Adrift in a Sea of Phlegm

After the earliest snow to hit the capital in 22 years fell on November 1, the capital was again shrouded in white Tuesday with more snow expected in the coming three days, the National Meteorological Centre said.

The Beijing Weather Modification Office communists artificially induced both storms by seeding clouds with chemicals, a practice that can increase precipitation by up to 20 percent.

On Tuesday, an official, as is standard government practice, simply lied and claimed the storm was "natural".

"No one can tell how much weather manipulation will change the sky," Xiao Gang, a professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the paper.

"We should not depend too much on artificial measures to get rain or snow, because there are too many uncertainties up in the sky."

Zhao Nan, a Beijing engineer, was quoted as saying the more than 5,500 tonnes of erosive snow-melting chloride used on city roads Tuesday -- nearly half the annual allotment -- could "erode steel structures of buildings".

In 2005, the snow-melting agent was responsible for killing 10,000 trees in Beijing and decimating 200,000 square metres (2.15 million square feet) of grassland, the paper said, citing official statistics.

Despite a massive effort to clear the capital of snow that involved over 15,000 workers, many roads remained blocked, while highways into Beijing and in neighbouring Hebei and Shanxi provinces were closed, state propaganda reports said.

One day in late summer 2008, FBI and Secret Service agents flew to Chicago to inform Barack Obama's campaign team that its computer system had been hacked. "You've got a problem. Somebody's trying to get inside your systems," an FBI agent told the team, according to a source familiar with the incident.

In its third-quarter monetary policy report, the communist People's Bank of China departed from well-worn language on keeping the yuan "basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level." It hinted instead at a shift from an effective dollar peg that has been in place since the middle of last year.

"Following the principles of initiative, controllability and gradualism, with reference to international capital flows and changes in major currencies, we will improve the yuan exchange rate formation mechanism," the central bank said in a 46-page monetary policy report.

The comments, published just days before a visit to Shanghai and Beijing by U.S. President Barack Obama, set out the possibility of a return to exchange rate appreciation that began with a landmark July 2005 revaluation.

The yuan strengthened by nearly 20 percent against the dollar until concern over the impact of the global financial crisis prompted Beijing to hit the brakes in the middle of last year to protect exporters.

The yuan has been stuck at around 6.83 per dollar ever since, drawing increasing ire from other countries, especially as it has followed the dollar downwards against other currencies.

The dollar has dropped 13 percent against a basket of major currencies including the yen and euro since mid-February.

Back to a Basket?

Some analysts have called for the return to a genuine basket of currencies, which the central bank said in 2005 it would use as a reference for the yuan.

"I think the wording change ... shows that it is an irresistible trend for China to resume yuan appreciation," said Xing Ziqiang, an economist at China International Capital Corp (CICC) in Beijing.

"It is not sustainable for the yuan to always be pegged to the U.S. dollar; after all, the repegging since late 2008 was just part of China's measures to address the global financial crisis, and now the impact of the financial crisis is fading, so the yuan should resume appreciation sooner or later."

The central bank's report came just hours after data that showed the world's third-largest economy had firmly put the worst of the global financial crisis behind it. Factory output growth surged to a 19-month high of 16.2 percent in October.

While exports were still down in year-on-year terms, economists pointed to the likelihood that they would start growing again soon.

Some analysts said the statement could have been timed to send a signal ahead of Obama's Nov. 15-18 visit to China.

Obama told Reuters on Monday that he planned to raise the currency issue during his trip.

However, fascist Beijing is increasingly facing complaints about its currency from other emerging economies, which see an undervalued yuan as undercutting them in global markets.

No Sudden Shift

Those concerns were evident in a draft statement from APEC finance ministers circulated on Wednesday, in which they call for flexible interest rates and exchange rates as a way of redressing economic balances.

"We agreed that flexible prices, including exchange rates and interest rates, play a critical role in allocating resources efficiently, and can facilitate the adjustments needed to support balanced and sustainable global growth," said the latest draft statement by the finance ministers dated Nov. 10.

While the statement could change in its final form, a deputy Chinese finance minister was present at discussions on it, suggesting some level of agreement by Beijing on the wording.

However, analysts were quick to caution against expecting any sudden shift in the yuan's actual value, given China's penchant for carrying out any reforms gradually.

"The central bank's worries about capital flows, liquidity, and inflation signal growing pressure for yuan appreciation," said Ben Simpfendorfer, strategist with the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong.

"But I'm not looking for gains in the currency until the second quarter as the export sector still faces large challenges and margin pressure." Markets priced in a slightly greater appreciation over the coming year.

Offshore one-year dollar/yuan non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) fell to 6.6075 bid late on Wednesday compared with Tuesday's close of 6.6320.

Yuan appreciation implied by NDFs, which moves inversely with the forwards, was around 3.3 percent in a year compared with 3.06 percent before the announcement.

