March 10:
By 2016, two Chinese companies will complete a $2.8 billion electrified railway linking Addis Ababa to Djibouti, Agence France Presse reports. The project is part of land-locked Ethiopia’s effort to link its exporters with the Port of Djibouti. The Chinese Civil Engineering Construction Corp. is building the line from Mieso to the Djibouti border at a cost of $1.2 billion, of which China’s Export-Import Bank will provide 70 percent and the Ethiopian government the remaining 30 percent. Another unnamed Chinese company will build the Addis Ababa to Mieso segment. The project will create 5,000 jobs for locals, some of whom are being trained by Chinese engineers on Chinese-imported excavators and other equipment.
March 11:
“The Chinese government will keep its family planning policy unchanged,” said Wang Feng, deputy head of the State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform. The comment came after The State Council unveiled a restructuring plan to merge the Ministry of Health with the National Population and Family Planning Commission and create the new National Health and Family Planning Commission. In comments carried by the official People’s Daily Wang said the institutional reforms were intended to “strengthen family planning policy implementation” and improve personnel quality and task allocation.
March 13:
Zhang Shuhua, head of the Intelligence Research Academy under the Chinese Academy of Science and a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference deputy, has said Chinese education is facing an “unprecedented crisis” because the “destructive” over-emphasis on English-language studies. He said recent “English enthusiasm” in China has taken up too many educational resources with few real gains and that it is “absolutely unnecessary” to impose English on students who pursue professions that do not require them. Chinese students’ focus on English tests has resulted in “mute English” and hurt their performance in other subjects, Zhang said in comments carried by the South China Morning Post reports.
March 19:
Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, a U.S. defense contractor at the military’s Pacific Command in Hawaii has been charged with passing classified national security information to a 27-year-old Chinese woman. The two met at a conference in Hawaii and in June 2011 began a sexual relationship. According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, in May, Bishop allegedly sent the woman an email with information on PACOM’s war plans and U.S. cooperation with international partners, the Washington Times reports. During a September phone call, Bishop told her about U.S. nuclear weapons deployments and capability to detect other countries’ short and medium range ballistic missiles. In November, investigators searched Bishop’s Honolulu home and found 12 classified documents. He is charged with concealing a relationship with a foreign national, a breach of his security clearance, communicating national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it, and unlawfully retaining national defense-related documents.
[Editor’s note: Intelligence operations in which a younger sexual partner is used to seduce and suborn a target with access to secret information are called “honeypots” or “honeytraps.” China and Taiwan specialize in such operations.]
March 20:
Guangdong Baiyun University has formed a committee of nine faculty and six students nicknamed the “Red Army of the Internet” to monitor students’ online activities, the official Yancheng Evening News reports. The army monitors and “corrects errors in public opinion” on scores of Weibo, QQ, Baidu and other online forums. Students’ personal accounts are also monitored. Student applicants were selected based on their grades, faculty nominations, and interviews to confirm their “firm political and ideological stance.” One faculty member explained: “Participating students must demonstrate a firm stance in all situations. They fail to fulfill the position’s requirements if they follow public opinion and do not speak for the school.” The chosen few work 1½ hours a day and get a salary of 7.5-8 yuan per hour. The Guangdong Province University Student Affairs Committee has commended Baiyun’s “Red Army” as “a distinguished student project.”