November 3:
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has established a center to promote anti-corruption efforts at the National Defense University in Beijing. The center, which, according to the official China Daily “aims to study theories and major issues regarding the Army’s anti-graft efforts,” was approved by the PLA General Political Department and placed under its Discipline Inspection Department. According to Wu Jieming, director of the center, it will organize workshops and lectures and work with relevant departments of the Communist Party of China and the government to reduce corruption in the military.
November 5:
China has had a space-monitoring facility built in western Australia to maintain direct communication with its satellites and spacecraft and decode and encrypt the stream of information they send to earth. China has several other overseas ground stations, reports the South China Morning Post,including a huge facility in Karachi, Pakistan, that track the whereabouts of civilian satellites and command military ones. The Swedish Space Corporation, which has served NASA, the European Space Agency, and Japan's space program, built the Dongara station for China. Local Australian officials approved construction of the facility in March. A dozen NASA and European Space Agency stations for tracking satellites are located near the new Chinese installation.
[Editor’s Note: A U.S. congressional report released this month asserts that hackers from China hijacked two U.S. government satellites through a ground station in Norway and manipulated their operations. The report says the breaches were in line with Chinese military writings that advocate disabling an enemy’s space systems through “ground-based infrastructure, such as satellite control facilities.”]
November 7:
North Korean border guards have shot a man dead on Chinese soil shortly after he crossed the Yalu River. “Some 30 minutes after his death, several Chinese security officials approached the scene to investigate,” a witness told the Yonhap News Agency. North Korea has installed surveillance cameras and reinforced barbed wire in its northern border areas near China. The border has numerous routes through which a stream of North Koreans continue to flee to China for eventual defection to South Korea, now home to more than 22,000 North Korean refugees. In June 2010, China issued a formal complaint to North Korea after border guards shot dead three Chinese residents of Dandong, Liaoning and injured a fourth on “suspicion of crossing the border for trade activities,” the BBC reported.
November 8:
About 10 percent of China’s farmland contains excessive levels of heavy metals due to contaminated water and poisonous waste seeping into the soil, the Southern Metropolis Daily and Hong Kong’s The Standard report, citing a survey by China’s environmental protection ministry. Pollution from lead, mercury and cadmium is blamed for poisoning entire villages and crop-growing land as factory bosses flout environmental laws and farmers use toxic fertilizers. “Heavy metal pollution incidents have occurred repeatedly in recent years,” Wan Bentai, chief engineer at the ministry said. “From January to August alone there were 11 incidents, nine involving lead.” Earlier this year, Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian warned that pollution threatens to choke China's economic growth. Exposure to heavy metals can damage nerves, reproductive systems and kidneys, and cause other health complications, especially in children.
November 11:
The PLA engineer corps is helping to build Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, the Saindak Project in Baluchistan, the Chashma-I and II nuclear power plants, as well as the Karakoram Highway (KKH) and power projects in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Linking the Gwadar Port with the KKH will reduce the cost of Chinese products in Central Asian markets and expand China’s access to oil, gas, and minerals from Africa and the Middle East, Pakistan’s Jang newspaper reports. Chinese-supported infrastructure projects under way in Gilgit-Baltistan and the Northern Areas include the Sadpara Dam, Bunji Dam (7000 MW), Kayalbo Dam (3000 MW), Diamer Bhasha Dam (4000 MW), the Naltar Power Project, the Gilgit-Skardu Highway, and the Praib Bridge. China is building several tunnels in Hunza, the Sost Dry Port, a fiber optic network, and several oil and gas projects. Beijing and Islamabad are also considering an oil pipeline from Gwadar to western China and a Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline to transport oil to China from Saudi Arabia and Iran.