China News Consortium [Open]

[Chinese Peoples]

The State Media has been since the beginning of the 20th Century the premier governmental news service, meticulously delivering the workings of government to the millions that reside in China.

If there's anything your government would like to tell our people, here's the chance to do it. Post your news articles here, and our people will read them.

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[Chinese Peoples]

Translation:

[Nanking, 17th Jan]

President Summons the National Assembly
Kuomintang Retains Majority

PRESIDENT Ma, on the 19th of March instant, according to Article 66 of the Constitution, noting that his term is about to end, announced that the National Assembly is summoned to meet in the National Assembly Hall in Nanking, and the representatives are to report to that building on the same day.

The 13th National Assembly is constituted by 3,254 representatives, and they have all been elected as of today.

The Kuomintang (party for the nation) still has a sizeable majority, with 1,799 representatives being registered members of the assembly. The Social Democrat Party has 750 representatives, and the Chinese Communist Party has 202 members. There are 90 independents.

As the electoral results tell, eastern China still predominantly supports the KMT, as well as Canton and Kuang-hsi, as well as Taiwan. The SDP is making steady gains in KMT territory, and Che-chiang has for the first time elected more SDP representatives than KMT representatives. The CCP has its main support base in northern China and the 9 provinces of the north-east, as well as Hsin-chiang. Tibet and Mongolia has elected, for the most part, independent representatives.

Mayor of Nanking said, "the capital city is ready to receive the National Assembly."

Since the last session, a year has elapsed. Even when the National Assembly is not in session, the hall which hosts it is being rented to various groups for artistic expression and performance.

President Ma says that he will, according to the constitution, not peruse re-election.

[Chinese Peoples]

Translation:

Oversized Divisions
Are A Bad Idea

A division has been a traditional unit of the military in China for a long time. Three thousand years ago, the king declared that only himself should have 6 divisions; all his vassals had to be content with 3. A division is not only a number of soldiers, but also almost a separate creature, with a standing in history, and its own support staff; in the modern world, it is more so.

In the Chou Dynasty, a division had 12,500 people. This of course is a rough number, because divisions are stationed in different places, and staff will vary according to the situation. But this figure has been the standard for the ages to come.

But, since 1970, many prime ministers made it their objectives to reduce the size of the military. They, however, rarely pick out which units disband, and what can they do? There is one clear solution -- pack more regiments into a division, and, voila! A military with fewer divisions. Since the number of divisions is the usual measure of the size of the military, reducing the number of divisions will seems like reducing the military's size. Of course, this does not mean the prime ministers were unwilling to do so, but the military lobby is enormously powerful, and the military often makes a decisive difference in many constituencies during elections. Since 1965, when the size of the army alone peaked with 4.1 million soldiers, it had 350 divisions. Now, with the size of the army shrunken to a 2.2 million soldiers, it has only (!) 101 divisions. This means the average division is over 70% over its nominal size of 12,500! Financial resources are, however, not stretched; yet administrative and human resources are. Many regimental commanders are hesitant to accept a promotion to the division, because of such a difficulty.

[Chinese Peoples]

Translation:

China Southern Automobile: Can't Stop Producing Crap

Nanking.

According to the financial report issued by the China Southern Automobile Company, the state-owned corporation has returned in the red for the past 43 years. This year, the deficit has enlarged to 450 million Yuan ($90 billion NSD), and represents the largest deficit ever racked up by the manufacturer. That report further points out that the board of directors of that company will seek subsidy from the central government, so that they will not go bust.

The company's new line of vehicles has just appeared on market, and statistics show that there are on overage 0.9 manufacturer-responsible accidents that happen to China Southern car every single day. How will the citizens bear subsidizing such a company every single year?

Objectively, China Southern's Mt. River class D sedan costs 9,200 Yuan ($230,000 NSD), has a V8 engine and electrical seats and air conditioning, without question. But fuel economy is 253% worse than the average of such vehicles, and the accident rate is an astounding 934% of the average. Fixing the damaged car is even more egregiously expensive. It is only that the government signed a contract for China Southern to supply 106,000 vehicles each year in 1969, otherwise such vehicles would have been swept into the dustbin by the market.

[Chinese Peoples]

Peking Board of Aldermen is History

Dec. 11th, 1980.

Under the great celebratory events hosted by the Communist Party, the Board of Aldermen of Peking, the upper house of the city legislature, via the revision to the Act for the Government of Peking City passed in the Legislative Yuan this year, is now officially abolished. Since 1949, the Board of Aldermen has accompanied the city though all its turbulence, and has been an invaluable part of the city government.

The premier, Huan Li, told the State Media that, "The Board of Aldermen was established to guide the city onto the path of democracy and self-government. Thirty years later, we at the central government have been greatly satisfied with the results of introducing self-government to the city, and, having on multiple occasions seen indisputable proof that the city is more than capable of governing itself responsibly, we have decided that the Board of Aldermen is no longer a necessary element in government; therefore, we have submitted a bill to the Legislative Yuan to abolish it."

On the other hand, the representative from the Chinese Communist Party has other ideas: "It has been many years before now, that we have been made subject to the unreasonable and dictatorial interventions from the KMT, through the Board of Aldermen, detrimental and regressive to the advance of democracy here in Peking. The [Comunist Party] honestly has the credit for fighting to repel KMT tyranny."

From this day forth, the City Legislature of Peking will be unicameral. The direct election of the lower house has already been granted by the central government in 1977, in order to ensure genuine representation of the city public. The spokesperson of that party also said, "the KMT now cowers away from appointing mayors. The next fight will be for a direct elected mayor."

Editorial note: The upper house, the Board of Aldermen, was wholly appointed by the central government, whose members sat for life, and had no performance standards; the members usually stood at 5. Despite overwhelming support for the Communist Party in Peking historically, all members appointed to the Board have been life-long KMT members. Currently, the mayor of the city of Peking is indirectly elected.

