May 23:
The massive earthquake that laid waste to central Sichuan province has affected a variety of key Chinese arms manufacturing facilities. Beijing spent nearly 15 billion RMB setting up military infrastructure, arsenals and research institutions in Sichuan, including the Sichang Satellite Launch Center which took over twenty years to construct. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff spokesman Ma Jian told the South China Morning Post that some military facilities were damaged, but that the launch center was not among them. Ma also reassured reporters that while Mianyang and Guangyuan – the hosts of China’s nuclear weapons design and plutonium processing plants – had been affected, all nuclear sites and advanced weapons research facilities had been secured.
After two hours of talks in the Great Hall of the People, China’s President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement which, among other things, rules out either country’s support for military actions against Iran. "All parties should consider global and regional security, make diplomatic efforts, refrain from military and extreme means, cautiously resort to sanctions and take into account the interests of the country involved," the official People’s Daily quoted the seven-page joint statement as saying.
May 26:
Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie met with visiting Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force of Chile, Ricardo Ortega, in Beijing to boost cooperation between the two militaries. Ortega said the Chilean air force was especially ready to promote cooperation and exchanges with its Chinese counterparts, the official Xinhua News Agency reports.
May 28:
Authorities in Xinjiang have charged 14 Uighurs, including three teenagers, with "instigating and splitting the nation", the South China Morning Post reports. The three teenagers were middle-school students from Moyu county in Hotan district. They were initially arrested along with 27 other people on March 23 when they joined a protest in a marketplace in support of freedom of religion. The rights group said more than 500 people took part in the Hotan protest and about 10 people were injured after authorities sent in hundreds of armed police to quell the demonstration. The protest was said to have been sparked by a local ban on worship.
[Editor's note: Xinjiang, China's largest province, is also one of its most volatile. The Uighurs comprise the province's largest ethnic group and the vast majority are Muslims. An influx of ethnic Han Chinese – from 4 percent of the population to roughly 50 percent in the past 60 years – has diluted the Uighurs majority in Xinjiang and complicated their long-running struggle for greater autonomy.]
A PLA Navy “guided-missile escort boat formation” has left the Sanya port for the Gulf of Tonkin to participate in the fifth China-Vietnam joint maritime patrol, the Xinhua News Agency’s domestic news service reports. The Chinese Navy and the Vietnamese Navy’s guided-missile boats will make up the joint formation, which will conduct 28.5 hours of patrols and conduct various training tasks. In October 2005, the two countries signed the Agreement for Joint Patrol of the Gulf of Tonkin, which stipulated that joint patrols should be conducted in May and December of each year.