From OilPrice.com:

Song Xiaojun, a former senior officer of the People's Liberation Army, warned that Australia cannot juggle its relationships with the United States and China indefinitely and Australia has to find a godfather sooner or later. Australia always has to depend on somebody else, whether it is to be the 'son' of the US or 'son' of China.

What is also notable about Song's remarks is that they coincided with Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr's first official visit to China, where Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi urged Australia to dismiss its alliance with the United States, a decades-old bipartisan and central pillar of the nation's foreign policy, as "the time for Cold War alliances has passed."

McClatchy has the 411:

Blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, whose daring escape to the American embassy in Beijing last month sparked a diplomatic crisis, left China for the for the United States Saturday afternoon.

Chen’s departure – reportedly to Newark, N.J., on United Airlines -- brought to an end a nearly month-long saga that began on April 22 with Chen slipping away from his village in eastern China, where he’d been held in extra-judicial house detention for 19 months.

A U.S.-brokered deal earlier this month to allow Chen to leave the U.S. embassy after he hid there for six days brought considerable controversy and criticism from activists in China. There were widespread doubts about Beijing’s initial guarantees to safeguard Chen’s wellbeing and allow him to study at a Chinese university. That agreement shifted to one in which Beijing said it would accept Chen’s application for travel documents; New York University announced a fellowship awaited him.

The news on Saturday finally answered questions about whether China planned to live up to its end of the bargain. Efforts to reach Chen by phone on Saturday were unsuccessful, though he was quoted as telling the Associated Press from the airport that, “thousands of thoughts are surging to my mind.”

Auntie Beeb's Martin Patience has it right in my estimation: "[B]oth Beijing and Washington will want to put this affair behind them." But, as Patience further notes, despite a broader diplomatic crisis having largely been averted, this dispute "highlights profound differences between a superpower and a rising power on how they view the world." One assumes it will not be the last time.

Update: Apparently the US (via the Philippines) & China have profound differences on how they view the Scarborough Shoals (though beware simplistic, perpetually-revolutionary narratives from over-eager Trots -- the facts on the ground

are never quite that cut & dried, natch).

Peter Lee | May 18 | Asia Times

What's the standoff between China and the Philippines over an atoll in the South China Sea all about? Is it a matter of seafood and sovereignty ... or gas fields and gambling?

To an outside observer, the antics of China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia over conflicting territorial claims smack of farce auditioning for tragedy, and ridiculous claims abound.

May 19

AFP - China is exploiting Western commercial technology, carrying out aggressive cyber espionage and buying more anti-ship missiles as part of a steady build-up of military power, the Pentagon said on Friday.

Beijing is working to take advantage of "mostly US" defence-related technologies in the private sector as part of a long-running effort to modernise the country's armed forces and extend China's reach in the Asia-Pacific region, the Pentagon wrote in a report to Congress.

"One of the PRC's (People's Republic of China) stated national security objectives is to leverage legally and illegally acquired dual-use and military-related technologies to its advantage," it said.

And China, which has the world's second largest defence budget behind the United States, "openly espouses the need to exploit civilian technologies for use in its military modernisation" and dual-use technology transfers could have a "substantial" cumulative effect in boosting the country's army.

The Pentagon warned that "interactions with Western aviation manufacturing firms may also inadvertently benefit China's defence aviation industry."

Washington | May 17

Al Jazeera - Rewards for reforms include first US ambassador to South Asian nation in 22 years and easing of investment sanctions.

Barack Obama, the US president, has declared a "new chapter" in US relations with Myanmar as the US moved to restore full diplomatic relations with the Asian country.

"As an iron fist has unclenched in Burma, we have extended our hand, and are entering a new phase in our engagement on behalf of a more democratic and prosperous future for the Burmese people," Obama said in a statement on Wednesday.

In the statement, Obama said the US is rewarding democratic reforms in Myanmar with announcement of the country's first US ambassador in 22 years and an easing of investment sanctions.

BBC News, By Kate McGeown, May 14

Manila - When night falls in Manila, a wave of young people scurry into the skyscrapers which criss-cross the city.

They're call centre agents, and because most of their clients are on the other side of the world, the night shift is their busiest time.

