BEIJING—China’s Communist Party elite was craving a firm hand on the tiller when it chose Xi Jinping for the nation’s top job in 2012. Over the previous decade, President Hu Jintao’s power-sharing approach had led to policy drift, factional strife and corruption. The party’s power brokers got what they wanted—and then some. Four years on, Mr. Xi has taken personal charge of the economy, the armed forces and most other levers of power, overturning a…
Posts published in “Day: December 28, 2016”
US President Barack Obama signed US National Defense Authorization Act for the 2017 Fiscal Year into law on Friday. For the first time, it included a section that allows civilian officials at the level of assistant secretary of defense or above and serving military officers to visit Taiwan for exchanges – a breakthrough in upgrading the level of military exchanges since 1979 when the US ended its diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The signed bill was…
China has tested the latest version of its fifth-generation stealth fighter, state media reported on Monday, as it tries to end the West’s monopoly on the world’s most advanced warplanes. The test comes as the nation flexes its military muscles, sending its sole aircraft carrier the Liaoning into the western Pacific in recent days to lead drills there for the first time. The newest version of the J-31, now renamed the FC-31 Gyrfalcon, took to…
A court in central China on Monday jailed a former deputy sports minister who once sat on China’s Olympics committee for 10 and a half years after finding him guilty of bribery. Xiao Tian, who as a deputy head of the General Administration of Sport held a position equivalent of a vice minister, was put under investigation for suspected corruption last year. The court in Nanyang in Henan province said that Xiao had taken Ұ7.96…
The author is a senior fellow of the National Institute of International Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Indian media reported recently that Nepal would hold its first ever joint military exercise with China on February 10, 2017. Indian media said the joint military exercise appeared unconventional. But so far the news has not been confirmed officially by China and Nepal. Indian media hyping up China-Nepal joint military exercise is to partly put pressure on…