China Security

Recommendations included in the U.S.-China Security Review Commission's report to Congress would: * Give the president the authority to penalize governments for violating weapons control agreements and expand the sanctions to include trade and investment restrictions and limits on access to U.S. capital markets. * Require pre-license and end-user checks on sensitive technology sold to China to prevent diversion to military users. * Require U.S.

Images of Greek demonstrators rioting over austerity measures and Occupy Wall Street protesters scuffling with police in the U.S. appear to be worrying China's communist leaders. One of China's most senior officials has acknowledged that the souring global economy has the government on edge. According to an official New China News Agency report Saturday, China's top security chief warned provincial officials to brace for unrest if financial conditions continue to deteriorate.

China scored a victory Wednesday in its 18-month-old standoff with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, thwarting planned protests by the banned sect but at the cost of the heaviest security clamped on central Beijing in years. Checkpoints ringed Tiananmen Square, marring the beginning of the lunar New Year, the most auspicious date in the Chinese calendar. Police inspected identification papers, bags, pockets and coat sleeves to ferret out suspected Falun Gong followers.

Whoever is sending out the mysterious tweets calling for regular Sunday afternoon "strolls" around China has come up with a highly effective psychological operation against the government, sending a paranoid security apparatus chasing at shadows. The possibility that somebody might heed the coy calls to protest led Chinese security to virtually shut down some of the most heavily trafficked sites in the country: a McDonald's on the popular Wangfujing pedestrian mall in downtown Beijing and Shanghai's People's Park.

It didn't take long before we knew that the Chinese man in white trousers and maroon sweater was following us. He tried to stay a couple of hundred yards behind. But he never disappeared. When we stopped, he stopped. When we turned, he turned. When we slipped around a corner and stepped into a family courtyard, he passed on by. But soon he was back.

From his cramped studio apartment littered with dirty socks, old Pepsi bottles and instant noodles, Lu Yunfei has whipped up a wave of anti-Japan sentiment across China using little more than a laptop and a high-speed connection. Since February, the 30-year-old founder of the Patriots' Alliance website and his colleagues have collected 3.5 million signatures for a petition to block Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

In the midst of this month's unrest in Tibet, Cub Scout Pack 3944 in Beijing was invited to round the bases and meet their baseball idols, the Dodgers, when they came for the first-ever major league game played in China. Shortly before the first pitch, however, Chinese police told leaders of the expatriate pack that the deal was off. The apparent concern: that the boys might agitate for Tibetan independence.

China's decision to block the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk from a long-planned Thanksgiving visit to Hong Kong, before relenting 24 hours later "on humanitarian grounds," had all the markings of a diplomatic slap in the face, analysts say. It just wasn't terribly clear whose face it was aimed at.

Hundreds of students at Beijing University staged a bold anti-government protest early today, the anniversary of last year's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. Shortly after midnight, the crowd of students marched through the campus shouting anti-government slogans despite the pleas of a Communist Party official to return to their dormitories, witnesses said.

Two outstanding questions loomed at the opening of the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women that concludes here today: The first was whether the international women's movement could maintain the consensus on reproductive health and a woman's sovereignty over her own body that was achieved last year at the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development.

In the midst of this month's unrest in Tibet, Cub Scout Pack 3944 in Beijing was invited to round the bases and meet their baseball idols, the Dodgers, when they came for the first-ever major league game played in China. Shortly before the first pitch, however, Chinese police told leaders of the expatriate pack that the deal was off. The apparent concern: that the boys might agitate for Tibetan independence.

China's decision to block the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk from a long-planned Thanksgiving visit to Hong Kong, before relenting 24 hours later "on humanitarian grounds," had all the markings of a diplomatic slap in the face, analysts say. It just wasn't terribly clear whose face it was aimed at.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that China endorsed his nation's bid to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council, a move strongly opposed by the United States. The announcement came as Chavez outlined a dozen bilateral trade deals at the close of his state visit to Beijing, including plans to triple oil exports to China by 2010. Chavez said he saw stronger relations with China as a means of creating a "multi-polar" world and lessening the "hegemony" of the United States.

From his cramped studio apartment littered with dirty socks, old Pepsi bottles and instant noodles, Lu Yunfei has whipped up a wave of anti-Japan sentiment across China using little more than a laptop and a high-speed connection. Since February, the 30-year-old founder of the Patriots' Alliance website and his colleagues have collected 3.5 million signatures for a petition to block Tokyo's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Recommendations included in the U.S.-China Security Review Commission's report to Congress would: * Give the president the authority to penalize governments for violating weapons control agreements and expand the sanctions to include trade and investment restrictions and limits on access to U.S. capital markets. * Require pre-license and end-user checks on sensitive technology sold to China to prevent diversion to military users. * Require U.S.

China and the United States announced Saturday that they have cleared the remaining hurdles blocking Beijing's entry into the World Trade Organization. The agreement reached between Chinese Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng and U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick during talks in Shanghai means that China now has a better chance of joining the global trading body by year's end. "We are pleased to report that the U.S.

The U.S. Embassy issued an "urgent notice" on Thursday warning Americans that terrorists from another country may be planning attacks on Americans living in the Chinese capital. The unprecedented warning, which came from Chinese public security officials on Wednesday, caused the U.S. Embassy to issue an alert to the 1,500 Americans living in China that they should take measures to protect themselves, said U.S. consular official Dewey Pendergrass.

Thousands of Chinese police patrolled the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on foot and in trucks Thursday, and foreigners there said hundreds of people have been arrested in the past six days. The anniversary of the outbreak of a bloody 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule passed Thursday without major incident, said foreigners in Lhasa contacted by telephone from the southwest China city of Chengdu.

When senior U.S. military commanders for Europe, Latin America and Asia went before Congress recently to describe the dangers they faced, one thread ran through all the testimony: They needed more ISR--more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. In short, more of exactly what the Navy EP-3 spy plane was engaged in when it collided with a Chinese fighter April 1 and touched off the first national security challenge of George W. Bush's presidency.

China scored a victory Wednesday in its 18-month-old standoff with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, thwarting planned protests by the banned sect but at the cost of the heaviest security clamped on central Beijing in years. Checkpoints ringed Tiananmen Square, marring the beginning of the lunar New Year, the most auspicious date in the Chinese calendar. Police inspected identification papers, bags, pockets and coat sleeves to ferret out suspected Falun Gong followers.