According to Reuters, "An advanced party of Chinese peacekeepers is in South Sudan and the rest of the 700-strong contingent is due to arrive by early April, a U.N. official said on Friday, part of a surge in a U.N. mission to protect civilians in a nation mired in conflict. Fighting in the oil-producing nation, which is one of the world's poorest, has killed more than 10,000 people, driven more than a million from their homes and left many without enough food.. 'Overall deployment of the 700-stong Chinese infantry battalion and its equipment will take more than two months to complete,' he said, adding 180 troops would be in Juba by the end of February with 520 more arriving by late March or early April. China is a major investor in South Sudan's oil industry." 

"Four core members of student protest group Scholarism were arrested and released without charge on Friday by Hong Kong police, as authorities press ahead with the potential prosecution of hundreds who took part in recent pro-democracy protests. Group leader Joshua Wong and three other students were released unconditionally after being held for a few hours and refusing police bail...Key figures in the Occupy pro-democracy protests which ended in mid-December have said publicly that they have been contacted by police this month, including lawmakers, students and volunteers. The protesters are demanding a more democratic election for the chief executive post in 2017, after Beijing said in August that candidates running must be prescreened," reports The Wall Street Journal.  

The New York Times writes, "A senior official in China's Ministry of State Security faces investigation by the Communist Party's central anticorruption agency, the agency announced on Friday, breaching the wall of secrecy that usually protects the powerful ministry. The investigation of the official, Vice Minister Ma Jian, was the latest demonstration of President Xi Jinping's drive to consolidate his control of the levers of Communist Party power. The inquiry was disclosed in a single-sentence announcement on the website of the party's anticorruption agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection...In China, corruption investigations of senior officials are usually first done by the party's own agency. Then officials are handed over to prosecutors for criminal investigation, which is almost invariably followed by trial, conviction and imprisonment."