China Reform Monitor: No. 1171

June 17:

Beijing has released new regulations requiring five categories of vessels including container ships to be modified to “serve national defense needs,” Reuters reports. The regulations “will enable China to convert the considerable potential of its civilian fleet into military strength.” Beijing will pay for the conversion of about 172,000 civilian ships. “Naval warfare often requires the mobilisation and deployment of a large number of ships,” said army researcher Cao Weidong. “The new standards will help translate the private shipbuilding sector's strength into military prowess.” Last month China said it will expand its military power projection at sea and air to defend the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea.

June 18:

Soldiers from China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) have been deployed to newly constructed border stations in Jilin province to defend against North Korean trespassers, UPI reports. “The PLA soldiers ‘are everywhere’ in the Chinese borderlands facing the North Korean cities of Musan and Hoeryong and the North Korean county of Onsong.” The deployments come after a series of North Korean attacks on Chinese nationals in towns adjacent to the Tumen River. Chinese soldiers recently shot and killed a person entering the country illegally from North Korea. In April, North Korean soldiers killed three Chinese nationals in Helong, Jilin and last December North Korean soldiers killed four ethnic Korean-Chinese.

June 23:

Hundreds of PLA veterans were detained after about 3,000 of them staged a sit-in protest outside the Central Military Commission in Beijing complaining about a lack of proper benefits and pensions, Radio Free Asia reports. Many were veterans of China's short-lived 1979 border war with Vietnam and the 1969 border conflict with the then-Soviet Union. China’s Defense Ministry said it was unaware of the protest.

June 24:

China has given its first-ever public assessment of the scale of drug abuse, Reuters reports. According to Liu Yuejin, assistant minister of public security, last year China had 49,000 drug-related deaths, annual economic losses of 500 billion yuan ($80.54 billion), and more than 14 million drug users. By the end of 2014, China’s 1.2 million methamphetamine users, which rose 41 percent since last year, outnumbered heroin users for the first time. Heroin and methamphetamine are being smuggled into Yunnan and Guangxi, which both border Southeast Asia. China is strengthening law enforcement cooperation with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, etc., Liu said. “We have given them relatively large assistance with the aim of improving the capacity of these countries to combat drug crime and prevent more drugs flowing into China.”

June 25:

China's Defense Ministry has declined to confirm that it is considering a military base in the east African country Djibouti. In May, Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh said he was in talks with Beijing about the base, and he welcomed a Chinese presence. The U.S. and France both have bases in Djibouti and foreign navies participating in the fight against Somali pirates, including China’s, use the port there, Reuters reports. “Maintaining regional peace and stability accords with all countries' interests is the joint desire of China, Djibouti and all other countries in the world. China is willing to, and ought to, make even more contributions in this regard,” said a PLA spokesperson.

[Editor’s Note: In 2009, then-Rear Admiral Wu Shengli urged the PLA to set up navy supply bases overseas for the anti-piracy fight off the coast of Africa. Wu is now China's navy chief. Chinese ships have undertaken anti-piracy operations off Somalia since late 2008.]