September 28:
The Amu Darya Natural Gas company, an affiliate of China National Petroleum Corporation, has reported the discovery of an estimated 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas on the right bank of the River Amu Darya in eastern Turkmenistan. Gas from the deposit will flow to China via Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline, Russia’s Gundogar website reports. Turkmenistan, in turn, has increased the capacity of its gas pipeline to China to 60 million cubic meters a day. “This station will allow a significant increase in gas supplies to the Turkmenistan-China transporting network,” the president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimukhameddov, said at the inauguration of the new Bagtyyarlyk compressor station, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reports. Turkmenistan’s head of state also said his country “is speeding up the preparation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project.”
September 30:
The Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc in China, infecting millions of computers around the country. "This malware is specially designed to sabotage plants and damage industrial systems, instead of stealing personal data," an engineer at antivirus service provider Rising International Software told the official Global Times. Another unnamed expert at Rising International said the attacks had so far infected more than six million individual accounts and nearly 1,000 corporate accounts around the country.
October 5:
One of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing newspapers has accused the independent Apple Daily of being a shill for Washington. “The newspaper has strong U.S. inclinations because the United States has been manipulating it to establish an anti-China base in Hong Kong," wrote Cho Wei in the Wen Wei Po.
October 7:
China sent Sukhoi SU-27 fighter aircraft and pilots to conduct a week of joint air force exercises with Turkey’s air force; Beijing’s first such exercises with a NATO country. Until 2008, the Israel Air Force was a frequent guest in Turkey's sky and a regular participant in the country's largest annual exercise, codenamed Anatolian Eagle. “Turkey replaced the Israel Air Force with its Chinese counterpart,” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reports. In the past these exercises were held openly, but last week they were held covertly, with only a brief report appearing in the Turkish media after the exercise.
October 9:
An editorial in the official Global Times newspaper entitled “2010 Nobel Peace Prize a Disgrace,” was published the day after the award was announced. It said: “The peace prize is loaded with Western ideology. The committee continues to deny China's development by making paranoid choices. In 1989, the Dalai Lama, a separatist, won the prize. Liu Xiaobo, the new winner, wants to copy Western political systems in China. Neither of the two made constructive contributions to China's peace and growth in recent decades. The Nobel Peace Prize has been degraded to a political tool that serves an anti-China purpose. They are trying to impose Western values on China. Obviously, the Nobel Peace Prize this year is meant to irritate China, but the committee disgraced itself. The Nobel committee made an unwise choice, but it and the political force it represents cannot dictate China's future growth. China's success story speaks louder than the Nobel Peace Prize.”
[Editor’s Note: Mr. Liu, 54, a veteran pro-democracy advocate, has been in jail since December, when a Beijing court sentenced him to 11 years for helping to draft Charter ‘08, a manifesto calling for political reform, human rights guarantees and an independent judicial system. Although initially signed electronically by thousands of intellectuals, students and former Communist Party officials, Charter ‘08 has since been blocked on China’s Internet and is largely unknown to ordinary Chinese.]
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