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Jul.01 (China Military News cited from AP and written by ANITA CHANG) — What will the lonely hearts of the People’s Liberation Army do now?

Rigid restrictions on Internet usage imposed this month on the 2.3 million-strong Chinese armed services are sure to cramp the already lackluster social lives of the predominantly young, male force. Online dating was given the boot, along with blogs, personal websites and visits to Internet cafes.

It may seem harsh and out of touch, particularly for troops posted in remote regions of China who have little contact with the civilian world. But military experts said restraints are necessary to avoid compromising security for a Chinese military that prizes secrecy.

“Some soldiers leaked military secrets when chatting online, for instance, giving away troop locations. Certainly a large amount of secrets were revealed this way and the regulation has just blocked the hole,” said Ni Lexiong, a military expert at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

Female Soldiers also have the same problem for their future love connection

Plus, Ni said, “matchmaking for soldiers can be conducted in more serious ways, such as through introductions from families, friends, or their work units.”

China is just the latest country to wrestle with the sticky issue of Internet freedoms for its military, trying to find a balance between the demands of Web-savvy troops, who as civilians were used to sharing personal details online, and the need to maintain security.

After years of back and forth, the U.S. Department of Defense now promotes use of social media by everyone from privates on the front line to generals at the Pentagon as a way of spreading its message. For example, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has 20,000 followers on Twitter.

Most other countries fall somewhere in between.

“Cyberspace has been a gray area. This is a tricky issue because it straddles both personal and professional space,” said Ho Shu Huang, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“The military is a reflection of society and how it responds will be a result of that. So in more closed societies, it’s easier for the military to say, ‘Don’t do anything. Don’t talk online. That’s that,’” he said.

Countries such as Britain and Israel allow troops to post personal information online, as long as it does not compromise military operations. The open approach has not always worked for Israel.

The Israeli military scrapped a raid on a West Bank village earlier this year after a soldier revealed the time and location of the operation on his Facebook page. In 2008, a soldier attached to an elite Israeli intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in jail after uploading a photograph taken on his base to Facebook.

The Chinese Internet prohibitions are a brief part of lengthy internal affairs regulations issued by the Communist Party’s Central Military Affairs Commission.

“Seeking marriage partners, jobs or making friends through the public media is not permitted. Going online in local Internet cafes is not permitted,” the regulation states. “Opening websites, home pages, blogs and message forums on the Internet is not permitted.”

It was not clear if troops would be completely cut off from social networking sites. The regulations do not apply to civilians serving in military research and training academies.

It’s also not known how authorities in China plan to enforce the restrictions. The regulations, posted on the Ministry of National Defense’s website, did not say how troops would be punished for transgressions. Phones rang unanswered at the ministry’s information office and questions submitted by fax were not answered.

Yet the prohibitions seem out of step in a wired society with 400 million overwhelmingly young Internet users in a country hurtling toward prosperity and global power.

“(The policy) is regressive in its understanding of technology, regressive in generational attitudes and regressive in transparency and attitudes we have of leading powers in the 21st century,” said Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

Chinese social networking sites and instant messaging programs are wildly popular. Young Chinese office workers chat online with friends throughout the work day. Internet cafes in small towns are packed with youngsters playing games. Ni, the Chinese military affairs expert, said in the past soldiers had been allowed to visit Internet cafes in plainclothes and some had become addicted to the pastime.

The stipulation that troops cannot “make friends through the public media” is likely to be unpopular. In recent decades, rank-and-file soldiers often drawn from poorer rural families and until recent years paid miserably have found it hard to find spouses.

A blog apparently written by a paramilitary soldier which has not been updated since the new rules took effect on June 15 features a poem titled “We Are Still Single.”

The Internet has been a boon, with a proliferation of unregulated online dating sites targeting military men.

The Chinese military now plans to attack that problem the way it did decades ago, when it arranged socials between military units and civilian work outfits with heavily female work forces such as textile factories. A report on a military news website said the Xigaze Military District in central Tibet is working with the local government and women’s federation to help troops find partners.

Ho, the researcher in Singapore, said the restrictions are meant to prevent people from getting an inside look at the military. He said security lapses don’t usually involve highly classified information, but rather small details that intelligence agents can use to piece together a larger picture about an operation or a unit.

“Most intelligence is based on really, really mundane stuff. History is replete with examples: the color of the sand, the types of uniforms they’re wearing, the kinds of vehicles being deployed, the number of people and what they’re wearing, whether they have facial hair, stuff like that,” he said. “That’s what militaries are concerned about, people piecing bits and pieces together.”

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African view: “

In our series of viewpoints from African journalists, Ghanaian writer and former government minister Elizabeth Ohene considers China’s impact on Africa.

In Ghana as in other countries on the continent, the Chinese are here, very visible and very busy.

The relationship between Africa and China is a love-hate one – the love is more on the side of the governments and the hate on the side of business, civil society and the unions.

But those of us of a certain age know that the Chinese are not new to Africa.

The first wave of Chinese flirtation with Africa was in the early years of independence and at the time when they themselves were serious communists and seemed to frown on business and all things capitalist.

They came to Africa to make friends, they built the first football stadiums and organised projects that the World Bank frowned upon.

They set the fashion for our presidents, getting the likes of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania into Mao suits.

