China Reform Monitor: No. 1170

June 16:

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has begun a six-month probe into buildings that exceed legal specifications or are illegally rented out. Projects built after the 18th Communist Party congress in 2012 that violate regulations will be stopped immediately. Projects built before the congress will have to be fixed. PLA's General Logistics Department is drafting new rules for project approvals,management and the bidding process. Earlier this year, the PLA ordered new barracks’ to be built as economically as possible, without using ostentatious or imported building materials. Although the military has been subjected to an ongoing two-year anti-corruption campaign, there remains “deep-rooted problems” in military infrastructure and barracks. “Some 'big problems' left over from the past several years continue to exist, and illegality and ill-discipline keeps happening. Chronic problems in the building of barracks have not been totally sorted out,” the defense ministry said. Liu Yuan, the political commissar of the PLA General Logistics Department, said the cases of Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou, Ling Jihua and Su Rong show that corruption had reached the top of the PLA,the South China Morning Post reports.

June 17:

The Central Military Commission (CMC) has pledged to continue fighting military corruption and ordered that all malpractice uncovered by its audit office be transferred to “military law enforcers.” Officers overuse of secretaries and office attendants and the living standards of their families will be monitored. The CMC also announced the prosecution of two more senior officers, Kou Tie, former head of the Heilongjiang Military Area Command, and LiuZhanqi, former chief of the People's Armed Police traffic command. So far, 37 high-ranking military officers have been removed for corruption, the official PLA Daily reports.

June 21:

China’s chemical factories and drug traffickers have become leading suppliers of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, and the compounds used to manufacture them. Officials from several countries say Chinese authorities are uninterested in combating what they see as other countries’ drug problems, the New York Times reports. China was the primary source of illicit amphetamine-type drugs detected at the Australian border in 2013 to 2014. “We’ve seen it all,” said Scott Cook, Detective Superintendent of New South Wales. “There’s absolutely no limit in terms of how far they go to import drugs. They’re ingenious.” After a five-month antidrug sweep that ended in March, Chinese officials arrested more than 133,000 people and seized 43 tons of illegal narcotics. They found meth in Chinese shipments of garden hoses, handbags, lamps, aquarium pebbles, metal shafts, kayaks and 70 toilets. Mexican cartels, which produce 90 percent of the meth consumed in the U.S., have also turned to Chinese ingredients. “The Chinese never showed any willingness to cooperate on stemming the flow of precursors into Mexico,” said Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s ambassador to China from 2007 to 2013. Chinese officials responded to Mexico’s requests for assistance by indicting that they had used incorrect typeface or were improperly translated. “Hands down China is No. 1,” said one U.S. law enforcement official.

June 22:

China may station J-11 fighter jets in the disputed South China Sea once work on several runways on reclaimed land is complete. The J-11’s deployment in the Spratly Islands would extend Beijing’s reach 1,000km beyond its southernmost base at Sanya, Hainan. China has several hundred J-11s, which have a range of 1,500km that can be extended with additional fuel tanks. Setting up operations on the islands would “take China towards its stated goal of moving away from offshore defense to open-seaprotection,”SCMP reports. David Tsui of Sun Yat-sen University said the J-11 could defend China's seven artificial islands, but is not sophisticated enough to be used in an attack role.

June 23:

Last year China spent 488 billion yuan on water projects and will exceed that figure in 2015, Vice Minister of Water Resources Jiao Yong said. Beijing has allocated another 25 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) for water-related projects, the official PLA Daily reports. The funds will finance 143 new “irrigation, diversion, water saving and cleaning up lakes and rivers projects,” with the remainder going to recapitalize 29 existing projects.