[Chinese Peoples]

Commander of the Army Under Detention for 99 Days

Today the spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence, Chang Ping-tung, announced, "The Commander of the Army, Lin Cheng-jung, spoke impertinently in the presence of his superiors, and he has been committed to Detention for 99 days." He did not say what exactly did the Commander say to deserve this penalty, or the person who authorized this penalty.

According to reliable sources, Commander Lin has been in the waiting room before his scheduled audience with the Minister of Defence at 9 a.m., but the Permanent Secretary of Defence, Huan Kuo-lun, intentionally detained the Minister, with verbose statements that he prepared for this purpose, in order to stop the Commander from meeting the Minister. Huan did not leave the Minister's office until 4 p.m. The Commander reportedly said something, in reaction of his dilatory tactics, that Huan's confidents promptly reported to Huan; he thus made a case on the Commander's supposed "impertinence" and coerced the Minister into declaring this penalty.

The laws of the nation do not specify where this arrest is to be executed, in order to protect the dignity of commanding officers to be penalized this way. In view of the laws' openness, Huan declared that the Commander is to be "under arrest in the women's lavatory in the basement of the Ministry building for the first fifty days, and thence moved to the rubbish dump for the remaining term of his penalty, in order to show to him his true qualities." To compound his misery, Huan ordered that "the rations are to be delivered at unusual and irregular intervals, especially when he is asleep."

It is not news that Huan is not in agreement with the Commander on most issues, but the monstrosity of this unprecedented declaration (detention under 3 days is the norm for impertinence, but the maximum permitted is 100 days) is evident of Huan's abuse of public authority in degrading a senior officer of the armed forces as part of a personal vendetta.

Until the finalization of today's newspaper, a number of prominent military officers have written articles for this paper, criticizing Huan's abuse of authority, including the Admiral of the Navy, and the Deputy Commanders of the Army and Air Force. The Censor-General of Nanking has announced his intention to impeach Huan for abuse of power. The Commander's original formation, the 5th Army, has collected in excess of 32,000 signatures in a petition to the Cabinet Secretary (Huan's superior) to declare this penalty void.

This paper also exhorts Huan to reverse his decision to save the dignity of the armed forces of China.

[Chinese Peoples]

[Chinese Peoples]

Supercomputer Turns 55 Today

1st Feb., 2015

Today, the supercomputer in Nanking's Railway Data Centre turns 50 years of age, having been installed in Feb. 1960.

Citing an enormous railway boom in the mid to late '50s, the railway of China (operated by the state through the agency Railway General Management Directorate, Chinese 鐵路管理總局) sought out methods of obtaining real-time information about the state of the system, including its stations, warehouses, yards, and depots, even factories, and compiling and analyzing that information efficiently and immediately. The solution -- the new star -- was the computer. Handling over 16,000 points of generation and record of information was no puny task, and the government appointed in 1956 a special board to oversee the selection and installation of a new data-management system, and the transition into it from the existing paper-based informational system.

Immediately, the panel came into contact with the International Business Machine incorporated company (better known as IBM) and requested an assessment of the current situation. The company drew up a grand scheme invoking a computer at every such point where data is collected, and a supercomputer that would synthesize and analyze the collected information, conceiving the GIS (General Information System), composed of exactly that, a computer network of 17,520 computers connected to a main server, whose birthday we celebrate today.

The costs were not cheap. IBM demanded a hefty price tag for its system, at $27 billion US dollars in 1957. In today's money, this easily goes over the $200 billion price point, under which are all the supercomputers in existence, even IBM's latest supercomputer, which cost a puny $220 million to build. It was the single most expensive thing bought by the Chinese government in the decade. But money wasn't the only stumbling block: in order to relay the information from the individual entry points to Nanking, a new network and transmission protocol had to be installed. Having determined that ChinaTelecom will not co-operate in building a new telephone system for free, they used the existing lines, with real-time information being fed through telephone lines and routed specially to Nanking's main computer.

There are essentially three types of information being processed by the computer: 1) what is where, 2) what costs what, and 3) what is available. The first type is illustrated by the CCC (current carriage control), a sub-system capable of tracking the whereabouts of every single serviceable carriage in the country; it works by an employee scanning the carriages and entering its last known location into the computer and immediately sending it to Nanking, where this information features on hourly printouts to prevent carriage shortages. It also enables a real-time display to be installed in every station, allowing passengers to check estimated arrival and departure times or delays. The second, what costs what, is best seen through the ticketing system, where a clerk would enter the desired information into a terminal by punched cards, and the computer will spit out the price. The third system is also involved in the sales department: in order to implement assigned seating (a passenger is assigned a seat particular to himself), the system needs to know what seats are available and for between what stations. Say, a passenger wants a ticket from station A to station C via station B, and the computer will take this information to check all the trains for vacancies that exist between A and C; if such a vacancy exist, it spits out an offer which can later be confirmed by the station clerk. If it does not, it can seek out other combinations between A and C, such as from A to B and then to C, in a format called a composition ticket. Prior to the introduction of the system, the station clerk could only sell trains that passed through his own station; in order to get a composition ticket, a phone call would be placed to the intermediate station to check their records for trains that run through to the destination. This process is labourious and time-consuming, and always frustrating; sometimes tickets could be made up to 20 legs, and a phone call was necessary to check all of them. Now that ticket sales are controlled in Nanking by the computer, a customer can wait as little as one minute for this ticket that would have made the clerk pull out his last hair in 1956.

The state treasury processed the payment upon commencement of the work in 1957 for the whole amount of $27,122,319,251.19. IBM offered a plan for payments in instalments, but the government uncharacteristically opted for the single transfer, as it did not want to owe foreign debt. Both the scale and ingenuity of the operation was stunning for the time: IBM never before received such a large contract for so many computers at one time. Even the contract for the SAGE computer system placed the year before was dwarfed by the GIS. Featuring 17,560 fully transistorized computers, each with its own peripherals, IBM constructed two new factories on Long Island just to deliver on this contract. After months of meticulous testing and combating frequent issues, the certificate of completion was signed by the director of the railway management agency on 1st Feb., 1960. On the same day, the president ceremonially "turned on" the computer, even though it has been operational for some weeks now, and despite the fact that the computer could not be turned on with just one press on a big red button. IBM estimated that booting the main server took about a full week, and turning it off orderly will take more than 36 hours.

