22nd November 08

Sydney Morning Herald

Tibet's hopes stir winds of change

As the Dalai Lama prepares to step back, exiled Tibetans urge greater action, write Matt Wade in New Delhi and John Garnaut in Beijing.THEY have campaigned against a seemingly invincible opponent for decades and their ailing leader, the Dalai Lama, has become disillusioned. But Tibetans in exile won't give up. About 500 leaders and activists from Tibetan communities around the world met in the Indian hill station town of Dharamsala this week to reinvigorate their struggle against Chinese rule in their homeland.

AAP

China 'using cyber warfare to target US'

China has developed a sophisticated cyberwarfare program and stepped up its capacity to penetrate US computer networks to extract sensitive information, a US congressional panel says. "China has an active cyber espionage program," the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its annual report to the US Congress. "China is targeting US government and commercial computers."

The Australian

China's secrecy 'could affect region', Angus Houston warns

CHINA'S excessive secrecy over defence spending and its shooting down of a satellite in January could trigger regional instability, the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, has warned. Beijing should be more forthcoming about its reasons for expanding its military forces, Air Chief Marshal Houston said yesterday. It had also failed to explain why it needed a capability to blast satellites out of space.

International Herald Tribune

Translation mix-up brings China quake toll into question

BEIJING: The news conference Friday was meant to explain how far the government had come in helping victims of the earthquake that devastated Sichuan Province last May. More than 200,000 homes have been rebuilt, 685,000 others are under reconstruction and $441 billion will be spent in the coming years to help make Sichuan whole again, said Wei Hong, the provincial vice governor. But a garbled translation of Wei's words ended up shifting public attention from valiant reconstruction efforts to unresolved questions about how many children perished beneath the rubble of their poorly built schools.

Asia Times Online

China's party hardliners want the last word
By Verna Yu

BEIJING - In an incident which highlights growing internal tension in the Chinese Communist Party, the most outspoken political magazine on the mainland has been put under pressure to get rid of its prominent publisher after it printed an article praising ousted former party chief Zhao Ziyang. It is also evident the authorities are trying hard to keep a tight lid on anything that could possibly remind people of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen crackdown on student-led pro-democracy demonstrations, as next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the bloody tragedy.