February1, 2007:
The president of China is in the midst of a trip to Africa, where he
will visit eight nations. China has shown a preference for tyrants and police
states, and is eager to get access to key raw materials (rare metals and oil).
China does not care about criticism, and has no guilt about helping to prop up
dictatorships. Makes sense, because for all its economic growth and rising
living standards, China is still a Communist police state. This does not go
unnoticed in Africa, where Chinese are seen as collaborators with the dictators
and tyrants. The Chinese don't care, as long as they get what they came for.
January
31, 2007: Investigations into the growing organ transplant industry in China
indicate that a major player is the Chinese military. There is a worldwide
shortage of organs for transplant. Since China still executes hundreds of
criminals each year, and has thousands of political prisoners, who often go
into prison camps and just disappear, there always seems to be available organs
for transplant in China. Desperate, and well heeled, foreigners come to China,
get their life-saving transplant, and notice that there are a lot of military
personnel working in the hospitals. The military is a major player in Chinese
medical care, with a large network of hospitals for its millions of troops and
their dependents. The military can also force prosecutors and police, in most
cases, to go away.
January
25, 2007: China finally admitted it had been responsible for a recent
anti-satellite test, and that it wants a treaty to ban weapons in space. The
U.S. refuses to negotiate such a treaty, because of the belief that such a
treaty would not really stop any of the satellite launching nations from
developing weapons systems. China's January 11 test was its fourth attempt to
destroy a satellite. China was using tech developed in the 1970s by the U.S.
and Russia. Apparently the Chinese just wanted to see if they could do it. They
are unlikely to do it again, as this one test increased the number of dangerous
fragments-in-orbit by eight percent. With all the major industrial nations so
dependent on the hundreds of satellites in orbit, China was spitting in
everyone's soup with this test. It was all rather irresponsible, and says much
about how decisions are made in China. Logic and self-interest are not always
the prime considerations.
January
18, 2007: The government has established an organization to find and punish
fraud in academic research. Corruption is widespread in China, always has been,
and tends to be worst when there is more money involved. Given the importance
of technology in military affairs, lots of money has been directed towards
defense research. The misbehavior that ensues is kept quiet, as is the case
with most instances of military corruption. But this is the reason why so many
military weapons and equipment development projects have failed. It's not just the
inability of the scientists to do what was asked of them, there was outright
lying, fraud and theft involved. Thus the eagerness to buy, or steal, foreign
military technology. But China also wants to develop, or at be able to
use, the latest technology. To make this happen, there has to be less fraud in
the scientific research community. You can't hustle the laws of physics.