Last year, with more than 600,000 call centre workers, the Philippines officially overtook India as the world's call centre capital.

Patrick Winn | Washington | May 15

Global Post - Last month, influential Democratic Sen. Jim Webb proposed "moving forward on trade" with Myanmar, a reforming quasi-democracy currently sealed off from American investors by a thicket of sanctions.

Now we've got a longtime Myanmar observer from across the aisle, Republican Sen. John McCain, suggesting Uncle Sam should pull out the weedwhacker.

IBT, By Yifei Zhang, May 7

China will soon start drilling from an advanced new oil platform designed to tap into deep-sea petroleum resources in the South China Sea, according to reports in the country's official media on Monday.

The development is major technological progress for China, which claims to have developed the new platform indigenously through its state-owned corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) [NYSE: CEO, Hong Kong: 0883]. It also occurs in an area where China has clashed recently with neighbors including the Philippines.

May 10

CNN - A Chinese military newspaper has warned that the country's armed forces will not allow anyone to challenge China's sovereignty of a tiny island outcrop in the South China Sea.

China and the Philippines have been involved in a tense standoff since April 10 when the Philippines Navy accused Chinese boats of fishing illegally in waters off the Scarborough Shoal, some 130 miles (200 kilometers) from the Philippines island of Luzon.
They attempted to arrest the crew but were blocked by Chinese surveillance vessels deployed in the area.

Both countries claim the shoal, which China calls Huangyan Island. Analysts believe the area is rich in mineral resources, natural gas and oil.

"We want to say that anyone's attempt to take away China's sovereignty over Huangyan Island will not be allowed by the Chinese government, people and armed forces," said a report in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

"Don't attempt to take away half an inch of China's territory," it warned.

** China urges the Philippines to ensure citizens' safety
** Chinese Embassy issues safety alert to citizens
** Solid evidence supports China's sovereignty claim over Huangyan Island(Xinhua)
** Aquino Open to China Oil Deal Despite Sea Spat
** DFA to pursue diplomatic consultations

May 10

Raw Story - The United States opened its banking market to China’s biggest bank ICBC, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.

Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.

The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.

ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding abroad.

Outside China, it operates subsidiary banks in Asian countries and has branches in a number of countries including Germany, Japan and Singapore.

According to the Fed, the bank has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion.

ICBC will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.

2. Crocodiles for sale at Walmart:

Buzzfeed

Mark Townsend | May 5

The Observer - Senior British diplomats introduced an extraordinary "licence to kill" law in an attempt to legalise retrospectively the colonial-era killing of 24 villagers by UK troops in Malaysia, the Observer can reveal.

The Batang Kali massacre took place on 12 December 1948, as British troops carried out a counter-insurgency operation against Chinese Malayan communists. The shootings took place after a 16-man patrol group of Scots Guards surrounded a rubber estate at Sunga Rimoh by the Batang Kali river. The bodies of several unarmed villagers were reportedly mutilated and the village was burned to the ground.

An informal investigation of the incident, carried out in 1949, exonerated all the soldiers involved. But claims of a cover-up by families of the victims have ensured that the killings in the village of Batang Kali remain one of the most contentious in British colonial history.

Some have described the episode as "Britain's My Lai," a reference to the murders of Vietnamese villagers by US forces in Vietnam. The campaign for a thorough investigation into the incident will reach a climax in London this week when a court will finally rule on whether to open an official inquiry into the killings. Although some of the Scots Guardsmen are still alive, the victims' families are not seeking criminal prosecutions.

Ahead of the hearing, the Observer has seen documents revealing that after the killings the British authorities hastily passed a regulation empowering troops in the country to use "lethal force" to prevent escape attempts.

When did the neoconservatives start giving a shit about Tibet?

A blind activist shows up at the US Embassy in Beijing. He and his family are being threatened. The movie version is that the brave diplomats spirit him out in the dark of night, lying on the floor of the back seat of the limousine, and fly him to safety.

The reality is otherwise. Embassies represent an agreement with the host country not to mess with internal issues. This is an especially sensitive consideration when there are big differences between the countries' internal policies. An embassy can't set up as dissident central, in open opposition to the host country's policies.