The only time it mattered was in 2012, when the computer system was retired and donated to the Nanking Computer Museum. Flipping open the manual to the "switch off" section, the engineers actually took 72 hours to turn the whole thing off, severing the connections to the individual computers one-by-one, as severing more than one at a time has proven to crash the computers that were severed from the server.

It wasn't so much that the specs of the computer proved unsatisfactory for the new millennium, but the power consumption was atrociously wasteful for the modern age. The main server consumed about $120,000 in electricity per day, adding up to about $40 million per annum. Most of the power went to feed the 72 CPUs with their millions of finger-sized transistors, and the 1,200-odd hard discs, and over 3,000 tape drives constantly running, reading and writing. For comparison, it's like running 1,200 washing machines at 100 times the normal speed 24/7. Space also became a premium during these 50 years, and the two-dozen building complex, innocently spread out in 1-story buildings but surrounded by skyscrapers, that housed the computer could fetch a irresistible amount if leased to other businesses.

The railway management negotiated for a new system amidst popular pressure to find a domestic manufacturer, of which there were plenty, instead of knocking on IBM's door again, but the management did exactly that. In spite of the best technology provided in 1960, a modern mainframe can easily outperform the GIS, while costing only 1% the original price and consuming 2% of the original electricity, not to mention needing only a corner of one of the original 25 buildings. By 2008 the deal was concluded, and late 2009 the new system installed. The new ensemble consisted of 12 cabinets, all refrigerator-sized, with 220 CPUs dotting the interior of the cabinetry. The hard discs and memory now sat within the cabinets, whereas on the old system a single panel of 1k memory or a single hard drive took one cabinet... and there were more than 1,000 panels of memory and 1,200 hard drives. In fact, the new system was installed in the engineers' lounge of warehouse #1, and there was enough space to refashion a smaller engineers' lounge.

Over 400 full-time engineers were employed to tend the old system; the new system only required 37.

A revamp also occurred for the remaining tens of thousands of computers that dotted the network. Initially it was suggested to replace the computers in phases, but apparently the new IBM system could not be made to work with the older computers. IBM replaced the computers with a small server per station and workstations connected to it, all for a fraction of the price of the original mainframe (each station makeover cost about $750,000, the original cost circa. $10 million).

Back to Nanking, the new server took over at a closely watched and nerve-wrecking touch of a button (and this one actually works), but the new system handled the workload well. The railway bureau donated the original Nanking server to the Nanking Computer Museum, which has built a whole new campus to house the computer. IBM engineers were called in to remove the computer from the data centre and ship it to the museum, slightly distant from downtown. There, the same engineers again booted the server by itself, and now it stands there for enthusiasts and researchers to study the most expensive single computer ever: $1,970,000,000 1957 dollars or $21,000,000,000 modern dollars.

While the computer during its working life handled only a couple of programmes, it's now open for the general public to run their own programs, provided that it is vetted by the curatorial staff. It still performs text-based tasks very well, even quicker than most modern PCs, but since it has no graphics capability, no video games could be played with it. Until now.

In late 2014, the curatorial staff designed a clever system to let the server run modern operating systems instead of its native IBM OS/870, and the performance turned out to be quite satisfactory for OSX and Windows, though best performance was seen on Linux. In fact, the creaking old computer allowed a gamer to win a game of WoW (though arguably they found the best player in the country), with a modern PC running Windows Server Edition used to mask its components and to interpret graphics in and output into text commands the the server could understand. Critics were amazed by this performance considering that CPUs only worked at 4 mHz, which is 1,000 times slower than modern gaming CPUs.

[Chinese Peoples]

As of Feb. 15th, 2015, the world's first and at one time most powerful supercomputer opens its panels for public use. Its previous operator, the Railway General Management Directorate, donated it to its present owner, the Nanking Computer Museum, which now charges $500 NSD per hour for its use.

Critics abound, their eyes focused on the price.

"The unfriendly price is largely the product of the computer's power consumption," says the Curator of the Museum, "which costs about $120,000 per day if running at full capacity. Continuous running of this computer is made possible by a rate decrease, courtesy of China Electricity, in special dispensation for the computer's academic and historical value."

The monster supercomputer consumes over 14.4 mW per day, supplying power to its transistorized 72 CUPs (which exist as large cabinets filled with cherry-sized transistors that each require over 1,000,000 times the power to "flip" states on a modern microprocessor), magnetic core memory (large cabinets with grids of gold/copper wire with magnetic doughnuts woven into the fabric), 1,200 hard disc drives (requiring the power of a washing machine to turn, only 100 times faster), and over 3,400 magnetic tape drives.

The supercomputer is capable of 3.5 megaflops at peak performance: a modern PC can operate about 1,000 times faster.

As the integrated circuit didn't exist at this point, everything seemed magnified out of proportion. Racks upon racks of faceless, nondescript circuitry dominate the landscape of the new stadium-sized building that's host to the computer, which had been partitioned into 25 rooms while used by the railway. The mesh-like memory boards still brims with energy as currents pass through, with a light bulb on each control wire turning on if electricity passed.

This computer is also impervious to electromagnetic frying. Whereas a modern CPU can be "fried" by overpowering it with excess voltage, cracking up the power on this computer clandestinely is virtually impossible. No, that diesel generator can't boot the computer. A special power supply has been wired with dedicated cables from the nuclear generators near Shantung and amplified every now and then to maintain the pressure. (That being said, fatal electrocution is a real hazard when working with the computer.)

Power supply was sometimes unstable in China in the early 60s. Voltage fluctuated, and the builder manufactured the computer to take a wide range of voltages from about 5 volts per transistor minimum to about 40 volts maximum. The setting at 40 volts (while delivering the most impactful and clearest results) has never been used, as electrical costs would be ridiculously high. 10 volts has been the standard input per transistor since the 1970s.

