China to Increase Central Asian Gas Imports
A short article on this expanding relationship, without mentioning the consequent vulnerabilities and no map!
Link:http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ed...bd8596982eb3e6
Corruption in China's Military
This may have been posted somewhere on the site, but I can't find it and it seems worthy of attention:
Quote:
Rotting From Within
Investigating the massive corruption of the Chinese military.
...The institution is riddled with corruption and professional decay, compromised by ties of patronage, and asphyxiated by the ever-greater effort required to impose political control. The speeches, one in late December and the other in mid-February, were given by Gen. Liu Yuan, the son of a former president of China and one of the PLA's rising stars; the speeches and Liu's actions suggest that the PLA might be the site of the next major struggle for control of the Communist Party, of the type that recently brought down former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai. Liu is the political commissar and the most powerful official of the PLA's General Logistics Department, which handles enormous contracts in land, housing, food, finance, and services for China's 2.3 million-strong military.
"No country can defeat China," Liu told about 600 officers in his department in unscripted comments to an enlarged party meeting on the afternoon of Dec. 29, according to sources who have verified notes of his speech. "Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting."...
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...ithin?page=0,0