China Reform Monitor: No. 1071

November 16:

Rebels fighting against South Sudan’s government are using Chinese-made small arms supplied by Sudan, Kenya’s The East African reports. Although China has no direct role in supporting South Sudan rebels, Chinese-made assault rifles and ammunition are among the most common weapons used by insurgents. Sudan had been supporting rebel groups against South Sudan, but in an agreement signed this month, both sides agreed not to support rebels on each other's territory and to cooperate on weapon control, community and humanitarian issues.

November 20:

China’s authorities have technology that can translate in real time every major ethnic minority language in China and selected foreign languages, the South China Morning Post reports. The new system allows for the monitoring of calls, text sent via the Internet, and communications embedded in images or graphics. “An increasing number of messages are passed around on the internet in image format to dodge government surveillance. Most of the equipment in use these days cannot deal with such information,” said Ding Xiaoqing, a professor at Tsinghua University, and the leader of the team behind the new application. “It is aimed at local authorities in areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet, where security officials do not know the local language. With the help of our technology, they can have first-hand, real time access to intelligence information. They can also deal with multiple languages with one system,” Ding said.

November 21:

After thousands staged street protests in Kunming, Yunnan in May and June opposing the construction of a massive refinery and petrochemicals plant to use oil to produce fuel and paraxylene, a carcinogenic chemical used in polyester and plastic bottles, officials have decided to relocate the project. The refinery, which was due to be completed in 2014, was to take 200,000 bpd, or nearly 50 percent of the 440,000 bpd of the Myanmar pipeline’s maximum transmission capacity, The Irrawaddy reports. In August, despite a CNPC environmental assessment claiming the project presented no danger to the population, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection announced it was suspending environmental approvals for new refinery projects by both CNPC and Sinopec, “because they had failed to meet their [air pollution] emissions reduction targets last year.”

[Editor’s Note: Myanmar pipeline is the first to pump oil into China that is not linked directly with a field. The added cost of shipping crude to Kyaukphyu before offloading and transferring make it uneconomical. CNPC pays Myanmar $13.6 million per year in rent on the pipeline, plus $1 for every ton that flows through it, or $22 million if it operates at full capacity.]

November 25:

China has announced that all airlines will have to announce their flight plans before entering its “air defense zone” in the East China Sea – an area roughly two-thirds the size of the UK and including the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, reports The Guardian. “Unenforceable and dangerous,” said Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe. “It’s a unilateral step, changing the status quo in the East China Sea. It escalates the situation and could lead to an unexpected occurrence of accidents in the airspace.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned: “Escalatory action will only increase tensions in the region and create risks of an incident.” A PLA spokesman responded: “The purpose of China's approach is to defend national sovereignty and territorial airspace security, maintain the order of airspace flight, and is an effective exercise of our right of self defense.” He urged the U.S. to “not take sides, not make inappropriate remarks and not give the wrong signal to Japan and encourage risky behavior.” Despite high-level diplomatic protests, however, transport ministry officials in Japan, Seoul and Taipei said planes flying in the zone would not adhere to the pronouncement and alert China’s civil aviation authorities of their flight plans.

South Korea stressed its “unchanging” control over a disputed, submerged, South Korean-controlled rock - known as Ieodo; an area within China’s newly declared air defense zone. Seoul called Beijing’s announcement “regrettable.” “I'd like to say once again that we have unchanging territorial control over Ieodo," a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said in comments carried by the Straits Times Singapore.