April 1:
China’s defense ministry has set up the new Overseas Action Department to coordinate "non-war" activities overseas, such as evacuations from conflict zones. The department's main mission will be to plan, coordinate and enact "non-war" overseas action, such as peacekeeping missions, evacuations and joint drills. Last April, the PLA navy helped evacuate 613 Chinese citizens and 279 foreigners from Yemen, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.
April 2:
An MoU was signed between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) National Electricity Company and the China Three Gorges Corp to build the Grand Inga Dam project and several other dams in the Congo. Deputy Chairman Lin Chuxue signed the MoU after a three-day visit to the Inga Dam site. DRC currently taps less than three percent of its hydropower resources, and the agreement aims to exploit the country’s remaining 100,000 megawatts of hydroelectric potential, Radio Okapi reports.
April 5:
President Xi Jinping will consolidate power through personnel reshuffling at next year’s 19th CPC National Congress. There are five vacancies on the pre-eminent, seven-member Politburo Standing Committee and the top candidates include Su Zhanshu, Li Yuanchao, Zhang Chunxian, Han Zheng, Wang Yang, Zhao Leji, Hu Chunhua, and Sun Zhengcai. Top candidates hoping to gain admission to the 25-member Politburo include Yang Jing, member of the CPC Central Secretariat, and Liu He, director of the Central Office of Finance, Ming Pao reports.
April 6:
President Xi Jinping has called on “every branch and every member” at all levels of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to enforce a year-long campaign to instill rules and good values in Party members, which includes the study of Xi’s speeches to ensure “strict party management at the grassroots level,” the official China Daily reports. The campaign will use “regular workshops” to ensure “chief officials at all ranks effectively carry out the campaign, supervise its development and prevent perfunctory-ness,” Xi explained. The campaign is "a major ideological and political task" of the Four Comprehensives strategy to “build a moderately prosperous society, deepening reform, advancing the rule of law, and strictly governing the CPC. Arranging the new study campaign is a step toward expanding intra-Party education from 'a key few' to party members more broadly, and a switch from centralized study to study conducted more frequently. The campaign aims to ensure the entire Party maintains a high degree of ideological and political consistency with the CPC Central Committee,” he said.
April 11:
During a three-day trip to Beijing, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe asked China to accept equity in Sri Lankan companies and infrastructure projects in return for canceling some of the country’s $8 billion debt, reports the SCMP.Wickremesinghe also announced the resumption of the controversial $1.4 billion Colombo Port City project suspended for more than a year due to contract irregularities. Colombo upset Beijing last year when it ordered a review of the project, which was approved by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Colombo has seen protests over joint investments that use Chinese workers, thus limiting skills transfer to Sri Lankans.
April 12:
China plans to produce one of the world's best soccer teams by 2050, the SCMPreports. The ambitious goal includes interim targets of having some 50 million players by 2020, of which 30 million would be primary and high school students. The time frame was announced by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese Football Association, the sports bureau and the Ministry of Education. By 2030, the Chinese men’s team is expected to be in Asia's top echelon and its women's team will be "one of the world's strongest," the document said. In the next five years China aims to produce two to three first-class soccer clubs, every county should have two standard fields, and every new urban residential compound with adequate resources should have at least one five-a-side pitch, it said.