quite well. Wars, assassinations, violent purges: these are the woof and warp of politics, which is, after all, nothing but organized coercion or the threat of it. Combine this with international intrigue, and the opportunism that thrives in the heart of all politicians, and you couldn’t come up with a better narrative to outline if not explain the current leadership struggle in China.

Neil Heywood was an adventurer, or so he liked to think: a British businessman with links to a company founded by "ex"-MI-6 operatives, he was close to the family of Bo Xilai, the ambitious and now disgraced former secretary of the Communist Party in Chongqing. Bo was a rising leader of what has been mistakenly referred to as China’s "new left," a popular leader who rid his city of organized crime, attracted much foreign investment, and was angling for a spot on the Politburo’s all-powerful Standing Committee. He also aroused the ire of China’s supposedly "reformist" leadership, and as such he was in their sights when the current scandal broke – a scandal that provoked rumors of a coup, caused the Chinese authorities to crack down on the internet, and brought the British government into the mix on the current leadership’s side.

When Heywood was found dead in his hotel room, after having been summoned to Chongqing, the initial verdict was that he had a heart attack, like his father before him. He had been drinking, said the local police, and his family raised no questions about his death, dismissing rumors that he had been murdered as preposterous. All that changed, however, when Bo began directly criticizing the Chinese leadership: see my previous piece on the background story here.

Bo was summarily dismissed from his post, and his wife, Gu Kailai, stands accused of Heywood’s murder. Both have disappeared from view.

In China, politicians don’t just "fall from favor" – they plummet.

The murder charge is almost certainly trumped up: the chief "witness," Wang Lijun, was Bo’s chief of police, who was himself under investigation by central authorities and had been summoned to Beijing to spill the dirt on Bo. When he returned, he showed up at Bo’s office and informed him that his wife had Heywood poisoned. Wang has also since disappeared.

The Wall Street Journal is pushing this story big-time: they have a breathless account of Heywood’s "final hours," including a sub-plot about mysterious "documents" detailing Bo’s overseas investments stashed away in England: their story cites a "friend" of Heywood’s who say he feared for his safety. There is good reason to doubt the veracity of this anonymous tipster, if only because it contradicts numerous press accounts that describe Heywood as "happy" in the days before his death: a New York Times piece says he had "moved beyond" his relationship with Bo’s family and other accounts report he hadn’t seen either Bo or anyone in his family for a year.

It is being reported that questions about Heywood’s death were raised, not by his family, but by the "British expatriate community" in Chongqing: this, however, appears to be a euphemism for the British government, as this tweet by William Hague indicates. Heywood’s James Bond-ish persona combined with his business affiliations should cause a few alarm bells to go off about this affair: in addition to his own consulting firm, Heywood-Boddington, the deceased also worked for Hakluyt & Co., founded by former officers of the British spy agency MI-6. Hakluyt is described by one top Australian government security official as "aggressive and invasive" as far as corporate intelligence companies go, and this is borne out by their record: they were caught, in 2001, infiltrating and spying on European "green" groups on behalf of Shell Oil and British Petroleum.

Hakluyt, which also operates as the "Hakluyt Foundation," is part of a pattern established by MI-6 in the 1960s, when several "consultancies" – e.g. Diversified Corporate Services, operating out of Rome, London, and New York – were set up as, essentially, fronts. As one source describes the spookish origins of Hakluyt:

"Set up in 1995 by the late Sir Fitzroy MacLean, with a board that includes a former Royal Dutch Shell managing director and a former BP deputy chair, the Hakluyt Foundation provides leading British businesses with information that clients ‘will not receive by the usual government, media and commercial routes’. Hakluyt’s managing director, Christopher James, was until 1998 in charge of MI6′s liaison with commerce, while a fellow-director, Mike Reynolds, was regarded as one of the Service’s brightest stars."

Heywood’s affiliation with Hakluyt, with its top drawer political and corporate connections – including links to British oil and mining interests – is a strong indication there’s more to his death than is at first apparent. This is an outfit that sports Javier Solana, former EU foreign minister and NATO secretary-general, and former Senator Bill Bradley on its international "advisory" board. It could be a coincidence that Royal Dutch Shell has recently been granted major oil concessions by the Chinese government – the same leadership clique that opposes Bo.

On the other hand, maybe not.

What is happening in China today is very similar to what happened in Russia after the Communist implosion: the "reformist" leadership in Beijing is quietly selling off the nation’s "socially owned" resources to the highest bidder, creating a class of ostensibly "Communist" princelings – the sons and daughters of high-ranking leaders from the "revolutionary" era – who are living off the fat of the land. They are making themselves fantastically wealthy by establishing cozy relationships with Western corporate interests, taking bribes, allying with China’s gangster underworld, and handing out favors and concessions to the highest bidder. If and when the full story of China’s "Yeltsin years" is ever told, it will no doubt resemble the large-scale looting of the post-Communist Russian economy, which gave rise to the infamous Russian "oligarchs." With one difference: there is a lot more wealth in China to loot.

Just because of who he was, the murky circumstances surrounding Heywood’s death are inextricably intertwined with the struggle of competing corporate interests to profit from the China market – and the factional struggle this has set off within the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership, the first such battle in 20 years.

In China, we are seeing a changing of the guard, as the old "reformist" leadership grouped around the late Deng Xiaoping, passes its legacy to a new generation of "collective leadership." The plan is that, with the "princelings" in charge, and China’s crony-capitalist oligarchy firmly in the saddle, the nation would advance on the road to the "Four Modernizations."

Bo was an obstacle on that road: with his anti-corruption initiatives, his smashing of gangster networks, and his expressed desire to have ordinary Chinese benefit from the enormous wealth pouring into the country, the now-disappeared Chongqing party secretary and populist hero posed the first serious threat to the leadership in many years. The linking of his wife to Heywood’s death is clearly just the beginning of a smear campaign, the full ferocity of which has yet to be unleashed.

China’s oligarchs fear their restive people, and they acted quickly when rumors of a military coup swept the Chinese internet: the censors moved in and tried to stem the tide of speculation, as the government propaganda machine went into high gear, linking Bo to "leftists" who want to bring back the Bad Old Days of the Cultural Revolution. I would be surprised if Bo and his wife reappear as defendants in a public show trial, similar to the trial of the Gang of Four – after all, the less public discussion of the affair, the better for the ruling elite – but I wouldn’t rule it out altogether. If it happens, you can be sure it will be a carefully staged affair, with little if any opportunity for the accused to mount a real defense.

In Russia, Communism fell with a thunderous crash, scattering all kinds of debris across the international landscape and leaving an open power vacuum that was quickly filled by a perpetually inebriated "leader" and various gangster networks. In China, Communism fell as a leaf falls from a tree: slowly, even languidly gliding down to earth. That this soft landing is being helped along by numerous corporate interests with links to Western governments — who are profiting enormously in the process – is a story largely untold. The Heywood affair, mystifying and murky on the surface, illuminates yet another chapter in the long-running serial, which might be entitled "How the East Was Won."

[TonyGosling]

Philippines, U.S. stage war games in face of China warning
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/southchinasea-idUSL3E8FP6512 0120425
Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:11am EDT
* China warns of risk of confrontation but says committed to diplomacy
* Recent South China Sea gas find may stoke China's claims
* Vietnam, Taiwan re-stake their claims (Recasts)

By Manuel Mogato
ULUGAN BAY, Philippines, April 25 (Reuters) - U.S. and Philippine commandos waded ashore on Wednesday in a mock assault to retake a small island in energy-rich waters disputed with China, part of a drill involving thousands of troops Beijing had said would raise the risk of armed conflict.
The exercises, part of annual U.S.-Philippine war games on the southwestern island of Palawan, coincide with another standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels near Scarborough Shoal in a different part of the South China Sea.
China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea, each searching for gas and oil while building up their navies and military alliances.
China said last week the drill would raise the risk of confrontation. On Wednesday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said China was committed to dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the dispute.
"We are certainly worried about the South China Sea issue," Cui told a news briefing in Beijing, saying "some people tried to mix two unrelated things, territorial sovereignty and freedom of navigation".
The comments come before high-level talks with the Obama administration. China, which claims the South China Sea based on historical records, has sought to resolve disputes bilaterally but its neighbours worry over what some see as growing Chinese assertiveness in its claims in the region.
"Location (of the drill) is irrelevant," Ensign Bryan Mitchell, spokesman for the U.S. Marines, told reporters.
"These exercises take place on a regular basis. This year it happens to be in Palawan. The planning for this took place months ago prior to any events that are currently in the headlines."
U.S. President Barack Obama has sought to reassure regional allies that Washington would serve as a counterbalance to China in the South China Sea, part of his campaign to "pivot" U.S. foreign policy towards Asia after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Philippine military officials sought to play down the exercise. Lieutenant General Juancho Sabban, military commander for the western Philippines, said the drill "simply means we want to work together, improve our skills".
Sabban's area of command includes Reed Bank and the Spratlys, a group of 250 mostly uninhabitable islets spread over 427,350 sq km (165,000 sq miles) west of Palawan.
The Spratlys are claimed entirely by China, Taiwan and Vietnam and in part by Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.