Torn uniform pants led Blockbuster worker to hatch bizarre plan

Chinese Trial Reveals VAST Web of Corruption

But Mr. Wen’s lavish tastes were nothing compared with the carnal appetites of his sister-in-law, Xie Caiping, known as “the godmother of the Chongqing underworld.” Prosecutors say she ran 30 illegal casinos, including one across the street from the courthouse. She also employed 16 young men who, according to the state-run press, were exceedingly handsome and obliging.

In recent weeks, Ms. Xie, Mr. Wen and a cavalcade of ranking officials and lowbrow thugs have been players in a mass public trial that has exposed the unseemly relationships among gangsters, police officers and the sticky-fingered bureaucrats.

The spectacle involves more than 9,000 suspects, 50 public officials, a petulant billionaire and criminal organizations that dabbled in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and random acts of savagery, most notably the killing of a man for his unbearably loud karaoke voice.

But like all big corruption cases in China, this one is as much about politics as graft. The political machine in Chongqing, a province-size mega-city of 31 million people in the southwest, has been broken up by a new Communist Party boss who is the son of a revolutionary party veteran and has his eye on higher office.

Mr. Bo, a former trade minister sent to Chongqing to burnish his managerial credentials, has conducted the crackdown in a way that appears devised to maximize national attention. The drawn-out nature of the trial and the release of lurid details of the criminal syndicate have given him a reputation as a leading corruption fighter, though the inquiry has yet to implicate any really high-ranking party officials.

So far six people have been sentenced to death. Ms. Xie got off relatively lightly, receiving an 18-year prison term on Tuesday.

How Mr. Bo’s performance is regarded by the party elite is a matter of speculation. There are some suggestions that his swagger, including boastful comments to the news media, strikes some fellow officials as excessive. Anticorruption campaigns by China’s one-party state are generally calibrated to show resolution in tackling venality, but also to reassure the public that whatever problems are uncovered are localized and effectively contained.

“These guys are all for fighting corruption, but they are a little alarmed by the way Bo Xilai has been going about it and building up his personality,” said Sidney Rittenberg, one of the few American citizens to join the Communist Party here and a confidant of Chinese leaders since 1944. “People I talk to say he’s getting too big for his britches.”

A so-called princeling whose father, was an economic planner and a onetime ally of the paramount leader, Mr. Bo, 60, is already a member of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo. He is often talked about as a future top leader in Beijing, although in the party’s rigid hierarchy the No. 1 posts in the party and the government have already been assigned to other younger officials.

Recent statements by Mr. Bo suggest he understands the perils of drawing too much attention. Two weeks ago, he defended the crackdown, saying he was forced to act by the rampant violence and brazen criminality that had given this perpetually foggy city a reputation for lawlessness.

“The public gathered outside government offices and held up pictures of bloodshed,” he said. “The gangsters slashed people with knives just like butchers killing animals.”

In the three weeks since trials began, the crowds have continued to come, and their stories of bloodshed are indeed horrifying. They press outside the gates of the Fifth Intermediate Court, hoping to glimpse the orange-vested defendants who are paraded through the hearings.

Others desperately seek out reporters willing to hear tales of crimes unpunished. “The bandits used to live in the mountains; now they live in the Public Security Bureau,” said Zheng Yi, a vegetable wholesaler.

Unlike past sweeps that brought down crime bosses and their henchmen, the crackdown in Chongqing has yielded a number of wealthy businessmen and Communist Party officials, exposing the depth of corruption that has resulted from the mixing of state control and free-market economics in China.

Ko-lin Chin, who studies the intermingling of organized crime and government in China, said the line between legitimate business and illegal conduct had become increasingly blurred, although most official corruption involved bribery, not violence.

“As these gangs have become more powerful, their existence depends entirely on the cooperation and tolerance of the Communist Party,” said Mr. Chin, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers. “But when things get out of hand, as they did in Chongqing, the party can really go after these groups with a vengeance.”

Among those on trial this week is Li Qiang, a local legislator and billionaire who the authorities say owned a fleet of 1,000 cabs and 100 bus routes. So great was his power, they say, that he orchestrated a taxi strike last year that brought the city to a standstill. On trial with him are three government officials suspected of acting as his “protection umbrellas” in exchange for payments of about $100,000 each.

While Mr. Li stood in the dock, more than 200 people gathered outside in the rain, including women who said they were roughed up in October last year when they refused to vacate their homes for a redevelopment project. One of them, Wu Pinghui, 67, said 40 people were herded into a government-owned bus and dumped in the countryside. By the time they made it back, their homes were gone.

“We called 110,” she said, referring to the Chinese emergency number, “but the police said they couldn’t get involved in a government affair.”

Hong Guibi also came to the courthouse. She said the Communist Party chief of her village, enraged when she and her husband refused to give him part of their orchard, watched as thugs attacked the couple with cleavers. Ms. Hong, 47, was critically wounded, and her husband was killed. “The neighbors heard our screams, but they were afraid to do anything,” she said.

