China Reform Monitor: No. 1183

September 9:

“China has witnessed ballooning drug problems for years” and now has nearly 3 million “registered addicts,” the official PLA Daily reports. According to the Ministry of State Security: “The borders between Vietnam and China are one of busiest drug routes into China, with huge amounts of heroin passing through the area [and] a considerable amount of synthetic drugs transported out of China via the same line.” China and Vietnam have launched a three-month campaign from September 16 to mid November against cross-border drug trafficking. The initiative, whose headquarters will be set in Nanning, Guangxi, includes increased police cooperation, an intelligence-sharing mechanism and joint operations to apprehend suspects.

Last year a similar bilateral campaign led to the arrest of 3,800 suspects and over 900 kg of drugs.

September 16:

China has warned the winner of the upcoming Taiwan leadership election against deviating from the 1992 Consensus, the agreement between Taiwan and China to adhere to the one-China principle. "Without the common political foundation of the 1992 Consensus, political mutual trust and institutionalized consultation built upon the foundation would collapse. Any responsible political party should make clear their stance on this fundamental issue," said Ma Xiaoguang, of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office. Tsai Ing-wen, the chair of Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party, who will run for President in January, has yet to endorse the deal, the officialGlobal Times reports. Beijing’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and Taipei’s Straits Exchange Foundation reached the Consensus in November 1992.

September 17:

Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told a Senate hearing that Washington should challenge Beijing’s claims to South China Sea territory by patrolling close to Chinese-built artificial islands. Harris said China is building three airfields on the islands and their further militarization was of "great concern militarily" and posed a threat to countries in the region. “I believe that we should exercise - be allowed to exercise, freedom of navigation and flight in the South China Sea against those islands that are not islands. They're also building deep-water port facilities there. It creates a mechanism by which China would have de facto control over the South China Sea in any scenario short of war," Harris said. Committee chairman Senator John McCain criticized the administration for not challenging China by sailing within 12 miles of the new islands even after China sent naval vessels within 12 miles of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska last week. China is also deploying long-range submarines near the Horn of Africa and North Arabian Sea, and ballistic missile submarines in the Pacific, Reuters reports.

September 21:

Beijing police have detained more than 1,000 PLA veterans who gathered outside government buildings in protest over lack of income. "There were 20 buses that took us to the Tongzhou district of Beijing, to the side of a road in the countryside," PLA veteran and long-time petitioner Yang Suiquan told RFA from one of the buses. "The buses have all stopped here, and we are still sitting." The veterans arrived in Beijing on June 23, to lodge a formal complaint, and were promised a reply within 60 days. "But there has been no reply to date, and nobody was doing anything about it, so we went back there again," Yang said. Authorities are increasingly cracking down on PLA veterans who routinely complain about their mistreatment.

China's military is resisting President Xi Jinping's decision to cut troop numbers by 300,000, a 13 percent reduction for the 2.3-million strong PLA. "It's been too sudden," an anonymous source told Reuters. "People are very worried. A lot of good officers will lose their jobs and livelihoods. It's going to be tough for soldiers." One commentary in the PLA Daily said the troop cuts and other reforms would require "an assault on fortified positions" to change mindsets and root out vested interests, and that the difficulties faced would be "unprecedented." It said if these reforms failed, further measures would be "nothing more than an empty sheet of paper." Military song and dance assemblies would likely be the first to go. Then China's seven military regions, which have separate command structures that tend to focus on ground-based operations, are expected to be reduced. China's military budget this year rose 10.1 percent to 886.9 billion yuan ($139.39 billion), the second largest after the United States.