Sky News has obtained chilling new evidence of mobile execution buses being used by the Chinese government. It comes less than two years before China hosts the next Olympic Games.
posted by Stan at 1:42 PM
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China has no covert agents in the United States trying to buy military gear on its behalf, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
"The so-called allegations that China is conducting intelligence collection on military or science and technology in the United States are purely fictitious," spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular news conference.
"Chinese military trading enterprises will never buy any military products from clients who cannot provide legal and effective documents," he said.
A Taiwanese man who worked as a sales representative for the Pentagon's biggest supplier pleaded guilty on Wednesday to plotting to ship to China advanced U.S. weapons, including an F-16 fighter engine and nuclear-capable cruise missiles.
Ko-Suen Moo, 58, represented Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the industry-leading U.S. defense contractor, in Taiwan for more than 10 years, the company said.
He also pleaded guilty in federal court in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to being a covert agent for China, U.S. law enforcement officials said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Defense Department singled out China as having the greatest potential among major and emerging powers to compete militarily with the United States over coming decades.
posted by Stan at 4:47 AM
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior lawmaker from US President George W. Bush's Republican party accused China of genocide for allegedly conducting forced abortions to phase out indigenous populations in the largely Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang regions.
Christopher Smith, chairing a Congressional hearing on human rights abuses in China, slammed the United Nations for backing China's so-called family planning program which he said had been used as a "tool of repression" in the two regions.
"This assistance puts the UN seal of approval on a very coercive population control program which against the Tibetans and certainly against the Uighurs constitutes genocide," said Smith at the hearing of the House of Representatives subcommittee on human rights.
"The genocide definition couldn't be more clear ... when people are targeted in whole or in part because of their ethnicity for destruction," Smith said at the hearing, timed to coincide with Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States.
Bush is under pressure from Congress to put human rights as a priority issue, aside from trade and economic matters, when he holds talks with Hu on Thursday.
Rebiya Kadeer, a top campaigner for the rights of China's Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang, claimed at Wednesday's hearing that the Chinese authorities had stepped up "forced abortions" among locals and encouraged Chinese migrants to move into the region.
Kadeer, who was deported to the United States last year after serving nearly six years of detention in Beijing, spoke about the "horrific accounts of forced, late-term abortions, of forced sterilizations and the extreme physical and psychological traumas inflicted on women as a result of these procedures."
She said if Beijing "continues with this program for the next 20 years, it would result in the Uighurs being wiped out from the face of the Earth."
"It seems to me when there is a systematic effort to displace the Uighurs by using migration policies coupled with family planning policies that included forced abortion, it would seem to rise clearly to that level (genocide)," Smith said.
The International Campaign for Tibet said there is a "major concern" about the way in which birth control policies are implemented in Tibetan areas.
"We know there are quotas imposed for sterilization and abortion which can lead to coercion of women," Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet, told AFP. "Lack of education in birth control is a major problem."
Noting that forced abortions by Nazis on Polish women in the 1930's constituted a crime against humanity, Smith said, "it is no less a crime against humanity today when practised by the Chinese against a vast array of women."
Smith also called for international pressure on China to improve its human rights record ahead of its hosting the 2008 Olympics.
He said he was "disappointed" that popular American film director Steven Spielberg would be among high-profile consultants designing the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics.
"It immediately flashed to my mind that the Olympic games are to the Chinese dictatorship what the 1936 Olympic games were to the Nazis -- a chance to put a face on tyranny or somehow gloss over ongoing systematic abuse of human rights and I, for one, was disappointed that he would lend his name and his extraordinary talents to that effort," Smith said.
posted by Stan at 6:41 PM
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Mon Apr 3, 2:10 PM ET
China plans a "military showdown" with Taiwan in less than a decade, the island's President Chen Shui-bian said.
Rejecting an opposition call to resume talks with Beijing based on earlier guidelines, Chen said it is not he but Chinese leaders who have tried to alter the status quo in the Strait by stockpiling weaponry targeting Taiwan.
"The number of ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan has topped 787 from 200 seen in the year 2000," the independence-leaning president, who took office that year, told opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou during a nationally televised two-hour meeting.
The number is increasing by 100-120 per year, he said.
"Is this goodwill or part of its preparations for invading Taiwan? We must not turn a blind eye to this development," Chen told Ma, who favours the resumption of talks with China.
"They have come up with a three-stage timeframe of using force against Taiwan," Chen said in the meeting with Ma, head of the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist) party.
"They plan to beef up their emergency warfare capabilities by 2007, and large-scale warfare capabilities against Taiwan by 2010 and capabilities to have a military showdown with Taiwan by 2015, according to the information we have collected."
Therefore, while dealing with Beijing, the risk of hostilities must be taken into consideration, Chen said.
Ma is seen as the front-runner in the 2008 presidential polls while Chen cannot seek a third term.
Chen also rejected Ma's recommendation that his government hold rapprochement talks with Beijing based on 1992 guidelines on the "one-China" principle.
"It would be problematic to regard this, which does not exist at all, as the basis of talks," he said.
At a 1992 meeting in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan each agreed on their own interpretation of the "one-China principle" so talks could go ahead.
Chen suggested that former KMT chairman Lien Chan raise the so-called "1992 consensus" while meeting China's President Hu Jintao later this month.
If Hu confirmed the consensus or allowed Taiwan to keep its interpretation of "one China," Chen said he would also abide by the consensus and hold the peace talks as Ma proposed.
The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war but China regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.
Ma had requested the meeting with Chen after returning from a high-profile trip to the United States last month. In an unusually warm reception he met US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, the highest level contact between Taiwan and the United States in years.
Washington was angered by Chen's decision last month to disband a council dealing with the politically tricky question of uniting with China. It saw the move was an unnecessary provocation of the mainland.
The United States has also shown some frustration at Taiwan's failure to conclude a huge US arms deal.
Chen's government initially sought parliament's approval for a 19-billion US dollar arms purchase over 15 years, but has since scaled back the amount under pressure from the KMT and other opposition parties.
The latest version calls for the purchase of eight conventional submarines, 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft and six PAC-3 Patriot anti-missile systems at a cost of 10.6 billion dollars.
Some opposition lawmakers say Taiwan cannot afford the arms deal. Others say the equipment would be delivered too slowly to enable the island to keep pace with China's military build-up.
posted by Stan at 6:47 PM
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