Philippine ex-president Fidel Ramos said Wednesday that China's recent assertiveness over sea disputes was motivated by a desire to challenge US power, as he predicted more tensions to come.

On a visit to Washington, Ramos described China and the United States as "shadow-boxing" over the South China Sea and East China Sea where Beijing has growing friction with countries including the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.

"China's proximate aim, it seems to me, is to limit American freedom of access" and "erode the credibility of Washington's security guarantees to the East Asian states, including and especially the Philippines," Ramos, who was president from 1992 to 1998, said at the Heritage Foundation think-tank.

"We, where we come from, expect South China Sea tensions to continue because the root cause is really China's perceived need to break out from under the strategic dominance of the Western allies," Ramos said.

China, already the world's second largest bullion consumer, has installed the country's first gold vending machine in a busy shopping district in Beijing, state media said on Sunday.

Shoppers in the popular Wangfujing Street can insert cash or use a bank card to withdraw gold bars or coins of various weights based on market prices, the People's Daily said on its website.

Each withdrawal is capped at 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) or one million yuan (about $156,500) worth of gold, the report said.

Gold vending machines already exist in Britain, the United States, the Middle East and Europe.

The machine was launched Saturday by the Beijing Agricultural Commercial Bank and a gold trading company, the report said.

They plan to install an unspecified number of machines in secure locations such as gold shops and upmarket private clubs.

In an international twist in the Dodgers' ownership saga, Frank McCourt has been offered $1.2 billion to sell the team to a group indirectly financed by the government of China.

The bid is headed by Los Angeles Marathon founder Bill Burke, according to a letter sent to McCourt on Tuesday. The letter was disclosed to The Times by two people familiar with its content but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The proposed sale price would set a record for a Major League Baseball team. However, the bid was received with skepticism within MLB, where executives wondered whether the proposal might be used by McCourt to stir negotiations with other potential buyers or to persuade a Bankruptcy Court judge to keep McCourt in charge of the team.

A Pentagon report has found that a multibillion-dollar Chinese telecommunications company that has been seeking to make major inroads in the U.S. market has close ties to China's military, despite the company’s denials.

The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China's military, released last month, identifies Huawei as a high-tech company linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

“The shipbuilding and defense electronics sectors, benefiting from China’s leading role in producing commercial shipping and information technologies, have witnessed the greatest progress over the last decade,” the report states. “Information technology companies in particular, including Huawei, Datang, and Zhongxing, maintain close ties to the PLA.”

China is expanding its nuclear forces with a new multiwarhead mobile missile and keeps its strategic stockpiles in deep underground bunkers, the Pentagon disclosed in its annual report to Congress on the Chinese military.

China is thought to have up to 75 long-range nuclear missiles, including hard-to-find, road-mobile DF-31 and DF-31A intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), according to the report, which was released Wednesday. China also has 120 intermediate- and medium-range missiles.

“China is both qualitatively and quantitatively improving its strategic missile forces,” the report states. “Beijing will likely continue to invest considerable resources to maintain a limited nuclear force … to ensure the [People’s Liberation Army] can deliver a damaging retaliatory nuclear strike.”

Pakistan allowed Chinese military engineers to photograph and take samples from the top secret stealth helicopter that U.S. special forces left behind when they killed Osama bin Laden, the Financial Times has learnt.

The action is the latest incident to underscore the increasingly complicated relationship and lack of trust between Islamabad and Washington following the raid.

"The U.S. now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI, gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," said one person in intelligence circles, referring to the Pakistani spy agency. The Chinese engineers were allowed to survey the wreckage and take photographs of it, as well as take samples of the special "stealth" skin that allowed the American team to enter Pakistan undetected by radar, he said.

China sent its first aircraft carrier to sea, a defining moment in its effort to become a top-tier naval power that seeks to challenge U.S. military supremacy in Asia and protect Chinese economic interests that now span the globe.

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into reported transmission problems in 2011 and 2012 Ford Mustangs.

The preliminary evaluation stems from 32 complaints filed with the agency regarding an occasional problem shifting into gear in six and eight-cylinder cars equipped with a 6-speed manual transmission that is manufactured in China. Approximately 26,000 of the cars have been sold.

Two Chinese fighter jets crossed an unofficial dividing line in the Taiwan Strait late last month in pursuit of a US spy aircraft, according to defence sources in Taipei and Beijing.

