August 18:
China and Australia have signed their biggest ever trade deal with PetroChina agreeing to buy $50 billion of natural gas produced by ExxonMobil, according to the Daily Telegraph. PetroChina will acquire gas from Australia's Gorgon field, 120 miles off its west coast, for the next two decades. The deal for 2.25 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year will come from ExxonMobil's 25 percent stake in the field, in which Chevron has a 50 percent stake and Shell the remaining 25 percent. China has been buying liquefied natural gas (LNG), which can be stored for about three years, unlike traditional pipeline gas. It has plans to build ten new LNG storage facilities, and double its use of natural gas over five years. The Australian government agreed to accept liability for storing carbon dioxide emissions in the underground geological formation.
August 19:
The Russian Air force’s adoption of the new multi-purpose fighter jet – the SU-35 – will “open the way to the conclusion of a contract for the delivery of these planes to China,” said Igor Korotchenko, of the Russia’s Ministry of Defense Public Council. Moscow’s adoption of the SU-35 will also “be very significant for the competitiveness of this aircraft in the Indian tender,” Russia’s Vedomosti website reports. These comments followed Sino-Russian “technical consultations” last month at which “Chinese partners were offered cooperation on the Su-35 program in the form of buying a batch of ready planes with subsequent organization of their licensed production in China," Aleksandr Mikheyev, deputy general director of Rosoboronexport, said in comments reposted by the Interfax news agency. For a description of the SU-35 please see Defense Industry Daily.
August 21:
Police in Russia’s Khabarovsk Territory have arrested 11 Russian and Chinese members of a timber smuggling ring that exported tons of valuable oak, ash and lime types of timber to China. Russia’s Interior Ministry estimated that millions in damage was caused by the illegal logging. Several fly-by-night companies that provided smugglers with documents were also implicated in the scheme whereby rough timber was bought in Khabarovsk for cash and exported to China. If found guilty each defendant faces 12 years in prison, state-controlled Russia’s Channel One TV reports.
August 23:
In the wake of last month’s race riots in Xinjiang, Beijing law firms received a notice from the justice bureau suggesting they "exercise caution against giving legal consultations and against acting as litigation lawyers for cases related to the Xinjiang incident." The Xinjiang Lawyers Association separately requested all related cases be given to local lawyers associations in Xinjiang. Ming Pao reports that these orders appear to violate the Lawyers' Law, because they interfere with lawyers' independence, and because only law firms are qualified to handle such cases. Lawyers and firms have come under enormous pressure stoking fears of uncertain judicial equity and objectivity.
[Editor’s Note: In another such notice issued in mid-July the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau demanded that lawyers "exercise caution against giving legal consultations and against acting as litigation lawyers for cases related to the Xinjiang incident," but that the notice was soon deleted for unknown reasons.]
August 24:
The trials of 200 people accused of instigating and participating in the Xinjiang riots will begin at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court this week. Nearly all the suspects were arrested in Urumqi and Kashgar. Authorities have transferred dozens of judges from around Xinjiang to take part in the trials. Judges have been divided into groups with three to seven judges in each group. “Rulings will be made according to the principle that the minority is subordinate to the majority,” Ming Pao reports. The authorities have designated 170 Uighur lawyers and 20 Han lawyers to defend the suspects. The police have collected over 3,300 pieces of evidence including bloodstained bricks and clubs, 91 video footage discs and 2,169 photos, the official People’s Daily reports. So far 718 people have been formally arrested because of the riots although authorities said over 1,500 are currently being detained.
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