HUGE OIL, GAS RESERVES
Proven and undiscovered oil reserve estimates in the South China Sea range as high as 213 billion barrels of oil, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a 2008 report. That would surpass every country's proven oil reserves except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, according to the BP Statistical Review.
A Philippine exploration firm, Philex Petroleum Corp , said on Tuesday its unit, Forum Energy Plc, had found more natural gas than expected around Reed Bank, where Chinese navy vessels tried to ram one of Forum Energy's survey ships last year.
The Philippines is due to open oil-and-gas exploration bids in Reed Bank on Friday.
Vietnam reasserted its claim to the Spratlys and the Paracel islands, known in Chinese as the Xisha islands, further west of Scarborough Shoal in what it calls the East Sea.
Self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, reiterated its claims over territories in the South China Sea and urged "countries concerned to exercise self-restraint so that peaceful resolutions can be reached through consultation".
Nearly 7,000 American and Philippine troops are taking part in the two-week drills that are taking place at sea and in different parts of the main Luzon island.
On Wednesday, about 100 commandos came ashore from U.S. and Philippine ships in a simulated amphibious assault at Palawan province to recapture an island supposedly taken by militants, officials said. Earlier estimates had put their number in the hundreds.
Jumping from rubber boats as they hit the shore, the commandos engaged in a mock firefight, making their way inch by inch from the beach to a navy facility to rescue "hostages" and recapture the base.
Four days ago, commando teams rappelled from U.S. helicopters and landed from rubber boats in a mock assault to retake an oil rig in the northern part of Palawan, 18 km (11 miles) off the town of El Nido on the South China Sea.
The annual war games come under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, part of a web of security alliances the United States built in the Asia-Pacific region during the Cold War.
The drills are a rehearsal of a mutual defence plan by the two allies to repel any aggression in the Philippines.
Hundreds of kilometres to the north, a Philippine coast guard ship patrols near Scarborough Shoal, a group of half-submerged rock formations 124 nautical miles west of the main Luzon island, where Chinese fishermen were accosted by Philippine officials three weeks ago, sparking the latest conflict between the two countries.
Manila officials say Chinese response on the Scarborough shoal issue was "based on inaccurate appreciation of the fact and dynamics of the negotiations." (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, John Ruwitch in HANOI and Jonathan Standing in TAIPEI; Editing by Nick Macfie)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/southchinasea-idUSL3E8FP6512 0120425

[TonyGosling]

Gu Xilai admits to murder in China trial
Published: Thursday, Aug 9, 2012, 13:51 IST | Updated: Thursday, Aug 9, 2012, 19:01 IST
http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_gu-xilai-admits-to-murder-in-chin a-trial_1725823
By KJM Varma | Place: Beijing | Agency: PTI
The high-profile trial of the wife of disgraced Chinese Communist Party leader Bo Xilai, for murdering a British businessman, turned out to be a one-day affair, with court saying she had admitted guilt and the verdict would be announced soon.
The court wound up the case involving Gu Kailai and her orderly Zhang Xiaojun, hours after it began and stated that four police officers will also go on trial in the case for alleged cover up.
According to a report in state-run Xinhua news agency, Gu invited the Briton, with whom she had conflict over "economic interests" to a vacation resort where she poisoned him with the help of her orderly.
The trial of Gu and Zhang began this morning at Intermediate People's Court at the eastern Chinese city of Hefei under tight security, and was attended among others by two British diplomats.
TV footage showed her being escorted to the court by two policewomen and she was seen smiling and appeared in good spirits.
By noon, Xinhua flashed the news that Gu has been charged with administering poison to the 41-year-old Briton.
It said in the "intentional homicide trial" of Gu and Zhang, prosecutors charged that Gu personally administered poison to Heywood in November in Chongqing where her husband Bo worked as head of city Communist Party wing.
According to Xinhua, Gu, 53, opted to kill Heywood and she and her son Bo Guagua had business conflicts with him.
"Worrying about Heywood's threat to her son's personal security, Gu Kailai decided to murder Heywood," it said.
She made Zhang to invite Heywood to Chongqing from Beijing and met him "for a drink" at the vacation resort Chongqing.
"After Heywood was drunk, vomited and asked for water, she put the poison which Zhang had brought along to the hotel room, into Heywood's mouth, which led to Heywood's death," the report said.
The prosecuting body said the facts of the two defendants poisoning the victim to death are clear and the evidence is substantial.
"Their behaviour has violated Article 232 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China; therefore, the two defendants should be held criminally responsible for intentional homicide," the prosecution said.
The charges could invite death penalty.
The case is a joint offence with Gu Kailai as the principal and Zhang as the accessory, the prosecuting said.
Later a court official in a surprise briefing to the press said trial has ended and the two accused have not contested the charges against them.
The date of the verdict would be announced later, BBC quoted the court official as saying.
The official, Tang Yigan, said Gu and Zhang "did not raise objections to the facts and the charges of intentional homicide".
He said Gu had been "in good shape and mentally stable," throughout the trial.
"The trial committee will announce the verdict after discussion," he said.
According to the court, four other police officers, who were suspected of covering up Gu's son Bogu Kailai's illegal conduct during the investigation into Heywood's death, were also charged with bending the law to achieve personal benefit. The court will hold an open trial for the officers tomorrow.
Heywood's death was initially recorded as a heart attack.
The involvement of Gu became public in dramatic circumstances after local police chief, Wang Lijun, a close associate of Bo, took shelter in US Consulate in Chengdu and sought asylum fearing reprisals from Bo as he investigated Gu's role in the homicide.
Wang came out of the US mission after a team of central officials assured him of security. Like Bo, he too has been sacked and imprisoned pending investigations.
http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_gu-xilai-admits-to-murder-in-chin a-trial_1725823

[outsider]

China State Paper Warns of War Unless US Backs Down:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41957.htm

'A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that "war is inevitable" between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway.

The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper the People's Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country's "most important bottom line."

The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China's land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was "strongly dissatisfied" after a US spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability.

China should "carefully prepare" for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said.

"If the United States' bottomline is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea," the newspaper said. "The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as 'friction'."

Such commentaries are not official policy statements, but are sometimes read as a reflection of government thinking. The Global Times is among China's most nationalist newspapers.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.

The United States has routinely called on all claimants to halt reclamation in the Spratlys, but accuses China of carrying out work on a scale that far outstrips any other country.

Washington has also vowed to keep up air and sea patrols in the South China Sea amid concerns among security experts that China might impose air and sea restrictions in the Spratlys once it completes work on its seven artificial islands.

China has said it had every right to set up an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea but that current conditions did not warrant one.

The Global Times said "risks are still under control" if Washington takes into account China's peaceful rise.

"We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it," the newspaper said. —Reuters

[outsider]

Aquino ready for talks to allow Japan to use Philippines' military bases:
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/aquino-ready-for-talk s-to-allow-japan-to-use-philippines-military-bases?

'TOKYO —

The Philippines and Japan are to start talks on allowing Japanese military aircraft and naval vessels to use bases in the Philippines for refueling and picking up supplies, enabling them to extend their patrol range deep into the South China Sea, Philippine President Benigno Aquino said.

“We will be starting discussion on this,” Aquino said at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday.

Japan is considering joint air patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, sources told Reuters in April, in response to China’s increasingly assertive push for influence as it builds air strips and other man-made islands in the disputed waters.

A Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), would clear the way for the Japanese military to use Philippines’ bases on a rotational basis, similar to the way the U.S. does now. An ability to refuel close to the South China Sea would allow Japan’s Self Defense Forces to keep their aircraft on patrol longer and cover a greater distance.

The decision to start talks on a VFA was not included in a joint statement on Thursday after Aquino met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The two leaders, however, discussed the VFA and agreed to open up negotiations, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters. He declined to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

Aquino’s trip comes as the two countries deepen their security ties. Unable to match the scale of the Chinese fleet, Manila is looking for allies in its territorial spat with China. Tokyo is concerned that Chinese land reclamation projects in the South China Sea will expand Beijing’s influence in a region through which about $5 trillion of sea-borne trade passes annually, much of it heading to and from Japan.

In an interview in January, Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, told Reuters that Washington would welcome Japanese air patrols there because their presence would provide a stabilizing counterweight to a growing fleet of Chinese fishing and naval vessels.'

Can anybody else hear the sound of distant drums, or is it a trick of my imagination?

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

China passes controversial new anti-terrorism law

New law requiring technology firms to hand over sensitive information has attracted deep concern in Western capitals
Ben Blanchard Sunday 27 December 20151 comment
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-passes-controversia l-new-anti-terrorism-law-a6787391.html

Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists
Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists AFP/Getty Images
China's parliament passed a controversial new anti-terrorism law on Sunday that requires technology firms to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government and allows the military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations.

Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly Western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in the past few years.

