Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
BEIJING — China is referring to a southern military command as a “theater of operations,” warlike language evidently designed to increase pressure on rival claimants to the South China Sea. The term, unfamiliar in peacetime, has appeared in a report by the state’s Xinhua news agency covering a visit to the southern city of Guangzhou by the new chairman of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping. Xi has inspected the command and called on the Chinese armed forces to increase their “real combat” awareness through military training, Xinhua says.
After 14 years of trying, North Korea has finally joined the countries capable of launching a satellite into orbit. But the success was short-lived. The nation's space program is also experiencing the bitterness of the failure to keep its spacecraft stable. North Korea succeeded Dec. 11 on its six attempt to orbit what officials there call an Earth-observation satellite. The U.S. led a group of nations, including Russia and China, that warned North Korea not to proceed with the mission. China has since expressed “regret” over it.
