Japan calls for China to North Korea in check to keep

1 of 3. Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda (L) looks after a meeting with China's national people's Congress Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo (R) in the great Hall of the people in Beijing 26 December 2011.

IMG credit: Reuters / Ed Jones/pool

By Kiyoshi Takenaka

BEIJING (Reuters) - Japan calls China a major role in ensuring North Korea avoids shoulders volatility after the death of its leader, Kim Jong-il on Monday.

The Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda called the Chinese President Hu Jintao has Exchange of information on the developments in North Korea, where the succession of Kim's son Kim Jong-un, speculation about who is really the mysterious a party State and his nuclear program control fanned.

"It is important that we have not the death of the Chairman of the National Defense Commission Kim have a negative impact on the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula", noted Noda by a Japanese official as telling Hu during a visit to Beijing.

Many positions include head of the important military Commission Kim Jong-il.

"In these circumstances, the role of China, is the Chair country of the six-party talks and has a great influence on North Korea, is extremely important," Noda, said after the official informed the reporter, but it declined to identify.

The so-called six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia and are aimed at getting North Korea give up its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

The Japanese Prime Minister is the first regional leader to visit China since Kim Jong-il's death was announced a week ago.

China is in the North of only major ally and the North has long on China for diplomatic and economic support.

Chinese State news agency Xinhua said that Hu Noda said, that it is in the interests of all parties stability on the Korean peninsula.

"China is willing, together with all the parties involved, including Japan, to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and to achieve lasting peace, security and order in the peninsula and (in) North-East Asia, efforts" Xinhua quoted Hu as talking.

Noda asks China to upcoming about what it learned about the Northern transition.

"I would strong information exchange between Japan and China, and intend to calm the situation and correctly" the Japanese official quote Noda told Hu at the second and last day of his visit.

North Korea has the region with two plutonium-based nuclear test blasts, alerted a number of military conflicts and explanations that it has been developed uranium enrichment, which could open a different path of assembling nuclear weapons.

Restriction of North Korea is especially important for Japan, in the field of missiles is located in the North and wants to help spies decades ago hit them and resolve the problem of the fate of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea.

But China is careful to disturb, North Korea, in a delicate transition, and his comments of on the public the impact of who has restricted Kim's death beam calls for stability and peace.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry in his account of the talks "Both sides agreed the maintenance of peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula serves the interests of all sides," said Wen on Sunday between Noda and Prime Minister Jiabao.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Ben Blanchard;) (Editing by Robert Birsel)

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China beat up dissidents 10 years for "subversive" essays

Chinese dissident Chen XI is in this o.j. handout photo released by his family on the 26 December 2011 seen. A court in China sentenced a dissident, veteran Chen XI on Monday to 10 years in prison for subversion, his wife said, Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was arrested one of the most severe sentences for political charges since two years ago.
IMG credit: Reuters/handout
By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - a court in China sentenced a dissident, veteran Chen XI on Monday to 10 years in prison for subversion, his wife said, Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was arrested one of the most severe sentences for political charges since two years ago.

The Court in Guiyang, China, Chen tried quickly declared him for "inciting subversion of State power" and said that he deserves a hard set of ten years in prison, said his wife, Zhang Qunxuan, Reuters by phone.

"The judge was a big crime, which had a malign influence and he has been a repeated offender," said Zhang by telephone.

"The Government wants democracy and progress, you need people who speak their negative view," she said.

"To undermine you - can he?" Has he any army? He has a police force? Has he courts? With a piece of paper and a pen he can to undermine you? "Are you so fragile?"

Chen XI, 57, 36 articles denounced criticism of the ruling Communist Party, which he on overseas Chinese websites, said Zhang. The process took about two and half hours, she added.

Chen said that he would not address, because it would make no sense, said Zhang.
An official in Guiyang intermediate people's Court telephoned by Reuters declined to give any information or give contact details for the scope of the Court, the Chen, tries, also known as Chen Youcai.

