By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

ANXIAN, China - China grappled with backed-up rivers and reservoirs in danger of collapse, along with looming storms that threatened Monday to compound damage from the country’s worst earthquake in three decades.
 
Two weeks after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake centered in Sichuan province, the confirmed death toll rose to 65,080 with 23,150 people still missing, the Cabinet said. The government has said the final number of dead is expected to exceed 80,000.

Many of the disaster victims were children, prompting officials to clarify the country’s strict one-child policy guidelines.

The Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of Sichuan province said Monday that families whose children was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can get a certificate to have another child.

Chen Xueyun’s 8-year-old son, Weixi, was killed when the family’s apartment in Qingchuan collapsed. Chen said he searched three days before finding the boy’s body. He wears his son’s blue plastic watch as a reminder.

Monday’s announcement could offer some parents some hope, Chen said, after their grief subsides.

“If they are still sad and depressed, it’s impossible to talk about another baby,” he said. “But in the future, it could be quite helpful for them.”

On Monday, 1,800 soldiers arrived on foot at the new Tangjiashan lake in Beichuan county to fight the flood risk, each carrying 22 pounds of explosives to blast through the debris, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The lake is 2 miles upstream from the center of Beichuan county. Thousands of people who remained there after the initial earthquake have been evacuated in recent days as a precaution.

With weather clearing that had prevented helicopter flights, heavy equipment was also lifted in the area to help remove debris, state media reported.

But thunderstorms were forecast for parts of Sichuan later Monday and Tuesday, the China Meteorological Administration said, adding they “could increase the risks posed by river blockages in some quake-hit areas.”

The rains were likely to put more pressure on dams and reservoirs weakened by the quake. The storms herald the start of the summer rainy season that accounts for more than 70 percent of the 2 feet of rain that falls on the area each year.

The backed-up lake is one of several dozen in Sichuan.

In An country, about 30 miles to the south of Beichuan, a landslide blocked the Chaping river, submerging Shuangdian village.

Residents say the lake has been rising by about 7 1/2 feet a day.

“The water was covering the road, and two days later I could not see the roof of my house anymore,” said Liu Zhongfu, 31, a truck driver who built his two-story wooden house himself, standing on a mountain overlooking the new lake. A sofa and bits of wood that were once part of houses could be seen floating among the debris in the milky green water.

Liu was working away from home when the earthquake hit. His wife, 3-month-old daughter and 60-year-old mother all were unhurt.

“I thought I could go back but I have nothing now. My village, it’s all become a sea,” he said.

Water there was backed up 2 miles along the river, said Wang Li, county Communist Party secretary.

“We need to take care of this soon, this is a serious situation,” he said.

Elsewhere, 600 people were voluntarily evacuated from Guanzhuang in Qingchuan county because of landslide worries.

“There’s no danger for this exact moment from flooding but we are very worried because the whole mountain is loose,” said Ma Jian, a local official.

Problems with dams and reservoirs from the earthquake and its aftershocks also have been reported in other provinces.

The Water Resources Ministry said Monday that three small reservoirs in Shaanxi province, just north of Sichuan, were in danger of collapse after the strong aftershock Sunday. A total 2,383 reservoirs were in danger across the country, the ministry said.

China’s top Communist Party leaders said relief efforts should now focus more on resettlement and post-quake reconstruction, but that work to find survivors should not stop.

The shift was announced at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee presided over by President Hu Jintao, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry said it would investigate whether flawed school construction contributed to collapses.

“We will punish those who cut corners during school building construction and will have zero tolerance for corruption and shoddy school projects,” spokesman Wang Xuming said in Beijing.

In Mianzhu city, the Communist Party secretary pleaded with protesting parents — whose children were killed in a school collapse — not to complain to higher authorities, the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper reported Monday.

Despite Jiang Guohua’s pleas, the parents of the 127 children who died kept marching Sunday and eventually met with higher officials, who told them the government would investigate.

The march was the latest example of growing anger among Chinese about the quake, especially the fact that nearly 7,000 schoolrooms were destroyed while school was in session. Parents at several schools have held protests, defying the government’s general disapproval of such demonstrations.

A photograph on the newspaper’s Web site shows Jiang on his knees, his arms outstretched in vain.

“Please trust that the Mianzhu party committee can solve this problem,” he begged the parents. “Don’t go!”

But the parents marched on, carrying photos of their children.

“We have no more tears,” one mother told the newspaper.

Also Monday, Xinhua reported that one of the two pandas still missing after the earthquake had been found.

The panda was recovered earlier in the day, but there were no immediate details given on its condition.

The pandas had been missing from the famed Wolong panda reserve, located near the epicenter in central Sichuan province. The center suffered heavy damage from the quake and five staff members were killed.