With China's military growing at an "unprecedented rate," the U.S. wants to ensure that expansion doesn't destabilize the region, Rear Adm. Kevin Donegan told reporters on a visit to the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Donegan referred to China's expanded weaponry. His remarks echoed the concerns of other U.S. military leaders who have said the growth in China's military spending — up almost 15 percent in the 2009 budget — raises questions about how Beijing plans on deploying its new power.

"When we see a military growing at that rate, we're interested in transparency and the understanding of the uses of that military," said Donegan, commander of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group, a key part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Donegan's comments come as a top Chinese general visits the United States on a mission to strengthen trust between the two militaries and dispel U.S. concerns about the growth of the People's Liberation Army.

Xu Caihou, the PLA's second-highest ranking officer, told President Barack Obama on Wednesday that ties between the two countries' militaries play "an important role in enhancing strategic mutual trust and deepening their pragmatic cooperation," according to Chinese media reports.

China has boosted military spending by more than 10 percent annually for almost two decades, and the official figure of $71 billion this year is thought by many analysts to represent only a portion of total defense spending. It still amounts to only a fraction of U.S. defense spending.

China says much of the increase is used to improve salaries and living conditions for soldiers, but it has also been adding sophisticated new warships, submarines, fighter jets and other weapons systems to its arsenal. PLA leaders have also said they are considering building an aircraft carrier, but such a development is thought to be years, if not decades, away.

Donegan acknowledged the possibility of a Chinese aircraft carrier, but also said he was concerned with anti-access weapons. This class of weapons includes missiles and submarines that can threaten U.S. forces in the region and prevent them responding in the event of a crisis.

"I am absolutely concerned," Donegan said.

He went on to say, "When a navy is doing that, we just want to make sure it's transparent enough so those in the region understand what they're doing."

At the same time, Donegan described positive exchanges between the two militaries that he said he hoped would continue, including a visit by five Chinese army generals aboard the George Washington during its call in Hong Kong this week.

Ties between the two militaries have been repeatedly roiled by China's objections to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, claimed by Beijing as its own territory, as well as Chinese efforts to disrupt Navy surveillance missions off its shores.

A series of confrontations involving vessels from the two navies has raised concerns over China's rising determination to defend what it sees as its territorial interests in the South China Sea, where the U.S. has long operated as the major international power.

Donegan said the Navy would continue to operate in international waters — something that could come in defiance of Beijing's claims it has the right to bar surveillance work inside its exclusive economic zone.

"We are going to continue to operate in the South China Sea and international waters and not in territorial seas of another country," he said.

Chinese authorities have carried out their first executions of Tibetans in connection with the deadly riots that swept Lhasa last year, according to exile groups.

As the first reported judicial killings in the region for six years, the news has prompted overseas protests and concerns that proper legal procedures were not followed.

The Chinese state media have yet to confirm the executions. However, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Dharamsala in northern India, said it had reports that they took place early on Tuesday morning.

It identified three of the executed Tibetans as two men – Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak – and a woman named Penkyi. The fourth victim was not named.

The Lhasa intermediate people's court sentenced the two men to death on charges of arson in April, according to Xinhua news agency reports at the time. Under Chinese law, death penalty cases should be reviewed by the supreme court.

The Dharamsala-based group said the body of Lobsang Gyaltsen had been handed to his family, while Loyak's ashes were given to his relatives.

The director of Free Tibet, Stephanie Brigden, said the executions were an outrage. "It is impossible to have any confidence that even the most basic legal norms were observed before the Chinese state sanctioned and carried out the killing of these four Tibetans," she said.

London-based Tibetan groups called for a vigil outside the Chinese embassy. Free Tibet said the executions, which came just weeks after a Foreign Office minister, Ivan Lewis, made a rare trip to Lhasa, should prompt the British government to rethink the way it engages with China over the region.

Labour MP Kate Hoey has tabled an early day motion calling for an inquiry into the UK government's failure to secure human rights improvements in Tibet.

A US congressional commission will publish a study of Tibet next week which finds Chinese officials are strengthening efforts to separate Tibetan Buddhists from the Dalai Lama, and preparing to select his successor. However the study also notes that the Dalai Lama's willingness to restrict discussions only to areas that China considers part of Tibet have opened up an unprecedented opportunity for progress.

In a separate case, Reporters Without Borders called for the release of three Tibetans who have been held since 1 October for allegedly sending information about Tibet to contacts abroad via the internet.

It said the three have not been permitted to contact their families during detentions.

"The internet is monitored, censored and manipulated more in Tibet than in other Chinese provinces," Reporters Without Borders said. "Despite the risks, Tibetan internet users continue to transmit information, especially to the diaspora and human rights groups. It is deplorable that the Chinese police devote so much energy to identifying and arresting ordinary internet users."

