Photo, above: Zhou Yongkang, PRC former domestic security chief.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-hosts:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.  Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.

Hour One

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Scott Harold, political scientist, RAND, in re:  

China’s military muscle-flexing ensnarls air traffic  China will conduct a series of live-fire military training drills in the East China Sea from Tuesday, coinciding with the announcement of massive flight cancellations due to separate wide-scale military exercises on land. . . . China’s airline regulator on Saturday warned of “massive flight delays” across eastern and central China, saying traffic capacity of some domestic routes will drop by as much as 65 per cent, with airports in major economic hubs including Shanghai, Nanjing and Wenzhou among 23 airports affected.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 1, Block B: James Holmes, Naval War College, & co-author of Red Star over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, in re: Which Germany Should Modern China Emulate? China is clearly a great power on the rise. German history offers two possible paths: Bismarck or Wilhelm II. Which will Beijing choose? 

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  William Harwood, CBS News space consultant, in re:  Cygnus and space news. Russian Progress and ESA ATV resupply to ISS, all functions okay on ISS.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 1, Block D: A Burmese railroad project was canceled. It would have  linked the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal. Fears over environmental impact and public objects were responsible for the cancelation

 

Hour Two

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Phelim Kine, deputy director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch, in re: Concerns Grow Over China's Confucius Institutes  Once lauded as the jewel in the crown of China's "soft power" cultural diplomacy, Confucius Institutes have sprung up at hundreds of colleges and teaching institutions around the world.

Partnering with local academic centers, their aim is to teach people to speak Chinese, as well as broadening people's experience of Chinese culture in general.

But a recent warning from a group of U.S. professors suggests some 90 Confucius Institutes across the U.S. may also be seeking to instill in students the ruling Chinese Communist Party's views.

"Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state," the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) wrote in a report issued in June.

"Most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China," it said.

It said such political agendas are typically allowed to flourish in U.S. colleges and universities, even when curriculum choices and academic debate are restricted as a result.

Confucius Institutes may appear at first glance to resemble the British Council, the Goethe Institut or the Alliance Franςaise, but their potential threat to academic freedom lies specifically in the fact that they base themselves out of universities, the AAUP said.

While their European counterparts are clearly aligned with "soft power" objectives and national agendas, they aren't permitted to influence academic freedom in the countries where they operate, it said.

"Allowing any third-party control of academic matters is inconsistent with principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities," the group said.

It called on U.S. universities to break ties with Confucius Institutes unless they can renegotiate agreements to win back unilateral control of their curricula, staff hiring policies and choice of texts. [Further: not likely that a Communist-based educational system could accurately convey the meanings of the profoundly non-Communist Confucius.]

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Kelley Currie, senior Fellow, Project 2049 Institute, in re: China’s cancelled Burma railway is its latest derailment in southeast Asia. A $20-billion Burmese railroad project that would link the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal was cancelled this week due to fears over the project’s environment impact and objections from the public. It was the latest backlash to China’s attempt to expand its influence in its “near abroad” of southeast Asia.

The railway between Burmese city of Kyaukpyu and the Chinese city of Kunming was supposed to follow the gas and oil pipelines (the former is operational, the latter almost finished) that have been the target of widespread protests by Burmese who are outraged that a country largely without electric power is shipping its natural resources to China. Civil society groups in Burma have long protested the Sino-Burmese railway, with groups in the country’s Rakhine state saying it was one of 10 major infrastructure projects—including the China gas pipeline, major mining works, and hydropower projects—that were granted without the approval of local people who would be affected. Under a memorandum of understanding that has now expired, China was to finance most of the cost of the railroad in exchange for a 50-year concession to operate it.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Gregory Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re: Japan and Australia. Although the U.S. and Japan became close after WWII, Australia saw Japan as the great aggressor. Finally this idea is being put to rest.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: 

Hour Three

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Monica Crowley, Fox News, in re:

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Robert Zimmerman, Author, Behind the Black, in re: Messenger descends to Mercury as engineers lower its orbit closer to the planet’s surface. Comet 67P.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Aaron Klein, Salem Network, in re: Israeli government resolves to intensify Gaza attacks despite of criticism. Israeli army death toll is up to 56, while 17 Palestinians died in an attack on a market and at least 15 in an attack on a Gaza school building.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Eli Lake, The Daily Beast, in re: Ted Cruz’s needling of Obama. Cruz reveals a new type of foreign policy: “American exceptionalism without the nation building.”

Hour Four

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: David Quammen, Author, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Part 1.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 4, Block B:  David Quammen, Author, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Part 2.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: David Quammen, Author, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Part 3.

Wednesday  30 July  2014 / Hour 4, Block D:   David Quammen, Author, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Part 4.