A former employee of a state-owned newspaper who figured among China’s 100 “most-wanted” fugitives has returned from the United States to turn himself in, the top anti-graft body said on Thursday, as China mapped out its strategy on fugitives in 2017.

Last year, China brought back more than 1,000 people and assets of 2.4 billion yuan ($347 million) after kicking off its “Sky Net” campaign in 2014 to target corruption suspects who had fled overseas and the illicit funds they spirited out.

In the campaign’s latest victory, China has succeeded in bringing back Wang Jiazhe, who fled to the U.S. in 2000 amid allegations of contract fraud while working for the official newspaper in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said.

Wang, 56, returned thanks to the efforts of “Sky Net”, the commission said in a statement on its website.

As part of President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign, China published a list of 100 most-wanted fugitives in April 2015, all subject to Interpol red notice arrest warrants.

Wang is the 39th fugitive on the list to return, the graft body said, without giving details, such as whether U.S. law enforcement provided assistance.

In a separate statement, the commission said this year’s “Sky Net” campaign will focus on prevention and better global cooperation, including aligning some criminal laws with international laws, though it did not say how this would happen.

“Preventing one person from fleeing, in some respects, is to get a person back,” it said.

In November, China’s most-wanted corruption suspect, Yang Xiuzhu, a former deputy director of the construction bureau in the southeastern city of Wenzhou, ended 13 years on the run by returning from the United States.

China has been trying to drum up international cooperation in its hunt for suspected corrupt officials who have fled overseas since Xi began his war on deeply-rooted graft more than four years ago.

Western countries, however, have been reluctant to help, or to sign extradition treaties, unwilling to send people back to a country where rights groups say mistreatment of criminal suspects remains a problem.

They also complain China is unwilling to provide proof of the crimes.

Instead, China has turned to methods of persuasion to get people back from countries such as Canada and the United States, where many graft suspects have holed up.
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More than 20,000 people from Myanmar have flooded into border camps in neighboring China, seeking refuge from bitter fighting between ethnic groups and security forces in the country’s north, China said on Thursday.

Thousands of people have crossed China’s border in recent months to escape the conflict, which threatens Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s top goal of reaching peace with minorities.

This week, about 30 people were killed in an attack by ethnic Chinese insurgents in Laukkai, a town 800 km (500 miles) northeast of Myanmar’s commercial hub Yangon.

China is providing humanitarian assistance while taking steps to ensure peace and tranquility in the border region, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

He reiterated a call for all sides involved to “exercise restraint and immediately cease fire” to keep clashes from escalating.

“China supports Myanmar’s peace process and hopes all sides can use peaceful means to resolve their differences via dialogue and consultation,” Geng told a regular news briefing.

Stray shells and bullets had fallen into China territory, injuring one Chinese person living there and causing some other damage, he added, but did not elaborate.

Suu Kyi’s nearly one-year-old government is increasingly besieged by ethnic rebels, grappling with an alliance of militias in Myanmar’s north and a new insurgency by Rohingyas rebelling against decades of persecution in the northwest.

Suu Kyi swept to power in 2015 on promises of national reconciliation and the meeting was aimed at giving fresh impetus to the stuttering peace process.

In this week’s attack, fighters of the predominantly ethnic Chinese Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) launched a pre-dawn raid on police, military and government sites in Laukkai, the capital of the northeastern Kokang region.

MNDAA is a part of the Northern Alliance coalition of rebel groups comprising one of Myanmar’s most powerful militias, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and two smaller groups caught in a stand-off with the military since 2015 clashes in the region.

Many died and tens of thousands fled during that fighting, which also spilled into China and led to the death of five of its people, angering Beijing.

 
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Since January of this year, thousands of school children in India’s northeastern state of Assam have pored over an illustrated story of how two young girls from a relief camp were lured by a man who told them of the good life they could lead in a big city, home to swanky buildings and flashy cars. It sounded attractive to the poor youngsters who could only visualize a bleak life ahead.

Fortunately spotted by a policeman as they waited for the man at a railway station to head to the city, the story goes on to relate what their future could have been like when they were sold to work as poorly paid domestic employees, sex workers or laborers.

The comic in the Assamese language aims to raise awareness among children about trafficking rings that lure young girls and boys from villages into India’s booming cities with the promise of good jobs.

The most vulnerable to human traffickers are states such as Assam, where a violent ethnic conflict has displaced many families, and the country’s poorer, underdeveloped states such as West Bengal, Telengana, and Andhra Pradesh.

As child rights campaigners stress prevention as key to addressing the problem, comic books have emerged as an effective tool to empower children to protect themselves in these areas. Children being sold accounted for nearly half of the human trafficking cases in India in 2015.

