FBI Director Christopher Wray says China right now poses a more serious counter-intelligence threat to the United States than any other country, including Russia. In his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wray described the threat as “more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counter-intelligence threat” he can think of. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
At least 14 people have died in two landslides in southwestern China and rescuers are looking for 42 others who are missing, Chinese state media reported Wednesday.
A landslide on Tuesday night buried 21 houses and caused at least 13 deaths in Guizhou province’s Shuicheng county, said state broadcaster CCTV.
Eleven people were rescued and sent to the hospital while another 42 remained missing. Heavy rainfall is believed to be the main cause, CCTV said.
More than 800 rescuers have been scouring the area, where continuous rainfall and the mountain’s steep slopes have hampered search efforts.
One person died and six others are unaccounted for after an earlier landslide hit a village in Hezhang county in Guizhou on Tuesday afternoon. The landslide happened at a highway construction site, the Xinhua state news agency reported.
For the first time in four years, China’s Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday released a white paper on the country’s overall national defense strategy, disclosing that, before 2017, its military spending accounted for 1.28 percent of its GDP.
The lengthy 27,000-word white paper, titled “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” totals six chapters.
It is the first comprehensive white paper since the 18th National Congress of China Communist Party, held in 2012, and the 10th one since the Chinese government released its first defense white paper in 1998.
Some analysts said the white paper has demonstrated China’s efforts to regain international security narrative. Others, however, add that it’s nothing new, but more about repeating consistent Chinese narratives while its defense budget remains opaque.
Xi slogans
Compared to the last white paper in 2015, “this new white paper is designed to really facilitate China’s drive to what I call to earn the regional security narrative. The white paper is full of (Chinese President) Xi Jinping’s slogans,” said Alexander Neill, a Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow for Asia Pacific security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Following a period of quite considerable defense reform, this white paper is setting out its achievement in terms of reforms but it’s also offering a new vision for regional security with Chinese characteristics,” added the Singapore-based expert.
During a news conference on Wednesday morning, China insisted its armed forces are defensive in nature.
That, some observers believe, shows China’s attempts to dismiss international criticism that it is a rising military threat.
According to Hu Kaihong, spokesman at China’s State Council Information Office, the white paper responds to the international community’s interest in the development of China’s armed forces and elaborates on the distinctive feature of China’s national defense policy, which is defensive in nature.
A military threat?
“China’s national defense in the new era is never seeking hegemony, expansion or spheres of influence. And China’s national defense expenditure has been reasonable and appropriate,” Hu said.
According to the white paper, from 2012 to 2017, China’s defense expenditure increased from US$98 billion to $152 billion.
During the period, China’s GDP and government expenditures grew at an average rates of 9.04 percent and 10.43 percent respectively while its defense expenditures increased by an average of 9.42 percent.
Meanwhile, China’s defense expenditures accounted for 5.26 percent of government expenditures on average and 1.28 percent of its GDP, the latter of which compared to Russia’s 4.4 percent, the U.S.’s 3.5 percent and India’s 2.5 percent.
“The percentage of China’s defense expenditure in GDP remained stable and grew in coordination with the increase of government expenditure,” the white paper said.
It added that China ranks the sixth among those big defense-spending countries in terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP on average and is the lowest among the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Opaque defense spending
But Ross Feingold, a Taipei-based political risk analyst, refuted the comparison as a distortion given other great military powers have international peacekeeping obligations.
The security presence of the U.S., for example, is broadly welcomed around the world whether that’s through weapon sales or actual presence of U.S. personnel or equipment, he said.
“Broadly speaking, there’s still a preference around the world for a U.S. [security] presence. Where China is expanding its presence, it seems to be very bilateral, rather than [a] regional request,” Feingold added, referring to China’s naval base in Djibouti as an example.
Feingold said the white paper is nothing new but China’s consistent military narrative.
He further questioned if China’s disclosure of military expenditures between 2012 and 2017 was updated and transparent enough.
He said that some of China’s military spending may not be reported accurately or there remain secret budgets through Chinese state-owned enterprises which engage in research and development or even products — all that he said may not show up in the actual budget numbers.
While the white paper also seeks to show just how intense China’s military reforms have been since it was introduced by Xi, what’s missing in the paper is the actual turbulence that has happened to the Chinese military in the past couple of years, Neill said.
Both Russia and China are denying their military aircraft violated South Korea’s territorial airspace during a joint air patrol Tuesday.
The alleged violation happened near a disputed group of islands claimed by both South Korea, which calls it Dokdo, and Japan, which calls it Takeshima.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry says it scrambled multiple fighter jets after a Russian warplane ventured into its airspace over the East Sea.
The ministry says after the South Korean jets fired warning shots, the Russian plane left South Korean territory. However, it returned a short time later, prompting the South Korean jets to fire more warning shots.
Russia’s Defense Ministry denied Seoul’s depiction of the incident, and accused the South Korean fighter jets of “unprofessional maneuvers.” A spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry told reporters in Beijing that the patrol did not “target any third party” and flew along established air routes.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry summoned officials from the Chinese and Russian embassies to lodge an official protest. Seoul says this is the first time that a Russian plane has violated its territorial skies.
The flight by two Russian and two Chinese bombers, plus early warning planes from both nations, marks a notable ramping-up of military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.
Japan also lodged its own formal protest with Seoul and Moscow over the incident. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo that South Korea’s actions were “totally unacceptable and extremely regrettable” in light of Japan’s claim over the islands.
Officials in Afghanistan say a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed vehicle into a NATO military convoy in Kabul Wednesday, killing one Croatian soldier and wounding two others.
The early morning attack occurred near a military base on the northern outskirts of the Afghan capital.
Croatian officials initially said three soldiers were wounded but later said one of them died after suffering serious head injuries.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Meanwhile, the insurgent group captured Keran Wa Manjan district in northeastern Badakhshan province bordering Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.
A provincial government spokesman, Nek Mohammad Nazari, told VOA the Taliban overran the district after week-long fighting. The insurgent group claimed about 40 Afghan security personnel surrendered the Taliban during the course of fighting.
The Taliban continues to inflict hundreds of casualties on pro-government forces and has captured new territory during the current fighting season amid ongoing negotiations with the United States for a political settlement to the 18-year-old war.
U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad has arrived in the region for a new round of talks with insurgent interlocutors in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. The two adversaries are said to have come closer to signing an agreement in the nearly year-long dialogue.
The deal, if approved, would require Washington to announce a timetable for American troops to leave Afghanistan in exchange for assurances the Taliban will not allow transnational terrorists to use insurgent-controlled areas for international terrorism. The insurgents, under the deal, will immediately engage in intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss a permanent cease-fire and an inclusive governing system.