China Reform Monitor: No. 902

June 2:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will start negotiations with Pakistan, India and Iran to review their requests for full membership and review Afghanistan's application for observer status, SCO Secretary-General Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev said in Beijing. Despite the announcement, it is unlikely there will be progress on SCO enlargement at the upcoming 10th anniversary summit, the official China Daily reports, citing a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Peace has yet to be achieved in Afghanistan, Iran remains under UN sanctions, and the process for Pakistan and India remains undecided, he said.

June 7:

Kazakhstan has extradited Ershidin Israil, an ethnic Uighur schoolteacher, back to China on terrorism charges related to the July 2009 Uighur-Han riots. Astana agreed to deport Israil after “the Chinese side gave written guarantees that he would not be executed,” the Kazakh Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson said in comments carried by Pakistan’s Daily Times. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which had granted Israil refugee status in 2009, rescinded that status on May 3 after looking more closely into his case. “Taking into account Israil’s confessions on his role in a terrorist act in China's Xinjiang and his possible complicity in preparing a terrorist act in July 1997, the commission turned down his request to obtain refugee status in Kazakhstan,” the spokesman said.

June 8:

China and North Korea have broken ground on a pair of joint economic development zones, one on Huangjinping and Weihuadao islands in the Yalu River near Dandong, Liaoning, and the other near Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin. Ceremonies marking the start of the projects, which Beijing called “government-guided, enterprise-based and market-oriented,” took place this week during consultations led by Commerce Minister Chen Deming and Jang Song Thaek, a top cadre in the ruling Korean Workers’ Party and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law. Chen and Jang attended the groundbreaking, along with a thousand or so others, including brass bands, the release of doves, and the floating of giant balloons above the proceedings emblazoned with the words “North Korea-China friendship and joint development,” South Korea’s Yonhap News agency reports. Pyongyang’s last attempt to establish an economic development zone on the Chinese border in 2002 was abandoned after China arrested its governor, the Dutch-Chinese businessman, Yang Bin, on bribery and kickback charges.

June 9:

China is claiming one of its fishing boats became entangled with cables from a Vietnamese ship and was dragged along for over an hour. “The Vietnamese ship put the lives and safety of the Chinese fishermen in serious danger,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in comments carried by Agence France Presse. “By conducting unlawful oil and gas surveys in seas around the Wan'an Bank of the Spratly archipelago and by driving out a Chinese fishing vessel, Vietnam has gravely violated China's sovereignty and maritime rights,” said Hong. Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson described the incident very differently, claiming the Chinese fishing boat used a “cable cutting device” that became trapped in its ship’s underwater cables. Two Chinese ships then came to help the Chinese vessel, she said, calling the incident part of China’s campaign of systematic and intentional violations of Vietnam’s sovereignty. Hanoi also lodged a complaint with Beijing in late May when a Chinese patrol vessel slashed the cables of another ship conducting a seismic survey off Vietnam’s south-central coast.

June 10:

China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Liu Jianchao, has called Manila's accusations of intimidation near the disputed Spratly islands “exaggeration” and said claims that two Chinese fighter jets buzzed a Philippine military plane are “a bad rumor.” In reaction, a Philippine Defense Department spokesman said his agency and the Philippine military all stood by the previous statements regarding China’s “intrusions.” “We are bringing our case to the international community to let the international community judge these actions that were taken by China,” he said. Last week, Philippine President Benigno Aquino said in less than four months there were seven incidents involving Chinese and Filipino confrontations in the Spratleys. According to Agence France Presse, Liu’s response was unapologetic: “We are exercising jurisdiction over this area so we will do whatever is appropriate for us to do to exercise our jurisdiction,” he said.