January 6:
China’s official Zhongguo Tongxun She news agency reports that China’s Navy plans to begin building two aircraft carriers in 2009 for launch in 2015, and has begun a four-year aircraft carrier training program for 50 pilots at its Dalian Naval Academy. Each aircraft carrier will displace around 50,000 to 60,000 metric tons of water, be conventionally powered, and after being commissioned will patrol the South China Sea. They will be comparable to England’s "Queen Elizabeth" class aircraft carriers, which have a displacement of 65,000 metric tons, a personnel capacity of 1,400, and can host 40 fixed-wing warplanes. China's aircraft carriers will be built in a Shanghai shipyard, but Beijing has ordered 50 Russian-made Su-33 "Flanker-D" carrier-based planes. A Chinese rear admiral recently said China’s aircraft carriers would be used to protect the country's sea routes for oil imports.
January 9:
Under Secretary of Commerce Mario Mancuso has announced that the U.S. plans to "ease restrictions" on hi-tech exports to China and that approval of hi-tech exports to China will now be done on a “case-by-case basis.” The official Zhongguo Tongxun She called the decision a “’big gift’ to China from the outgoing Bush administration.” The easing of restrictions on high-tech exports, which was the result of long years of negotiations between China and the United States, follows the addition of a new technology export examination program designed to validated end users in late 2007. That program reviews foreign companies to help ensure U.S. hi-tech products will not be used for military purposes or threaten U.S. security interests. China’s companies, which were among the first to receive "validated end user" status, will now apply for export licenses under the new regulations. Early this month, the National Academy of Sciences submitted a report to President-elect Barack Obama that said: "Restricting foreigners' access to strategically important technology might have been useful decades ago, when the United States was the undisputed world leader across the technological spectrum. But today, the nation is losing scientific and engineering dominance." The report suggested reevaluating the technology export control policy and establishing a new policy with "openness and engagement" as main characteristics. Despite this easing, however, U.S. limitations on hi-tech exports to China are likely to continue in some form for some time to come.
January 15:
More than two thousand prominent Chinese citizens from both outside and inside the government have signed Charter 08, a petition submitted to the Beijing government that calls for one-party rule and a system based on human rights and democracy. Signatories include well-known dissidents and intellectuals and middle-level officials and rural leaders. The document was written in admiration of the founding of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia where, in January 1977, more than two hundred Czech and Slovak intellectuals formed a loose, informal, and open association of people calling for respect for human and civil rights. Charter 08, which was released on December 10th, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a vision of a democratic China that its adherents hope will be a blueprint for fundamental political change in the years to come. It argues that: “The Chinese government's approach to ‘modernization’ has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse.” The New York Review of Books has posted a full English translation of Charter 08 on its website.
January 22:
The Japan Times reports that to counter the U.S. Navy in the Asia-Pacific China will deploy ballistic missiles with special guidance systems to hit moving surface ships before they can get within range of Chinese targets. Such a weapon could threaten U.S. aircraft carriers and other major warships far from China’s shores and would make Washington think twice before sending naval forces to intervene in a crisis over Taiwan, as happened in 1995. The Pentagon's 2008 annual report to Congress on Chinese military power said that when incorporated into a sophisticated command and control system, the missiles would give the Chinese armed forces "the capability to attack ships at sea, including aircraft carriers, from great distances." In November, Ronald O'Rourke, a specialist in naval affairs for the Congressional Research Service, told lawmakers that the Defense Department and other analysts believed that China was developing anti-ship ballistic missiles that would have a range of up to 3,000 km and carry maneuverable re-entry vehicles with warheads designed to hit moving naval vessels. The missiles would be launched by rocket propulsion from land in an arc-like trajectory and travel at up to 24,000 km per hour.