20th November 08

Asia Times Online

Chinese rocket fuel lands US scientist in jail
By Peter J Brown

China is looking forward to many accomplishments in space over the coming decade, while Shu Quan-Sheng, the physicist and corporate executive from Virginia arrested in September for selling American space technology to Beijing, is looking at up to 25 years in prison…. Hainan Island is where China will soon start constructing its first coastal rocket launch facility, known as the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center (Wenchang SLC). Larger and far closer to the equator than any other launch site in China, it will be well suited for launching large satellites into geosynchronous orbit, in which the satellite maintains its relative position to the earth as the earth rotates.

US template wrong for China
By Samuel Bleicher

Noting that private consumer spending amounts to only about one-third of the Chinese gross domestic product (in the United States it has been over 70%), the editorial says China "must do more to unlock the savings of its citizens and encourage them to spend". And the switch would be easy - the Chinese government has a "huge budget surplus" and "money to spare"to execute this policy. Attempting to reshape China into an American-style mass consumer economy, however, is a recipe for economic, environmental, and probably political, disaster. It's a path to the past, not the future.

Bangladesh and Myanmar in fuel spat
By Andrew Symon

SINGAPORE - The search for offshore energy resources has triggered a border dispute between Myanmar and Bangladesh that threatens to complicate China's ambitious designs to pump fuel from the region to its landlocked southwest Yunnan province through a yet-to-be-built 2,300 kilometer long pipeline.