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Chinese Mother Testifies About 13 Million Forced Abortions a Year – It Amounts to ‘Torture’

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At a hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China on Thursday, a Chinese woman who is pregnant with her second child — and who fled to the United States with her husband and son — said the official government policy change from one-child to two will not stop forced abortions that number at least 13 million a year and amount to the “torture” of Chinese women.

“A majority, but not all, families will meet the criteria and be allowed to keep their second child,” Sarah Huang – not her real name – said in her prepared testimony, which she gave from an undisclosed location through an interpreter. “However, clearly China’s change to a two-child policy is not enough.”

“Chinese families who attempt to have two children could still be subject to coercive and intrusive forms of contraception and forced abortions, which amount to torture,” Huang said.

“The Chinese government data report that 13 million abortions are performed each year, for an average rate of 35,000 abortions per day,” Huang said. “I personally believe the number is much higher because these statistics only include hospitals that report their figures and most abortions occur in unauthorized ‘black’ clinics or at home.”

Huang said she believes the number of abortions annually in China is closer to 20 million a year. (Read more from “Chinese Mother Testifies About 13 Million Forced Abortions a Year – It Amounts to ‘Torture'” HERE)

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Watch for U.S. Recession, Zero Interest Rates in China next Year

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The outlook for the global economy next year is darkening, with a U.S. recession and China becoming the first major emerging market to slash interest rates to zero both potential scenarios, according to Citi.

As the U.S. economy enters its seventh year of expansion following the 2008-09 crisis, the probability of recession will reach 65 percent, Citi’s rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. A rapid flattening of the bond yield curve towards inversion would be an key warning sign.

“The cumulative probability of U.S. recession reaches 65 percent next year,” Citi’s rates strategists wrote in their 2016 outlook published late on Tuesday. “Curve inversion will likely come more quickly than the consensus thinks.” (Read more from “Watch for U.S. Recession, Zero Interest Rates in China next Year” HERE)

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China ‘Clone Factory’ Scientist Eyes Human Replication

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The Chinese scientist behind the world’s biggest cloning factory has technology advanced enough to replicate humans, he told AFP, and is only holding off for fear of the public reaction.

Boyalife Group and its partners are building the giant plant in the northern Chinese port of Tianjin, where it is due to go into production within the next seven months and aims for an output of one million cloned cows a year by 2020 . . .

Boyalife is already working with its South Korean partner Sooam and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve primate cloning capacity to create better test animals for disease research . . .

The firm does not currently engage in human cloning activities, Xu said, adding that it has to be “self-restrained” because of possible adverse reaction.

But social values can change, he pointed out, citing changing views of homosexuality and suggesting that in time humans could have more choices about their own reproduction. (Read more from “China ‘Clone Factory’ Scientist Eyes Human Replication” HERE)

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China Plans to Launch Carbon-Tracking Satellites Into Space

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China plans to launch satellites to monitor its greenhouse gas emissions as the country, estimated to be the world’s top carbon emitter, steps up its efforts to cut such emissions, official news agency Xinhua said on Monday.

News of the plan comes as more than 150 world leaders arrived in Paris for climate change talks and Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama said they would work together towards striking a deal that moves towards a low-carbon global economy.

According to the Xinhau report, the country’s first two carbon-monitoring satellites will be ready by next May after four years of development led by Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics and Physics, part of China’s Academy of Sciences . . .

If successful, it would be the world’s third country to send satellites into orbit to monitor greenhouse gases, coming after Japan which was the first country to do so in 2009, followed by the United States last year.

The satellites will be key for expanding research into emissions – currently, China is only able to collect data from the ground, whereas the probes will also monitor oceans, which make up 71 percent of the world’s surface. (Read more from “China Plans to Launch Carbon-Tracking Satellites Into Space” HERE)

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China ‘Cloning Factory’ to Produce Cattle, Racehorses and Pets

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The world’s biggest animal “cloning factory” is due to open in China, producing one million calves a year, sniffer dogs and even genetic copies of the family pet.

The £21 million “commercial” facility will edge the controversial science “closer to mainstream acceptance”, Chinese media said, following the development of a technique which began when Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal when she was born in Scotland in 1996.

The centre may cause alarm in Europe, where the cloning of animals for farming was banned in September due to animal welfare considerations.

But Xu Xiaochun, chairman of Chinese biotechnology company BoyaLife that is backing the facility, dismissed such concerns . . .

“Legislation is always behind science. But in the area of cloning, I think we are going the wrong way and starting to kill the technology.” (Read more from “China ‘Cloning Factory’ to Produce Cattle, Racehorses and Pets” HERE)

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Beijing Vows Justice as ISIS Kills Chinese, Norwegian Hostages

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Beijing has vowed to bring ISIS to justice after the group said it had executed two hostages, a Chinese and a Norwegian.

ISIS said it had killed the two men, identified as Chinese national Fan Jinghui and Norwegian citizen Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad in its English-language online magazine Dabiq.

