Briefly

PLA warns off US warship near Xisha

The Chinese military warned off a United States warship that illegally entered China's territorial waters off the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea on Saturday, a spokesman for the People's Liberation Army said. Senior Colonel Tian Junli, spokesman for the PLA's Southern Theater Command, said on Saturday that the guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper illegally intruded into China's territorial waters off the Xisha Islands on Saturday without the approval of the Chinese government. The theater command organized air and naval forces to follow and monitor the ship, and drove it away according to the law, he said. Tian criticized the action as a serious violation of China's sovereignty and security, and more "iron proof" that the US is pursuing "navigational hegemony" and creating a "militarization of the South China Sea".

135th Mekong River joint patrol concludes

Four Chinese law enforcement vessels that participated in the 135th Mekong River joint patrol docked at a port in Yunnan province on Friday, marking the successful conclusion of an operation also involving Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. The joint patrol saw the participation of seven vessels and 176 law-enforcement officers from the four countries and covered over 600 kilometers of waterway. During the patrol, the joint task force from these countries inspected 137 vehicles, 285 individuals and over 60 metric tons of goods. One person suspected of an illegal border crossing was apprehended, while one boat-capsizing incident was handled, with two Laotian crew members rescued in the process. In a bid to ensure effective emergency response and management in the Mekong River region, a joint search and rescue drill was carried out involving the rescue of individuals who had fallen into the water, firefighting on boats and underwater detection and salvage.

Data center installed on seabed off Hainan

A core data module weighing 1,300 metric tons was successfully installed on the seabed off Hainan Island on Friday, marking an important step in the building of the world's first commercial data center based on the sea floor. According to China Central Television, the module can process more than 4 million high-definition images within 30 seconds, a capacity equivalent to 60,000 traditional computers working simultaneously. Unlike land-based data centers, the underwater facility uses seawater to keep it from overheating during its operation, saving energy, freshwater and land resources. Once fully operational, the underwater data center is expected to save 68,000 square meters of land, equivalent to nearly 10 standard soccer fields, and save 122 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 105,000 tons of freshwater per year.

Inspections launched to curb statistics fraud

China's National Bureau of Statistics has decided to start a new round of regular inspections from late November which will focus on six provincial-level regions and two central government organs, in a bid to crack down on statistics fraud and improve data quality. The eight inspection teams will be dispatched to the Guangxi Zhuang and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions and the provinces of Anhui, Hubei, Sichuan and Yunnan, as well as to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Commerce. Besides focusing on fraud and data quality, the teams will also be responsible for a series of other tasks, including the handling of violations of laws and regulations, the rectifying of problems found during previous inspections and the implementation of the fifth national economic census.

Xinhua - China Daily