July 4:
China’s defense ministry has signed a contract worth over $500 million dollars with Russia’s state arms maker Rosoboronexport to supply 123 specially modified AL-31 fighter aircraft engines for China’s latest Chengdu J-10 fighter aircraft, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reports. The first 13 engines will be delivered by the end of this year and the rest should be completed by 2013. Two of these engines are usually fitted to Russia’s twin-engine Su-27 and Su-30, but China will use them in the smaller, single-engine J-10. Rosoboronexport supplied 54 AL-31s to China in 2003, 100 in 2007 and 122 in 2009.
June 7:
A Chinese citizen has been arrested by Russian customs officers in the Trans-Baikal Territory for attempting to smuggle specialized component parts for the MiG-29 and Su-27 fighter aircrafts into China, the Siberian Customs Directorate reports. The man was detained at the Zabaykalsk border crossing point with a variety of aircraft parts that cannot legally be removed from Russia without licenses. Russian authorities arrested the man and opened a criminal investigation, Russia’s Interfax news agency reports.
July 8:
After online do-gooders identified suspicious business deals between the Red Cross Society of China and several private firms, China’s largest charity organization has agreed to open its books to auditors. The Red Cross society admitted the existence of business deals between its Red Cross China Business System and the Beijing-consultancy groups Zhonghong Boai and Wang Ding, but said the audit report would disclose any irregularities. The Red Cross society and the China General Chamber of Commerce, which jointly administer Red Cross China Business System, have agreed to form a joint task force to investigate the allegations, the South China Morning Post reports.
July 11:
Ta Kung Pao reports that China’s National People’s Congress has conducted a massive review of military and law enforcement’s ability to protect 36 strategic military facilities including military airports, ports, and missile and radar positions. Over a half dozen government departments, including the PLA General Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, and 13 provinces including Heilongjiang, Qinghai, Henan, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Yunnan, participated. The review report called for “a comprehensive survey and targeted surveillance of security threats.” It also charged the PLA to improve three somewhat vague problems: “the potential security risk in some core sensitive areas, the compromised airspace and electromagnetic environment around some military airports, and the unauthorized posting of signs falsely indicating an area as a military facility.”
July 12:
After over 30 years, Guangdong, China’s most populous province, has asked to ease the one-child policy, NewsChannelAsia reports. Guangdong wants Beijing to allow couples where just one parent is an only child to have a second baby, a policy already adopted in some areas, like Shanghai. “To allow the new policy will have little overall impact on population growth,” Guangdong family planning chief Zhang Feng said in comments carried by the Southern Metropolis Daily. “The increase in population is still a big problem affecting our social and economic development. But in the long term, ageing will also be a problem.” The Agence France Press reports that officials plan to launch pilot projects in five provinces to evaluate the effects of relaxed rules and spread successful policies throughout China. The proposed test provinces are Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
[Editor’s Note: The request comes in response to growing concerns over gender imbalances and an ageing population. The results of the latest nationwide census released in April found that more than 13 percent of the population was over the age of 60, up nearly 3 percent from 2000 and that over the past 10 years 118 boys were born in China for every 100 girls. As a result, Beijing predicts that more than 24 million men of marrying age could find themselves without wives in 2020.]
