March 3-4:
The Communist Party of China (CPC) has hosted a delegation from the Palestinian Fatah party in Beijing. Delegation Chairman Mahmud al-Alul, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, was briefed on the CPC’s formation, organizational methods, and building of China’s state institutions. The CPC side called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, a halt to Israel’s settlement activities, and an international peace conference to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Al-Alul told top CPC officials that relations between Fatah and the CPC date back “to the days of the martyrs,” the official Palestinian News Agency Wafa reports.
March 6:
An Economist cover story detailing the extent of the boy-girl imbalance in Asia has concluded that by 2020 China alone will have 30-40 million unmarried young men, the same as the entire population of young men in America. Millions of Chinese girls have been aborted, killed, and neglected to death for four reasons: the ancient preference for sons, a modern desire for smaller families, ultrasound scanning that identifies the sex of a fetus, and, most importantly, the one-child policy. In January 2010, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said there were about 120 boys for every 100 girls meaning one in five young men will soon be unable to find a bride. The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, while stories of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution have become commonplace.
[Editor’s Note: According to the World Health Organization, female suicide rates in China are among the highest in the world. Suicide is the most common form of death among Chinese rural women aged 15-34. Young mothers often kill themselves by drinking agricultural fertilizers, which are easy to come by. Many, the Economist posits, cannot live with the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby daughters.]
March 7:
India’s external affairs minister S M Krishna has conceded that New Delhi will not apply to the World Bank for funds to help with projects in Arunachal Pradesh, a region disputed by China. Instead India will fund them with its domestic resources. “If we can find internal resources to take up these projects, where is the compulsion for us to seek the World Bank?” Krishna said. India’s Economic Times reports that a World Bank internal discussion paper also quotes Krishna as having said that India would not pose any Arunachal-specific projects to the Bank. Meanwhile, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used the statement to accuse the government of going “soft on China,” The Hindu reports. The BJP has also branded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a “Panda hugger” for claiming last week in Parliament that India and China had the best of relations.
March 8:
Just as Taiwan's air force command renewed its bid to procure F-16 fighter aircraft from the United States, the Taiwanese defense ministry has issued a report concluding that China now has better fighter jets than Taiwan. Taiwan's air force consists of some 60 aging F-5s, 126 IDFs, 146 F-16A/Bs and 56 Mirages. Of the three types of fighter jets in the Taiwan air force, only the F-16A/Bs have a slight edge over Chinese aircraft. The island's Indigenous Defensive Fighters (IDF) and French-made Mirage 2000-5s were both inferior to the Russian-made Su-30s deployed by China, it said. In January Washington approved a $6.4 billion arms package to Taiwan that included replacement equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fleet, but none of the submarines or new fighter aircraft that Taipei had requested, the Defense News reports.
March 9:
Despite a lack of technology, China will begin excavating huge reserves of combustible ice discovered on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in September. The plateau has about a quarter of the China’s total combustible ice reserves estimated to equal at least 35 billion tons of oil, which could supply energy to the PRC for 90 years, the People’s Daily reports. One cubic meter of combustible ice equals 164 cubic meters of natural gas. Environmentalists warn that mining it could cause geological disasters, such as ground slumping and the release of large amounts of methane, a green house gas, the Tibetan Review reports.