“There are more colors, more expressions, its an effective means of communication, especially for children,” says Miguel Queah at Assam-based non-profit Utsah, who wrote the story and helps organize reading sessions in vulnerable and displaced communities such as relief camps, children’s homes and government schools in Assam. “Children love reading the stories, discussing among their friends, we could see that response taking place” he says.

Orders to print more comics have gone out with the initial stock of 800 copies having run out and there is a proposal to incorporate it in school curriculums.

The non-profit My Choices Foundation began reaching out to rural communities a little over a year ago with its comic book, The Light of Safe Villages to educate children about threats such as trafficking and other social problems such as child marriage.

Hannah Norling who heads communications at the My Choices Foundation is confident that the colorful books and simple stories in local languages are effectively spreading the message of how traffickers trap young children. “We are in the right place,” she said.

It is distributed to students across more than 500 Indian villages.

She points out that while it is sometimes difficult to reach out to parents, who are busy working, children are more of a captive audience and the idea was to give them an illustrated book that could serve as a complete educational tool which they could share with their parents.

“We had to leave something behind that would be a long term reminder. If something happens a year from now, a physical frame of reference for them to revert back to ‘OK now what do I do?” said Norling.

One of the stories in the comic is of a guardian girl on a mission to save others and another of a vigilant boy.

Growing awareness among children has made them more alert to threats from traffickers and some have reported to village council or others if they noticed a friend missing, according to Norling. She said that helped in the rescue of three girls in the past year who had left their village.

The comic book initiative is among several efforts to prevent trafficking in rural areas. One of them by Save the Children spreads the message in local communities through children who have been rescued.

India honored a woman on Wednesday when 21-year-old Anoyara Khatun, who was trafficked from West Bengal state, received the “Women Power” award from the president for stopping hundreds of other children from being forced into labor or married off.

Khatun was brought to Delhi when she was 12 years old and forced to work as a house maid, but managed to escape after six months. With the help of child rights advocates, she returned home and is part of a network of children’s groups in 80 villages where young people are taught about their rights.

Manab Ray at Save the Children in New Delhi points out that once trafficking has happened, there is little that can be done to help the victims, so the key is to stop it in villages. And at the heart of the effort to engage local communities are the children themselves. “Children we found are the best informers, in terms of knowing the issues, because they face it themselves, they can have the natural ability of identifying the traffickers and all,” said Ray.
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Conservationists are calling for support to protect a major wildlife sanctuary in Myanmar’s northern Karen state they say is threatened by a China-financed dam on the Salween river.

Plans to dam the Salween, the longest river free from dams in mainland Southeast Asia, remain controversial, with seven dams proposed for the Salween’s main stem.

But it is the 1,365 megawatt Hatgyi that is seen as threatening two wildlife sanctuaries in northern Karen State. The dam is a joint venture between China’s Sinohydro and Thailand’s Electricity Generating Authority (EGAT).

Saw Paul Sein Twa, executive director of Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), said the dam is a direct threat to the sanctuary and is calling for a moratorium on the project.

“The dam will flood the area where we have found so many species, including tigers, we need to really preserve. We need to do more research, survey to find out their status,” he said.

“We have found some already but we need to do more. So this area will be flooded before we can do much work on the ground. That’s why we are calling for a moratorium to stop it and look into this study of the wildlife,” Saw Paul told VOA.

Species under threat

In a February 6 edition of Oryx Journal, co-authors Saw Sha Bwe Moo, Graden Froese and Thomas Gray, detailed results of research investigating the sanctuary area. They said from a total of 9,511 trap nights they obtained 4,191 records showing tigers, leopards, the Asian black bear and elephants.

At least 17 of the 31 species found are considered as near threatened, vulnerable or endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) “red” list.

The authors called for urgent action to assist the Karen people to protect “one of Southeast Asia’s last intact rich and diverse ecosystems.”

The five-year study has drawn international support, including from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), European zoological associations and the Australian non-government organization Wildlife Asia.

Wildlife Asia director Clare Campbell said protecting the region from growing threats, including development and poaching, requires international support.

“Threats are emerging all the time and some of those threats are going to take fairly considerable resources and international awareness and attention as well as if the local community is able to see out their vision for the landscape which may be a little different from a foreign developers’ vision,” Campbell told VOA.

A program to protect the sanctuary against poaching led to the creation of teams of local Karen undertaking anti-poaching patrols, often with the armed backing of the Karen National Union (KNU) militia.

Campbell said they are looking to expand the teams’ area of coverage but will require greater resources.

Political factors

Myanmar’s central government has reached cease-fire agreements with several ethnic armies, including the Karen, while political stability and reform has opened the economy to development. But a reduction in conflict has opened the way for animal poaching and trafficking.

Since 2012 Myanmar has reported a tenfold increase in elephant poaching to around 25 to 30 a year, with authorities blaming a lack of information and ongoing demand for animal parts, especially from China.