The Dalai Lama, 74, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, is expected to visit the state of Arunachal Pradesh from Nov. 8 to Nov. 15, the official, who asked to remain anonymous, said in an e-mail message. China considers the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, to be a separatist who advocates Tibetan independence. The Dalai Lama insists he wants only true autonomy for Tibet, which the Chinese Army invaded in 1951.

Tenzin Taklha, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama, said in an e-mail last month that the Dalai Lama would visit the region because he had received “a number of invitations” since he last visited in 2003. “There is a large Buddhist population that is keen to have his holiness give teachings,” the spokesman said.

The Dalai Lama was scheduled to visit Arunachal Pradesh last year but canceled his trip. Some people in the area say he was denied permission by the Indian government, possibly due to pressure from China. Tenzin Taklha said the Dalai Lama postponed his visit so as not to disrupt elections taking place in India around that time.

The status of Arunachal Pradesh is one of the most intractable diplomatic issue between China and India. The dispute centers on the mountainous, mist-cloaked region of Tawang, a thickly forested area bordering Bhutan and Chinese-ruled Tibet that is dominated by the ethnic Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism and speak a language very similar to Tibetan.

The Chinese government says Tawang was once part of Tibet, and so belongs to China. The Indian government says a self-governing Tibet signed a treaty with British-ruled India in 1914 that ceded Tawang to India on the condition that London recognize Tibetan autonomy.

The British agreed at the time to acknowledge what they called the suzerainty of Tibet. But last year, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, retracted that recognition, saying it was a holdover from a colonial era and thus betrayed Tibetans for the sake of Labour convenience.

Perhaps inevitably, the Dalai Lama has taken sides in the China-India dispute. Last year, he announced for the first time that Arunachal Pradesh belonged to India. Tenzin Taklha said the Tibetan government recognizes the borders designated by the 1914 treaty, called the Simla Convention.

Meanwhile, India has been adding troops and fighter jets to the region. Indian military leaders have feared an invasion there by China ever since China and India fought a border war over Himalayan territories in 1962. The Chinese Army occupied Tawang then and only retreated after securing the Aksai Chin region north of the western Himalayas, which India claims.

The Dalai Lama has deep interests in Arunachal Pradesh. India’s most important Tibetan Buddhist monastery is in Tawang, and the Dalai Lama appoints the abbot there. The 6th Dalai Lama, an ethnic Monpa, came from the area. The current Dalai Lama prayed at the Tawang monastery as he passed into exile in India in 1959, fleeing the Chinese suppression of an uprising in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

As members of the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth organization, we were all in uniform — we boys in crisp white shirts tucked into navy slacks and the girls in white shirts and blue pleated skirts that swayed in the brisk morning breeze. Each of us had a red scarf neatly tied around the neck. We were like meticulously arranged flowers, waiting for inspection.

The senior party leaders showed up late, as usual. By the time they delivered their slogan-filled speeches and initiated the flag-raising ceremony, we had already been standing like statues for several hours, our feet planted to the ground. Nobody was allowed to make a noise or leave the group, even though I badly needed to answer the call of nature. Instead, I raised my arms repeatedly and joined the crowd in shouting: “Long live the Chinese Communist Party! Long live Chairman Mao!”

Standing next to me was a student who seemed to share my anxiety. She was pretty, with closely cropped hair. Her eyes darted around impatiently. We waved our arms, chanting slogans like everyone else.

Suddenly, I saw a trail of tears rolling down her cheeks. I first thought she had been caught up in the revolutionary euphoria, but then I noticed that she seemed to be embarrassed by something. She kept adjusting her skirt with her hands. I looked closer and saw that she had wet herself. I untied my red scarf and tucked it into her hands.

Our political instructor used to tell us that the red colour of our national flag symbolized the blood shed by Communists who had sacrificed their lives for the country. We were told to treat our scarves like parts of the flag. So as I quietly tossed away my stained scarf at the end of the ceremony, a vague sense of fear flashed through my mind.

In 1963, I entered college. All freshmen had to undergo a month of intensive training to prepare for the anniversary parade. On the morning of Oct. 1, we goose-stepped in unison, passing the podium and saluting the leaders. Once again, there were red flags everywhere. Colorful floats depicted another bumper harvest. People shouted slogans at the top of their lungs, touting the so-called accomplishments of the Great Leap Forward campaign. I later heard that more than 20 million Chinese had starved to death as a result of that disastrous program.

It was on the eve of another National Day, in 1968, that the security police suddenly arrested me and put me in a detention center without any explanation. During interrogation, I found out that my “crime” was related to a letter I had written a year before to the Moscow University Library, requesting a copy of “Dr. Zhivago,” which was banned in China as counterrevolutionary. The police had intercepted the letter and had been monitoring me for quite some time.

I was sentenced to three years of re-education in a labour camp, where I spent two National Days behind bars. On those days, prisoners were granted a reprieve from working in the fields. National Day was a holiday for the guards, who simply locked us inside while they went home. We were able to enjoy a day without supervision. More important, every prisoner would get a few morsels of pork in his meal, which normally featured half-rotten vegetables, thin corn gruel and steamed corn buns.

