December 7:
Last year (2008) China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “intruded deep inside Bhutanese territory and came many times to the Royal Bhutan Army outposts.” This year (2009) there were 17 such PLA incursions. Bhutan’s Secretary of International Boundaries made the revelations during a briefing for Bhutan’s parliament before the upcoming 19th round of Bhutan-China boundary negotiations. In August China also restarted road construction within disputed areas that had stopped in 2004. Individual.com reports that this year Bhutan made five diplomatic overtures to Beijing to stop construction based on a 1998 agreement that both sides will “refrain from taking any unilateral action to change the status quo of the boundary." One member of Bhutan’s parliament said that "These activities, if not monitored, could ruin the peaceful talk process and lead to bigger problems” between Bhutan and China.
December 9:
China’s official Xinhua News Agency reports that Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense has released a White Paper on National Defense, its third such document since 1998. At the press release in Hanoi, Deputy Minister of National Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh stressed that the figures are “much lower than the Chinese budget for army forces” but declined to confirm or deny Russian media reports that Vietnam was negotiating multibillion dollar contracts to buy six Project 636 Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines and 12 Russian Sukhoi Su-30 supersonic fighter jets. Vinh maintained that the Communist Party and State of Vietnam intend to resolve the South China Sea dispute via peaceful negotiations. Next year the Southeast Asia country will assume the ASEAN presidency and most expect Hanoi will use this position “to internationalize the East [South China] Sea issues.”
December 11:
According to the South China Morning Post, attacks targeting local police have grown increasingly brazen of late, particularly in Southern China. In Shitang, Guangxi fourteen people were arrested after a crackdown on unlicensed motorcycle-taxi services lead local police to detain owners of motorbikes with no licenses and confiscate them. When angry villagers tried to reclaim their motorbikes, more armed police were deployed to dispel the crowd. At least three policemen and 20 villagers were injured and several police vehicles were damaged. A video of the clash posted on a Baidu forum shows some men throwing rocks at police before being surrounded and beaten by officers.
In Yunfu, Guangdong a fistfight between an out-of-towner and a local on December 6th that resulted in the arrest of the local lead “thousands of people” to smash all the doors and windows of the local police station. When hundreds of police were called in, the mob clashed with them leaving 20 injured before the police dispersed the crowd using tear gas. Undeterred, thousands took to the streets the next day blocking Highway 324. On the following day they again demonstrated in front of the Yunfu city government and were dispersed by the public security personnel. More than 50 villagers have been arrested according to the police station's public security personnel, the Hong Kong Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reports.
December 12:
The president of the Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank), Li Ruogu, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kayrat Kelimbetov, head of Kazakhstan’s national welfare fund, to allocate an estimated $5 billion to the Kazakh fund to finance “breakthrough” projects. The funds come on top of a $10 billion credit line extended to the central Asian country in April, also to finance several large scale development projects. Kelimbetov said that among those projects supported by Chinese funds will be a metallurgical plant for the SBS-Steel company in western Kazakhstan's Aktyubinsk Region and a gas chemical complex in Atyrau Region, the Kazinform news agency reports.