The law has attracted deep concern in Western capitals, not only because of worries it could violate human rights such as freedom of speech, but because of the cyber provisions. U.S. President Barack Obama has said that he had raised concerns about the law directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Speaking after China's largely rubber-stamp parliament passed the law, Li Shouwei, deputy head of the parliament's criminal law division under the legislative affairs committee, said China was simply doing what other Western nations already do in asking technology firms to help fight terror.

"This rule accords with the actual work need of fighting terrorism and is basically the same as what other major countries in the world do," Li told reporters.

This will not affect the normal operation of tech companies and they have nothing to fear in terms of having "backdoors" installed or losing intellectual property rights, he added.

Officials in Washington have argued the law, combined with new draft banking and insurance rules and a slew of anti-trust investigations, amounts to unfair regulatory pressure targeting foreign companies.

China's national security law adopted in July requires all key network infrastructure and information systems to be "secure and controllable".

The anti-terrorism law also permits the People's Liberation Army to get involved in anti-terrorism operations overseas, though experts have said China faces big practical and diplomatic problems if it ever wants to do this.

An Weixing, head of the Public Security Ministry's counter-terrorism division, said China faced a serious threat from terrorists, especially "East Turkestan" forces, China's general term for Islamists separatists it says operate in Xinjiang.

"Terrorism is the public enemy of mankind, and the Chinese government will oppose all forms of terrorism," An said.

Rights groups, though, doubt the existence of a cohesive militant group in Xinjiang and say the unrest mostly stems from anger among the region's Muslim Uighur people over restrictions on their religion and culture.

The new law also restricts the right of media to report on details of terror attacks, including a provision that media and social media cannot report on details of terror activities that might lead to imitation, nor show scenes that are "cruel and inhuman".

[TonyGosling]

The U.S. just sent a carrier strike group to confront China
By David Larter, Navy Times 6:43 a.m. EST March 4, 2016
USS John C. Stennis operations
This article first appeared March 3 at 4:15 p.m. and has been updated
http://www.defensenews.com/story/military/2016/03/03/stennis-strike-gr oup-deployed-to-south-china-sea/81270736/

The U.S. Navy has dispatched a small armada to the South China Sea.

The carrier John C. Stennis, two destroyers, two cruisers and the 7th Fleet flagship have sailed into the disputed waters in recent days, according to military officials. The carrier strike group is the latest show of force in the tense region, with the U.S. asserting that China is militarizing the region to guard its excessive territorial claims.

Stennis is joined in the region by the cruisers Antietam and Mobile Bay, and the destroyers Chung-Hoon and Stockdale. The command ship Blue Ridge, the floating headquarters of the Japan-based 7th Fleet, is also in the area, en route to a port visit in the Philippines. Stennis deployed from Washington state on Jan. 15.

[TonyGosling]

UN's International Court of Justice in the Hague gently kicking this war along

Hague tribunal rules China's South China Sea claims unfounded
Reuters with CNBC.com 1 Hour Ago
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/12/tensions-in-south-china-sea-to-persist- even-after-court-ruling.html

Judges at an arbitration tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday rejected China's claims to economic rights across large swathes of the South China Sea in a ruling that will be claimed as a victory by the Philippines.

"There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," the court said, referring to a demarcation line on a 1947 map of the sea, which is rich in energy, mineral and fishing resources.

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In the 497-page ruling, judges also found that Chinese law enforcement patrols had risked colliding with Philippine fishing vessels in parts of the sea and caused irreparable damage to coral reefs with construction work.

China, which boycotted the case brought by the Philippines, has said it will not be bound by any ruling.

In reaction, China said: "The arbitration tribunal made the illegal and invalid so-called final verdict on the South China Sea dispute on July 12. Regarding this issue, China has made the statement for many times that it is against the international law that the Aquino III administration of Philippines unilaterally requested the arbitration. The arbitration tribunal has no jurisdiction on this matter."

Manila had contested China's expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, which the Philippines contends are invalid under international law.
This is the first time a South China Sea territorial dispute has been brought to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague and many think it will rule in favor of the Southeast Asian nation.

Control of the region is valuable because more than $5 trillion worth of global trade passes through the South China Sea each year, and China has been accused of ramping up tensions over control in recent years by building artificial islands on reefs, on which it has added airstrips and other military-style installations.
The U.S. is seeking to maintain "freedom of navigation" in the region for its ships including military vessels.

The case is under scrutiny globally as it could change the region's geopolitical landscape and set future precedence for similar challenges.
In China, the guns were out on Weibo where #SouthChinaSeaArbitration was a top trending topic on the Twitter-like social media platform on Tuesday.

Rumor (who attached this graphic with the nine dash line):


"Vow to protect the complete territorial integrity of the People's Republic of China! This is our China!"


CNBC
Li Dacan:

The judgment is not important. Arbitration that is only agreed on by one party is nothing more than toilet paper. This is my land; why should I let someone else decide what belongs to me.

Genie from a different land:

Haha, America is arbitrating what belongs to China? Are you crazy? What kind of logic is this? Regulate gun control in your country before talking to me. My wish is world peace.

The Philippines made its claim under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both countries are signatories of.

China, however, says its historic rights predate the UNCLOS and are not at odds with its provisions.

China has been stressing its rights to the territory relentlessly in everything from official pronouncements to press editorials.

China had long said the court has no jurisdiction over the matter and will not abide the judgment.

A China Coast Guard ship (top) and a Philippine supply boat engage in a stand off as the Philippine boat attempts to reach the Second Thomas Shoal, a remote South China Sea a reef claimed by both countries, on March 29, 2014.
Jay Directo | AFP | Getty Images
A China Coast Guard ship (top) and a Philippine supply boat engage in a stand off as the Philippine boat attempts to reach the Second Thomas Shoal, a remote South China Sea a reef claimed by both countries, on March 29, 2014.
China has said repeatedly that it prefers to negotiate directly with affected parties.

But countries may not be amenable to that idea, said Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

"Over time, Southeast Asian countries have realized that China will offer these assurances and then withdraw them later," he told CNBC's "Capital Connection."

"What can be relied upon in the long term is international law. That's why the Philippines after 10 years of negotiation decided to take China to the PCA over this dispute," Connelly said.

New Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has indicated that he wants friendly relations with China and has previously said he was open to talks with the economic giant, possibly about joint ventures in the development of the disputed region.

The legal action was initiated by his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III.

[ian neal]

Such hypocrisy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia
http://johnpilger.com/videos/stealing-a-nation

[TonyGosling]

China is wrong about this
But, I suppose, making the point that the US is flaunting the law all over the world
The Philippines is totally controlled by the US Mafia - - so I suppose the Chinese are having a dig at them - - - - all very worrying

South China Sea dispute: Hague Tribunal finds China has no 'historic title'
http://www.smh.com.au/world/south-china-sea-dispute-hague-tribunal-fin ds-china-has-no-historic-title-20160712-gq4bnm.html




China has no claim to large tracts of the South China Sea and has violated The Philippines' sovereignty by building artificial islands in the smaller country's waters, an international court has found in a landmark ruling.
In a judgement that is even tougher on Beijing than experts anticipated, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has rebuked China on everything from its interference in its smaller neighbour's fishing to the environmental devastation wrought by its large-scale construction of islands on fragile coral reefs.
The tribunal threw out China's "nine dash line" which asserts the country's claim to most of the South China Sea based on historic rights, insisting that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is the prevailing law.
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"The tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," it said in a statement.
The judgement sets the scene for a tense period in international diplomacy, with Beijing likely to consider stepping up its activity in the waters as a show of its disregard for the tribunal's jurisdiction.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop issued a statement late on Tuesday night calling on both sides to abide by the ruling, describing it as "final and binding" and "an important test case for how the region can manage disputes peacefully".
She stressed the finding was not about who owned the rocks and reefs but about "the lawful uses of our oceans" - an implicit rejection of Beijing's stance that the tribunal had no jurisdiction.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs swiftly issued a statement saying the ruling was "null and void and has no binding force".
Filipinos react as the tribunal ruled against China.
Filipinos react as the tribunal ruled against China. Photo: AP
It accused the Philippines of "bad faith" and accused the tribunal of abusing the UN convention and getting its facts wrong.
South China Sea.

Crucially the judges also found that the Beijing's artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago do not generate any extended maritime zone because the natural features could not sustain human habitation. This means it has violated the Philippines' sovereignty where building has happened within the smaller country's exclusive economic zone such as Mischief Reef on which Beijing has placed a military-grade airstrip.
"Having found that certain areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, the tribunal found that China had violated the Philippines' sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone," it stated.
The legal precedent that island construction...

[ian neal]

Yeah I should have added a bit more. What China is doing is wrong and worrying but how can the "international community" say anything given the UK and US's record on the Chagos Islands/Diego Garcia.

