AsiaCast

Asia Cast for Tuesday August 26th.

In this Bulletin…

- The White House points out China’s missed opportunity;
- Olympics cost Chinese people dearly, and
- Zimbabwe to have a power sharing arrangement.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China.

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Hua Guofeng, former chairman of the CCP Central Committee died of illness on August 20th in Beijing. The CCP is considering holding his funeral in accordance to specifications for Heads of State.

According to media reports, in addition to his request to quit the party, Hua Guofeng had repeatedly asked to restore his real surname to Mao Zedong. To safeguard the image of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, the CCP has rejected his request and covered up his secret personal background.

Hua GuoFeng’s children residing overseas will arrive in Beijing to attend their father’s funeral.

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Hebei news, during the college entrance examination in 2008, a student Zhao Zhen-Pei from Ping Xiang County High School, instructed by his school principal and class teacher, joined in the university entrance examinations on behalf of Ping Xiang. The County Party Secretary’s son, achieving over 500 marks, received an admission notice to attend college.

However, they refused to keep their promise to pay Zhao 1,800 yuan as arranged previously. Instead, the student was threatened, driving him to commit suicide on the 30th of July at his home. The next day, the students family carried his corpse to the school and county Party venue to call for redressing the issue, causing a fervent response locally.

The leaders of the rural county and school authority feared exposure of the scandal and offered as a lump sum compensation of 300,000 yuan to the victim’s family to buy their silence. State media coverage was prevented.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast.

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In reference to the Olympics the White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said “It was maybe an opportunity missed for the Chinese to demonstrate their willingness to be more open, and to allow more freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, while the world was watching,”.

“So I would say perhaps we’re disappointed that they didn’t take the full opportunity that was offered to them while the world was watching during these Olympics.”

“We would like to see more liberalization of human rights and religious freedom,( in China)” said Fratto, speaking for the Whitehouse.

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In a look at the real cost of the Olympics the estimated cost of a gold medal to China has been calculated to be around 10 billion yuan by China commentators.

The haul of 51 gold medals has exhausted a sum to the tune of 500 billion yuan to Chinese taxpayers.

The moral cost of the Olympics have been high too with thousands of democrats, underground Christians, Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted.

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A 10-year old girl in southern China’s Sichuan province was slapped by police and shut in an iron cage for giving her teacher a Falun Gong brochure, according to Epoch Times sources in China.

The trouble started after Siyang  gave her teacher, Cheng Zhongtao , a brochure about the persecution of Falun Gong.

Her teacher called the police and they came to the school and abducted the 10-year-old.

Her classmate also said that the police captain had slapped Siyang repeatedly, used fetters and handcuffs on her, shut her in an iron cage, and shouted at her continuously. The police captain Gou Yongqiong also gave each student 1 yuan (US$ 14 cents) to encourage them to report similar situations. Some students refused to take the money, she said.

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You’re listening to Asia Cast on the SOH Radio Network.

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A UK built solar plane has stayed aloft for more than three days running. The solar plane stored enough energy in its batteries for night flights as well as powering the planes twin propellers during the day.

The Zephyr-6, is a prototype reconnaissance unit for possible military uses as well as a battlefield communications platform.

The benefits of a solar plane are that it has continuous coverage over an area rather than a satellite which tends to only be present twice a day as it orbits the earth.

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Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is due to open parliament in which his Zanu-PF party will be in the minority in the lower house for the first time.

On Monday, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party saw its member, Lovemore Moyo, elected speaker.

Mr Moyo told the BBC that parliament would no longer just “rubber-stamp” Mr Mugabe’s policies.

The MDC does not recognise Mr Mugabe as president and is considering a boycott of the opening session.

Zanu-PF’s Edna Madzongwe on Monday won the presidency of the upper house, the Senate, where Mr Mugabe’s party has a majority.

Power-sharing talks between Mr Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai are currently deadlocked.

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“Asia Cast… keeping you across the top headlines from Asia and the World.”