The Curator also announced that the computer has been retrofitted with a graphics unit, permitting video games to be played on the computer; however, the $500/hr rate makes this the most expensive gaming rig for hire in the world.

[Chinese Peoples]

Random access memory isn't new technology by any standard now or even in the age when the Supercomputer was installed (1960). The main job of RAM is to permit the CPU to draw information quickly and to store said information, having been processed, somewhere for writing back into the hard drives or other storage media.

Since IBM developed the world's most powerful CPUs for the supercomputer, they also needed the world's fastest RAM to keep them occupied with business, by bridging the gap between the relatively slow hard drives and the lightening-fast CPUs.

The RAM used in the supercomputer was of the Magnetic Core type: individual doughnut-shaped magnets are sewn into a fabric of metal wires positioned at the intersections of the mains and crosses. When the main and cross wires are electrified, the magnet on the intersection becomes magnetized or demagnetized as need be. This magnetized/demagnetized state permits each doughnut to store one binary bit of information, either a "0" or a "1".

The work needed to produce this type of RAM is painstaking. Thousands of apt seamstresses were employed to do the weaving work, and the RAM units were amongst the final to be completed in late 1959: the supercomputer alone took up 128 mB of RAM, and that means 960 million magnets sewn onto the wire grids, given 8 word bits with 6 substantial bits, 1 title bit, and 1 parity bit. A dozen factories, employing tens of thousands each, were set up in Mesoamerica to facilitate this extremely repetitive but also intricate work, providing by 1960 over 3 gB of memory, which is probably less than what you have on the computer you use to read this!

That memory was then shipped to China by air, then individually tested. The standard form factor of the memory plates was 64x64, meaning 64 crosses and 64 mains interwoven gave 4096 bits or a meagre 512 bytes, or 0.5 kB. These plates then were connected to the memory modules, each weighting over 100 kG and stood 3' tall, 2' wide, and 2' deep. The mains and crosses are connected to the module, which had its own independent power supply, via expansion wires, making the whole module look like a glass exhibit case with a small piece of shiny tapestry suspended inside.

In the RAM rooms, these modules are then connected to each other to form the RAM assembly of the computer. The CPU room was at the geographic centre of the computer complex, and in the same room stood the cache modules. Surrounding this room were the RAM buildings, of which there existed eight, positioned in each cardinal and intermediate direction of the CPU room. The RAM rooms are divided into four stories, three underground and one above ground. Each level stored just under 8,000 such modules. The modules are stacked on top of each other to form a tower with three stories. Each tower stood equidistant from its neighbours in a neat grid-like pattern.

[Chinese Peoples]

The CPU is the computer. Nothing else in the proverbial computer can compare to its importance and significance, because it is actually what does what a computer does: compute.

The Nanking Main Server distinguished two types of CPU: pre-processor and main processor. The pre-processor dealt a single task: redirecting packets of information incoming. As the server comprised of 70 main processors in parallel, something had to distribute the workload amongst them, and pre-processors did the job. The idlest main processor would take the incoming packet and perform the required computing.

Both types utilized the most advanced technology available during 1957, the year during which the processors were designed. It was called modular discrete transistor technology.

In the era before integrated circuits, which power modern PCs and mobile devices, individual transistors would be wired together to form a single circuit. A CPU requires large amounts of repeated patters in lieu of logical gates, and in 1957 these would be done on "modular cards", a small board on which a standard pattern of resistors, transistors, and capacitors would be placed and mass-manufactured.

These boards would then be plugged into the CPU frame, forming a unified circuit.

This technology, though state-of-the-art in the late '50s, was terribly expensive compared to modern CPUs. A standard modular card would have between 0 and 4 transistors, and cost $25 to manufacture and test. But that single card would get you nowhere: you needed lots of them, proportional to desired computer versatility and power. For versatility, you needed a greater variety of cards; for power, you needed more of fewer types of cards.

To make a CPU actually able to compute anything beyond arithmetic (for which calculators exist), you practically needed over 1,000 of these cards along with sophisticated cabling to make a coherent whole out of this disjointed mass. A CPU those days routinely cost over $100,000.

The Nanking Main Server's CPUs were no exception. Pre-processors, whose jobs were simple but with imperative speed, had merely 7,850 cards in 122 types. Main processors maxed out at 12,250 cards in 507 types. It was calculated that the Server possessed 3.5 million transistors, while your modern PC might have over 4 billion.

Each CPU is charged with a small amount of "buffer memory", or in more modern terms, cache. This buffer memory had same cycles as the CPU, and could deliver information to in as soon as the previous batch emptied out. This kept the CPU running at near 100% capacity when the buffer itself was regularly replenished, a task of great difficulty. Main memory was capacious but relatively slow, and buffer small but fast; reading from main memory and writing into buffer after said buffer is emptied often results in buffer emptying before a complete instruction from main memory is loaded. To combat this issue, multiple buffers sections were set up and main memory continuously wrote into each of these sections, while the CPU would nibble at each section individually. Total buffer memory for each CPU was 32 KB, which was divided into 512 sections.

Power consumption was horrendous. Each transistor consumed about 0.5 volts, which meant the processors alone consumed over 1,750,000 W. (Your computer's CPU consumes around 100 W.)

[Chinese Peoples]

China lays claim to world’s largest digital datacentre, then and now.

The Times of the USA, New York. 8th Aug., 2013

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (usually known as the Foreign Office) has today filed two claims to the Guinness Book of Records, for the title of world’s largest data centre measured by amount of data stored.

The first and historical claim is centred around the Nanking Railway Records Office that began in the late ‘50s as part of the country’s elaborate and somewhat ostentatious computerization scheme; it boasted a total storage capacity of 513.22 gigabytes from inception in early 1959.

The said database was used to store railway travellers’ personal data, including ID numbers, birthdays, past tickets, regular routes, and a plethora of personal information, even including favourite tea selections. In those days, 99.9% of Chinese people travelled by rail, so the size of the database understandably enormous.