So while the whole country was involved in the Oct. 1 celebration, we huddled together inside our cells, chatting and playing cards, a rare break from the daily grind of hard labour. The parade, the fireworks and the slogan shouting seemed as remote as a half-forgotten dream.

In September 1971, I was released from jail and arrived home a few days before National Day, which was unusually quiet. Later, through the rumor mill, people learned that the plane of Defence Minister Lin Biao had mysteriously crashed in Mongolia. (Lin, once seen as a possible successor to Mao, had fallen from favour.) The authorities scrambled for an appropriate public explanation. Lin’s absence at major public events could certainly fuel speculation that could damage Mao’s reputation. To buy time, the government cancelled the parades that were supposed to glorify the Great Leader and his successor.

Mao soon grew ill and was no longer in the mood to go to Tiananmen and wave to the adoring masses. Red October lost its lustre and we were finally free to celebrate National Day at home.

This Oct. 1, the elaborate parades — and tight control — returned. I watched from the United States as China’s leadership orchestrated a huge celebration to showcase its wealth and military prowess — while the familiar red flags flew over the capital. Tens of thousands of policemen and volunteers were sent in to maintain security. The party tried to control the weather and even regulate the movement of pigeons. Dissidents were under surveillance or in jail. I couldn’t help but think that while China has made great material progress over the last 30 years, Mao is still clearly the patriarch of the Communist Party.

China yesterday celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.

Tiananmen Square became a hi-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey 'Mao' suit, and the Communist Party leadership watching the meticulously disciplined show from the Gate of Heavenly Peace over the Square. Here DOMINIC SANDBROOK explains why the West should be so wary of the new superpower.

The bunting is out, the streets have been cleared, the troops are making their final preparations, and even the massive portrait of Mao on the Tiananmen Gate seems to wear a more self-satisfied expression than usual.

Today, China will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule with flowers, fireworks, performances and a huge military parade which will celebrate the country's new-found military might.

The regime has come an enormously long way in six decades, from a society of peasant collective farms, hidden from the world behind a veil of secrecy, to the world's fastest-growing economy, an industrial and military superpower-in-waiting.

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The first tank phalanx receives inspection in a parade of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Chang'an Street in central Beijing

But beneath today's orgy of celebrations that marks the anniversary lurks a disturbing reality. Mao's successors may have embraced cut-throat capitalism to a degree that makes even Western economists blanch. But the arrangements for the parade are a reminder that China remains a deeply authoritarian society.

Kites have been banned from the centre of Beijing, pigeons have been culled and soldiers with machineguns are on every street corner. Scientists are even seeding the sky with chemicals to prevent inclement weather spoiling the celebrations.

Tibet has also been closed off to foreigners for the duration - a reminder of China's expansionist ambitions, and of the threat it could pose to world peace in years to come.

Since Chinese history is rarely taught in our schools and universities, it is not surprising that most Britons have only the foggiest notion of what goes on in the world's most populous nation.

Yet when historians look back, it is a safe bet they will see China's rise to power as one of the defining stories of the last century, perhaps eclipsing even the Cold War.

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A mass parade including 200,000 performers and representatives of each wing of the armed forces showing off its latest weaponry passes through Tiananmen Square

When the Communists seized control in 1949, China was a poverty-stricken basket case, ravaged by famine, ethnic tension and feuding between rival warlords.

And in the years that followed, Mao's policies of forced industrialisation and collective farming, as well as his murderous purges of the middle classes, accounted for millions of deaths.

One scholarly estimate suggests that in 40 years, almost 80 million Chinese were slaughtered or died as a result of government policy - making the regime the biggest killer in history.

But now, of course, all that is conveniently forgotten. And British politicians are more likely to pay tribute to China's economic renaissance than to draw attention to the undemocratic brutality of its Communist regime.

There is no doubt that the facts and figures are extraordinary.

Thanks to the regime's embrace of capitalism, China's poverty rate has fallen from 53 per cent to just 8 per cent over the past 20 years.

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China's President Hu Jintao stands on a limousine to inspect the military parade near Tiananmen Gate. A giant portrait of Mao can be seen behind

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China's President Hu Jintao, fifth from left, flanked by former president Jiang Zemin, fifth from right, top legislator Wu Bangguo, fourth from left, Premier Wen Jiabao, fourth from right, and other leaders, applauds as they watch the celebrations

And thanks to its low labour costs, it has become the world's third-largest trading power - which is why when you turn over so many manufactured goods, the words 'MADE IN CHINA' stare up at you.

Once a peasant society, it has the largest number of mobile phone users in the world and the largest number of broadband consumers. It has some of the world's biggest and fastest-growing cities - vast metropolises such as Tianjin, Wuhan and Guangzhou, which are almost unknown in the West but boast populations of more than four million each.

