China Reform Monitor: No. 1010

December 30, 2012:

China’s second west-to-east gas pipeline, the world’s longest line with a transportation capacity of 30 billion cubic meters, is now fully operational and carrying natural gas from Huoerguosi, Xinjiang on the China-Kazakhstan border to Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) announced the completion of the last section of the 8704 km pipeline line, which has one trunk line and 8 regional lines. The 142.2 billion yuan ($22.57 billion) pipeline traverses 15 provinces and will benefit 500 million people, the official China Daily reports.

December 31, 2012:

By 2015 Japan plans to introduce U.S. Global Hawk unmanned high-altitude spy drones to boost its surveillance capabilities in waters near the Japanese-administered – but Chinese claimed – Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands. The drones will monitor China’s “repeated intrusions into Japan's territorial waters and airspace,” Japan’s Kyodo reports. Tokyo estimates that it will cost tens of billions of yen to build the necessary ground command facilities for the drones, which do not have attack capability, but can be fitted with sophisticated cameras and communications-receiving equipment. The Global Hawk can fly for more than 30 hours at about 18,000m – about twice as high as commercial passenger aircraft. Japan first deployed them following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to monitor the Fukushima nuclear crisis. China and South Korea are also in the process of deploying drones in the East China Sea.

January 1:

Laos has put up minerals, including potash and copper, as collateral for a $7 billion loan from China’s Export-Import Bank to finance a 260-mile Chinese-built railway from Vientiane, Laos to Kunming, Yunnan. A United Nations Development Program assessment has called the financing terms for the sum (which is nearly equal Laos’ $8 billion GDP) “onerous” and said they place Laos’ “macroeconomic stability in danger.” The railroad’s construction, the report said, is “an expensive mistake” that will turn the countryside of northern Laos into “a waste dump.” Despite such concerns (also voiced by the World Bank and IMF) Laos’ National Assembly approved the Chinese deal as its part in the massive 20-country trans-Asian rail agreement signed in 2006. When additional sections are completed, the Chinese-financed railway will link southern China to Bangkok, Thailand and then the Bay of Bengal via Myanmar, expanding China’s already enormous trade with Southeast Asia and enabling it to bypass the Malacca Straits, the New York Times reports.

Luo Yuan, a hawkish People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Major General, has called for China to reform of its cumbersome maritime affairs system and select or create a supreme maritime law enforcement agency. Currently at least nine rival agencies (not including the PLA) have overlapping mandates which creates obstacles for China’s ability to strengthen its claims over disputed territories, the South China Morning Post reports. “Each of these agencies has different interests and aims and there is no one superior official to coordinate them,” said Zhang Mingliang of Jinan University in Shandong. “Far from helping to tackle the territorial disputes, they make things more chaotic. A powerful man is needed to make the top decisions when the different agencies start jockeying for their own interests.” Li Guoqiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggested that the State Oceanic Administration, currently under the Ministry of Land and Resources, could be made an independent ministry with expanded authority.

January 4:

The head of a village family planning committee in Anxi, Fujian has been selling babies, the official China Youth Daily reports. The official, a mother of four herself, is suspected of participating in the illegal sale of four babies. The woman confessed to police that she had bought a baby boy for 50,000 yuan from a child trafficker who had smuggled him from Yunnan in December and then sold him for 52,000 yuan. Trying to rescue the baby, police tracked down the woman who bought him, but she had already sold the child to another couple for 60,000 yuan. When police found that couple, they had already sold him to yet another woman for 62,800 yuan. The final buyer already has a son, but after she received a tubal ligation he developed a severe medical condition prompting her to buy another. Although no official statistics are available it is believed that despite enhanced government efforts and public awareness, China’s illicit baby market continues to grow.