[TonyGosling]

Hang on
To be fair
Not wishing to justify what's happened there one iota, but...
The Chagos Islands were legally a British protectorate

[TonyGosling]

China to build nuclear power stations on disputed islands in South China Sea
Beijing says Japan should ‘exercise caution in its own words and deeds, and stop hyping up and interfering’ in a dispute some fear could lead to war

Ian Johnston Friday 15 July 201655 comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-south-china-sea-spr atly-islands-disputed-nuclear-power-philippines-vietnam-japan-a7139421 .html

China plans to build nuclear power stations in the South China Sea to establish “effective control” of disputed islands, officials have reportedly said.

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) made the announcement just two days after the Hague-based tribunal concluded China had “no legal basis” for its claim to almost all of the South China Sea.

The area is home to rich fishing grounds and oil and gas fields, while some £3.8 trillion in global trade passes through the area every year.

According to the state-run Global Times, the CNNC wrote on a social media account: “Marine nuclear power platform construction will be used to support China’s effective control in the South China Sea.”

The power plants would be created to “ensure freshwater” supplies on the Spratly islands, the CNNC added.

“In the past, the freshwater provision to troops stationed in the South China Sea could not be guaranteed, and could only be provided by boats delivering barrels of water,” the CNNC said.

“In the future, as the South China Sea electricity and power system is strengthened, China will speed up the commercial development of the South China Sea region.”

The tribunal ruled against China after the Philippines asked it to rule on ownership of several of the disputed areas. China boycotted the case.

A number of other countries, including Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, also claim ownership of various parts of the South China Sea.

China is also involved in disputes over islands in the East China Sea with countries including Japan and South Korea.

On Friday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Japan should stop interfering with the South China Sea issue.

Meeting at a regional summit in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, Mr Li told Mr Abe that China’s stance on the South China Sea was completely in line with international law, state news agency Xinhua reported.

“Japan is not a state directly involved in the South China Sea issue, and thus should exercise caution in its own words and deeds, and stop hyping up and interfering,” Mr Li added.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Mr Abe told Mr Li that international rules must be respected.

Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Yasuhisa Kawamura said Mr Abe “reiterated the fundamental positions regarding the South China Sea” during his meeting with Mr Li.

“The situation of the South China Sea is the concern of the international community,” the spokesman said. “The tribunal award of 12 July is final and legally binding on the parties to the dispute.”

[Randa]

http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/us-china-tension-maneuveri ng-ww3

US-China tension in the last few months has sharply increased, with both nations exchanging some heated dialogue over the contested issue of the South China Sea. Although the prospect of the US and China actually engaging in battle is still an abstract idea, the notion became a little more concrete recently with the decision of the RAND corporation (long-time New World Order think tank) to release a study entitled War with China – Thinking Through the Unthinkable. The RAND corporation has been intimately involved with US military intelligence ever since its inception after World War 2, and has a history not of reactively responding to trends, but rather proactively shaping them. I would suggest this is yet more evidence that the Anglo-American-Zionist NWO manipulators are now actively working on causing US-China tension, in order to bring China into a potential conflict that could become World War 3. Having spent a lot of the last 5 years (since the invasion of Syria in 2011) aggravating Russia and being in an indirect proxy war with the Russians, the US has now turned some of its attention to China as well. Clearly, WW3 with China is no longer “unthinkable” since it is now being openly discussed and evaluated.

RAND Study: US-China War Would Be “Prolonged, Destructive and Inconclusive”

The authors of the RAND study claim that “while neither state wants war, both states’ militaries have plans to fight one” and that “Chinese losses would greatly exceed U.S. losses, and the gap would only grow as fighting persisted. But, by 2025, that gap could be much smaller. Even then, however, China could not be confident of gaining military advantage, which suggests the possibility of a prolonged and destructive, yet inconclusive, war.” This isn’t the first time RAND has been preoccupied with US-China tension. This recent 2016 has been preceded by many easier studies, such as this 2015 study entitled The U.S.-China Military Scorecard – Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 which states:

“Despite U.S. military improvements, China has made relative gains in most operational areas, in some cases with startling speed … The U.S. military should adopt operational concepts and strategies that capitalize on potential advantages and utilize the geographic size and depth of the theater, as well as areas of particular U.S. military strength.”
There is also this 2015 study entitled China’s Incomplete Military Transformation – Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) which states:

“The PLA’s capabilities aimed at deterring or, if necessary, countering U.S. military intervention in the Asia-Pacific region, including systems designed to hold U.S. military bases, aircraft carriers, space systems, and computer networks at risk have improved markedly.”
All in all, the trend is that China is rapidly improving its military strength and capability, but RAND’s conclusion is that the US is still superior, although if war were to break out, it may be decided by non-military factors such as economic ones.

Rekindling the Cold War, This Time with Russia and China

Last month the Hague Tribunal ruled on the issue of the disputed territory of the South China Sea. It concluded that “there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’”. The nine-dash line was a demarcation China made on the map in 1947 to claim their supposed territory. The Hague ruling angered China, who boycotted the hearings and ignored the decision on the basis that the Tribunal has no jurisdiction over the matter.

The issue over the South China Sea didn’t have to be America’s issue; according to renowned journalist John Pilger, Hillary made it so, and the current Obama administration has made a point of focusing on enlarging its forces in South East Asia in its Pivot to Asia:

“As her emails show, Clinton appears to want to destroy Syria in order to protect Israel’s nuclear monopoly. Remember what she did to Libya and Gaddafi. In 2010, as secretary of state, she turned the regional dispute in the South China’s Sea into America’s dispute. She promoted it to an international issue, a flashpoint. The following year, Obama announced his “pivot to Asia,” the jargon for the biggest build-up of US military forces in Asia since World War Two. The current Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently announced that missiles and men would be based in the Philippines, facing China. This is happening while NATO continues its strange military buildup in Europe, right on Russia’s borders.”

The US is not the only one building up forces. China has been building artificial islands in the aforementioned South China Sea’s Spratly Islands by digging up underwater sediment and depositing the material on reefs. Then, China has built air strips and has test landed planes there, much to the ire of Vietnam. Pilger is currently working on a film The Coming War on China which will tell the story of why US-China tension has been escalating. As Pilger writes, the film will reveal that:

“… the US is preparing for a new provocative cold war that has every chance of becoming a hot war. Washington has begun to move its main missile and naval forces into the Asia-Pacific in order to surround and ‘confront’ China, whose extraordinary economic rise in recent years is regarded in Washington as a threat to American dominance.”

In commenting on these ominous indications, Peter Symonds of World Socialist Web Site writes that:

“The RAND Corporation paper is a chilling confirmation of the warnings made by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in its statement of February 18, 2016 titled “Socialism and the Fight Against War.” The statement notes that at a certain point, military fatalism becomes a significant contributing factor to the outbreak of war. It cites an international relations specialist who wrote: “Once war is assumed to be unavoidable, the calculations of leaders and militaries change. The question is no longer whether there will or should be a war, but when the war can be fought most advantageously.”

It is a massive step backwards in the evolution of humanity for the world’s greatest superpower, the USA, to be following the Wolfowitz Doctrine and rekindling the Cold War, after the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991. There is no good reason for the US to make more enemies, when Russia and China would willingly cooperate with it. Russia’s Putin has repeatedly expressed his desire to peacefully coexist with the USA. However, as always, US foreign and military policy is not being driven by true American national interest.

US-China tension is part of the larger strategy of the New World Order: a Global Government on the ashes of chaos.
US-China Tension: On a Deeper Level

If RAND is correct in their assessment that a WW3 scenario between US and China would be long and inclusive, that may suit some people just fine. I am referring to the NWO cabal of international bankers and unelected shadowy figures who have no allegiance to particular countries. The chief family of the NWO, the Rothschilds, have a documented history of funding both sides of wars (as they did in WW1 and WW2). That way, they make lots of money while countries fight each other, and they also get to determine who wins by denying credit to the side they have designated to lose. Since the Rothschilds, who have now intermarried and interbred with the Rockefellers and other rich families to some degrees, control the central banks of so many countries around the world, will they be able to pull off this same strategy once again? Or will enough people realize what’s going on and stop the rush towards war? Feel free to give your comment below.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

China plans to produce its own aircraft engines
Published time: 29 Aug, 2016 13:40
https://www.rt.com/business/357531-china-aircraft-engine-maker/

In an effort to wean itself off foreign suppliers, Beijing has launched the country's first aircraft engine manufacturer for the domestic market.
Read more
Marine corps vehicles carrying ship-to-air missiles drive past the Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing © Damir SagoljAI cruise control: China wants high-level artificial intelligence for next-gen missiles
“We will try to find a path along which we can make independent innovation in conducting fundamental research, making breakthroughs in key technology and producing strategic aircraft engines,” said Liu Tingyi, President of the Chinese Aeronautical Establishment, as quoted by Chinese state media.

China’s cabinet, Beijing municipal government, along with the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China and Commercial Aircraft Corp of China has invested into the new Aero-Engine Corporation of China (AECC).

The new enterprise, which will reportedly have 50 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) in registered capital and 96,000 employees, will focus on developing both military and commercial jet engines.

Founding the company was a “strategic move” to make China an aviation power, according to President Xi Jinping.