A major part of the database stored data in sequential access storage devices, which is a lengthy euphemism for magnetic tapes. Some of these tapes would be placed on racks, awaiting future use, but others would be constantly spinning on one of the facilities 805 magnetic tape readers, transcribing information from hard disc drives or being requisitioned for more dated information.

What’s remarkable about the database, however, is the random access storage that it had. Magnetic tape was cheap even in the ‘60s, so every datacentre would have a boatload of these. Hard disc drives, on the other hand, were very expensive.

The facility boasted 17.5 gB on hard disc drives in 1960, which is an impressive amount considering each hard disc drive stored only 50 mB. The hard discs drives are nothing like the palm-sized PC necessities you see today; they are power-hungry, humongous, and noisy cabinets occupying more space than beds, with dozens of parts that could cause serious injury if improperly handled. To store a single gigabyte, you need 20 such drives; to store 17.5 gB… you need 350. Each drive retailed for $230,000.

To put things in perspective, the whole datacentre could be stored on your 1 tB HDD with room to spare, and you’d pay just over $100 for that HDD. The Chinese government paid over $80 million for the HDDs alone, not to mention another $35 million for the tapes and high-speed tape readers. If a 9-figure price tag for just the storage isn’t scary enough, remember there’s still the rest of the computer that they bought. Your typical 3.5” HDD will probably have a one or two platters, but the HDDs here have 50 platters, each having a diameter of 45”.


For reference, the IBM 1301 is a slimmed-down cousin of the custom HDDs here.

The claim is for the period between Mar. 1959 and Feb. 1971, on which the Inland Revenue Service’s new computerized database was initialized, with 750 gB of tapes, though only 510 mB in HDD.

Judging by international acclaim, this first claim seems to be uncontroversial. After all, only some governments would fork over the obscene sum of $2.1 billion for a single computer.

The same could not be said about the second claim: China is also claiming the world’s largest database at present. The newly opened Nanking Centre for Technology and Data boasts an enormous database equipped to serve, as it claims, the world’s cloud needs. Each one of its HDDs has about 10 times the capacity of the entire Railway Database in 1960, at 5.6 tB. Total size is estimated at 13 exabyte.

The FBI expressed yesterday, through its unremarkable spokesperson, “the present claim is untenable.” The agency, however, did not state what other facility could contest this claim. Perhaps the FBI has a larger but secret database stashed somewhere away from the public view? One which it would like to boast about but could not?

[Chadtonia]

Because the chinese peoples are allegedly, according to a non-governmentally sanctioned popular vote on a survey by a localized t.v. show, confused about the Supreme Federation's Political system, we release this press release to inform the chinese peoples and any other nation that has any interest in the correct system of government of Chadtonia.

The belief by other nations that Chadtonia remains an empire is in all pragmatic senses entirely false. The reference to Presidents as "Emperors" is ill-founded, and only esteems ignorance by such foreign nations. Chadtonia's Presidents are not Chadtonia's Heads of State, in the same precise sense that certain presidents of other nations are Heads of State. The Head of State of Chadtonia is The Federal Council, and the President acts solely as Chairperson on such council, but aside from some few very specific to context Imperial Laws, and a newly adopted Commander-In-Chief law, the President cannot legally act alone, and any Federal Law must be changed by at least a two-third majority vote by the Federal Council.

Because space is limited we will not establish a list of all Federal Council members to date, however, we do wish to properly inform the nation's of the world of the list of Presidents that Chadtonia has had since Janurary 1, 2000 to present.



President Alan Rudolph Schmidt

1. The First President of The United Provinces of Chadtonia, The First President of The Supreme Federation of Chadtonia: President Alan Rudolph Schmidt. {Served Jan. 1, 2000 - Aug. 8, 2013}


President Alan Rudolph Schmidt was the official president of Chadtonia from January 1st 2000- August 8th 2013 A.D. until the election of Clayton Deylanna after laws were changed to no longer allow the president's term limit to be life. In spite of initially being aligned with The Empircial Party, President Alan Schmidt helped lead the direction to undermine the much distrusted Parliament of The United Provinces of Chadtonia and to create a new progressive council, The Federal Council, which in turn after several bill passages, became the nation's Head of State, The Federal Council of The Supreme Federation of Chadtonia. During the course of his Presidency President Alan Rudolph Schmidt separated ties with the *Empirical Party and aligned with the People's Party. He was the first and only president, thus far, to change political parties while in office.


[Image Removed]
President Clayton Deylana

2. The Second President of the Supreme Federation of Chadtonia: President Clayton Deylana {Served Aug. 10, 2013 - Dec. 2, 2014.}

Clayton Deylana was both the second President of the Supreme Federation of Chadtonia and the Cheyaffa of the Tikinua Province, which is the province that seats the capitol city The Great Royal City of Chadtonia. He was, as of 2014, the youngest President to be elected as President, elected at fifteen years of age in 2013 A.D. although historically there have been Emperors younger than Clayton. He was also the first president to hold two elected positions simultaneously. President Clayton Deylana's campaign heavily relied on expunging Empirical Law, however, shortly after Clayton was elected he foresaw an area in which a president could use an Empirical law to his or her advantage: the particular issue dealt with the President's right to impose certain laws. President Clayton Deylana took advantage of those specific-to-context laws to help him impose the law that a President may be exempt from all taxation while in office. President Clayton Deylana later stated that he was no longer concerned with the abolishment of all Empirical Laws, but wanted to maintain his focus on reforming or abolishing Empirical Laws related to civil rights, education, and occupation. Prior to being able to make these changes, President Clayton Deylanna was found deceased in his bed with no bruises or stab-wounds at 7:00p.m. Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014 A.D., Chadtonian Standard Time. Although, the Minister of Defense, Coco The Clown stated "The President will surely be missed by all of us, and we greatly send our prayer to Sky God that the president be held in Realm of Peace forever.", The Federal Council did not quickly make any statements or comments on the death of President Clayton Deylanna. The Chadtonian Federal Investigation Agency immediately announced plans to investigate whether or not this was an assassination via poison or drugs.