Deforestation has also taken its toll. Myanmar is reported by the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to rank only behind Brazil and Indonesia in forest loss.

But conservationists fear China’s growing influence may lead to a loss of support from the Karen leadership to continue to support the sanctuary through Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the KNU.

During recent cease-fire talks, KNU chairman Mutu Say Poe recently became the first Karen rebel leader to visit China.

KESAN’s Saw Paul says there are concerns over the KNU possibly abandoning support for the sanctuary.

“We worry about the Chinese side might raise this project [sanctuary] in relation to their cooperation with the KNU or in the peace process. I don’t know. But of course since this dam’s major stakeholder is China, the second is EGAT of Thailand, so we do have that concern,” he said.

VOA was unable to reach KNU officials for comment on this story.

In a bid to dissuade the government from backing the Hatgyi dam construction, the Karen have launched the Karen Wildlife Conservation Initiative (KWCI) to promote alternative development.

The KWCI brings together the Karen Forestry Department, KESAN, and Wildlife Asia. The project, known as a Peace Park, earmarks an area down to the dam site as a Karen cultural and community reserve as well as a wildlife sanctuary.

“The program we are looking at now is an alternative to the government’s big development projects,” he said.
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China is developing an advanced new spaceship capable of both flying in low-Earth orbit and landing on the moon, according to state media, in another bold step for a space program that equaled the U.S. in number of rocket launches last year.

The newspaper Science and Technology Daily cited spaceship engineer Zhang Bainian as saying the new craft would be recoverable and have room for multiple astronauts. While no other details were given in the Tuesday report, Zhang raised as a comparison the Orion spacecraft being developed by NASA and the European Space Agency. The agency hopes Orion will carry astronauts into space by 2023.

China’s Shenzhou space capsule used on all six of its crewed missions is based on Russia’s Soyuz and is capable of carrying three astronauts in its re-entry module.

China came late to crewed space flight, launching its first man into space in 2003, but has advanced rapidly since then. In its most recent crewed mission, two astronauts spent a month aboard a Chinese space station late last year.

A fully functioning, permanently crewed space station is on course to begin operations in around five years and a manned lunar mission has been suggested for the future.

Now firmly established among the big three in space travel, China last year moved ahead of Russia for the first time in number of rocket launches and equaled the United States at 22, according to Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Russia had 17 launches, while the U.S. might have had several more if Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet hadn’t been grounded following a Sept. 1 launchpad explosion.

 
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Urban India is employing an increasing number of children — many under 9 years old — in producing everything from pickles to fireworks, working in tourism and laboring on building sites, a U.N. children’s agency report and campaigners said.

The State of Child Workers in India report by UNICEF, based on the latest Indian census data, says the proportion of child workers in the 5-to-9-year age group jumped to 24.8 percent in 2011 from 14.6 percent in 2001.

The same decade also saw an increase in urban child laborers to 2.9 percent of the child population, up from 2.1 percent.

While across India there was a drop in child workers, to 3.9 percent in 2011 from 5 percent in 2001, campaigners say the problem could be much bigger, with data failing to capture the extent of child labor in the home.

Many children missed

Andrew Sesuraj of the nonprofit Tamil Nadu Child Rights Observatory said most of the information available takes into account only those children working in the organized sector.

“Girls doing domestic work, children in agriculture, those working with their parents are totally discounted. … What we see is just the tip of the iceberg,” Sesuraj said.

Helen R. Sekar, co-author of the report, which was published in February, said most child workers are migrants who have no home address and who do not figure on any government list.

“Investigators would not come across these children when they visit homes for data collection,” Sekar said.

Other factors

Falling agricultural returns, landlessness and few work opportunities are also forcing rural families into cities, putting their children at greater risk, campaigners said.

The analysis shows that although education policies have led to a rise in literate children, inadequate family earnings still compel them to work and supplement household incomes.

Komal Ganotra of the nonprofit Child Rights and You said there was an increase in work being outsourced to Indian homes and wages being paid per piece produced.

“It is motivating parents to employ their children to earn more. The number of children working with their families and dropping out of school is increasing,” Ganotra said.

The report cites the embroidery, shoe, carpet, garment, leather and lock-making industries as examples where “invisible children” work with their parents to increase household income.

32 locations cited

Produced in collaboration with the V.V. Giri National Institute of Labor, the report identifies 32 child labor hot spots, with the cities of Hyderabad and Jalore topping the list with 67,366 and 50,440 child workers, respectively.

The report says that while the growth of child workers is decreasing at 2 percent annually, at that rate it will take almost 200 years for India to eradicate child labor.

It calls for better implementation of education policies, including better schooling for migrant children, to reduce cases of child labor.

“We are looking at the report and will come up with suggestions accordingly,” said Stuti Kacker, head of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
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