"Inciting subversion" is a charge levied, frequently used, dissidents to punish, and China's Party toboggan dishes rarely found in favour of the accused in studies, in particular for political charges.
Chiefs put Communist Party if many years focusing on political challenges should increase defense for a guided tour of the party passed end next year.

"" "Severe punishment the Chinese Government is the clear choice of response to the protests spread from home and in many parts of the world: it is determined,"The monkey kill the chicken to scare"," Renee Xia, the International Director of the Chinese defenders of human rights, an advocacy group said in remarks by e-Mail.

"The chicken to scare the monkeys, killing" is a Chinese proverb hold singling out victims for rough treatment to others of.

"PAY-BACK"

The long sentence comes days after an other dissident-Chen Wei of Sichuan province, Chinas--jailed for nine years similar because of "inciting subversion." Chen is a family name in China, and the two men are not related.

Liu Xiaobo, 2010 was awarded Nobel Peace Prize, was sentenced on 25 December 2009, and imprisoned for 11 years for inciting subversion. In March of this year, fees jailed dissidents Liu Xianbin for 10 years on subversion.

This month, a Beijing sent a China's best known rights lawyers, Gao Zhisheng, back in prison, although he never appears mysterious confinement mainly escaped have provided Court.

Beijing quiet Christmas chose for these studies as it tried to avoid international attention and diplomatic censure, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher on China for New York-based human rights watch, an organization.

"It not the character is a confident Government which believes that it has a strong argument against a specific person," he said by telephone. "It's pay-back for decades up to the Government."

Police kept hundreds of dissidents, human rights activists and protest Organizer in a crackdown on dissent this year, when the Communist Party of anti-authoritarian revolts in the Arab world inspired to prevent wanted the protests.

Chen XI, imprisonment was released but arrested only last month after his release from a week-long by his campaign for independent candidates to places in party people's Congress assemblies, win, Zhang said.

Chen is a former soldier and factory workers that prison was for three years for his support of 1989 pro-democracy protests which ended after troops struck down, said demonstrations his wife.
Again, he was imprisoned in 1996, but since his release an organizer of human rights was a civic forum in Guiyang in 2005.

China uses a "firewall" of Internet filters and blocks to prevent that citizens read websites abroad is regarded as politically unacceptable. With the technology to break through obstacles and uncensored Web sites publish but many activist.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Hong Lei a daily briefing that he don't know about Chen XI conviction. China a "country of the rule of law" is added to Hong.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Reuters TV;) (Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Obama boosts U.S. military in Australia, reassures China

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota 

President Barack Obama signs a guest book after participating in an arrival ceremony with Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, November 16, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed

By Caren Bohan and James Grubel

CANBERRA | Wed Nov 16, 2011 8:01am EST

CANBERRA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday unveiled plans to deepen the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific, with 2,500 U.S. marines operating out of a de facto base in northern Australia.

China, already worried the United States is caging it in, immediately questioned whether strengthening military alliances would help the region when economic woes put a premium on cooperation.

"With my visit to the region, I am making it clear that the United States is stepping up its commitment to the entire Asia-Pacific region," Obama told a joint news conference with Gillard in Canberra.

From next year, U.S. troops and aircraft will operate out of the tropical city of Darwin, only 820 kms (500 miles) from Indonesia, able to respond quickly to any humanitarian and security issues in Southeast Asia, where disputes over sovereignty of the South China Sea are causing rising tensions.

"It is appropriate for us to make sure...that the security architecture for the region is updated for the 21st century and this initiative is going to allow us to do that," Obama said.

He stressed that it was not an attempt to isolate China which is concerned that Washington is trying to encircle it with bases in Japan and South Korea and now troops in Australia.

"The notion that we fear China is mistaken. The notion that we are looking to exclude China is mistaken," he said, adding China was not being excluded from the planned Transpacific Partnership (TTP) on trade.

"We welcome a rising, peaceful China."

But China's rising power means it must take on greater responsibilities to ensure free trade and security in the region, he added.

"It's important for them to play by the rules of the road and, in fact, help underwrite the rules that have allowed so much remarkable economic progress," he said.