China is manufacturing planes, but has been struggling for decades to build its own jet engines that could meet global requirements and increase China’s military power.

READ MORE: Weak trade data from China adds to concerns over global economy

China's air force imports Russian-made engines. Chinese commercial aircraft, the narrow-body C919, is powered by engines produced by a US-French joint venture, while engines for the ARJ21 airliner are made by General Electric.

The establishment of AECC will help China reduce its reliance on foreign producers and potentially develop a self-sufficient aerospace sector to meet the requirements of domestic commercial and military aviation.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

THE COMING WAR ON CHINA (CERT TBC)
The Coming War on China by John Pilger

The Coming War on China is John Pilger's 60th Film for ITV. Pilger reveals what the news doesn't - that the world's greatest military power, the United States, and the world's second economic power, China, both nuclear-armed, are on the road to war. Pilger's film is a warning and an inspiring story of resistance.

DocDays screening: John Pilger will join us for a live Q&A after the film.

Thursday 8 December 6.15pm, Soho.
Soho
Bloomsbury
Victoria
Mayfair
Chelsea
Richmond
Wimbledon
Canterbury
Knutsford
Ripon
Sheffield
ShareThis Copy and Paste - See more at: http://www.curzoncinemas.com/soho/docdays/docdaysthecomingwaronchina

[TonyGosling]

Confronting China: an Interview with John Pilger
by T.J. COLES
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/28/confronting-china-an-interview- with-john-pilger/

TJC: Please tell us about your new film, The Coming War on China.

JP: The Coming War on China is my 60th film and perhaps one of the most urgent. It continues the theme of illuminating the imposition of great power behind a facade of propaganda as news. In 2011, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’ of US forces: almost two-thirds of American naval power would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020.

The undeclared rationale for this was the ‘threat’ from China, by some measure now the greatest economic power. The Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, says US policy is to confront those ‘who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us’.

The film examines power in both countries and how nuclear weapons, in American eyes, are the bedrock of its dominance. In its first ‘chapter’, the film reveals how most of the population of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific were unwittingly made into nuclear guinea pigs in a programme whose secrets – and astonishing archive – are related to the presence of a missile base now targeting China. The Coming War on China will be released in cinemas in the UK on December 1st and broadcast on ITV (in the UK) on December 6th.

TJC: How do you assess Australia’s role in America’s ‘Pivot to Asia’?

JP: Australia is virtually the 51st state of the US. Although China is Australia’s biggest trader, on which much of the national economy relies, ‘confronting China’ is the diktat from Washington. The Australian political establishment, especially the military and intelligence agencies, are fully integrated into what is known as the ‘alliance’, along with the dominant Murdoch media. I often feel a certain sadness about the way my own country – with all its resources and opportunities – seems locked into such an unnecessary, dangerous obsequious role in the world. If the ‘pivot’ proceeds, Australia could find itself fighting, yet again, a great power’s war.

TJC: With regards to the British and American media, how can the US get away with selling China as a threat when it is encircling China?

JP: That’s a question that goes to the heart of modern-day propaganda. China is encircled by a ‘noose’ of some 400 US bases, yet the news has ignored this while concentrating on the ‘threat’ of China building airstrips on disputed islets in the South China Sea, clearly as a defence to a US Navy blockade.

TJC: Obama’s visit to Japan, and particularly to Hiroshima, was a really cynical act. What was your impression of Japan and the political situation there?

JP: Japan is an American colony in all but name – certainly in terms of its relationship with the rest of the world and especially China. The historian Bruce Cumings explores this in an interview in the film. Within the constraints of American dominance, indeed undeterred by Washington, Japan’s current prime minister Shinzo Abe has developed an extreme nationalist position, in which contrition for Japanese actions in the Second World War is anathema and the post-war ‘peace constitution’ is likely to be changed.

Abe has gone as far as boasting that Japan will use nuclear weapons if it wants. In any US conflict with China, Japan – which last year announced its biggest ever ‘defence’ budget – would play a critical role. There are 32 US military installations on the Japanese island of Okinawa, facing China. However, there is a sense in modern Asia that power in the world has indeed moved east and peaceful ‘Asian solutions’ to regional animosities are possible.

TJC: Do you think the new trade and investment deals like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and especially the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) will affect China’s business operations?

JP: It’s difficult to say, but I doubt it. What is remarkable about the rise of China is the way it has built, almost in the blink of an eye, a trade, investment and banking structure that rivals that of the Bretton Woods institutions. Unknown to many of us, China is developing its ‘New Silk Road’ to Europe at an astonishing pace. China’s response to threats from Washington is a diplomacy that’s tied to this development, and which includes a burgeoning alliance with Russia.

T.J. Coles is the author of Britain’s Secret Wars (2016, Clairview Books).

This interview was originally published by the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

China military official says war with US under Donald Trump 'becoming practical reality'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-donald-trump-war-us -military-official-practical-reality-president-latest-a7550601.html

[TonyGosling]

Terror threats transform China's Uighur heartland into security state
A police officer checks the identity card of a man as security forces keep watch in a street in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, March 24, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-security-insight-idUS KBN1713AS
By Philip Wen | KASHGAR/HOTAN, China

Three times a day, alarms ring out through the streets of China's ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, and shopkeepers rush out of their stores swinging government-issued wooden clubs.

In mandatory anti-terror drills conducted under police supervision and witnessed by Reuters on a recent visit, they fight off imaginary knife-wielding assailants. Armored paramilitary and police vehicles circle with sirens blaring.

China says it faces a serious threat from Islamist extremists in this far Western Xinjiang region. Beijing accuses separatists among the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority there of stirring up tensions with the ethnic Han Chinese majority and plotting attacks elsewhere in China.

A historic trading post, Kashgar is also central to China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative, President Xi Jinping's signature foreign and economic policy involving massive infrastructure spending linking China to Asia, the Middle East and beyond.

China's worst fears are that a large-scale attack would blight this year's diplomatic setpiece, an OBOR summit attended by world leaders planned for Beijing in May.

State media say the drills, and other measures such as a network of thousands of new street-corner police posts, are aimed making everyone feel safer.

But many residents say the drills are just part of an oppressive security operation that has been ramped up in Kashgar and other cities in Xinjiang's Uighur heartland in recent months. (For a graphic on China's Xinjiang crackdown click tmsnrt.rs/2nQrQm4)

As well as taking part in drills, shopkeepers must, at their own expense, install password-activated security doors, "panic buttons" and cameras that film not just the street outside but also inside their stores, sending a direct video feed to police.

For Uighurs like the owner of an online multimedia company facing one of Kashgar's main streets it is not about security, but mass surveillance.

"We have no privacy," said the business owner who, like almost everyone Reuters spoke to in Kashgar, did not want to give his name. "They want to see what you're up to."

A Chinese security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the new security measures in Xinjiang were not politically motivated, but based on fresh developments and intelligence. He declined to elaborate.

The Xinjiang government and the State Council Information Office, which doubles as the Communist Party spokesman's office, did not respond to requests for comment.

China routinely denies pursuing repressive policies in Xinjiang, and points to the vast sums it spends on economic development in the resource-rich region. Xinjiang's gross domestic product last year rose 7.6 per cent, above the national average.



RELIGIOUS RE-EDUCATION

Since ethnic riots in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009, Xinjiang has been plagued by bouts of deadly violence.

The incidence of attacks reported in state media have actually declined markedly, both in frequency and scale, since a spate of bombings and mass stabbings in Xinjiang and southwestern Yunnan Province in 2014.

But Chinese state media say the threat remains high and the Communist Party has vowed to continue what it terms its own "war on terror" against spreading Islamist extremism.

In Xinjiang, this can also be seen at weekly flag-raising ceremonies that Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who formed the majority in Xinjiang before an influx of Han Chinese, are required to attend to denounce religious extremism and pledge fealty under the Chinese flag.

At one such event witnessed by Reuters in Hotan, a former Silk Road oasis town 500 km (300 miles) southeast of Kashgar, more than 1,000 people filed onto an open-air basketball court where Party officials checked their names against an attendance list and inspected their dress and appearance.

"Best you take this off or I'll send you to re-education," said one female official, pulling back the black hijab worn by a middle-aged Uighur woman to expose her forehead and hair.

Hotan authorities offer 2,000 yuan ($290) rewards for those who report "face coverings and robes, youth with long beards, or other popular religious customs that have been radicalized", as part of a wider incentive system that rewards actionable intelligence on imminent attacks.

Xinjiang lawmakers this week approved legislation extending a prohibition on "abnormal" beards and the wearing of veils in public places across the whole region. The new rules come into force on Saturday.

This month a video purportedly released by the Islamic State group showed Uighur fighters training in Iraq and vowing that blood would "flow in rivers" in China.



"GRID-STYLE" SURVEILLANCE

The architect of the anti-terror drills and other new measures in Xinjiang is Chen Quanguo, appointed Communist Party boss in the region in August in what analysts said was an implicit endorsement of his hard-line management of ethnic strife in neighboring Tibet.

