July 12:
Senior Captain Fang Jiang, vice president of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Dalian Naval Academy, said at a symposium on the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road and Navigation Support" held at Dalian Maritime University that military bases are an important part of the PLA Navy’s “maritime strategic pre-positioning.” The PLAN will establish “strategic support points” overseas with “a focus on personnel and materials support and warship maintenance.” U.S. military bases are “strongly offensive,” he said, and China needs to ensure safe navigation along the maritime Silk Road. Whether the PLA should build overseas military bases depends on “its image as a major country, military strategic needs, and the issues of national independence and democratic movements in some countries,” the official Ta Kung Pao reports.
July 13:
“Journalism in Hong Kong has entered its darkest era,” according to the Hong Kong Journalists Association. “In my three decades in the industry, I have never seen so many journalists being attacked,” HKJA chairwoman Sham Yee-lan said. The HKJA identified “escalating self- censorship in the industry,” and disturbing trends in many local newspapers, The Standard reports. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) now requires columnists to get approval for story topics, and after hiring a new chief editor Ming Pao has changed stories on the anniversary of the handover on July 1, and the memorial for the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown. There is also less freedom in TV broadcasting, including the failed renewal of Asia Television's license. Hong Kong ranked 71 of 180 countries in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index – it was 18 in 2002.
July 16:
Hong Kong has failed to enforce its laws against ivory smuggling, contributing to “serious smuggling” and the killing of thousands of African elephants every year, theSCMP reports. Large illegal ivory shipments from Africa continue to transit the city bound for the mainland. Mainland tourists buy ivory items in retail outlets and smuggle them home. Although it has been illegal to import or export ivory from Hong Kong without a license for almost 25 years, “no other city surveyed has so many pieces of ivory on sale as Hong Kong.” Prices for half of the 30,856 pieces of ivory for sale in Hong Kong – including rings, pendants and bracelets – are double in Beijing. More spot checks at land crossings and sniffer dogs are needed because almost all ivory bought in Hong Kong is concealed in luggage.
July 22:
North Korea has almost completed its upgrades on the Dongchang-ri long-range rocket launch facility near its border with China. Satellite imagery reveals a new 67-meter-tall gantry at the site, which can be used to launch long-range missiles twice the size of the 30-meter-long Unha-3. An anonymous South Korean government source told Yonhap: “We believe that the North will use the extended gantry at Dongchang-ri to fire a long-range missile longer than the Unha-3 around the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party on October 10.” South Korea's Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Pyongyang is expected to take “strategically provocative action” around the anniversary. North Korea is banned under UN Security Council resolutions from launching ballistic missiles.
July 23:
Beijing has no timetable for allowing all Chinese couples to have two children. The National Health and Family Planning Commission made the announcement in response to reports that an extension to the second-child policy, and a two-child policy for all couples was forthcoming. Lu Jiehua, a professor at Peking University, had said he expected the nationwide two-child policy to be released next year. Wang Guangzhou of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences also supported the relaxation. In 2012, Wang had called for Beijing to immediately begin allowing a second child for all couples in some provinces, the official PLA Daily reports.
[Editor’s Note: In 2013, China relaxed its one-child policy, allowing couples to have a second child if either parent was an only child, resulting in 470,000 more newborns last year over 2013. Each month about 80,000 to 90,000 couples apply to have a second child.]