President-In-Effect Albert Greenbuckle

*Special Note: Vice President and President-In-Effect of the Federation:
Albert Greenbuckle {Served as President-In-Effect Dec. 2, 2014 - Dec. 7th 2014}

Albert Greenbuckle served as the Vice President from Jan. 3 2000 to December 2. 2014 when President Deylana was found deceased in his bed due to an unknown cause. Albert Greenbuckle was notified immediately via cell-phone. He officially became the President-In-Effect at 7:30p.m. Dec. 2, 2014 and was never officially sworn in as President. Albert Greenbuckle served as Vice President under both the first and second presidents of the Supreme Federation of Chadtonia, and is currently serving his last term as Vice President under the third President and his running-mate President Theresa Bear Claw, the first female president of Chadtonia.


President Theresa Bear-Claw
{Note: The photo of Theresa BearClaw may be viewed on our nation's website:http://www.nationstates.net/nation=chadtonia/detail=factbook/id=333509}

3. The Third President of the Supreme Federation of Chadtonia: Theresa Bear Claw {served Dec. 7th - Present}

Theresa Bear Claw is the current President of the Supreme Federation of Chadtonia. She is also the first female president of The Supreme Federation of Chadtonia. Upon receiving presidency, President Theresa Bear Claw immediately instituted her "Emperor-In-Effect" powers to abolish all archaic Empirical Laws constraining the government's ability to make Trade Sanctions with foreign nations. Previous presidents wanted to reform these particular laws, not abolish them.

Political agenda: Abolish all Empirical laws. Increase military spending. Create one central governing authoritative body, and abolish territorial designations of Provinces.}

*In spite of all three presidents being in partial or complete opposition of certain Empirical Laws during their campaigns and/or while in office, all three presidents, thus far have used certain Empirical Laws either to their personal advantage, or for their political agenda.


This Press Release is made public by the Department of Diplomatic Endevours: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=chadtonia/detail=factbook/id=326471

[Chinese Peoples]

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[Chinese Peoples]

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[Chinese Peoples]

Locomotive explodes in China

A large, steam powered locomotive exploded earlier today in Shanghai, China. The blast, which occurred in an actual passenger train station, injured over 250 people, but fortunately none died.

Locomotive C761 was being fired in the early hours of the morning of the 7th of August, in preparation for its daily journey to Nanking, pulling Limited Express No. 35. A series of oversights occurred to occasion this disaster.

The locomotive was inspected at 3 A.M. on the same day and certified fit for service, with no causes for concern. It was pulled out of the roundhouse by a diesel locomotive and brought to a siding between platforms 5 and 6 for firing, which occurred without issue at about 5. Watering was done inside the roundhouse at 6.

Having been fired and brought up to pressure subsequently, another diesel locomotive towed its train and connected the carriages to it at 8:30, still at the same siding.

At precisely 8:40, the engineer brought the whole train to platform 1, where it was scheduled to depart at 9. But this is the end of clearly logged events regarding the train.

The engineer was sighted to leave the locomotive shortly after arriving at platform 1, and evidently skipped into the lounge for some reason. The fireman was apparently absent.

At this point, travellers on the platform became weary of the unattended locomotive, as visible signs of overheating began to occur. Some astute travellers backed away and returned to the station building, where they sought to inform the staff regarding the locomotive. The station master was informed of the issue at 8:55, when the locomotive exploded.

The force of the blast collapsed the roof of the platforms and razed nearby structures, and the outbound end of platform 1 disappeared as a result of the blast.

Witnesses state that the boiler split from the side facing platform 2, which had been fortunately empty as an earlier train had carried away all the travellers on that platform. However, while most of the steam rushed to the empty side, the boiler was propelled in the direction platform 1, and tore through the adjacent station building, into the street, and then through another 4 buildings. All 4 are warehouses, so no injures were reported as it finally came to rest on Kuang-fu Rd.

The rampant steam caused severe scaldings to nearby persons, but fortunately nobody was standing within 50 metres of the engine, for within that distance the steam could have been fatal. Boarding hadn't begun, so the carriages that were carried away by the force of the explosion were empty.

The diesel locomotive that towed the steamer into position, itself weighting over 100 tonnes, was also sent flying across the station, coming to rest at platform 5.

The steamer itself left very little of its former existence, most of which was blown to fragments and rained down on the city in the aftermath of the explosion. Even the wheels firmly lodged into ground. Its tender, along with 5 passenger carriages, was irreparably damaged.

The station staff immediately evacuated the station, citing the possibility that the tender could start burning with the fuel inside; that fortunately did not happen.

No. C716 had been an outstanding locomotive with no previous accidents, delivered to the railway in 1951. It had been on active passenger service as express locomotive since. The engine also was regularly and didactically maintained.

Early suspicions faulted either the watering that happened inside the roundhouse or the engineer's absence.

"Quite certainly the disaster was effected by overheating without water," says the Prof. Jackson of Cambridge University, "though that would imply the locomotive wasn't properly watered in the roundhouse. There is simply no way a watered locomotive could explode in such short notice with a full tank of water."

The engineer later publicly demurred, "I was summoned to the office (travelling through the lounge to arrive at the office) for last-minute instructions for the express service. The locomotive showed no signs of stress when I left it. I didn't instruct the station staff to begin boarding as passengers could not legally board a train without its engineer."

The station mechanical staff denied any responsibility, stating that all procedures were properly followed. Indeed, the amount of steam seems to suggest that the engine was properly watered.

But the mystery is not likely to be resolved any time soon, as the locomotive was almost completely eradicated from existence.

The episode brings to mind the question of China's dependence on steam engines for passenger service.

"China's railways are laid in such a way as to make electrification very expensive, and diesel locomotives could not hope to pull passenger trains at sufficient speed to match the tight timetables. Steam still makes sense for passenger services, with the absence of electric."