Chen has made his mark swiftly, culminating last month in what state media described as mass "anti-terror" rallies across Xinjiang's four largest cities involving tens of thousands of paramilitary troops and police.

One of Chen's most visible initiatives has been to build thousands of what the authorities call "convenience police stations" across Xinjiang and hire some 30,000 new officers to man them.

They are present on almost every intersection in Kashgar, typically just hundreds of meters apart, in what Chen calls a "grid-style social management" system he pioneered in Tibet.

Local state media have praised the initiative as a new benchmark in community-based policing. Critics, including Uighur and rights groups, say the real purpose of the convenience police stations is to spy on the population.

Citizens are encouraged to use the stations to charge their mobile phones, have a cup of tea or shelter from the elements.

"I don't know anyone who has been in there," said one Han Chinese taxi driver, who only wanted to be identified by his surname Huang, suggesting few have taken up on the offer to huddle beside the riot police and soldiers that occupy the stations.

But Huang, reflecting the region's simmering ethnic tensions, added that the increased security made him feel safer.

"Some people think it's too much, that it's just a few Uighurs," he said. "But if they chop your family, then you'll know."



ECONOMY OR SECURITY?

James Leibold, an expert on Chinese ethnic policy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, said the focus on security runs counter to Beijing's goal of using the OBOR initiative to boost Xinjiang's economy and improve its integration with the rest of China, because it would disrupt the flow of people and ideas.

"Those two are just fundamentally at odds," he said.

Spending on security in Xinjiang is rising, jumping nearly 20 percent in 2016 to more than 30 billion yuan ($4.35 billion), according to state media.

That can be seen in the metal detectors and airport-style security checks in place at major public areas, including Kashgar's ancient Id Kah mosque, bazaars, malls and hotels.

Police spot document checks are carried out on pedestrians, with mobile phones inspected for extremist videos or use of banned chat applications like Telegram, WhatsApp and Twitter. Mobile internet speeds have been slowed from 4G to 3G.

"There's maybe 5,000 people making trouble, but the rest of us, 10 million of us, pay the price," one Uighur man in Kashgar told Reuters.

Reuters was tailed closely by local police in Kashgar. A reporter returning to his hotel at 1 a.m. found officers waiting in the lobby.

When asked about the reason for the security one of the officers said Kashgar's preparations for OBOR were of paramount importance.

"When you see military and police vehicles patrolling the street in your country, what do you think it's for?" he said. "It's for safety. Kashgar will be a hub for travel. Everything must be good."

(Reporting by Philip Wen; Editing by Alex Richardson)

[TonyGosling]

Pentagon encircles China with new radar stations
Friday, 1. September 2017 , by Freeman at 08:00
http://alles-schallundrauch.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/pentagon-kreist-chi na-mit-neuen.html

Not only Russia is being encircled with NATO eastward expansion, with the Installation of American weapons systems, military bases, and the relocation of NATO troops to the Russian border, systematically, the same happens with China. The latest step is the announcement of the Pentagram, it is the radar to build stations on the Pacific Islands of the mini-state of Palau. Is claimed, it comes to the Monitoring of air and Maritime transport, the prevention of illegal fishing in the waters around Palau and also the tracking of North Korean missile firings. In the same way as it is a lie, the construction of the so-called missile defense system in Poland and Romania, serve only to avert the North Korean and Iranian missiles to protect Europe, but the fact is, the United States a nuclear first strike against Russia, directed the radar stations on Palau, in truth, against China. The "danger" of an attack from North Korea is just an excuse.



The Radar System will consist of a series of radar towers, which will be distributed to the over 300 Islands of the Palau archipelago, what is the cause to this pristine dream of Islands, a considerable environmental damage. Not only piers and the concrete foundations have to be built, but also diesel generators for the power supply installed and building to be erected for the maintenance teams.



The Islands of Palau are a Paradise for divers, but the archipelago is quite isolated.



Official of the two countries, the United States and Palau, met at 16. August, at the locations of the Radar-discuss Matrix, such as the office of the President of Palau, and the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Koror, jointly announced.

"The Radar System is Palau advanced Maritime law enforcement in its territorial waters permit, and in the exclusive economic zone, while the United States is a greater awareness of the airspace for the safety prepare, "the statement said.

Palau occupied a strategically important Position in the vicinity of the Philippines and much closer to the Chinese mainland to the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, the justification for the establishment of a radar system on Palau, a sham.

The Americans have long sought a replacement for the loss of the Navy and air force bases in the Philippines, since they have abandoned in the 1990-years, and the current President Rodrigo Duterte does not consider the United States as a friend and increasingly China and Russia.

The new Radar System will complement the existing American radar stations on the island of Guam and the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which are part of the system, to monitor missile launches in the Asian continent.

Historically, Palau 1543 discovered by the Spanish and taken possession of. In the late 19th century. Century colonial, the Spaniards terrorizing the Islands.

By the defeat in the Spanish-American war, 1898 sold to Spain Palau along with the largest part of the rest of the Caroline Islands, in accordance with the German-Spanish Treaty of 1899 as part of German new Guinea to the German Empire.

Palau was a German colony until February 15. August 1914 Japan declared war on the German Reich and the Islands occupied. Later, Palau was awarded as a mandate territory by the League of Nations Japan.

During the II world war, Palau was liberated by the Americans and then from Washington to be administered. The small Nation with only 17,600 inhabitants, got in 1994 on the independence, but America is in 50 years for the defence responsible. The country has neither the military nor its own currency and uses the US Dollar.

The construction of the new radar system has to do with the prevention of illegal fishing and the protection of the economy of Palau, therefore, nothing, because already in July 2014, a monitoring system was installed.

It is the Sea Dragon System, which is the SlimSAR of the company Artemis used air-based Sensors, the illegal fishing activities from the altitude to observe and document.



In other words, there are drones flying with Radar, TV and infrared cameras on the sea and the ship traffic.



As I said, it goes back to the Warbringers in Washington, only to encircle China, complete with military bases and war and surveillance technology. An alleged threat from North Korea and the protection of the fish stocks around Palau that are only back clear justifications for the good faith.

Imagine the opposite case, China would say, it's a huge radar builds plant in Jamaica, in order to protect the area around the Caribbean island South of Florida against the "illegal fishing", Washington, hysterical would freak out. The U.S. military would view it as a Chinese provocation and threat to the US mainland.

Hier weiterlesen: Alles Schall und Rauch: Pentagon kreist China mit neuen Radarstationen ein http://alles-schallundrauch.blogspot.com/2017/09/pentagon-kreist-china -mit-neuen.html#ixzz4s8UxP7Yp

[TonyGosling]

By Josh Chin and Clément Bürge | Photographs by Giulia Marchi for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Dec. 19, 2017 10:58 p.m. ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chinas-survei llance-state-overwhelms-daily-life-1513700355
URUMQI, China—This city on China’s Central Asia frontier may be one of the most closely surveilled places on earth.
Security checkpoints with identification scanners guard the train station and roads in and out of town. Facial scanners track comings and goings at hotels, shopping malls and banks. Police use hand-held devices to search smartphones for encrypted chat apps, politically charged videos and other suspect content. To fill up with gas, drivers must first swipe their ID cards and stare into a camera.





Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/07/feature/in-chi na-facial-recognition-is-sharp-end-of-a-drive-for-total-surveillance/

CHONGQING, China
For 40-year-old Mao Ya, the facial recognition camera that allows access to her apartment house is simply a useful convenience.

“If I am carrying shopping bags in both hands, I just have to look ahead and the door swings open,” she said. “And my 5-year-old daughter can just look up at the camera and get in. It’s good for kids because they often lose their keys.”

But for the police, the cameras that replaced the residents’ old entry cards serve quite a different purpose.

Now they can see who’s coming and going, and by combining artificial intelligence with a huge national bank of photos, the system in this pilot project should enable police to identify what one police report, shared with The Washington Post, called the “bad guys” who once might have slipped by.

Facial recognition is the new hot tech topic in China. Banks, airports, hotels and even public toilets are all trying to verify people’s identities by analyzing their faces. But the police and security state have been the most enthusiastic about embracing this new technology.

The pilot in Chongqing forms one tiny part of an ambitious plan, known as “Xue Liang,” which can be translated as “Sharp Eyes.” The intent is to connect the security cameras that already scan roads, shopping malls and transport hubs with private cameras on compounds and buildings, and integrate them into one nationwide surveillance and data-sharing platform.

It will use facial recognition and artificial intelligence to analyze and understand the mountain of incoming video evidence; to track suspects, spot suspicious behaviors and even predict crime; to coordinate the work of emergency services; and to monitor the comings and goings of the country’s 1.4 billion people, official documents and security industry reports show.

At the back end, these efforts merge with a vast database of information on every citizen, a “Police Cloud” that aims to scoop up such data as criminal and medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments — and link it to everyone’s identity card and face.

