October 10:
An al-Qaida videotape has surfaced calling “China an enemy of the Islamic world” and threatening a jihad to avenge the persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. In response China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing “enforces the policy of ethnic equality and religious freedom” and “will continue to cooperate with the international community to jointly respond to the terrorist threat,” the official Zhongguo Tongxun She reports.
October 13:
Caijing Magazine, China’s most influential business publication is entangled in a high-stakes dispute to decide its future. Managing editor and founder Hu Shuli is in last ditch talks to strike a deal after the resignations of general manager Daphne Wu Chuanhui, eight of nine business directors, and 70 of 110 of Caijing 's top executives. Hu is responsible for the editorial content and Wu headed the business operations. Hu single-handedly nurtured the magazine over the past 11 years and has fiercely defended its editorial independence. Serious disagreements remain over the magazine's shareholding structure, editorial policies and future direction. If negotiations fail, Hu is set to resign and take most of Caijing’s 180 reporters and editors with her, the South China Morning Post reports.
October 15:
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has initiated a seven-point plan to boost cooperation between Beijing, Russia, and the Central Asian states that includes $10 billion in loans. Wen made the announcement while hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) eighth prime ministers' meeting attended by his counterparts from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as representatives from the SCO observer nations and Afghanistan. Other aspects of Beijing’s proposal include coordination “to promote international monetary system reform,” and cooperation on health, education, disaster relief, human resources, agriculture and food security. China will also help SCO states build clean energy projects, roads and railways, as well as aid their fight against Islamic terrorism, the official CCTV website reports.
October 16:
A delegation from the China International Fund (CIF) has left Guinea after signing a mining, infrastructure and oil exploration contract with the country's military junta worth an estimated $7 billion. The African country’s foreign minister Alexandre Cece Loua thanked “China [for] signing such an important contract with the Guinean government” according to comments carried by the Guineenews website. Guinea’s military junta, which seized power last December, has been deprived all foreign financial aid and is facing sanctions from the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union, and western countries.
[Editor’s Note: After a landslide of criticism against the deal, China’s foreign ministry spokesman said that “CIF is a Hong Kong-registered company and its investment is unrelated to the Chinese government,” the official Global Times reports.]
October 19:
"There definitely exists a clandestine Chinese arms market which sells arms to different rebel groups," said Indian Army Lt General N K Singh. Singh said that although no official Chinese government agency could be implicated the clandestine arms market was active near the opium-rich Golden Triangle in Northern Myanmar. In 2006 and 2007, Indian security agencies seized 4,000 small arms in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir, nearly half of which were made in China, the Indian Express reports. Last year China replaced Cambodia and Thailand as the main supplier of weapons to insurgent groups in India's Northeast and Myanmar. Singh said that to prevent the illicit arms trade a 10-km stretch along the Indo-Myanmar boarder was being fenced by Indian authorities.
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