China Reform Monitor: No. 1157

March 23:

Two armed North Korean border patrol guards reportedly went AWOL and crossed over into Dandong, Liaoning. After North Korea alerted the Dandong authorities they plastered posters featuring the soldiers’ images and initiated a large-scale manhunt. Three days into the search Chinese forces found one of the men in a small rural village armed with a gun. He kidnapped a Chinese woman, whom he held hostage and had dragged onto a rooftop until some 100 armed Chinese security officials and soldiers overpowered him. It is unclear whether the second soldier has been arrested or if he remains at large, Daily NK reports.

March 25:

Director of China Merchant Holding Li Xiaopeng has signed an agreement with the president of Djibouti Ports and Free Trade Zones Authority in the presence of Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh for the construction of a free trade zone, a shipyard, a highway, and the expansion of Doraleh port. The $7 billion free trade zone, which be built over ten years in the tiny East African country, will include “manufacturing, air and sea transportation, electronics trade and regional distribution, conference facilities and international exhibitions, cruise ship terminal, residential and entertainment installations, hotels and tourism centers and a petroleum industrial park,” Spy Ghanareports. Hadi called the project “the economic catalyst for Djibouti’s future.” In January 2013, Djibouti signed an initial MoU with China Merchant Holding for the construction of two ports: Doraleh and Damejog; the latter is under construction.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post (SCMP) just ahead of his visit to Beijing, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said Jakarta will act as an “honest broker” to resolve the South China Sea territorial disputes. Indonesia wants a Code of Conduct (COC) currently being negotiated between China and ASEAN member countries to be “acceptable to all parties.” Indonesia is not a claimant state, but China's nine-dash line map, which forms the basis of its maritime claims and covers nearly 90 percent of the sea, overlaps with waters around the resource-rich Natunas islands that Indonesia controls. In a 2009 position paper to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Jakarta said the line had no basis in international law. Indonesia supports the use of the ASEAN Maritime Forum - whose members include the US, China and India – as the proper venue to resolve the South China Sea issues.

March 26:

As fighting continues between Myanmar government troops and ethnic Chinese rebels, China’s military has deployed artillery and conducted nighttime live-fire drills near the border, the SCMP reports. To test the troops' “combat readiness” a brigade from the 14th Army Corps carried out large-scale live-fire drills in the mountains of western Yunnan that included flamethrowers and intense artillery fire. “The defense forces are preparing for the worst, that the conflict across the border will get out of control,” said Shen Shishun at the China Institute of International Studies. Last week, as battles raged as close as one kilometer from the border, a Myanmar warplane dropped a bomb on a sugar-cane field in Yunnan, killing five residents and injuring eight. Meanwhile, Chinese fighter jets have been scrambled to track, monitor, warn and chase away Myanmar military planes flying close to the border. Last week, Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in Yunnan with local officials about border security, SCMP reports.

March 27:

China and Turkey are in a diplomatic tug-of-war over a family of 17 suspected Uighur Muslims under custody in Thailand. This week a Thai court rejected their argument that their prolonged detention was illegal, but made no ruling on their nationality, reports Reuters. The family claims to be Turkish and, while still in detention, was issued passports by the Turkish Embassy and granted permission to travel to Turkey. Beijing insists the detainees are Uighurs and should be returned to China. Hundreds of other suspected Uighurs have been detained since they illegally entered Thailand from Cambodia in March 2014. Two of the 13 children in the group were born last year in the main police immigration detention center in Bangkok.