The incident marked the first time in more than a decade that Chinese military aircraft have entered Taiwan’s side of the 180km-wide strait. According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, two Chinese Su-27 fighter jets briefly crossed the so-called “middle line” on June 29.

Confirmation of the close encounter comes as the US and China are trying to cool tensions in the South China Sea and safeguard a recent improvement in bilateral military relations.

Taipei, whose relations with Beijing have also been on the mend, moved to downplay the incident. “This was not between Taiwan and China, but between China and the US,” said a senior Taiwanese defence official. “The Chinese crossed the line to repel a perceived intrusion by a US reconnaissance aircraft.”

The political left is pressing the White House and Congress to inflict a wave of Pentagon budget cuts not seen since the post-Cold War 1990s.

Liberals are citing the debt crisis and troop drawdowns from Iraq and Afghanistan to argue that now is the time for the Defense Department to shed people, missions and weapons after a decade of doubling arms spending after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The proposals, including one from the Center for America Progress, go well beyond President Obama’s call in April for $400 billion in defense cuts over 12 years. The center — run by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Clinton — wants that much in reductions over the next three years and $1 trillion from what had been projected increases over the next decade.

Some House Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, also have called for $1 trillion in cuts.

China and the United States remain starkly different on military issues and have a long way to go toward building a trusting relationship, the top U.S. military officer said Friday after a bumpy visit to Beijing.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed his talks with Chinese military leaders were "productive and generally positive." But he added that efforts to create a working military-to-military relationship are still young and so far fraught with difficulties.

"There is a long way to go," he said in a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, where he is wrapping up his Asian tour. "Differences between us are still stark."

Mullen's visit to China was the first of its kind in four years. It was intended to build on efforts to increase communications and exchanges between the two in hopes of easing growing tensions over China's growing military might and economic clout in the region.

The Pentagon on Thursday revealed that in the spring it suffered one of its largest losses ever of sensitive data in a cyberattack by a foreign government. It's a dramatic example of why the military is pursuing a new strategy emphasizing deeper defenses of its computer networks, collaboration with private industry and new steps to stop "malicious insiders."

William Lynn, the deputy secretary of defense, said in a speech outlining the strategy that 24,000 files containing Pentagon data were stolen from a defense industry computer network in a single intrusion in March. He offered no details about what was taken but in an interview before the speech he said the Pentagon believes the attacker was a foreign government. He didn't say which nation.

The United States is spending too much on its military in light of its recent economic troubles, China’s top general said Monday while playing down his country’s own military capabilities.

The chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, Chen Bingde, told reporters he thought the U.S. should cut back on defense spending for the sake of its taxpayers. He was speaking during a joint news conference in which he traded barbs with visiting U.S. counterpart Adm. Mike Mullen.

“I know the U.S. is still recovering from the financial crisis,” Chen said. “Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military and isn’t that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers?

China has opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge - which stretches five miles further than the distance between Dover and Calais.

The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26.4 miles long and links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to the offshore island Huangdao.

The road bridge, which is 110ft wide and is the longest of its kind, cost nearly £1billion to build.

Japan's Defense Ministry said Thursday 11 Chinese warships were spotted in international waters off the country's southern island of Okinawa.

No territorial violations were claimed by Japan, but the movements are sensitive because Japan and China have a dispute over small islands in the East China Sea.
The ministry on Thursday said the Chinese warships were monitored passing from the Pacific Ocean into the East China Sea.

Ministry spokesman Shuichi Fukuya said they were believed to be returning from target practice and refueling exercises in waters about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) south of Okinawa.

He said the Japanese military saw the Chinese warships heading out to the area June 8-9.

In less than 40 years India will overtake the US as the world’s second-largest trading nation, pushing today's superpower into third place and Europe in to the little leagues, according to a new report by Citi.

“According to our projections, world trade in goods and services will grow from $37 trillion in 2010 to $149 trillion in 2030 and $371 trillion in 2050,” Citigroup’s William Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari wrote in a research note released on Thursday.

“But at least as interesting as the growth in world trade that we forecast are the changes in its composition that we expect over the course of the next four decades, with today's emerging markets set to gain much more prominence in world trade relative to advanced economies,” they added.

A Chinese national company is interested in developing a 10,000- to 30,000-acre technology zone for industry, retail centers and homes south of the Boise Airport.

