China Reform Monitor: No. 1080

January 2:

A People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Task Force including the amphibious docking vessel Jinggangshan and missile frigate Hengshui has docked in Mombasa, Kenya for four days. Representatives from the Kenyan government and navy and China’s Ambassador to Kenya were among those that greeted the fleet. Kenya’s Secretary for Defense Raychelle Omamo said the visit strengthens relations between the two militaries, which will practice anti-pirate tactics, “equipment maintenance, damage control, medical aid and sports,” the official People’s Daily reports. This is the first official visit by PLA combat personnel to Kenya. In 2010, the military hospital ship Peace Ark docked in Mombasa.

January 3:

U.S. officials have expressed concern about South Korea’s decision to contract China’s Huawei to help build the country’s new broadband network. During his visit to Seoul last month, Vice President Joe Biden raised the issue with Prime Minister Jung Hong-won, The Daily Beast reports. Meanwhile, the White House’s National Security staff has tasked the U.S. intelligence community to study the effects of the Huawei-South Korea deal on American security interests. “Given the serious concerns that our government has with Huawei and its alleged ties to the Chinese government, a Korean decision to give Huawei a major stake in building out the country’s telecommunications infrastructure would go over very badly in the United States and the Congress,” said Senator John McCain. “The national-security interests of the United States are directly affected by the integrity of Korea’s information networks.”

January 4:

The Global Times, often China's most hawkish English-language newspaper, has criticized South Korea’s plans to build another oceanographic station calling it an illegal move to secure rights in China’s territorial waters. The paper decried South Korea’s policy of building research centers atop submerged reefs in waters claimed as by other countries as part of their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).. The South Korean government has allocated 12.6 billion won ($11.9 million) in its 2014 budget to build another ocean research station, the “West Sea station,” in the Yellow Sea. South Korea already has such stations on Ieodo (Suyan in Chinese) and Gageo. Ieodo’s station was completed in 2003 and Gageo’s was built in 2009, Yonhap reports.

[Editor’s Note: Beginning in 1996 Beijing and Seoul held talks to delineate a median line for their EEZs in the Yellow Sea, but have failed to reach agreement. South Korea insists that the demarcation line be equidistant from both shores. China claims population size and length of shoreline should be weighed in the drawing, which would push the line closer to South Korea.]

January 7:

At a public ceremony in Guangzhou aimed to send a message to illegal ivory smugglers, authorities destroyed 6.15 metric tons of ivory, representing one-sixth of the illegal ivory seized globally in 2012. China, which previously turned a blind eye to ivory smuggling, accounts for 70 percent of the global demand for ivory. Kenya has been hit particularly hard, with over 350 elephants killed annually by poachers. Poaching networks are linked to drug smuggling, gun running, and terrorism funding. “China now should take the next step and demonstrate that destroying the ivory was no mere public relations gesture. It must take the same severe action against those driving the illegal trade as it takes against drug smugglers, organized criminal gangs and corrupt government officials: Long jail-terms or the death sentence,” read an editorial in Kenya’s Daily Nation.

The Japanese government will nationalize 280 remote islands to strengthen its administrative control, Kyodo reports. “We will register the remote islands as state property to enhance their management,” said Ichita Yamamoto, state minister for oceanic policies and territorial issues. The remote islands are among the roughly 400 (mostly nameless islands) that Tokyo claims define Japan’s territorial waters. Last year an advisory panel to Yamamoto proposed the government set up a system to monitor ownership changes, name the islands and survey their natural environment and resources in the sea around them.