And almost unnoticed, it has become the world's biggest acquirer of foreign public debt.

With some $800 billion of U.S Treasury securities, China now has a hold over the American economy that would have seemed unthinkable a few decades ago.

At one level, of course, all this is cause for celebration. For centuries, China led the world economically, culturally and technologically.

It was the Middle Kingdom, the world's most cohesive and enduring society, which pioneered not just the compass, gunpowder and printing, but porcelain, paperback books and a medieval postal service that would put today's Royal Mail to shame.

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Chinese People's Liberation Army air force jets and helicopters fly in formation over Beijing's central business district

None of us, in other words, should begrudge an industrious and innovative people their return to the top table.

Yet there is a dark side to China's revival - a disturbing instinct for sabre-rattling and neo-imperialism that arguably poses the biggest threat to world peace since the Cold War.

What we often forget about China is that it is not an ordinary nation-state like any other. It is a rigid, highly militarised and intensely nationalistic empire, in which 1.2 billion Han Chinese dominate dozens of other ethnic groups, by force if necessary.

The mountain kingdom of Tibet, for example, was seized at gunpoint in 1950, and its brutal occupation remains a black stain on China's record. And in the remote far western region of Xinjiang - once known as Chinese Turkestan - ethnic tensions have surfaced in bloody fashion in the past few months.

Sixty  years ago, Xinjiang was home to the Turkic Uyghur people, most of them Muslim peasants, craftsmen and silk weavers. But since the Communist Revolution, millions of Han Chinese settlers have poured into the region, responding to government economic incentives.

As a result, traditional Uyghur shops, mosques and bazaars have been torn down and replaced with bland Han-owned malls and offices. And when tension spilled over into ethnic violence earlier this summer, the authorities were quick to blame Uyghur 'terrorists' - even though their own ruthless colonialism clearly lay at the heart of the trouble.

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People watch Chinese People's Liberation Army helicopters fly in formation over Beijing's railway station during today's parade

What terrifies China's neighbours is the thought that they might be in for the same treatment as Tibet and Xinjiang. And the most obvious target for Chinese expansion is the island of Taiwan, the self-styled 'Republic of China' that was established after the American-backed Kuomintang lost the civil war against Mao in 1949 and fled across the narrow Taiwan Strait.

Even though Taiwan now stands as a highly successful state in its own right, the Chinese Communists have never abandoned their ambition to incorporate it into their empire.

And what is more, any government wanting diplomatic relations with China has to forgo relations with Taiwan and formally accept the 'One China' policy - a kind of blackmail to which Britain and the United States. have shamefully acceded.

But China's horizons extend well beyond the Taiwan Strait. Although Chinese spokesmen insist that it has no imperialistic ambitions, the list of border disputes that might provide a pretext for war - the Sudetenlands of the future, perhaps - is disturbingly long.

China currently has territorial disputes with Japan, both Koreas, Bhutan, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as one of the world's most enduring and most dangerous border disputes with India, which could easily bring two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

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Female soldiers march past Tiananmen Square during the military parade

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Women members of the militia, a civilian reserve force under China's military, salute as they march past Tiananmen Square

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Participants hold heart-shaped balloons during the parade

Perhaps most worrying, however, is the evidence of Chinese expansionism and interference in Africa.

In 1873 the Victorian explorer Sir Francis Galton suggested that one way to modernise the so-called Dark Continent was to fill it with ' industrious, order-loving Chinese', with Africa becoming a 'semi-detached dependency of China'. Such was the outcry that Galton soon dropped the idea. But more than a century later, he seems to have been ahead of his time.

For in the past decade, more than 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa, and the red flag now flutters over jungles and prairies alike.

In the ports of East Africa, Chinese cargo ships are loaded every day with oil, timber and diamonds.

Vast Chinese-owned mines pay African labourers less than £1 a day to scratch out copper for the gigantic smoke-belching cities of East Asia. And deep in the heart of Africa, acres of forest are ripped down every day as timber for China's industrial revolution.

But there is another side to this new Scramble for Africa. For in return, the Chinese are selling African leaders the assault rifles, warplanes and mortars they need for their bloody wars of conquest and ethnic cleansing.

Only last year, Zimbabwe's despotic Robert Mugabe received a cool £200m in Chinese military aid.

And even the brutal slaughter in southern Sudan, in which hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim peasants were murdered by government militias, was carried out with £55m-worth of Chinese weapons, sold to the Sudanese in defiance of a UN arms embargo.

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Performers participate in the parade. It showed everything from airplanes for in-flight refuelling to intercontinental missiles as well as tens of thousands of children in brightly coloured costumes

Meanwhile, China itself is well on the way to becoming one of the world's dominant military powers. Already, its standing army alone has more than 2.25 million men.

And for the past 20 years, the Chinese have been modernising at a staggering rate - ploughing the fruits of their industrial revolution not into welfare programmes, health care or the environmental protection their people so badly need, but into guns, guns and more guns.