Officials of the China National Machinery Industry Corp. have broached the idea — based on a concept popular in China today — to city and state leaders.

They are also interested in helping build and finance a fertilizer plant near American Falls, an idea company officials returned to Idaho this month to pursue.

This ambitious, long-term proposal would start with a manufacturing and warehouse zone tied to the airport, and could signify a shift in the economic relationship between the two superpowers — a relationship once defined by U.S. companies like the J.R. Simplot Co., Hewlett-Packard and Morrison-Knudsen that would head to China to build and develop.

More than 5 million people have been displaced or otherwise affected by flooding in eastern China that is also pushing up food prices, state media reported Sunday.
Torrential rains have left huge areas of Hubei and Zhejiang provinces under water, with more than 1 million acres of farmland inundated, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Almost 1,000 businesses have been forced to suspend operations and 5.7 million people have had their lives disrupted, Xinhua said in a brief report. More than 7,000 homes collapsed or were otherwise damaged and direct financial damage was estimated at almost 6 billion yuan.

China criticized the U.S. on Tuesday over a senator's call for multilateral negotiations to resolve festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said only those countries with territorial claims in the vast resource-rich waters should get involved in such discussions.
"We hope countries not related to the disputes over the South China Sea will respect the efforts of directly related countries to resolve the issue through direct negotiations," Hong told a regularly scheduled news conference.
China, which claims the entire sea and its island groups, will assert its rights and interests but won't use force to resolve disputes or impede navigation, Hong said.

A Chinese ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order.

"In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting," Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., the only Chinese agency that gives sovereign ratings, was quoted by the Global Times saying.
Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies -- eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Guan said.

Guan did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.

The US government will run out of room to spend more on August 2 unless Congress bumps up the borrowing limit beyond $14.29 trillion -- but Republicans are refusing to support such a move until a deficit cutting deal is reached.

When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Beijing late last year, advocacy groups accused him of playing down human rights concerns to avoid losing China’s support in his bid for a second term. This week China confirmed that it would back Ban for another five years at the helm of the world body.

“China is satisfied with his job,” Chinese ambassador to the U.N. Li Baodong said in New York shortly after Ban formally announced his candidacy. “China supports Mr. Ban Ki-moon’s bid for re-election and hopes that he will gain the extensive support of all parties.”

The dollar fell to a one-month low against a basket of currencies on Tuesday and a record low against the Swiss franc after a Chinese official said the greenback would continue to weaken versus other major currencies.

he head of the international payment department at the Chinese forex regulator also warned about the risks of excessive holdings of U.S. dollars.
The dollar index [.DXY  73.61     -0.34  (-0.46%)   ]fell to a low of 73.601, the lowest since May 5, while the greenback fell to 0.8328 Swiss francs on trading platform EBS a record low.
"China has been growing its share of U.S. securities quite aggressively in the past, and the threat that they will be  selling these holdings has always been there," said Adam Myers, senior forex strategist at Credit Agricole.

The Chinese Communist Party's main newspaper lashed out at Google on Monday, saying its latest complaints of computer hacking traced to China were politically motivated and warning its business might suffer.

"Google's accusations against China are fictitious and have ulterior motives and sinister intentions," the People's Daily said in its foreign edition.

The newspaper accused Google Inc. of trying to fan disputes between Beijing and Washington and hamper cooperation in fighting cybercrime.

The Environmental Protection Agency has given at least $1,285,535 in grants to China to promote environmental research in the country.

In all, the EPA issued six grants that went to China, most of which pertained to researching methane in Chinese coal mines and reducing carbon emissions in China, a communist dictatorship long criticized by human rights groups. Two of those grants were awarded during the Bush administration; four were awarded during the Obama administration.

The Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of launching a global "Internet war" to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China.

The accusations Friday by Chinese military academy scholars, and their urging of tougher policing of the Internet, followed allegations this week that computer hackers in China had compromised the personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including government officials, military personnel and political activists.

Google traced the origin of the attacks to the city of Jinan that is home to a military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more sophisticated assault on Google's systems 17 months ago. China has denied responsibility for the two attacks.

Unkown hackers believed to have been working from China carried out a "campaign" attempting to collect email passwords of U.S. and Asian officials, Chinese activists, military personnel, and journalists, Google said on Wednesday.

"We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing," Google said, making a reference to an email hacking practice where perpetrators try to trick users into handing over their passwords.
"This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists," Google said.
Google shares were only slightly lower in extended trading Wednesday, on a day when stocks sank broadly on major U.S. indexes. Get late Google quotes here.

