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China Defence Budget To Rise 10.7% In 2013

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Photo Credit: APChina’s defence budget is set to rise 10.7 percent this year, state media said on Tuesday as the national parliament’s annual gathering opens, a slight drop from a 11.2 percent increase in 2012.

“China plans to raise its defence budget by 10.7 percent to 720.2 billion yuan” ($115.7 billion) in 2013, the Xinhua news agency said, citing a budget report that will be reviewed by the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature.

China’s military budgets have risen steadily in recent years along with the country’s booming economic growth, and experts say the actual totals are usually substantially higher than the publicly announced figures.

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Empire Strikes Back: Report Confirms China Assaulting Home Churches

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Photo Credit: WNDChina’s crackdown against its thriving home-church movement is surging, only a few months after it was reported the communist nation’s attacks on Christians had subsided, according to a new report from the Chinese-focused human rights group China Aid.

China Aid said its research shows a 42 percent increase in persecution over the past 12 months.

China Aid founder Bob Fu, who says the Chinese government is wary of organized groups, confirmed, “Experts say the Communist Party in China has long felt threatened by any movement that galvanizes a large sector of the population, fearing it could wield political clout.”

Now, he said, “The nation has become more systematically hostile to worshipers.” China Aid spokesman Mark Shan told WND the government appears to intend to do what is necessary.

“There is a major effort now to wipe out the house churches by any means. The government will shut down the church,” Shan said. “Or, they will force the house church members to join an official church.” Those official groups, recognized and allowed by the government, also are influenced by the government, critics have explained.

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China Deal Benefits Obama Donors

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The government watchdog group Judicial Watch is suing the Treasury Department for records pertaining to the department’s decision to grant a Chinese government-backed company access to oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that will benefit Obama donors.

The Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) reached a “definitive agreement” with Nexen, Inc., a Canadian energy company, announced on July 23, 2012, to buy all of the company’s outstanding public shares. Nexen has holdings in the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, giving the Chinese government access to millions of barrels of Keystone XL and Gulf reserve oil.

Nexen’s holdings in the Gulf, coupled with the Chinese government’s ownership of CNOOC, meant the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had to approve the takeover, which it did on Feb. 12.

The secretaries of several major executive departments—including treasury, state, defense, and homeland security—sit on the committee.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the deal in November, but the Treasury Department did not reply within the mandatory 20 days. Judicial Watch then filed suit on Feb. 14 to get access to the documents.

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Has The Bell Begun To Toll For China?

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Photo Credit: Human Events“Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered,” China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, told a closed meeting of party elite in Guangdong province.

“Finally all it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone,” said Xi, according to notes obtained by The New York Times.

“Everyone is talking about reform, but in fact everyone has a fear of reform,” said Chinese historian Ma Jong. “The question is: Can society be kept under control while you go forward? That is the test.” That is indeed the test.

What is it that gives a party its legitimacy, its right to rule? What holds a nation together when its cradle faith, its founding ideology, has been abandoned by both elites and the people? That is China’s coming crisis.

With victory in the civil war with the Nationalists in 1949, Mao claimed to have liberated China from both Japanese imperialists and Western colonialists, and restored her dignity. “China has stood up!” he said. His party’s claim to absolute power was rooted in what it had done, and also what it must do. Only a party with total power could lead a world revolution. Only an all-powerful party could abolish inequality in a way that made the French Revolution look like a rebellion at Berkeley.

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Beijing Preparing for War?

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Photo Credit: APUnited States intelligence agencies recently detected China’s military shifting road-mobile ballistic missiles closer to its southern coast near the disputed Senkaku Islands amid growing tensions between Beijing and Japan over the islands dispute.

U.S. defense officials said the movements are being watched closely as China’s military is also holding large-scale military exercises that some fear could be a trigger for a conflict with Japan that could involve U.S. forces. The officials did not provide details of the missile movements that were tracked by U.S. aircraft, ship-based, and satellite surveillance systems in the region.

Disclosure of the missile movements comes as White House national security adviser Tom Donilon on Monday met in Seoul with China’s state councilor Liu Yandong. The two were in South Korea to attend the inauguration of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Tensions remain high between Japan and China over Tokyo’s nationalization last year of several uninhabited islands between Okinawa and Taiwan called the Senkakus. China claims the islands as its territory. At issue are large undersea oil and gas deposits sought by both energy-poor countries.

The officials confirmed the missile movements near the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian after Chinese press outlets first reported them.