This time around they are here for business, and let nobody forget that.

Bulldozer diplomacy

Sixty years of communism in the People’s Republic has lulled some people into forgetting just what committed businessmen the Chinese have been for 3,000 years.

CHINA IN AFRICA

• China is Africa’s second-biggest trading partner, behind US
• Between 2002 and 2003 two-way trade doubles to $18.5bn
• By 2008 trade tops $100bn – China exports $51bn, imports $56bn
• Almost all imports come from oil-rich nations: Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, and Sudan

Sources: China Daily, Reuters, Council on Foreign Relations

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China praised for African links

Their methods might be slightly different from those we have been used to from the Western nations we have been dealing with for the past 300 years, but the Chinese I have come across are as ruthless in business as any “master of the universe” on Wall Street.

I have seen them operate at first hand over the past eight years, when I was in government in Ghana.

Many are willing to work seven days a week; if they can get away with paying $2, they will not pay $3; and if you are late with the payment of one interim invoice, they will stop work.

If it suits them, they claim they cannot speak or understand English to get themselves out of sticky situations.

Here is an example of what I mean: A Korean company was building a highway westwards out of Accra for more than a year.

The work stalled because the authorities could not, or would not, pull down the structures demarcated to be pulled down and for which compensation had been paid.

Indeed, the gossip was that more people started putting up structures after the demarcation exercise so they could be paid compensation – but that is another story.

A Chinese company started building a highway northwards out of Accra.

Once the demarcation was done and the compensation paid, they waited for seven days and one fine Sunday morning, as people made their way to church, they brought out the bulldozers and by the time church was over, the houses and kiosks in their way had all been pulled down.

No amount of shouting or pleading or threatening impressed them – they claimed they couldn’t understand English.

After a few days of shock, the communities resigned themselves and concentrated on the beautiful road being built for them.

Meanwhile on the western front, it took for ever before the project could be completed. And guess who got kudos for delivering the work on time

We’ll get the cheque

I recall a gathering in Oxford University in the early 1990s that brought together investors, business people, academics, UN types, pseudo-politicians and journalists to deliberate on Africa.

I forget his name now, but I think he was a boss with a mining company.

He told a story of his experience of doing business in China and in Zimbabwe.

He and his team arrived in Zimbabwe to a muted reception and slightly shambolic series of meetings and concluded a low-scale deal, or at least that was their view at the time.

Next stop Beijing, where the full panoply of state protocol was on display, complete with a 27-course dinner in the People’s Hall in Tiananmen Square.

They signed a deal and were highly impressed with all the arrangements.

Yet four years later they had made no money in China but were making a lot of money in Zimbabwe.

And, by the way, at the end of the Chinese trip, they had been presented with a detailed bill for the 27-course dinner and the protocol laid on for them – and they had to pay.

The Chinese are here and everywhere else to make money and let no-one forget that – ever.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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China praised for African links: “

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has praised the way China does business in Africa, criticising the West for basing relations with the continent on aid.

Huge Chinese investment in African companies and infrastructure is helping Africa develop, Mr Kagame said.

Annual trade between China and Africa is now worth more than $100bn (£63bn).

Chinese companies are active across Africa, but have been criticised by some in the West, who accuse Beijing of failing to promote good governance.

Chinese firms, many of them state-owned, regularly bid for major construction projects at costs which Western firms cannot match.

In addition, Beijing also operates a policy of non-interference in domestic affairs.

That has allowed China to do business in areas of Africa, such as Sudan, where Western firms are constrained by human rights concerns.

Old problems

Speaking to a German newspaper, Mr Kagame – seen in the West as one of Africa’s more dynamic leaders – was as critical of the West as he was generous in praise of China.

“I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid“

Paul Kagame,
Rwandan president

“The Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies,” he told business newspaper Handelsblatt.

“China is investing in infrastructure and building roads,” he said, adding that European and American involvement “has not brought Africa forward”.

“Western firms have to a large extent polluted Africa and they are still doing it,” Mr Kagame said.

“Think of the dumping of nuclear waste in the Ivory Coast or the fact that Somalia is being used as a rubbish bin by European firms.”

Although Rwanda received substantial international aid in the wake of the 1994 genocide, which left more than 800,000 dead, Mr Kagame told Handelsblatt that relations based more on trade than aid were now the most useful to Africa.

“I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid,” he said.

“There is a need for help – but it should be implemented in such a way as to enable trade and build up companies.”

The Rwandan leader also said that high trade tariffs prevented African producers from gaining equitable access to global markets.

“It would help Africa much more if industrialised countries allowed us the same trade rights as they give to each other,” Mr Kagame said.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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Now, a bunch of pictures from the 3rd 054A of HD shipyard. Looks like they are almost ready for this ship to start sea trials.

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And here is 252, the second unit of F-22P. The first one has already been handed over to PN

Some really up-close shots of 022. The first one shows its propulsion with name Kamewa, which was bought out by Rolls Royce. I think I read a while ago that Rolls Royce was supplying party of the propulsion system for 022. The second one shows the window of a 022 (I’m not sure why the colouring here is black and white), but I think the window edging was done that way to make it more stealthy. By the way, if you look at 022 closely, you will see that even the smallest windows using this kind of edging rather than the normal straight edges.

“