China Reform Monitor: No. 1132

October 22:

At a trade fair in the border city Dandong, Liaoning Chinese businesses signed 60 trade and investment deals with North Korea worth $1.26 billion. Around 500 North Korean officials attended the trade fair, including those in charge of economic development. There is no guarantee that the letters of intent will materialize into concrete investments and the amount of deals struck this year was smaller than last year (93 deals worth $1.6 billion) in both in number and total terms, the Chosun Ilboreports.

October 24:

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has denied that its military officers sold classified information to China about U.S. military equipment including the E-2K early warning aircraft, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and PAC-2 anti-ballistic missile systems.Defense News reports that, “as relations improve between Beijing and Taipei, military morale still continues to fall as fewer Taiwan military officers see a future in an ever-shrinking armed forces. Many are beginning to cash in on their intimate knowledge of military secrets, including classified information on U.S. military equipment.” Taiwan’s official Central News Agency reports that over the last three years there have been 14 military-related Chinese espionage cases. It said Beijing uses two approaches to entice Taiwanese officers to spy. First, it uses Taiwanese businessmen operating in China to contact potential candidates. Second, it develops close relationships with active or retired military officers’ families and gives them gifts and overseas trips and then probes them for information.

October 26:

China’s continues to expand Kagitingan (Fiery Cross) Reef, which is eventually expected to provide a vital outpost for its military and civilian commercial activities in disputed areas of South China Sea. Beijing plans to build air and naval bases on the reclaimed reef to bolster its presence and claims in the South China Sea, the Daily Tribune reports. Wang Hanling of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said he expects that reclamation work, which has already covered about one square km, will continue. Citing unnamed sources and satellite images from DigitalGlobe taken between late September and mid-October, Chinese website Guancha.cn reports that the reef “has been upgraded to an island.”

October 28:

Former Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, General Xu Caihou, has confessed to taking “particularly huge bribes,” in return for helping people win promotions or make unspecified personal gains. No details were provided about who gave the bribes or how much Xu took. Military prosecutors officially finished their inquiry into Xu and are likely to put him on trial, the New York Times reports. The party authorities announced in late June that he was under investigation after a secretive inquiry begun in March. Xu is one of the highest-ranking targets of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign.

October 29:

On September 26, in Luntai, Xinjiang “40 rioters, six civilians, two police officers and two auxiliary policemen were killed after a series of explosions hit a shop, an open fair and two police stations,” the official China Daily reports.