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...reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family...
...gone is Sarkozy's former mocking of realpolitik as a political cop-out of cynical diplomats without principles. France is now eager to work with Russia on common security and economic interests - and it doesn't want to hear any sniping or criticism from other countries, s'il vous plaît.(See pictures of Nicolas Sarkozy in London...
...Much of the speculation over why Xi was not promoted has centered around the military itself, and the possibility that senior generals in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) may have vetoed or delayed his appointment. Xi's lack of concrete relations with senior military figures, as well as an absence of credentials showing that he would support more large increases in military expenditure, are usually cited as reasons for not being backed by the PLA. But other analysts argue that the cause probably lay in a broader factional divide in the Party that pits supporters of Hu and Premier...
...tense standoffs in recent months between American and PLA surveillance vessels near China's southern Hainan island may be an augur of what lies ahead. A new submarine base there gives Beijing a vital edge in the South China Sea, whose waters are contested by five other governments. The disputed Spratly and Paracel archipelagoes, which sit above reserves of natural gas, have been an ongoing bone of contention between China, Taiwan and Vietnam. Further afield, China and India, Asia's other rising giant, are locked in a protracted contest of influence over the Indian Ocean, with China setting...
...China's maritime rise in the same continuum as that of the British Royal Navy in the days of Victorian empire, and the U.S. fleet during the Cold War. At present, China's naval capabilities are still that of a regional power - its own state planners aim for the PLA to finally have "risen" only in half a century's time. By then, the world could be very a different place. The Chinese navy could act as a stabilizing force - or a source of conflict that threatens its neighbors. "It should not shock us that they're going...