It is no accident that the centrepiece of the 60th anniversary celebrations in Beijing is a massive military parade.

Like so many aggressively modernising regimes before them - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union spring to mind - the Chinese leadership clearly equate economic progress with military spending. Only this week, their Defence Minister Liang Guanglie bragged that the parade would ' display the image of a military force, a civilised force, a victorious force'.

With its new J-10 fighter jets, naval destroyers and Cruise missiles, the Chinese army, he said, was a match for any in the Western world. 'This is an extraordinary achievement,' he boasted, 'that speaks of our military's modernisation and the huge change in our technological strength.

' Whenever Western observers voice disquiet about this terrifying military buildup, the Chinese insist that they have no hostile ambitions, or merely put the complaints down to racist scaremongering. But then they would say that.

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Mobile missile defence systems were part of the giant military parade.

And the evidence of their actions - their callous repression in Tibet and Xinjiang, their ruthless suppression-of dissent and free speech at home, even the violence of their bullying 'minders' during the shambolic Olympic torch relay through London last year - tells a very different story.

Of course, China's long march to world domination is by no means inevitable. As academic experts point out, their current economic miracle is built on distinctly shaky political and environmental foundations.

History suggests that any society modernising at such breakneck pace, with millions of peasants flooding from the countryside to the cities, often into low-paid jobs and jerry-built apartments, is bound to suffer enormous social and economic tensions.

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Early-warning aircraft from the Chinese People's Liberation Army air force fly in front of a fighter bomber

At some stage, the Communist Party is likely to come under intense pressure from China's growing middle classes to grant political and environmental reforms. And if the economic miracle turns sour, then the consequences for the regime could be very serious indeed.

But would this be such good news for the West? In an era of globalisation, we have become more dependent on Chinese economic success than most of us realise.

By 2010, the Government predicts, trade between Britain and China will be worth more than £35 billion to the UK. And with many British firms dependent on exports to China, families in Birmingham could suffer just as much as those in Beijing if it all goes wrong.

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Changed times: The moon rises above New York last night, as the Empire State Building is lit in red and yellow in honor of communist China's anniversary

The truth is that we need a buoyant, successful, self- confident China. But we do not need the secretive, repressive, expansionist dragon that many experts see stirring in the Far East.

We have, after all, been here before. Seventy years after the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in human history, we should all know the dangers of appeasing territorial ambitions, of turning a blind eye to domestic repression, of naively swallowing the propaganda of an authoritarian regime.

The year 1939 is now etched in our collective consciousness.

But unless we play our cards right - unless we use the next few years to coax China towards democracy, to push for human rights reform, and to roll back their new colonialism - then another date might loom larger in our descendants' imagination.

Within ten years, China's rulers plan to have a fully mechanised and computerised army. And within 20, the world's biggest military force could be capable of standing toe to toe with its American counterpart - especially if the U.S. economy continues to stutter and slide.

Imagine a scenario, 30 years from now, where the Western powers' resistance has been sapped by years of economic turmoil, environmental collapse and a bitter struggle for resources.

Imagine that China's Communist leadership, buoyed by decades of military spending, decide to celebrate their 90th anniversary by reabsorbing Taiwan and 'settling' their border disputes once and for all.

It is all too easy to close our eyes and wish for the best. But unless we are careful, what happens in 2039 could make 1939 look like a children's tea party.

We cannot say that we have not been warned.

The Tibetan Government-in-Exile has released new video footage of the protests in Lhasa last year that confirms the use of extreme violence and torture by Chinese authorities. The Chinese communist regime has always denied that torture is used in Tibet.

"This extremely rare and shocking footage confirms our worst fears about the horrific pain and suffering Tibetans are experiencing at the hands of the Chinese authorities in the wake of last year's uprising," said Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, in a press release.

"The brutality of the Chinese authorities against Tibetans in this footage is not the exception to, but rather the rule of, Beijing's treatment of the Tibetan people over the past 50 years,” he said.

One segment of the video, recorded on March 14, 2008, shows Chinese police beating Tibetan prisoners with batons, after they were arrested in the protests. The prisoners have their hands tied behind their backs and can only curl in an attempt to resist the beatings.

Another segment of the video shows gruesome images of a young Tibetan by the name of Tendar being tortured by Chinese authorities. He was reportedly fired at, beaten with an electric baton, burned with cigarettes, and his right foot was pierced by a nail.

The video shows him after being brought to the TAR People’s Hospital. His body is covered with rotting wounds from lack of proper treatment. Tendar died from his injuries on June 19, 2008.

The protests in Tibet began on March 10, 2008, leading up to the Beijing Olympics.

Officials from the Chinese Communist Party have repeatedly denied that torture was used in Tibet. In November 2008 when the U.N. panel released a report on the use of torture on Tibetans by Chinese police, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called the reports “untrue and slanderous” and accused the committee members of being “prejudiced” against China. However, the regime imposed martial law and banned tourists and journalists from Tibet for months after the protests.

