June 26:
China has agreed to help Bangladesh develop Sonadia deep sea port in the Cox Bazar district of Chittagong, in the Bay of Bengal. “We're serious about our (deep sea port) proposal and the Chinese government has reassured its cooperation,” Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Mijarul Quayes said, in comments carried by the Press Trust of India. Last week Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni presented the preliminary port construction proposal to vice-president Xi Jinping in Beijing, who assured her of China’s assistance on the project. China also provided 150 million RMB to Bangladesh for socio-economic development.
June 29:
To mark the Communist Party’s 90th anniversary, China has deployed a new diesel-powered submarine, equipped with six Jwirang-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) with a range of 8,000 km. The Ching-class submarine, which is moored near Shanghai, can also be converted and fit with 42 cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 km, the Korea Times reports. China is expected to begin production of more diesel-powered Ching-class submarines because they are cheaper than nuclear subs yet still stealthy, thanks to significant improvements in noise reduction technology.
[Editor’s Note: Since mid-1990s, China’s navy has increasingly deployed submarines to secure fishing grounds, natural resources and sea routes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.]
The China State Grid Corporation has completed a two-year, 159 million RMB renovation on the 70-year-old Shuifeng hydropower station on the Yalu River, between China and North Korea. The power station’s renovation involves upgrading flood control facilities ahead of the upcoming rainy season, the official Xinhua News Agency reports. The Chinese company handed over control of the newly renovated dam to Pyongyang, which is in charge of the station’s flood-control facilities. The Shuifeng hydropower station is the largest dam on the Yalu River and since 1955 has generated more than 260bn kw/h of electricity shared by China and North Korea.
July 1:
In response to a surge in North Korean cyber attacks originating from China, South Korea has doubled the size of its cyber warfare unit to over 900 experts and placed it directly under the control of its defense ministry. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports that Seoul’s Cyber Command, which was created in January 2010 after hackers paralyzed several government websites and a major bank, hopes to protect the South Korea’s military cyber infrastructure, government and private websites. According to Seoul’s Defense Security Command, North Korea has built a 1,000-member cyber warfare unit that operates from within both North Korea and China.
July 3:
The South China Morning Post has published two articles calling for the Communist Party of China (CPC) to increase the transparency of its activities in Hong Kong. The first article reports that in Hong Kong, the CPC has established “grass-roots organizations in the army, trade unions, schools, universities, youth groups, women's groups, neighborhoods and even commercial enterprises.” CPC influence, which grew in the 1990s, is now embedded in many Hong Kong organizations but if CPC members became known,- others “might worry about whether these members had reported on them to the Communist Party.” The second article notes that since Hong Kong’s 500,000 person-strong protests on July 1, 2003, the CPC adopted a higher profile taking on “an increasingly active role in coordinating candidates from the Beijing-friendly camp in the city's elections.” If the CPC operated openly in Hong Kong, however, “it would experience direct, in-your-face competition” from rival political parties.
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