China tells police to be loyal to party amid graft crackdown
China’s police chief wrote on Friday that his officers must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party and be loyal to it, as the government targets the domestic security apparatus in a crackdown on corruption. Sources have told Reuters that China’s former security tsar, Zhou Yongkang, one of the most powerful politicians of the decade, has been put under effective house arrest while the party investigates corruption allegations against him. Last month, the government began a graft investigation into a one-time deputy public security minister, Li Dongsheng, an ally of Zhou’s. Li held a rank equivalent to cabinet minister, and state media says he is the first member of the ruling party’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee, the influential domestic security body which Zhou used to head, to be investigated for graft. Writing in the party’s official People’s Daily, Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun said his more than two million officers had to be “absolutely loyal and absolutely clean” and stand steadfastly in line with the orders and politics of President Xi Jinping.
China plans joint military command system: state media
China’s armed forces plan to set up a joint operational command system to “enhance efficiency” in crisis response, state media reported Friday. At present the People’s Liberation Army, (PLA) the world’s biggest military, which incorporates China’s navy and air force, is arranged on a geographical system with land forces at its core and dividing the country into seven regions. Now the military has “launched positive pilot programmes” for a joint operational command system and will establish the system “in due course”, the state-run China Daily newspaper said, citing the defence ministry. The defence ministry said its military modernisation was not aimed at any country, the China Daily said.
Budget phone-maker Coolpad thinks it can sell more 4G smartphones than Samsung in China this year
Shenzhen-based budget smartphone maker Coolpad (HKG:2369) says it aims to sell more 4G handsets in China than Samsung (KRX:005935) in 2014, according to Tech 163. That’s a big claim for a company that …
A tale of two leaders in China and Japan
China’s President Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe of Japan are locked in a spiralling diplomatic standoff but their burgeoning rivalry contrasts with striking personal parallels between the two, analysts say. “These personality traits and similar historical background, I think they do matter because for both Xi Jinping and Abe, nationalism has been a potent force which they can exploit to consolidate their position,” said Willy Lam, a politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Abe and Xi both came to power in late 2012, Xi anointed as Communist Party general secretary and Abe elected Japan’s prime minister after an aborted first term five years earlier. Abe was voted in vowing to rejuvenate Japan’s long moribund economy after two so-called “lost decades”, amend its war-renouncing constitution and take a more positive view of Japan’s past with the slogan: “Take back Japan”.
Tencent hits the road (and goes off the beaten path) to create China’s biggest ‘street view’
Started with just three areas in late 2011, Tencent’s (HKG:0700) street view imagery is now the most comprehensive in China. In a country where Google has not been permitted to roll out its iconic Street …
Two ‘pretty’ women from China caught for smuggling drugs at LCCT
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — The first visit to Malaysia for two “sweet young things” from China turned sour when they were detained by Customs officers at the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in Sepang…
China denounces U.S. for sending Uighur “terrorists” to Slovakia
China’s Foreign Ministry criticised the United States on Thursday for sending the last three Uighur Chinese inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to Slovakia, saying they were “terrorists” who posed a real security danger. Yusef Abbas, Saidullah Khalik, and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper are the last of 22 Muslim minority Chinese nationals to be moved from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, according to the Pentagon. Slovakia’s Interior Ministry confirmed that it would take in the three. Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim people from China’s far western region of Xinjiang.
Murdoch’s Fox sells Star China TV stake
Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox said Thursday it was selling its 47 percent stake in Star China TV, which operates three Mandarin-language television stations.
Study pinpoints likely site of next big China quake
It is impossible to predict when the next big earthquake will hit, but researchers said Thursday they have a good idea of where in China such a temblor is likely. The hot zone is a 60-kilometer (37-mile) segment of the Longmenshan fault which divides the Tibetan Plateau from the Sichuan Basin in southwestern China, said the study in the journal Seismological Research Letters. Such a quake could be as large as a magnitude 7, based on the amount of accumulated stress in the fault, it said. However, a risk assessment map produced by the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program “shows the entire Longmenshan fault zone as being relatively safe,” the study noted.
China loans Pakistan $6.5 bn for nuclear plants
China has agreed to lend Pakistan $6.5 billion to help build nuclear power stations including a 2,200-megawatt plant in Karachi, as Beijing increases its involvement in the cash-strapped country. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced the package at a b…
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