China Reform Monitor: No. 719

September 24:

With China’s help over the next 22 years Pakistan will install 10 nuclear power plants to generate 8,800 MW of nuclear energy, a senior Pakistani government official told The News. Pakistan will recruit 400 experts over the next five years to study Chinese language so they can communicate with Chinese vendors and manufacturers and be trained by Beijing’s nuclear industry experts. Pakistani personnel will attend orientation and training and be sent for on-job training at nuclear power plants in China. "The training program of these persons will primarily consist of teaching them technical Chinese languages. And the specialists will be used for this purpose," the official said. In his forthcoming visit to China next month Pakistani President Zardari will seek fuel technology for the future nuclear power plants.


September 25:

In the wake of new clashes between Tibetan monks and Chinese armed police, Beijing has issued a White Paper refuting the charges of "cultural genocide" in the troubled autonomous region. The Times reports that fifty monks from the Kirti monastery were injured in a confrontation at the local police station. The monks marched on the station to protest the mistreatment of one of their colleagues. The police responded by calling in two truckloads of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police who beat the monks. At least four were taken to the hospital.

According to its text, carried in the official People’s Daily, Beijing’s most recent official White Paper on “Protection and Development of Tibetan Culture” was "published to give the international community a better understanding of the reality of the protection and development of Tibetan culture." The "Dalai Lama and his clique and the anti-China forces in the West conspire to force the Tibetan ethnic group and its culture to stagnate and remain in a state similar to the Middle Ages, in effect to become living fossils, while they themselves enjoy the fruits of modern civilization and culture," said the White Paper released by the Information Office of the State Council, the seventh of its kind on Tibet.


September 26:

After concluding trade talks with the United States, Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming was joined by European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson as co-chairs of the 23rd China-EU Joint Economic and Trade Committee in Beijing. The negotiations, first launched in June 2007, are intended to upgrade the 1985 China-EEC Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement that has served as the only legal basis for bilateral ties over the past 23 years. The official People’s Daily reports that agreements in “the areas of the trade in steel and iron products, customs cooperation, environment protection and energy efficiency, technical trade barriers, standardization cooperation, China's full market economy status, traditional Chinese medicine, [and] two-way investment and trade in services” were reached in principle. The two sides also agreed to accelerate negotiations on the Intellectual Property Rights Customs Enforcement Action Plan.

[Editor’s Note: The talks were unsuccessful in persuading the European Commission not to extend its 16.5 percent anti-dumping emergency duties on shoes imported from China, the Financial Times reported on September 29th. Despite a nonbinding vote of 15 to 12, Mr. Mandelson said EU law left him little alternative but to maintain the duties given the evidence of harm from cheap imports presented two years ago, when the duties were imposed.]


September 29:

The North Korean coast guard has shelled a Chinese fishing boat, the South Korean Ministry of Defense has confirmed in comments carried by the Yonhap News Agency. The vessels skipper was seriously injured and is now hospitalized at Inha University in Inchon, South Korean. "North Korean coast guards often fire at Chinese boats trespassing in North Korean waters and illegally fishing," said a defense ministry official in Seoul. Officers say increasing numbers of Chinese fishing boats are infiltrating Korean waters as harvests in Chinese waters are plummeting due to pollution and over-fishing. Since 2001, when South Korea's fisheries treaty with China took effect, about 3,000 Chinese boats have been captured for fishing illegally in Korean waters.