In 1662, Emperor Kangxi moved all residents along southern China coastline inland by 50 Chinese miles and abandoned the salt-fields in hopes of weakening the pirate Zheng Chenggong's power through cutting his support from coastline residents.
By the night of January 1, the UN defenses at the Imjin River and the Hantan River had completely collapsed with the Chinese advancing 9 mile into UN territory.
The Chinese won by miles.
The Chinese are simply miles ahead.
In a live broadcast on television, Zhai Zhigang, the mission leader, waved a Chinese flag 340km (210 miles) above the earth.
On a mountaintop south of Taipei, a cluster of American-made Patriot missile launchers, draped in camouflage netting, stands pointed toward the Chinese mainland 130 miles away.
The American alliance has rarely mattered more to Japan, as China has sought to challenge its rule of the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), some 400km (250 miles) from Okinawa.
Nobody had any idea where the commission had come from, and people responded in different ways when they saw that their shops were being painted by artists in an obscure Chinese city six thousand miles away.
And some fund managers said they were watching nervously as United States officials struggled to retrieve the surveillance plane and its crew from Hainan, the Chinese island 400 miles southwest of Hong Kong.
From its source in the Himalayas of Tibet, the Nu ("angry river" in Chinese) flows 1,750 miles through Yunnan province - a region rich in ethnic and biological diversity - and on into Burma and northern Thailand, where it is known as the Salween.
The Chinese had built miles of roads cutting across the thick forests of Congo, some areas so dense that they were entirely untouched.