[Chinese Peoples]

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[Chinese Peoples]

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[TURTLESHROOM II]

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[Chinese Peoples]

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[Chinese Peoples]

[Chinese Peoples]

Special! Executive Yuan bombed, casualties unclear

Seven o'clock this morning, the government district was suddenly attacked by aircrafts of unknown origin; according to an eye witness, one of the bombs landed right in the Executive Yuan. Immediately following, a second wave of attacks arrived, dropping bombs in the Office of the President, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Defence; there was fire and heavy smoke fuming out of the buildings.

The aircrafts did not remain over Nanking for long; they were spotted immediately flying in an easterly direction, and was described by our correspondent in Shanghai to have left Chinese airspace very swiftly. The Capital Air Defence Command issued a statement later this morning, stating, "We have received no instructions of any kind from the chain of command, so we did nothing." The Chief of Military Staff issued a similar statement.

Pedestrians also point out that the principle buildings in the Executive Yuan soon collapsed after they were hit by the bomb. Individuals came running out of the building, looking for sources of water to stop the fire. The Nanking Fire Brigade soon arrived with multiple engines, but the Executive Yuan complex is quite expansive, and no fire safety standards were in effect when it was originally constructed, so the firefighting operation must be carried out on foot. Firefighters have been working through the compound, looking for survivors.

As it is a Thursday, the Cabinet was set to meet this morning at 7:30, and apparently all ministers had already reported to the Executive Yuan by the time the bomb dropped. As of noon, none of the ministers have been found by the Fire Brigade.

As to the Office of the President, due to the relatively low density of the buildings, the force of the explosion did not cause any buildings to collapse immediately, and the President and Vice-President were rescued by the Fire Brigade successfully, though both were unconscious due to the force of the blast. They have been admitted to the Capital General Hospital, and a spokesperson confirmed that both are set for recovery, though neither is likely to regain consciousness for another day or two. They will be discharged as soon as the Physician-General deems it safe.

With this disaster, the question of deputization comes into focus. A resident constitutional expert at this newspaper states that the Prime Minister is to deputize for the President when both the President and Vice-President have become incapacitated. As the Prime Minister is yet nowhere to be found, the office of the head of state has no legal deputy. Some have called for the President of the Legislative Yuan to step in, citing the American precedent of the Speaker of the House of Representatives stepping in as President; however, the Legislative Yuan is not currently in session, and it is doubtful whether the President thereof can actually act in this capacity. The next in line would hypothetically be the Chief Justice, but he has asserted that he has no constitutional or legal right to deputize.

The chain of command of the military is also miffed by this attack. By law, the Secretary of State for Defence acts on behalf of the President in the capacity of commander-in-chief, and this office legally passes to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence in the incapacity of the Secretary of State. He, like many others, has yet to be found. Beyond this point, legislation does not provide who should be responsible. Alas! A great trial has befallen China.

[Chinese Peoples]

Special: Cabinet Minister Hospitalize; Reports Surface.

Nanking: Five this afternoon, the Fire Brigade and Police of Nanking jointed announced that the rescuers have penetrated into the Executive Yuan complex and successfully located and rescued most of the people trapped inside. All Cabinet ministers have been sent to the emergency room. The spokesperson said, “When the ministers were discovered, they were lying amidst the debris of the building, where the atrium of the Executive Yuan once was; other than the Deputy Secretary-General of the Executive Yuan Chung Chi-cheng, there were no persons conscious when first discovered.”

After they were rushed to care, the City General Hospital issued a statement regarding the condition of the Prime Minister Ts’ui, who is said to be “in a very poor state”; nevertheless, the hospital has committed to devoting all available resources and efforts in an attempt to resuscitate the Prime Minister. According to the Deputy Secretary-General, who was conscious throughout the explosion and subsequent collapse, the Prime Minister was instantly unconscious after the initial blast, whose force came through the window facing the Cabinet room and upturned the heavy table at which the minister sat; the Prime Minister had his back facing the window and was flung against the bookshelf; when the building collapsed during the chaos, a horizontal beam came loose and landed on his head. Given the fact that the rescuers took 10 hours to reach him, he remains in immediate danger.

On a brighter note, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, Finance, Education, Social Affairs, and Economy have been cleared to leave intensive care, while those for the Interior, Defence, Judicial Administration, and Transport are still being actively operated on. As to the deputization of the President, the Head of the Civil Service asked the Judicial Yuan to give answer as to the line of succession in the event of incapacity in such a large scale. Confirming the speculations from some sources, the Judicial Yuan opined, “In such a case, the President shall be deputized by the Presidents of the Legislative, Judicial, Examination, and Control Yuans in turn, but none of them shall deputize for more than three months.”

With this, the Head of the Civil Service has asked the President of the Legislative Yuan to assume the office of President temporarily in order to restore order and quash doubts of the stability of government.

Six this afternoon, the President of the Legislative Yuan issued this following statement: The capital city of the Republic of China having been attacked by unidentified aircrafts, the ministers have been transferred to the hospitals for the best care available. The scale of the destruction and the extent of the impact have completely exceeded the expectations of the legislators who laid down the line of succession initially; all legal deputies have been incapacitated for both the President and the President of the Executive Yuan, even causing them to be in mortal danger. This is a formidable and severe test for the unity and solidarity of the people of this Republic. As acting President, I cannot shy away from the immediate affairs of state, and I shall presently summon the available officers of the Office of the President to study and counsel me regarding the measures that must be taken to fulfill the government’s promise and duties to the nation. I shall also presently call the Legislative Yuan into session, in anticipation of ameliorating situation of the Prime Minister, and in order to restore to normalcy the government. As to the present state of the chain of command, I have instructed my officials quickly to submit to the High Court of Nanking to issue an interpretation of the Defence Structure Act, which will soon lend clarity to the present confusion. Again, I wish to emphasize, that during this disaster, let all and sundry carry on as they would had nothing happened and not become victim of irrational fear and panic.

[Chinese Peoples]

Countersignature Act and responsible government in China

China was a dictatorship in 1945, but it was as vibrant and clear, and probably irreversible, a democracy in 1950; the transition happened peacefully (for the most part, considering the sheer size of China, geographically and demographically) but not uncontroversially. This makes China an anomaly amongst nations, in most of which the end of a dictatorship is invariably uprising and revolution.