That means that when someone like Chen Guancheng comes to the US Embassy, it's a problem for all concerned. The details of his arrival, while not all available, make for even more of a problem. His human rights are clearly being threatened, and his life and family may be in danger. What any person would want is for that danger to be removed. The problem is how to do it.

The movie version is not available. Sorry, it just isn't under international law and the conventions that apply to embassies. And, in any case, Chen didn't bring his family with him, so they would be left to face the authorities, probably in more danger than they are now.

So, no, Mitt Romney, and no, hardline leftist human rights activists, it's not that President Obama and/or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are miserable people, suborning human rights to the financial ties to China. I suspect that the best people in the State Department and White House are trying to figure out the path to the best outcome. The incident isn't over. Stay tuned.

I'm not at all a China expert, so I can't speak to the politics involved. Here's some commentary that takes the realities into account from people who know more about China than I do.

Debacle in Beijing

Blame China, not the U.S., for the Plight of Chen Guangcheng

the Ai precedent

Keith B. Richburg & Jia Lynn Yang | Beijing | May 2

WaPo - Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled de facto house arrest last month and sought refuge at the U.S. Embassy, left the diplomatic compound on Wednesday to seek medical treatment after receiving assurances from China’s government that he would be treated humanely, U.S. officials said.

But what had been described as a deal to guarantee Chen’s safety was quickly called into question by local Chinese activists and overseas human rights groups, who said they were worried that the Chinese authorities would not keep their word, and that the U.S. had no way to enforce the agreement.

Mark MacKinnon | Beijing | May 2

The Globe & Mail - Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who made international headlines by taking shelter in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, has now left diplomatic territory, escorted by U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke.

Mr. Chen is said to be receiving medical treatment at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital and his wife and daughter are reportedly en route from his native Shandong Province to join him. There were reports that Mr. Chen – who has said he doesn’t want to leave China – will be allowed to move to another part of the country, away from the local officials in Shandong who were responsible for holding the 40-year-old self-taught lawyer incommunicado in his home village of Dongshigu for the past 20 months.

According to a Reuters report, Mr. Chen would be moved to a “safe environment” where he could attend university. “This was an extraordinary case involving exceptional circumstances, and we do not anticipate that it will be repeated,” a U.S. official told Reuters.

Fredrik Dahl | Vienna | Apr 30

Reuters - China called on the United States and Russia - which hold the vast majority of the world's nuclear warheads - on Monday to make further "drastic" cuts in their atomic arsenals.

A senior Chinese diplomat also told a meeting in Vienna that the development of missile defense systems which "disrupt" the global strategic balance should be abandoned, a possible reference to U.S. plans in Europe that have angered Russia.

A new U.S.-Russian arms reduction treaty will cut long-range, strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the two Cold War-era foes to no more than 1,550 on each side within seven years after it came into force in February 2011.

But they still have by far the most nuclear arms - a fact stressed by the Chinese representative on the opening day of a two-week conference to discuss the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a 1970 pact to prevent the spread of atomic bombs.

China, Britain and France are the other three recognized nuclear weapons states. But the size of their arsenals are in the low hundreds, well below those of the United States and Russia which have thousands of nuclear warheads. read the rest!

Lolita Baldor | 20,000 feet up | Apr 28

AP - In these days of shrinking U.S. defense budgets, the Obama administration is looking to South America to help monitor and protect the Asia-Pacific region in the years ahead.

During visits to Colombia, Brazil and Chile this past week, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta underscored their importance as military partners in the Pacific, where China is challenging U.S. influence in a number of countries. As those defense relationships grow, officials say it can only help U.S. economic and political ties across South America.

bottom line:

Defense chiefs Juan Camillo Pinzon of Colombia, Celso Amorim of Brazil and Andres Allamand of Chile brought up cyberthreats as a major concern, including incidents of hacker attacks and data thefts, U.S. defense officials said.

The three countries, said one official said, want help from the U.S. in hardening their computer networks against breaches and increasing their technological skills. The official said there is a recognition of how vulnerable they are, and they want to learn more about the nature of the threat and how to combat it.

That threat is likely to involve China, which is steadily gaining as a top trading partner and economic developer in South America. It's surpassing the U.S. in trade with Brazil, Chile and Peru, and is a close second in Argentina and Colombia.