Top Pentagon contractors have been bleeding secrets for years as a result of penetrations of their computer networks, current and former national security officials say.

The Defense Department, which runs its own worldwide eavesdropping, spying and code-cracking systems, says more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations have been trying to break into U.S. networks.

Some of the perpetrators "already have the capacity to disrupt" U.S. information infrastructure, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who is leading remedial efforts, wrote last fall in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Joel Brenner, the National Counterintelligence executive from 2006 to 2009, said most if not all of the big defense contractors' networks had been pierced.

"This has been happening since the late '90s," he told Reuters Tuesday. He identified the main threats as coming from Russia, China and Iran.

North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il's armored train arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, setting the stage for a summit with Chinese leaders that he will want to underscore the bond between his isolated state and Asia's biggest economy.

A motorcade later swept down central Beijing's Chang'an Avenue under unusually tight police guard, suggesting the secretive Kim was in the Chinese capital.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Kim was there "apparently for a summit meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao."

Neither China nor North Korea have confirmed the visit.

This would be the third trip to China in just over a year for Kim, who in previous years rarely travelled abroad and then only in his personal train, reportedly scared of flying.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to make his second visit to China as the world's No. 1 social networking company looks for the best way to expand into that country.

"Our company mission is really clear, which is we want to connect the whole world," said Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg at the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Thursday. "And it's impossible to think about connecting the whole world right now without also connecting China."

Sandberg also described a public offering of Facebook shares as "inevitable," though she declined to provide details on when Facebook expects to have an IPO.

"It's a process that all companies go through. It's an inevitable process for us, the next thing that happens," she said. "People used to ask us if we were going to get sold. People have stopped asking that question -- we're not ... No one is buying us, we're going public."

In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party" is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

"According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads "joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party... as the CCP marries totalitarianism with capitalism and fools the people with entertainment, only the "politically correct" or stupid–or those who pretend to be so–can get rich. And GM seems to know this very well. While Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo have all rushed to please China’s rich and powerful through physical enlargement (offering models of extended wheelbases), Cadillac gratifies the..."

The U.S. is developing aircraft carrier-based drones that could provide a crucial edge as it tries to counter China's military rise.

American officials have been tightlipped about where the unmanned armed planes might be used, but a top Navy officer has told The Associated Press that some would likely be deployed in Asia.

"They will play an integral role in our future operations in this region," predicted Vice Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, which covers most of the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Land-based drones are in wide use in the war in Afghanistan, but sea-based versions will take several more years to develop. Northrop Grumman conducted a first-ever test flight — still on land — earlier this year.
Van Buskirk didn't mention China specifically, but military analysts agree the drones could offset some of China's recent advances, notably its work on a "carrier-killer" missile.

The next generation stealth fighter under development by the Chinese military could rival America's best fighters in speed, stealth and lethality, according to a new private report.

Details on the Chinese J-20 fighter are scant as the project has been developed under extreme secrecy, but an analysis conducted by the conservative Washington D.C.-based defense policy think tank The Jamestown Foundation based on the little publicly available information concluded that the fighter "will be a high performance stealth aircraft, arguably capable of competing in most cardinal performance parameters... with the United States F-22A Raptor, and superior in most if not all cardinal performance parameters against the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter."

The F-22 Raptor, which cost the U.S. government $77 billion for 187 planes from defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin,

A Chinese company with ties to Beijing's military and past links to Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger, Pentagon officials say.

Without the card, the person will NOT be able to LIVE in Shenzhen. They will NOT be able to get government benefits, they may NOT even be able to buy food!!

The safety problems affecting Chinese goods spread from toys to textiles on Monday as New Zealand said it would investigate allegations that imported children’s clothes contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde.

A new bout of food scare has gripped the United States, with the US Food and Drug Administration urging people to throw away more than 90 different products, made at a Castleberry's Food Co plant, from chili sauce to corned beef hash to dog food, for fear

FDA warns Americans to avoid products containing poisonous antifreeze solvent

Agency officials said they found toothpaste containing a sweet, syrupy poison, at a Dollar Plus retail store. The agency said toothpaste containing diethylene glycol was sold under the names Cooldent Fluoride, Cooldent Spearmint, Cooldent ICE, Dr. Cool, S