In 1945, China was just emerging from the ravages of the Second World War, with Japan finally capitulating in 1943 to a treaty of mutual friendship but which also promised China a huge payment in reparations, euphemistically termed “gift” in order to maximize the amount without challenging the Japanese national ethic. At that point, China was nominally united under the National Government, which was bound legally and constitutuionally to the direction of the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, the man in 1945 was called by TIME magazine, “dictator”. However, the word “nominally” is used with caution, as there existed major and military opposition to Chiang’s government, in the form of the aggressive Chinese Communist Party and the passive Democratic Socialist Party.

In order for Chiang to mitigate these threats, he chose a “velvet glove” approach in late 1945 by inviting the moderate faction from the CCP into the KMT, thereby weakening and fracturing the CCP. On the side of the KMT, however, this also introduced additional complications in a party that was already hardly a single organization. Before this incorporation, the KMT had more than 12 known and public factions, some rooted in military influence, some in government, and some even through major financial institutions and industrialists. By some clever manoeuvres, Chiang managed to keep the factional quarrels to a private scene and kept the KMT’s façade of unity. Thus, by weakening the CCP, Chiang also weakened his own position, and he was forced to make many compromises to the draft of the constitution that was to be delivered to the Constituent Assembly for approval next year.

In response to some very damaging publicity due to scandals of misappropriation and gross incompetence from the KMT’s ranks, Chiang was further pressed to seek additional conciliation with the opposition; this culminated in the Political Conference of July, 1946, to which were invited the leading members of the three major parties in China – the KMT, the CCP, and the DSP. Chiang had envisioned a presidential-style government with himself as president when the constitution was to be passed; the two opposition parties, however, made it clear that Chiang cannot be an executive president without losing their support in the Constituent Assembly, which without whom would be inquorate. To this end, Chiang made several other compromises, including a non-executive presidency and a powerful, directly-elected legislature, to which the executive was to be responsible. In exchange for these terms, Chiang received the pledge of support from the DSP to make him the prime minister of China, which was executive.

The Constitution came into effect on Christmas Day, 1947. Focusing on the issue of the presidency, Chiang recommended the renowned scholar and university professor Hu Shih, who was elected with an unambiguous majority in the National Assembly that year, taking office on the 20th May, 1948; on the same day, Chiang was given approval with a small majority by the Legislative Yuan, along with his Cabinet, consisting of only 3 other members from his faction, but with 8 others from the DSP and other KMT factions. Nothing at this point really stops Chiang from perpetuating the dictatorial powers that he still clung onto, but Chiang was growing weary and suspicious of Hu’s mounting popularity and credit, and Hu was inopportunely opinionated about the affairs of state, from which he was meant to refrain from meddling. Chiang further conceived that there was a plot by the DSP and CCP to move Hu to dislodge himself, which was legal and part of Hu’s powers.

To stop Hu from doing anything unilaterally, Chiang introduced the Countersignature Act as a government bill in 1949. This act was based on the thirty-seventh article of the Constitution, which required the countersignature of the Prime Minister for any law or ordinance passed by the legislative to become effective at promulgation. Chiang elaborated on this article, which was perceived at that time largely as a formality, into a 11-article bill that basically made the President unceremoniously stricken from doing just about anything without the Prime Minister’s (i.e. Chiang’s) approval. Chiang expected to steer this bill through the Legislative Yuan with a combination of bribery and intimidation by means of the party machine. The Legislative Yuan, however, proceeded quickly to amend, at the instigation of the DSP, this bill. Chiang’s desire to control the President was entertained, but the new bill also curtailed Chiang’s own powers as Prime Minister by requiring either the countersignature of the responsible minister or a definitive Cabinet vote on everything Chiang could do. Learning of these developments, Chiang wanted to withdraw the bill from the Legislative Yuan, but a critical number of factions in the KMT, particularly the left-leaning and non-military ones, emboldened by the prospect of elevating the status of their allies in Cabinet, sided with the DSP and passed this law. Chiang moved to return the bill to the Legislative Yuan, but it was returned to him with a supermajority, which meant he must either accept it or resign, per the Constitution.
Chiang was quite disappointed at these developments, especially with the fear that he had made a fool of himself in public. The Countersignature Act, while perceived by Chiang as a parliamentary failure, remains a key element in China’s constitution today, reaffirmed many times by the Judicial Yuan to be “a fundamental principle in executive responsibility”. Thus was complete, within five years, China’s transition from a presidential dictatorship, to a prime ministerial autocracy, to a cabinet-style, responsible government. Chiang, however, soon found peace with the system, and settled into his tracks; he remained as Prime Minister until 1960, when he was ousted by a parliamentary party revolt.

[Chinese Peoples]

According to a surprising new release from the Ministry of Defence, 7 military officers and 180 Army soldiers have been booted out of the armed forces for "conduct unbecoming of an officer" and "gross indecency". As they were not officially convicted, they were discharged "with full honours and gratitude of the nation for exemplary service".

The statement did not detail exactly what unbecoming conduct was exhibited, but according to confidential sources, the officers and soldiers (all males) in question had been found topless or wearing only vests in a public place. They were surprised by the unit commander, who reported the incident to the Department of Personnel, Ministry of Defence.

The timing of this removal seems co-incident with the Prime Minister's policy objective of slimming down the military, and it has been rumoured that each unit commander has been given a quota to to eject from their units. Failing this quota within this given interval, they themselves would be demoted. However, no military sources have been willing to disclose more information recently, which seems to indicate strict orders from above, above the armed forces.

All officers and soldiers so removed have declined to comment, but close relations indicated that they felt the expulsion to be "profoundly unfair".

At the Canton park where they were caught red-skinned, under the August Sun, sleeveless or topless seems to be acceptable attire, with temperatures soaring above 38ºC in some locations.

It is notable that the Ministry of Defence has recently issued a revised version of the Code of Conduct of Military Personnel in Civilian Life, a standard reference for officers attending civilian functions, but ignored by most soldiers as too detailed and above their social spheres.