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Associated Press Writer Cara Anna in Beijing contributed to this report.

by Robin Millard

LONDON (AFP) - China is building a major underground nuclear submarine base on the southern tip of Hainan Island, defence group Jane’s said Friday.

Jane’s Intelligence Review, a respected defence periodical, said satellite images of the base from imagery provider DigitalGlobe were the first confirmation of its existence.

Although Beijing is displaying no overt aggression, the base could mean an increase in its strategic capability in the South China Sea and considerably further afield, Jane’s analysis said.

“Jane’s can confirm that the satellite pictures show that China is constructing a major underground nuclear submarine base near Sanya, on Hainan Island off its southern coast,” the group said.

The Daily Telegraph, which reported the satellite images, called the base a “vast, James Bond-style edifice capable of concealing up to 20 nuclear-powered submarines, which will enable China to project its power across the region.”

The British broadsheet said in an editorial that it was a sign of China’s secretive side and Beijing “too often seeks to conceal its activities and becomes defensive when questioned.”

Jane’s said that Asian military sources had told it about the base in 2002, but the photographs provided independent verification.

The satellite images showed the harbour layout and a Type 094 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine at the base, said Jane’s.

Others show three Luyang guided missile destroyers and a Jiangwei 2 guided missile frigate moored on a jetty, it said.

There are believed to be 11 tunnel openings at the base, it was reported, with each entrance, carved into the hill-side, stretching to a height of about 60 feet (18 metres). Pictures showed two of the tunnel entrances.

Another showed construction operations involving engineering and excavation barges.

The extent of construction indicates that the Sanya base could become a key future hub for the Chinese navy’s aircraft carriers and other power-projection ships, Jane’s said.

The Chinese navy moved its first Type 094 submarine to Sanya in December 2007, it added.

The identification of an underground submarine base and the positioning of China’s most advanced sub-surface combatants at Sanya could have implications for China’s control of the South China Sea and the strategically vital straits in the area, said Jane’s.

“For both regional and extra-regional powers, it will be difficult to ignore that China is now building a major naval base at Sanya and may be preparing to house and protect a large proportion of its nuclear forces here and even operate them from this base,” the group said.

“This development so close to the south-east Asian sea lanes so vital to the economies of Asia can only cause concern far beyond these straits.”

Jane’s Intelligence Review editor Christian Le Miere said: “China’s nuclear and naval build-up at Sanya underlines Beijing’s desire to assert tighter control over this region.

“China’s increasing dependence on imported petroleum and mineral resources has contributed to an intensified Chinese concern about defending its access to vital sea lanes, particularly to its south.

“It is this concern that in large part is driving China’s development of power-projection naval forces such as aircraft carriers and long-range nuclear submarines.”

BEIJING (AFP) - China Thursday inaugurated one of the world’s longest bridges, which will provide an important new route into Shanghai, state press said.

Presented as the “world’s longest sea bridge”, the 36-kilometre (22-mile) structure connects Jiaxing city near Shanghai to the port city of Ningbo in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

It is slightly shorter than the 38.4-kilometre Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge in the southern United States, which is often billed as the world’s longest.

The 11.8 billion yuan (1.7 billion dollars) bridge cuts the length of the road trip from Shanghai to Ningbo by 120 kilometres, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Construction of the six-lane bridge started in November 2003 in an effort to reduce traffic congestion in the booming area, Xinhua said.

Hundreds of people attended an opening ceremony on Thursday afternoon, it said.

The bridge was opened to traffic on a trial basis at 11.58 pm (1658 GMT), Xinhua said. However, officials did not know how long the trial would last, it added.

By CARA ANNA, Associated Press Writer

DANBA, China - It was just after nightfall when three journalists were stopped at a police checkpoint on a winding, rutted road in China’s western Sichuan province — territory that had become out of bounds for the foreigners.

Police officers took them to a nearby town and locked them in a hotel overnight. They then escorted the journalists more than 250 miles back to the provincial capital, Chengdu, and left them with a warning.

“If you come back, we will send you back again,” one official said.

The routine became drearily familiar over days of fruitless attempts to journey into Tibetan regions where the largest anti-government protests in almost 20 years erupted last month.

Dozens of such checkpoints have sealed off a chunk of western China twice the size of France, keeping out foreign journalists and other unwanted visitors as part of a campaign to squelch bad publicity ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.

To avoid accusations of muzzling the media, officials deny the existence of a travel ban, saying only that reporters are recommended to keep away for their own safety.

The de-facto ban on news coverage in China’s Tibetan regions violates China’s revised rules that are supposed to allow foreign journalists freedom to report through the Olympics.