Surveillance technologies are giving the government a sense that it can finally achieve the level of control over people's lives that it aspires to.
Adrian Zenz, a German academic
A goal of all of these interlocking efforts: to track where people are, what they are up to, what they believe and who they associate with — and ultimately even to assign them a single “social credit” score based on whether the government and their fellow citizens consider them trustworthy.

At this housing complex in Chongqing, “90 percent of the crime is caused by the 10 percent of people who are not registered residents,” the police report said. “With facial recognition we can recognize strangers, analyze their entry and exit times, see who spends the night here, and how many times. We can identify suspicious people from among the population.”

Adrian Zenz, a German academic who has researched ethnic policy and the security state in China’s western province of Xinjiang, said the government craves omnipotence over a vast, complex and restive population.

“Surveillance technologies are giving the government a sense that it can finally achieve the level of control over people’s lives that it aspires to,” he said.

Here are a few of the ideas that
the tech companies showcase.

0:47
/ 2:49



China is pursuing an ambitious plan to make an omnipresent video surveillance network to track where people are and what they're up to. The Post's Simon Denyer looks at the technology that will make this possible.
In this effort, the Chinese government is working hand-in-glove with the country’s tech industry, from established giants to plucky start-ups staffed by graduates from top American universities and former employees of companies like Google and Microsoft, who seem cheerfully oblivious to concerns they might be empowering a modern surveillance state.

The name of the video project is taken from the Communist slogan “the masses have sharp eyes,” and is a throwback to Mao Zedong’s attempt to get every citizen spying on one another. The goal, according to tech industry executives working on the project, is to shine a light into every dark corner of China, to eliminate the shadows where crime thrives.

The Sharp Eyes project also aims to mobilize the neighborhood committees and snoopy residents who have long been key informers: now, state media reports, some can turn on their televisions or mobile phones to see security camera footage, and report any suspicious activity — a car without a license plate, an argument turning violent — directly to the police.

To the eyes of the masses, in other words, add the brains of the country’s fast-growing tech industry.

At Megvii offices in Beijing, a designer prepares marketing material for a facial-recognition product. The company's marketing manager has said Megvii's Face program has helped police make thousands of arrests.
By 2020, China’s government aims to make the video surveillance network “omnipresent, fully networked, always working and fully controllable,” combining data mining with sophisticated video and image analysis, official documents show.

China is not alone in experimenting with these new technologies. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification System uses facial recognition to compare images from crime scenes with a national database of mug shots. Police forces across the United States have been using algorithm-based techniques for several years to predict where crimes are likely to occur.

Chicago police identified and a court convicted a thief using facial-recognition technology in 2014, and Britain used a Japanese program called NeoFace Watch to spot a wanted man in a crowd in May.

The United States, with around 62 million surveillance cameras in 2016, actually has higher per capita penetration rate than China, with around 172 million, according to Monica Wang, a senior analyst in video surveillance and security at research consultants IHS Markit in Shanghai.

Yet it is China’s ambition that sets it apart. Western law enforcement agencies tend to use facial recognition to identify criminal suspects, not to track social activists and dissidents, or to monitor entire ethnic groups. China seeks to achieve several interlocking goals: to dominate the global artificial-intelligence industry, to apply big data to tighten its grip on every aspect of society, and to maintain surveillance of its population more effectively than ever before.

“Deep learning is poised to revolutionize the video surveillance industry,” Wang wrote in a recent report. “Demand in China will grow quickly, providing the engine for future market growth.”

In the showrooms of three facial-recognition start-ups in Chongqing and Beijing, video feeds roll past on big screens, with faces picked out from crowds and matched to images of wanted men and women. Street cameras automatically classify passersby according to gender, clothes and even hair length, and software allows people to be tracked from one surveillance camera to the next, by their faces alone.


LEFT: A CCTV camera is reflected on a window at the entrance of the Megvii showroom in Beijing. RIGHT: A CCTV display using the facial-recognition system Face in Beijing.
“The bigger picture is to track routine movement, and after you get this information, to investigate problematic behavior,” said Li Xiafeng, director of research and development at Cloudwalk, a Chongqing-based firm. “If you know gambling takes place in a location, and someone goes there frequently, they become suspicious.”

Gradually, a model of people’s behavior takes shape. “Once you identify a criminal or a suspect, then you look at their connections with other people,” he said. “If another person has multiple connections, they also become suspicious.”

The start-ups also showcase more consumer-friendly applications of their technology. Companies like SenseTime, Megvii and Cloudwalk provide the software that powers mobile apps allowing people to alter, “beautify” or transform their faces for fun.

Much of their business also comes from banks and financial companies that are using facial recognition to check identities, at ATMs or on phones. Some airports in China already employ facial recognition in security checks, and hotels are doing the same at check-in; a Chinese version of Airbnb promises to use it to verify guests’ identities, while China’s version of Uber, Didi Chuxing, is using it to verify those of its drivers.

Some of the applications have a slightly gimmicky feel. A lecturer at a Beijing university was said to be using a face scanner to check if his students were bored; a toilet roll dispenser at a public facility outside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing reportedly scans faces to keep people from stealing too much paper, while a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Hangzhou allows customers to simply “smile to pay.”

Other ideas are struggling to move beyond the pilot stage: a plan to identify jaywalkers in Chongqing has already been abandoned, while residents have responded to facial-recognition gates on some apartment buildings in Chongqing and Beijing by propping the doors open.

Yet facial recognition is not going away, and it promises to become a potent tool for maintaining control of Chinese society.

So far, the technology doesn’t quite match the ambition: It is not foolproof.

“There will be false positives for the foreseeable future,” said Jim Dempsey, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Law and Technology. This raises two critical questions, he said: Does a country’s due process system protect people from being falsely convicted on the basis of facial-recognition technology? And are the false positives disproportionately skewed toward certain minority groups, such as Chinese Muslims?

In China, the tech companies claim many times greater accuracy rates than, for instance, the FBI, and probably justifiably so, experts say: after all, they have been able to draw on a huge pool of photos from government records to improve their algorithms, without any pesky concerns about privacy.


More than anything else, experts say, deep learning technologies need huge amounts of data to come up with accurate algorithms. China has more data than anywhere else in the world and fewer constraints about mining it from its citizens.

“Now we are purely data driven,” said Xu Li, CEO of SenseTime. “It’s easier in China to collect sufficient training data. If we want to do new innovations, China will have advantages in data collection in a legal way.”

Smart technology backed by artificial intelligence will be a tool to assist the police forces of the future. Chinese IT and telecoms giant Huawei says its Safe Cities technology has already helped Kenya bring down urban crime rates.

But who’s a criminal? In China, documents for the Police Cloud project unearthed by Human Rights Watch list “petitioners” — people who complain to the government about perceived injustices — as potential targets of surveillance, along with anyone who “undermines stability” or has “extreme thoughts.” Other documents cite members of ethnic minorities, specifically Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang, as subjects of scrutiny.

Crowds walk in a Beijing pedestrian underpass, near Tiananmen Square, that is monitored by three CCTV cameras.
Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said what sets China apart is “a complete lack of effective privacy protections,” combined with a system that is explicitly designed to target individuals seen as “politically threatening.”

“In other countries, we are often concerned about the use of big data for deepening existing policing bias — for example, for targeting historically disadvantaged groups like African Americans in the U.S. context — but for the Chinese systems, the targeting of people of certain ethnicity is a fundamental function of the system,” she added.

In Muslim-majority Xinjiang, where a spate of violent incidents has been blamed on separatists or Islamist radicals, facial-recognition cameras have become ubiquitous at roadblocks, outside gas stations, airports, railway and bus stations, and at residential and university compounds and entrances to Muslim neighborhoods, experts say. DNA collection and iris scanning add extra layers of sophistication.

At Megvii, marketing manager Zhang Xin boasts that the company’s Face++ program helped police arrest 4,000 people since the start of 2016, including about 1,000 in Hangzhou, where a major deployment of cameras in hotels, subways and train stations preceded that year’s G-20 summit.

Very likely among that number: some of the dozens of dissidents, petitioners and citizen journalists who were detained in and around the city at that time.

Frances Eve, a researcher for Chinese Human Rights Defenders in Hong Kong, argues that China’s tech companies are complicit in human rights abuses.

“It’s basically a crime in China to advocate for human rights protection,” she said. “The government treats human rights activists, lawyers and ethnic Uighurs and Tibetans as criminals, and these people are being caught, jailed and possibly tortured as a result of this technology.”

Shirley Feng contributed to this report.

Read more

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In China, Big Brother isn’t just watching your every move. He’s selling your personal data.