PEARL HARBOUR OF AUSTRALIA

The U.S. deployment to Australia, the largest since World War Two, will start next year with a company of 200-250 marines in Darwin, the "Pearl Harbour of Australia," Gillard said.

More bombs were dropped on Darwin during a surprise Japanese raid than on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

A total of 2,500 U.S. troops would eventually rotate through the port city. The United States will bring in ships, aircraft and vehicles, as well as increase military training.

Asked about the proposed deepening of U.S.-Australian military cooperation, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said China stood for "peaceful development and cooperation."

"We also believe that the external policies of countries in the region should develop along these lines," Liu told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

Liu added that "whether strengthening and expanding a military alliance is in the common interests of the region's countries and the international community is worthy of discussion," especially amid a gloomy international economic situation and with each country seeking cooperation.

But some Asian nations are likely to welcome the U.S. move as a counterbalance to China's growing military power, especially its expanding maritime operations, and a reassurance that Washington will not scale back its engagement in the region due to a stretched U.S. military budget.

"The United States hopes to militarily strengthen alliance relations with Japan in the north and with Australia in the south, with the clear intention of counter-balancing China," Su Hao, the director of the Asia-Pacific Researcher Center at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, told the Global Times, a popular Chinese newspaper.

OBAMA TO RAISE SOUTH CHINA SEA

The winding down of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has opened the door to greater U.S. attention to simmering tension over the South China Sea, a shipping lane for more than $5 trillion in annual trade that the United States wants to keep open.

Obama plans to raise maritime security in the South China Sea at a regional summit on Bali this week, defying China's desire to keep the sensitive topic off the agenda.

China claims the entire maritime region, a vital commercial shipping route rich in oil, minerals and fishery resources. It insists that any disputes be resolved through bilateral talks and says Washington has no business getting involved.

"The United States is also trying to get involved in a number of regional maritime disputes, some of which concern China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," a commentary from China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei hold rivals claims to at least parts of the sea and tension occasionally flares up into maritime stand-offs.

Obama will make an "anchor speech" outlining the U.S. vision for the Asia-Pacific to the Australian parliament on Thursday before a whistle stop in Darwin. He then flies to the Indonesian island of Bali for the East Asia summit.

(Additional reporting by Michael Perry and Jim Regan in Sydney and Chris Buckley in Beijing; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Jonathan Thatcher)

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Outcry after China road accident kills 18 children

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AppId is over the quota

BEIJING | Wed Nov 16, 2011 8:00am EST

BEIJING Nov 16 (Reuters) - Eighteen nursery school children were killed when a coal truck slammed into their "drastically" overcrowded school van in northwest China on Thursday, local media reported, prompting an outcry about the country's deadly roads.

The collision on a rural road in Zhengning County, Gansu province, also killed the driver of the van and a teacher onboard, the Xinhua news agency said.

Another 44 people were hurt -- 10 of them seriously -- in the accident, one of the worst on China's roads for some time.

An initial investigation showed the van was "drastically overloaded", carrying 64 people instead of the nine passengers permitted, said Chinese state radio news.

Pictures on Chinese news websites showed the crumpled wreckage of the yellow van that was struck by the much larger coal truck on the way to the nursery.

Investigators were examining the cause, said news reports which left unclear whether the truck or van driver might be to blame.

Officials hurried to the scene to offer support and promised a crackdown on road hazards. But a flood of messages on Chinese web sites echoed with outrage about lax safety enforcement.

"The nursery school can't shirk responsibility for such serious overcrowding," said one comment on Sina's "Weibo" microblogging site.

Another said: "Why don't we protect children in the same way we protect our leaders?"

Chinese authorities have tried to crack down on dangerous driving but breakneck economic growth, and rapid expansion in the number of roads and drivers, creates many menaces, especially on poorly policed rural roads.

In 2010, Chinese police officially recorded 219,521 traffic accidents that led to deaths or injuries, including 65,225 fatalities, a fall of 3.7 percent on the previous year.

In a study published by the World Health Organisation in 2010, however, experts found that such official data seriously undercounted the number of road deaths in China, which they estimated to be almost twice the number reported by police. (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Paul Tait)

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