Tibetan activists have asked, why, if the communist regime has nothing to hide, does it lock down the country and deny any independent investigation?

In the Lhasa protests and the following crackdown by the communist regime, close to 220 Tibetans were killed, more than 1,294 were seriously injured, and more than 1,000 simply disappeared. The Chinese authorities arrested more than 5,600 Tibetans, of which 290 are known to have been sentenced.

The video, which is graphic and at times difficult to watch, can be seen:  http://footage.tibetanbridges.com/Torture-in-Tibet.mov

Less than two weeks from a massive celebration of China’s 60th anniversary as a Communist state, Beijing is flooded with policemen and the city is on the highest state of security alert permissible outside wartime.

But that did not stop a man going beserk with a knife yesterday evening not far from Tiananmen Square, where a huge military parade is planned for Oct. 1. He killed two people and injured 14.

So much for the massive security presence. But what is equally striking is that the public has been told practically nothing about the dramatic incident.

The state news agency Xinhua issued a terse report Thursday evening giving the man’s name, home town, and the number of his victims. On Friday it released another brief article saying he had been drunk when he went on the rampage.

No newspaper website was allowed to print anything more. Blogs and Twitter posts discussing the stabbings and adding supposed details of what happened were censored almost as soon as they went up. (The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, for example, reported that three men were wielding knives and that two escaped.)

Perhaps the authorities were embarrassed that something so dreadful could happen a few hundred yards from Tiananmen Square at a time when it was blanketed with policemen guarding preparations for a parade rehearsal due to be held throughout Friday night.

Perhaps the perpetrator had just lost his job, or suffered some other indignity that would not promote the image of harmony and peace that the government is so keen to present at the anniversary.

But perhaps, too, the massive and sudden censorship reveals something about the Chinese leadership’s idea of security – and of reality. They can’t keep people safe from an attack like this (nor can any government) but they can stop people talking about it, and it is the talking that really makes them nervous.

It is as if they think that if nobody knows what happened, it didn’t happen. But even if nobody hears a tree falling in the forest, that does not mean that it did not fall.

(Xinhua)  Why Are The Thirty-Year-Old Execution Photos Of A Corrupt Female Government Official So Popular On The Internet?  By Qin Henhai.

On April 23, 1979, the People's Daily had an exclusive news report: In Heilongjiang province, the largest corrupt gang was busted.  The criminal Wang Shouxin and others were arrested and investigated for the crimes of sharing illegal profits and then hiding and covering up the loot.

On February 28, 1980, this principal criminal of this internationally known crime -- Heilongjiang Province Bingyuan County Combustible Fuel manager and party secretary Wang Shouxin -- faced the legal consequences.  You can call her a "corrupt official" but she is a merely a manager of a combustible fuel company.  Nobody knows what the rank might be in the hierarchy of officialdom but it is probably the lowest possible.

A few years ago, the process of her execution was published by the photographer at the scene and then broadly circulated on the Internet.  Recently, someone posted these photos on Sohu.com.  Within a few days (ending 4pm on May 3), those photos had been seen by 1.132 million persons.  The popularity was astonishing.

Ordinarily speaking, when a life is terminated, one should be studying the pathos of the death, no matter how much this person deserves to die.  But why are so many people looking at these photos in so many different ways (calmly, emotionally, carefully or thoughtfully)?  Some people even long for this scene to occur today.  Now that is truly thought-provoking.

Today as it was thirty years ago, everybody hates those people who loot state resources through bribery and corruption.  Therefore, when people see photos of a corrupt government official being executed, they are pleased.  However, there are some differences in feelings between today and thirty years ago.

Thirty years ago, a case involving several hundred thousand RMB results in the death penalty.  Today a case involving hundreds of millions only results in a suspended death penalty.  In Heilongjiang province, the later and greatest corrupt female government official Han Jiazhi was given a suspended death penalty for seven million RMB in ill-gotten gains.  The former Heilongjiang governor and later State Land Resources Department director Tian Fengshan was given a life sentence for corruption involving 4.98 million RMB.  If Wang Shouxin was executed in her time, why should Han Jiazhi and Tian Fengshan be allowed to live?

... Thirty years ago, there would a public meeting after which the convict is taken out to the execution field and shot.  Today, many localities use lethal injections for execution and also give certain rights to those who were given life sentences and deprived of their political rights.

Therefore, fewer and fewer death penalties are carried out.  The number of public executions has also decreased.  Correspondingly, the deterrent effect against corrupt officials has weakened.  This is why people become nostalgic for the photos of the execution of government officials several decades ago.  Apart from this current series of photos, another series entitled <Mao Zedong personally signed the approval to execute seven criminals> has also been popular on the Internet recently.

It is hard to explain all the reasons but one thing is quite obvious: if we can be more decisive, powerful and open in punishing government corrupt officials, people would be less concerned about events that occurred several decades ago.

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