As the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marked its 82nd birthday on August 1, the Hu Jintao leadership has taken several major initiatives to raise the quality of its senior personnel. President and Commander-in-chief Hu has also given a big boost to military modernization by pledging... MORE

Calm has been superficially restored to the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (XAR), where an outbreak of ethnic violence on July 5 led to the death of more than 197 Han Chinese and Uighurs, according to an official count (Xinhua News Agency, July 18). Chinese Communist Party... MORE

Celebrations that Beijing has bowed to global pressure and scrapped an order to use filtering software in all personal computers have turned out to be premature. On July 1, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) spokesman said that while Beijing had, on June... MORE

While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must have heaved a sigh of relief over the relatively uneventful 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, central party authorities are adopting extra measures to defuse tension between local officials and the masses. Widespread anger at the... MORE

Beijing’s reaction to the recent North Korean nuclear test may not seem significantly harsher than its response to the DPRK’s October 2006 detonation of a similar device. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration is still calling on concerned countries to conduct “negotiations and dialogue” with... MORE

While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration seems preoccupied with the twofold task of baoba and baowen—maintaining an 8 percent growth rate and upholding social stability—it is also giving priority to the rejuvenation of the party’s leadership. Attention is being focused on young turks of... MORE

China’s military forces crossed a watershed when the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) celebrated its 60th birthday by holding a parade of state-of-the-art hardware such as indigenously developed nuclear submarines. That the 2.4-million strong People's Liberation Army (PLA) has attained quasi-superpower status was also supported... MORE

China’s soft and quiescent reaction to Pyongyang’s rocket gamesmanship seems to contradict the image of global statesmanship that President Hu Jintao projected at the G20 summit in London earlier this month. And Beijing’s last-minute agreement to a UN Security Council chastisement of the Kim Jong-Il... MORE

Beijing is beefing up its control apparatus to counter unprecedented challenges to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration this year. Apart from on-going protests in the Greater Tibet Region, the police, state security, People’s Armed Police (PAP) and other units are bracing themselves against demonstrations,... MORE

Premier Wen Jiabao has pulled out all the stops to reassure the National People’s Congress (China’s parliament)—and the world—that the Hu-Wen government’s revamped stimulus package can ensure an eight percent growth rate this year. That the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has discouraged NPC deputies from... MORE