But in the sealed-off regions, officials wave those rules away, saying the current situation is a “special” one.

Officials often try to sugarcoat the treatment with offers of tea and food, cigarettes, handshakes and a seeming concern for the journalists’ well-being.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” some say.

“We warmly welcome you to come back another time,” say others.

“When all of this calms down, you can come back and have much better reporting conditions,” said officials in Danba, where the three journalists were kept overnight.

But it hasn’t all been so polite. Policemen have waved guns in journalists’ faces, confiscated passports and forced photographers to delete photos of checkpoints and riot police.

Authorities say 22 people died in the March 14 riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, while other reports put the death toll in the protests and ensuing crackdown at up to 140.

New violence in Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province along the border with Tibet has led to eight more deaths, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign said Friday.

Officials in the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces all repeatedly warned of potential dangers to journalists from insurrectionist Tibetans, who live in the so-called “Tibetan autonomous regions” but have little say in a power structure dominated by China’s majority ethnic Han Chinese.

When pressed for details of the dangers, officials in the areas where riots and protests were known to have happened all claimed no knowledge of any unrest.

The deputy head of the local government in the Aba prefecture in Sichuan province appeared to contradict himself Thursday when he told reporters that life was “completely normal” in the area, but that it was still too dangerous for foreign media.

Some officials said they doubted the area would be open again until the Olympics are safely over.

“Wait until September,” one foreign affairs official in Aba said cheerfully as his car carried two journalists away from a checkpoint late Monday night.

Travel to Tibet has always been tightly restricted, but such rules have now been extended to neighboring provinces. Bus stations have even been told not to sell foreigners tickets, and drivers face stiff punishments for picking up outsiders.

But worried about further damage to Tibet’s tourism industry, the regional tourism authority announced this week that Tibet will reopen to foreign tourist groups on May 1.

Even if a foreign journalist gets past a checkpoint, he or she is usually caught after checking in at a hotel, where registration with a passport is required.

In other cases, plainclothes policemen tail journalists, crimping their activities. On Thursday, a plainclothes tagged after a reporter as she walked Danba’s main street, quietly trying to interview local Tibetans. The policeman then stopped the Tibetans and asked them what the journalist had asked.

There is even interference far from the sealed-off areas.

At a university campus in Sichuan’s capital Chengdu, a journalist was barred from meeting with Tibetan professors by a woman who claimed herself to be a Tibetan professor. She then took photos of the journalist with her cell phone camera, claiming the blonde-haired woman looked like one of her sisters, and had her escorted off campus.

While officials seemed to feel little need to justify their actions, at least one fell back on what has become a major thrust of Chinese propaganda.

“The foreign media twist the Tibetan story very much, so we need to completely forbid them from wandering around,” said one foreign affairs official.

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - China escalated its rhetoric against supporters of the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate’s backers of planning suicide attacks.

The Tibetan government-in-exile dismissed the allegation, saying it remained dedicated to the nonviolent struggle long promoted by their Buddhist leader.

“Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks. But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government in exile in Dharmsala, India.

Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said searches of monasteries had turned up 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 19,000 sticks of dynamite, 7,725 pounds of unspecified explosives, two hand grenades, and 350 knives.

He provided no details or evidence.

“To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibetan independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks,” Wu said at a rare news conference on Tuesday.

He used the term “gan si dui,” a rare term directly translated as “dare-to-die corps.” The official English version of his remarks released by the Public Security Ministry translated the term as “suicide squads.”

Beijing has repeatedly lashed out against the Dalai Lama and his supporters since March 14 anti-government riots in Tibet, labeling the spiritual leader a “cat’s paw of international anti-China forces” and denouncing protesting monks as the “scum of Buddhism.”

The U.S. State Department called the Dalai Lama a “man of peace” who wanted only to talk with China about the situation in Tibet.

” We continue to encourage the Chinese to engage in dialogue with the Dalai Lama and his representatives,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

In recent days China has been showing decades-old propaganda films on state television portraying Tibetan society as cruel and primitive before the 1950 invasion by communist troops. China has ignored international calls for mediation and refuses to discuss accusations of discrimination, repression and economic disenfranchisement.

The 72-year-old Peace Prize winner has condemned the violence in Tibet and urged an independent international investigation into the unrest and its underlying causes. The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said he seeks autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule.

Chinese state media says 18 civilians and one police officer were killed in the Lhasa riots. All but one were migrants from other parts of China, among the many who have flooded into the region in recent decades.

Tibetan exiles say the violence and the harsh crackdown afterward left nearly 140 people dead.

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Associated Press reporter Ashwini Bhatia contributed to this report from Dharmsala, India.