Juba | Apr 28

AFP - China has agreed to loan South Sudan eight billion dollars for infrastructure development, Juba government spokesman Barnaba Mariel Benjamin said Saturday.

"It will fund roads, bridges, hydropower, agriculture and telecommunications projects... within the next two years", he said, giving details of a visit this week to China by South Sudan's President Salva Kiir.

"Details (of the projects) will be defined by the ministers of the two countries and by the Chinese firms in charge of the work," the spokesman said.

China is the largest purchaser of oil from South Sudan and is also a longstanding business partner of Sudan from which it also buys oil.

As a result of independence the south took with it about 75 percent of the formerly united Sudan's oil production worth billions of dollars.

win win win for China

Kuala Lumpur | April 28

AP - Police unleashed tear gas and chemical-laced water Saturday at thousands of demonstrators who staged one of Malaysia’s largest street rallies in years, demanding fair rules for national elections expected soon.

Malaysian police said in a statement that 222 people were arrested. Lawyers said most were expected to be released soon after having their details recorded, but it was not immediately clear if they would be charged later with any offense.

Officials said three demonstrators and 20 police were injured.

Oops.

Unexploded cluster munitions have been found for the first time in Sri Lanka, a UN expert on land mines has claimed.

In an email, Allan Poston said that small bombs from the weapons were discovered in the north of the country, near to where a child was killed in an explosion last month.

The government has denied that it ever used cluster bombs during the civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels.

They are banned under an international treaty that took effect in August 2010.

The treaty has been signed by more than 60 countries, but not Sri Lanka, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and the US - who all argue that the bombs are a legitimate weapon of war when used properly.

It's been over a year since we were told that a leaked UN report into "credible allegations" of war crimes represented Sri Lanka's "Srebrenica moment" and still there's been no movement towards finding justice for tens of thousands of civilians.

Ongoing border disputes between Sudan and South Sudan over unresolved oil revenue issues have reached a violent, near-critical mass in recent days (three guesses who's bearing the brunt of the clashes). So it's not surprising that China, a key patron & trading partner of both warring states (and very much concerned with keeping investments in local energy infrastructure stable & on track), is highly uncomfortable with the burgeoning tension. As South Sudan president Salva Kiir Mayardit reportedly cuts short his diplomatic mission to Beijing to deal with the growing crisis at home, Beijing (with a li'l help from Washington -- lead from behind, baby) has stepped up diplomatic efforts to stabilize the situation.

Daily Mail, By Richard Shears, March 29

Hundreds of orangutans are believed to have died in fires deliberately lit by palm oil companies.

Conservationists say the rare Sumatran orangutan could be wiped out within weeks.

‘It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears,’ said Briton Ian Singleton, of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme.

Nick Hopkins | Beijing/Washington | April 16

The Guardian - US and Chinese officials take part in war games in bid to prevent military escalation from cyber attacks.

The US and China have been discreetly engaging in "war games" amid rising anger in Washington over the scale and audacity of Beijing-co-ordinated cyber attacks on western governments and big business, the Guardian has learned.

State department and Pentagon officials, along with their Chinese counterparts, were involved in two war games last year that were designed to help prevent a sudden military escalation between the sides if either felt they were being targeted. Another session is planned for May.

Manila | Apr 11

Taipei Times - The Philippines’ biggest warship was locked in a standoff yesterday with two Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, reigniting tensions in a decades-long dispute over the resource-rich waters.

The Philippine government said the Chinese ships were blocking efforts by its navy flagship vessel to arrest Chinese fishermen that were found on the weekend to have illegally entered its territory.

In a dramatic day of diplomacy, the Philippines summoned the Chinese ambassador in Manila and lodged a formal protest, but China insisted it had sovereign rights over the area and ordered the Philippine warship to leave.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said he was looking to end the standoff through diplomatic means.

“No one will benefit if we have violence,” he told reporters.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said both sides wanted a peaceful resolution, but also cautioned that negotiations were at an “impasse” and his country was ready to defend its territory.

“If the Philippines is challenged, we are prepared to secure our sovereignty,” del Rosario said.