The walls are closing in: China finds new ways to tighten Internet controls




China’s Total Information Awareness: Second-Order Challenges

By Ashley Deeks Tuesday, January 16, 2018, 9:00 AM
https://lawfareblog.com/chinas-total-information-awareness-second-orde r-challenges

Every day seems to bring a new article about China’s pervasive use of facial recognition technology. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have reported how widely China is using this technology, collecting and storing video evidence from cameras on every street corner and road, at apartment building entrances, and in businesses, malls, transportation hubs, and public toilets. The Chinese government seeks to consolidate this information with people’s criminal and medical records, travel plans, online purchases, and comments on social media. China would link all of this information to every citizen’s identification card and face, forming one omnipotent database.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal produced a chilling long-form article tracking a journalist’s trip to Xinjiang province. The piece details not just the use of facial recognition software but also more intrusive steps such as the use of DNA collection, iris scanning, voice-pattern analysis, phone scanners, ID card swipes, and security checkpoints, all to further suppress unrest among the predominantly Muslim Uighur population. The piece frames life in Xinjiang as a forecast of what’s to come in China more broadly.

These developments feel relatively distant, both geographically and as a matter of current U.S. domestic practice. Our government does not collect video feeds from cameras in public toilets and private apartment buildings. Nor does it possess a database containing every citizen’s photograph. Nevertheless, federal and local government agencies in the United States are increasing their use of facial recognition software at the border and in law enforcement contexts. There are a range of second-order questions that we should begin to think about as facial recognition software continues to improve and as its use expands, both within and beyond China’s borders.

One challenge relates to U.S. intelligence collection. If the Chinese government can recognize every person on the street and easily track a person’s comings and goings, this will make it even harder for foreign intelligence agencies to operate inside the country. Not only will U.S. and other Western intelligence agents be even easier to follow (electronically), but the Chinese government will also be able to identify Chinese nationals who might be working with Western intelligence services—perhaps using machine learning and pattern detection to extract patterns of life. China’s facial recognition efforts thus facilitate its counterintelligence capacities.

A second challenge is posed by the fact that this technology surely will spread to other (probably authoritarian) countries. China seems committed to becoming a (maybe the) leader in artificial intelligence, and is promoting startups that focus in this area. No doubt China will seek to export AI technology to other states that seek a high level of government and social control over their populations. Sooner or later, the United States therefore will need to decide what it thinks about the use of pervasive video surveillance and, more specifically, whether this kind of surveillance violates basic human rights norms.

I have not been able to find U.S. government statements, law review articles, or statements from nongovernmental organizations articulating views about whether such pervasive surveillance implicates Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states in part that “[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” (If such documents exist, I would welcome reader feedback.) Without doubt, some level of public surveillance poses no difficulty under the covenant; after all, one generally lacks a reasonable expectation of privacy for those acts one performs publicly. States such as the U.K. widely employ closed circuit cameras in public spaces, and London’s metropolitan police purportedly deployed a trial of facial recognition software at a gathering in August 2017. The FBI operates a face recognition service that it uses in criminal investigations to search through a database of 30 million photographs, to compare, for instance, a still photo taken from a surveillance camera. Customs and Border Patrol uses a more limited technology that compares a photo of a person seeking admission to the United States with the photograph in his or her passport. The Electronic Privacy Information Center lists a few other contexts in which U.S. actors (including companies such as Facebook) are using facial recognition tools.

And yet constant surveillance in the public sphere implicates some of the same concerns that several members of the Supreme Court raised in U.S. v. Jones. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by three other justices, worried that long-term monitoring by the government of a person’s movement in public places might not pass Fourth Amendment muster. In her concurrence, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that the court’s jurisprudence might not be adequate in “cases of electronic or other novel modes of surveillance that do not depend upon a physical invasion on property.” She noted, “GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations”—something that robust, closed circuit collection of people’s movements would generate as well. This is a domestic case, to be sure, but the underlying question about whether total government surveillance of one’s public actions ultimately violates privacy rights resonates within the international law concept of privacy as well.

China is not a party to the ICCPR, so it need not be troubled as a matter of international law by charges that this level of surveillance runs afoul of international privacy rules. However, many other states are parties to the agreement. How will the United States react, if at all, when those states begin to employ China’s techniques? Will the United States argue that pervasive public surveillance violates the covenant? Where and how will it draw the line between permissible and impermissible levels of surveillance? Does the agreement’s privacy provision even have enough teeth to offer a shield against Chinese-level facial surveillance?

A third, related challenge will arise in the context of the U.S. military. The U.S. military has employed facial recognition software in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems safe to assume that the technologies used in wartime contexts will continue to improve as private companies fine-tune and then sell their algorithms. What if the U.S. military creates large facial recognition databases during conflicts such as Iraq or Afghanistan, to protect U.S. and allied troops and detect combatants or terrorists? When the time comes for the U.S. military to leave, should the military turn that database and software over to the host state? What protections exist to guard against abuse, especially where the host state has given indications that it will use these tools to harass or harm its population?

There is undoubtedly much more to say about widespread facial surveillance and related surveillance algorithms, which raise questions about accuracy and the difficulty correcting inaccurate identifications; about the ways in which such surveillance chills free speech and association; and about who will have access to the information. However, even this short list of second-order challenges suggests that we should start thinking now about how to respond to deep surveillance states. The U.S. government, the military, intelligence agencies, human rights groups, and the public all have a role here. Credit these news articles for allowing us to see what a modern total information awareness society looks like—and to imagine what one would feel like.

[TonyGosling]

China makes disrespect of national anthem a crime
Christian Shepherd, Venus Wu
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-law-anthem/china-makes-disresp ect-of-national-anthem-a-crime-idUKKCN1BC4FX

BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Anyone who mocks China’s national anthem faces up to 15 days in police detention after parliament criminalised such acts in a new law on Friday that covers Hong Kong and Macau.

FILE PHOTO - A man waves the Chinese national flag as an amateur choir performs in a park in a residential neighbourhood in Beijing, China February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
Since taking over as president, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has ushered in new legislation aimed at securing the country from threats both within and outside its borders, besides presiding over a sweeping crackdown on dissent and free speech.

Protecting “the dignity of the national anthem” will help “promote patriotism and nurture socialist core values”, says the new law passed by the National People’s Congress (NPC).

It governs when, where and how the anthem, the “March of the Volunteers”, can be played.

The law bans its use as background music and in advertisements, rules out playing it at funerals and on other “inappropriate occasions” and prescribes administrative detention for any “distorted” or “mocking” renditions.

Those attending public events must stand to attention and sing in a solemn manner when the anthem is played.

The new law brings treatment of the anthem into line with desecration of China’s national flag, or its emblem, which has been a criminal offence punishable by up to 15 days’ detention since the 1990s. Those laws also apply in Hong Kong and Macau.

Wu Zeng, the office head of the NPC’s national laws panel, confirmed that lawmakers had agreed the law should also apply to Hong Kong and Macau by being written into their constitutional provisions, the Basic Laws.

The law has fuelled concern in Hong Kong, whose residents have grown nervous over China’s perceived encroachment of the city’s autonomy following such events as the disappearance of booksellers who later emerged in mainland Chinese custody.

Hong Kong lawyer and pro-democracy lawmaker Tanya Chan said she expected “a series of obstacles” when the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, adopts the law.

“The rights and freedoms protected under Hong Kong laws have come under challenge in recent years,” she said. “So it is right for people to be concerned.”

The city’s Justice Secretary, Rimsky Yuen, said he hoped “the intention of the national law would be upheld without affecting Hong Kong people’s basic rights and freedoms”.

In 2015, Hong Kong football fans booed the Chinese anthem during a World Cup qualifier, prompting a fine for the territory’s football association from world body FIFA.

Last month, Shanghai police detained three men for having “hurt patriotic feelings” by dressing up as Japanese soldiers and posing for photographs outside a memorial to China’s war with Japan, state media said.

Reporting by Christian Shepherd in Beijing and Venus Wu in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Philip Wen; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

[TonyGosling]

'Xi Jinping Thought' enshrined in China constitution
https://www.rte.ie/news/asia/2017/1024/914761-china-congress/

Wednesday, 25 Oct 2017 06:36

China's ruling Communist Party has enshrined President Xi Jinping's political thought into its constitution, putting him in the same company as the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong.

The party unanimously passed the amendment to include "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" as one of its guiding principles at the end of its week-long congress.

The party will announce its new Standing Committee, the apex of power in China, tomorrow, culminating a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle.

The current committee is made up of seven people.

Also included in the amended constitution was the party's "absolute" leadership over the military, that the fight against corruption would continue, Mr Xi's "Belt and Road" development initiative, supply-side reforms, and giving play to the "decisive role" of market forces in resource allocation.

"The congress holds that the leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential attribute of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the greatest strength of this system," the party said in a statement.

"The party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavour in every part of the country."

Whether Mr Xi was able to have his name "crowned" in the party constitution had been seen as a key measure of his power, elevating him to the level of previous leaders exemplified by Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory.

No other leader since Mao has had an eponymous ideology included in the document while in office. Deng's name was added after his death in 1997.

Mr Xi's more recent predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, both had the party constitution amended to include their guiding thoughts, but without their names directly attached.

Mr Xi has rapidly consolidated power since assuming party leadership in late 2012 and then the presidency the next year.

The party gave Mr Xi the title of "core" leader a year ago, a significant strengthening of his position ahead of the congress, which is held once every five years.