Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com In its just-published White Paper on National Defense, China’s military establishment has revealed new information about the country’s secretive People’s Liberation Army (PLA). For example, the Paper noted that the PLA’s ground forces consisted of 850,000 officers, while the navy and air force had strengths of respectively 235,000 […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com New Chinese leader Xi Jinping has flatly ruled out political reform in an unpublished internal speech during his recent tour of the quasi-capitalist Guangdong Province. According to a transcript of the speech obtained by East-Asia-Intel.com, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary bitterly accused party members who favored […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com General Secretary and Commander-in-chief Xi Jinping is set to continue the “pro-Russian” policy of his predecessor, Hu Jintao, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership becomes more nervous than ever over Washington’s perceived “anti-China containment policy.” While meeting with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in Beijing on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Xi Jinping, newly anointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has lost no time laying down what will likely be a leitmotif of his 10-year tenure: promoting “constitutional Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This so-called “Back to the [Chinese] Constitution” movement will be kicked off after fellow […]
Sol W. Sanders Perhaps more than Westerners, Chinese have a gambling streak. Even during the darkest hours of Maoist oppression and pretended Puritanism, Beijing tolerated gambling on its southern flank in the Portuguese colony of Macau. Now reincorporated into China, in 2012 the world’s largest casino, holding the country’s only legal gambling monopoly, raked […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Just 11 years after then-President Jiang Zemin took the unorthodox step of admitting private businessmen into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an unprecedentedly large number of “red capitalists” are set to be inducted into the Party’s policy-setting Central Committee. According to the official media, at least 24 non-state-sector […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com The most recent round of promotions of full generals not only says much about high-level personnel movements in the defense establishment but also the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership’s top priority of upholding stability within the nation. Six senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers were made generals on […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com While Hu Jintao’s tenure as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won’t end until the 18th Party Congress in October, he has already delivered a tough farewell speech to the Party faithful. The occasion was a special study session of Party dogma for top Party, government […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Since territorial disputes erupted between China and Japan in the early 1970s over the Diaoyu islets (called the Senkakus in Japan), Beijing has stuck to late patriarch Deng Xiaoping’s famous dictum: “Leave the question of sovereignty for the next generation; let’s put the emphasis on joint [economic] development.” […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com For years, analysts of domestic Chinese politics have been pondering this important question: With riots and protests increasing to more than 150,000 incidents a year, how close is China from an Arab-style mass uprising that could result in the destruction of the dictatorial Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Even […]