November 30:
In mid-October Taipei released a Chinese spy sentenced to life in exchange for two Taiwanese military intelligence officers, Colonel Chu Kung-hsun and Colonel Hsu Chang-kuo, who were imprisoned in China for nine years. Taiwan gave advance parole to mainland spy Li Zhichao, according to an official statement from Taipei. "The [spy] swap is a natural fruit of the peaceful development of cross-strait relations over the past years," Zhang Tongxin of Renmin University told the South China Morning Post(SCMP). More than 100 Taiwanese spies are imprisoned in China, among whom Chu and Hsu were the highest-ranked. The most senior mainland spy in Taiwan, Major General Lo Hsien-chen, is serving a life sentence.
December 1:
China's four military headquarters – the General Staff, General Political, General Logistics and General Armaments departments – and seven key military commands will be dissolved and reorganized under a new military reform initiative. "The four general headquarters' excessive concentration of power has allowed it to become an independent leadership hierarchy overshadowing many of the functions of the Central Military Commission, affecting the commission's centralized and unified leadership over the army," the official PLA Daily reports. The overhaul, the PLA's largest-ever, aims to transform it into a U.S.-style joint command with the army, navy and air force equally represented. The changes are expected to reinforce President Xi Jinping's control over the military.
December 2:
Police in Jiangmen, Guangdong have arrested 22 suspects after exposing a massive human- smuggling operation, the official Guangzhou Daily reports. Authorities have frozen bank accounts containing 11 million yuan, and confiscated than 35,000 forged visas and 270 counterfeit official seals. Before the bust, which was the largest in over a decade, the Guangdong and Fujian-based "snakeheads" had made 220 million yuan trafficking 3,200 people, mostly young men, out of China to the Americas. The kingpin identified as Li specialized in forging documents, and ran a travel agency in Shenzhen as a front. In February 2014, border control officials in Shenzhen found evidence that led to the detention of one syndicate member, and 12 migrants with counterfeit visas headed for South America. In July 2014, police launched coordinated raids in 25 different locations, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Jiangmen and Beijing that led to the arrest of 198 suspects and the seizure of 35 vehicles.
[Editor's Note: In 2013, Spanish and French police broke up a human smuggling ring that charged each Chinese migrant up to 50,000 Euros to reach Europe and the U.S. That two-year investigation led to the arrest of 75 suspects - 51 in Spain and the rest in France, SCMP reports.]
December 4:
In the three years since Xi Jinping began his anti-corruption campaign, 104,900 violations have been reported and over 138,800 officials were disciplined. In 2013, there were 24,521 violations involving 30,420 officials, and in 2014 there were 53,085 violations while 71,748 officials were disciplined. From January to November 2015, there were 27,328 cases reported and 36,699 officials were punished. Cases involving unauthorized spending of public funds on dining and foreign travel rose 278 percent and 221 percent, respectively. "China called an end to pointless inspection tours, visits, meetings, circulars and media reports concerning high-ranking officials and asked officials to shun extravagance, saying there should be ‘no welcome banner, no red carpet, no floral arrangement or grand receptions' and ‘fewer traffic controls arranged' for officials' visits," the official China Daily reports. Last year, the central government spent 5.88 billion yuan ($910 million) on overseas trips, vehicles and receptions – 1.27 billion yuan ($200 million) under budget.
December 8:
According to an official climate change report released last month, Himalayan glacier retreat means that "in the future, disputes between China and neighboring countries on regional environmental resources will keep growing." More than 80 percent of the permafrost on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau could disappear by the next century, jeopardizing wildlife habits, people's livelihoods and the integrity of infrastructure like the railway to Lhasa. Glaciers on Mount Everest, which straddles the Tibet-Nepal border, have shrunk nearly 30 percent in the last 40 years. Across China, glaciers have decreased more than 10 percent since the 1960s. Temperatures are predicted to rise 1.3 to 5 degrees Celsius by century's end, with consequences including rising sea levels along the coast, storms and floods across China, and more glacial erosion. From 2008 to 2010, 62 percent of Chinese cities experienced floods and 173 had three or more, the New York Times reports.