President Xi Jinping “strongly condemned” ISIS for the killing of Fan, the first known Chinese national to be killed by the group, and the country’s foreign ministry said the Chinese government would “definitely hold the perpetrators accountable.”

But how to respond to Fan’s “cold-blooded and violent” death presents a dilemma for China, which has stayed on the sidelines in the fight against ISIS and has a long-held principle of noninterference in other countries’ affairs. [Editor’s note: this is laughable; China economically leverages nations all over the globe. Ask any Ecuadorean, for instance, as to whether they believe China interferes in their domestic affairs]

To date, Beijing has been vague on the question of what it will contribute to the global fight against ISIS and has declined to explicitly offer its support for airstrikes being conducted against the group in Syria. (Read more from “Beijing Vows Justice as ISIS Kills Chinese, Norwegian Hostages” HERE)

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China Welcomes IMF Backing to Make Yuan World Reserve Currency

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China on Saturday welcomed backing from IMF experts that the yuan should be included in its reserve currencies, saying the move would strengthen the world’s financial system.

Now the world’s second-largest economy, China asked last year for the yuan to be added to the elite basket of SDR currencies, but until recently it was considered too tightly controlled to qualify.

It now looks likely the yuan will be formally admitted to the IMF’s “special drawing rights” currency basket at the end of the month, which would mark a milestone in China’s efforts to become a global economic power.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said the fund now deemed the yuan “meets the requirements to be a ‘freely usable’ currency” — a key hurdle to joining the yen, dollar, pound and euro as a leading unit in international trade.

The yuan hit headlines in August when China’s central bank devalued the currency and said it would use a more market-oriented system to calculate the point around which the currency can trade each day. (Read more from “China Welcomes IMF Backing to Make Yuan World Reserve Currency” HERE)

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US Flies B-52 Bombers Near Disputed Islands Claimed by China

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The United States flew two B-52 bombers over the weekend near man-made islands constructed by China in the South China Sea, a U.S. official told The Hill, in a clear challenge to China’s territorial claims to the area.

The bombers made one pass within 12 nautical miles of the islands, the official said, in what the military refers to as a “freedom of navigation” operation.

During the operation, the Chinese military radioed the bombers, telling them to “get away from our islands.” The bombers did not comply, according to the U.S. official . . .

Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban said two B-52s took off and returned to Guam on Nov. 8 and 9 respectively, flying a “routine mission in international airspace in the vicinity of the Spratly Island of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.”

Urban confirmed that the pilots received two verbal warnings from a Chinese ground controller “despite never venturing within 15 nautical miles of any feature,” he said. “Both aircraft continued their mission without incident, and at all times operated fully in accordance with international law.” (Read more from “US Flies B-52 Bombers Near Disputed Islands Claimed by China” HERE)

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Chinese Scientists Unveil New Stealth Material Breakthrough

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A group of scientists from China may have created a stealth material that could make future fighter jets very difficult to detect by some of today’s most cutting-edge anti-stealth radar.

The researchers developed a new material they say can defeat microwave radar at ultrahigh frequencies, or UHF. Such material is usually too thick to be applied to aircraft like fighter jets, but this new material is thin enough for military aircraft, ships, and other equipment.

Today’s synthetic aperture radar use arrays of antennas directing microwave energy to essentially see through clouds and fog and provide an approximate sense of the object’s size, the so-called radar cross section. With radar absorbent material not all of the signal bounces back to the receiver. A plane can look like a bird.

“Our proposed absorber is almost ten times thinner than conventional ones,” said Wenhua Xu, one of the team members from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in a statement.

In their paper, published today in the Journal of Applied Physics, the team describes a material composed of semi-conducting diodes (varactors) and capacitors that have been soldered onto a printed circuit board. That layer is sitting under a layer of copper resistors and capacitors just .04mm thick, which they called an “active frequency selective surface material” or AFSS. The AFSS layer can effectively be stretched to provide a lot of absorption but is thin enough to go onto an aircraft. The next layer is a thin metal honeycomb and final is a metal slab. (Read more from “Chinese Scientists Unveil New Stealth Material Breakthrough” HERE)

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China Deploys Radars, Drones on Borders to Curb Infiltration

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China has deployed advanced radars and drones in its border areas under an integrated round-the-clock frontier monitoring system to check infiltration and drug trafficking on the Indian border in Tibet as well as in Xinjiang and Yunnan regions.

Many border areas have deployed an integrated frontier monitoring system consisting of advanced radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, Mao Weichen of the Southwestern Institute of Technology and Physics in Chengdu, who designed the integrated sys ..

“Our system has been adopted by border defence units in Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan and many other regions to curb illegal border crossings and drug trafficking,” Ma was quoted as saying by state-run China Daily . . .

People trying to cross the border will be detected by the system, which then automatically notifies soldiers, he said, adding that the system can also be used in coastal policing if it is equipped with sea-scanning radar.

“Compared with traditional border monitoring networks that mainly depend on video surveillance, our system has a wider coverage and more deterrence thanks to the use of drones and acoustic weapons,” he said. (Read more from “China Deploys Radars, Drones on Borders to Curb Infiltration” HERE)

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