China Reform Monitor: No. 1225

May 13:

North Korea is deploying six KN-08 mobile ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 km at three or four frontline bases along the Chinese border. Ironically, the mobile launch vehicles were smuggled in from China, Choson Ilbo reports.

May 14:

China is withdrawing support for Venezuela. Since 2007 Beijing's support to the regime of then-President Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013, and current President Nicolas Maduro including cash and loans totaling $65 billion, reports the Associated Press. The headline project was the $7.5 billion Tinaco-Anaco railway led by China Railway Group. However, 16 months ago, with construction four years behind schedule and the economy in freefall, 800 Chinese managers and workers abandoned their factory in Zaraza. The facility was then ransacked by residents who tore apart dozens of buildings and hauled away everything of value including copper wiring and ceramic tiles. Six Venezuelan officials were arrested in 2013-14 for embezzling $84 million from a Chinese development fund and in 2013 the head of Venezuela's state rail authority acknowledged owing Beijing $400 million. In February, a high-level Venezuelan mission to Beijing returned empty-handed.

May 15:

The state minister at the Ministry of Information and Secretary of Media in Sudan's ruling National Congress (NC) Party, Yasir Yusuf, has praised his party's close cooperation with the Communist Party of China. Yusuf recently led a media delegation to Jiangsu to meet with officials from the Central Party School of the CPC Central Committee and "expressed his pleasure over the CPC's support for Sudan's development," Sudan's official Suna news agency reports.

May 17:

The China State Shipbuilding Corp. (CSSC) hopes to construct a network of ship and subsurface sensors, called the Underwater Great Wall Project for the China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). According to a brochure obtained by IHS Jane at CSSC's booth at a public exhibition in late 2015 the system is "a package solution in terms of underwater environment monitoring and collection, real-time location, tracing of surface and underwater targets, warning of seaquakes, tsunamis, and other disasters as well as marine scientific research." Specific components of the system include surface ships, sonar systems, underwater security equipment, marine oil and gas exploration equipment, underwater unmanned equipment, and marine instrument electronic equipment. The network is essentially a Chinese version of the Sound Surveillance System that allowed the U.S. to counter Soviet submarines during the Cold War.

May 21:

On a recent visit to China, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and Vice-President Li Yuanchao signed six bilateral agreements including a technical cooperation agreement valued at 500 million RMB ($76 million), an aid package worth another 500 million RMB, a deal to purchase Afghan saffron, and an MoU on China's New Silk Road project. It also included agreements for Chinese construction firms to build an auditorium at Kabul University and cheap housing for government employees. The two sides discussed accelerating work on the Amu Darya project and the Aynak copper mine, increasing cooperation in the field of higher education, encouraging Chinese investors to invest in Afghanistan including its state-owned newspaper Anis.