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BBC Scandal: Transcripts Show Mark Thompson, Now NYT CEO, Said He ‘Never Heard’ Rumors About Molester

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Photo Credit: APNewly released transcripts from an inquiry into the BBC’s handling of the Jimmy Savile child sex scandal reveal more about the role played by the public service broadcaster’s then director-general, New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson.

The transcripts, published Friday, show that Thompson told the inquiry late last year that he had “never heard” rumors that Savile had a “dark side of any kind, sexual or otherwise.” Savile, a celebrity entertainer who died in 2011 at age 84, is alleged to have sexually abused hundreds of children over his long BBC career.

The same inquiry, chaired by former Sky News chief Nick Pollard, was told by one of the BBC’s most prominent journalists, Jeremy Paxman, that Savile’s liking for “young girls” was “common gossip” at the BBC. Other interviewees confirmed this, with one recalling have heard rumors even before she joined the BBC well over a decade earlier.

The Pollard transcripts also criticize the way the BBC was run while Thompson was at the helm, with claims he oversaw a Beijing-style, top-heavy management structure.

“[T]hey had more senior leaders than China,” BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten told Pollard. “The management team, the senior management team, that the previous director-general [Thompson] had was 27 – 25 or 27. They never met.” (Patten has first-hand experience of China’s leadership structure; he was Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong before it reverted to mainland control in 1997.)

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Video: Biden- Americans ‘No Longer Worried’ About Economy

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Photo Credit: marcn In remarks today at the White House, Vice President Joe Biden said that Americans don’t have the same economic worries they did when President Barack Obama came into office:

“The are no longer traumatized by what was a traumatizing event, the great collapse of 2008,” said Biden.

“They are no longer worried, I think, about our economy being overwhelmed either by Europe writ large, the EU, or China somehow swallowing up every bit of innovation that exists in the world.”

See video:

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China’s Xi Affirms Goal Of Unification With Taiwan In Meeting With Senior Island Politician

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Photo Credit: Andy Wong/APChinese leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s desire to bring Taiwan under its control in a meeting Monday in Beijing with the honorary head of the island’s ruling party.

Xi told Nationalist Party honorary chairman Lien Chan that he and other Communist Party leaders who took office in November will continue developing ties and pushing for unification with the island, which China claims as part of its territory.

“The new Communist Party ruling collective will continue to push forward the peaceful development of relations between the two sides and advance the cause of peaceful unification,” Xi told Lien at their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of the legislature in downtown Beijing.

Xi promised to “pragmatically forge ahead” to achieve new achievements in relations that would enrich residents on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The meeting is the first between Xi and a leading Taiwanese politician since Xi assumed the party leadership in November, and comes weeks before he assumes the title of state president at the legislature’s annual session.

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Senators Raise Alarm Over Another Possible Sale Of Taxpayer-Backed Firm To Chinese

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Photo Credit: ReutersRepublican senators complained Wednesday that U.S. taxpayer dollars could end up boosting the Chinese economy, following reports that a Chinese firm is leading the pack of companies bidding for a majority stake in government-backed Fisker Automotive.

The troubled California-based electric car maker, which was backed by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of nearly $530 million, for months has been looking for a financial partner. Reuters reported earlier this week that China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is favored to take over, though Fisker is also reportedly weighing a bid from another Chinese auto maker.

The development comes after Fisker’s main battery supplier — U.S. government-backed A123 Systems — was recently purchased by a separate Chinese firm.

Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voiced concern Wednesday that Chinese companies are benefiting from U.S. taxpayers’ investment.

“Obama’s green energy investments appear to be nothing more than venture capital for eventual Chinese acquisitions,” Thune said in a statement. “After stimulus-funded A123 was just acquired by a Chinese-based company, it’s troubling to see that yet another struggling taxpayer-backed company might be purchased under duress by a Chinese company.”

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China’s Hack Attack Revealed China’s Military Linked To Cyber Espionage

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Photo Credit: APA secret Chinese military unit is the major player in cyber espionage against an array of computer networks around the world, according to an intelligence report by a cyber security firm.

“Our research and observations indicate that the Communist Party of China is tasking the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to commit systematic cyber espionage and data theft against organizations around the world,” the report by the security firm Mandiant said.

Mandiant conducts cyber threat analyses for both government and industry clients. A threat intelligence report produced in 2010 by the company was unable to confirm Chinese military involvement in widespread cyber attacks that were suspected as originating in China. “Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment,” the report said.

“The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese government is aware of them.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the Chinese government plays a direct role in cyber theft that is “rampant,” and a problem growing “exponentially.”

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